Roane State softball player Briar Mays, left, is undergoing treatment for a rare form of cancer but intends to return to the squad in the spring. She is pictured with teammate Kacee Hedrick. (Photo by Roane State)
Briar Mays said she started noticing it last September—her right leg and hip were hurting.
During warm-ups and workouts as a freshman member of the Roane State Community College women’s softball team, Briar said she had to use her arms to pull her legs up for some exercises.
Physical therapy was recommended and undertaken, but that didn’t help ease the pain.
Still, the 18-year-old former standout for Forrest High School’s softball team in tiny Chapel Hill, Tennessee, finished out last fall’s season for the Roane State squad, playing left field.
It was only after an MRI in January that Briar received the devastating news: she had cancer.
The diagnosis was Ewing sarcoma, a rare malignant cancer that forms tumors on bones, often the pelvis, and targets young people, especially girls.
“My first thought was that this wasn’t a big deal; I’m young and I’ll get through this,” Briar said in a phone interview from her Chapel Hill home, where she’s recovering from surgery and her latest round of chemotherapy.
“It wasn’t until the oncologist said I wouldn’t be able to go to school that it sunk in,” she said. “The hardest part was leaving my teammates and coming back on home after being an independent young adult. Sometimes I get sad because I wish I was back at school. I know what I’m missing after being there for a season.”
She’s now gone through numerous rounds of chemotherapy to reduce the size of the tumor, along with a surgery on June 1 to remove the cancerous growth and part of the pelvis and right hip to ensure it won’t return.
Undergoing a regimen of chemotherapy is rough and is scheduled every other week, she says. There’s an overnight stay in Vanderbilt Children’s Hospital in Nashville followed two weeks later with five nights at the hospital, where she’s hooked up to a monitor and provided with medication intravenously.
“It makes me feel really tired,” she said of chemo. “I get out of breath while walking.”
It’s far from over. After four more rounds of chemo, Briar faces another surgery. She’ll be getting what she calls a “bionic hip” to replace the right hip because part of the hip socket had to be surgically removed.
Still, softball remains on her mind and she intends to be ready to rejoin the team next spring as a red-shirted freshman.
“She has a great outlook and attitude,” Sue Niemi, the Roane State women’s head softball coach for 13 years, said of Briar. “One thing that keeps her going is that her teammates text and call her. She really wants to come back and play softball.”
For now, Briar keeps up with her studies through online courses.
“I talk to my teammates pretty much every day,” she said. “They’re doing a great job of making me feel like I’m on the team; almost like I was still there.”
Briar’s experience has shaped her plans. She said she wants to graduate from Roane State, go to a university and then graduate school, and get a doctorate in physical therapy.
“I want to be a physical therapist at a children’s hospital,” she said.
Roane State is a two-year college providing transfer programs, career-preparation programs and continuing education. It was founded in 1971 and now has nine campuses, in Harriman, Oak Ridge, Crossville, Wartburg, LaFollette, Knoxville, Jamestown, Huntsville and Lenoir City.
For more information, visit roanestate.edu or call 1-866-462-7722.
This press release was submitted by Owen Driskill.
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