Cancer & Prevention
21 Days Post-Op: My Journey to Prevent Ovarian Cancer
I am no longer a surgical patient. Just three weeks after my hysterectomy and surgery to remove my ovaries, my doctor has cleared me to take back my life. He said I am healing perfectly and I can even resume exercising. I don’t have to go back to his office again until my next regular gynecological exam in six months. And, here’s the most exciting part: my days of routine blood tests and radiological screenings to detect ovarian cancer are…
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My Preventive Mastectomy – Staying Alive For My Kids
I’m not a helicopter parent and my children would tell you I don’t bake cupcakes for their birthday parties. But I’d readily cut off my breasts for them — and recently, I did. Removing breast tissue uncompromised by cancer is relatively easy. It took the breast surgeon about two hours to slice through my chest and complete the double mastectomy seven weeks ago…Continue Reading
View Blog PostWhy More Women are Choosing Double Mastectomies
Ten months ago, Vanessa Thiemann lay in bed unable to sleep. The 42-year-old single mother of two had a sinus infection, and the pain was making her restless. She tried getting comfortable on her left side, then her right, but she ended up staring at the ceiling in complete darkness, her left hand coming to rest on her chest….Continue Reading
View Blog PostWhat I Share with Angelina Jolie
In 2007 I had my ovaries and fallopian tubes removed to prevent my getting ovarian cancer. It was a surgery of the kind that Angelina Jolie recently underwent, as she revealed Tuesday in a New York Times op-ed. Two years ago, Jolie divulged that she’d had a prophylactic double mastectomy — I had done this as well, in 2012. Along with the effects of the surgeries themselves, we now also share a related fallout: surgical…
View Blog PostFoods Every Breast Cancer Survivor Should Know About
Women checking in for appointments at the Comprehensive Breast Center at St. Luke’s-Roosevelt Hospital Center in New York this month are being offered more than a pre-op or post-op surgical visit. On the reception desk, inside a large plastic frame, is a colorful flyer decorated with pictures of luscious-looking fruits and vegetables. It’s an invitation to attend “Superfoods and Super Habits for Super Health,” a seminar that promises to teach patients the foods they should…
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Can the Human Blueprint Have Owners? BRCA Test, Vital for Me, Shouldn’t Be Limited
Myriad began offering BRCA1 and BRCA2 testing in 1996, the same year my mother died of ovarian cancer. Since then, Myriad reports to have screened more than one million patients. That includes Angelina Jolie, and me. Jolie and I have a lot in common: Her mother died of ovarian cancer when she was 56; my mother died of ovarian cancer when she was 57. Angelina tested positive for BRCA1; so did I….Continue Reading
View Blog PostPreventing Cancer – What I Did to Stay Alive
I woke up this morning without breasts. Not a surprise. This is how it’s been since I underwent a prophylactic double mastectomy six years ago on August 7, 2012 – to prevent getting breast cancer. I still think, as I imagine Angelina Jolie believes of her life-affirming surgery, it’s the best decision I ever could have made. For more than a decade, my gynecologist warned me I was high-risk for developing cancer. My mother had…
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Artist Emily McDowell Reveals the Deeply Personal Reasons She Launched Her Empathy Cards Collection, What Spurred Her Relationship With Sheryl Sandberg’s Option B Team, and the One Memento That Reminds Her Most of a Very Dear Friend
Pinch me! I am super excited to share my latest Q&A with you – a conversation with the incomparable Emily McDowell. Don’t know her name? I can nearly guarantee you know her artwork – fun, whimsical, and often sassy and irreverent. Slate named her Empathy Cards, a line of greeting cards crafted to help family and friends connect around illness and loss, one of the top designs making the world a better place. And no,…
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The BRCA Gene and Losing American Writer Elizabeth Wurtzel
Photo by Neville Elder Elizabeth Wurtzel was a fearless writer, willing to share stark details of her own clinical depression, drug use, and sex life at an age when most of us are still crafting the narrative of who we are. Even her book titles – Prozac Nation: Young and Depressed in America and Bitch: In Praise of Difficult Women – were forthright and unflinching. Perhaps this is why I am struggling with Wurtzel’s death at the…
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