CosBeauty Magazine #86

Jess when she was undergoing cancer treatment.
‘
commitment anyway,’ says Jess. ‘I am
so lucky I was in that position. I have
spoken to other women who aren’t in
relationships and it is an added layer
of complexity having to have that
conversation. It is hard enough to
meet someone without knowing you
have to explain all of this too!’
With a family history, Jess was well
armed with the facts.
‘My paternal grandmother had
died of breast cancer at 34, when my
dad was five years old. We had heard
of this testing and my cousin was
keen. She had mentioned it to my
family, so my dad and uncle did the
genetic screening first and both had
Jess’s positivity stayed with
her throughout the entire ordeal
and she remains as buoyant
as ever today.
’
the BRCA gene. My sister then got
screened and, yep, we both have the
gene too.’
From there it was a matter of
screening every six months. Rather
than wallow in self-pity or fear, Jess
and her sister decided to make a sixmonthly
event of the tests.
‘We thought we would have
this ‘date’ every six months, to do
something for ourselves and make
it special. That way it was no more
routine than a pap smear, but we also
had some sisterly bonding to look
forward to.’
‘You have a mammogram and
an ultrasound, and at six-monthly
intervals, an MRI. I had the
mammogram and ultrasound in
December and had the MRI in July,
which is when they picked it up. It
was deep within my breast and wasn’t
detectable to touch. Because of my
age and dense breast tissue it may not
have been there six months before,
but it may have been and was just not
detectable.’
Jess’s positivity stayed with her
throughout the entire ordeal and she
remains as buoyant as ever today.
‘I am one hundred per cent one of
the lucky ones – for some reason fate
had it and I knew to have the test. A
lot of people don’t have the luxury of
being able to intervene so early. It was
the family thing that threw us a little
though.
‘At some point, of course we
wanted a family, but I wanted to be
the one to choose when the time
was right. Travers and I are both very
practical. We are not deep talkers –
we didn’t even talk about it. We just
knew we were going to go down the
path of fertility preservation. Neither
of us had the energy or time to have
an in-depth conversation about it.
We were told that ‘this is what we
should do’, so that is what we did!
‘I was told early on that chemo
could ‘fry my eggs’. My biggest fear
was that chemotherapy would place
me into early menopause and I
would become infertile. I had the
opportunity to do one round of IVF
before chemotherapy started, but
I experienced a looming sensation
that that was the only option I would
have.
‘I was given a monthly injection
of Zoladex, which switches off the
ovaries and puts them to sleep. I
had that and even though there
was every chance it wouldn’t work;
it was successful, and I was able to
do another round of IVF after my
chemotherapy was over. I was so
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