Matthew said it came as a shock to be told the cancer was incurable.<\/p>\n
“I have lost two inches in height because of the damage but at least it’s treatable and I’ve responded to treatment as well as they could expect,” he said.<\/p>\n
While he is in remission, Matthew has had to grapple with unexpected side effects of the intensive treatment.<\/p>\n
The draughtsman, who creates technical drawings for electrical engineers, is still dealing with fatigue and was hospitalised with infections three times last winter.<\/p>\n
While his back has healed to an extent, the damage is irreversible.<\/p>\n
He said it had been a difficult time for his family, especially his wife Diane, adding he was “eternally grateful” for their unwavering support.<\/p>\n
“You can’t just ignore myeloma sadly, but you can put it at the back of your mind. <\/p>\n
“We’ve officially called 12 March 2024 my remission date and that’s what I focus on. <\/p>\n
“That’s my mark saying, the myeloma had been put to sleep.<\/p>\n
“It will rear its head at some point, but hopefully I can get many years with it before it comes back.”<\/p>\n
For now, Matthew is determined to live a full life again.<\/p>\n
“I can’t do anything that will impact my back but we’ve been able to live as normal a life as possible. You can’t let myeloma define you.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Matthew said it came as a shock to be told the cancer was incurable. “I have lost two…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":490913,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[11],"tags":[105,16,15],"class_list":{"0":"post-490912","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-health","8":"tag-health","9":"tag-uk","10":"tag-united-kingdom"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@uk\/115355415685704674","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=490912"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/490912\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/490913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=490912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=490912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=490912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}