Busy mum-of-two Maria Black first thought she was suffering from exhaustion before eventually visiting her doctor with a persistent cough which had been lingering for months.

"He said 'Yeah, it's normal right now. People are not used to being sick because of COVID," she explained. "You know, people were isolated, so now when they get sick, they get really sick. You're just one of them, and it's normal."

Maria, a preschool teacher, now realises there were subtle signs she was unwell; But at the time, none of it seemed like a red flag.

"This is why so many people end up with a stage 4 diagnosis - because the symptoms they had were normal in society. Everybody's always tired. Everybody's always sick," she said.

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Maria carried on her life as mum to Marcel, now eight, and Rich Junior, who is three this month. But in late 2023, her husband Rich discovered a .

"He told me, 'Oh, something's hard right there.' And I just thought, 'Yeah, of course something is hard there.' When you're breastfeeding, your breast tissue is harder."

When Maria stopped breastfeeding two weeks later, she felt something odd. "I was touching my breast, and I felt something really hard and round. I thought, 'That’s not normal. This is so round and hard.' I had never felt something like this before."

She showed her husband and he reminded her he'd mentioned the issue before. So she decided to get seen by a doctor, but they were unconcerned. "They told me, 'Oh, this doesn’t look like anything serious. It’s probably just a fibroadenoma. You’re young, and you’re breastfeeding,'" she said.

However, something in her gut told her it was more serious. "I said, 'Yeah, but it came so quickly. It wasn’t there a few weeks ago.'"

The doctor agreed to do a biopsy, with Maria explaining: "She told me, 'I can definitely tell it’s nothing serious. That’s really good. I can move it, and it doesn’t look like anything bad.'"

Maria put it out of her mind - until four days later. "I was at work. I’m a preschool teacher, and the kids were taking their naps. I was in a dark room when I got a call from my doctor," she added.

“She said ‘Is your husband around? You need to come in. We have the biopsy results, and I want to tell you both.'

"In that moment, I knew. It definitely wasn’t good. When she said, 'Bring your husband,' and didn’t want to tell me over the phone, I just knew."

The couple's worst fears were soon confirmed. She said: "Both doctors were there, and they had that face. You know the face - the 'we feel so bad for you' face. The 'your life is about to change' face."

Maria, who lives in Germany, had six rounds of chemotherapy and mastectomy followed by 25 rounds of radiation.

The treatment was traumatic, but she found such things as watching her older son Marcel play baseball and football deeply comforting.

"My son had to go through a lot for his age. He was also scared when I got sick. We had a lot of conversations with him. I feel like that was very important," he said.

Raising two energetic children while going through treatment wasn’t always easy, but in some ways, it helped Maria keep moving. "Our boys have a lot of energy, which wasn’t always easy while I was sick but helpful at the same time because it forced me to stay active and get out of bed."

Maria had to adjust to major changed in her appearance as she had hair down to her waist before the diagnosis. She lost her hair and it grew back curly and is a lot shorter than before. Maria said: "To my surprise: I gained my confidence back. I am more confident now."

Maria, now adjusting to life post-mastectomy, is now raising funds to reunite with their loves one in Atlanta.

She explained: "If our dream of moving to the USA can’t come true at the moment, then we would be so full of joy if we could fly to our family in Atlanta for Easter.

"Great-grandma wants nothing more than to meet her great-grandson. My husband’s stepfather, who also has cancer, wants nothing more than to fire up the BBQ grill with us like in the old days. Our eldest son keeps asking when we are finally going to America again. I wish I could tell him: this Easter."