I’m 27 and about to have a double mastectomy

By Kelley Luckstein

It took a few tablespoons of my blood, a six-week wait to determine the results and only an instant to change my world.

“I’m afraid I have bad news,” my oncologist said.

Even though I’m a healthy 27-year-old woman right now, I'm going to have both my breasts removed as a preventative measure because I’m a member of a very exclusive club: Like one out of 1,000 women, I have a genetic mutation that dramatically ups my chance of cancer. My gene — called the BRCA1 gene — gives me a 40 percent to 85 percent lifetime risk of developing breast cancer, and a risk of ovarian cancer that is 30 percent to 70 percent higher than women who do not have this gene, according to the Mayo Clinic…

Removing the breast tissue will reduce my chance of developing breast cancer by about 90 percent, according to the Mayo Clinic.

MSNBC, Essay by Lizzie Stark, 10/19/09