I had never heard of myeloma before November 2023. When I did, my whole life changed overnight. My son and I had just returned from Japan – from the most amazing holiday. My husband, Nick, told me he had something to tell me and could I come straight back after the school run rather than go for my swim before work.
I thought “he either wants a divorce, has lost his job or some money somehow or it’s his health”. I knew it wasn’t divorce and I prayed it was a financial problem. I even bargained with the powers that be that maybe he was a secret gambler or had lost his job months ago and was only getting round to telling me now. The one thing I did not expect to hear was the word “cancer”.
Nick had had some health issues during 2023 and had had different tests all coming back clear. Until abnormal cells were detected in his bone marrow.
Myeloma is a cancer that really wreaks havoc with your emotions as well as your blood cells.
That’s because myeloma is an incurable cancer and once you’ve been diagnosed with it, it will definitely progress but the rate at which it does so, varies. For many, by the time it is caught, they are already at a stage where treatment needs to start immediately.
Currently, Nick’s condition is asymptomatic, which is good, but he is in the highest risk category of it progressing in the next two years.
This cancer has no cure. It can be treated and it has an average 7 year life expectancy with treatment.
When something like this happens to someone you love, there are a ton of emotions to process and navigate and part of this is feeling helpless. There is, what feels like, constant monitoring and a horrid kind of waiting for it to get worse. At the same time, we try to get on with normal family life as much as we can.
We have made lots of decisions about how we want to live and what we want to do and we try to live in the present.
Something proactive to do and important to do is raise money to fund research into this very rare cancer.
Treatments are improving all the time and finding better and better treatments and perhaps one day a cure, relies on hard cash. I want to raise £10k by the end of the year.
That’s 10% of the cancer charity Myeloma UK’s £100k target which shows just how much difference YOUR donation will make.
Each quarter I will complete a different challenge.
March 2024 – walk 10 miles a day at my health club and outdoors.
“Cancer cannot cripple love, it cannot shatter hope, it cannot conquer the spirit.”
Unknown
