By Gary Lloyd
CLAY — One of Justin Sipka’s best friends summed him up in three words.
Courage. Strength. Happiness.
Sipka died last Wednesday after battling osteosarcoma, a form of bone cancer, for the last couple years. He was 18.
“(He was) just an all around great guy,” said friend Mitchell Feemster, who graduated from Clay-Chalkville High School with Sipka in May 2013. “If you needed anything, he was right there to help or even give you something. He had cancer and all he cared about was keeping a smile on other people’s faces. He had so much to be down about, but yet he just wanted to make other people happy.”
Sipka had found out Feb. 28 that he was cancer free, a second time defeating the disease. The first inkling that something was wrong was during his freshman year of high school, when he began to feel pain in his left knee. During his sophomore year, the pain got worse, and a “mini chain link fence design” appeared in black and purple on the knee. A full body MRI revealed a softball-size mass on Sipka’s hip, and a surgeon determined it to be a bone cyst.
That diagnosis changed about a week later to osteosarcoma. It usually spreads up the leg, but Sipka’s spread downward, which happens to only about 5 percent of those affected.
Sipka’s first chemotherapy treatment was Oct. 31, 2011, and he had a surgery in January 2012 to replace his hip bone and femur. He then completed chemo treatments until August 2012. He was told he was free of cancer, but his six-week scan revealed the cancer was back in the same spot. Sipka again had surgery, that time to replace a joint.
On Dec. 23, Sipka’s mother, Nina, Tweeted this: “Love you to the moon and back justin sipka.”
Contact Gary Lloyd at news@trussvilletribune.com and follow him on Twitter @GaryALloyd.