My Jewish DNA: humour, trauma and BRCA

In 2020, when Melbourne was part-way through COVID lockdowns, I thought a nice way to break up the dark, isolating, never-ending period of suffering would be to get a DNA test.

The test was to determine whether I’m destined to get cancer.

If that’s not the most Jewish thing you’ve ever heard – piling suffering onto existing suffering – I don’t know what is. Of course, it’s only now, five years later, that I can even begin to apply some humour to what was the most devastating news of my life.

I was BRCA1 positive, the doctors told me on a Telehealth call. Why did I do that call sober?

My therapist is nervous that I use humour as a coping mechanism. To that I say, does she know how the Jews survived centuries of exiles, pogroms, a Holocaust, October 7? It’s culturally on-brand and, my god, a hell of a lot better than other things I could be using (but I could still do with a drink).

Since learning about my BRCA1 gene, I’ve been getting annual MRIs to screen for breast cancer. Devastatingly, early detection of ovarian cancer is not a thing. My risk starts to grow when I turn 35 in November.

Has the medical world invented Viagra? Yes. But despite millions (or maybe billions) of dollars used to fund medical research, ovarian cancer is a silent killer. In 2024, there were over 2,200 deaths from gynecological cancer in Australia alone.