Doctors dismissed my leg pain as sciatica. I’ve now been diagnosed with terminal cancer at 23: There were subtle warning signs in the bathroom and at night… that were left too late
When a pain erupted in Maddy Stikeleather’s leg and lower back, she thought it would go away on its own.
A budding gymnast, the then 22-year-old had pulled a muscle two weeks prior doing splits, leading her to blame the pain on fallout from her previous injury. With a busy social and work life, as well as upcoming plans to move to South Korea, she didn’t have much time to think about her health.
‘It was a short, sharp pain in my right leg,’ she said, ‘it was anywhere from the middle of like the top of my hip down to my knee, or the inside of my thigh. Sometimes, I could even feel it in the bottom of my foot.’
Maddy tried to ease the pain with hot and cold compresses, massages, stretches and balms, but found that it only got worse, particularly at night.
‘I started to move a lot slower, I couldn’t keep up with anybody,’ the Michigan native said. ‘The pain just wouldn’t go away, especially at night time, it made it really difficult to sleep.
‘It affected my job in a bar too. You need to be on your feet a lot, and I just couldn’t be. 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 in her spine and sciatica, a condition caused by a pinched or compressed nerve that leads to pain through the buttocks and down the leg.
‘The doctor didn’t offer me any treatment, but just said I should see my primary care physician,’ 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 are diagnosed with sciatica at least once in their lives, but doctors warn that sciatica is only a diagnosis for the symptom, but not what is causing the pain.
In many cases, it is triggered by an overgrowth of bone or a herniated or bulging disc, but in some cases it may be a warning sign of something more sinister.
‘If the pain does not improve or does not respond to therapy, then that is a sign that further tests are needed’, said Dr Ali Baaj, a spine surgeon at Northwestern Medicine in Chicago.
‘Whenever someone has unusual prolonged back pain, numbness or tingling in a limb that spreads to another limb or severe pain in their lower back that does not respond to therapy, then that would warrant further investigation.
‘Pain at night would also be something that we would investigate.’
Maddy, now 23, told Daily Mail the dismissal of her symptoms by the hospital doctor ‘really set me up for failure.’
Finally, in September, she saw her primary care doctor about the pain, which had now spread across her lower back.
‘My doctor just told me I should do six weeks of physical therapy and then I could have another scan to see what was going on,’ she said.
Stikeleather visited the ER at least seven times, only to be told she had sciatica and then that she was likely pregnant
The above graphic shows the sciatic nerve (blue line), and where it connects to the spinal cord. In sciatica, the nerve becomes compressed, triggering pain
She attended physical therapy but, as the pain continued to worsen, she went to the ED twice more. Just like the first time, no treatment was offered and she was sent home after 30 minutes.
‘By this time, my periods had randomly stopped too, so they thought I was pregnant or that it was just cramps or hormonal issues,’ she said.
‘I had other warning signs too. My right leg was now completely numb and I stopped being able to feel when I needed to use the bathroom.
‘To avoid an accident, I was using 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 ED for a fourth time in a flood of tears in November – just over four months after the pain started – that doctors took her seriously.
Scans were ordered and they quickly revealed the cause of her symptoms.
‘They found a lime-sized mass on the lower right side of my back that had started to wrap around my vital blood vessels and urethra. They also detected nodules in my lungs,’ Maddy said.
Doctors suggested that the mass had been pressing on her sciatic nerve, triggering the pain that was diagnosed as sciatica.
They immediately carried out surgery to open up her urethra – which carries urine from the bladder outside the body – to ensure she could urinate properly. Then, they took two biopsies from 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 had a diagnosis: Leiomyosarcoma, a rare and aggressive type of cancer that forms from the smooth muscle cells that line organs – such as the intestines and bladder – and contract automatically to push substances through the body.
About 2,000 cases of this fast-growing cancer are diagnosed in the US every year and, like other cancers, it becomes much harder to treat if it is detected late.
If doctors find the cancer before it spreads, about 63 percent of patients live for five years or longer, but if it is not detected until it has spread throughout the body, the five-year survival rate drops to 14 percent.
Although it is rare overall, women are most at risk of the cancer, and most patients are between 48 and 54 years old.
For Maddy, doctors told her the cancer was stage four – meaning it had spread to distant locations in her body – and it was inoperable because it had wrapped around her vital blood vessels.
They said that, without surgery, she had just two years to live.
‘It’s been difficult,’ Maddy said. ‘I feel like I am trying to handle it the best that I can… but it can be tough.
‘It just took so long to get the diagnosis, and my mass was growing at such a quick rate, 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 the majority of young female patients had been through exactly the same thing as me.
‘They had been dismissed, got false diagnoses and unfortunately [were] left with something much more severe when it was finally diagnosed just because they were dismissed so many times.’
Stikeleather said that chemotherapy has so far not managed to stop her cancer growing
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 while it had eradicated some nodules in the lungs, several new ones had appeared.
Growth of the main tumor in her lower back has slowed, but not stopped. It is now about the size of an orange.
Doctors have switched her onto a new chemotherapy for two to three rounds.
If this does not cause her tumor to shrink, however, Maddy says she is considering changing hospitals and finding one that will consider operating on the tumor.
Despite the cancer, Maddy is battling to remain 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 stepmom.
‘I miss my old self a lot right now because, even though they said I would only have two years left to live, I feel like I’m not living,’ she said.
‘I had plans to become an English teacher in South Korea. But now, I feel like I’m just getting by.
‘I’m remaining positive, however, and hoping that this new chemotherapy works.’
