The pandemic, a deadly cancer and my 14-year-old daughter

Rebecca Zammit Lupi, a 14-year-old cancer patient, sits in an armchair whilst receiving a hydration intravenous drip after a chemotherapy session in her room at Rainbow Ward at Sir Anthony Mamo Oncology Centre in Mater Dei Hospital, during the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) outbreak, in Tal-Qroqq, Malta, June 15, 2020. REUTERS/Darrin Zammit Lupi

TAL-OROQQ, Malta (Reuters) - Strangely, I can't clearly picture the face of the surgeon who changed my family's life. I'm not sure I'd recognize him if I bumped into him in the street. And yet I can vividly recall his face turning pale the instant he looked at the X-rays of my 14-year-old daughter's shoulder.

Her chronic pain had first been diagnosed as a likely inflammation, and then possibly some problem in the muscle that could be fixed with a few physiotherapy sessions. But on that day, October 31, 2019, we found out that it was Ewing's Sarcoma, a rare and extremely aggressive form of bone cancer. The cancer had started deep in the sponge bone of her humerus and then broke out through the bone surface, causing excruciating pain, then metastasizing to several other parts of her body.