A woman who was sent home with eczema cream after going to her doctor with worrying symptoms has been diagnosed with cancer.
Claire Meitinger had been in great health, only suffering the occasional cold, when she spotted a dark spot and a lump on her breast.
While the 32-year-old immediately expressed her concerns that it could be cancer, she claims her GP thought it was eczema or dermatitis and prescribed an ointment.
Knowing something more sinister was at play, Claire pushed for a mammogram, which picked up abnormalities, and a biopsy confirmed the truth: she had breast cancer.
“I had a panic attack in the doctor’s office when I found out,” Claire, who documented her story on TikTok, garnering over one million views, told Need To Know.
“Despite feeling like my symptoms were cancer for so long, actually hearing that cancerous cells were found was extremely hard
“I was afraid of the word ‘cancer’ and what that would mean for my life and future.
“I was also so angry because I had felt something was wrong and had to push so hard to find out what it was.
“The providers always told me not to worry because I was a healthy, young woman with no family history.”
Claire, from Richmond, Virginia, US, first spotted the lump back in mid-2023, and immediately went for a breast exam – but the ultrasound didn’t pick up anything, so she was advised to wait until the age of 30 before getting a mammogram, due to the rarity of diagnoses in younger women.
By then, the lump had grown painful, but it hadn’t changed in size, and a mammogram and ultrasound again flagged nothing of concern.
Claire, who is currently out of work while she undergoes treatment, said: “I was told I had extremely dense breast tissue and was sent home.”
It wasn’t until the dark spot appeared on the same breast in December 2024 that she became convinced something was wrong.
But the examiner said it “looked like eczema or another form of dermatitis” and prescribed her an appointment.
Claire said, “It was so statistically unlikely that it was cancer, so leading up to my diagnosis, I tried to calm myself down and tell myself that it’s probably benign.
“I hoped my gut feeling was wrong.”
Doctors weren’t alarmed, given Claire’s young age and healthy history – but the young woman felt intuitively that it was cancer.
When the lump caused her right breast to grow significantly larger than her left, she fought to be taken seriously and have further tests done.
This time, while the ultrasound still showed nothing, the mammogram picked up calcifications – an indicator of early-stage breast cancer.
A biopsy performed a week later confirmed her worst suspicions, and she was diagnosed with ductal carcinoma in situ in January.
Claire said, “Hearing that it was cancer was still unbelievably shocking.
“I just remember feeling scared.
“Of course, looking back, I feel frustrated because I was right all along and, had doctors listened to me sooner, we could have caught it when it was truly stage 0, and I could have likely avoided chemo and immunotherapy.
“It was a difficult feeling to finally have an answer for my symptoms, but being devastated at it being cancer.”
She opted to have a double mastectomy to cut out the cancer and lower the chances of it returning in the other breast, as well as nine lymph nodes removed from her armpit to check if the cancer had spread.
Thankfully, it hadn’t, but pathology results found cancerous cells had broken out of the milk ducts and formed a small tumour in her breast tissue – changing her diagnosis to stage one invasive ductal carcinoma.
Claire went through 12 rounds of gruelling chemotherapy and immunotherapy, and will continue to have immunotherapy for the next eight months.
She said: “I am so happy and relieved to have completed this milestone, but that peace is mixed with some anxiety of recurrence.
“After being misdiagnosed for so long, it’s hard to fully trust my medical providers, and that makes this stage of recovery feel more uncertain than expected.
“But I know I can always trust my gut.
“Going through all of this, I have learned to speak up for myself and communicate my concerns clearly.
“I’d advise other people to advocate for themselves even when it feels uncomfortable.
“If something doesn’t feel right in your body, you deserve answers.
“My breast tissue was so dense that it hid the tumour for so long, and even after being confirmed by a biopsy, the ultrasound did not pick up on the cancer.
“Had I not listened to my gut and continued to insist on testing, who knows how long this would have gone undetected.
“I learned the hard way that misdiagnoses and delays can happen, but trusting your instincts and speaking up can make all the difference.”
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