Grace Spence

My cancer journey

I am fundraising to support target ovarian cancer as I was diagnosed with Stage 3b High grade serous Ovarian cancer at the end of 2025 at 26 years old!

The type of epithelial ovarian cancer I have is most commonly diagnosed in women between the ages of 50-65 years old!

After major surgery to remove all of the cancer, including a full hysterectomy & bowel surgery, multiple complications and genetic testing, we found out that I have an inherited genetic mutation we were unaware of. This mutation is called PALB2 and is the cause of my cancer. 

A PALB2 mutation increases my lifetime risk of developing breast cancer to 55% and pancreatic cancer to 5%. My lifetime risk of developing ovarian cancer was also 5%. 

It is important for genetic mutations such as PALB2 to be identified early for monitoring, however testing is often only offered to people with family history of the mutation and specific cancers. I think the guidelines are too strict and should be more accessible to the public. As someone with a lot of family history of cancer but not in specific enough cancers to be tested, my mutation wasn’t picked up till after my diagnosis.

Therefore, I am raising money in hopes of helping other people who are diagnosed ovarian cancer at a young age and also to make genetic testing more accessible.