Understanding BRCA

Living with the breast cancer gene

Clarissa Foster
Hammersmith
260 pages
ISBN-13: 978-1781611203
November 2017

Three years ago, at the age of 35, Clarissa Foster was found to carry a harmful mutation in the BRCA2 gene which drastically increased her risk of developing breast and ovarian cancer. She searched for a book that would help her to understand the full extent of what it meant to carry a harmful mutation, the options available to her to lower her risk and, most importantly, how it would feel to undergo preventive surgery. Finding nothing that answered her needs she set about reading all the available medical literature and liaising with relevant medical professionals to answer her questions. This book is the result of that research and of the decision she took based on it - to have a full mastectomy and oophorectomy. Within the context of her own painful experience of cancer (her mother died of ovarian cancer) and of elective surgery, Clarissa explains what the BRCA mutation is, what it signifies, what the individual's choices are and what the fall out can be in terms of a woman's body image, identity and sexuality.