I received the genetic testing results on August 11th, 2022. I remember laughing when my mom first told me, a coping mechanism I have developed since I was a kid. When I am uncomfortable I laugh. However, this was not funny at all. My older sister and I both tested positive for the mutation. I watched as tears began falling from my mom’s eyes, I began to have a greater understanding of what was going on, but I still did not know how to react. I called my older sister and broke the news to her. She was silent over the phone, I couldn’t tell whether she was upset or had already accepted it. I looked to everyone else’s emotions to tell me how to feel. To me, of course this was not the best news. But it also was not the end of the world. I could get a double mastectomy and reconstruction, and go on my way living my long, happy, healthy life. Why was everyone so upset?

It was not until about a week later, when I started doing research on the mutation, that I began to feel all of the emotions that had hit my mom previously. I was losing a part of my body. A part of my body that I really love. I don’t want to lose a part of my body. Not only that, but I could also lose the ability to have children. When I found out about my mutation, I did not realize that it entailed both breast and ovarian cancer, and I did not realize that post-surgery breasts are not identical to the original breasts. Naively, I was under the impression that I would basically be having a more complicated boob job. This was not the case.