It’s fair to say Lynette’s had a rough trot of it recently. Widowed recently for the second time, she was still grieving for her husband when she noticed she was run down and tired. Naturally assuming this was a natural part of grief, she was staggered when her doctor announced she had myeloma – a type of blood cancer.

Fortunately Lynette is one to take things in her stride, and whilst initially devastated, she decided to meet it head on.

“I said to my doctor, well, what do we need to to beat this? And he said to me, first things first, we need more pathology tests to really determine what sort of myeloma we’re dealing with, and get you the right treatment. So that’s what we did.”

I had a bone marrow biopsy, which was horrendously painful, but I know my doctor wouldn’t have ordered it if it hadn’t given him information needed to save me. Once treatment began, I had so many blood tests that I’ve lost count. They told my doctor if treatment was working, and if my white cell count started to fall dangerously low they’d postpone treatment to prevent deadly infections.

Pathology was and continues to be central to guiding my treatment.”