We all get joint stiffness from time to time, and we often attribute it to age or sleeping in an awkward position.
This is what Natalie Garcia, 29, from New York, thought when she woke up one morning and discovered her middle finger was ‘frozen.’
The doctors echoed this and told him that the problem was probably a fracture or a small bone break.
Two months later, however, Garcia found herself sitting in her doctor’s office receiving nightmarish news: her “fractured” finger was actually a rapidly growing tumor.
The diagnosis sparked the beginning of a grueling journey that saw her endure seven months of powerful chemotherapy and, ultimately, surgery to remove the finger.
Natalie Garcia woke up one morning to find she couldn’t move her finger and doctors initially thought it was fractured.
When they realized it was actually a tumor, they removed it, but after a month it had grown back and the doctors tried to remove it again. The second time he was less successful and the mother of two eventually had her finger completely removed.
‘When he said the word tumor, my jaw dropped. I thought she had a fracture,” Mrs. Garcia said.
“I didn’t know you could have a tumor on your finger.”
The ordeal began on January 1 of last year, when Garcia woke up to find he couldn’t move his finger. He didn’t hurt, but he was slightly bent but he couldn’t straighten it completely.
Two or three days later, the finger swelled, so he went to the emergency room where doctors gave him ibuprofen.
Doctors took an x-ray to find out why her finger still wasn’t moving, but they couldn’t find anything and told Ms. Garcia that she was fine.
She returned home, but was called hours later after doctors reviewed the x-ray again and informed her of a hairline fracture in her finger that they had initially missed, and advised her to see an orthopedic surgeon.
But when he returned to the hospital and had an X-ray, he said the entire medical team started “freaking out.”
“It looked like someone took an eraser and erased part of my bone,” he said.
She was referred to a hand specialist for an MRI, who told her she wasn’t sure what it was but thought it was a benign tumor.
In April, a hand tumor specialist recommended that he undergo an open biopsy, where doctors cut open his finger to remove a small portion of the tumor for analysis.
He had a beam amputation, which is when doctors move his remaining fingers closer together to make it less obvious that one is missing.
The results confirmed that it was a benign tumor, but it was an aggressive type of giant cell tumor, so doctors removed it during surgery in May.
Ms. Garcia had a tenosynovial giant cell tumor (TGCT), a rare type of tumor that grows in the joints and is usually noncancerous. Ms. Garcia’s was growing on both the bone and the joint of her finger.
In very rare cases, TGCTs can become cancerous tumors.
About 43 people out of every million in the world are diagnosed with TGCT each year.
Doctors still don’t know what caused the tumor to develop in the first place.
The next month, his finger began to swell and form a lump.
The doctor said, ‘My God, the tumor is back.’ This is very aggressive, we just eliminate it.”
She had another operation to remove the second tumor. “It was a failure,” she said.
“I was very disappointed after the surgery.”
The doctor told him he would also have to take a chemotherapy pill or his finger would be amputated.
In September 2023, the surgeon was unable to completely remove the tumor.
Feeling like she had no choice, she started taking the chemotherapy pill, which she stayed on until April 2024.
At first, his tumor began to shrink. There were several occasions when she was unable to take the medication because the delivery had not occurred, during which, she said, the tumor grew “very quickly.”
Then the medication stopped working and the tumor began to regain size again, causing his finger to sprain.
Doctors told him they couldn’t save his finger and would have to amputate it because the tumor would always grow back.
He had a beam amputation, which is when doctors move his remaining fingers closer together to make it less obvious that one is missing.
“I think it was the best decision, although it was a very difficult decision and my finger still hurts,” he said.