My mother was 42 when she was diagnosed with breast cancer. Being that most cases of breast cancer are sporadic it is unlikely that I have any genetic predisposition, but that doesn't make me any less paranoid.
I have an irrational fear of breast cancer. I will take all sorts of the other illnesses I have seen but I just don't want to have to go through what she did. Maybe it is because she was dying at a time from her breast while mine were developing, but I just don't have a feminine emotional attachment to the lumps of fat that sit on my chest.
So I have been referred in for genetic counseling and possible genetic testing and thus I ask myself - do I really want to know right now? Now before I go through more crazy hormones and then 9 months of even crazier hormones? Do I want to be paranoid about breast cancer in pregnancy? If I do have some gene am I going to have preimplantation genetic diagnosis to possibly save my children from this paranoid delusional behavior?
Ignorance is bliss - and I know too much already. Since I'm in my vacation from fertility treatments I am trying to catch up on all those things that I should have been doing in the past year - I cant say this is all more important to me - but it does have some pretty big implications.
Wishing you an easy road with this. It is a series of tough decisions to have to make.
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