Multiple cancers in the family.
Isolated? Coincidence?
In 1990. My sister Rebecca got leukemia at twenty-one.
I was fourteen.
While she choked on chemotherapy.
Mum got breast cancer.
Rebecca died in ’94.
Dad got bowel cancer soon after.
Mum’s other breast. Cancer there too. She survived that one.
- Esophageal cancer.
Major surgery. It came back.
Six weeks later. Gone.
Fast forward.
2020.
My other sister got triple-negative breast cancer. The aggressive kind.
Something is wrong.
Something is deep.
She tested for BRCA.
Negative.
So they dug deeper.
The gene is TP53.
Rare. Much worse than BRCA.
Li-Fraumeni syndrome.
If you have this mutation, the gene that stops cancer—your body’s own brake pedal—fails.
Women with it face a 90-100% lifetime risk of developing cancer.
Anywhere in the body.
Half of them get it before age 30.
“It’s a dud.”
When they offered her the test, I had never heard of Li-Fraumeni.
Who has?
She tested positive.
Shattered.
Since it runs in families.
They offered it to me.
I didn’t hesitate.
Not for myself.
So my sister wouldn’t carry it alone.
Tested in 2022.
Age forty-seven.
Positive.
Surprisingly.
I felt peace.
Finally.
Answers.
Reason for the blood. For the graves. For the fear.
My brother refused.
He wanted no answers.
He chose the fog.
I chose the map.
But the map leads through fire.
Diagnosed. Life changes.
You do not sleep soundly with Li-Fraumeni.
Within months.
Double mastectomy.
Preventative.
The surgeon cut away my left breast.
Found it there.
Two ductal carcinomas. In situ.
Early stage.
Caught.
Narrow margin.
I live in Sydney.
Joined an Australian clinical trial.
Annual whole-body MRI.
Looking for tumors in any organ.
2022 scan. Clean.
2023.
9mm meningioma.
On the brain’s meninges.
Benign.
But the panic?
Real.
Now.
Every November. The MRI.
Scanxiety builds from July.
Four months of waiting.
Four months of wondering: Is this the year?
Is this the one that sticks?
The study helps.
Reassurance through paranoia.
Finding cancers when they are still tiny.
When they are treatable.
My sister gets annual MRIs now too.
She survived.
I layer the checks.
Dermatology yearly.
Blood tests yearly.
Endoscopy every two years.
Colonoscopy every two years.
They found polyps. Removed them.
Atypical cells in the esophagus.
Watched closely.
I check myself constantly.
Shoulder sore?
Fear.
Is it cancer?
Or did I lift a box wrong?
Doesn’t matter.
The fear stays.
My geneticist suspects a de novo mutation in Mum.
Spontaneous.
Not inherited from her parents.
Born with her.
Passed to me.
We have no children.
The chain ends here.
With us.
My partner.
“You do what you have to do.”
Simple.
Solid.
No reconstruction.
Scars show the work.
Not damage.
History.
I stay positive.
Not naive.
Realistic.
My sister-in-law had a stroke.
Everyone has a wound.
Yours just bleeds internally.
Or it’s visible.
Doesn’t matter.
We bleed.
We scar.
We live with it.
Life is not a white picket fence 🏡.
It’s rough ground.
We walk it anyway.
