No Requiem For Him

16-year-old cancer survivor Joe Ginem plays violin during a rehearsal for a concert to benefit Moffitt Cancer Center.

By JAY NOLAN / Tribune

By NATASHA DEL TORO The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 5, 2007

TAMPA - After playing violin only three years, Joe Ginem was a rising star, serving as concertmaster for the Sickles High School orchestra, planning to attend the prestigious New England Music Camp and dreaming of a career as a violinist.

Then, last spring, Ginem was diagnosed with a rare form of bone cancer.

He worried more about his shattered dreams than losing his arm - or even his life. "My fear was that I would not be able to play the violin again," said Ginem, now 16.

At first, doctors weren't sure if they would be able to save the arm. But after a year of chemotherapy, and surgery that replaced his upper right arm bone with a metal rod, Ginem took the stage again Friday night for a concert at Sickles High School to benefit the Moffitt Cancer Center.

The program included Dvorak's New World Symphony, a 19th century Romantic piece, and a duet for Ginem called "Meditation from Thais," a haunting melody by Jules Massenet.

Ginem hasn't fully regained his ability, but he intends to. His doctors and teachers are amazed at his progress.

"It's only been a year and he's already back playing the violin," said Eric Nordstrom, Ginem's violin professor. He has taught Ginem for about two years.

Nordstrom said Ginem complained about a strange throbbing in his upper right arm in January 2006. His teacher assumed the discomfort stemmed from improper technique until the pain turned into paralysis.

"I couldn't lift it," Ginem said. "I would try to send a message to my arm, but nothing would happen."

As the pain intensified and his arm swelled, his mother Peggy took him to a doctor.

X-rays revealed a tumor on his shoulder. Ginem had developed osteosarcoma, a bone cancer most commonly found in teenage boys during growth spurts.

"We were just dumbfounded, just dumbfounded," said Peggy Ginem, a single mother who also has three daughters, two of them at home. "You can imagine."

'Like Getting Hit By A Semi Truck'

Once-a-week chemotherapy treatments, more than 20 of them, began in April and lasted until February.

"Chemo is like getting hit by a semi truck without the bruises and the broken bones," Joe Ginem said.

At one point, his bones, brittle from the cancer, snapped in half and jammed into his muscle. Ginem said he didn't even realize it had happened, he was so delirious from pain medication.

"This whole year is so beyond a blur," he said.

His mother took time off from work at an insurance brokerage to care for him. She watched as her 6-foot-1-inch son dropped 30 pounds and lost his long hair.

"He was sick as a dog, vomiting, dehydrated," she said.

A Unique Procedure

In August, Ginem received limb-salvage surgery, a procedure performed at only a few hospitals. Doctors removed the tumor and replaced his humerus bone with titanium. They grafted muscle from other parts of his shoulder and attached it to the prosthetic piece.

Ginem was listening to his idol, Grammy-award winning violinist Itzhak Perlman, on his iPod as he was wheeled into the operating room.

During his recovery, Ginem played music in his mind, imagining the pitch, and his fingers sliding up and down the strings of his violin.

By Christmas, he had picked up the instrument, a 1905 Wilhelm Duerer violin that belonged to his late grandfather, and started practicing again.

He still can't play the lower strings, but he is doing physical therapy and feels he's getting closer every day to full mobility.

Said Nordstrom, "The violin gave him his motivation."

As soon as chemotherapy ended, Ginem auditioned again for orchestra and he'll be trying out next week for the Florida Youth Symphony, which plays Carnegie Hall this summer.

He organized the concert for Moffitt, at $5 a ticket, to raise awareness of osteosarcoma and promote research. If the cancer is diagnosed and treated before it spreads, patients typically have a 60 percent to 80 percent chance of survival.

The concert was also to show Ginem's gratitude to the team of Moffitt doctors and nurses who helped him.

"They saved my life, they saved my arm, they saved my dream. It's the least I could do."

Reporter Natasha del Toro can reached at (813) 259-7827 or ndeltoro@tampatrib.com.