'If I had one wish this Christmas, it would be for less gruelling, less painful leukaemia treatments to be discovered.'
Describing her ordeal, she said:"This time last year, when I should have been getting ready for Christmas with my family, I was all alone in hospital. Everything happened so quickly. I started getting these agonising chest pains. It got so bad my husband called 999. Within just a few days, the results of a blood test showed I had acute myeloid leukaemia. I just couldn't believe it. It's hard to put into words how awful those next few months of treatment were.
"Looking back, I don't know how I got through those days. I remember one doctor saying to me, 'I hope at one point soon we won't have to do what we're doing to you, because with the radiotherapy and chemotherapy, what we're really doing is pumping you full of poison. We have to find better ways to destroy cancer cells'. And if I had one wish this Christmas, it would be for less gruelling, less painful leukaemia treatments to be discovered.
Stem cell transplants are a vital treatment option, but only 50 percent of them work. Still 3,000 people are diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia each year, and 27 people in the UK are diagnosed each day, including 100 children.Fiona Hazell, Chief Executive of Leukaemia UK, said:"Important discoveries are happening all the time within blood cancer research.
Emma said the treatment has been extremely challenging but gives her hope that she will have a life without cancer.She said:"Since diagnosis it has been a horrendous journey for my family, but although the treatment has been incredibly challenging, it has given me hope that it will cure me of the disease and allow me to live a normal life, cancer free.
"This time last year I was alone in hospital, unable to have visitors or even speak to my children by video call because seeing me was upsetting them too much. But my stem cell transplant has seen me go from strength to strength and only a year on I am living a full and active life."
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