At 30, I Chose To Have My Breasts Removed. 12 Years Later, My Children Have Questions.

“I do not have to have all the answers now. I can be open and I can be honest with my children’s questions as they arise.”

When he was 5, my son went through a phase where he would climb up onto the couch where I was sitting, plop himself on my lap and punch my breasts, squish them in his hands, then try to pinch my nipples. I’d push his arms down and pull away, saying, “Ouch! That hurts, buddy. Please, don’t poke me there.”

My daughter, then an inquisitive 6-year-old, was more likely to ask pointed questions. A conversation might start like this: “Mom, why do women have breasts but not men?”

We talked about how men do have breast tissue and nipples but that women’s breasts look different – bigger, bouncier – because they serve a different function.

And then, “Did you breastfeed us, Mom?”

She knew the answer, but she asked anyway.

“No, I didn’t breastfeed you, sweetie,” I replied. “ I fed you formula from a bottle,” I reminded her, adding, “and because of that, Daddy got to help feed you, too!”

Curiously, the question she hadn’t asked, until recently, was why.

Thirteen years ago, when I was 30 years old, I underwent a prophylactic bilateral mastectomy with reconstruction – that is, I opted to have my healthy breast tissue scraped clean from my skin, removed and replaced with silicone substitutes.

In my family, breast cancer is like puberty; if you are a woman, you wait for it, prepare for it, wondering when – not if – breast cancer will strike. My mom’s grandmother died of breast cancer when she was in her early 50s; my mom’s aunt died of breast cancer at age 35; my mom’s mother was diagnosed with breast cancer the year I was born, but had a mastectomy, and is still alive today at 96 years old.

Of my mom’s four sisters, three – plus my mom – developed breast cancer, two in their 30s and two right around age 50. The two who developed cancer earlier in life have since died, as has one of the other two, despite undergoing a bilateral mastectomy. The one sister who hasn’t developed breast cancer is also the only sister who tested negative for a deleterious BRCA2 mutation.

Like my mother and three of her four sisters, I carry a potent BRCA2 genetic mutation that, before surgery, put my lifetime risk of developing breast cancer pre-surgery at 55-69%. A prophylactic bilateral........

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