<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8" standalone="yes"?><oembed><version><![CDATA[1.0]]></version><provider_name><![CDATA[The Dish]]></provider_name><provider_url><![CDATA[http://dish.andrewsullivan.com]]></provider_url><author_name><![CDATA[Andrew Sullivan]]></author_name><author_url><![CDATA[https://dish.andrewsullivan.com/author/sullydish/]]></author_url><title><![CDATA[Sick With Uncertainty]]></title><type><![CDATA[link]]></type><html><![CDATA[<p>Lizzie Stark, author of <em><a href="http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/1613748604/ref=as_li_qf_sp_asin_il_tl?ie=UTF8&amp;camp=1789&amp;creative=9325&amp;creativeASIN=1613748604&amp;linkCode=as2&amp;tag=thdi09-20&amp;linkId=EQ2Z4YUBBMFMAR7X" target="_blank">Pandora&#8217;s DNA: Tracing the Breast Cancer Genes Through History, Science, and One Family Tree</a></em>, <a href="http://www.newrepublic.com/article/119798/living-brca-breast-cancer-gene%20">discusses</a> the maddening ambiguity that comes with having a <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BRCA_mutation">BRCA mutation</a>:</p>
<blockquote><p>As a woman positive for a BRCA mutation, I bear this uncertainty doubly, both because I am frequently screened for cancer and am therefore more likely to receive ambiguous results, but also because the BRCA test itself is a sort of screening for pre-cancer. I may not have any precancerous lesions inside me, but I have been told that I have a potentially life-threatening mutation inside every cell of my body. After my genetic results came back, I no longer felt like the physically healthy twenty-seven-year-old newlywed that I was. Instead I became someone who went to the doctor more than ten times a year, like a good patient, to make sure I wasn’t sick yet. I lived in a state of betweenness, in a no-man’s-land straddling the worlds of sick and healthy.</p></blockquote>
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