The author shares her family's history of breast cancer and the preventative measures she takes due to her high risk.
My grandma always changed her clothes in the closet. But I saw her scars once. After two bouts of breast cancer , she was left with no breasts. She wore tent-like dresses, with fabric that flowed. When he was six, my brother named my mom’s wig Gloria. Mom was going through chemotherapy that made her hair fall out in clumps.
Years later, I spent a week in the hospital as she recovered from a mastectomy; radiation treatment from her prior breast cancer had led to a dangerous breast angiosarcoma, a kind of cancer that forms in the blood vessels and lymph nodes. I never knew my great aunt Berthie. She died of breast cancer in her 30s. For most of my life, I have been haunted by these kinds of memories. And since the second half of my 20s, I have gone every three-to-six-months for a rotation of MRIs, ultrasounds, physical breast exams, and more recently, 3D mammograms. The imaging often picks up potential problems because my breasts are especially dense, so I go back for more. This is what I am supposed to do as someone with a family history that puts me in the high-risk category. Three years ago, a cousin had a preventative mastectomy. She had a BRCA2 mutation from her dad’s side, which gave her an estimated risk of developing breast cancer during her lifetime between 55 and 69%. Eight years earlier, Angelina Jolie published an op-ed in the New York Times about her decision to get the surgery based on her BRCA1 mutation. I was happy that she was making women aware of this, but it didn’t occur to me that I might find myself in a similar sort of situation. I had no known mutation—just a very strong family history of early onset breast cancer. There are several mathematical formulas that doctors use to estimate risk for people like me (inputting things like pregnancies, birth control use, age of menses, and family history)
BREAST CANCER FAMILY HISTORY PREVENTATIVE MEASURES RISK ASSESSMENT GENETICS
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