Cultural ambassador and style icon, Farooq Oreagba, has opened up about his long and quiet battle with cancer, revealing how a routine hospital visit in 2014 changed his life forever.
Speaking in a video shared on his Instagram page to mark World Cancer Day on February 4, Oreagba said he went for a routine scan on February 12, 2014, not because he felt unwell, but simply out of caution.
“On the 12th of February 2014, I went for a routine scan. It’s not that I was unwell — call it fate or whatever,” he said.
According to him, the results arrived a week later with words he says he will never forget.
“The crucial sentence was that the images indicated a high possibility of malignant activity. In a nutshell, I had been diagnosed with cancer — stage one multiple myeloma,” Oreagba revealed.
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He explained that multiple myeloma is a cancer that attacks plasma cells in the bone marrow, adding that the diagnosis came as a complete shock as there was no known history of cancer in his family.
“Up until then, I had no reason to even imagine that I was a candidate for cancer. There was no history in my family that I knew of,” he said.
Oreagba said the diagnosis altered every aspect of his life, particularly as his youngest child was just two years old at the time.
“You can imagine that it turned my whole life around. But because I’m a stubborn kind of guy, I just decided that whatever it takes, I was going to fight this thing, give it my best shot, and see where it goes,” he said.
He disclosed that shortly after the diagnosis, he began chemotherapy and later underwent a stem cell transplant in August 2014, which was successful.
“A few months later, on the 4th of February 2015, I went into complete remission,” Oreagba said, describing the date as deeply symbolic.
Despite achieving remission, he noted that the journey was far from over.
“I then proceeded to do seven additional years of chemotherapy, making it eight years in total. I finished in August 2022,” he added.
Oreagba said he now only goes for regular medical checkups and remains grateful for life, using his story to encourage others facing similar battles.