RIVERVIEW, Fla. — A Hillsborough County mother is raising awareness for an incurable cancer after her own diagnosis during the pandemic.
In 2020, Corinne Torney was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer that starts in plasma cells.
She had recently given birth.
"Leading up to the diagnosis, I was having a ton of back pain, a lot of fatigue, but at the time, it was COVID, so it was the year of 2020. I was teaching from home, working from home with a baby and a toddler," she said.
WATCH: Riverview mother of two brings awareness to incurable cancer
Torney said at first, doctors attributed her symptoms to postpartum issues.
"I ended up going to a nurse practitioner here in Riverview, and she was the one who found the myeloma," said Torney.
"It's a disease of your plasma cells and your bone marrow, very rare and even more rare for a young person to get it. Statistically speaking, it's usually patients who are 65 and older," she said.
Torney had to leave her job as an educator in Hillsborough County to start treatment in Arkansas. She needed two stem-cell transplants.
Six years later, she still returns to Arkansas a few times a year for scans and also goes to Moffitt Cancer Center every month.
"In almost all cases, it does come back, it’s just a matter of when, some patients can make it years before it comes back, whereas some patients can only go a matter of months before it returns," she said.
Torney is raising money to help find a cure.
She plans to attend THE MMRF walk at ZooTampa on April 25, 2026. The Multiple Myeloma Research Foundation hosts annual walks in cities across the United States.
The MMRF walk raises money for research and to help accelerate the development of new and better treatments.
"Funding is crucial because without funding, I wouldn’t have made it to where I am today. When I was diagnosed, they told me two years, and here I am watching my girls grow up, one's a preteen, one's in elementary school, so this to me is so utterly important to get the funding for the research to catch up and hopefully find a cure or even better treatment options to prolong our lives," said Torney.
For more information on the MMRF walk, click here.
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