Woman wins lottery jackpot same week she learns she’s cancer-free. ‘What are the odds?’

After learning she is cancer-free, an Iowa woman is eager to move on to the next stage of her life — with a big lottery windfall.

The 24-year-old Cedar Falls woman, who earlier in the week received a cancer-free diagnosis, won big with an X-tra Bingo scratch-off ticket bought at a convenience store

Winning $25,000, Lily Miller became the game’s 12th jackpot winner.

“I was already in shock with the first bit, and then I was like, ‘There’s no way I won the lottery on top of it!’ What are the odds?” Miller told Iowa Lottery officials in an Oct. 29 news release.

X-tra Bingo costs $2 to play, and odds of winning the $25,000 top prize are 1 in 242,140. There are 26 jackpot prizes in the game.

Miller was skeptical when she saw her big win, so she put her glasses on to give the ticket a closer look.

“I convinced myself I wasn’t counting the zeroes right,” she said, per the release. “I took a screenshot and zoomed in as far as I could. I’m like, ‘OK, that’s three zeroes after the number 25. Holy cow!’”

Miller said in a Facebook post in April she had been diagnosed with Stage 2B Hodgkin’s Lymphoma in February.

While battling cancer, Miller moved into her mother’s home, according to lottery officials. Now recovered — and $25,000 richer — she is planning her next move.

“Being able to have that money to move out of my mom’s house and find a job and be able to kind of press play on life again because everything got put on hold — having that money there is going to make it a lot less stressful,” she said in the release. “I don’t think it could’ve come at a better time.”

Cedar Falls is about a 60-mile drive northwest from Cedar Rapids.

This story was originally published October 31, 2024 at 2:59 PM with the headline "Woman wins lottery jackpot same week she learns she’s cancer-free. ‘What are the odds?’."