So here goes, my first ever blog post! A trip back to April 2015.
April 15 – Just after my birthday I started to have a really bad lower back, as in unbearable pain, when standing still for any longer than 2 minutes. Not ideal when standing on a packed tube commuting for 40 mins twice a day.
I went to my GP and fortunately as I have private healthcare through work I was able to start seeing a physio (a lovely bloke and a hero in this story) almost immediately. I had a session a week with him from May to July, and while the pain eased during the session it didn’t last long.
In the meantime, I began to feel a bit crap. Generally feeing run down and tired and had a persistent cough, which was all put down to being anaemic (following a blood test). Glands had also started to appear in weird paces (side of neck, collar bone, groin), the anaemia was blamed on fighting an infection – so I was given some antibiotics. And there was the night sweats, drenching, pretty unpleasant night sweats.
After the course of antibiotics and a holiday there was no improvement. A GP at that stage told me that
“everyone has back pain”
and the glands were up due to
“a change in the weather”.
Naturally I was delighted to hear such insightful information from a trained medical professional. Not.
Anyway I’ll get to the good bit. My physio insisted that I got a MRI scan done on my back as I wasn’t showing any sign of improvement. That’s when things really started to heat up…
After a series of tests - Thomas discovered he had Hodgkins Lymphoma. His symptoms were not caused by a 'change in the weather'!
You can read more of Thomas's Blog - from diagnosis, treatment and beyond here: https://theapsdiary.wordpress.com/
