As if being diagnosed with leukemia in the eighth grade wasn't enough, the treatment to save her life destroyed her knees.

"It was like something was stuck in my knee," Tougaw said. "I couldn't move it, it was just painful."

"She was developing fairly significant arthritis as a very young age," said orthopedic surgeon Dr. Kevin Marberry.

"When you take an active girl, a cheerleader, she jet skis, and knee boards and wake boards. And she's out trying to do things and we have to stop her, that's the hard part," Cassie's father Michael Tougaw said.

Stop her from being active because the cartilage and bone in her knees had disintegrated because of two years of chemotherapy.

But knee replacements only last about 20 years if you're lucky, so doctors had to approach the idea of replacing a teenager knees differently.

"The cells are grown over a series of weeks and sent back to us in a vial," Marberry said.

From Cassie's own tissue, new cartilage is grown in a lab in Boston and then put back into Cassie's knee, successfully avoiding multiple knee replacements in her life.

"She's a pretty remarkable girl, she's been through a lot with her leukemia being in remission," said pediatric surgeon Dr. Daniel Hoernschemeyer.

"Going through this completely changed me," Cassie said. "I value everything now."

So after beating cancer, and making her old knee new again, this trip home from the doctor to Fort Leonardwood has been a long time coming because it should be her last.

Cassie wants to go into health care as an RN and work in pediatric oncology. Although she doesn't see herself cheerleading again, she is back to bow hunting and jet skiing.