CANCER MADE ME SHRINK

After a shock diagnosis, Debbie Archer, 60, lost 10cm from her height

- RACHEL TOMPKINS

With the sun beaming down, I placed an arm around my friend, Rhian, then 47, and smiled for the camera. It was April 2010, and I was visiting her in Australia for two weeks, as she was living there at the time. Standing in front of the majestic Sydney Opera House, as we posed for a picture, at 5ft 6in, I towered over her 5ft 2in.

Rhian and I had known each other for years, since meeting at Aston University in 1984. We often travelled together and now it was nice to be visiting her while she lived in Sydney. When I wasn't working as a pharmacist, I loved to travel, ski and go sightseeing.

All too soon, my holiday was over, and I was back at work, offering health information and preparing prescriptions. But in June 2017, it was me who needed advice. Reaching down to touch an angry red lump on my right leg, I winced in pain. It'd been bugging me for a couple of days, after I'd been bitten by a gnat while digging in the garden. Now, it was so sore I was wondering if it had become infected.

'Can you have a look at this bite on my leg?' I called across to my colleague. It was on the front of my shin, so I propped my leg onto an office chair so she could take a closer look at it, but just as I lifted up my leg, I lost my balance and fell to the floor.

Pain tore through my lower back. 'I can't move,' I cried, as my colleagues rushed to help. They called paramedics, and after administering gas and air, they pulled me to my feet. Afterwards, a colleague drove me home, still in agony, but the next day, when I tried to get up, I collapsed onto the floor.

INCREASING SYMPTOMS