A Fit, Healthy 22-Year-Old’s Back Pain Was Blamed on New Office Job. Months Later, She Was Diagnosed with Blood Cancer

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A 22-year-old in England is speaking out about receiving a devastating diagnosis after doctors first told her she was likely just experiencing back pain due to having a new office job.

Lara Muller, from the town of Guildford in Surrey, England, first started having symptoms — including a sore neck and back while suffering a chest infection — in December 2024.

She had previously been a “fit and healthy” person in her early 20s, she told Kennedy News and Media, and tried multiple techniques to get her energy levels up, including drinking more coffee and taking vitamin supplements.

And after Muller booked herself an appointment with her doctor and went for a blood test, medical professionals blamed her tiredness on being anemic, and her back pain on sitting down all day at her new office job.

“I felt like I was going crazy,” said Muller, who is a business development manager. “I knew there was something wrong with me and I was just getting worse but no one was hearing it.”

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Per a clip on her TikTok account, Muller explained how her general practitioner had told her “you’re just anemic” when she complained about not feeling well.

After she coughed up blood following another chest infection in March, Muller went for an emergency X-ray and a CT scan, which confirmed she had a mass in her chest.

Muller — who has opened up about her cancer journey on TikTok — confirmed on the social-media platform that she underwent keyhole surgery and was eventually diagnosed with Hodgkin lymphoma, which is a type of blood cancer. She received the diagnosis in June.

Per the Mayo Clinic, “Hodgkin lymphoma is a type of cancer that affects the lymphatic system. The lymphatic system is part of the body’s germ-fighting and disease-fighting immune system.”

“Hodgkin lymphoma begins when healthy cells in the lymphatic system change and grow out of control,” the site adds.

PEOPLE is out to Muller for further comment.

Muller has since undergone chemotherapy, revealing on TikTok last week that she’d “got rid” of the disease in a month and a half.

She is keen to share her health journey to warn others of some of her symptoms that were previously overlooked.

“Now [that] I’m having treatment and I have solutions and answers, I feel 10 times better than I did when I was ill and not knowing what it was,” she said. “But no one prepares you to hear that you have cancer at 22.”

Muller continued of her symptoms, “I felt so tired all the time so I went to the doctors and they did my bloods and they put it down to [anemia],” explaining that doctors had initially tried increasing the dose of her iron tablets.

“I asked about the back and neck pain and they said as I’d started a new job and I sat down in a chair all day, it was probably to do with that. I went back two or three more times [to the doctor] because my symptoms got worse,” she added.

Muller went on, “I’ve always been really fit and active and into sports and at my new job I’d sit down all day, so surely I wouldn’t be getting that tired.”

She added of getting checked out, “I went back to the doctors a third time as I started to get really dizzy and they told me it was down to the [anemia] again. I would walk 10 minutes up the road and I’d be so exhausted from it and I thought, ‘This isn’t right.’ “

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Muller said she ended up being “too exhausted” to go to the gym and had started to work out less, as well as found herself having to lift much lighter weights.

“I’d normally go four or five times a week and then I went down to once a week,” she recalled. “There was a period of two months when I didn’t go at all and I was losing weight.”

Muller continued of now wanting to warn others of her symptoms, “I would say keep pushing if you think something is wrong with you. I should have just trusted my gut instincts more, as you know in your gut how you’re feeling.”

Read the original article on People