Background history……

Firstly, thanks to my nephew Alex who enabled me to get to grips with WordPress and actually publish something!

This is the background to how it all started for me …….

I had a bad kidney infection in Sept/Oct last year, which knocked the stuffing out of me and took ages to recover from. After that, I had 4 colds in the next 7 months, and the fourth one sent me to the GP, thinking something isn’t right. The GP sent me for a blood test, which was done on 24th June, and the results showed that I was anaemic, but more blood tests were required. The next one was on 17th August, and this showed that my anaemia was due to low haemoglobin, so they were going to refer me to a haematologist to discuss.

I saw the haematologist on 8th Sept (I was fast tracked by the GP), and he advised that I had low haemaglobin and also some abnormal proteins, which suggested that there was something going on with my bone marrow, with a possibility of myeloma as the cause. But, he needed more blood tests, a full body x-ray to check my bones, and a CT scan to be carried out first to get a better picture. Finally on 18th October, I had a bone marrow biopsy. The upshot of all that was that my bones were in good condition, my kidneys were fine, but the result of the bone marrow biopsy when I saw the haematologist again on 25th November was to confirm that I definitely had a myeloma diagnosis.

Myeloma is a rareish cancer of the bone marrow, which is treatable, but not ultimately cureable, so it’s a matter of treatment followed by periods of remission. What happens in myeloma is that there are some protein cells in the bone marrow which shouldn’t be there, and they can crowd out the red blood cells, which then reduces the amount of haemoglobin going round and subsequently causes the anaemia.

Some people don’t even realise they have myeloma until they have broken bones, as if untreated it can cause bubbles in the bones that weaken them. The good news for me was that my bones were sound, I was young at 68 the consultant said (!!), I was fit and had no underlying health conditions, so that meant I also qualified for a stem cell transplant further down the line, but treatment was going to commence on 6th December 2022!!

At this point I was thinking well OK this explains all the issues I have been having with infections, but at the same time it all feels very unreal, however this is where I am at so just have to go forward one day at a time now…….