The Gunnedah woman is preparing to have tumours and her thyroid gland removed from her neck on Tuesday in Tamworth.

What started out as seemingly harmless goiters (enlargement of the thyroid gland), have since been identified as category four tumours.

“The only thing I can do is have them removed completely, which means hormone-replacement therapy for the rest of my life,” Ms Johnson said.

“You've got to take a tablet each day to regulate your system.”

In an ironic twist, the 30-year-old took part in the Stars of Gunnedah Dance for Cancer in December to raise funds for the Cancer Council.

“When I found out, I was shaking – I was just so shocked,” she said.

“You get so caught up in life – Christmas and New Year’s and it’s kind of only hitting me this week.

“It’s really turned my life upside-down.”

RELATED STORY: Little battler: Ava completes 27 months of chemotherapy

Ms Johnson said the lumps had been growing over the past five years but she had been putting off having them checked because she was so busy with work.

“A few years ago, a friend actually noticed I had a lump in my neck,” she said.

“I didn’t notice it because I had issues with weight and having issues with weight, I assumed it was weight-related. I went to the doctor and they diagnosed them as goiters but my thyroid was functioning fine but they said you should have yearly scans because goiters can get quite large.

“I think life just gets in the way and always having worked in real estate, like real estate is a very full-on six-day-a-week role and I’m such an ambitious person that I put everything into my work so I kind of didn’t really put myself or my health first, so I just let it go.”

Ms Johnson had gastric sleeve surgery in August and then returned to work six days a week. 

"I just assumed that the really bad fatigue I was feeling was just work-related. I was doing Dancing with the Stars [and] I was working six days a week, plus Wednesday nights.

“I’d lost 30 kilos and I was going to the gym and I was being really active but I was struggling to get up in the morning. I was really tired and I felt even a little depressed, which isn’t me by nature. Beforehand I was so motivated and I thought something’s not 100 per cent right, so I went to the doctor [in September].”

The doctor ordered tests, which showed irregularities in her thyroid. She admitted she knew she had goiters and the doctor ordered some scans, which showed she had multi-nodular goiters. 

“Mine at the moment are double the size of a normal person’s,” she said. 

“They’re about seven to eight centimetres by seven to eight centimetres. They’re actually growing into the base of my neck, they’re so big.

“I kind of thought, well, ‘Okay yeah, they’ve grown a bit’, but I wasn't expecting anything – I’m 30.

“I very naively thought, ‘I don’t have time for this’.”

Ms Johnson said a three-centimetre lump and a one-and-a-half-centimetre lump were found on either side of her neck, which concerned the doctors.

“They misdiagnosed it as a multi-nodular goiters but because of the size of the three-centimetre lump, they wanted to rule out tumours and cancer.”

RELATED STORY: Adelaide’s hope

Ms Johnson had biopsies and the results showed “multiple tumours” in her neck.

“I met with the specialist and he rushed me through for an appointment in December and when I met with him, he said that they’re category four – like out of the most likely to be cancer, they’re a category four,” she said.

“The specialist said from Glen Innes, Moree, Gunnedah, right through to Narrabri are really high goiter areas.”

Goiters are nothing new to the women in Ms Johnson’s family with both her great-grandmother, grandmother and cousins also developing goiters in their lifetimes.

“My great grandmother had an 11-pound one removed many years ago and it was so large and they actually sent it to the US to be studied because they’d never seen one so big,” Ms Johnson said.

“Lucky for my family, no one’s were cancerous or tumours, so it’s kind of come out of nowhere.

“With any sort of cancer, it’s so important; I really should have been keeping on top of it every year.

“If anyone has a lump or an irregularity, don’t just assume that it’s fine. 

“Now I’m at a point, I’ve got tumours but I can’t even tell how long they’ve been there.

Ms Johnson has already been put on medication to block her thyroid from working ahead of the “risky” operation. Once the tumours have been removed, they will be tested to determine whether any more action needs to be taken.

“I kind of want people to learn from my mistakes,” she said.

“With any type of cancer, early detection is so important for survival rates.”