Unfortunately, with these things you can never quite pinpoint when you first became “unwell”. But I do know that I was down as a stem cell donor match for a patient in May 2023 and I went through all of the medical checks. Interestingly I was told my ESR rate was elevated. I had it rechecked and was told it was probably due to allergies. Around that time I started to notice itching on my legs, but due to having allergies and eczema I didn’t ever really think much of it. In fact I did have a doctors appointment at one point for some skin cream, but this was never flagged as an issue. And it nev ..read more

I’m Ruby and I’m 13 years old and this is my story. In early April i had extremely itchy lower legs. We thought that it was our washing powder but it never went away. On the 18th of May i came home from school with an egg sized lump on the left side of my neck. We went to our Local GP and got prescribed antibiotics and kept having follow up appointments after follow ups, until my Doctor suspected something wasn’t right and he sent me to my hospital. On the 2nd of June i had an ultrasound and a chest x-ray. We got told that we were no longer looking at an infection and we were looking at Lympho ..read more

My name is Bebe and I am 14 years old. So where do I start? I started to get extremely tired around December time and my skin was really itchy, so my mum took me to my local doctors and they said let’s get some blood tests done. We got my results back and it said I was severely anaemic so they prescribed me some iron supplements to try for 3 months. I took these iron supplements religiously for 2 months but it was just not improving. So my mum and dad took me to the doctors again and he said get more bloods, but the wait to get bloods was 3 months! We couldn’t wait so we went and hoped for the ..read more

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I’m Lizzie, and I have worked in the NHS as a Therapeutic Radiographer since 2011. In May 2022, I was diagnosed with Hodgkin Lymphoma. I was 29. Despite spending all my adult life working in an Oncology setting, I didn’t recognise the symptoms of blood cancer in myself. My symptoms included weight loss, fatigue like no other, intense itching, unexplained bruising, chest pain, breathlessness, non-healing sores, insomnia, night sweats, a cough, and paresthesia. I also had a small palpable lymph node behind my collarbone. When I list my symptoms like this, I can’t believe I didn’t realise that so ..read more

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I began feeling unwell around November 2021. I started noticing swelling in my upper torso and face, as well as pressure in my head whenever I bent down. The swelling progressed and by very late December 2021, I was in a very poor way with chest pains, tachycardia and the symptoms I listed above. I was then diagnosed with a bilateral pulmonary embolism but the cause was still a mystery to the consultants.  After several misdiagnosis, it appeared I had a mass in my superior vena cava which was giving me symptoms of superior vena cava syndrome. I had a PET scan in March 2022 and it became a ..read more

While I was enjoying my final year at London College of Fashion, I discovered a lump on my left side near my breast. Being terrified of anything medical, I tried to ignore it, thinking it would eventually disappear, but more lumps appeared. My neck, armpits, and groin were all affected, causing constant pain. I had to make the difficult decision to drop out of university due to my inability to keep up with projects. As the lumps grew, the more comfortable I became. Fighting through my anxiety and selective mutism, I finally managed to get the courage to go to the GP. She explained that I would ..read more

In June 2022 I was diagnosed with Hodgkins Lymphoma, which is a type of blood cancer that mainly affects the lymph nodes. I never thought that at my age (28) I would have to battle something like this, but I have the most amazing support system around me, my husband especially, and family and friends who are all helping me through this tough chapter in my life. The first symptom I had, which I didn’t link to anything was night sweats, I thought it was just my body fighting some sort of flu or infection.  The second thing was a lump on my neck, which at first I thought was a swollen glan ..read more

Michael developed a lump on his right collarbone about 1-2 years ago. I think the position of the lump really threw us all off that it would be anything sinister… Maybe it was an unhealed injury from sport, maybe a calcium deposit… We weren’t quite sure, but cancer definitely didn’t cross our minds. The pain/inflammation would come and go throughout this period and he saw a couple of physios who put the inflammation down to his work-from-home set up (thank you COVID!) causing issues in his posture and impacting nerves leading to where the lump was.  Things didn’t improve with the physio e ..read more