“Even the influencer's parents cut ties because of the cancer” ... ‘500,000-follower influencer’ who persevered after having a leg amputated dies at last

[Financial News] A Chinese influencer in their 20s, who was diagnosed with a rare bone cancer called osteosarcoma ahead of college entrance exams and continued to share their cancer journey with resolve despite being abandoned by their parents, has finally passed away, prompting sadness. 
According to foreign media outlets, including Hong Kong’s South China Morning Post (SCMP), on the 6th, Sha Jinhe, a Chinese cancer-treatment influencer in their 20s known as “Miracle Shasha,” died on the 27th of last month at a hospital in Shanghai after the cancer spread to the lungs, pleura and other areas. Before passing away, Sha chose a black-and-white memorial portrait and wrote a final farewell on a phone, sharing it with 500,000 followers.
Sha was diagnosed with osteosarcoma at 18, when Sha was in the third year of high school. Immediately after the diagnosis, Sha’s father cut off all contact, and a year later, Sha’s mother also blocked contact, leaving Sha alone. With no one to rely on apart from an elderly grandmother, Sha’s condition rapidly worsened, and Sha underwent major surgery to have the right leg amputated. Sha later had a prosthetic leg made and trained to walk, while paying for seven major surgeries and chemotherapy through writing online novels and selling crocheted dolls at a street stall. In the end, however, Sha was unable to stop the cancer from spreading to distant parts of the body.

Osteosarcoma is the most common primary malignant tumor arising in bone itself. It occurs most often from adolescence through the early 20s, when bones are growing rapidly, and is overwhelmingly more common in people of growing age, whose bone-forming cells are actively dividing, than in adults whose growth has stopped.
Bones around the knee—the lower end of the femur or upper end of the tibia—account for 50–60% or more of cases. Osteosarcoma also commonly occurs in the shoulder (humerus) and pelvic bones.
The problem is that early signs of the disease are easy to miss. The main early symptoms of osteosarcoma are a dull ache and slight swelling around a joint, which are often mistaken for “growing pains” common in adolescence, a simple ligament sprain sustained during exercise, or a bruise.
Growing pains usually affect both legs alternately, with no pain during the day and temporary aching at night. Osteosarcoma, by contrast, causes persistent pain in only one specific joint area on one side. The pain grows stronger over time, the swelling does not subside, and the area throbs both day and night.

Osteosarcoma is highly aggressive, with cancer cells rapidly spreading through the blood vessels to the lungs or other bones. As in Sha’s case, when early-stage osteosarcoma has spread to the lungs, pleura or other areas, the treatment prognosis deteriorates sharply. If detected before metastasis, chemotherapy before and after surgery combined with tumor removal can bring the five-year survival rate to around 70%. But once distant metastasis has progressed to stage 4, the survival rate drops sharply to 20–30%.
In the past, treatment for osteosarcoma often involved amputating the affected arm or leg. But with advances in targeted cancer drugs and imaging technology, when the disease is detected early, limb-salvage surgery—which safely removes only the tumor and reconstructs the bone—is now performed in 80–90% or more of patients.
Medical experts stress that teenagers and people in their early 20s should not dismiss symptoms as simple growing pains. If, without an injury, pain persists for three weeks or longer around one knee or another joint, or a hard lump can be felt near a joint, they should visit an orthopedic or pediatric clinic and get an X-ray. Even a standard X-ray can detect many early signs that may indicate bone cancer, such as bone tissue destruction or a periosteal reaction.
[email protected] Moon Young-jin Reporter