Lying in a hospital bed with a shattered leg is the moment a Dundee man credits with saving his life.
Aged eight, Barnhill Primary pupil Tommy McKay skipped lunch one day to take part in a playground kickabout that would change his life forever. He beat a challenge from a friend and his right leg shattered.
While he was laid up in hospital, doctors investigating the break realised the reason his femur had snapped was that it carried an aggressive form of bone cancer called osteosarcoma.
He was immediately transported to Yorkhill Hospital in Glasgow to undergo chemotherapy.
After three bouts and no remission, the only option was to amputate his leg at the age of nine.
After four more rounds of chemotherapy he was given a clean bill of health, having spent a year in hospital. Tommy says he was one of only two from a ward of 18 kids that survived their stay.
The Monifieth man, who is now 33 and has two children of his own — Ramsay, four, and one-year-old Xander — with his wife of five years Caroline, today told the Tele he
feels “blessed” despite only having one leg.
He said: “I was lucky because I was so young when it happened that I didn’t have that fear in me that you get when you are older.
“I am really lucky that I broke my leg — not many people can say that.
“The guy that tackled me was one of my best friends.
“The worst thing was going back to school a year later and finding out he had been blamed by everyone for me losing my leg — but he had actually saved my life.
“I’m so lucky because all it would have taken was for me to have gone to lunch and we would never have known the tumour was there.”
Speaking of his life now, Tommy said: “I get around on crutches. I don’t use an artificial leg because the strap has to go round my waist because of where my leg was amputated. I tried it, but it was really clumsy. I can get around so much faster on the crutches.
“I get phantom pain all the time — it is like having pins and needles — and sometimes I even feel like I have cramp in the leg that isn’t there.”
Tommy worked a full-time desk job after leaving school but he had to give it up because of kidney problems stemming from the numerous doses of chemotherapy he endured as a youngster. Now he attends Ninewells Hospital twice a week for treatment.
He works as an administrator for the Inclusion Group.
Tommy added: “Caroline always said she didn’t see my leg, so she has never bothered about it. At the same time she wouldn’t let me use it as an excuse.
“Getting around was hard, and when looking after the kids when they were babies, I was always scared my crutch would scratch them and stuff like that. Now they are older it is much easier.”
Tommy often wonders if he would have fulfilled his dream and made it as a professional footballer.
He has recently secured a place in Scotland’s first amputee football team, run by limb loss charity Finding Your Feet and Partick Thistle FC.
Tommy now has ambitions to secure a place in the British national team and he’s calling on other amputees to get involved.
He added: “I would say to them to just take the plunge and go for it. It has given me a new lease of life and another chance to be a footballer.”
More information can be found at findingyourfeet.net.