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.
.. By Matthew Barbour Published: 21:27 EDT, 6 July 2024 | Updated: 21:27 EDT, 6 July 2024 e-mail View comments 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 h.
