BRCA 1 Gene

Last night Doug met with Dr. Freeze virtually.  She had run some tests recently and one of them discovered the BRCA 1 gene mutation in his DNA.  Doug and I weren't really surprised by the news.  There was a high incident of cancer on the Brucker side of the family and both Doug's mom and his brother Phil had tested positive for the mutation.  From the results today, we learned that Doug was at a slightly higher risk of male breast cancer and prostate cancer.  The scary one that she mentioned was an increase in pancreatic cancer as well.  The good news was that no one in Doug's family had ever had pancreatic cancer, so it may not be a concern at all.

In the end we talked with her about the next steps for Doug.  She said that she would contact a cancer surgeon in Goshen and get his recommendations.  Dr. Freeze was most concerned about Meg as the BRCA 1 gene increased her risk for breast and ovarian cancer up to 60 percent.  Thankfully, Meg and I had already met with a breast cancer doctor and had made tentative plans with her in case Doug did test positive for the gene.  We're still holding out that Meg will test negative for BRCA 1, but right now we're skeptical of that.  This wasn't quite the news we wanted to hear yesterday, but at least we all came up with a plan on how to move forward with the information.