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Kristen Hallenga was born on Nov. 11, 1985, in Norden, a small town in northern Germany, to a German father and an English mother, both of whom were teachers, according to The Times of London. When she was 9, she moved to Daventry in central England with her mother, Jane Hallenga; her twin sister, Maren Hallenga; and their older sister Maike Hallenga, all three of whom survive her. Her father, Reiner Hallenga, died of a heart attack when she was 20.
Ms. Hallenga first felt a lump in 2009 when she was in Beijing working for a travel company and teaching on the side. During a visit back home in the Midlands, in central England, Ms. Hallenga went to her internist. She told The Guardian that her doctor had blamed the lump on hormonal changes associated with her birth control pill.
But the lump grew more painful, and bloody discharge developed. Another internist gave her a diagnosis similar to the first — attributing her condition again to hormones and the pill. But because Ms. Hallenga didn’t know what would be considered normal, she didn’t have anything to judge by.
“I wasn’t touching my boobs at all,” Ms. Hallenga said in 2021. “I didn’t know anything about them.”
But Ms. Hallenga’s mother, whose own mother had breast cancer at an early age, insisted that her daughter obtain a referral to a breast clinic. By the time she was diagnosed, eight months after finding the lump, the prognosis was terminal. The cancer had also spread to her spine.
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