Abby from Long Island, New York, came to us with a story I felt was a dramatic example of the biblical command to "choose life” [Deuteronomy 30:19.]
She wrote: I am a BRCA1+ “previvor." That means that I have a mutation that causes breast cancer at an alarmingly high rate (87% for me). I had no idea I was a carrier until a close friend was dying of breast cancer in her early 30s and implored me to get tested, despite my lack of apparent family history. I thought it was crazy, but because she was dying, I obliged.
Knowing what my friend would have wanted, I made an appointment to discuss a preventative double mastectomy. She wanted me to test so that my life would be saved, and for now, the only preventative measure we have to prevent breast cancer in BRCA carriers is this somewhat barbaric surgery.
I had the mastectomy in 2016 with direct reconstruction with implants under the pectoral muscles. But I had continuous problems on my left side, with pain and complications basically from the get go.
Finally, this year, I decided it was time to live my truth without judgment. Implants have now been linked to a specific lymphoma, chronic inflammation, and other problems. I’d had enough. I decided to get them out and live life flat-chested. I am a woman without breasts, but a survivor — or previvor — and no less of a woman at that. I know my friend, who died, would be proud.
My conversation with her was one of those conversations that end abruptly, because everyone loses track of time until I’m told that my next meeting had started already. During the conversation and after it, the concept changed several times, until I had morphed into a round work, made of the words Woman of Valor, partly open and partly closed at the edges and with a warm center, as to say the core, the center, the true self is guarded from whatever changes happen to the outside, to the physical, to the body.