WE ARE BRIGHT PINK

Tanya
I was 16 years old when my Mother was first diagnosed with ovarian cancer, followed by breast cancer. My close knit family watched her struggle and fight cancer with amazing courage and conviction for 5 years before it ultimately took her life. It was during her last couple of years, when we discovered she carried both the BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene. With a family consisting of 4 daughters and 1 son, she was filled with feelings of guilt and grief that she had a 75% chance of passing this gene on to her children.

At the age of 24, I just took the plunge and decided to get my genetic testing done last month. When I received the news that I tested positive for BRCA2, strangely, I was not overcome with any one emotion; rather I almost felt calmed, relieved. Questioning whether I was a carrier or not had consumed my thoughts for years, now I had the knowledge to take the actions I knew I needed to take.

Discovering you are a BRCA carrier is scary, overwhelming, and certainty life changing. But on the same hand, it is knowledge that our mothers and grandmothers did not have the privilege of knowing- and if they had, many of them would still be with us today. So I am not going to let this gene run my life and put some invisible timeline in front of me. Rather, I am going to live a healthy lifestyle, be preventative, laugh often, and live my life to the absolute fullest. I take all of the preventative measures I can and yes, there are thoughts of a mastectomy in my near future, but for now, I rely on my loved ones and the support they give me and I live my life like I know my mother would want me to….