It's very important for people particularly women to test for BRCA. Men with the gene should alert female relatives. For those women that have the gene there are non surgical options today to prevent some of these cancers. Highly recommend this documentary from PBS on the topic as well: https://inheritance-brcafilm.com/pbs-documentary
But life had other plans
81–90 of 247 posts
Re: But life had other plans
#82As a recent medical school graduate and a technical founder of a medical education startup, wow. This is an "edge case" for lack of a better phrase and is the kind of stuff that becomes widespread as lore or an interesting story - at least I'd like to think so. Thanks for sharing your story and I wish you the best with what's next.
IMHO the surest way to get pregnant is to be told by a doctor that you can't.
All because the kind of people who visit a fertility specialist have lower fertility stats than the kind of people who don't (duh). The average practitioner doesn't really excel at distinguishing between correlation and causation.
Re: But life had other plans
#83I appreciate and quite love the story, and congrats all around. But this idea of putting awful GIFs into a rather serious and interesting story has got to stop. It did nothing but cheapen and interfere with the story being told. Reaction GIFs are for uninteresting or ineloquent people. Just write how you feel!
https://giphy.com/gifs/robert-downey-jr-sigh-confused-116a8z...
Re: But life had other plans
#84Re: But life had other plans
#85Several years ago my wife and I agreed we'd actively start making a baby and quit contraceptives. She was on the pill (progestogen-only) and we'd been using it for the better part of three years. Worked fine, she took it religiously at the same time every day. So we agreed to quit, and the next day she comes to me, awkwardly, saying "It worked!" half-jokingly. I stared at the pregnancy test, positive and unambiguous…
I thought the contraceptive doesn't prevent the pregnancy but just causes the body to menstruate regardless. So she might have been pregnant many times but this time it wasn't terminated by mensuration? (I'm certainly not very confident in my understanding.)
> The birth control pill works by stopping sperm from joining with an egg. When sperm joins with an egg it’s called fertilization.
> The hormones in the pill safely stop ovulation. No ovulation means there’s no egg for sperm to fertilize, so pregnancy can’t happen.
> The pill’s hormones also thicken the mucus on the cervix. This thicker cervical mucus blocks sperm so it can’t swim to an egg — kind of like a sticky security guard.
https://www.plannedparenthood.org/learn/birth-control/birth-...
Re: But life had other plans
#86In my late 30's, with the only indication that we were fertile at all having been an ectopic pregnancy many years before, we gave up. We had wanted kids, but our lives were good, with nieces and nephews we love. A few months before my 40th birthday - and the pandemic - SURPRISE! We are currently the proud but exhausted old parents of an increasingly rambunctious toddler.
Re: But life had other plans
#87What about injuries to the baby due to medicine, pain killers, or alcohol consumption? Could this be a problem?
Probably no riskier than being born into a poor household or in developing countries etc. Which is to say that you try to control what you can, and learn to live with the rest.
Re: But life had other plans
#88It reminds me of a joke we have in Spain about unlikely pregnancies. It ends with “If you got pregnant, we’re calling the baby McGyver”
Re: But life had other plans
#89Several years ago my wife and I agreed we'd actively start making a baby and quit contraceptives. She was on the pill (progestogen-only) and we'd been using it for the better part of three years. Worked fine, she took it religiously at the same time every day. So we agreed to quit, and the next day she comes to me, awkwardly, saying "It worked!" half-jokingly. I stared at the pregnancy test, positive and unambiguous…
Re: But life had other plans
#90Does anyone know a decent data source for these kind of statistics?