A girl who had a leg amputated at 13 after her sore knee turned out to be cancer said she wants to share her motto – “I’m not what happened to me, I’m what I choose to become” – after skiing in Bulgaria, playing football for England and performing at Eurovision with Sam Ryder. Annabel Kiki, 14, started to notice “an ache” in her left knee – while attending school and playing sports – which left her struggling to walk between lessons and sit still without it “really hurting”.
She initially thought the ache was due to growing pains and hoped it would “go away”. But after a swimming lesson left her in agony and “floods of tears”, she had to be taken out of school.
Her mother, Sally Remmer, 43, took her to hospital for an X-ray. On February 7 2022, after further tests, Annabel was told she had osteosarcoma – a type of bone cancer.
A month later she began her first course of chemotherapy, which lasted 12 weeks and caused “horrific mouth sores”, hair loss, fatigue and sickness. Annabel, from Staffordshire, was given the choice of having limb salvage surgery as part of her treatment.
But because that would have meant she “would never be able to run, jump or ski again”, she chose to amputate the leg to remove the tumour. The procedure was done on May 23 2022.
Two days later, Annabel, “all bandaged up”, was in a wheelchair and doing archery and boxing as part of her recovery. She got a Genium X3 prosthetic leg in October before finishing a second course of “horrible” chemotherapy.
Annabel has since been signed by inclusive talent agency Zebedee, skied in Bulgaria, represented England in the football and performed alongside Ryder at the Eurovision Final in Liverpool on May 13. She hopes to inspire other amputees and show that, no matter what you have been through, “there’s always light at the end of the tunnel”.
“You can’t change what’s happened to you but you can change how you respond to it – and it doesn’t help responding in sadness or ‘I wish it wasn’t me’ or ‘Why me?’” Annabel said. “I just thought, ‘Well, I’ve got to deal with this for a year, maybe a year and a half’, but I just got on with it and thank goodness I did because look at where I am today.”
In 2021, Annabel said she was playing sports, going to school and “doing everything a normal 13-year-old would do” – so her cancer diagnosis last February was “just awful”. She started chemotherapy a month later, which Sally said was “hell on Earth”, and also had immunotherapy, another form of cancer treatment.
Because of her mouth sores, Annabel could barely eat or drink. Her hair fell out and she was “sick every day”. But her strength and determination kept her going. Sally said: “She just knew that, ‘This is the goal, this is what I’ve got to do, I don’t care how much pain I’m in, I don’t care what it takes – I’m doing this.’
“She never once felt sorry for herself and I’m there seeing her, broken as a child, broken as a daughter, and she never ever complained. She’s just a special kind of person.”
Annabel said she came to terms with losing her leg early on so “wasn’t nervous” prior to her surgery last May. She said she experienced phantom pain for about a week after but would sit in front of a mirror to reinforce the fact her “leg wasn’t there”.
Her rehabilitation programme, personalised by Dorset Orthopaedic Clinic, involved activities like hoverboarding and scootering. She even went to Asda to practice walking, using the handrail in the freezer aisle.
Annabel knew she wanted to get Ottobock’s Genium X3 microprocessor prosthetic leg to allow her to play sports again and go swimming. She launched a fundraiser to pay the £75,750 cost.
She finished her second course of chemotherapy in October and felt “free” after her immunotherapy ended in February 2023. A day later, she went skiing abroad with her mother.
“It was just incredible,” Annabel said. “It was very healing because it made me realise you can do the things that you used to do.”
As well as her interest in sports, Annabel said she has always wanted to work in showbusiness and, after completing an application form in January to work with Zebedee, recently did her first modelling shoot. She then spotted a Twitter post about holding the first European amputee women’s football camp and travelled to Poland with Sally to represent England in March.
She was paired with Marcin Oleksy, a Polish amputee footballer who won the 2022 Fifa Puskas Award for a scissor-kick goal. Most recently, Annabel met Ryder, who represented the UK at 2022’s Eurovision Song Contest, and played the drums with him at this year’s contest alongside other performers who have overcome adversity.
In Ryder’s new song, Mountain, the lyrics read: “I am a mountain and down in the valley below is all that I’ve overcome”. Before performing on stage, he asked each person, including Annabel, what they have overcome.
Annabel said: “Down in the valley below is childhood cancer that stole a year of my childhood, stole my leg, but it didn’t steal my spirit.” Reflecting on what she has overcome and achieved over the past year has been “incredible”, and the support from her family, including her older brother Archie, 15, has been invaluable – but Annabel does not want to stop here.
She wants to say yes to every opportunity, relearn to surf this summer, swim more, carry on modelling and one day become a TV presenter. She said: “Everything is just blossoming into so many more opportunities.
“I’m not glad this happened to me, but in a way it has boosted me into all the things that I’ve done so far – and hopefully many more.” A year on from her amputation, Annabel wants to inspire other amputees to keep striving for their dreams as she believes limitations can be overcome if you try to stay positive and “find that bit of light”.
“As long as you’re being positive in everything, it will get better,” she said. “It will obviously never go back to normal but there is light at the end of the tunnel.
“My message is just to appreciate everything more. Just appreciate every single second because it’s almost like I’ve got a second chance at living life.” To find out more, visit Annabel’s Instagram page @annabelkiki or her website annabelkiki.com
