Mia Hamant wanted to play through everything. It started with a bad cough that lingered for a while. Then the coughing fits became worse and longer-lasting. She made light of it at the time. Her goalkeeping coaches joked that she needed to stop smoking cigarettes - never mind the fact that she had never touched them.
A few months of that, and the University of Washington goalie still thought nothing of it. But then, on a team trip to Spain, she started getting other symptoms, including vomiting. The cough lingered, and Hamant - who by her nature would make an effort to play through anything - had to sit out two fixtures in a row.
That finally prompted her to go to the emergency room. A cough? Fine. An even worse cough? Play through it. Her body physically shutting down? It might be time to get checked out. The results came back, and doctors told her there were three possible options.
“It could either be an autoimmune disease, it could be an infection or it could be cancer,” she said. “I was like … what? Like, there's no chance. That's a sick joke.”
More tests followed, and then the troubling news came back. It was stage four SMARCB1-deficient kidney cancer, a rare condition that accounts for fewer than one percent of all kidney cancers. Some hospitals only see one case per year. She was, statistically, a medical anomaly.
That was nearly two months ago, and the time since for Hamant has been a whirlwind of treatment, chemotherapy and hospital bills. But through it all, she has been determined to use her diagnosis and the battle through it as a means of hope for others. She has documented all of it, insisted that she still go about the day-to-day of life, and worked towards the goal of playing soccer again - no matter how rare, or challenging, her condition is.
“You’ve got to have hope,” she says. “And that's what I always say, is like, ‘If I don't have something to shoot for, a goal to strive for, like, what is this? What are we doing?’ “
