NORTH ANDOVER — Justine Williams moves what remains of her left leg back and forth in the air, as if waving hello, a childish glint in her eyes.
"Tell them what you call it," her mother, Jane Williams, says.
The 12-year-old giggles and gives another wave with her leg — cut off an inch or so above the knee — before deciding to give away this joke of hers.
"I call it Peggy," she said, and both mother and daughter break out laughing.
After all Justine and her mother have gone through in the past few years, they've decided they can joke about most anything.
It's been almost two months since doctors amputated Justine's leg, but instead of harping on it, she is a girl at peace — someone who has seen it all and thinks things must get better from here.
Justine has been through bone cancer and agonizing chemotherapy sessions.
She survived the cancer only to find that her leg was not growing, forcing her to undergo numerous surgeries and hours of physical therapy. She had to repeat the fifth grade. She lost her hair for a year, and she now wears a hearing aid as a result of the chemotherapy. And in the end, she made the decision to have her leg amputated.
A string of beads Justine started building during her first treatments has grown from 18 inches to 12 feet, each bead representing a procedure she's had. And the sixth-grader has been on crutches for the last 30 months — a quarter of her life.
All she wants to talk about is how great it will be to play softball again, chase her cousins and her cat Penny, and ride her bicycle like she did 21รขÑ2 years ago — all things she will be able to do once she has a prosthetic leg.
She went for her first fitting for a leg last week and cried because she was so happy.
"She said, 'I can't believe it's happening,'" Jane Williams said. "It feels so real now."
Like most things in Justine's life, a prosthetic won't come easily. It will require several fittings and dozens of physical therapy sessions. Jane Williams said the estimated $50,000 cost will not be covered by insurance. Williams said insurance would have covered a normal prosthetic for Justine, but it wouldn't allow her to be the normal 12 year old she wants to be.
"She wants to feel the vibration of a baseball bat hitting the ball again," Williams said. "She wants to feel the air through her hair as she rides her bicycle."
Williams said she's not one to ask for help, but it has been a struggle to support the family. She is barely able to afford the gas to drive back and forth to Justine's treatments. She has been out of work since Justine started her treatments. Her ex-husband, Michael, helps a lot, but the bills stack up.
"When gas went up, I cried," Williams said.
Justine was only 10 years old when she was first diagnosed with cancer, a shy girl who was more comfortable being on the periphery. Now, Williams sometimes forgets her daughter is only 12.
"It's like I'm talking to an 18-year-old," Williams said. "She is the bravest girl I know ... I'm not surprised people think she's amazing. She is amazing."
A difficult decision
Debi DeRoberto was Justine's teacher when she was first diagnosed with bone cancer in her second month as a fifth-grader at Thomson Elementary in North Andover. In her 27 years of teaching, this was the first time one of DeRoberto's students had been struck with such a debilitating disease.
It hit her at a vulnerable time in her own life. Her father had died of cancer a year before. She started making home visits, tutoring whenever Justine felt up to it.
She still comes by the Williams home after school to tutor Justine before heading home to Hampton, N.H., even though she's not Justine's teacher anymore. She has invited the family to her house for dinner with her family. Her mother prays for Justine.
Justine has missed close to 300 days of school since first being diagnosed in October 2006. She hasn't even gotten a report card this year.
DeRoberto said it was hard to cope with Justine's decision to have her leg amputated.
"It was such a final step," DeRoberto said. "I had a hard time understanding. I thought, 'What if there's something else?,' with all the medical breakthroughs out there. But she has handled it so well."
Justine's trouble started in August 2006 when she slipped on a piece of notebook paper at home and fell hard, causing her knee to swell and bruise. Two months later, the swelling still had not gone down. X-rays showed the bone hadn't broken.
An MRI scan picked up a tumor, and a biopsy confirmed that Justine had bone cancer, or osteosarcoma. It's a form of bone cancer diagnosed in only 900 people in the United States every year.
