Specialty: Orthopedic Oncology
Chiara
Cancer won’t be my last dance.
“When the prize is our future, every day is the match of our lives. In all my years playing around the world, I have never seen a brighter soul than Chiara’s. You would never know what it took for her to be here.”
— Pilo Gomez
When we unite around one purpose and drive toward one goal, that is when we win.
From the first moment she strapped on a pair of satin ballet slippers, 24-year-old Chiara Valle has devoted her life to dance.
In 2016, her years of hard work and dedication finally paid off when Chiara was offered a coveted spot with The Washington Ballet.
But her dream come true took a nightmarish turn when this dancing phenom developed a sharp pain in her left leg.
It almost felt like someone was just stabbing the leg 24/7. It was excruciating.
Concerned by the mysterious throbbing and their daughter’s developing limp, Chiara’s parents took her to a Manhattan hospital.
I went to go see a hospital who said it was a benign bone tumor. They did the surgery for that and the pain came back within three, four months… that’s when my family and I decided I needed a second opinion.
Chiara visited the specialists at Montefiore Einstein, where Dr. David S. Geller, Co-Director, Orthopedic Oncology, made a horrific discovery. The previous hospital had misdiagnosed the young ballerina. Her tumor was not benign. She was suffering from Ewing sarcoma, a rare, cancerous form of bone tumor.
I was in shock when I received the news. It felt like a train just came crashing into all of us and our whole life changed.
Within days, Chiara began an aggressive regimen of chemotherapy to keep the cancer from spreading to other parts of her body.
I was sort of like, ‘You’re about to go through this intense journey. If you can go through something like that, you’ll be able to do anything.’
With chemo treatments under way, it was time for doctors to focus on the tumor itself. For that, the hospital assembled a large multidisciplinary team of specialists known as a “tumor board”.
Tumor board is a meeting amongst surgeons, oncologists, radiation oncologists, pathologists, and radiologists to review especially challenging patient cases.
Remaining mindful of Chiara’s lifestyle and ambitions, and not believing in a one-size-fits-all approach to treatment, Montefiore Einstein specialists ultimately recommended a radiation plan that would destroy the tumor while allowing the young ballerina to keep dancing.
That’s what I love most about Montefiore Einstein. I wasn’t just a patient. I was much more to them. … Montefiore Einstein almost became a second family to me throughout treatment.
Today, Chiara is cancer-free and feeling better than ever. She runs a nonprofit charity, Wings for Ewing Sarcoma, which is dedicated to raising awareness about this rare childhood cancer. She was finally able to get back to The Washington Ballet and recently joined the City Ballet of San Diego as an Apprentice.
I’m dancing for every pediatric patient out there. The ones who are survivors, the ones who’ve passed, ones who will be fighting, and the ones that are fighting right now. I think of all of them when I’m dancing.
With the help of choreographer Mimmo Miccolis, Chiara has turned the story of her battle with cancer into an emotional solo dance piece called “Remember.”
Below is a behind-the-scenes look at the making of Chiara’s autobiographical dance routine “Remember.”
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