Callie Matalas remembers the pain in her left arm was so agonizing it would jolt her awake in the middle of the night.
The 39-year-old teacher from Chicago said the ‘excruciating’ pain, which would radiate up her arm and into her neck, felt like a muscle spasm. At first, she assumed she had just been ‘sleeping funny’ and brushed it off as a pulled muscle in August 2025.
But over the next weeks, the pain kept returning, along with a trivial but persistent cough.
‘One night, the pain woke me up and I was slamming my hand on the pillow because it would just not stop,’ Matalas said.
‘It was radiating, so [my husband] took the massage gun and massaged the area with it, and that helped for that night, but it would come back a couple of days later.
‘I’m in my late 30s, so I thought maybe I pulled a muscle or something and maybe it will just take a while to heal.’
It took until September 2025, when she saw a ‘lightning bolt’ in the corner of her right eye while reading to a student, for her to seek medical help.
‘Shortly after, I started getting pain in my left arm,’ the mother-of-two said. ‘I was worried that I was having a stroke or something, so I went to the doctor.’
Callie Matalas, a 39-year-old teacher from Chicago, thought she had slept ‘funny’ and had a pulled muscle. It turned out to be deadly cancer
Matalas, seen above during chemotherapy, was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a cancer of the lymphatic system
A CT scan revealed Matalas had a four-inch tumor in her chest, near her left lung, despite her only symptoms being the cough and shoulder pain.
After a biopsy in October 2025, she was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma, a type of cancer that affects the body’s disease-fighting lymphatic system.
‘I went to the doctor for an eye and arm situation and came out learning that I had a growth in my body and I now need an oncologist,’ Matalas said.
‘I felt like I was in a dream – it didn’t feel like it was me sitting in my body in a seat.
‘I was definitely in shock. I couldn’t cry, I was speechless.
‘Knowing that I would lose my hair was really hard for me because I didn’t want to look sick.
‘I didn’t want my kids to see me and think, “What’s wrong with my mom?” So that was really hard for me, and that’s when I just started crying.’
Non-Hodgkin lymphoma (NHL) starts in the lymphatic system, a germ-fighting network made up of bone marrow, clusters of cells called lymph nodes and organs including the spleen.
The American Cancer Society estimates nearly 80,000 Americans will be diagnosed with NHL this year and almost 20,000 will die. Overall, men have a one in 46 chance of developing NHL in their lifetime, while the risk is one in 55 for women.
The overall survival rate is 74 percent, according to the National Cancer Institute (NCI).
Going through chemo forced Matalas to spend time away from her two children, which she said was one of the most difficult parts of her cancer journey
After six rounds of chemotherapy, Matalas is urging other young people to advocate for themselves in medical settings
In Stage 1, the five-year survival rate is 88 percent, which drops down to 64 percent when the disease spreads to other organs. The largest share of cases (33 percent) are diagnosed in Stage 4.
It’s unclear what stage of the disease Matalas had.
Additionally, NHL is most common in people ages 65 to 74, with an average age of 68. Only about five percent of patients are between ages 35 and 44 like Matalas.
Since November 2025, Matalas has undergone six rounds of chemotherapy and is waiting to have a PET scan in April to see how effective the treatment has been. PET scans use radioactive tracers to detect cancer throughout the body.
‘I have a nine and an 11-year-old, so having chemotherapy was hard for me because I had to be in the hospital for several days,’ she said. ‘I’d never spent more than a day or two away from [my kids] at a time.’
She is now urging others, particularly young people, who notice something is off with their body to visit their doctor and advocate for themselves.
‘If you feel like something is wrong, or if you feel like something is off, then get it taken care of,’ Matalas said. ‘If doctors don’t listen to you or you don’t feel like you’re being heard, then go seek another doctor.’
