BOULDER, Colo. — A Boulder woman is opening up about her fight with multiple myeloma during Blood Cancer Awareness Month. She went from being in the emergency room to conquering Mount Kilimanjaro.
Allison Freedman had never heard of multiple myeloma, but while she was finishing up her MBA at 42 years old and caring for her twin boys, she was diagnosed with this rare blood cancer.
"My body was actually telling me to stop biking and stop running and stop hiking and doing all the fun things," Freedman explained. "I don't know why because I've been doing all those things before, and it was like my body sort of was telling me to stop, but I was exhausted, like completely exhausted."
The pain and exhaustion would become so intense that Freedman went to the emergency room to figure out what was wrong, insisting she would not leave until there was an answer to her suffering.
"We couldn't find the source of it because I didn't fit the demographic for multiple myeloma, which is the cancer that I was diagnosed with, and so they didn't look for it. They didn't catch it until it was very, very, very progressed," said Freedman.
Freedman was told that besides her multiple myeloma diagnosis, her pain was also coming from multiple broken ribs and vertebrae. She would describe the months following as going by fast, where she would go to her first chemotherapy treatment and, in the months following, have a bone marrow transplant.
During this scary time, she found immense strength thanks to the people by her side.
"I knew something wasn't right, so getting the diagnosis was a little bit of a relief, I guess, but cancer is scary and it definitely changed very dramatically my journey," said Freedman.
While her once active lifestyle would be put on pause, Freedman was left wondering what her future would look like. Getting back on her feet started with small steps and the thought of making lifelong memories for her twin boys, recalling her state of exhaustion, but she was able to bring her boys to a balloon festival in Snowmass.
"It was the beginning of these little hikes and things that I would do, which would eventually allow me to get strong enough to climb Kilimanjaro last year," Freedman said. "But at the time, it was just that I wanted to spend time with people, do things that I loved, and be in the place that I loved."
These walks with loved ones would not only serve as motivation to get back on the trails, but they would also show Freedman her inner strength and ability to preserve through a once-fearful diagnosis.
"It was so hard to imagine that I would have a future like, everything that I wanted to do was outside of the bed, and I was stuck in bed, and I had all these terrible injuries," Freedman explained. "But I also had this illness, and cancer is scary, and people think of it and have many different experiences with it, and it does have many different ways that it presents itself."
Last September, Freedman climbed Mount Kilimanjaro through the Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation, meeting other multiple myeloma survivors on the climb and raising money to help with research. Conquering this climb would not only be a physical challenge but also mentally challenging, reminding Freedman of how far she has come.
"This is the whole group of us that got to the top, and in that moment, it's like speechless and beyond the fact that you climbed all night and you're at 19,000 feet, and it's just overwhelming," said Freedman.
Opening up about her battle against multiple myeloma took time for Freedman, who recognized her story could help others who were feeling the same emotions she had when she was first diagnosed.
"At this time, as I look back on it, I have chosen to talk about it. I didn't talk about it before," Freedman said. "I was very careful to sort of compartmentalize it and put it behind me, but I agreed to team up with GSK to talk about multiple myeloma during Blood Cancer Awareness Month because when I was diagnosed, it was so scary."
She hopes that sharing her story will inspire others to find their inner strength in the scariest of times because the future can hold amazing things, like climbing Mount Kilimanjaro.
"I have found myself so much stronger now that I want to be able to say to those people who may be facing a scary diagnosis that there are so many ways to find yourself and to find yourself through this diagnosis just to take care and look inside and lean on the people around you and seek that support," said Freedman.
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