What is CML?

Chronic myeloid leukaemia is a rare type of cancer affecting around 700 people a year in the UK. Most of these people are aged between 40 and 60 and is slighty more common in men then women. That explains why my CML support group views me as the baby of the group as i am the youngest member.

Leukaemia is a cancer of the white blood cells (i actually didn't know this til the other day as i thought it was all the cells in the blood so it shows i don't know everything afterall damn!). So usually the white cells grow in a controlled way, but in leukaemia they grow out of control and the cells divide too quickly and are not developed properly when they are released in to your blood stream. In CML, too many myeloid cells (a type of white blood cell) are produced. The myeloid cells are released in to the blood when they aren't fully developed so cannot work as they should be doing. These cells then fill up the bone marrow and stop it from making blood cells as it should be doing. Therefore, you are more likely to get an infection because you do not have white blood cells that are working properly to fight off the infection. Also the bone marrow cannot make enough healthy red cells and platelets due to the overcrowdedness of the immature white cells.

I must also stress how rare this cancer is for children and people of my age group. CML develops very slowly hence why it is called 'chronic' myeloid leukaemia.

Causes of CML are not known, but if you lived near high voltage cables, household radon, being in a nuclear accident then there is nothing to pin point why you have developed CML. I know that none of these apply to me so i will blame it on being on my mobile phone too much when i was younger. Also it is not something which can be passed down to your children which is a relief as i know that i did wonder if this was possible at some stage.

Symptoms

With Cml it develops very slowly over a lot of years so you may not have any symptoms.You could find out that you have it if you ahve a routine blood test for something else. I personally think that i had the disease from when i was 17 as that was when i developed a gastro-reflux problem, then on my 18th birthday i had chicken pox for the first time and was constantly at the doctors for different illnesses up until getting diagnosed. If they had done a blood test years before then i reckon i would have being diagnosed then and wouldn't have got more ill as the years went by, but there is no point dwelling on the past and i should just focus on the future now  and beating this cancer.
So symptoms in the chronic phase which i had all of them are as follows:

• Fatigue
• loss of appetite
• weight loss
• night sweats
• enlarged spleen (which explains why i couldn't eat and is probably why i was producing too much stomach acid as my spleen was taking up half of my stomach on diagnosis!)
• bone pain (which i still have)
• men can have a painful erection that wont go (trust me to find that out in my research lol)

Right i have just got to pop out to the supermarket now but will continue my CML information when i get back.