Deborah has the now-infamous 'Angelina Jolie' breast cancer gene. This is her story.

I fucking hate cancer.

I don’t often swear but when comes to cancer I really feel the need to.

For those of us outside of cancer it’s a reality check.

It makes some people sad, some people concerned, some people fearful.

For me, it makes me angry.

 I’ve written before about my oldest friend, Bridget and her ovarian cancer battle. And that makes me angry.

She doesn’t deserve getting in on the wrong side of the gene pool. She never deserved to feel tired, or sick or bone achingly nauseous.

She didn’t deserve any of it.

The thing that gets me is that she isn’t angry – I can’t speak for her so I am only guessing – and she certainly isn’t pious and at peace with the blasted thing, but she’s not angry. The rest of us are for her.

So when I read the cancer stats that came out last week – once more I was angry.

Red hot anger.

Once more I wanted to scream at cancer. Once more I wanted to ask why? Why can we do so much in this world and yet we have this intolerable disease in our society. What really made me mad about this research was the breast cancer statistics.

Deaths from breast cancer are on the increase; they’re up 14 per cent from 2008. In fact, each year in Australia more than 14,940 women discover they have breast cancer. It is the most common cause of cancer death among women.

The report last week from the World Health Organisation’s International Agency for Research on Cancer show breast cancer killed 522,000 women last year. And 1.7 million women were newly diagnosed with breast cancer last year, up more than 20 per cent from 2008.

That made me angry.

So when I spoke to a breast cancer survivor Deborah Reid, I expected her to be angry.

But again – another person who has suffered the damn thing – and another who isn’t angry. What Deborah is is fearful – fearful for her eight-year-old daughter. Fearful for her grandchildren when she has them.

You see Deborah has the now-infamous Angelina Jolie gene – the BRCA mutation.

It was the simple act of breastfeeding that alerted Deborah to a lump in her breast. It was 2009, she had a gorgeous six-month old, Lachy, and she felt something unusual. She went to her GP.

“She said it would be nothing, it would be fine and she sent me off for an ultrasound.”

It wasn’t fine.

She was sitting at her desk at work and the phone call came to go straight into the surgery. And to bring support.

She couldn’t get in touch with her husband and so she took a friend from work. “My GP said you have breast cancer and all these other terms that didn’t mean much at the time. She said I needed to see a specialist straight away. Because of that I was like oh this is super duper bad,” Deborah says.

Deborah says she was overwhelmed, and when she told her husband they were both just stunned.

What was hard at first was that he simply didn’t believe the magnitude of the situation.

“I had to get him to come to all the appointments so it made it real for him. I also needed him big time to lean on it was so traumatic.”

Because Deborah’s Aunt and Grandmother had breast cancer there was suspicion there was the BRCA gene on her maternal side. It turned out it was her father’s family carrying the gene mutation. Even though no one in his family had ever had breast cancer.

With two sisters – both of them then had to be tested. One, Michelle was positive. The other, Chloe was negative.

Both Deborah and her sister have had double mastectomies and hysterectomies.Surprisingly, she says that was one of the worst parts.

“It was confronting it meant I couldn’t have any more kids. It was a door slamming shut and then having to go through menopause and having had breast cancer I can’t do anything about it I just have to go through all the symptoms.”

Four years on from the initial diagnosis, for Deborah and her family, life is good.

She has six-month checks which are always nerve wracking. But the biggest challenge she feels lies ahead. In ten years time her little girl, Annabella can be tested to see if she carries the gene.

“I don’t know when I tell her but there will be a time when we have to. I am just hoping by then there will be cures or some better way of treatment so she doesn’t have to go through it.”

We are all here hoping with you Deb.

If you or someone you care about has recently been diagnosed with breast cancer, contact Breast Cancer Network Australia (BCNA) for a My Journey Kit, a free information resource for newly diagnosed women – 1800 500 258 or www.bcna.org.au