In late October, Aldera Doucet found out she only had five days left with her arm.
Synovial sarcoma of a 22-year-old child-a Rare cancer that affects soft tissue – was back. Her hospital’s tumor board met to discuss her options. Soon after, Dusty received a phone call with their recommendation: He needed to have his right arm amputated above the elbow. Doing so would eliminate his dominant hand, but also remove the large, aggressive tumor at the heart of his disease.
It’s a terrible situation to be in, but, in Dusty’s view, at least the way forward was clear. Now, all she wanted was to end it as soon as possible.
“I really didn’t want to wait,” she says. “So I got a surgery scheduled that was like five days from that phone call.”
First diagnosed with cancer at age 19, Doucette has been documenting her life with the disease on social media. He posted sporadically and didn’t have a huge following, but one streak made him count down the days until his rant went viral.
Now, another video of Dusty is also going viral. After her amputation, she wanted more respect for her arm. So he sent the body to a mortician who embalmed it and held a public funeral for him with his friends and family.
Her video of the event, featuring Doucet, her loved ones and her amputated arm, has garnered more than 15 million views. Instagram And about 40 million Tektok. Doucetti says the experience taught her a lot about cancer, healing and closure.
“In the video, you can see me kind of go through some different emotions, and there was definitely a huge shock factor to it.” “I sat there and really processed everything that I had lost inside that arm and everything that I will never get back, which is a very sad but necessary part of the healing process.”
He lost his arm to cancer. For this, his open funeral went viral.
Doucet first noticed something was wrong with her arm when she was 16. He had pain and numbness in his hand, but thought it was due to carpal tunnel syndrome. Around 18, she noticed a lump, but thought it was due to inflammation.
At age 19, an MRI revealed the truth: that the lump was actually a golf ball-sized tumor on his median nerve. Further testing revealed that it was cancer.
Docet underwent a month of radiation and multiple surgeries, putting his cancer in remission. This lasted for about a year. Then her doctors found a new, cancerous mass.
“By this point, I knew that an incision was most likely going to be the next step, because I had discussed it with my surgeon for a long time,” Doucette says. “There really wasn’t a place to move it again without severely compromising the use of my arm.”
In the days that follow his amputation, Doucet tries to memorialize his arm as much as he can. He printed an ink thumb. He made a plaster cast of his hand. She let her social media followers submit short messages to write on her arm in marker. Some were funny, others heartfelt. “I appreciate your sacrifice,” read one. “Thanks for all the anointing,” read another. A friend photographed her with these messages on her arm on her favorite mountain in Southern California.
Then it was procedure time. During the operation, one of his videos about the erosion went viral.
“I remember waking up from my amputation with my friends and my boyfriend telling me that I had gained over a million followers while in surgery,” she says.
Doucetti had made plans with a mortician to preserve his arm bones, and had the idea of ​​an open-cassette funeral.
“I kind of jokingly asked him if there was any way I could see my arm before I left,” she says. “In my head, I was kind of thinking about doing a look, but he was like, ‘This is unconventional … but would you like to do more to see it, where some of my Friends and some family can come over and we’ll get an hour in the room, and it’ll be ready, just like a whole body?’
Doucette says the answer was clear: “Of course I took the opportunity. … Part of my coping skills involves finding the silver lining in everything, even if it’s weird.”
His friends were also on board. One of Doucetti’s requests was that he wear something black, to which he happily obliged. Doucet wore a long black dress with a black veil.
He held a memorial in early January. She says Marshion walked her through the good company to see how it moved and how her arm looked.
Doucet praised the care he put into preserving his arm. She even made sure her nails were still painted black, the color she was going into surgery with.
Her boyfriend’s mother brought a corsage for the severed wrist. Dusty found all the love and admiration for the “weird touch” for the arm.
When she walked into the room, it was her first time seeing his arm since surgery. She cried for about a minute. She says that’s what she needed.
“The last time I saw him was when I was lifted onto the surgery table,” she says. “I just remember holding it up to my face and wriggling my fingers and trying to somehow process what was going to happen, and then I was out. Even though the whole thing started as a joke, But the ending was beautiful.”
The cremation of his amputated arm changed the way cancer was viewed
The whole experience also changed how Doucette saw her arm and, by extension, cancer and herself.
Dosty says that for years, he saw his right arm as nothing more than a burden, the source of his pain.
Lying in front of her, Doucette says her perspective began to change. He began to see his arm not as an enemy, but as the rest of his body, a victim of his disease.
“I almost started forgiving him more and seeing him in my body as a martyr to this attacker,” Doucette says. “At the end of the day, it’s my body that’s trying to fight this cancer, and it’s the cancer that’s fighting. … Taking (my arm) helps me apologize to him. found.”
Since his erosive and viral memorial, Doucetti’s cancer has been under treatment. She is currently undergoing an aggressive form of chemotherapy, which she is also documenting online. Later this month she begins her third round.
She has become more accustomed to using her left hand for everything. She’s had to grieve and accept that there are things she can’t do anymore, like play guitar, but she’s trying to stay positive. She says that, ultimately, her erosion was independent.
“I almost felt angry about getting that part attached to it but it was causing me a lot of grief and it wasn’t really useful,” she says of life before her amputation. . “So that bite almost opened up a lifetime of opportunity for me.”
