Taking Stock
1. My father-in-law has brain cancer. My husband shaved his head in solidarity with his dad. One of the many reasons I love him.
2. My dog Nilas has cancer. Some sort of soft tissue sarcoma on her leg. The dog oncologist thinks he can remove just the tumor and she’ll be fine. I did not expect this.
So cancer sucks, no matter what. For someone who’s never had it, I’ve had to live through other people’s breast cancer, ovarian cancer, brain cancer, liver cancer, uterine cancer, throat cancer, skin cancer… and to realize how much I’ve been touched by it without ever having a diagnosis is strange, and scary to say the least.
Because of the history in my family, I always expected to get cancer. I have had a defeatist/pessimistic attitude about this since I was 20. When I found out about genetic testing, I was freaked out. I had written my own struggle, so to speak. Not necessarily in the melodramatic sense of “oh, poor me,” although I think sometimes it came out that way; but in the “I’m preparing myself for this so I can be strong” kind of way. This is how I got through everything in my life. I’m a worst-case-scenario girl. Probably what makes me good at my job in information security. So when genetic testing came along, and even got to the point where you could get tested and insurance companies couldn’t hold it against you if you were positive for a genetic mutation, I was still not sure. I’ve lost five women in my family to breast and ovarian cancer. Five within two generations. Five women who affected me significantly in my life. One died while I was at sea in the Southern Ocean with my job. I will never forgive myself that–mostly that I hadn’t seen her for years before she died. Not because she had cancer, but because she had been one of the best surrogate mothers after my mom died. I owed her more than that.
I found out I was negative for BRCA1 and BRCA2 last fall. Which means nothing, ironically, unless someone has tested positive for one of the genes in my family. Which, according to available records, no one has in my family. So I have to continue to screen like a maniac for breast cancer. But revising that future history I’d written indelibly with black Sharpie all over the rest of my life–that’s more challenging than a blood draw and a phone call from a genetic counselor. I’m not ready to go revisionist mythology on this one.
So… the lesson: I will not deny my fears. But I will not ignore them, either.