At 17, Maddy thought the ache in her hip was just a pulled muscle from soccer practice. Instead, she learned it was something far more serious—osteosarcoma, a rare and aggressive bone cancer with a grim prognosis for kids her age.

The usual treatment for osteosarcoma isn’t gentle. It’s months of high-dose chemotherapy, surgery that can leave scars inside and out, and a long list of side effects that linger long after the cancer is gone. Maddy and her family were bracing for the worst.

Her doctors offered another option. A Gateway-funded clinical trial at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, led by Dr. Frank Balis. The trial aimed to fight the cancer while sparing patients from the harshest side effects of chemo.

She finished her last round of chemo in March 2014. And then, slowly, life began to come back. She went to college. She became a nurse. She got married. Today, Maddy is living the kind of everyday, ordinary life she once worried she might never see—a life filled with possibility, health, and HOPE for the future.