Finally some good news

When I was first told I had breast cancer I was sent to see a genetic doctor. The fact that I was diagnosed at 31 and had some cancer in my mother's side of the gene pool they were pretty confident in thinking this was a genetic gene mutation. I met with the genetic doctor who explained the entire DNA process and how cancer develops to Ryan and I. When it is a genetic cancer that means that I would be a carrier for the BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene. These genes are the cancer fighters in your body. When we are conceived we inherit 2 from our fathers and 2 from our mothers, when a pair of inherited genes are mutated they can eventually turn into cancer. I was never aware of any family history of cancer until my grandfather passed away at 79 from pancreatic cancer, which we found out is a cancer that the BRCA genes can create. We sat with the geneticist and made a family tree of everyone as far back as we could gather and their medical histories, now I found out that genetic cancer will NOT skip a generation. No one in my mothers generation has or had cancer, so there was a missing link between my grandfathers generation, him and his sister had cancer, and my generation. We were told that since my mother and her sister both had their ovaries removed before 45 that basically took their chance of developing cancer away, so now the missing link had been found. I was now considered high risk for a gene mutation.

Finding out that this could be genetic was devastating to me. It meant that I was carrier and now anyone in my direct bloodline, Gabby, my niece Maddy, my sister Mandy, Cole, and my nephew Ethan were now at a high risk of developing cancer. For the boys it was not as serious as the girls. It just meant they needed to be screened for prostate cancer a lot sooner than everyone else. For Gabby and Maddy it meant a lot. If I was found to be positive they would need to start getting MRI's (no mammograms for them) at 18 every 6 months. Now, I am not sure about anyone else but MRI's are not fun. Sure you just lay there for 45 mins to an hour but the breast MRI, you have to lay on your stomach with your face in this little cut out on the table or with your head to the side. Not comfortable after 5 mins and the machine is so loud. No 18 year old should have to go through that. It also meant at 25 they would have to decide if they wanted to get preventative mastectomies, have their ovaries removed or just be checked every 6 months. All of these are things that a person that young should never have to decide.

Having the test done, which was gross, I had to give a spit sample. Sounded easy enough until the geneticist gave me a bottle of a scope and a small tube. I had to take a mouthful of scope, swish vigorously for 30 seconds, harder than it sounds, spit and repeat. Followed by licking the inside of my cheeks until my mouth filled with spit, gross, twice. The samples were sent to a lab in Utah, apparently this lab, Myraid, has a patent on the BRCA gene so it took 3 weeks to get the results. For 3 weeks I would look at Gabby and just think I would never forgive myself if she had to go through this. Yesterday was the big day, Ryan, Mandy, and I all went up to the good ole Graham to get the results. They took us back and she said we were going to use the conference room this time, I immediately thought to myself this is bad. We sat right down and she got right to the results. NEGATIVE!! No gene mutation detected. She said all my DNA lined up and read in the correct sequence, I had no gene that would cause cancer. That was the biggest sigh of relief I could have felt. There was nothing for Gabby, Maddy or Mandy to worry about now. Finally some good news.

Getting negative results also means a lot for me. My chance of cancer recurring now dropped significantly. I was told if this was genetic I had about an 87% chance of cancer coming back, so with that I would have to have the double mastectomy and my ovaries removed, my cancer is estrogen fueled so the ovaries would help it come back. I now have some things to think about and have a choice in what surgery I get. They said unfortunately, they have no idea why I got cancer. It could have been something as simple as my biology got confused. It only takes 1 cancer cell to turn other cells. It could be the fertility pills I was on back in 2005, it was a risk I was told about before taking them. When you take fertility pills and do not become pregnant on them you increase your chance for breast and cervical cancer, I took the max dose for the max amount of time, which is only 4 months and did not become pregnant. I got pregnant on my own 2 months after taking them. No one can tell why this happened but all I care about is the fact that it was not genetic. Now I can solely focus on the remaining chemo treatments and the surgery, then once this is gone and over it will be over for good. We can put it behind us and move on!