My beautiful Mum was diagnosed with Breast Cancer when she was 37 years old. She was breastfeeding my baby sister at the time, and was immediately referred for chemo and radiation. 

Mum also had a unilateral mastectomy in the affected breast. Despite fighting like crazy, and going into remission twice, she eventually lost the battle in 1996, at the age of 42. I was 12 at the time, and had also lost my Grandma (my Mum's mum) in the year before, 1995.

Obviously, as I grew up, my understanding of breast cancer was poignantly aware. From the age of 16 I started having six monthly mammograms and ultrasounds. When I was 21 I had two lumps removed from my breasts (benign) and it was then that my surgeon referred me to the Peter Mac Familial Cancer Clinic in Melbourne. I live in Bendigo in Central Victoria, around two hours from Melbourne, so going down to see the team there required a full day off work etc. It took a few years, but after lots of searching through family history etc we determined that my risk of getting breast cancer was in the 'extreme' category. My grandmother had eight sisters, and six of them had had breast cancer. My Mum was an only child.

I had originally intended on having a gene test for the BRCA1 and BRCA2 genes, but it was explained to me that unless I had a living relative who had or had survived breast cancer they couldn't do a comprehensive test. Unfortunately in my family breast cancer has claimed the lives of all it has touched.

After all this information sunk in, I was given two options by the Peter Mac team - I could remain vigilant with my testing every six months, or I could do something a little more drastic and have a mastectomy. I am only 26 years old and I don't have any children. While the surgeons where amazingly knowledgeable, initially they didn't seem to grasp my decision to go ahead and have the mastectomy. They thought I was too young, that I would ruin my ability to breast feed, that without a gene test they couldn't even be sure that I had a higher risk etc.

This was a little bit of a shock initially, and I remember being really upset after one appointment. They didn't seem to understand that the alternative, regular testing merely meant I was WAITING FOR CANCER! Just because I would catch it early, it still meant I could get cancer! I explained it this way to the surgeon on my next appointment, and I think they finally got it. I was referred to a plastic surgeon - and it was him to tell me out the DIEP option.

I had a team of twelve surgeons working on me for the operation. They were made of breast surgeons (the ones who cut away the breast tissue away) and then micro surgeons (connecting all the blood vessels up) and plastic surgeons (moulding and creating new breast and the flaps).

My surgery took around 12 hours in total - which was a little longer than planned, but all was completely successful and everyone was extremely happy with the result.

I am now six months in recovery from the operation, and I have never felt better - I am determined to be the first generation in my family not to be diagnosed with breast cancer - so far, so good.