Genetic Testing Can Be a Trying Process
Genetic Testing Can Be a Trying Process
May 30, 2000 -- The threat of heart disease, cancer, and a host of other skull-and-crossbones conditions looms over everyone's lives. There's always a chance they may strike. But what if the chances of one of them striking were far greater for you than for most people? Would you want to know?
Joan did. Her mother died of ovarian cancer; her grandmother had cancer, too, as did some of her aunts. Joan's sister got breast cancer, twice -- and, after undergoing genetic testing, found out she had a mutation in a gene called BRAC1, which signals a predisposition to breast and ovarian cancer. Joan, the 42-year-old mother of two boys, decided to have the testing, too, knowing there was a 50-50 chance she also carried the mutation. As it turned out, she did.
"I pretty much expected it," says Joan, who spoke to WebMD on condition that her real name not be used. "I think, from the people I know that have been tested, they all expect to test positive. But it hits you in the stomach when you hear the real results. ... I cried on and off for about two weeks. I would say, other than my mother's death, it probably was one of the worst times of my life."
A new study shows that, although most people who have this increasingly common type of testing are able to predict how they will feel when they get bad news, some -- particularly those who have had cancer before -- underestimate how distressed they will be. These patients, the researchers suggest, could benefit from counseling to help them cope.
"We were interested to know if people would be thrown eventually by receipt of their results, if they wouldn't be able to anticipate what they would feel," study co-author Andrea Farkas Patenaude, PhD, tells WebMD. "But in fact, what we found was that the majority of the people who had not [previously] had cancer, who were asked to anticipate their feelings, were pretty good at doing that." Patenaude is with Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and an assistant professor of psychology in the psychiatry department at Harvard Medical School.
Genetic Testing Can Be a Trying Process
May 30, 2000 -- The threat of heart disease, cancer, and a host of other skull-and-crossbones conditions looms over everyone's lives. There's always a chance they may strike. But what if the chances of one of them striking were far greater for you than for most people? Would you want to know?
Joan did. Her mother died of ovarian cancer; her grandmother had cancer, too, as did some of her aunts. Joan's sister got breast cancer, twice -- and, after undergoing genetic testing, found out she had a mutation in a gene called BRAC1, which signals a predisposition to breast and ovarian cancer. Joan, the 42-year-old mother of two boys, decided to have the testing, too, knowing there was a 50-50 chance she also carried the mutation. As it turned out, she did.
"I pretty much expected it," says Joan, who spoke to WebMD on condition that her real name not be used. "I think, from the people I know that have been tested, they all expect to test positive. But it hits you in the stomach when you hear the real results. ... I cried on and off for about two weeks. I would say, other than my mother's death, it probably was one of the worst times of my life."
A new study shows that, although most people who have this increasingly common type of testing are able to predict how they will feel when they get bad news, some -- particularly those who have had cancer before -- underestimate how distressed they will be. These patients, the researchers suggest, could benefit from counseling to help them cope.
"We were interested to know if people would be thrown eventually by receipt of their results, if they wouldn't be able to anticipate what they would feel," study co-author Andrea Farkas Patenaude, PhD, tells WebMD. "But in fact, what we found was that the majority of the people who had not [previously] had cancer, who were asked to anticipate their feelings, were pretty good at doing that." Patenaude is with Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and an assistant professor of psychology in the psychiatry department at Harvard Medical School.
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