To remove healthy breasts or not? As we walked over to 69th Street from 72nd street early one June morning 10 years ago, I remember the sense of certainty as familiar as the iced coffee I just drank this morning.
We were entering an outpatient facility that was going to shortly be discarding, albeit healthy, breasts that were a vehicle for a potentially
deadly, deleterious genetic mutation
BRCA 1. The “founder” gene increases the risk for growing breast cancer up to 87 per cent. “If you opt for a double mastectomy you lower the risk to under 5 per cent.” Words my doctor said to me 6 years prior to my having the procedure. One in 400 people in the general population in the United States and 1 in 40 woman of Jewish Ashkenazi decent carry this mutation. A piece of mine and my families bad luck presented itself this way.
Fast forward to last eve and Kayleigh Mcenany (press secretary’s) speech. She revealed in a much less peripatetic way than her Barbie Doll, speed talking style, that she was also a carrier of a mutation. She carries the BRCA 2, different distinctions. We were prepared to hear more noisy rhetoric supporting the demonic despot at the helm of our United States of America. Mic drop, we listened carefully. Our beloved country is no longer recognizable compared to our childhood days of playing hopscotch and hide and go seek on the “safe haven” of our block. We knew the street’s as extensions of our homes. Our playgrounds outside our front doors. A far scream and shout out loud please G-d, from the street where an innocent man, father of three was brutally shot 7 times in his back, on his streets. Because why? We are segregated in ways that are as far from being resolved as ever.
Genetic mutations cross barriers of race and religion. Bigotry, hate and violence do now, more than ever. When we back up our prayers on i cloud let us beg that November 3 will be a beginning to redefine our Land of the Free Because of the Brave!