A teen athlete who thought she was suffering from a muscle strain had her sports dreams dashed after receiving a devastating diagnosis. Maria Lawal was a fit and healthy 15-year-old who spent most of her time after school training.
In 2008, she thought she had picked up a muscle injury while playing basketball, however when the pain became too much to bear, she was rushed to A&E. After going for a scan, she was given the heartbreaking news that she was actually suffering from osteosarcoma - a form of bone cancer.
Maria's life was turned upside down overnight, with the once-active teen swapping sports meets for surgery and chemotherapy sessions, Manchester Evening News reports. More than a decade later, Maria says it is thanks to cancer research and improved treatment that she is still here today, with the entrepreneur now striving to help more people like her battle the disease.
Maria had just turned 15 when she started getting an intermittent pain in her left thigh, which was initially thought to be a sporting injury picked up during basketball training. But one day the teenager, who grew up in Manchester, discovered a lump and when the pain became too much to bear her family took her to A&E.
Sadly, a scan found a tumour and, in February 2008, Maria was diagnosed with osteosarcoma. Shortly after her diagnosis, Nigerian-born Maria had surgery to remove the bone from her hip down to below her knee, which was replaced with a titanium prosthesis. She received chemotherapy for eight months.
Tragically 18 months later, during a routine check-up, doctors found tumours in her lungs. Maria said: “I was so shocked when they told 15-year-old me that I had cancer. I was the first person in my family to have cancer and I couldn’t understand why it had happened to me when I was young and so fit and healthy.
“Battling through this hard time at such a young age tested my family and me so much. Thankfully I pulled through only to find out, I relapsed again in both lungs 18 months later.”
Still just a teenager, Maria’s "dreams of being an athlete were over", she admits. Once again, the young girl was forced to fight back.
“I couldn’t believe I had to find the strength and courage again from nowhere to go through it all again,” explained Maria. “It was far from easy, and my dreams of being an athlete were over, but I was determined not to give up on myself and not let my family down after everything we’d been through.
“Thankfully with having the chemo and more surgery to remove the remaining tutors I won the battle for the second time.”
Years on, Maria now lives with her husband and 18-month-old son in Rochdale. She is dedicating her life to help other cancer patients and has spent much of her adult life working as a patient advocate.
Maria set up a business making wigs in a variety of colours for women and girls like her who had lost their hair due to cancer treatments. The entrepreneur also began offering makeup tutorials for women whose skin had been affected during chemotherapy, and recently she even wrote her first children’s book.
Maria said: “I still wear my wigs. I love having a choice of colour each day. I started making them so that women and girls like me felt they had a better choice and to help them to feel good inside and out.
“I wanted girls to look in the mirror and feel like themselves and not like a cancer patient in a wig. And it was the same with the makeup lessons, my skin was so dark during chemo, it was so different to my normal skin and I know many girls and women struggle with how to wear makeup when their skin is going through these changes.
“Then after having my son Zyon I felt compelled to write a book containing the positive mindset mantras that I believe helped me through my cancer journey. My book is about building confidence from a young age and I read it to my son every day.”
Maria hopes that by sharing her story, she can encourage people to support Cancer Research UK. With around 43,600 people diagnosed with cancer every year in the North West, Maria says that funding new treatments could provide key breakthroughs that help those people survive.
She said: “If it wasn’t for the research I wouldn’t be here today. I set myself up as a regular giver to Cancer Research UK as soon as I was earning my own money so that I could give something back. I like helping in my own little way, it feels good, and I know I am helping someone else like me have a new lease of life.
“I can’t physically make a wig for everyone in the world, as much as I would love to, but I think of regular giving as my way of doing something for everyone.”
Cancer Research UK is celebrating its 20th anniversary in 2022. Its history dates back to the founding of the Imperial Cancer Research Fund in 1902. During this time, the charity’s work has led to more than 50 cancer drugs used across the UK - and around the world - from widely used chemotherapies to new-generation precision treatments.
Drugs linked to the charity are used to treat more than 125,000 patients in the UK every year – that’s three out of every four patients who receive cancer drugs on the NHS, says the organisation.
“If I had been diagnosed with cancer twenty years ago, the outcome might not have been the same for me and that’s down to research,” said Maria. “Thanks to research I have been able to grow up and get married and have a family.
“By making a monthly donation to Cancer Research UK, people across the UK could help give hope to many more families like mine and invest in long term research that could save lives for generations to come.”
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