“It’s Cancer…”

Two words.  Simple, yet powerful.

In the fall of 2014, Nicki was diagnosed, having just turned 26, with breast cancer.   Our life was a little tumultuous before then – by that point, I had lost my job and income and we had moved across the country – but that seems like a cake walk after going through those next few months.

What would you say?

Several weeks later, Nicki and I were sitting in a pre-operation room.  She was on the bed with me by her side, only a few minutes to each other before she would be wheeled to the operation room for her bilateral mastectomy and initial breast reconstruction.  We said nothing.  What could we say?  What would you say?  Twenty-six is way too young to be facing breast cancer.  Thirty-one is way too young to be contemplating being a widow.

We didn’t know why it was happening, where it came from, what would happen next…  But that wasn’t all that we found.

Because Nicki was so young, the oncology team performed a genetic test.  They assumed they would find that Nicki had either the BRCA-1 or BRCA-2 gene – two resounding markers for breast cancer that were made infamous by Angelina Jolie and increasingly the genetic source for female breast cancer.  She tested negative for both.

Instead, we found out that Nicki has an incredibly rare genetic mutation on the Tumor Protein sequence 53 or TP-53 for short.  In layman’s terms, most of us are walking around with abnormal cell growths but also have two copies of this TP-53 gene that helps suppress and destroy that cell growth before it becomes cancer.  Nicki only has one functioning copy, making her significantly more susceptible to tumor growths and cancers.

Now her diagnosis wasn’t isolated to breast cancer but could be a slew of cancers – melanoma, brain cancer, sarcomas, etc, etc, etc.  It’s called Li-Fraumeni Syndrome (LFS for short). A whole new world of medical procedures would open up for us.  Another new world would reveal itself to us at the same time.

“You have to change your diet”

Fortunately, Nicki’s cancer was discovered early enough that she was not recommended to go through chemotherapy or radiation – with her LFS, it was thought that the benefits wouldn’t outweigh the risks. Still, it was clear that normal was going to have a new definition.  Once recovery was in swing, our first thoughts were ‘what can we do to help or prevent this disease?’ and ‘what medicines does she or do we need to take?’  Her cancer team gave us a slew of advice, but the most simple of it all was: “Change your diet.”

Um…okay…but shouldn’t we get vitamins and juice cleanses and immuno-therapeutic remedies or something?

“You need to cut out sugars, processed foods, fast foods, synthetic chemicals, and eat more fruits, vegetables, whole grains, and unrefined foods.  Unrefined matters.”

In short, we were sick.