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. When she was 9, she moved to Daventry in central England with her mother, Jane Hallenga; her twin sister, Maren; and their older sister Maike, 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 to the Midlands, Ms. Hallenga went to her internist, who attributed the lump to hormonal changes associated with her birth control pill, she told The Guardian.
But the lump grew more painful, and a bloody discharge developed. Another internist gave her a diagnosis similar to the first, tying her condition again to hormones and the pill. But because she didn’t know what would be considered normal, Ms. Hallenga didn’t have anything to judge by.
“I wasn’t touching my boobs at all,” she said. “I didn’t know anything about them.”
But her mother, whose own mother had breast cancer at an early age, insisted that Ms. Hallenga 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.
After an aggressive round of chemotherapy, a mastectomy and hormone therapy, tests in 2011 revealed that the cancer had spread to her liver, she told The Huffington Post. A year later, doctors found that the cancer had spread to her brain. She underwent radiotherapy to remove a tumor.
