“You can’t mentally tell yourself that you’re sick, or it will be harder to fight off,” Grace Grant says

NEED TO KNOW

• Grace Grant was diagnosed with stage 4 pancreatic cancer after initially being treated for what seemed like pink eye
• Doctors discovered tumors in her neck and pancreas, a rare diagnosis for someone her age and health
• She remains optimistic, undergoing chemotherapy and planning for her future while pursuing her master’s degree online

Grace Grant thought she had a bad case of pink eye when she woke up in May with a swollen eye.

The Kent State graduate student, 24, tells PEOPLE that urgent care confirmed the diagnosis and sent her home with antibiotics and steroid drops. When those didn’t help, the golfer went home to her parents in Bradenton, Fla. Her mom took her to the doctor, who referred her to a neurologist.  

From there, things moved quickly. “The neurologist couldn’t hear the blood flow well on the left side of my neck. So he starts freaking out and sends my mom and I to the emergency room,” Grant tells PEOPLE.

“That’s when they found the tumor in the left side of my neck.”

Given her age, doctors thought she might have lymphoma. But during a PET scan two weeks later, “my pancreas lit up.” At first, doctors thought there was “no way” it was pancreatic cancer because she was so young. After a biopsy at MD Anderson in Houston and repeat scans, Grant was told she had a small tumor on her pancreas — and it matched the same cancer cells in her neck tumor.

“The most shocking thing wasn’t that it was cancer,” Grant tells PEOPLE. “It was that it was pancreatic cancer.”

The average age of a pancreatic cancer diagnosis is 70, the American Cancer Society says, with men more likely to be diagnosed with the disease than women. It’s one of the most devastating cancers, as it generally doesn’t show symptoms until it’s too far advanced. As PanCAN explains, even when it’s discovered only in the pancreas, the five-year survival rate is 44%. For all types of pancreatic cancer, the five-year survival rate is 13%.

As Grant tells PEOPLE, “You instantly, of course, start to panic when you Google things about pancreatic cancer. It’s one of the deadliest cancers there is.”

But she faced her stage 4 pancreatic cancer diagnosis the way she would face a tough day on the links. “I’m so mentally strong, I think, just from playing golf and having a strong mental game in sports,” she explained. “Even today, I still haven’t really broken down about it. You can’t mentally tell yourself that you’re sick, or it will be harder to fight off.”

That’s why she tells her mom, “ ‘Don’t say it’s stage 4, ‘cause it feels so much worse to me and it sounds so much worse.’ ” Grant says she feels “really fortunate to have found it when I did. I could have gone on for years because I didn’t have any pain at all and I felt so healthy.”

The discovery of the tumor gave her time to freeze her eggs before starting treatment, which in her case is chemotherapy. She’s taking a “stronger dosage of chemo than a 65-year-old” because she is in such good health that her body can handle it. And while chemo feels “pretty awful,” Grant says, “I watched golf the entire time. So it definitely made the time go faster.”

She’s remaining optimistic, sharing that the week she was diagnosed, the breakthrough pancreatic cancer drug daraxonrasib was approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration to treat pancreatic cancer. Grant says that if chemotherapy, radiation and surgery don’t work, the plan is for her to begin taking it.

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In the meantime, she’s going to shift to online courses for her master’s degree in fashion. 

“If you just keep telling yourself you’re gonna see the other side then you will,” Grant says. “As hard as it is, you have to try to find the positives, even if it’s a day without a doctor’s appointment and you get to go do something that you enjoy. “

“Take every day one day at a time,” she says. “But thank God every day that you’re still alive and still trying to fight this battle.”

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