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On: Genetic Testing

by Robin Dunn Bryant on May 29th, 2007

I forgot to mention a very important part of the conversation I had with my gynecologist last week:  the results of my BRCA testing.

My old oncologist had this obsession with removing my ovaries to reduce my risk of reoccurrence and lower my risk of ovarian cancer.  He talked about removing them at every appointment, even though I told him that my husband and I weren’t necessarily ruling out having more biological children.  He always laughed about that and said “well, you never know what the BRCA information might say.”  Mind you neither he or his nursing staff could get it together to get information from the testing facility and my insurance to see if it would be paid for.  (The way they do it is they call before submitting the sample to see if it will be covered.)

Well about a month or so ago I was in to see the gyno and he said “Let’s just send the sample in and see if your insurance will cover it.  We can tell the lab to call you if there is any out of pocket cost to you.”  Turns out that my insurance would cover it and I got my results at my last appointment:  No genetic mutations showing!  I almost broke down in his office.  That means that we can’t point to a particular culprit for me, which is a bad thing, but it also means that I can stop obsessively worrying that I might have passed the mutation on to my daughter.

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