Warning signs

To begin, I was no stranger to having a touch of lip filler back in the day, so when my colleague, a dentist at the surgery where I worked, asked if I would model for them… Needless to say, I jumped at the chance! Never could I have predicted all that would soon follow. Immediately after being injected, my lip became extremely swollen, and a huge bruise erupted simultaneously. My colleague was clearly alarmed and told me this wasn’t a normal reaction and encouraged me to see my GP. I made an emergency appointment – but not before I searched online for what could have been happening. ‘Leukaemia’ popped up in the search results. I dismissed it quickly in my mind, thinking I was too young to die. But only a few hours after I had a blood test at my GP surgery, they called me and urged me to go straight to the hospital. My quick internet search had been right. After further tests, I was diagnosed with chronic myeloid leukaemia (CML), and I started having oral chemotherapy right away. Fortunately, I am now in partial remission, but I will need to take medication for the rest of my life so the leukaemia cells hopefully do not return.