Cancer came a callin'

In 2005, cancer came knocking on my family's door and it has changed shape ever since then.  My sister called me one fall day - within days of her 38th birthday.  After years of family support for breast cancer causes, my sister now had a stage 3 cancerous lump.  A wife, a daughter, a sister and a mother of 3 - cancer does not discriminate.

Five years on, my sister remains cancer free but forever vigilant.  But the plan has now changed.  As part of her monitoring process, she was involved in a study looking at the link between early breast cancer in women, family histories and genetic mutations.  Her participation was to prove that those with no real history of breast cancer were random cancer patients. They had tested her to see if she carried the breast cancer gene.  Now the results are in: BRCA1 positive.

BRCA genes are the good guys of the cell duplication process.  Just as a photocopy is not as perfect as the original, the BRCA genes' job is to fix any problems with the the DNA of a 'copy' so it is an close to the original cell as possible.  If the BRCA can't fix the DNA, it destroys the problem.  When you have a BRCA mutation, it means that the fixing process is faulty and more abnormal cells slip through the cracks.

Did this gene mutation happen because of something my sister did or didn't do right?  Not in the least.  The BRCA1 and BRCA2 mutations are hereditary and go back many generations.  No one is to blame.  But it seems the gene mutation has come through my mother's side of the family and both my mother and I have tested positive for the mutation as well.

So we all have some decisions to make moving forward.  Women with the mutation have an increased risk of developing ovarian and breast cancers - much higher than the general population.  But the solutions are not simple.  They involve surgery to remove ovaries and breasts.  So with a variety of screening tools, monitoring and surgical interventions, we will take proactive steps to ensure we are survivors.

Cancer may have come a callin' but we will prevail.