3 sisters opt for mastectomies to avert cancer
None of them was sick, but their mom battled disease four times
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Sisters opt for mastectomies Dec. 20: TODAY anchor Meredith Vieira reports on three women who stuck together and went through with this preventive surgery due to their family’s long history of cancer. Today Show Health |
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Thanks to genetic testing, cancer is not always something you have to live in fear of. As three sisters from the state of Washington want the world to know, sometimes you can get it before it gets you.
Stephanie Cone and her sisters Terri and Kim Meche did just that, they told TODAY co-host Meredith Vieira on Thursday. It was just 17 days after all three had undergone double mastectomies on the same day at the University of Washington Medical Center.
None had cancer, but their mother, Richie Meche, had gone through four battles with breast, colorectal and ovarian cancer over more than 15 years and eight other relatives had had cancer, including her mother, grandmother and six sisters. Genetic testing confirmed what the family history suggested — all three of Richie Meche’s daughters had a gene that made them susceptible to breast and ovarian cancer.
“We wanted to be preventive,” Kim Meche said in the TODAY studio in New York in explaining the decision they all made together.
“This is an amazing trio of women — very strong women,” Dr. Nancy Snyderman, NBC’s chief medical editor, told Vieira. “These smart women sat down and said, ‘You know, the pieces of the puzzle look like we might be at risk.’ And then they did two very smart things: They went in to get blood tests and they sat down with a genetic counselor. There has to be a very methodical approach to this.”
The sisters’ story with cancer goes back 16 years to when their mother was treated for ovarian cancer, the same cancer that attacked so many other women in the family. Doctors at the time told the sisters they should probably have hysterectomies once they were through having children. Terri and Stephanie, who have five children, including three daughters, between them, underwent the surgery.
Kim delayed and was diagnosed several years later with ovarian cancer. When doctors went in to remove it, they found her fallopian tubes had become cancerous.
By then, genetic testing had advanced to where doctors could identify a number of genes that were markers for high risk of breast and ovarian cancer. After debating what to do, the women decided to get tested — all three came back with a mutation to the BRCA1 gene that is one of the markers.
‘This is prophylactic’
Having the gene isn’t a guarantee of getting the disease.
“You can be positive for the gene and not get cancer, and you can not have the gene and still get cancer,” Snyderman said.
“Our genetic counselor laid out what those options were,” said Terri. Among them were increased testing and vigilance and prophylactic mastectomies. The sisters took their time weighing their decision.
“Our decision to have this surgery came gradually,” Terri said. “It was a fully year after our first test that we even began to consider to have this surgery.”
They are exceptionally close, and when they decided to have the surgery, they were determined to do it together. When the day came, they went to the hospital together, taking their turns to go under Dr. Kristine Calhoun’s scalpel while their mother kept vigil over the 15 hours it took to complete all three surgeries.
Biopsies on the removed tissue showed that none of the women had cancer, which Snyderman said was good news. The surgery isn’t to find cancer, but to head it off.
“This is prophylactic,” she said. “You don’t want to find cancer.”
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