Mum found out she had cancer after shrinking 4in
A MOTHER found out she had cancer after she shrank four inches in height.
Alison McDonald, 56, suffered an ‘excruciatingly painful’ back, which doctors believed was caused by muscle aches.
However, it later emerged it was a symptom of myeloma, a blood cancer with no known cure.
It was only when daughter Vicci Hughes noticed she was ‘towering over’ her mother, who had been two inches taller than her, that they realised something was wrong.
They used a measuring tape and discovered Mrs McDonald, from Edinburgh, who used to be 5ft 6in, was 5ft 2in.
She said that 18 months ago she had three rib fractures but did not realise this could have been the onset of myeloma.
It was on Mrs McDonald’s birthday that her daughter spotted the change in height. Mrs McDonald said: ‘I got a pang of fright, then noticed part of my spine was sticking out of the middle of my back.
‘I thought, this isn’t muscular, I need to get help.’
She said she was fortunate her daughter pointed out that she had shrunk, or she would have continued to believe the back pains were only muscular.
The mother of four, who has four grandchildren, including Georgia and Amber Hughes, had also lost a stone in weight and an X-ray identified multiple breaks in her spine. She was later sent for further tests by a GP.
A CT scan in April and bone marrow tests indicated Mrs McDonald had myeloma.
Mrs Hughes, 38, a serving police detective, is going to shave her head in solidarity with her mother, who has shaved her head after losing hair due to chemotherapy. She has also set up a page on JustGiving and has raised more than £4,000 for Myeloma UK.
Mrs Hughes, who lives in West Lothian, said: ‘If my mum hadn’t questioned her height loss and weight loss they wouldn’t have done the X-ray which revealed just how bad things really were.
‘The X-ray showed breaks in her spine akin to something like a horse-riding accident. She said she had been told her bones had holes in them like Swiss cheese.’
She added: ‘Hopefully my mum can be treated successfully for a long number of years.
‘She’s very precious to our family and her amazing fiancé Trevor [Kelly] has been with her all the way through this.’
About 6,000 myeloma cases are diagnosed in the UK every year.
It accounts for 2 per cent of all new cancer cases.