Did you ever wonder as a child what your future would look like? Whether you’d grow up to be a ballerina, or a cardiologist? If you’d bring five kids into the world or live out your days in a secluded cottage?
For Krystal Barter, this picture held just one thing: cancer.
“From a really young age I’ve watched every single woman that I love face cancer,” she said on the podcast Fighting For Fair.
Krystal is in a family that carries the BRCA1 breast cancer gene mutation. The same one made famous by Angelina Jolie. And one that, back then, very little was known about, because a global biotech company owned the rights to test and research the gene.
Listen to Krystal tell her astonishing story on Fighting for Fair:
The BRCA1 is a genetic mutation that is linked to hereditary breast cancer. The disease is not a certainty, but it increases the odds, with around 55 to 65 per cent of women with the BRCA1 mutation developing breast cancer by the age of 70. For those of us without the mutation, the chance is less than 13 per cent.
There was a test to determine whether the gene mutation was present, but for Krystal, ignorance was preferable. Until, at the age of 21, she found out she was pregnant.
“That, to me, was probably exactly what I needed in my life to bring me on the straight and narrow,” she said.
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Fantastic work and thank you, I never knew the story behind "pink hope". 2017 is a new year xx