In today’s episode of the Hidden World of Women, Emma is joined by Sherrie. Sherrie is sharing her experience with preventative breast cancer care. Sherrie’s family has a history of aggressive breast cancers caused by the BRCA gene. After Sherrie’s mum’s own cancer and positive test for this gene, Sherrie knew she wanted to minimise her own risk. A decade ago, Sherrie got a referral to Fiona Stanley’s High Risk breast ward. Until her 40th birthday she had yearly mammograms and MRI’s on her breasts. Emma had many questions about what these are like, as they are under discussed and often only available when you’re over 50. Who would have known that breast MRI’s have a space to put your boobs in?

After her 40th birthday, Sherrie was given further options on ways to manage her breast cancer risks. One of her options was a double mastectomy with reconstruction. Her mum had had a reconstruction with implants and Sherrie had seen the long-term impacts that implants had and knew they weren’t for her. Instead, Sherrie chose to have a DIEP Flap reconstruction. This procedure removed her breast tissue and used fatty stomach tissue to reconstruct the breast. Due to this procedure not being motivated by a preexisting breast cancer diagnosis Sherrie was able to spend four years thinking about her options and what would allow her the greatest quality of life. Her eventual surgery ended up being quite spur of the moment due to a cancelation, Sherrie went from not knowing if she would be able to get it done at all to being booked in next Wednesday. While there were concerns around how that would impact her life in the short term, she took the booking and went into surgery.

The surgery has a 12–18-month recovery time, at time of recording Sherrie is 7 months out and is able to begin thinking about final steps and cosmetic choices. Breast cancer often starts at the nipple, so the surgeons took her nipples and replaced them with skin from her stomach. She is now on a weighting list to get realistic nipple reconstruction surgery and then eventually she will get them tattooed. With the procedures complete Sherrie now has no breast cancer risk because she has no breast tissue!

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