'Football bruise' turns out to be blood cancer

"There were a lot of separate little things, but I made excuses for all my symptoms."

Nurse Katie Haywood brushed off a bruise on her arm as a football injury, only to find out it was caused by incurable blood cancer.

The Wolverhampton resident was 45 when she was diagnosed with myeloma in June last year.

She had put down her many symptoms to football, teaching yoga and being a busy working mother-of-two, charity Myeloma UK said.

By the time her cancer was caught, she was in end-stage kidney failure and told she was days away from collapse.

"I always found a reason. I was tired, but I was working full-time as a nurse, teaching yoga twice a week and I was playing football.

"I was getting out of puff and I struggled to take the stairs up the multi-storey car park at work, but I had had a chest infection and a cold that took a while to shake off.

"Now I know it's because I was severely anaemic, something I would spot in someone else straightaway."

The nurse said that about three months before she was diagnosed, she had a "really bad bruise" on her arm and it "looked like there was blood underneath".

"I didn't remember being hit, but I thought someone must have elbowed me at football and I didn't notice," she said

"But the next day, my arm was still hurting and it still looked like a fresh bruise."

Concerned, she had blood tests done at work.

Within an hour, she was told they needed to redo the tests because "there was no way the results could be correct", but they were, the charity said.

Now, during Myeloma Awareness Week, the 46-year-old is urging people not to ignore warning signs.

"I was in end stage renal failure. I was severely anaemic, which explained the shortness of breath," she said, adding that it was believed she had had myeloma for a year, maybe even two.

She started chemotherapy and had a stem cell transplant in November last year.

A year on from her diagnosis, she is now in remission, but while her kidney function has improved, it is not what it was.

The chemotherapy and transplant put her in menopause and managing the symptoms along with intensive cancer treatment had been extremely challenging, the charity said.

It added that despite being the third most common type of blood cancer, myeloma was frequently missed, as its symptoms, including back pain, easily broken bones, fatigue and recurring infection, were vague.

The charity added a simple blood test could, in most cases, pick up signs of the cancer.

Myeloma UK has released a symptom translator to help conversations with GPs, which lists examples of symptoms in patients' own words alongside the corresponding medical term.

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