21/10/2025
“Definitely get any lumps that you find checked by your GP. I’m sure that if I didn’t go to the GP when I did, if I’d waited a few months, things could’ve turned out extremely differently for me.”
Teresa Hanniffy, 50, who is originally from Italy but lives in Mullingar, Co. Westmeath, was diagnosed with breast cancer in 2019. The mother-of-two found a lump in one of her breasts and initially dismissed it, as she got unrelated digestive problems checked out earlier that year that all came back clear.
“When I found the lump, I thought I had to stop imagining things, that I had to remind myself I was fine,” says Teresa. “Then I started thinking that no one else in my immediate family had breast cancer, so why would I? I thought I was just imagining things."
The next day, Teresa couldn’t shake the sense that something could be wrong, so she went to see her GP.
“I still felt a sense of doubt, so I decided to get it checked,” she says. “I went to my GP, she did an examination and tried to keep me calm because I explained to her that I was a bit nervous.
“She said she could definitely feel something, and she sent a referral to the Breast Clinic in the Mater. She said it could be a cyst, but she couldn’t tell me anything for certain – but I latched on to her saying it could be a cyst.”
In early July 2019, Teresa visited the Breast Clinic at the Mater Hospital in Dublin, where she underwent a mammogram. They asked her to wait in the waiting room, then sent her for a triple assessment. Afterwards, she was told what the scans had shown.
“They said what I didn’t want to hear – that I had breast cancer,” says Teresa. “They said that the biopsy they took that day had been sent away for testing, but by looking at my scans they were almost certain that I had a tumour."
Read Teresa's story in full: cancer.ie/your-stories/teresa-hanniffys-breast-cancer-story
