Updated October 3, 2026, 11:06 a.m. ET
Cancer has wormed its way into Chance Osborne’s family history. Breast cancer, ovarian cancer. But was he hiding her genes too?
Her mother died of ovarian cancer in 2011, when Osborne was 14. All of his mother’s sisters also suffered from some form of cancer.
When she turned 18, a doctor recommended she seek genetic counseling. She had the BRCA1 gene, meaning she was indeed at higher risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer. His doctor immediately recommended imaging.
“I was reluctant,” Osborne said on a Zoom call from Scottsdale, Arizona. “So I waited a few years, then started imaging around age 20, doing a breast MRI every six months, then a mammogram or ultrasound every six months from then on.”
Despite these precautions, the unthinkable still happened. Two weeks after a flawless breast MRI in early 2021, while sunbathing on a Florida beach, she felt something. Something weird.
“I thought maybe I was lying like a seashell or something,” recalls Osborne, now 30, “so I went to lift my beach towel, and there was nothing there. And I’ll never forget that feeling in my stomach like ‘oh no’.” Osborne, then 24, discovered a lump. She ignored it for a few weeks, only to learn that it was not benign breast cancer, but triple negative breast cancer that grows extremely quickly.
Osborne’s diagnosis comes as younger and younger people are falling ill. Breast, liver, ovarian and colorectal cancers are among 17 types of cancer increasing among Generation X and millennials, according to an American Cancer Society study published in 2024.
“Even between the time I identified the lump myself and the time I went to the doctor, it had almost doubled in size,” Osborne adds, “and that was in just two weeks.”
The condition of breast cancer
More than 300,000 women will be diagnosed with breast cancer in any given year, and it is the most common cancer among American women, after skin cancer, according to the American Cancer Society. Breast cancer will kill more than 40,000 women in 2026. Despite its omnipresent nature, many people are unaware of this disease.
“One of the most common misconceptions is that people believe that to have breast cancer you have to have a family history,” says Dr. Ruemu Birhiray, an oncologist and hematologist at Hematology Oncology of Indiana/American Oncology Network. Most breast cancers are curable if detected early, and “screening tools like mammograms are very helpful in identifying breast cancer at an early stage.”
“Are they perfect? No, they’re not,” he adds, “but an annual mammogram would be great.” He also recommends that patients do a breast self-exam once a month – do it on the 23rd of each 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 reconstruction failure; and a total hysterectomy.
“It was preventative,” she says of the hysterectomy, “given my mother’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 is alive five years later.
“You might be able to do something sooner rather than later.”
Social media was his best friend and worst enemy during his treatment. “People who aren’t well want to talk about it online and get help online,” she says. “On the other hand, people who are very successful don’t talk about it online because they’re living their lives. They’re doing things they weren’t sure they could do.”
Online speech did led him to discover Signatera, a circulating tumor DNA test that aims to help detect cancer relapses earlier. Osborne now works for its parent company, Natera.
She pushed her doctor for tests for peace of mind, and has now had 15 negative tests since they started several years ago. “I’ve been doing this for almost three years now, and I still get anxious every time I wait for my results,” she says. “I don’t think it’s ever going to go away, but the anxiety that comes from not knowing is much worse for me than knowing. Even if it came back positive, I would at least want to know.” She gets tested every three months and will increase to twice a year once she reaches seven years cancer-free, per the advice of her oncologist.
“You might be able to do something as early as possible before it becomes established,” adds Birhiray.
Genetic tests “intended to give power”
Years after her mother’s death, grief hit her in the gut. Last July marked a dark milestone: His mother was dead longer than the time Osborne spent with her alive.
“The older I get and the further I get from my own survival, the harder it becomes to grieve,” she says, noting that her own cancer journey has peeled away new layers of sadness. “Typical grief, without my own cancer journey, would honestly, I think, be a little easier than having survival guilt and grieving the loss of my mother,” she adds. “So it’s definitely been a tougher year.”
Today, she advocates for everyone to undergo genetic testing to know their risk of developing cancer.
“Finding out this information about your DNA is not meant to be scary,” she says. “It is intended to empower you and enable you to make decisions to save your own life.” Additionally, “just because you don’t have a family history and just because you’re young doesn’t mean it won’t or can’t happen to you.”
Gn Health
