'If I didn't have that massage, I wouldn't be here today': Grace's horror discovery after last-minute massage booking

"If I didn't have that massage, I wouldn't be here today," Grace Scoleri tells 9honey.

It's been almost four years since the last-minute appointment that lasted half an hour and probably saved the mum-of-two's life.

Scoleri was working late one afternoon in 2020 when she noticed unusual pain in her lower back and dialled her massage therapist's number.

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"Being such a late time on Friday afternoon, she said, 'I can only do half an hour for you,'" Scoleri recalls.

"So I popped in, had my massage, and that relieved it."

Or so she thought.

The next morning she woke up in such agony that she couldn't even get out of bed.

Her stomach had swollen so much she "looked about seven months pregnant" and she spent all day sitting in magnesium baths, trying to ease the pain. It didn't work.

"By that night, I could barely walk," she says.

Scoleri was home alone but managed to drag herself to hospital, where she underwent a flurry of tests and scans before a doctor appeared at her bedside and drew the curtain closed.

"In hushed tones, the doctor proceeded to tell me that my [cancer] markers were up and to follow up with my own GP," she says. 

"But he said, 'there's no hurry' [...] and sent me home to take two Panadol Forte."

Scoleri asked why they wouldn't just do a CT scan then and there, but the doctor said it wasn't that urgent. Thankfully, she didn't listen to him.

Certain something was deeply wrong, Scoleri got herself to her usual GP within 48 hours and was sent for an ultrasound, where the mood shifted.

"I was sitting on the edge of the bed waiting for the radiographer to come back, and she was taking such a long time," Scoleri says. 

"I knew deep down inside what it was. I knew it was ovarian cancer."

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That evening, her GP called and confirmed Scoleri, then 58, had the most deadly gynaecological cancer in the world. 

About 1,815 Australians are diagnosed with ovarian cancer every year and it claims the lives of around 1000 women annually - that's one woman every eight hours.

Despite the statistics, most Aussies are woefully undereducated about the disease and don't know it can't be picked up with a pap/cervical smear.

But Scoleri had known exactly how dire the disease was since she was 13, when she read an article about Cassandra Harris, Pierce Brosnan's late wife, who died from ovarian cancer.

"She was so very young when she passed away, and that actually stuck with me," Scoleri says. "It was entrenched in my mind."

Still, the diagnosis blindsided Scoleri, who had no symptoms until the day of that massage. If not for that, she might not have caught the cancer until it was too late.

Ovarian cancer symptoms are vague and can include bloating, fatigue, lower back pain, irregular menstrual bleeding, and more.

With no early detection test, over 70 per cent of cases are diagnosed in the advanced stages 3 or 4, when the disease has spread to other organs.

Scoleri had Stage 3A High Grade Serous ovarian cancer and had to start treatment right away if she wanted to be among the 49 per cent of patients who survive at least five years.

But first she had to tell her husband and two daughters.

"The thought that I would carry this on to my daughters [...] that just about broke me," Scoleri says. "I remember looking at them, and I felt so helpless."

There were plenty of tears at first, then the mum-of-two felt a steely resolve come over her.

"This is not going to be the end," she vowed, "I'm going to get through this and then somehow help other women."

She had surgery shortly after her diagnosis, then recovered alone in hospital for two weeks during Melbourne's second COVID-19 lockdown.

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It was one of the hardest parts of her treatment and only made her more grateful for her family when she got home.

"The minute I held my girls in my arms, it was like a rebirth," Scoleri says, "it was as if I had held them for the very first time."

That love helped her endure 16 rounds of chemotherapy, 22 rounds of immunotherapy, and 22 months of maintenance treatment.

Surprisingly, she went into remission almost immediately after starting chemo. 

That good news lasted three years.

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The chance of recurrence for ovarian cancer patients diagnosed in the advanced stages is scarily high and in September 2023, Scoleri was devastated to learn her cancer was back.

"You basically put your boxing gloves back on and get back to fighting for your life," she says.

Back in treatment, Scoleri's desperate to save other women from this insidious and relentless disease by raising awareness and funding more research.

"Research saves lives," she says, "it's the only way we're going to see light at the end of the tunnel."

But ovarian cancer research currently receives just 0.7 percent of government medical research funding. It's not enough.

Today, Scoleri's an ambassador for the Ovarian Cancer Research Foundation (OCRF) and a Founding Patron of the foundation's Patrons Program, which aims to secure more funding for research into an early detection test, better treatment options and, one day, a cure.

She's using her story to raise awareness and inspire more research funding; she just hopes she lives to see the better future she's fighting for.

If you would like to learn more about the OCRF and their Patron Program, head to their website.

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