Leukaemia diagnosis ‘bloody scary’
Nicole Huston thought she might be anaemic.
She was rundown and had bruises and cuts that weren’t healing and she knew something was wrong. So, she went off to the doctor expecting a prescription for iron pills.
Instead, the 27-year-old massage therapist’s life crumpled into disarray. She was sent to the hospital and diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia. She has not been back to her home in New Plymouth since. ‘‘I never in a million years thought I was as sick as I was,’’ Huston said.
After getting the initial blood tests her GP ordered, he called her and told her to go straight to the emergency department.
At Taranaki Base Hospital she underwent more tests and a biopsy before being given the news.
Huston was flown to Palmerston North Hospital the next day, June 13, and started chemotherapy later that week.
Acute myeloid leukaemia is a type of cancer that causes an overproduction of immature white blood cells which crowd bone marrow and stop it making normal blood cells, which can lead to recurring infections and bruising and bleeding easily.
Huston needs to be monitored every day and can’t go home, although the doctors may let her go for a few days soon, she said.
‘‘Because everything happened so quickly, I think the first week for me was kind of a blur.’’
Huston has her own massage therapy business in Bell Block, but ‘‘that all just had to be put on hold’’.
Her mum has flown over from Australia to be with her, and her partner Cody drives the three hours to Palmerston North from New Plymouth on the weekends.
Her best friend Emma Wilson, also of New Plymouth, is shaving her head to raise funds and awareness of the disease in conjunction with Shave for a Cure, at midday on July 5 at Shelby’s Barber Gang.
Wilson had dropped off her dog at Huston’s house while she went to Fiji, but later that day received a text asking if Ruby could go somewhere else.
‘‘I said ‘what’s wrong?’ and she said ‘don’t freak out and don’t come home but I’ve been diagnosed with leukaemia and I have to go to Palmy’. It was pretty bloody scary.’’
Wilson said when these sorts of things happened you felt helpless.
‘‘It’s a process they have to go through and deal with. She’s probably the toughest woman I know so if anyone can get through it it can be her.’’
Huston is waiting for results on how bad the disease is, but her outlook is hopeful.
‘‘They do say that they have quite a high success rate,’’ she said. ‘‘It’s a course of probably...three chemotherapies and possibly a bone marrow transplant if it’s a more aggressive cause. You go from having a working life to all of a sudden everything is revolved around hospital appointments and if you need blood transfusions.’’
She is hoping this will turn out to be three or four months out of her life before picking up where she left off, possibly working part time at first.
Now she is urging others not to ignore any warning signs. ‘‘If anything is abnormal definitely go to the doctor sooner rather than later. You just never know.’’