What is Staying Alive about?
The book explores the meaning of breast cancer by looking at my family's experience with the disease, and how the family was actually shaped by the disease. It's also about the changes in breast cancer treatment and care, and how women are taking control of the disease in ways they could not have fifty years ago.
Could you briefly describe your family's history with breast cancer?
My mother and both her sisters had breast cancer. My aunt was the first in the family to be diagnosed, at age 29, when I was a child. Every ten years after that, a woman in my family was diagnosed and/or died from breast cancer. We didn't know what it was at first; it haunted us. We thought we were the victims of some grim joke. I preempted dying of cancer myself by having a preventive mastectomy, or both my breasts removed.
I didn't tell many people that I went in for the surgery. And one of the reasons is that so many people felt it was a repellent thing to do. I was really stunned by some reactions to the theory of doing prophylactic (preventive) mastectomies. And I thought, "Where do I begin to explain? How can I tell them that this makes perfect sense to me?" In a way, the book was an attempt to relate what it's like to live with an impending sense of loss and gloom, and how I came to make an aggressive decision in order to get away from the specter of this disease.
When did you first consider getting the bilateral mastectomies, and how did you approach this decision?
The first time a doctor suggested I think about the surgery, I was shocked. I knew that I wanted to breast-feed my children before I considered the option in earnest. And I did.
