Mum with back pain asked 'am I going to die' after devastating diagnosis

A mum has issued an emotional plea after she received a devastating diagnosis.

Jane Hogan was suffering with back pain so bad that doctors thought she had been in a car accident. However, the 58-year-old was actually showing symptoms of myeloma, an incurable blood cancer.

Jane was diagnosed seven months after displaying symptoms described the pain from the illness as "off the Richter scale" as it led to a broken breastbone and her back being fractured in 12 places. She told PA Real Life: "They asked if I’d been in a car accident or if I’d fallen down the stairs or if I’d been attacked as I had multiple fractures."

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The mum, from Cheshunt, Hertfordshire, has lost three inches in height as a result, meaning she is now 5ft 3in tall, and said her back looks like a “question mark” from the side. Jane started chemotherapy soon after her diagnosis and had a stem cell transplant in December 2020.

However, the cancer had returned by the autumn of 2021 and she is currently receiving maintenance chemotherapy. Jane wants to raise more awareness of the symptoms of myeloma to help others advocate for their health and get an early diagnosis.

She said: "Hopefully, I’m going to be the one that gets to 10 years (post-diagnosis). I’ve still got too much to do, I can’t go anywhere yet.

"My daughter’s about to buy her first property, I need to get her in and married. I’ve got lots to do still, so it won’t beat me.”

On her advice to others, she added: “You’ve just got to be grateful every day when you get up… I try not to sweat the small things anymore.

“Just get up every day and breathe. Get in the garden if you can, go for a walk, go for a drive, go and have a burger if that’s what you fancy.

“The NHS is keeping me alive, so for that, I’ll be eternally 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 frequently missed, as its symptoms, including back pain, broken bones, fatigue, and recurring infection, are often linked to general ageing or minor conditions.

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

She said: "When we were cooking dinner at Christmas, I was doing the splits trying to get food out of the oven because I could not bend."

She was later sent for an X-ray, which showed some compression on her spine, which doctors described as “wedging”. She was prescribed morphine, but her back pain was “off the Richter scale”, leaving her unable to walk and get into her car without assistance.

She said: "I am tough. I’m a single mum, I’ve raised two children, I had a full-time job, a good social life – it knocked me for six. I took time off work, which I never do, and I had to sit on a garden chair. I couldn’t even sit on my sofa, it was awful.”

In February 2020, Jane’s daughter Tillie, 26, had to call an ambulance as Jane “could not get off the sofa” and she was rushed to hospital and had an MRI. Unable to pinpoint the cause, however, Jane said doctors sent her home in a back brace, which she described as a “torture contraption”, along with some painkillers.

Jane had to move her bed to the lounge because she could not walk up the stairs and, just over a week later, she was taken to hospital by ambulance again. She said: "I woke up that day and I thought, ‘I’m going to die today."

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

She added: "My first thought was, I’ve got to tell my kids. I’ve got to tell them that I’ve got cancer. Then it was, ‘Am I going to die?’

“The doctors just said, ‘We’ll get your treatment plan sorted. It’s not curable, but it is very treatable’.”

Jane started chemotherapy immediately, but due to the first Covid-19 lockdown, she had to continue treatment at home with tablets and blood thinners. She described the subsequent months as “hell on Earth” and then had a stem cell transplant on December 24 2020.

Jane said she thought she would be “up and dancing around the living room in three weeks”, but instead, she felt like a “balloon that had deflated”.

In July 2021, Jane started to feel “more like (herself)”, but by October 2021, the cancer had returned and she needed to start chemotherapy again.

Jane’s family were “brilliant” in supporting her and she said her friends “became a pride of lionesses”. She feels she “wouldn’t be here without them” and her two children. Tillie, 26, and Charlie, 32.

She said: "You can’t get through cancer unless you’ve got that (support network). To me, cancer, you’ve got to beat it mentally and I am very stubborn, and I say to everybody, ‘It won’t 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 her maintenance chemotherapy and is having physiotherapy – and she is determined to “make a life” for herself.

As part of Myeloma Awareness Week, Jane urged people to get unusual symptoms checked out as early as possible. She added: “It never really goes. I can’t get in a bath anymore, I can’t go out on my own, I can’t walk too far, I do my housework in chunks.

“But I say, ‘If I wake up and I’m in pain, it means I’m still here’.”

She added: “Until I got it, I didn’t have a clue about myeloma… there were so many red flags that I didn’t pick up on. Don’t keep leaving things. If there’s a problem, go and see your doctor.”

For more information, visit Myeloma UK’s website – myeloma.org.uk – or call its Infoline on 0800 980 3332. You can download the symptom translator here: myeloma.org.uk/MAW-2024.

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