My name is Anaïs, I’m (almost) 41 and my story began in 2016 with a phone call from my little sister, Chloé.
phone call from my little sister, Chloé. I’m on my way to work. We’re waiting for her
results, because since she stopped taking the pill, her breast has only got bigger. The
Hormones, no doubt.
Unfortunately, we’re in for some very different news.
In a split second, a tsunami washed over her, over me, over us. The lump is in fact a triple-negative cancer that is progressing rapidly. And this one is very nasty, very present. We mustn’t delay.
I hang up with a bitter taste in my mouth. I realise that our carefree days are behind us.
This opens up a world that was previously completely unknown to us: the disease, the treatments, the impact of all this on her life and ours.
the impact of all this on her life and ours.
My sister, with her calm and rather reserved temperament, shows us that she is in fact a real Viking, ready to demonstrate that she’s not going to take it lying down.
a real Viking, ready to show that she’s not going to take it lying down.
A life lesson that would change me forever!
In the meantime, life went on and I became the mother of a little girl
Angèle, born in April 2017. It was at the same time that ‘genetics’ entered my life, but also the lives of my other sister Myrtille, my parents and my partner.
Testing, waiting, results… It’s now this melody that gives rhythm to our lives.
In July 2017, I discovered that I was also a BRCA1 mutation carrier,
that I inherited it from my dad, that my second sister is not a carrier (phew!) and that, as far as our daughter is concerned, we’ll only find out more in a few years’ time, when she can take the bloody genetic test.
that for our daughter, we’ll only be able to see more clearly in a few years’ time, when she can take the bloody genetic test… Which seems like an eternity to us!
A whirlwind of information followed! I’m already 34! Where do I start?
My sister has been fighting for 3 years, sometimes it seems like an eternity and
sometimes the opposite. Everything goes too fast, it’s too long, it’s too short. We have no sense of time.
My sister is leaving us 3 years after the announcement of her cancer. The visceral bond that binds me to my two sisters makes this experience insurmountable for me, but we MUST carry on. Get up. To move forward. To live.
My mantra then becomes: One day at a time. Keep at it. You’ll see. Chloé had given me a huge gift, she had given me the chance to choose and not to ‘suffer’. I wasn’t going to waste that chance.
Following on from this, I decided to have a bilateral preventive mastectomy with immediate reconstruction at the end of October 2017.
We also wanted to have a second child. It was impossible for me
to envisage a second pregnancy knowing my ‘genetic heritage’ and this famous 50/50 over which we have no control.
We then heard about the possibility of IVF with PGD, and five long years of trials, hopes and failures followed. And yet, after the final attempt, Rosalie showed up in February 2022. Three days before the anniversary of my sister’s death, it was like a breath of fresh air, a little ray of sunshine in this ‘tsunami’!
At the end of 2022, the team following me warned me: “We’ll leave you until you’re 38.
but we advise against waiting any longer”. So I decided
that the second sword hovering over my head would soon go elsewhere and I underwent a preventive adnexectomy without hormone replacement therapy.
It’s now 2024. I’m the mother of two little chicks
almost 8 and 3, I’m a BRCA1 mutation carrier, I’ll still have straight breasts when I’m 50, I’m post-menopausal, I don’t wear a bra every day and there are days when I laugh and days when I cry.
I’ve always looked ‘straight ahead’ and taken each step as it came.
as they come. Of course, some roads are easier than others, but some are much more complicated than mine. I wasn’t going to dig a hole and wait.
I wasn’t going to dig a hole and wait, that would be giving this bloody genetics thing too much of a grip.
It’s to make all this at least a little bit worthwhile that I’ve decided to share my story with you today.
to share my story with you today. Involving myself in the BRCA+ Network project gives some meaning to all this. It also gives meaning to what has changed me forever, but also to what makes me who I am today.
BRCA+ Network asbl
