'Blood on my pillow was the first sign of leukaemia'

A woman who was diagnosed with leukaemia after waking up one morning with blood on her pillow wants to raise awareness of the cancer.

Dora Winslet, from Berkshire, was diagnosed with acute myeloid leukaemia in 2021 after discovering the spot of blood where her ear had been whilst she slept.

Following years of treatment, the 61-year-old now wants to raise awareness of the disease and its symptoms.

It comes as the world marks blood cancer awareness month, with the research charity Leukaemia UK saying that 60,000 people in the UK have blood cancer.

For Winslet, it was one morning soon after waking up that she realised something wasn't right.

"I woke up one morning with a pound coin-sized spot of blood on my pillow just under my left ear," she said.

"Because of the leukaemia you don't have the platelets [in your blood], so it didn't clot."

"I was feeling a little out of breath occasionally, more often than I should have been, and I was noticing a lot of bruising," Winslet said of her early symptoms.

"I was also getting these blood blisters, so I went to my dentist - and she sent me to my GP immediately."

According to the NHS, tiredness, bruising, pale skin, infections and swelling are all signs of acute myeloid leukaemia - which Winslet was eventually diagnosed with.

The disease is an aggressive form of blood cancer, with nearly 80% of the roughly 3,100 diagnosed with it in the UK each year not surviving beyond five years, Leukaemia UK said.

The diagnosis was not the first time Winslet had been told she had cancer, having previously battled breast cancer.

"I thought I'd gotten a t-shirt and I was done," she said.

"I suppose in a way it helped me, because I knew that I could survive cancer."

"I was ready to go to war."

During her treatment for leukaemia, the 61-year-old who lives near Bracknell, also contracted sepsis, complicating her recovery.

But after gruelling rounds of of chemotherapy and treatment, Winslet received a successful stem cell transplant and is now in remission.

"The doctors told me the reason that I pulled through this so strongly as I did was that I came into it fit strong healthy with a healthy lifestyle," she explained.

"I want to tell people that it's not going to keep you from getting cancer, but it can help you fight cancer - if you are one of the unfortunate people that gets diagnosed with it."