I’m not good at this part.

I’m someone who handles things privately, processes internally, and generally does not volunteer personal information unless absolutely necessary. I’m fiercely independent to a fault. I don’t love asking for help. I definitely don’t love talking about myself.

So the fact that I’m writing a blog about one of the most personal things that has ever happened to me is, genuinely, a little bit insane.

Here’s what I can tell you without wanting to crawl out of my skin. I’m a bodybuilder and a personal trainer. I’m in medical school. I bake sourdough, I have two cats who run my household, and I have a sense of humor about hard things because the alternative is worse. I was working in clinical research when I found out I was BRCA1 positive. I had a preventive mastectomy with reconstruction. And now apparently I have a blog.

I didn’t start writing this because vulnerability comes naturally to me. It doesn’t. I started writing it because when I was going through the hardest parts of this I kept looking for someone who was being completely straight about what it actually felt like, and I couldn’t find that person. So here I am, being that person, while being mildly uncomfortable about it.

If you’re reading this because you’re going through something similar, hi. I see you. I’m not going to sugarcoat anything. I’m just going to tell you what it was actually like, including the parts that are hard to say out loud.

That’s about as much about me as I can manage for now.

Let’s get into it.