I was told my stiff neck was nothing to worry about. It turned out to be a little-known terminal cancer. Here are the unusual signs you need to know...
Esther Shoebridge has never been someone to trouble her GP without reason. A gym-goer and long-distance walker, the 59-year-old former optician, from Beverley in East Yorkshire, prides herself on being fit and independent.
But when a nagging ache in her neck in the autumn of 2020 wouldn’t budge, Esther did seek a medical opinion and was reassured it was nothing serious. The advice was to go home, take painkillers and rest until the discomfort subsided.
When it didn’t subside, a second visit to the GP a few weeks later yielded the same advice – painkillers and rest.
In fact, it was another five months before Esther discovered the shocking truth – that she had broken a bone in her neck which was the root cause of her agony.
Esther Shoebridge was told that her fractured neck was due to myeloma, an incurable blood cancer that put her at risk of severe injury from any minor slips or falls
But there was much worse news. The fracture, doctors at Queen’s Medical Centre in Nottingham told her, was due to the fact she had an incurable blood cancer which would almost certainly kill her within five years.
Called myeloma, it had spread around her body, punching millions of holes in her bones, skull and spine and leaving her at severe risk of even more damage from the slightest slip or fall.
And it was likely, she later discovered, that had her neck problems been taken seriously at an earlier stage, she could have had treatment to prevent the bone damage, buying her more time to enjoy a decent quality of life.
‘It was the height of the Covid-19 restrictions,’ says Esther, ‘so it meant my husband Philip was not allowed to be with me when I got the bombshell news.
‘I was in floods of tears – I didn’t want to leave Philip, my daughter Grace or my four beautiful grandchildren. There was so much I still wanted to do.
‘The doctor who broke the news said, “I expect you’ve never heard of myeloma.”
‘But I told him I was only too aware of it – I’d just spent a year helping a good friend care for her mum who’d died from it.
One of Esther's first symptoms was a raging thirst, with her drinking up to four litres of water every day
Experts say if Esther had been diagnosed earlier, they could have prevented the debilitating injuries that occurred as a result of the myeloma
‘Yet not for one minute did I think that’s what I had. I felt I was too young to get anything like that.’
Myeloma affects about 4,500 people a year in the UK, mainly over 65s. It develops when DNA damage occurs in bone marrow, the spongy material inside the bones where blood cells mature.
This damage leads to the growth of abnormal cells that release a harmful protein which causes bones to easily break. Symptoms vary, ranging from bone pain and fatigue to kidney damage and nerve pain.
In Esther’s case, a raging thirst was – she later realised – one of the first signs. This is because myeloma also attacks the kidneys, stopping them from clearing excess calcium from the bloodstream – the body then ups fluid intake drastically to try to flush the calcium out.
Esther was drinking up to four litres of water a day.
‘It started with me feeling strangely weak and dizzy, unable to walk as far as usual, or go to the gym as much as I normally would,’ she says. ‘Then I developed an incredible thirst and started losing weight, dropping from nine stone to seven. I had also had insomnia and regular infections’.
It got to the point where Esther had to support her head to stop it falling down.
Esther's first two rounds of chemotherapy failed but a third attempt has stabilised the cancer
‘I’d bought myself a neck brace, imagining I’d strained it. Just knowing I’d soldiered on with these symptoms for months while the cancer riddled through me – it was utterly awful.’
Experts say if Esther had been diagnosed earlier, they could have prevented the debilitating injuries that occurred as a result of the myeloma – though the cancer itself could not have been cured. Treatments such as chemotherapy slow the disease’s progression and limit damage to the bones.
‘Myeloma leaches the strength from your bones, so with Esther there was more damage done because of the five-month delay,’ says Professor Graham Jackson, a myeloma specialist at Newcastle Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. ‘With myeloma, you can live up to 15 years if diagnosed early.’
Professor Graham adds: ‘The longer it goes untreated, the greater the chance of fractures and breaks. Yet one in four patients wait ten months from symptoms to diagnosis – the longest time of any cancer.’
Chemotherapy is not a cure but can reduce the number of myeloma cells.
For Esther, the first two rounds of treatment failed but a third attempt has stabilised the cancer.
Although there are promising treatments in the pipeline – such as CAR-T therapy, a type of immunotherapy that helps the body’s defence systems target the cancer – these are not yet approved for use in myeloma.
Esther says: ‘I refuse to let this beat me. In August 2022 I walked four miles every day for five days to raise over £2,500 for Myeloma UK – not bad for a person with a broken neck. I feel better now than I have for years, and this summer I’m flying to the US to visit my daughter Grace and the grandchildren in Florida.’
