On May 8th, I’m running in my first race! And for what better cause than to fight ovarian cancer, which is the deadliest and hardest cancer to detect in women. After five relapses, my grandmother passed away from this brutal disease in June 2007. And I have her genes.

To be honest, it didn’t really surprise me that I inherited her defunct BRCA1 gene. I’m really my grandmother in more ways than one. Just like myself, she was always so gullible to pranks and bad jokes of any nature. “See those chickens over there?” asked a friend once as they were driving by the Mexico border many years ago. The woman pointed out a family of scraggly, dirty chickens hopping along the side of the road. “Well,” she said, “they’re some of those crack-sniffing chickens!” My grandmother gasped, “Really?!?” She, like myself, could be so embarrassingly blonde.

I also have her breasts and ovaries, in a sense. Sounds kind of weird, but I feel so connected to my grandmother through these parts of my body because I know they’re made of the same stuff, the same common genetic thread. But our shared BRCA1 gene left her lady parts (and mine) completely defenseless to cancer. That is why she had breast cancer at 60 and ovarian cancer almost too many times to count.

To get technical, my BRCA1 mutation means that I carry up to a 54% risk of developing cancer in my ovaries, the single most defining part of my femininity. I’m all too familiar with 50/50 chances. Since my dad tested positive for his mother’s mutation, I knew that I had a 50% chance of also inheriting the gene that killed my grandmother. It was a coin toss. And the odds did not turn out in my favor.

I’m not willing to take risks like this again. I have enough risks already. So I’m going to lace up my bright pink running shoes, ready to bolt at the sound of the gun. I’ll be racing for my life.

In the meantime, however, my breasts remain my number one priority. The plan still holds to have them removed and exchanged for new saline boobs by the end of the year. I’m still researching doctors and setting up consultations with surgeons in June. Last month, June seemed forever away. Now it’s almost next month! Since I’ve made up my mind to have the preventative double mastectomy, I wish I could fast-forward through the next few months to the point when I’m wearing the thin hospital gown, feeling the anesthesia take hold as I lay on the operating table awaiting my new cancer-free breasts. I can’t wait to have a surgery date to mark in big, bright, bold pink letters on my calendar.

Since beginning this blog, I’ve come into contact with so many wonderful women from across the country. Last Monday night I received a phone call from a 27-year-old woman in New York City who recently had the prophylactic mastectomy and reconstruction. “Claudia, once you decide to have the surgery, just do it!” she said in the sweetest, most compassionate voice. Four months out from surgery, my new friend could not be happier with her new body. Last year she married the man of her dreams, and now she lives with the reassurance that her marriage will not be cut short due to breast cancer.

My new friend shared her experience of surgery, recovery and reconstruction with me in full detail, as I insisted. She changed doctors at the last minute after seeing a friend’s beautiful, round, perky breasts that just so happened to be entirely fake. After surgery, my new buddy awoke to find A-sized breasts. The surgeon took out everything inside and then the plastic surgeon inserted some hard, bumpy expanders. “They’re kind of like balloons,” she said. The reconstruction began immediately, and she was only flat-chested for a split second while still on the operating table. After four hours of extensive surgery, my friend emerged from the operating room with less than 1% risk of breast cancer.

Even though the medical crew left her a bedpan, she was able to creep along to the bathroom and do her business as usual. “The doctors wanted me to begin moving as soon as I was able,” my friend said. Within three days, she was out of the hospital. The doctors sewed drains to her chest wound to collect fluid, and she was able to remove them after 10 days. Three weeks after her surgery she was walking (carefully!) on the treadmill.

The three months of expansion were the worst part of the entire experience, she warned. The balloon-like expanders were rock-solid and bumpy, so her breasts did not look or feel like they would with the saline implants. The plastic surgeon would inject my friend’s expanders with more and more saline until her skin stretched enough to naturally hold the C-cup implants. Since I think I want to remain a C, I will probably go through the same expansion process as my friend.

Well, my friend said, this takes a lot of expanding! Before her exchange surgery last week, she was a double-D!!! I think I’ll tip over with those X-rated breasts. Hopefully I’ll look like a cartoon for only a week before my expanders are exchanged for the normal-size saline implants. However, for that week, my roommate already said I’m not allowed to leave the house. My best friend suggested I go to Vegas.

Doesn't Dr. Heerdt look so smart and nice? Maybe she'll be the one to save my life!

My new buddy also provided me with loads of incredible references in the high-risk medical field. Most of these doctors are in New York at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, one of the premier cancer institutes in the world. I’m meeting with her surgeon, Dr. Alexandra Heerdt, at 8:30am on Tuesday, June 1st. The next day I have a consultation with her plastic surgeon, Dr. Joseph Disa.

While I’m excited to see what Georgetown has to offer, some pretty divine signs are pointing towards Sloan-Kettering. First of all, Dr. Heerdt and Dr. Disa both take my insurance! Over the course of the past week, more and more women have sung this center’s praises to me. The founder of Be Bright Pink, Lindsay Avner, had her double mastectomy and reconstruction done at Sloan-Kettering. So did several of my other girlfriends in Be Bright Pink. They all have nothing but wonderful things to say about this center, the doctors, and the staff. I also like the idea that doctors like Dr. Heerdt and Dr. Disa have performed this procedure on so many young women. That’s really important to me.

Meanwhile, I am truly overwhelmed by the love and support of the young women with new cancer-free boobies who warmly reach out to me, bearing everything. My new friend even sent me photographs of her breasts during the different stages of expansion. Since she decided to keep her nipples, the only scarring she has is a barely-visible line circling the bottom half of her nipple. Through these slits, Dr. Heerdt took out most of the breast cells with bad BRCA genes, and Dr. Disa replaced them with the expanders. Now these tiny scars are so faint it would take a vigilant doctor to realize what took place. “You wouldn’t even need to tell a boy on a date that you have fake boobs,” she said, “he’d never know.”

Even though I’ve never met my new friend in person, she said she’ll come visit me in the hospital when I’m post-op. And this woman meant it. I know I’ll be seeing her beautiful, smiling face in the recovery room next to my long, white hospital bed. How incredible to have such a strong bond with women who I’ve never met. My new friend and I have only spoken on the phone for an hour, and I already feel like we’re sisters. As pre-vivors to cancer, all of us BRCA women are a band of sisters. And what better sisters – each so heroic, so courageous and so compassionate. I can’t thank you all enough for sharing your stories, your bodies and your love with me. I feel so blessed.

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