A sore chest after a boxing class led this mum to run her hand over one tiny lump – and uncover a diagnosis doctors could hardly believe

What began as nothing more than post-workout soreness turned into a cancer diagnosis so unusual Natalie Henderson’s doctor initially questioned whether the pathology results were even hers.

The Port Macquarie mother-of-three was just 23 at the time in September 2001. 

She was fit, healthy, and enjoying life as a young professional in Sydney when she noticed a tiny lump after a boxercise class.

She had no warning signs, concerning family history, or even the semblance of a reason to think cancer was even a possibility.

And yet that small, pea-sized lump, found almost by accident because her chest felt sore after the gym, would alter the course of her life.

Then, almost 20 years later, it happened again.

This time, it was just as shocking – and somehow even crueller. The second diagnosis was not a recurrence of her first breast cancer, but an entirely new and different kind.

For Natalie, now 47, the two diagnoses have divided her adult life in two.

The lump she found because she was sore after the gym

Natalie still remembers how ordinary the day felt.

She had been to a boxercise class and came home with a sore chest, a muscular ache most people would brush off without a second thought. Running her hand across the top of her chest, she felt something unusual.

It was tiny, about the size of a pea, sitting in the area where her décolletage met the start of her breast, closer to the armpit than where most women would expect to find a lump.

‘I had no other physical symptoms,’ she told the Daily Mail.

‘I wasn’t worried at all. I wasn’t thinking, “this is probably cancer”. I just thought, “that feels unusual. I should get it checked”.’

Her sister happened to have a GP appointment the following day and offered it to her. Natalie went along alone, expecting little more than reassurance that the lump was nothing serious.

Instead, the results began to raise alarm almost immediately.

Her GP sent her for an ultrasound and a fine needle biopsy. When the pathology came back showing abnormal cells, the doctor was so surprised she queried whether the pathology department had sent the correct results.

Natalie was stunned.

‘I said, “what does that mean, is it cancer?” And she said, “well, yes, that’s probably what it is”.’

At 23, with no family history and no symptoms beyond that tiny lump discovered because of gym soreness, the diagnosis felt impossible to comprehend.

A second, more invasive core biopsy confirmed it: Natalie had high-grade hormone receptor positive breast cancer.

‘It just felt so random’

At the time, Natalie was a young woman at the beginning of her adult life.

She was working in Sydney, building her career, going to the gym, seeing friends and enjoying the independence and energy of her twenties after growing up in regional New South Wales and finishing university.

Cancer did not fit anywhere in that picture.

She underwent a lumpectomy and sentinel node biopsy at Royal Prince Alfred Hospital, followed by six months of ‘gruelling’ chemotherapy, six weeks of radiotherapy, and five years on tamoxifen.

‘The chemotherapy was like a permanent hangover. I didn’t vomit all the time, but I had a deep ingrained tiredness. I just felt so unwell all the time.’

Then came radiotherapy, which she fitted around her job, attending treatment each afternoon after work. The fatigue built slowly, then the burn appeared – bright red, painful and raw.

‘I had to use burn cream and have it covered over. Still, to this day, 24 years later, the area is sore to touch. It’s a permanent pain that leaves discomfort.

‘If I get hugged too hard, it hurts. It was really difficult when my children were young – I kept having to remind them not to hug me too tight. I just feel bruised all the time.’

But before that, back in the early 2000s, Natalie said there was little room for discussion about what treatment meant for a young woman’s fertility or future family. The focus was simple: save her life.

When she asked about freezing her eggs, it was not possible. She did not have a partner, and at the time the technology to freeze unfertilised eggs was not available to her.

‘All I could do at the time was go through treatment and hope for the best.’

A new life, a miracle baby – then another devastating shock

Natalie met her future husband, a British backpacker, just after her treatment ended. More than two decades later, they are still together.

But cancer’s impact continued long after the chemotherapy ended. She struggled to fall pregnant and was eventually told her body was responding more like that of a 45-year-old than a woman in her early thirties.

After unsuccessful IVF in Australia, she made the extraordinary decision to leave her job and travel to London for treatment at a highly specialised clinic, spending three and a half months there and undergoing what she described as ‘IVF boot camp’.

‘They used a very intense approach to IVF. They give you high doses of medications and monitor you daily. But it worked – and I got pregnant after the first round.

‘At first, it was too good to be true. But then, in a way, I felt like it was my reward for taking the big, bold step to leave my job and go to London. I was away from my husband for almost four months. But I almost felt like I deserved it.

‘But still, like with any new pregnancy, you’re still tentatively excited and don’t want to get ahead of yourself in case it doesn’t last. Thankfully, I had a very healthy, uneventful pregnancy.’

Natalie’s daughter Olive was born in February 2012, and she later had twins Jude and Florence born in July 2014 – all from embryos frozen in the first round in London.

