Jillian Williams enjoys a busy life—working a job, chasing around two goldendoodles at home and planning her trip to Tokyo for the Paralympic games. But the U.S. sitting volleyball team isn’t the only team Jillian is on. She also works with diverse healthcare teams, impacting patients every day as a Mako Product Specialist at Stryker.

An unexpected diagnosis

Jillian’s journey started while playing college volleyball when she began feeling pain in her left knee. “I thought it was my meniscus and I self-diagnosed myself the entire season.” Eventually, Jillian got an MRI and learned what the real issue was—Ewing's sarcoma, a type of bone cancer, along with a fracture. All this during the week of her 19th birthday.

Jillian’s doctor, Valerae Lewis, M.D. at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Houston, provided a few treatment options. Jillian chose the one that gave her the best chance of playing sports—her passion and motivation. It was called rotationplasty. Rotationplasty is an amputation in which the femur and the knee are removed, making room for the bottom half of the leg to rotate 180 degrees and be reattached with the foot facing backwards. This solution would allow Jillian’s ankle to function as a knee. “It prevents phantom pains,” Jillian says. To address the fracture, a plate and screws were used to stabilize the femur.
 

Practicing her passion

After surgery, as Jillian faced long hours of physical therapy and cancer treatments, she started thinking about how she could be active again. She thought about taking up a new sport like skeet shooting, but her mind kept going back to volleyball, so she decided to teach herself how to play sitting volleyball. “I started practicing by myself, and as I became stronger, I decided to record a video and send it to the U.S. national sitting volleyball team.” To Jillian’s surprise, she was asked to join the program and start training with the team after completing her treatments.

Around the time Jillian received the offer to join the Paralympic team, she also graduated college. She interviewed for a job at Stryker, promising to give 100% as a working athlete. “The hiring manager was completely supportive,” Jillian says.

Routinely, Jillian sits and empathizes with a patient in fear, comforting them before major surgery. “It makes me feel fulfilled,” she says. Every day, Stryker’s values are lived through Jillian—including accountability for patients and a determination for better outcomes.