Its not luck if its cancer

I saw an article yesterday that annoys me to no end. Apparently bad luck is the cause of most cases of cancer. Barbara over at Let Life Happen also blogged about it. Its not luck if its cancer.

This new study looked at many types of cancer but not all and found that its just plain bad luck that accounts for many of these cancers and not environment or behavior or anything else. Its a crap shoot of gene mutations.  Granted smoking can cause lung cancer and sun exposure/tanning beds can cause melanoma.

Thank you for allowing me to be the beneficiary of so much back luck. I am overjoyed. I am so elated I can't stand it.

But on the upside, this does help answer the 'why me' question of every cancer patient. I think there was a line in '50/50' where when diagnosed  he asks 'Why me? I recycle!'.

So I am going to take the upside of this issue. Instead of bad luck, we can now call it an 'unfortunate series of gene mutations' which is what it really is.

Going back to what is known about the BRCA genes and the fact that they account for only 5-10% of all breast cancer cases. The rest are mostly caused by an 'unfortunate series of gene mutations'.

When I was diagnosed with breast cancer, my oncologist suggested I get tested for a specific gene mutation which I didn't have. I did find out that gene mutations can happen to a single person, they don't have to be inherited. You can just get them. I was told while I didn't have the mutation that they tested for, I probably did have another mutation that was similar but had no test yet available.

I can live with that as opposed to luck. Because its not luck if its cancer.