“Too afraid to go to the doctor”: only a few weeks to live for a mother

A 34-year-old mother who hesitated for too long to see a doctor for a lump in her breast hopes her story will help others overcome their fear, even though she now has only a few weeks left.

“I feel like now I can save someone’s life. Here I am, 34 years old, and I am dying because I was afraid to go to the doctor,” mother Kourtni Smith told American media WUSA9, according to what “The Mirror” reported on Monday.

With now only a few weeks left, the mother of five children from Maryland in the United States regrets not having consulted sooner for a lump in her breast, which she would have taken time to have diagnosed for fear of going to see doctor.

It was only in 2021 that the mother decided to have the bump checked while she was struggling to feed her newborn, aged 7 months. She was then diagnosed with stage 3 cancer.

But after only three rounds of chemotherapy out of a program of eight, in tandem with 15 radiotherapy sessions, she would have been forced to stop the treatments because her body could not tolerate them, she recounted in a crowdfunding campaign. GoFundMe, set up to help his family get through the ordeal.

Last April, her cancer had progressed, so much so that she was diagnosed this time with stage 4 invasive lobular carcinoma.

“I am writing this from the palliative care room. With the unfortunate reality that I don’t have long left on this earth,” she continued in writing two weeks ago, when she only had a few weeks left in front of her.

The thirty-year-old who hoped to be able to “hold the hand (of her children) and guide them towards adulthood” deplores that “this dream is fading away”, urging those who discover a bump to go look for a diagnosis as soon as possible, she told the American channel WUSA9.