On September 15, our congress, in its infinite wisdom, passed HR 1522 officially designating the last week of September as National Hereditary Breast and Ovarian Cancer (HBOC) Week and the last Wednesday of the month as National Previvor Day.
I admit that it bothers me a bit that a legislative body that can't gets it shit together to pass significant financial reform, estate tax legislation, jobs bills, and cap and trade can find the time to pass a bill recognizing HBOC. I don’t view all of life's priorities through the narrow prism of what's important to those at risk for hereditary cancers.
Further, I think excessive cheerleading about "awareness" can sometimes serve as a distraction for what ought to be our real priorities - research, treatment, and ultimately ending prophylactic surgery as we know it. We don't need to be "trendy". (Although it is kinda cool to have our own app.)
That being said, there is a shocking amount of ignorance in the medical community regarding BRCA and who ought to be referred for genetic testing. And I'm taking about gynecologists, fertility doctors and midwives, who really are on the front lines in the war against breast and ovarian cancer and ought to know better.
I speak from personal experience. You can read the story about how I can to know of my BRCA1 mutation here. But if not for my new gynecologist that I met when I was forty, I might never have been referred for BRCA testing until something really bad happened.
If not for Dr. Lucky, I might not have been so lucky.
After I tested positive, I faced the burden of notifying my two brothers and forty first cousins (you read that right - forty - my father was one of eight children) that we now had a known BRCA mutation in the family. Not a single one of them had ever been tested for a BRCA mutation despite a very suspicious family history. I was the first. The canary in the coal mine.
We are lucky though because no one in the family in my generation has gotten cancer and we range in age from fifty-four down to my youngest first cousin who is twenty. I do take some comfort in knowing that my ordeal with BRCA may have saved more than just my own skin.
So yes, we do indeed need more awareness. And thus, curmudgeon that I am, I am happy to be a supporter of HBOC Week.
So what should we do to celebrate Previvor Day?