B, R, C, A, What??

A few years ago, my mother lost an ugly ugly battle with pancreatic cancer at the age of 49.  Shortly after, I lost my aunt, my mother’s sister, to metastatic breast cancer.  She was barely 40 and had fought the disease for almost six years.  Somewhere amidst all of this cancer and suffering, I found that I had inherited what is often referred to as “the breast cancer gene.”  

BRCA 2

It’s confusing, hard to pronounce, and it places my risk of developing breast cancer within my lifetime somewhere between 80 and 90%.  Practically a guarantee.  Not to mention the extremely elevated risk of ovarian cancer and a slightly elevated risk of the almost-always-deadly pancreatic. 

My life is now all about hereditary cancer.  Partially because my body leaves me no other options, and partially becuase I’ve chosen to make it that way.  My job is about cancer, my volunteer work, my writing, THIS BLOG…

The truth is, as I dig deeper and deeper into the world of BRCA mutations, I hear the same things over and over.  The most common, I’d say, is that women refer to their bodies as “ticking time bombs.”  I understand this comparison, and I’ve often felt like that myself.  But I’ve decided to refuse the notion that my body is against me.  I mean, in reality, we’re all ticking time bombs.  The movement of the hands is just a lot louder for some…

I’m not a doctor, or a researcher, or a genetic counselor.  But I’m hoping, maybe, that someone  like me will stumble upon this tiny page amid trillions, and will, for a moment,  gather strength from the meandering musings of a fellow mutant.