For years, life began to feel steady again. Natalie kept up her annual mammograms and ultrasounds, and for 19 years, everything was clear.

Then, during lockdown in 2021, she felt another lump. This time it was in the other breast, near her armpit, and it felt like a swollen gland.

Even then, after all those years, the shock was immense.

‘I’d had no cause for concern for 19 years. So I was absolutely blown away,’ she said.

Tests revealed something almost unthinkable: it was not a recurrence of her first cancer, but a second primary diagnosis – and a completely different disease.

She had triple negative breast cancer, an aggressive form that does not respond to hormone-blocking drugs. Doctors also found not one tumour, but two, with one hidden from view.

Both tumours had sprouted in the six months since Natalie’s last scan.

By then she was 42, her eldest daughter was seven, and the twins were only five-years-old.

‘I felt sheer terror,’ she said.

‘I wondered if I was going to die. I was absolutely terrified and distraught, because I was a mother of three children this time around. It felt so much worse.’

Facing cancer again – this time as a mother

The first time Natalie was diagnosed, she was shocked. The second time, she knew exactly what cancer could do to a family.

‘I just thought of the innocence lost for my family, what they’d have to go through. I knew what was coming, because I’d been there before and knew just how much cancer impacts your life forever.

‘There’s something about accepting your life’s journey when it impacts just you, but knowing you’ve got young children is different. I just thought, ‘I can’t die. I need to be here for my kids’.’

The mum sat them down and told them she had cancer, carefully trying to balance honesty with hope.

‘The good news was, I’ve got really good doctors, and there’s medicine I’m going to get, and we’ve got it early,’ she said.

‘But I’ve got to go through some treatment to get rid of it.’

She underwent months of chemotherapy before surgery because doctors wanted to see how the tumours responded – which meant living for five months knowing the cancer was still inside her.

She was given the same gold-standard chemotherapy she had received as a younger woman, because despite all the advances in medicine, some breast cancer treatments remain largely unchanged.

But because she had already received so much of that drug in her twenties, she reached the maximum lifetime dose.

Two further chemotherapy drugs were tried, but her body could not tolerate either of them.

She then had a lumpectomy to check whether the cancer had spread to her lymph nodes. Thankfully, it had not. Six weeks later, she underwent a double mastectomy with immediate reconstruction during the height of the COVID lockdowns.

‘I was living in regional New South Wales and had to travel to Royal North Shore hospital for treatment. I needed so much documentation just to cross regional boundaries for medical care because everyone was supposed to be isolating at that point.

‘I was in the hospital for nine nights and couldn’t have a single visitor. I remember taking a story book with me so that I could read it to my children on FaceTime and use that to bond with them.’

‘I have to be my own best advocate now’

Natalie recently reached five years since her second diagnosis, a milestone she describes with real gratitude, especially because triple negative breast cancer offers no hormonal medication protection once treatment ends.

She has now been discharged from her oncologist’s care.

That means her greatest safeguard is no longer a regular treatment plan, but her own instinct.

‘My main source of protection is listening to my body, and if I don’t feel well, or something doesn’t feel right, I know that, for me, it’s a prompt to go and get checked.

‘Because that’s been the main question I’m asked. ‘How are you feeling? Any new symptoms?’ So I’ve got to be my own best advocate for future health.’

Natalie also revealed that she’s struggled with health anxiety as an adult.

‘I’ve had to really practice not to jump to the worst case scenario for many years now. If I have a headache on the right side of my head, I have to ask myself if it’s a pattern or a symptom or just a fluke.

‘I try not to look too many things up on the internet, but I talk to my husband and use him as a sense check.’

The mum said her diagnoses have shaped everything from her career choices to her family’s financial decisions. They have forced caution into plans that once might have felt simple.

‘You never know what’s around the corner,’ she said.

But living with cancer from the age of 23 has also sharpened Natalie’s appreciation for life.

‘I feel quite compelled to share with people how much they mean to me. I don’t take anyone around me for granted.’

Looking back, it still astonishes her that the first cancer was found only because of soreness after a boxing class. Without that fleeting ache, she may not have run her hand across her chest at all.

And 20 years later, the second diagnosis came as another bolt from nowhere – different, aggressive, and every bit as life-altering.

Now, Natalie’s message is simple: know your body, listen to it, and never ignore something that feels unusual.

Because sometimes, the smallest lump can change everything.

For people like Natalie, the work of Breast Cancer Trials in improving breast cancer treatments is vital, so she and others can get back to living their lives more quickly. 

All new breast cancer treatments and prevention strategies must be rigorously tested through the clinical trials process before they are made widely available to the community.

To learn more about Breast Cancer Trials’ lifesaving research or to make a donation, visit: