"I remember them telling me ‘we’ve got no more options’... but I just thought I'm not ready to die"

A mum worried that she would miss her son's 13th birthday after something suspected to be diabetes turned out to be a rare form of cancer. Jodie Hill from Wolverhampton was diagnosed with multiple myeloma in March 2021.

The incurable cancer affects the blood, and according to the NHS results in the deaths of 3,000 in the UK each year. At first the 46-year-old thought that her symptoms were a pulled muscle, then diabetes.

When she received her diagnosis Jodie had a number of holes, called lesions, in her skull and her spine. After trying several forms of treatment including five surgeries without success Jodie was told she had around three months to live.

However Jodie said that she was "not ready to die" and with other options exhausted she decided to try a new "miracle" treatment. This would give her a "one in three chance" of surviving, and as of October 2023 she has been in remission.

Jodie had feared that she wouldn't see her son Alfie turn 13, and in February he will turn 14. Now she is receiving immunotherapy, and while she has side effects of her treatment she is determined to make as many good memories as she can.

She said: “I just thought, I’m not ready to die. I remember them telling me, ‘We’ve got no more options’… but after taking this new drug, the next month I was in remission – and I’ve been in remission since October 31 2023. I genuinely do think it’s a miracle.”

In 2020, sales administrator Jodie woke up with chest pains so bad she thought she was having a heart attack. After calling NHS 111 she went to A&E and had an ECG to check her heart's electrical activity, saying: “Everything was clear, but it looked like I had pulled a muscle in my chest.”

Further tests revealed she was anaemic and had symptoms