A Louisiana woman diagnosed with breast cancer has shared the one thing she deeply regrets as she spends her final days in hospice care.

Whitney Brooks, 34, was diagnosed with Stage 3 breast cancer at the age of 27.

The disease has since progressed to Stage 4, and has spread throughout her body.

The Baton Rouge resident was placed in hospice care in July because she could not walk, use the restroom or feed herself without help.

Brooks was given a 90-day prognosis and she is using her last days to talk about her journey with breast cancer - urging others to get checked out as soon as they can.

Talking to WAFB, the woman shared how the breast cancer journey has changed her life and how she regrets not getting it checked at the right time.

‘Cancer really doesn’t have an age. It doesn’t have a number,’ Brooks said.

Brooks added that fear played a role in why she did not get the lump checked initially.

Brooks said she first noticed a lump in her breast when she was 25.

She was in the shower when she felt that something was wrong with her breast.

‘I just thought: “Oh, that’s a boil. It’ll go away,”’ Brooks told the outlet.

But when the lump did not go away, her now wife, Dana Foreman, asked her to get it checked.

Brooks went to Woman’s Hospital for a checkup, where she received the devastating news that the tumor was not benign. 

She urged women not to let fear get in the way.

‘Please, don’t wait,’ she said. ‘Don’t let fear sink in, because that’s what I did. I allowed fear to sink in and stop me.’

Brooks told the outlet she is scared she might not wake up one day, but she knows she has to keep fighting.

‘I think that’s one of the main reasons I don’t go to sleep,' Brooks said. ‘I just think: “What if I don’t get up? What if this is my last breath?”’

The woman added that there are days when she feels like giving up.

‘I know some days I feel like I want to keep moving, keep going,’ she said. ‘But some days, I want to throw in the towel and not want to do it anymore.’

As she waits for what comes next, Brooks is trying to enjoy the time she has left and hopes to go on one last vacation.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in American women, according to the National Breast Cancer Foundation.

One in eight women get diagnosed with breast cancer in their lifetime.

Women should perform breast self-exams at least once a month. 

‘Forty per cent of diagnosed breast cancers are detected by women who feel a lump, so establishing a regular breast self-exam is very important,’ Lillie D Shockney, Johns Hopkins University Distinguished Service Professor of Breast Cancer states.