Doctors said my excruciating back pain was due to a hernia – but the truth was much worse: the pain of an exercise-loving father, 46, diagnosed with blood cancer that could return at any time
A father’s excruciating back pain, which doctors dismissed as a hernia, eventually turned out to be cancer.
David Windle, from Camberwell, south London, was at one point unable to move because it would cause him pain.
Despite numerous trips to his GP, osteopath and physiotherapist in December 2021 and January, the 46-year-old was still in crippling pain.
Mr Windle assumed it was a nasty flare-up of a twinge he suffered at the gym years earlier, but he was desperate for relief.
Twice before his final diagnosis of myeloma, he was even sent to the emergency room. Medics there ruled he likely had a herniated disc – when soft tissue pushes out between the bones in the spine – pressing on nerves.
David Windle, 46, who kept fit by going to the gym, running and cycling, dismissed his back pain for almost four years and put it down to a gym injury
Mr Windle’s pain worsened to the point where he ‘crawled from the bed across the floor and lay down’.
During the half of February 2022, he needed his mother to care for his two children, Sylvie, 9, and Otis, 6.
Mr Windle, a deputy headteacher, recalled the extent of his pain, telling MailOnline: ‘I had to look after my children.
‘I had to call my mother and tell her I can’t move, you have to come and watch the kids.
“Every day I would just get out of bed, crawl from the bed across the floor and lie there.”
The deputy director, pictured with wife Emma Smith, 49, was told his back pain could be a herniated disc
In February 2022, at the age of 44, Mr Windle was diagnosed with myeloma, a form of blood cancer that can affect your bones
When Mr. Windle returned to work after the break, he would find “an empty office to lie down in,” just to get him through the day. Eventually, he found himself working from home, propped up by pillows.
His osteopath suggested he have an MRI scan, although he was unable to get one on the NHS.
Mr Windle, who paid to buy one privately, said so ‘revealed the disaster that would last the next year and a half of my life’.
Scans showed one of his vertebrae had disintegrated for no known cause, but he was told it could be cancer.
He said: ‘It was a terrible moment. I sat there and the world around me just disappeared.”
He called his wife Emma, 49, and explained that he urgently needed to go to hospital.
Once in the emergency room, doctors looked at Mr Windle’s MRI scans and asked whether he had been in a car accident or suffered trauma. He said, “They all looked a little concerned.”
He spent a fortnight in the hospital’s spinal unit and underwent several scans and blood tests.
Recalling the day he learned his diagnosis, Mr Windle said: ‘I had decided to go for my daily walk from my bed in the hospital ward, so I struggled into the back brace I had to wear and headed to my circuit. of the hospital.
‘I was on the ninth floor, so I had developed the habit of walking up and down the stairs to keep fit.
‘But on the way out I walked past the room where the doctors and nurses gathered around the computers. I heard a doctor talking to a nurse and I heard him say, “Well, myeloma at age 44, that’s a bit nonsense, isn’t it?”
‘I just thought, “yeah, that sounds a bit s***”… “oh s***, I think they’re talking about me”. So I stood back a little, just out of their sight, and I listened, I listened to them talk about it. And I thought, okay, that’s me. That’s my diagnosis.’
Myeloma is an incurable blood cancer that affects around 6,000 Britons every year. It occurs because plasma cells in the bone marrow – the spongy tissue in large bones – multiply uncontrollably.
Symptoms can be difficult to distinguish from other diseases, with pain and fatigue being clear signs of the disease.
Mr Windle was diagnosed with a rare form of myeloma called ‘light chain’ myeloma, which only affects about 20 per cent of patients with blood cancer. Due to its characteristics, it can be even more difficult to detect.
For Mr Windle, the cancer cells were causing a mess in his bone marrow, meaning it was not producing the useful cells that make and regenerate bone, causing his vertebrae to disintegrate, doctors believe.
Mr Windle added: ‘Once I got into the treatment process everyone acted very quickly.
‘Nobody looks at a 44-year-old man who goes to the gym, runs, cycles and is fit. No one thinks this is an incurable cancer.
‘The only problem is that people are not aware of myeloma and are not looking for it. I had to wait until my spine fell apart before I had a test to reveal what it is.’
When the results came back, he underwent a bone marrow biopsy, which involved inserting a needle into the pelvis.
Mr Windle, pictured in his back brace, was diagnosed with a rare form of myeloma called ‘light chain’ myeloma, which only affects about 20 per cent of patients with the blood cancer.
Mr Windle said: ‘I had to wait six weeks to find out what stage my myeloma was.
“But the good news I got those first two months was that the myeloma was officially standard.”
He underwent four months of chemotherapy and was given the cancer-fighting drug bortezomib in addition to tablets containing the steroid dexamethasone.
Mr Windle added: ‘I was already all over the place emotionally and dexamethasone heightens your emotions, I was crazy, I was really devastated and struggling.
‘I couldn’t be home. I just went through the streets every night crying.”
But eventually his dose of dexamethasone was reduced, which eased his symptoms and “made a huge difference.”
Me Windle admits his young children Sylvie, 9, and Otis, 6, pictured with boyfriend James Harvey, still don’t really understand his myeloma diagnosis
After a two-month break from medication, Mr Windle underwent a stem cell transplant in November 2022, followed by a further two months of the same treatment.
Now Mr Windle is taking the cancer medicine lenalidomide and zoledronic acid, which can prevent bone problems caused by myeloma.
He remembers breaking the news of his diagnosis to his family and admits that his young children still don’t really understand it.
Mr Windle, whose life is almost ‘back to the way it used to be’, said: ‘I’ve told all my adult friends and family but my children still don’t really know.
‘They just knew at the time that I had a really bad back and that I had to go to hospital. I was in the hospital for Sylvie’s seventh birthday, so that was pretty crappy.
Mr Windle has since found “hope” by building a community of friends with myeloma who also have the blood cancer and have had it for 10 to 20 years. Here he is pictured with his friends Chris Buckingham (left), James Harvey (centre) and Neil Gordon (right) who is currently running 1000km to raise money for Myeloma UK
‘The weeks I was diagnosed were the weeks I had to apply for a job as a headteacher.
‘But I don’t go for that anymore, I don’t have the energy for it. I’m doing my best, but I can’t continue, it’s very demanding work.
“The main problem is that you always wonder when it will come back.” It doesn’t go away, it comes back for everyone.’
It can take months or years for myeloma to become active again, but at some point patients do relapse, according to Myeloma UK.
It comes after British health chiefs this week approved Nexpovio, a cancer treatment designed for myeloma patients who have become resistant to other drugs.