Mom was diagnosed after shrinking by 3 inches – doctors thought it was an accident

A single mother whose back fractures were so bad doctors thought she had been in a car accident but led to a diagnosis of incurable blood cancer has said she lost three centimeters in height as a result – adding that the pain she was “turned off”. Richter scale”. Jane Hogan, 58, who lives in Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, was diagnosed with myeloma – an incurable blood cancer – in March 2020 after months of “horrendous” pain, describing it as feeling like “fireworks going off turn off’ on the lower back.

By the time she was diagnosed, about seven months after her symptoms began, she said her back was fractured in 12 places and her sternum was broken, prompting doctors to ask if she had been in a car accident. “They asked me if I was in a car accident or if I fell down the stairs or if I was attacked because I had multiple fractures,” Jane told PA Real Life.

As a result, she has lost three inches in height, meaning she is now 5ft 3in tall, and said her back looks like a “question mark” from the side. Jane started chemotherapy shortly after diagnosis and had a stem cell transplant in December 2020 – but by the fall of 2021, the cancer had returned.

She is currently receiving maintenance chemotherapy and wants to raise more awareness about the symptoms of myeloma to help others sustain their health and get an early diagnosis. “Hopefully I’ll be the one who makes it to 10 years (post-diagnosis). I still have too much to do, I can’t go anywhere yet,” said Jane.

“My daughter is about to buy her first property, I have to do it and get married. I still have a lot to do, so it won’t beat me.”

On her advice for others, she added: “You have to be grateful every day you wake up… I try not to sweat the small stuff. “Just get up every day and breathe. Go into the garden if you can, go for a walk, go for a drive, go and have a burger if that’s what you like.

“The NHS keeps me alive, so for that, I will be forever grateful.”

According to the charity Myeloma UK, around 5,900 people are diagnosed with myeloma in the UK each year. Despite being the third most common type of blood cancer, the charity said, myeloma is often overlooked because its symptoms – including back pain, broken bones, fatigue and recurrent infections – are often linked to general aging or minor ailments.

For Jane, a former office manager, she knew something was wrong when she started experiencing severe back pain in 2019. She saw her GP and was treated for muscle pain, but the pain increased to the point where he could not “sit properly” or “bend”.

“When I was cooking Christmas dinner, I was doing the splits trying to get the food out of the oven because I couldn’t bend over,” Jane said. She was later sent for an X-ray, which showed some compression in her spine, which doctors described as a “slope.”

She was prescribed morphine, but her back pain was “off the Richter scale”, leaving her unable to walk and get into a car without assistance. “I’m tough. I’m a single mother, raised two kids, had a full-time job, a good social life – he beat me for six,” she said.

“I took time off work, which I never do, and had to sit on a lawn chair. I couldn’t even sit on my couch, it was awful.”

In February 2020, Jane’s daughter Tillie, 26, had to call an ambulance because Jane “couldn’t get off the sofa” and was rushed to hospital and had an MRI. However, unable to pinpoint the cause, Jane said doctors sent her home with a brace for her back, which she described as “an instrument of torture”, along with some painkillers.

Jane had to move her bed into the lounge because she couldn’t climb the stairs – and just over a week later, she was taken to hospital again by ambulance. “I woke up that day and thought, ‘I’m going to die today,'” she explained.

In A&E, a junior doctor reviewed Jane’s previous test results and immediately suspected myeloma, leading to further tests and examinations. Jane was then officially diagnosed in March 2020 – around seven months after her symptoms first started.

“My first thought was I have to tell my kids. I have to tell them I have cancer,” Jane said. “Then it was, ‘Am I going to die?’

“The doctors just said, ‘We’ll work out your treatment plan. It’s not curable, but it’s very treatable'”. Jane immediately started chemotherapy, but due to the first blockage caused by Covid-19, she had to continue treatment at home with tablets and anticoagulants.

She described the following months as “hell on Earth” and then had a stem cell transplant on 24 December 2020. Jane said she thought she would be “up and dancing around the living room in three weeks”, but instead she felt like a “flat balloon”.

In July 2021, Jane began to feel “more like (her)”, but by October 2021, the cancer had returned and she had to start chemotherapy again. Jane’s family have been “brilliant” in supporting her and she said her friends have “become a pride of lionesses”.

She feels she “wouldn’t be here without them” and her two children – Tillie, 26, and Charlie, 32. “You can’t get through cancer unless you have (the support network),” Jane said.

“For me, cancer, you have to beat it mentally and I’m very stubborn and I tell everyone, ‘It’s not going to kill me because I’m not going to let it.’

Although her back pain will “never go away” and she has had to adjust to a new normal, Jane is currently responding well to maintenance chemotherapy and undergoing physiotherapy – and is determined to “get a life”. As part of Myeloma Awareness Week, Jane wants to encourage others to ‘be your own advocate’ when it comes to their health, ‘advocate’ and get any unusual symptoms checked out as early as possible.

Jane said: “It never really works. I can’t go into the bathroom anymore, I can’t go out by myself, I can’t walk very far, I do my housework to pieces. But I say, “If I wake up and it hurts, it means I’m still here.”

She added: ‘Until I got it I had no idea about myeloma… there were so many red flags I didn’t understand. Don’t let things go on. If there’s a problem, go see your doctor.”

For more information, visit the Myeloma UK website – myeloma.org.uk – or call the Infoline on 0800 980 3332.

You can download the symptom translator here: myeloma.org.uk/MAW-2024.