The BRCA1 mutation, primarily found among Ashkenazi Jews, raises my risk of ovarian cancer as high as 54% and breast cancer up to 81%. The surgery would cut my chances of ovarian cancer to virtually nothing. And as long as I had the operation by the time I turned 35, it would reduce my risk of breast cancer by half. I was 30.
My father thought I was playing Russian roulette with my life. Now that I had a baby, he believed there was no reason to wait.
I felt terrified for myself as well, as though cancer were this venomous snake waiting to strike. My aunt Lois was just 34, a few years older than I, when she was diagnosed with ovarian cancer. She died at 38.
I wanted to tell my father what he wanted to hear. How could I deny him his last wish for me?
But I wasn’t ready. I wanted another baby, a sibling for my daughter. Over and over, I apologized. I begged him to trust me.
Soon, I told him. Not yet, but soon.
Anna Gorman tells her story in the Los Angeles Times.
Oh, that’s so hard to read. I used to babysit for Anna and her siblings. I remember her father well. He was such a nice man. How hard it would be to know that you had something like that lurking inside you, waiting to strike…and not just you, but your children.