Talk about shock value. I visited with my doctor last week, who suggested I might want to cut out my ovaries. "We just go in through your belly button and snip snip!" What? Did I hear you right? It was that abrupt. She seemed so enthusiastic that I wanted to say to her - "hey, why don't we do it together? We could go get waffles at IHop afterward - make a day of it! Fun!"
Honestly, I am not ready for this. I consider myself a young woman. My mom was first diagnosed with breast cancer at 53. I am 50. So this is what I said to the doctor. "Well then, lets do a BRACA blood test." Now this is a little more reasonable. Let's give it a whirl. I stuck out my arm and the nurse took a couple vials of blood to whisk away to Myriad Labs. Just for the record, my mother did not have BRCA 1 or 2, but another fun variant that the genetic counselor says that 10 years after her death still is not a variant that indicates any increased risk for cancer.
I remember telling my mom at the time that we should call it Jeanne's Variant, after her. She did not find it too amusing. We still are not sure why Mom ended up first with breast then with the ovarian cancer that she struggled with and eventually succumbed to at the age of just 61 in 1999.
There is still so much we don't know about ovarian cancer. If cutting out my ovaries is the right thing to do, I'll do it. Jury is still out.
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