How I found out:
My grandmother, i.e., my father's mother, died of breast cancer in her early fifties. Her daughter, my father's sister, died of ovarian cancer, also in her early fifties. I never met my grandmother but my Auntie N was very beloved in our large extended family. Her death at such a young age was a terrible blow to many people.
Despite these red flags, I never really considered the fact that these terrible diseases might be coming for me someday. I guess I labored under the widely held misconception that you couldn't inherit this fucker through the paternal line. In fact, although I had three children over the course of fifteen years with three different certified nurse-midwife groups, no one involved in the births of my children ever mentioned genetic testing to me.
About eighteen months ago, I went to see a new gyno because I wanted to get a Mirena put in. After the birth of my third child in 2007, I felt quite "done" and the idea of five years of effortless birth control was very appealing. At my age, I figured that by the time the device died, I'd be out of eggs anyway and that would be that. As a new patient, I dutifully filled out the requested family history, noting all of the cancers. In the final analysis, it really was quite a lot of cancer. My father, a lifelong smoker, died of lung cancer at the age 61. His other sister also died of cancer at the age of 61 but she died so suddenly that no one ever determined exactly what kind of cancer she had. The new doc went over all this with me and said, ever so casually, "well, if you're worried about any of this you may want to go for genetic testing". There was no sense of urgency in her voice, no cause for concern. She may as well have said "well, if that bunion is bothering you, you might want to have it removed." On my way out the door, she tore off the corner of a manila envelope and wrote a telephone number on it. "Clinical genetics", she said, "at the _____ Cancer Center". I thanked her for the scrap and stuck it in my bag.
Then I promptly forgot about the whole thing.
Several months later, I went outlet shopping with my daughter and snagged a bowling ball shaped Coach logo bag with hot pink straps at 70% off list. As soon as I got home, I dumped everything out of my old bag in order to transfer everything to my new bag. After sorting through a hairy chapstick, two flattened tampons, a bottle of leftover antibiotics, and a dry cleaning receipt from two years ago, I came across the scrap with the telephone number on it. It took me a minute to remember what the number was for. I nearly threw it out with the hairy chapstick, but for some reason, at the last minute, I stuck in one of the inside pockets of my new bag.
Then I promptly forgot about the whole thing.
A few months later we ran out of toilet paper. Instead of going two doors down to the freakin' Rite Aide to get some, my teenaged daughter, the lazy git, improvised with some paper towels. My 120 year old plumbing is not equipped to digest paper towels and the toilet promptly backed up creating an unsightly floating mess of human waste. The next day at work I was rooting around in my bag looking for the last receipt that my overpriced plumber gave me so that I could call him to clear the blockage.
I didn't find the plumber's number but I came across the scrap of manila envelope.
For some reason that I cannot explain, I picked up the phone and dialed. |
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