Alexis Klimpl felt an itch. So, like anyone else, she went to scratch it. But her fingers curled around something else. A massive lump on her right breast.
About a year ago, the now 25-year-old was laying in bed with her boyfriend and immediately shot up. Her face dropped. "What?" he asked, naively. "There's literally a lump on my boob," she said. They felt it – maybe it's a bone? It was hard. But if it were a bone, could you move it around in a circle? Was it a cyst? A benign lump? Or ...
Breast cancer. Maybe it's breast cancer. At 24 years old. The diagnosis that affects more than 300,000 women each year in the U.S. More than 40,000 women die of it every year.
Klimpl is one of the 300,000 – and one of a growing number of women under 40 diagnosed with breast cancer in recent years. But she's now also one of the 4 million survivors living in the U.S., too.
Klimpl lives in San Diego but is a Hawaii native. She's at peace in the water and loves to surf. A beach trip to Indonesia she'd been planning was scheduled for a few days after first feeling that lump. With the travel planned, the money spent, she pressed on. The lump grew and grew.
