Doctor's Journey: Beating Myeloma, Saving Lives

0:00It's April 22nd. This is Edinburgh News Today, powered by AI. A doctor from Edinburgh named Judith Milligan caught her own blood cancer back in 2012. She was 45, training for a 10-kilometer race, when exhaustion hit hard and her ankle swelled after the run. Testing her own urine at work, she found protein leaks signaling leaky kidneys, leading to a fast diagnosis of myeloma and related AL amyloidosis, both, incurable but treatable. Doctors gave her just years to live, not decades, right as her husband faced his own health battles. She worried about leaving her two young kids orphaned, even talking to their school headmaster and getting a heartbreaking sandaletter from her. Daughter begging for meds to heal mom. 13 years later, a stem cell transplant put her in full remission, letting her see her kids, now 23 and 21, hit big milestones, like graduations. She credits her GP smarts for spotting vague signs like fatigue and fractures that busy moms

1:01or docks often shrug off as aging. Myeloma hits over 35,000 folks in the UK, including more than 2,400 in Scotland, but halfway over five months for. Diagnosis, and a third end up in emergency rooms. She's fighting back by co-creating a guide for GP's the catch it early and fundraising for myeloma UK. She's already raised 2,500 pounds for their London to Paris bike ride on May 14th, after crushing the London marathon for them in 2019. Living by live for today but planned for tomorrow, she's trekking Nepal this fall and cherishing every family moment she once thought impossible.