Jessica Queller, a Los Angeles-based TV writer, has written a book (Pretty is What Changes), detailing her response to a discovery she made four years ago: that her breasts were ticking cancer time bombs.
Queller, who underwent BRCA gene testing after her mother died of ovarian cancer, was told she was positive for the BRCA-1 gene, and had an 87 percent chance of developing breast cancer–as well as a 44% chance of developing even deadlier ovarian cancer. “The doctor told me the gold standard for prevention would be prophylactic surgery of my breasts and ovaries,” said Queller, in a National Public Radio interview Tuesday. “It was an outrageous proposition to me at the time. It took me a year of research, and a year of assimilating the information, to come around to considering something like that.”
Queller eventually did have a double mastectomy and reconstruction. “I had terrible fears that I’d feel deformed after the mastectomy. I felt I wouldn’t be attractive to men, wouldn’t want to be touched…” she said. “People thought I had post-traumatic stress syndrome from my mother’s death to even consider a double mastectomy,” Queller added.
But post-reconstruction, Queller’s whole outlook has changed. “I feel completely comfortable and at home in my new body,” she told NPR interviewer Renee Montagne. “Almost every woman I’ve spoken to [who’s had this procedure] agrees. Fear is the biggest thing; it just doesn’t seem like that big a deal on the other side.”
Now, Queller is 38 years old, single, and wants to have a baby. Age 40 is considered the “prudent” age to remove your ovaries if you’re carrying the BRCA gene. So Queller says she’s decided to get pregnant via a sperm donor, and become a single mother, then have her ovaries removed.
In an interview in "US News and World Report," she speaks of the “ethical ambiguities” of her situation: with the scientific ability to “select out” embryos with the BRCA gene, should she “choose embryos that don’t have the mutation and destroy the others? Or is it immoral to extinguish a life merely because it carries a gene I myself live with?”
The issues Queller has dealt with, and continues to face—prophylactic mastectomy and removal of her ovaries, choosing to select BRCA-free embryos—are huge. And potentially life-shattering. As a young, single woman, one who wants to marry and have children, how do you choose between an 87% chance of cancer, and the irretrievable loss of both your breasts (your self-perceived beauty) and your ovaries (your future children)?
As a breast cancer survivor, what advice would YOU give a young, single friend who’s discovered she carries the BRCA gene? The simplest advice would be “Yes, have the mastectomy and have your ovaries out,” or “No, wait and see what develops.” But this is really too facile; too easy.
