In the end, after about ten minutes of going back and forth, I decided to take the test. I was given a vial with a special lavender colored top and a note with strict instructions to return the vial to the genetic offices, since they send the blood off themselves. As I rode down in the elevator with my husband I began to feel trepidation sneaking up on me. My mind began to race as the worries and anxieties floated in and out of my mind. In the past, whenever I had considered this test, I had felt certain that when the day came to take the test I would feel a certain peace. The peace that making a decision usually brings anyone. That feeling of peace never came, not on the elevator ride, not when they messed up my stick twice and gave me bruises that covered my entire inner elbow, and not when I got in the car to return to normal life outside the medical center. It never came.
Instead, I became unable to focus on the present moment. Sure, I went to the grocery store, made dinner and had conversations but they were disjointed. Sometimes I blanked out in the middle and couldn't remember where I was supposed to go from that last item, step or word. The test would take three weeks to receive the results. In the meantime, I tried to go about life as I had known it before I willingly gave away a vial of blood to learn my BRCA status. To and from yoga I went, day after day, unable to be in the present moment or fully relax. Weekends were spent in yoga teacher training, my mind somewhere else, trying to predict my response to a negative result and a positive result. After so many years of absorbing every fact I could about BRCA mutations, testing and preventative measures, I honestly had no idea how I would respond to a negative result any more than I knew the response a positive result would affect me. It was a great, grey, unknown that I was staring down as the weeks passed.
The day before the big appointment, I was incapable of doing anything but cooking and distracting myself by talking to friends about anything but the impending appointment. I tried studying, reading, listening to music, but my mind kept coming back to the same place, my test results. It is hard to describe this period because it's something you understand only if you've been there yourself. As author Jessica Queller was told during her experience, "people often describe their experience with BRCA testing as their life before testing and then their life after". A shift occurs after the testing that changes the pattern, rhythm, and flow of your life. For better or worse, your life will never be the same, and you thought that tidbit only applied to marriage. How naive.
Instead, I became unable to focus on the present moment. Sure, I went to the grocery store, made dinner and had conversations but they were disjointed. Sometimes I blanked out in the middle and couldn't remember where I was supposed to go from that last item, step or word. The test would take three weeks to receive the results. In the meantime, I tried to go about life as I had known it before I willingly gave away a vial of blood to learn my BRCA status. To and from yoga I went, day after day, unable to be in the present moment or fully relax. Weekends were spent in yoga teacher training, my mind somewhere else, trying to predict my response to a negative result and a positive result. After so many years of absorbing every fact I could about BRCA mutations, testing and preventative measures, I honestly had no idea how I would respond to a negative result any more than I knew the response a positive result would affect me. It was a great, grey, unknown that I was staring down as the weeks passed.
The day before the big appointment, I was incapable of doing anything but cooking and distracting myself by talking to friends about anything but the impending appointment. I tried studying, reading, listening to music, but my mind kept coming back to the same place, my test results. It is hard to describe this period because it's something you understand only if you've been there yourself. As author Jessica Queller was told during her experience, "people often describe their experience with BRCA testing as their life before testing and then their life after". A shift occurs after the testing that changes the pattern, rhythm, and flow of your life. For better or worse, your life will never be the same, and you thought that tidbit only applied to marriage. How naive.
