Osteosarcoma, also known as bone cancer, is a rare kind of cancer to get, especially when it's found in the jaw. It's an obvious one to spot and starts with a painful swelling that eventually just sticks around and continues to be very painful to live with.
That's how it was for Canadian Elizaveta Bulokhova, who noticed on a trip to Amsterdam with her boyfriend, Roman Troubetskoi, that the right side of her jaw was tender and swollen in May 2014. Fast forward a few months to July and the pain was getting unbearable, and the Latvian-born knew it was more than a toothache. After a few
biopsies and CT scans, it was found that the then 24-year-old had this rare form of osteosarcoma.
In devastating news, she was told that to survive, her jaw would have to be removed. It was difficult to hear, especially since Bulokhova had been working as a model for seven years, walking down runways all over the world and posing as a fashion model in a career that saw her living and traveling all over the world. The surgery would certainly make it harder for her to land the same jobs.
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But what was even more devastating of all was hearing that after the surgery she would be forced to terminate her unborn son due to the five rounds of chemotherapy she needed to go through. It was her first child, and she was already in her second
trimester.
"He was very active and I would talk to him often while he was in my womb," she told Vice. "I had to tell him to stop moving because I couldn't keep him and then all of a sudden he did. He listened; he stopped moving."
Doctors at the University Health Network removed 95 per cent of her infected jaw in October that year. It was a 16-hour operation involving the removal of the tumour, then her jaw, and finally to reconstruct it using fibula, veins, nerves and skin grafts from her right left and right shoulder.
This followed with a number of follow-up operations to use a titanium plate and bone from the models' right leg to rebuild the jawbone, as well as nerves and skin tissue from her leg, arm, hip and shoulder to recreate her mouth and lips that could still move and feel.
Fortunately, complications from the surgery caused a delay in her chemo until 10 weeks before her son's due date. Just two days before the scheduled abortion, Bulokhova asked doctors if it would be possible to just deliver her son early.
"It was f**ked up," she recalled. "We basically had to tell the doctors to kill our perfectly healthy baby, but we had no choice. ... Then, with Valentin [her son] being nearly 28 weeks, we asked doctors where that put him. 'Is it safe to deliver him?' They said, 'Absolutely, let's do this.'"
Thankfully, it was. Troubetskoi was by the model's side during the whole thing, and while Valentin and his mother remained in hospital for a while to recover, they both came back home healthy.
Amazingly, just two months after her final cycle of chemo, Bulokhova posed for her first professional photos again. She worked with Toronto-based photographer Manolo Ceron, who was determined to highlight Bulokhova's strength and resilience.
Bulokhova's scars from the surgery and grafts are clearly visible, as are the sprouts of hair growing back after her chemo. She also posed with Valentin, who looks healthy and happy. The photos are beautiful.
She said the photoshoot with Ceron helped her feel better about her situation: "To do what I love the most, it made me so happy."
While the surgery likely signals the end of a professional career in modeling for Bulokhova, she seems unconcerned. For her, she managed to survive, as well as her baby, and she's perfectly happy to focus on family life for the time being.
