I'm
reading Jessica Queller's Pretty Is What Changes,
chronicling how she discovered that she was brca1 positive and the
medical decisions she made therewith.
The bad: tediously name-droppy.
The good: Queller really lets us in on what it feels like to consider
cutting off a part of your body because it might
save your life. And probably
save you from a serious and grizzly illness. And whether or not that
is too much of a decision for us all.
I
find it strangely comforting to read about someone who had a
prophylactic double mastectomy in response to learning about her
cancer gene. It isn't that I want to share the misery – I really
really desperately don't – but that I can fantasize that avoiding
cancer is possible. Dramatic, traumatic, but possible.
This
is a genetic disease. This means I was born with the code that would
lead to this, sort of. So, it feels silly to me to think of changing
who I was born to be, – “Oh, what if I didn't have this gene?”
– but perfectly reasonable to dream about going back in time, learn
that I had the gene, make the stunningly proactive decision to have a
drastically body-altering surgery, and screw around with my hormones
by removing my ovaries….
Oh,
wait. I guess that wouldn't have been me, either. Not the type for
extreme prevention, given my lifestyle habits.
Specifically,
I kind of lived on peanut M&Ms for a while, and yes, I have a bad
habit of staying up into the wee hours of the new day, and exercise
is a dirty word. I think these things may not have helped, but with
the gene statistics being what they are, my behavior probably had
almost nothing, if anything, to do with my cancer.
But
where I feel simmering though irrational guilt, and really want to
reach out toward the hope of cancer evasion, is in the possibility of
my having passed this code along to my children. It's a cruel coin
toss.
What
will my children choose? Will they get tested? Will they have
children? Will my daughter, if she tests positive, go the radical
mastectomy and oophorectomy route?
Maybe
by then that won't even be necessary. Maybe a little vaccination
spray up the nose gives them a cold that cures the cancer.
(Or
maybe it turns them into brain-eating zombies.... )