I thought I had a herniated disk, but it turned out to be incurable cancer. Since then, I’ve chosen hope day after day.

Tiffany Williams Tiffany Williams went to the hospital for what she thought was a herniated disk. Instead, she received a diagnosis of multiple myeloma, a rare blood cancer. This is Williams’ story, as told to Kelly Burch.

This as-told-to essay is based on a conversation with Tiffany Williams. It has been edited for length and clarity. I was sitting in my doctor’s office, impatient.

My husband had ducked out of work to bring me in for an MRI, and he needed to get back. A few days earlier, I’d bent over while cleaning my kitchen, and I felt a shooting pain. It was terrifying, but I thought I knew what it was: a herniated disk.

I’d had surgery to repair one just the year before. But now, as I waited for my surgeon to give me my MRI results, my mind started racing.  When the doctor walked in, he came with bad news: “You don’t have a herniated disk,” he said.

“You have spots on your spine. They have likely metastasized. “I was a nurse, so I knew what he was saying: I had cancer.

  We’ve all heard people talk about shock. But at that moment, I understood what shock really is. My breath was taken from me.

I couldn’t concentrate on what the doctor was saying because I’d heard his core message: I was just hitting my stride in the middle zone of life, with children who were almost grown and a career that was flourishing. Now, I had cancer.  My doctor told me from the start to have hopeIt’s hard to think about luck in a cancer diagnosis, but there is some in my story.

I was able to call one of my closest friends, who works in leadership at a cancer center. She sped up the process of getting me an appointment. Because my pain was so severe and my distress was so high, the cancer center admitted me.

 That’s when I received my diagnosis: multiple myeloma, a rare blood cancer. The doctor looked at me and said: “It’s incurable but treatable. There’s hope.

“I’m not a cancer nurse, but I had enough of a healthcare background to have a mixed reaction. I knew that bone cancer was bad, very bad. At the same time, it was a huge relief to know that I didn’t have stage 4 cancer that had metastasized to my spine.

 The diagnosis has redefined every aspect of my lifeIt’s been 8 1/2 years since that moment. I live my life in four-week cycles: three weeks of taking daily chemo drugs followed by a week off. I’ve had a stem-cell transplant, which brought on awful side effects.

I’ve been diagnosed with dysautonomia, a disease characterized by autonomic-nervous-system dysfunction, which can happen after a stem-cell transplant. I get debilitating fatigue with blood-pressure and heart-rate drops that make it hard to function. Everything about my life changed after my diagnosis.

I had to retire and give up the career I’d enjoyed my entire adult life. My purpose was so tied up in being a nurse. When I retired, I had to redefine myself.

 My nursing work has always been focused on addressing health disparities. Once I wrapped my head around my new normal, I began volunteering to address health disparities for people with multiple myeloma. At 55, my life is different from what I thought it might be.

But it’s beautiful. My two children, who were barely adults when I was diagnosed, are now 25 and 29. They’re both engaged to be married.

I’ve had to set aside my career, but I’ve founded support groups for people with multiple myeloma and advocated by telling my story.  Hope is the conscious, active decision that despair is not going to have the last word. I affirm that decision every day.

 Read the original article on Insider.