"So Many Times I Get Scared, Wondering If I Would Be Next"
Tolulope Dawodu is 28, lives in Lagos, and works as a sales manager. She's passionate about beauty, cooking, and baking, and her friends would call her goofy, honest, disciplined. She's also still in the middle of her own cancer journey, and she isn't pretending otherwise.
PROFILE
Name: Dawodu Tolulope Adebola
Age: 28
Location: Lagos, 🇳🇬
Diagnosis: Breast Cancer
Date Diagnosed: December 13, 2024
It all started the day Tolulope noticed a tiny lump in her breast.
"My reaction to diagnosis was shock and disbelief."
The hardest part of treatment, she says, was radiotherapy. But recovery hasn't necessarily gotten easier since. "The hardest part of my recovery is accepting my body the way it is," she says.
What has surprised her most is where her comfort has come from.
"I had so much support from people, mostly strangers, and that gave me immense joy."
But that comfort sits right next to fear. Tolulope has watched people around her deal with recurrence. She has lost friends to the disease. And because her own treatment isn't finished yet, the question of "what happens next" isn't abstract for her, it's daily.
"So many times I get scared because I see so many people dealing with reoccurrence, and I have lost some of my friends to cancer, so sometimes it has me wondering if I would be next."
What keeps her upright, she says, is simple: her family, and the support groups she belongs to.
If she could change one thing about how her story started, it's this:
"I wish I had knowledge about cancer generally before my diagnosis. Maybe I would have taken it seriously when I found the lump."
It's a line that lands close to the mission of Synced Cancer, because it's exactly the gap early education is meant to close.
Cancer has already reshaped how Tolulope moves through her days. She's more protective of her time, more deliberate about her joy.
"I now prioritise myself over anything else. I find happiness in the smallest things, I do everything to make me happy, and I stay away from any form of negativity."
To anyone newly diagnosed, her advice is direct:
"Find strength and happiness in the littlest things. Live now, because you don't know if you would make it till the next day."
She's not framing her story as finished, and she isn't waiting until it is to help someone else. Tolulope says yes, without hesitation, to mentoring others. walking this path. So, reach out to syncedCancer
Her signature line for this series, "Standing strong despite what life has dealt me," and her mantra say the rest:
"Cancer is not a death sentence."
