I was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer at age 31, despite my clear mammogram. These are the four surprising signs I wish I had never ignored

A nurse has told of the horror of being diagnosed with terminal breast cancer despite a mammogram showing a normal result just weeks earlier.

Kristi Halpin, 33, from New Jersey, US, ‘ignored’ a series of strange symptoms she suffered for months, including back pain, weight loss, strange bruising and fatigue.

The mother-of-one blamed the troubling problems on the fact that they had disappeared after the birth of her son Caiden in October 2022 – nine months before her symptoms started.

She never expected doctors to discover fatal tumors in both breasts, her spine, lungs and ribs.

“I was devastated and terrified,” she told her 38,000 TikTok followers of her diagnosis.

“I can’t leave my boys (her husband and son) and let my baby grow up without me.”

Ms. Halpin’s ordeal began in early summer 2023, when she noticed she was unintentionally losing weight.

She assumed she “just got lucky” and started losing the baby weight much sooner than she expected.

Another symptom she remembered was fatigue, which she assumed was the result of being kept awake at night by a crying newborn.

She told her TikTok afterward that she had also noticed a lot of “random bruising” on her arms and legs, which she didn’t consider an illness. ‘big deal’ and thought this was caused by her dogs bumping into her.

But then a new, alarming symptom appeared that was difficult to ignore: painful back pain.

When the problem didn’t go away in August, she decided to see a chiropractor, but that ultimately failed to ease the pain.

Then, on the day of her son’s first birthday party in October 2023, the pain had become so unbearable that she could no longer get up from the bathroom floor after trying to give her baby a bath.

Annoyed, she visited the local emergency room the next day, where doctors ran blood tests and discovered abnormalities.

The doctors thought she might be suffering from a gallbladder problem, but sent her home and told her to come back for a check-up a few weeks later.

Within this time, Ms. Halpin had noticed a strange change in the appearance of her nipple.

“I was in the shower and noticed that it looked like my nipple had been pushed in from the side, as if it was inverted,” she said, adding that a lump appeared to have formed beneath the surface.

She sought a mammogram, but it showed no tumors. Radiologists assured her that the mass was probably a cyst.

Although breast cancer screening can detect cancer early, it is not perfect and some people may get a false negative result, meaning tumors are missed.

This is especially true for women with dense breasts, where cancerous growths are not clearly visible on mammograms.

Unsatisfied with the radiologist’s conclusion, Ms. Halpin sought the help of a breast cancer surgeon, who offered to take a biopsy “just in case.”

When the results came back five days later, it turned out that she had breast cancer. Further MRI scans showed it had spread to her bones, lungs and ribs.

“I couldn’t hear anything, it felt like time stood still, I couldn’t see anything, I was gone for a few moments,” Ms. Halpin told her followers as she recalled her diagnosis.

Ms Halpin said her medical team recommended courses of chemotherapy and radiotherapy to shrink the tumors and prevent them from spreading to other parts of the body.

In her most recent clips, she has revealed that the treatment is keeping the disease under control so far.

However, her illness is classified as ‘terminal’.

Metastatic breast cancer occurs when cancer cells have spread from the breast to other parts of the body. This is also called stage 4 breast cancer.

Around 55,000 women and 370 men are diagnosed with breast cancer in Britain every year, says Breast Cancer Now.

Meanwhile, approximately 300,000 new cases of breast cancer in women are diagnosed each year in the US.

The usual first symptom is a painless lump in the breast, although most are not cancerous and are fluid-filled cysts, which are benign.

The first place breast cancer usually spreads to is the lymph nodes in the armpit. This usually presents as a swelling or lump in an armpit.

However, changes in the skin, such as dimples or a rash on the animal, can also be a warning sign.

In some cases, breast cancer can cause discharge and a rash or crust around the nipple.

According to Cancer Research UK, more than 25 percent of women will survive stage four breast cancer for five years or more after they are diagnosed.

In recent years, doctors have expressed concern about the rising number of cancer cases in young people.

According to Cancer Research UK, the rate of breast cancer among people aged 25 to 49 has risen by almost a fifth since 1990.

Lifestyle habits such as an unhealthy diet that causes weight gain and drinking alcohol are thought to be causing the rise in cases.

That’s because alcohol increases estrogen levels in the blood, and abnormally high levels of this hormone have been linked to breast cancer.

Being overweight also increases the risk of 13 types of cancer, including breast cancer.