My Brca2+ Journey - Part 2
The first time I went to the breast specialist, they found a lump. In all honesty, despite being told the importance of self-screening, I hadn’t known how to correctly do it and ironically, my fear of finding anything kept me from checking. My first routine check-up and I was already being sent for a mammogram and ultrasound to try and get a better idea of what the lump was. For the first time, I was faced with what would eventually turn into years of absolute fear. Luckily, the lump wasn’t concerning and I was sent home without the need for any more tests.
This was March of 2019 and I was quickly thrown into the world of BRCA care and a brand new (to me) health care system I had no idea how to navigate. I grew up in the United States but was making my permanent home in Ireland. Ireland offers two different routes for health care: private and public. To be seen within the private system, you pay out of pocket for your visits, tests, and surgeries, but can be seen very quickly. My first visit to the breast specialist was done privately which allowed me the option of an immediate mammogram and ultrasound. The other option is to go public, which offers all care including visits, tests, and surgeries for free, but there are lengthy wait times.
With annual screenings and regular visits in my indefinite future, and after eventually paying out of pocket for a routine breast MRI, I changed my plan to go public. Being so young at the time and therefore with less of a risk, I used that time to my benefit and went on the waiting list. For over a year (thanks covid), I waited to be added to the breast clinic and finally in February 2022, I started my care with the MidWest Breast Clinic in Limerick.
It’s hard to explain just how scary screening is. As someone who (embarrassingly) loves hospital-based tv dramas, I didn’t anticipate how emotional of an experience a “standard test” was. That all changed when I had my first breast MRI. To many it seems like you just go into a machine and then wait for the results and at that point, can have an emotional response. I’ll never forget the first time I laid down on the bed to have the contrast hooked up to my IV. I just started crying. Not because it hurt or because I was afraid of the machine, but because this was the first of potentially many times I’d have to be put face-to-face with possible breast cancer. The MRI is 40 minutes of lying uncomfortably on your stomach with your boobs hanging through these spaces in the bed and while you’re given headphones, they do little to drown out the piercing and repetitive sounds of the machine. It forces you to go into a different, possibly dissociative state and as a result, leaves you exhausted for the rest of your day. I’d leave every screening and appointment feeling like I had just ran a marathon.
My fear of cancer was ignited again in the midst of my initial breast care. In October of 2019, just a month after my wedding, I was diagnosed with an early stage of melanoma. Even before my BRCA diagnosis, because I’m fair skinned, I was luckily instilled with the necessity for minding my skin. I had noticed that what was once the cute freckle on my collarbone had actually grown close to 3 times as big over the course of a few years. Any major change in your spots should be seen to so after returning from my honeymoon, I went straight into the hospital for the first of two surgeries. When you have a spot removed or an area biopsied, your surgeons are looking for what’s called “clear margins” or areas around the full tumor that are healthy cells. This ensures that the full tumor has been removed. After my melanoma diagnosis, I had to return again not long after for an additional surgery to ensure that my margins were clear. I now wear my scar on my collarbone with pride that I caught it before it spread. I feel the same for the scar on my back, from a pre-cancerous spot removed a year after my initial melanoma. My skin cancer journey will be lifelong, with a higher risk of developing it throughout my life, but it strangely doesn’t frighten me anymore. This may sound odd, but I take a lot of comfort in being able to see it on my skin - I’m not stuck guessing what’s happening inside me. I’d take skin cancer screening over breast or ovarian cancer any day of the week.
