People

World champ hits the mark

by Hilda Wong

Like many other young women of her age, 22-year-old Alison Yu Chui-yee is fond of reading tarot cards to tell a fortune. But with an extraordinary past, she knows that fate is controlled in her hands, just as the way she won the world's champion title of wheelchair fencing despite the traumatic experience of losing part of her left leg because of cancer.

The sportswoman is studying geography and resource management at
the Chinese University of Hong Kong for the second year. She looks just like any other students in the campus, as she can walk normally with a prosthetic leg.

One can hardly tell the cheerful young woman has undergone a tragic experience that changed her life nine years ago, when she was diagnosed with bone cancer above her knee at the age of 11.

She underwent a bone transplant operation shortly after the diagnosis in
1996. But the bone from a dead donor soon cracked. A second operation to
transplant a part of her shin bone to the affected thigh bone also failed with the wound at the thigh suffering from rejection and inflammation. She received chemotherapy treatment in the hospital for two years. But the treatment did not improve her conditions.

She also needed to clean her inflamed wound every day and wear a plaster,
causing a lot of inconvenience to her life.

"It depended on whether I was willing to spend my time betting on this gamble. But even the doctor, who's a professional, could not tell me when I would recover. Why should I spend my time waiting?" she said.

The alternative at the time was to have an amputation. While her parents
hesitated, the young girl who did not worry about the impact of losing part of her leg decided to undergo the operation.

"I was 13, I didn't have any burden. I didn't think about the consequences.
Survival was my only goal," Miss Yu said.

It has taken Miss Yu two months to learn using the prosthetic leg before she
managed to take care of her daily life. "I did not get used to it. I had to learn how to walk, how to maintain balance and even how to sit and stand," she said.

But the dramatic changes in her life has led her way to wheelchair fencing,
with a friend suggesting her to play the sport in 2001.

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