When pain broke out in Maddy Stikeleather’s leg and lower back, she thought it would go away on its own.
The then 22-year-old, a novice gymnast, had pulled a muscle two weeks before doing the splits, leading her to blame the pain on the effects of her previous injury. With a busy social and work life, but also upcoming moving plans South KoreaShe didn’t have much time to think about her health.
“It was a short, sharp pain in my right leg,” she said, “it was somewhere from the middle, like the top of my hip to my knee, or the inside of my thigh. Sometimes I even felt it on the bottom of my foot.’
Maddy tried to ease the pain with hot and cold compresses, massages, stretches and balms, but noticed that the pain only got worse, especially at night.
“I started moving a lot slower, I couldn’t keep up with anyone,” said the Michigan said native. ‘The pain wouldn’t go away, especially at night, it made it very difficult to sleep.
‘It also affected my work in a bar. You have to be on your feet a lot, and I just couldn’t do that. I had to take so many breaks because the pain was so bad.”
In August 2025, just over a month after the pain started, Maddy went to the emergency department, where she was diagnosed with a bulging disc and sciaticaa condition caused by a pinched or pinched nerve that leads to pain in the buttocks and down the leg.
“The doctor didn’t offer me any treatment, just told me to go to my GP,” she said. “He told me not to come back unless I lost control of my bowels.”
Maddy Stikeleather, who turns 24 later this month, was diagnosed with a rare and aggressive cancer after initially being told she had sciatica
About 10 to 40 percent of Americans will be diagnosed with sciatica at least once in their lives, but doctors warn that sciatica is only a diagnosis of the symptom, not the cause of the pain.
In many cases it is caused by an overgrowth of bone or a herniated or bulging disc, but in some cases it can be a warning of something more sinister.
“If the pain doesn’t improve or doesn’t respond to therapy, that’s a sign that further testing is needed,” says Dr. Ali Baaj, a spine surgeon at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago.
‘If someone has unusually long-lasting back pain, numbness or tingling in one limb that spreads to another limb, or severe lower back pain that does not respond to therapy, then that would warrant further investigation.
“Night pain would also be something we would explore.”
Maddy, now 23, told Daily Mail that the hospital doctor’s dismissal of her symptoms “really set me up for failure.”
She finally went to her GP in September about the pain, which had now spread across her lower back.
“My doctor just told me I needed to have six weeks of physiotherapy and then I could have another scan to see what was going on,” she said.
Stikeleather visited the ER at least seven times but was told she had sciatica and then that she was probably pregnant
The image above shows the sciatic nerve (blue line) and where it connects to the spinal cord. In sciatica, the nerve becomes compressed, causing pain
She underwent physical therapy, but as the pain continued to worsen, she went to the emergency room two more times. Just like the first time, no treatment was offered and she was sent home after 30 minutes.
“By this time my periods had also stopped randomly, so they thought I was pregnant or it was just cramps or hormonal problems,” she said.
‘I also had other warning signs. My right leg was now completely numb and I could no longer feel when I needed to go to the toilet.
‘To avoid an accident, I used the bathroom religiously. I’m sure if I hadn’t done that I would have had one.”
It was only after she returned to the emergency room for the fourth time in floods of tears in November – just over four months after the pain started – that doctors took her seriously.
Scans were ordered and quickly revealed the cause of her symptoms.
‘They found a mass the size of a lime on the lower right side of my back which had started to wrap around my vital blood vessels and urethra. They also found nodules in my lungs,” Maddy said.
Doctors suggested the mass had pressed on her sciatic nerve, causing the pain diagnosed as sciatica.
They immediately performed surgery to open her urethra – which carries urine from the bladder outside the body – to ensure she could urinate properly. They then took two biopsies of the tumor to identify it.
Stikeleather is pictured above with her younger sister, her father and her stepmother. She is the middle child of three children
Three weeks later she was diagnosed: Leiomyosarcoma, a rare and aggressive form of cancer that arises from the smooth muscle cells that line organs (such as the intestines and bladder) and automatically contract to push substances through the body.
About 2,000 cases of this fast-growing cancer are diagnosed in the U.S. each year and, like other cancers, it becomes much more difficult to treat if it is caught late.
If doctors detect the cancer before it spreads, about 63 percent of patients live for five years or more, but if the cancer is not discovered until after it has spread through the body, the five-year survival rate drops to 14 percent.
Although generally rare, women are at the highest risk for cancer, and most patients are between the ages of 48 and 54.
For Maddy, doctors told her the cancer was stage four – meaning it had spread to distant locations in her body – and that the cancer was inoperable because the cancer had wrapped itself around her vital blood vessels.
They said without surgery she only had two years to live.
“It was hard,” Maddy said. “I feel like I’m trying to deal with it the best I can… but it can be tough.
‘It just took so long to get diagnosed, and my mass grew so quickly, that we all believe – even the doctors – that the delay led to me being diagnosed at a much later stage.
‘One of the nurses told me that the majority of the young female patients had experienced exactly what I had.
“They were fired, given false diagnoses and, unfortunately [were] were left with something much more serious when they were finally diagnosed, just because they were discharged so often.”
Stikeleather said chemotherapy has so far failed to stop the growth of her cancer
Stikeleather is pictured above with her cat Nira. She got the cat five years ago while living in North Carolina and the pair are inseparable
In January 2026, Maddy received her first of eight rounds of chemotherapy, and in June scans showed that although it had eradicated some nodules in the lungs, several new ones had appeared.
The growth of the main tumor in her lower back has slowed, but not stopped. It is now about the size of an orange.
Doctors put her on another round of chemotherapy for two to three rounds.
However, if this does not reduce the size of her tumor, Maddy is considering switching hospitals and finding one that will consider operating on the tumor.
Despite the cancer, Maddy tries to stay positive by spending time with her family and doing things she enjoys, such as camping.
On August 29, she will celebrate her 24th birthday with her father and stepmother.
“I really miss my old self now because even though they said I only had two years to live, I feel like I’m not alive anymore,” she said.
‘I had plans to become an English teacher in South Korea. But now I feel like I’m just barely getting through it.
‘However, I remain positive and hope this new chemotherapy works.’
