Other Pages

Olivia

As a young girl I always wanted to be older, I used to sit at the grownups table and listen to them speak while the kids would play. I don’t

know if that was because I had two older sisters that I looked up to, but I knew I didn’t want to be a little girl.

When you finally grow up to be a woman the amount of challenges faced are scary, all of a sudden our childhood seems a whole lot more appealing.

But being a woman is so wonderful and more importantly, having women around you to give you the strength and support you need is priceless, women are so important for each other, we need each other to survive and grow. The connections I have with the women in my life is extraordinary and irreplaceable. My mother passed so much onto me and my sisters, but she also passed on something that was out of her control, a faulty gene. A gene which she carried unaware of for half of her life. We had the choice to know if we carried her fault, and we chose to be aware and to do something about it, we chose to be in control of our bodies, and to beat the fears of cancer.

My grandmother passed away at the age of 70 from Ovarian Cancer, however at the time she was being treated for everything but, and it was only until after she had passed away that they could determine her cause of death. My mother was diagnosed with Breast Cancer at the age of 53; she thankfully had caught it early and is going on 7 years of good health. At the time, my mother found out that there was a family history of breast and ovarian cancer, and followed it up with Dr Kathy Tucker, who is the director of the Hereditary Cancer Centre at the Prince of Wales Randwick. My mother was tested positive for the faulty BRCA1 gene and told that she would pass on a 50 percent chance of a fault to her three daughters.

My two sisters where tested first, I was with both of them at the time they received the results and this I feel was a really good stepping stone for me. At 25 I decided it was time to be tested, and I wasn’t fearful at all, I just wanted to know. When receiving the result that I was positive to the BRCA1 gene I felt fine, normal, and a bit relieved; now I can be treated and monitored closely for any changes.

It wasn’t until my second mammogram and ultrasound that it really hit me. Because they know my history they were very cautious with the testing. I had two small lumps in my left breast that they wanted to check, and that scared the hell out of me! I had two needle biopsies to check for cancerous cells and thankfully they were negative.

However the whole experience changed my perspective on life, all of a sudden I lost my interest in my design degree and instead started thinking about children and marriage, two things I never really paid much attention too. I decided it was time to visit the counsellor at Uni and discuss my feelings and emotions, I told her about my final project and how it was related to the awareness of BRCA1 and BRCA2 in women from high risk families.

She was concerned with this, thinking that it may have been too much to carry as it holds strong emotional ties. I think she was right, and the beginning was hard, but nothing is as hard as facing cancer, and if my project can help raise awareness and understanding to women at risk then my job is done!