Rachel Danchek was 30 when she first noticed unusual bloating and periods that were more painful than usual.
The former finance expert from Pittsburgh attributed her bloating to unhealthy foods she may have eaten, alcohol and normal age-related weight gain.
Then, she began to feel more anxious, telling DailyMail.com: ‘It was physical anxiety; really jittery feeling. Almost like if I drank a bunch of energy drinks.’
Her struggle to get pregnant over the course of a year was the final red flag it took to see a doctor.
Following multiple rounds of tests, scans and a surgery, Danchek discovered the cause of her symptoms: ovarian cancer.
The symptoms of ovarian cancer are easily dismissed as everyday ailments. Bloating can seem like indigestion, pelvic pain can resemble cramps, and changes in bathroom habits can be blamed on stress or age.
Often, early stages of ovarian cancer cause no notable symptoms, which can make it challenging to diagnose, and patients have described being dismissed by doctors.
Danchek was repeatedly told that cancer was highly unlikely due to her young age, with her physicians confidently attributing the abnormalities to benign issues like cysts or fertility problems, advising her that it might just take more time to conceive.
So when the diagnosis came in 2023, Danchek was in shock.
Despite maintaining an extremely healthy lifestyle, working out five times a week and strictly following the Whole30 diet without sugar or alcohol, Danchek and her husband were unable to conceive after a year of trying, prompting her to seek medical advice
In the year before her diagnosis, Danchek experienced debilitating periods that left her couch-bound with pain, yet she longed to be a mother.
After six months of marriage, she and her husband began trying to conceive. When they had not gotten pregnant after a year, Danchek sought medical help to improve their chances.
‘My mom and my sister both got pregnant super easily, so I kind of expected that to happen with me,’ she said. ‘I was ovulating every month. I was working out all the time, and everything was very normal. So I just figured I was kind of unlucky.’
In addition to working out five times a week, Danchek was adhering to the Whole30 diet plan designed to reset eating habits and identify food sensitivities.
Her doctor performed a pap smear and blood tests to rule out hormone imbalances that could be impairing her fertility. The exam and tests came back normal.
Dr Mona Jhaveri, a molecular biologist and cancer researcher, told DailyMail.com: ‘Especially when patients are younger, their doctors are not thinking cancer, and so the cancer persists under the radar.’
When symptoms persisted, Danchek returned to her obstetrician, where an internal ultrasound showed a grapefruit-sized cyst on her left ovary, which was also covered in smaller cysts, generally benign fluid-filled sacs.
‘They kept going back and forth, calling it a cyst or calling it a mass,’ Danchek said. ‘It had one jagged edge, and that was a little bit alarming to [the doctor], but she still kept being like, you’re so young, it’s going to be benign, and we just have to get it out.’
Facing urgent chemotherapy that threatened her fertility, Danchek began IVF just four days after her cancer surgery, while still bandaged, to pursue her dream of biological children.
A woman in the US has a 1 in 78 chance of developing ovarian cancer in her lifetime. It is notoriously difficult to detect early, earning its ‘silent killer’ nickname.
Women are not routinely screened for ovarian cancer because no effective tool exists. The CA-125 blood test, while useful for monitoring recurrence in diagnosed patients, lacks the precision required for widespread screening.
While over 90 percent of women survive when diagnosed at stage 1, only 20 percent of cases are caught that early. For the majority discovered in stages 3 or 4, survival rates plummet to between 42 percent and 17 percent.
Dr Mona Jhaveri, a cancer researcher and founder of Music Beats Cancer, told DailyMail.com that the medical establishment is ill-equipped to diagnose ovarian cancer with no widely accepted screening tools
Cancer has generally been thought of as a disease that afflicts older adults. But the rate of cancer diagnoses in people under 50, known as early-onset cancers, is rising by one percent to two percent annually, according to the American Cancer Society.
While ovarian cancer rates had been declining for decades, this progress stalled in 2018 and reversed slightly in 2021.
The disease affects a significant number of younger women, with one-third of patients under 55 and one in 10 under 45.
According to Dr Jhaveri, this stagnation may be driven by rising risk factors like obesity and environmental pollution, which are offsetting earlier gains.
The American Cancer Society estimates 20,890 new ovarian cancer cases and 12,730 deaths from the disease in the US in 2025.
In February 2024, doctors removed Danchek’s entire left ovary.
Danchek is pictured in June 2024 following a procedure in which doctors flooded her abdominal cavity with concentrated warm chemotherapy to ensure all remaining cancer cells were killed
When Danchek awoke from the chemo bath known as HIPEC, she was declared NED: No evidence of disease
Her family then endured a five-day wait for pathology to confirm it was cancerous.
‘I came to terms with being prepared for them to tell me I was going to die. Like, you have to just prepare for the worst.’
The doctor called the cancer ‘a favorable stage three.’ While advanced, it was treatable.
Facing a diagnosis that typically has a 41 percent five-year survival rate, Danchek immediately began fertility preservation.
To protect her chance at biological children before chemotherapy could damage her eggs, she started IVF treatments just four days after her surgery.
After two rounds of IVF, five embryos were successfully retrieved. The couple plans to pursue surrogacy, with the intention of transferring one embryo to a surrogate.
They moved to Pittsburgh to be near family, where Danchek began six rounds of chemotherapy in April 2024.
Between treatments, surgeons also removed her right ovary as a preventative measure against the spread of microscopic cancer cells. Her uterus remained completely unaffected.
After six rounds of chemotherapy and ongoing monthly infusions to prevent tumor growth, Danchek rang the bell in September 2024, signaling she was cancer-free
The couple is now hoping to be matched with a surrogate so that they can welcome their first child
‘So they were able to keep that in, and maybe one day I could carry my own child.’
After surgery, doctors flushed her abdomen with a warm, concentrated dose of chemotherapy. The bath of heated chemo was designed to seek out and destroy any hidden cancer cells that might have been left behind.
She said: ‘I woke up from that surgery being NED, no evidence of disease. But I was so nauseous that I couldn’t even appreciate it.’
Danchek has undergone six rounds of chemotherapy and receives monthly infusions of a monoclonal antibody that blocks a protein that helps tumors grow.
In September 2024, she rang the bell in the cancer treatment ward after being declared cancer-free. She and her husband are now in the process of finding a surrogate to carry their embryo, with the expectation that they will be matched with one within the next six months.