After several rounds of exhausting chemotherapy treatments and long stays in the hospital, Justine was cancer free by the next summer and ready for things to return to normal. Doctors had replaced Justine's leg bone just above her knee with a donor graft from a cadaver.
"I really thought by the second year she'd be well and we'd be picking up where we left off," Jane Williams said.
Justine's leg wasn't growing the way it was supposed to. There was no connection happening between her bone and the donor bone graft. There were several surgeries to try to salvage the leg, and after the last one, she came down with the staph infection MRSA, causing her to miss her first three weeks of sixth grade.
Because her left leg was not growing but the rest of her was, Justine had to wear a 5-inch platform on her left sneaker to balance her out. She could barely walk, even with crutches.
"She said, 'What's the point of being cancer-free when you can't do anything?'" Williams said. "She would sob and ask when this was going to end. We were exhausted."
Justine decided she didn't want the leg.
Her mother and father agreed to let her have her wish, but Justine had to console her teacher, relatives and even her doctor.
"She tells her doctor, 'I know you did everything you could do.' She didn't want a life of surgeries," Williams said. "She wanted an ending, and she got a new beginning."
When doctors took off the leg, they saw that it "was junk," Williams said.
Justine still looks at her sneaker with the 5-inch platform with disgust.
"I'm going to throw it in the Atlantic," she said. "That's where the sharks are."
Rallying around 'Queen Justine'
"She has been through things no child should ever go through," DeRoberto said. "It's not normal."
But "Queen Justine" is still a typical 12-year-old, in love with Zac Efron from High School Musical, the Jonas Brothers, and Hannah Montana. She enjoys showing off a photograph of Efron kissing her cheek at a meet and greet set up by the Make-A-Wish-Foundation.
"I should have wished for one on the mouth," she said.
She carries around a pink cell phone and iPod everywhere. She worries about her hair, which grew back a shade darker after chemo. She is just as concerned about how the braces on her teeth make her look as the black and red decorated crutches she totes around.
Used to being ignored by her peers before this happened, Justine is not quite sure how to handle the spotlight now. She has recently started going back to school half-day.
"I'm nervous," she recently said about going back to school at North Andover Middle School, new territory for her. "Everyone surrounds me."
And it's not just attention at school. She has become a celebrity since her mother posted her story on cancer support Web sites, and letters pile in from around the country. One day this month, the Williams' kitchen table was full of Hallmark cards, stickers, hats, jewelry and a Shirley Temple DVD.
"The mailman knows everything is for Justine," Williams said. "I don't think she really gets it yet, how much support she has."
And while she hasn't been in school much, the schools are also rallying behind the young cancer survivor. The third grade held a "wear a crazy hat day" for Justine, raising $5,000. The middle school is holding pajama day, and on April 25, the Youth Center will hold a bowl-a-thon at Academy Lanes. A friend has set up a "Dreams for Justine" bank account at Enterprise Bank in Lowell.
More events keep popping up. Williams said she doesn't know many of the people who call up asking to help out.
Kevin MacLean, whose daughter Molly is Justine's classmate, is one of those random people who have found themselves in her support system. MacLean first got in touch with Williams after she sent out an e-mail to other parents letting them know about the amputation.
"I was floored," he said. "I contacted Jane, and we talked about the treatments, the family's situation. They're in debt past their eyeballs, but they're getting through day by day."
MacLean now visits Justine with his daughter.
"I'm just one of those everyday people caught up in life," he said. "Traffic gets to me. Weather gets to me. Then a story like Justine's comes and slaps you in the face."
When Justine first met MacLean and his daughter at her house, she was wearing a blanket across her lap.
"She says, 'Let me introduce you to Peggy,' She lifts her stump leg and starts to wave it," MacLean said. "We all laughed. She has a wicked sense of humor. This girl, you can tell she's so excited to move on."
But MacLean quickly goes from laughing to choking back tears.
"I get choked up talking about her," he said. "Bad things happen to such good people. You just want Justine to have a better life from now on."
Send encouragement to Justine
Her address is:
Justine Williams
17 Ardmore Court
North Andover, MA 01845
