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•T h e IF P • H alto n H ills, Thursd ay, M ay 9, 2013 25 IS LOOKING FOR IMPROVISERS TO JOIN G.L.I.C. $25 TO JOIN $25 FOR OVER 10 WEEKS OF IMPROV? THAT'S SIMPLY INCREDIBLE! SUMMER SESSIONS BEGIN MAY 15, 2013 Visit www.georgetownlittletheatre.ca or call 905-877-3422 to leave a message. EVERY WEDNESDAY: 7:30 TO 10:00 PM 33 STEWARTTOWN ROAD GLT STUDIOS. NEW MEMBERS WELCOMED ALL SKILL LEVELS WELCOMED, FROM NEWBIES TO PROS AGES 16 AND UP MAY SEE TODAY'S PAPER FOR OUR NEW FLYER OR VIEW IT ONLINE AT BADBOY.CA FREE BUFFET & HUTCH! when you purchase this dinette set $1598 9-PC DINETTE #905501 ONLY 40 UNITS AVAILABLE SAVE $700 Includes Table, 6 chairs, Buffet and Hutch SPOTLIGHT... on Maya da Silva Two years ago, Maya da Silva was considered one of the top athletes at her school, an elite-level gymnast who also anchored St. Catherine of Alexandria's girls' track & fi eld relay team. Then one morning, at a pre-school track practice, the 11-year-old felt a sharp pain in her stomach area. It soon subsided, only to return the next morning as she trained with her relay teammates. This time, however, the pain was excruciating, causing her to curl up in the fetal position. Rushed to hospital, the diagnosis didn't come quickly; a twisted bowel, doctors fi rst thought. Perhaps she needed her appendix taken out. Eventually, a grapefruit-sized malignant tumour was re- moved, requiring two major surgeries. A rare form of non- hereditary ovarian cancer had struck her down like a light- ning bolt, leaving her hospital and house-ridden for weeks. An ovary and Fallopian tube also had to be removed, al- though she should still be able to have children. Chemotherapy sessions would follow, sapping her strength and causing her hair to fall out. "I think it was because I was doing gymnastics and run- ning that they actually found (the tumour)," said Maya. "(The doctors) think that because she was so active, it caused the tumour to shift because it was so heavy and it blocked circulation of the blood fl ow," added mother Paula. "That caused the pain that gave an alert to us about what it actually was. Thank goodness, or it may have gone undetected a lot longer." It would be a long road to recovery, however, for da Silva. She was sick for weeks, had diffi culty sleeping and couldn't even leave the house for fear of exposing her weakened im- mune system. Her hair fell out and although she returned to school in September of 2011, begging to return to meet her new teacher and for EQAO testing, she wore a wig and a hat as not to draw attention to herself because most peo- ple in the school didn't know what had transpired. Some of her classmates asked the home room teacher why they couldn't wear hats too, so Claudia DeFazio said that they all could don a cap if they wished. But Maya wanted to keep her ill- ness secret and at times struggled with her plight, wondering why she'd been singled out by this disease. "Maya had some emotional problems in her Grade 7 year, especially with her hair," said Paula, a vice-principal at a school in Brampton. Dad Paul is a teacher as well and the couple has two younger children. "She made a transition from a wig to headband to short hair. It was so hard for me to see her go through that be- cause she didn't want anyone to know she was sick." Maya found comfort in her visits to Camp Oochigeas in Muskoka, where she could share her thoughts with fellow recovering cancer patients, making fast friends with a girl from Ajax named Stephanie Leighton, who'd had Hodg- kin's lymphoma. After Maya and her family went on a Disney World cruise in March 2012, courtesy of the Children's Wish Foundation, da Silva and Leighton were so impressed by their trips that they held a bottle drive that raised $2,400 for CWF so that another cancer survivor could go on one too. Not long after the cruise, da Silva could barely perform a bridge, a basic gymnastics movement she'd been able to do before without even thinking about it. She returned to the gym after months of physiotherapy in order to get into better shape, with no thoughts of ever competing again. At her pre-cancer physical peak, da Silva trained 25 hours a week, but after returning to the sport, was down to a couple of weekly sessions. Previously a Level 7 competi- tor, she dropped to Level 6. (Skill levels for Gymnastics Ontario run from 5-9). But her fl exibility improved. She won the fi rst competition in the provincial series in Bur- lington and Paula noticed that she and Maya's coach, Jennifer D'Alton of Futures Gymnastics gym in Mississauga, weren't the only adults in the gym in tears. "At fi rst, when I was learning my bridge all over again, it was really frustrating. And then I got everything back," Maya recalled. "My coach asked me if I wanted to do Level 7, but I didn't think I was ready. I was still really nervous." She also won her next Level 6 provincial qualifi er for 13-year-olds at Futures, and while Maya's confi dence was building, Paula said nobody thought she'd be in contention for a podium appearance at the Gymnastics Ontario cham- pionships in Windsor last month. Yet, in a fi eld of 27 competitors, da Silva earned a bronze medal thanks to superb third-place routines in the vault and bars, two of the four disciplines. "It surprised me because I'd never done that well at pro- vincials before," she added. "I didn't think I could ever do my best again, then at provincials, I got my best scores of the year." So now that she's healthy again, her hair now curly when before cancer it was straight, da Silva is retiring from gymnastics. She explains that after taking it up as a tod- dler, training to be a national-level gymnast like some of her friends would be too stressful and time-consuming. "I want to try dance and I really want to learn how to play the guitar. Maybe I'll do soccer in the summer if it's not too late," said da Silva, who is set to begin high school at Christ the King in September. "Because I've been doing gymnastics since I was two, I never knew how the other sports worked, so I wanted to try something new. (My recovery) has just made me realize that the smallest things are really good things." 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