So I bit the bullet and visited the doctor to get to the bottom of this deadly pattern I was noticing in my family. I found out that no, the women in my family didn't have a habit of pointing their breasts towards open microwaves. They were unwitting carriers of the breast cancer gene mutation known as BRCA1.
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BRCA1! No longer owned by a corporation, thanks to the Supreme Court.
That meant I had an 87-percent chance of getting breast cancer myself. (Women without the gene have a 12-percent chance, which is still pretty damned high -- imagine a game of Russian Roulette in which the revolver has one bullet in eight chambers.)
I wasn't going to wait for the other shoe to drop. I'd seen my mom battle breast cancer for the first 13 years of my life (she had it when I was born), and I wanted peace of mind for myself. The only way to get that was to have my deadly, deadly breasts straight-up removed. When I first decided to go that route, I had people telling me "You're too young." But cancer doesn't care how old you are, and you do not want to turn cancer prevention into a game of chicken. You will lose.
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Play chicken with a train. You'll have better luck.
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