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Impossible Choices, The Breast Cancer Gene, and How I Defied My Destiny
Spiegel & Grau
April 2008
On Sale: April 1, 2008
256 pages
ISBN: 0385520409
EAN: 9780385520409
Hardcover
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Non-Fiction Memoir
A timely, affecting memoir from the front lines of medical science: When genetics can predict how we may die, how then do we decide how to live?
Eleven months after her mother succumbs to cancer, Jessica Queller has herself tested for the BRCA βbreast cancerβ gene mutation. The results come back positive, putting her at a terrifyingly elevated risk of developing breast cancer before the age of fifty and ovarian cancer in her lifetime. Thirty-four, unattached, and yearning for marriage and a family of her own, Queller faces an agonizing choice: a lifetime of vigilant screenings and a commitment to fight the disease when caught, or its radical alternativeβa prophylactic double mastectomy that would effectively restore life to her, even as it would challenge her most closely held beliefs about body image, identity, and sexuality.
Superbly informed and armed with surprising wit and style, Queller takes us on an odyssey from the frontiers of science to the private interiors of a womanβs life. Pretty Is What Changes is an absorbing account of how she reaches her courageous decision and its physical, emotional, and philosophical consequences. It is also an incredibly moving story of what we inherit from our parents and how we fashion it into the stuff of our own lives, of mothers and daughters and sisters, and of the sisterhood that forms when women are united in battle against a common enemy.
Without flinching, Jessica Queller answers a question we may one day face for ourselves: If genes can map our fates and their dark knowledge is offered to us, will we willingly trade innocence for the information that could save our lives?
 Media BuzzTavis Smiley - May 28, 2008
Good Morning America - April 2, 2008
Morning Edition - April 1, 2008
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