Mayo clinic

Even though I’m a healthy 27-year-old woman right now, I’m going to have both my breasts removed as a preventative measure because I’m a member of a very exclusive club: Like one out of 1,000 women, I have a genetic mutation that dramatically ups my chance of cancer. My gene — called the BRCA1 gene — gives me a 40 percent to 85 percent lifetime risk of developing breast cancer, and a risk of ovarian cancer that is 30 percent to 70 percent higher than women who do not have this gene, according to the Mayo Clinic.