Alice Bolton is a British doctor who was working abroad in an Australian emergency room (or A&E as it is called down there). While training for a half marathon and regularly running 20km, she suddenly found it hard to get through 5km and noticed swelling in her lymph nodes and bruising on her legs. She suspected it was glandular fever and took a blood test one day while working at the hospital. An hour late, in the middle of her shift, she found out she had an aggressive blood cancer.

"I was actually on shift, and they literally called me about an hour after I’d had the blood test, saying, ‘You need to go to A&E straightaway’,” Alice said. “I said, ‘Oh, that’s weird, because I’m actually here anyway, I work in A&E’.”

She went from being a doctor to a patient in an hour. She started chemotherapy in October of 2024 and then had a relapse in March of 2025 when she was told she would need a stem cell transplant.

"I was shocked, but the thing I was most concerned about was having to phone home and tell my sisters and my parents because I think that makes it more real...it makes you realize that even if you are a healthcare professional, these things can still happen"

Read more of Bolton's story here.