Amanda is one of the happiest people you'll ever meet. She's bright, bubbly and endlessly positive.

She's also living with blood cancer, and doctors told her it had most likely been in her system for a year before she was diagnosed in 2018.

The paediatric anesthesiologist and mother-of-two had been feeling tired, but she was living what she described as a "lovely hectic life". Her two daughters were 13 and 10 at time, so there was an easy explanation for her fatigue.

"I used to walk up the hill from Queensland Children's Hospital to the car park after work and I found myself out of breath," Amanda, 53, told 9Honey.

"I thought I was unfit, so I joined a gym."

By September that year she was feeling terrible, and during a family holiday for the school holidays she began "feeling really quite crap".

"I was tired and sore and I thought I had a really bad cold," she said.

She wasn't even able to do any of the driving back home, approximately five hours, and when they got home she went to bed.

That was a Saturday. By Sunday she was even worse, but thought it could be a repeat of a health scare she'd had a decade earlier.

"I'd had pneumonia 10 years ago and at first I didn't realise and kept on working. That was until I got so sick that I couldn't even get up for work one day," she said.

"My husband (Owen) rang the nanny and asked her to check up on me to see if I was alright. She told him, 'I can't wake her up.'"

In that instance, Owen came home and took Amanda to hospital for treatment, and she eventually recovered.

This time, she did have pneumonia again, but it wasn't from working too hard. She'd developed pneumonia because her immune system had been destroyed by a blood cancer called Multiple Myeloma.

Amanda's treating physician, Dr Ian Irving, a clinical haematologist, told 9Honey about the cancer and ways in which it is being treated. He works at the Icon Cancer Centre, Wesley and Mackay and is also the Group Medical Director of the Icon Group Board.

"It's an incurable blood cancer that develops from plasma cells, a type of white blood cell found in the bone marrow that form part of the immune system and help protect against infection," he said.

"Approximately 18,000 Australians are living with Multiple Myeloma at any given time, only half of whom will survive five years post- diagnosis."

Amanda knew her outcome was bleak after receiving her diagnosis.

"I thought, 'No I don't have it. That's something old people get, and then they die.' It really felt dismal," she said.

The mum was admitted to hospital for urgent treatment and was anaemic, although she says she still felt calm, she told 9Honey, because she and Owen, also a doctor, were used to clinical settings.

Amanda was even calm when later that night she started having trouble breathing. She mentioned it to the nurse. She didn't make a big deal about it at all.

"I told the nurse, 'I'm not breathing very well' and she checked my stats and said they weren't good," Amanda recalled.

"The ward doctor came down and did some tests. By that stage I was so tired and everyone was so lovely. When they said they were taking me to intensive care to ventilate me, I remember thinking it was a good idea because I was tired of breathing."

While she was being wheeled to ICU, hospital staff rang Owen and told him they were ventilating her because she was suffering from respiratory failure and they couldn't wait for him to arrive as her situation was critical.

"I hadn't really cottoned on that I may not wake up," she said.

"I think it was more alarming for Owen and the children because I was ventilated for two days."

Looking back, Amanda realises she was one of the lucky ones.

"I was young enough to get a stem cell transplant. If you are under 65-70 and you get Myeloma, you can get a stem cell transplant. They don't do it on older patients because they don't normally survive it."

Her treatment plan involved chemotherapy, steroids and stem cell transplants. Not all of it worked, but after two types of chemotherapy, the steroids which she says triggered ridiculous mood swings and two stem cell transplants in May and August 2019, the first of which took her six-and-a-half weeks to recover from.

Her hair fell out for the first time on Mother's Day.

Amanda hasn't yet returned to 'fully healthy', but is much better than she was when she was first diagnosed.

"There's evidence to show that exercise helps with the nausea of chemo and so I've been walking the dog and doing resistance sessions at the gym," she said.

"I used to swim in a pool but I can't now because of my low immune system. I can swim in the ocean but I'm photosensitive now and very intolerant to heat following treatment, so we go early in the morning or late in the afternoon."

The COVID-19 pandemic meant staying at home in isolation early in 2020, and remaining there. Amanda isn't sure when she'll be well enough to return to work as hospitals will expose her to too many illnesses.

"When we told the kids we tried not to make too much of big deal out of it," she said.

"I think they've done really well. Obviously it has been tough for them and we don't live near many relatives who can help us. They pitched in, cooking dinner and sorting and helping their dad out around the house."

"I think it was good for them. Now I am proud to say that I have two independent daughters who have learnt to do a lot for themselves. They will become strong, independent women."

Amanda has even enjoyed her long break from work as she's been able to spend more time at home with her children, now aged 15 and 12.

"During the 18 months I haven't worked I've been with the kids and they are teenagers so it has been nice to just be around them," she said.

"I'm not glad this happened but I have tried to morph this into something positive."

Amanda hopes that by sharing her story she raises public awareness of Multiple Myeloma.

"It is so important as it is a lot more common than people think," she said.

"It is important that more people understand the different ways that the disease presents so they can seek advice from their doctor should they experience any of the symptoms."

Amanda has been able to access a new combination of medications to keep her in remission, including some recently added to the PBS including REVLIMID (lenalidomide), bortezomib (Velcade) and dexamethasone (not new, has been around for years) (RVd).

Known as a triplet therapy, each drug in the RVd combination has a different mechanism of action to kill myeloma cells, and all work together to help fight the disease.

Amanda feels grateful to be able to access the new treatments which are working to keep her blood cancer at bay.

"It doesn't seem right that people get better access to treatment if they have more money, especially this year when many people have become unemployed due to COVID-19," she said.

Amanda had plenty of time to read during her time off from work and in between treatments. She said one book in particular helped her greatly: Curveballs by Emma Markezic who was diagnosed with aggressive breast cancer in her early thirties.

"In the book she talks about a happiness study where they followed someone who won a lot of money and someone who had suffered a spinal cord injury and would have to spend the rest of their lives in a wheelchair," Amanda recalled.

"At first, the money winner was happier and the spinal cord victim was unhappy but a year later they found their happiness score was the same. I've discovered that a lot of fighting cancer is getting your head around it and your attitude determines how you feel."

While returning to work isn't on the cards, Amanda has been training to be a Lifeline Crisis Worker.

"I got part of the way through the training when COVID hit, but I'm hoping to start again next month," she said.

Although she does hope to return to her original work as a paediatric anesthesiologist "once COVID is gone".

"You can't cure Multiple Myeloma, it's not like other cancers. I'm in remission and I take medication to keep me in remission, but you always have it.

"Sometimes it doesn't come back for 10 years, sometimes it comes back in three months. I just want to make the most out of my life and try and make a difference for someone else."

Find out more about Myeloma blood cancer by visiting the Myeloma Australia website.

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'I was tired and sore and I thought I had a really bad cold' - 9Honey