the other side of 50/50

I think today was the first time I really wondered what it would have been like if my BRCA results were negative. I never let myself wonder before because I knew it never would have happened that way.

My dad used to tell me I should get tested, because wouldn’t it be great to know it was negative and not have to worry? I told him sure, that’d be great – but it wouldn’t be the case with me. It wouldn’t be negative. 50/50 isn’t great odds to begin with; when you already know the answer, they stop being odds and it starts being a fact.

How the hell there are still emotions related to this, I don’t know, but I’m having an awful and frustrating day when it comes to surgery options, and I searched “BRCA” on Pinterest. Just for shits and giggles, you know.

One of the results was a photo of a negative test result. Interesting, as I’d obviously never seen such a thing. The caption read “Love that my BRCA test came back negative today.” And it hit me – I will never know that feeling. Surprisingly, it wasn’t something I’d thought about before, because a negative result was never an option.

But what if it was? What if, in March 2010, I’d recieved a piece of paper that said “no mutation detected?” Who knows where I would be today, how I would feel, what I would be doing. I wonder if I would have given it a second thought or if I would still think every twitch and every pain was cancer. I wonder what, instead, I would be annoyed and upset about on this godawful gray day.

I wonder who I would be. However, as awful as this is and as much as I wish my results said no mutation detected instead of what they really said, I just don’t think I would be the same person. I don’t even believe “everything happens for a reason” but even as I went through the rollercoaster of emotions after my “diagnosis” (for lack of a better term), I couldn’t help but feel like this is what was meant to happen. There is a reason for this; I already knew it was positive because it had to be positive, because it of all things is what was meant to happen.

I am going to be a better person for this. I am going to be more me because of this. And as much as it sucks, some people have real problems. Some people are going through worse, and if this is the worst problem I have, I should consider myself damn lucky.