Cancer snuck into Chance Osborne's family history. Breast cancer, ovarian cancer. But was it hiding in her genes, too?
Her mom died of ovarian cancer in 2011, when Osborne was 14 years old. All her mother's sisters had some form of cancer as well.
When she turned 18, a doctor recommended she seek genetic counseling. She had the BRCA1 gene, meaning she indeed had a higher risk of developing breast and ovarian cancers. Her doctor recommended imaging right away.
"I was reluctant," Osborne says over a Zoom call from Scottsdale, Arizona. "So I waited a couple years, and then started imaging when I was about 20, doing a breast MRI every six months, and then either a mammogram or an ultrasound every six months from that point forward."
Despite these precautions,
the unthinkable still happened. Two weeks after a squeaky-clean breast MRI in early 2021, tanning on the beach in Florida, she felt something. Something weird.
"I thought I was maybe laying on like a seashell or something," Osborne, now 30, recalls, "so I went to go lift up my beach towel, and there was nothing there. And I will never forget that feeling in my stomach of like, 'oh no.'" Osborne, then 24, discovered a lump. She ignored it for a few weeks, only to later learn it wasn't benign, but triple negative breast cancer that grows extremely fast.
Breast cancer, ovarian cancer. But did it burrow in her genes, too?" id="91923201007">
Osborne's diagnosis comes as younger and younger people are getting sick. Breast, liver, ovarian and colorectal cancer are among the 17 different types of cancer rising for Gen X and millennials, according to American Cancer Society research published in 2024.
"Even from the time I identified the lump myself to when I actually went into the doctor, it had almost doubled in size," Osborne adds, "and that was in just a two-week frame."
The state of breast cancer
More than 300,000 women will receive breast cancer diagnoses in a given year, and it is the most common cancer for U.S. women apart from skin cancer, according to the American Cancer Society. Breast cancer will kill over 40,000 women in 2026. Despite its pervasiveness, many remain uneducated about the disease.
"One of the most common misconceptions is people believe that in order to get breast cancer, you have to have a family history," says Dr. Ruemu Birhiray, oncologist and hematologist at Hematology Oncology of Indiana/American Oncology Network. Most breast cancers are curable if found early, and "screening tools like mammograms are very useful in identifying early stage breast cancer."
"Are they perfect? No, they are not," he adds, "but an annual mammogram would be very good." He also recommends patients do self-breast exams once a month – do it on the 23rd every month if your birthday is on the 23rd, for example – and learn about risk factors that may make you a candidate for early screening.
Even if you do everything right, breast cancer can still develop. Osborne's treatment plan included chemotherapy, which lasted from April to August 2021, followed by surgery; radiation; a double mastectomy with failed reconstruction; and a total hysterectomy.
"It was preventative," she says of the hysterectomy, "given my mom's ovarian cancer diagnosis and the fact that I had BRCA1 and the fact that I had cancer so young." Medication followed for 372 days, and she's alive five years later.
'You might be able to do something about it sooner rather than later'
Social media was her best friend and worst enemy during treatment. "People who are not doing well want to talk about it online, and they want to get support online," she says. "On the other side of that, people who are doing really well, they're not talking about it online because they're living their lives. They're doing the things that they weren't sure that they were going to be able to do."
Online discourse did lead her to discover Signatera, a circulating tumor DNA test that aims to help find cancer relapses earlier. Osborne now works for its parent company, Natera.
She pushed her doctor for testing to give her peace of mind, and has now had 15 negative tests since starting them several years ago. "I've been doing this for almost three years now, and I'm still an anxious wreck every single time I'm waiting for my results," she says. "I don't think that's ever going to go away, but the anxiety that comes from not knowing is much more severe to me than knowing. Even if it came back positive, I would at least want to know." She gets tested every three months, and will switch to twice a year once she hits seven years cancer-free, per gudiance from her oncologist.
"You might be able to do something about it sooner rather than later before it establishes itself," Birhiray adds.
Genetic testing 'intended to be empowering'
Years after her mother's death, grief has punched her in the gut. This past July marked a grim milestone: her mother being dead longer than the time Osborne spent with her alive.
"The older I get and the farther out I get in my own survivorship, the harder it gets to grieve her," she says, noting that her own cancer journey has peeled back new layers of sadness. "Typical grief, without my own cancer journey, would honestly feel I think a little bit easier versus having like this survivorship guilt and also grieving the loss of my mom," she adds. "So it's definitely been a harder year."
Now, she advocates for all to get genetic testing to learn their risks for developing cancer.
"Finding out this information about your DNA is not intended to be scary," she says. "It's intended to be empowering and enable you to make decisions to save your own life." Plus, "just because you don't have family history and just because you're young doesn't mean it's not going to happen or that it can't happen to you."
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Her scan came back clear. Weeks later, she found a tumor
