A young student with post-gym leg pain was horrified when it turned out to be a warning sign of something far more serious.
Cian Douglas frequently worked out, and attributed his aches and pains to leg day for three years before he learned the truth.
The 21-year-old was later diagnosed with synovial sarcoma – a rare soft tissue cancer that develops from an abnormal gene swap between chromosomes – and has gone on to have seven surgeries to remove it.
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It has meant the once-active young man has had to re-learn how to walk, with the shock diagnosis coming while he was in Starbucks with his mum, Louise, and saw it on the NHS app.
“It was a complete shock,” Cian told Need To Know.
“It instantly sent so many emotions racing through my mind – mostly grief, sadness, and fear.
“I couldn’t really process it straight away.”
When they arrived for the formal diagnosis in-person, he says doctors apologised for the mishap, and moved on to discussing treatment options for the young man.
Cian, a computer science student at the University of Manchester, had been experiencing leg pain for three years prior to the diagnosis, starting aged 17.
He said: “I’d been to the doctors twice and, when it was really bad, I went to the walk-in clinic. “They thought it was just nerve damage as there wasn’t any apparent cause for it.
“I regularly went to the gym, and I knew there was always a risk of damaging yourself whilst exercising, so I just assumed I’d injured myself.
“It didn’t really affect my day-to-day life, but it was often more painful at night and it affected my sleep as I’d have shooting pains down my leg.”
It wasn’t until June 2024, when Cian, from Leicestershire, noticed a lump on his right leg while massaging it to ease the pain, that alarm bells started to ring.
He had to wait until his return to university in September, where his GP was, to get it investigated.
Cian said: “I’m Type 1 diabetic and I have an insulin pump in my leg, and the university doctor thought that could have caused the lump.
“The lump wasn’t near the pump, so I knew that it wasn’t that.
“I’d also had the pump for ages and hadn’t ever had a lump before.”
He was referred for an ultrasound, but with a waiting list of two months, his mum used their health insurance to have the test done privately.
The ultrasound found a mass, and Cian was passed back to the NHS for an MRI and biopsy.
Cian said: “My mum was up in Manchester with me so that she could come to the appointment where I’d hear the results.
“I was in Starbucks with my mum 10 minutes before my appointment and I had a notification come through on my phone which told me I had cancer.
“This was not ideal at all.
“I didn’t think it would be cancer as friends and family kept telling me not to worry.”
Cian moved back home for treatment, so he could have the support of his family nearby, and started treatment at the Teenage Cancer Trust unit, undergoing chemotherapy for four months to try to shrink the tumour, as well as proton beam therapy [a form of radiotherapy].
He said: “Because I’d been at uni before my diagnosis, I was used to having some independence. “During my treatment, I was struggling with basic things like walking around or standing up for long enough to cook for myself.
“It was hard.
“I was meant to spend one week in hospital having chemo, have two weeks at home, and then start again.
“But after my week of treatment, I was always home for a couple of days before I got neutropenic sepsis and then I’d be back in hospital as an in-patient for another week as I was so poorly.”
In May 2025, he underwent a seven-hour surgery to attempt to remove the tumour.
Cian said: “They had to remove a lot of my muscle, drill into my hip and remove some of my hip joint.
“I was cut from my hip to my knee.
“I had a lot of complications and kept getting infections, so I needed six more surgeries to clean the wound.
“I had to have physio and learn how to walk again, which took around six months.
“It was a difficult process – the surgeons had removed two of the four of my quadriceps, and moved one of them to a different location.
“This made it very difficult as I essentially had to learn to use my other muscles to support and help me walk, while actively trying to not use the muscle that had moved to a different location, around my hip.
“It was a very strange experience.
“It took just over a year to recover fully, but again, I am still permanently disabled and will never be able to get to what I once was.”
Cian has been supported by Teenage Cancer Trust throughout his treatment, which has been particularly helpful in terms of mental health care.
He said: “I was really worried about dying, and I couldn’t talk to my parents about that as I didn’t want to worry them, and so it was great to be able to talk to Claire, a clinical nurse specialist.
“When I tried to tell friends and family that I was worried, they just said that I’d be fine.
“I think they were just trying to be helpful and reassure me, but it just made me feel a bit rubbish as they didn’t know what might happen to me.
“Claire wouldn’t do that, which validated my feelings and helped me work through it.
“She would listen to me and provide comfort and advice.
“Just talking to her and getting it all off my chest really helped.”
Cian underwent scans recently which found the cancer has spread to his lungs, but doctors are monitoring the situation.
Cian added: “I was in my final year at uni when I was diagnosed, and it was really difficult as I’d dedicated two-and-a-half years of my life to it and I’d been working really hard, and now I was worried that I’d have nothing to show from it.
“It was hard seeing my friends and sister graduate the year I was meant to.
“It was tough watching them and I felt like I had been left behind.”
Incredibly, Cian was able to return to his studies and graduated in July, and remains positive while he looks ahead to the future – while doctors continue to monitor his health.
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