Woman’s Breast Shrunk, and She Brushed It Off as a Pregnancy Symptom. A Visit with Her Doctor Changed Everything

NEED TO KNOW

• Gemma Fish visited her doctor after noticing her nipple was inverted following her breast shrinking

• Her doctor made a shocking diagnosis

• Fish now urges others to seek medical advice for any breast changes

A new mom thought her breast shrinking three sizes was due to pregnancy, but ultimately received a troubling diagnosis.

Gemma Fish was pregnant with her daughter when her right breast began to shrink. However, even after giving birth to her daughter, Fish, 43, noticed the symptoms didn’t stop. Her right breast had shrunk three cup sizes smaller than her left breast.

“Obviously, in pregnancy, your body changes with every part of you,” the Manchester, U.K. woman explained, according to Kennedy News & Media. “As other things settled down, one of my breasts was still quite large, and one was shrinking.”

Despite this, she continued ignoring the change and chalked it up to the pregnancy until she in January 2023, 14 months after her symptoms first presented, that her nipple was inverted.

“I still put it off a little bit longer, but then went and had that checked in February 2023. I wouldn’t have gone if I hadn’t noticed that the nipple was inverted,” Fish said. “I was still just putting it down to how the changes happened during pregnancy.”

Fish went to her doctor and was recommended for a mammogram, ultrasound and biopsy. She was then diagnosed with Stage 1 breast cancer.

“As soon as I went into the doctor’s appointment and explained everything, I could tell by her face that it was serious,” she recalled. “It was just really, really surreal. I was like ‘How the hell am I going to deal with this?’ I was thinking, ‘I’m a single mom, I just don’t have any ability to deal with the logistics of being poorly.’ “

“At that point, I wasn’t thinking ‘I’m going to die from this,’ I was just like, ‘This is something that we have to deal with and get treated,’ ” she added.

In March 2023, Fish had a single mastectomy on her right breast. The following month, she began her chemotherapy treatment, which continued until August 2023. Her radiotherapy sessions started in October 2023.

Yet, when Fish had her ovaries removed in January 2024, doctors confirmed she had Stage 4 breast cancer. “As part and parcel of surgery, they were sent off for testing, and it came back that the breast cancer was in my ovaries,” she said.

“I’m [classified] as living with stage four breast cancer, but I will always take it as a win because it was found in the lab after they’d been removed from my body,” Fish added.

Fish also underwent a mastectomy on her left breast in March 2025. She has not had reconstructive surgery and said it is a “massive adjustment.”

“It was easier to live with one breast than I found it to live with no breasts, which sounds bizarre — but it was a massive mental toll getting used to my body again,” she said.

Fish’s cancer is now no longer “curable,” just “treatable.” She hopes to work on “keeping everything stable” but the diagnosis was hard “initially to accept that, particularly being a single mom to Rosie.” Her daughter is now 4.

“Living with Stage 4 cancer is completely different now compared to how it was years ago,” she described. “It’s no longer a straight death sentence so to speak, there’s lots of ladies that live long lives on various different treatment lines.”

“There were lots of decisions and things I had to put in place for her future, shall I not be here, but all of that is done and dusted,” Fish added. “Now we live as happily as we can and enjoy as many things as we can.”

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Fish now advocates for others to get “checked out” if they encounter any changes in their breasts. “Prevention is better than cure,” she explained.

She continued, “Just don’t ignore it, because if I had gone initially and not ignored it and not buried my head in the sand it would have been caught a hell of a lot sooner.”

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