At the age of 23, Kris Hallenga was diagnosed with terminal breast cancer. On average people given this diagnosis live for two-and-a-half years, but 10 years later she wants people to know that it is possible to beat the odds.

Axar.az reports citing BBC.

A tightrope artist walks along the line created by Kris Hallenga's mastectomy scar.

"I got the tattoo maybe three years ago now, it's to represent the balance of any illness with life and everything else," she says.

"I didn't want to cover up the scar, I just wanted it to feature within the art piece.

Kris has never tried to hide or deny her condition. Instead she has embraced it as part of her life.

"What happened to me couldn't really be changed, and I think getting to grips with accepting your situation is going to be much better than fighting something. That's why I don't see the cancer in my body as this enemy, because I don't think that's particularly healthy. I think we need to work with it rather than against it."

When diagnosed with advanced breast cancer in 2009, she decided not to get angry, but instead set up a charity called CoppaFeel, to raise awareness of the disease among young people and encourage them to check their breasts regularly.

Even before her diagnosis, she had become aware how fragile life is. She was left shaken at 15 by the death of a grandmother. Then, five years later, her father died.

"When I was diagnosed at 23 I was already au fait with mortality and that we weren't going to live forever," she says. "So I think that helped with my attitude and coping with the reality of the situation."

On 19 February, 10 years will have elapsed since the moment she was told she had stage-four breast cancer.

"Stage-one cancers are very small, limited to the breast," says Kris's doctor, consultant clinical oncologist Dr Duncan Wheatley. "Stage two and three are when it's starting to spread to the lymph glands around the breast and then stage four is when it's spread from beyond the breast to somewhere distant, whether that's liver, lung, bone, brain."

He says there are different degrees of stage-four breast cancer, but they are nearly always incurable.

Kris's cancer had already spread to her pelvis, liver and hips and she also had a tumour in her brain.