At 30, a Muay Thai fighter's breast cancer diagnosis reshapes her priorities

Shermin Shu was 30 years old and had just gotten engaged. It was June 2025 when she and comedian Jacky Ng made it official. Two months later, in August, she won her first amateur Muay Thai fight locally. She was training almost every day, preparing for her professional debut in Phuket that November—she would be the first woman from her gym, Tiger Muay Thai Singapore, to compete at that level. When Ng noticed a lump in her right breast that same month, she dismissed it. Probably hormones, she thought. Probably a blood clot from all the training. She was a marketing executive, busy, focused, moving forward. There was no family history of breast cancer. She was young. These things happened to other people, at other ages.

It wasn't until December, when she examined herself closely in the mirror, that something shifted. She saw a hard cyst near her nipple. She noticed she had lost weight. The density of her breast, she recalls, "just wasn't right." A breast and endocrine surgeon at Ng Teng Fong General Hospital delivered the diagnosis in January 2026: Stage 2B breast cancer. "I was young and active," she says now. "As women, we're familiar with breast cancer, but we are taught that it happens at a later stage of life."

She called Ng while he was performing in Australia. She apologized to him—they had just gotten engaged, had plans, had imagined children. He told her they would face it together. In March, she underwent a nipple-sparing mastectomy with breast reconstruction using tissue from her lower abdomen. In May and June, she retrieved and froze eight eggs through in-vitro fertilisation, administering her own IVF injections in a bathroom stall during breaks at a warehouse sale her employer was running. From mid-June onward, she endured 16 weekly sessions of chemotherapy. Radiation therapy is scheduled for later in 2026. Her employers, a wine import company, allowed her to work remotely, but she eventually quit to pursue freelance creative work on her own terms.

The shift in her thinking came quietly. "Being 31 this year, the biggest change I've made is to put myself first and listen to my body," she says. She had spent years chasing the next goal, pushing her health and happiness aside to deliver for others. Now, she says, she feels lighter. Muay Thai remained her anchor, though transformed. Her medical team encouraged her to stay active—fitness also meant visible veins for chemotherapy needles. Where she once trained six days a week, sometimes twice daily, she now does one 90-minute session weekly and coaches kickboxing twice a week at KIX Combat Fitness since August. She rests on Sundays, when post-chemotherapy fatigue typically peaks. The sport had taught her something unexpected: how to push through exhaustion. "When the chemo fatigue hit, it wasn't a completely unfamiliar feeling," she says. "I feel like that helped me cope with it better and recover a little faster each time."

But the invisible nature of her illness has been one of the hardest parts. She doesn't look sick. People on social media ask flippant questions about why she shaved her head—she jokes back that it saves on shampoo. Others wonder why she declines social invitations. "I have to explain that I'm going through chemotherapy and feeling lethargic," she says. "I think it's hard for people to comprehend that." She might coach or train one day and need complete rest the next, depending on how her body responds to treatment. "People forget that I need grace sometimes. I'm still a cancer patient."

She has been documenting her journey on social media, where she has 19,000 combined followers across TikTok and Instagram under the handle @caramelprata. She chose to post positive content deliberately. While searching for information about treatment side effects on TikTok, she found herself spiraling through negative videos. One wrong click and the algorithm fed her more of the same. "It made me spiral, especially when I was already scared and vulnerable," she says. "I want to make sure that whoever chances upon my content finds it positive, so that it gives them light through the tunnel." She also joined the Breast Cancer Foundation, a non-profit with a support group for younger patients, and found community there.

Her family has drawn closer. Her mother, 58, and younger brother, 29, who works in sales for a crematorium, show their love in practical ways—ensuring she has enough eggs and toilet paper, helping her move furniture. Her father died two years ago. Looking back, Shu reflects on the months she delayed seeking help, telling herself her health could wait because she was busy. If she had acted sooner, her cancer might not have progressed as far. "That's the biggest takeaway—making sure my health is taken care of," she says. Her wedding, originally planned for 2027, has been pushed back a year so her hair can grow out. She hopes to return to the ring for a few fights before she attempts to have children. For now, she is learning a different kind of discipline: showing up, even when it's less than before, and calling that enough.