Monday, May 23, 2011

The time bombs on my chest

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.

1 comment:

  1. Wishing you an easy road with this. It is a series of tough decisions to have to make.

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