Queller - Pretty is what changes: impossible choices, the breast cancer gene and how I defied my destiny

In Pretty Is What Changes Jessica Queller journeys to the place where the cutting edge of biotechnology meets real life and real patients. Eleven months after her mother succumbed to cancer, Queller had herself tested for the BRCA "breast cancer" gene mutation. The results came back virulently positive, putting her at a terrifyingly elevated risk of developing breast cancer before the age of fifty and ovarian cancer in her lifetime. Thirty-five, unattached, and yearning for marriage and a family of her own, she faced an agonizing choice: a lifetime of vigilant screenings and a commitment to fight the disease when caught, or its radical alternativea prophylactic double mastectomy that would effectively restore life to her, even as it would challenge her most closely held beliefs about body image, identity, and sexuality.

Informed, courageous, and armed with wit and style, Queller takes us on an odyssey from the frontiers of science to the private interiors of a womans life. Without flinching, she answers a question we may one day face for ourselves: if genes can map our fate and their dark knowledge is offered to us, will we willingly trade innocence for the information that could save our lives?

September 2004

Glorious California light poured through the sunroof as I made the left turn, pulled up to the gate, smiled, and flashed my badge. Joe the security guard winked and bellowed, Morning, Jess. The gate rose, and off I drove, the whole of the Warner Bros. lot spread before me. This routine never failed to give me a thrill.

When I was a little girl, my mother used to tell me I looked like Natalie Wood. At first I didnt know who she was, so my mom rented Rebel Without a Cause and West Side Story on Betamax and brought them home. Natalie Wood was so prettydid my mother really think I looked like her? I watched the films over and over, straining to see a resemblance. My mother fixed this mythical and misguided ideal in my head: I was supposed to look like a starlet. Id put on a white nightgown and sing Tonight into the mirror, assessing myself critically. Even at ten, I knew I fell short of Natalie Woods beauty. But I certainly wasnt going to point this out to my mother.

My mothers projections were informed by the fact that she did look like a movie star. As a child, Id curl up on the bathroom floor every morning and watch as she got ready for work. My mother would sit at her mirrored vanity table, carefully applying false eyelashes (a glamorous look from the 1960s that she continued well into the 1970s). Shed tell me how important it was for a woman to have a career, but, she added, a woman also had to be beautiful. All girls are pretty when theyre young, shed say. Once they grow up its another story. Luckily you and your sister have my genes.

Now, more than twenty years later, I was working on the Warner Bros. lot where my beloved Natalie Wood had filmed Rebel Without a Cause. I acted blas in front of my peers, but privately I found this astounding.

Though Id wound up in Hollywood, I didnt work on the side of the camera my mother had destined for meI was a writer on the hit television series Gilmore Girls. It took me a couple of decades to shed the notion that I was expected to measure up to movie stars. Id finally achieved the balance and perspective to feel whole just as I was. But Id never lose the capacity to be dazzled by Hollywood legends.

I drove past the steel suspension bridge, a perfect facsimile of an El train platform, where the doctors of ER bundled up against imagined Chicago cold, past the facade of a speakeasy covered in fake snow, and then I hit the jackpot: George Clooney and Don Cheadle playing a game of one-on-one at a netless hoop.

I made a right onto a street with a sign that read WELCOME TO WARNER VILLAGE . Neat rows of clapboard houses with emerald lawns and big shady trees lined each side of the street. To all appearances, it was a suburban neighborhood in New England. In reality, the exteriors of the houses were used for filming, while the interiors were divided into writers offices. Gilmore Girls occupied two houses in the center of the lane.

I swung into my parking space and spotted some writers from another show indulging in the fantasy of our neighborhood by playing stickball up the street. As I cut the engine, my friend and fellow Gilmore Girls writer Rebecca sped into the parking space in front of mine. We stumbled out of our cars like upscale bag ladiesteetering on high heels, wearing dramatic sun hats and shades, weighted down with bags of scripts, notebooks, laptops. We saw our own crazy image reflected in the other and broke into laughter. Individually, we were able to maintain the semblance of being adult professionals; together, we regressed into a pair of mischievous twelve-year-olds playing dress-up.

Rebecca was twenty-nine, tall and striking with long, pale blond hair; she had the carriage and confidence of a young Kate Hepburn and a Harvard pedigree to back it up. I was thirty-four, brunette, more of the girl next door. There was no need to appear jaded to Rebecca. Our chemistry allowed us to be our most vulnerable, true selves. We also shared clothes and lipsticks and finished each others sentences. Though we mocked ourselves for our excesses, we usually had far too much fun together to care.

Did you get my message? she asked.

Ive been trying to call you from the road .

Ive been trying to call you from the road .

What did you say? I asked.

That Im late and I need you to cover for me.

Youre not late, I said, glancing at the time on my cell phone. Its nine thirty.

I am late and so are youwere gathering this morning at

Nine! With Lorelai pitches. I forgot.

I made up some pitches on the freeway while spilling my coffee and nearly crashing into one of those little VW Bugs with the stupid bud vase.

Was there a bud in it?

A plastic rose. Rebecca started walking and I fell in beside her. If youre going to buy a car with a built-in bud vase, you should at least make the effort to stick a live piece of greenery in it. This is Californiapull something off a tree.

Look, I said, pointing to our bosss parking space, Amys cars not here yet.

Oh, good. She sighed. I need to call the dog-walker. She took Nina to the vet.

Whats wrong with Nina?

She ate a box of doughnuts.

Chocolate?

Assorted.

Whats the plan for tonight?

Eight thirty reservation at the Edendale.

Perfect.

A softball rolled by our feet and one of the writers trotted over to retrieve it. He was a Harvard guy whod been on the Lampoon with Rebecca. As they chatted, I walked up the porch steps and headed to my office.

The writers PA, a boy of about twenty, greeted me with a bright hello and eagerly imparted the days news: Our boss was running late and we wouldnt be gathering in the writers room until ten. I thanked him for the update. He smiled shyly and I caught a sudden glimpse of myself through his eyes. To this kid who was paid next to nothing to answer the phones and make the coffee runsall for the chance to be in proximity to those who were creating televisionmy life probably looked charmed. Of course it had only been a few years since I was scrambling to pay my rent and chasing a literary agent to his tennis lesson, imploring him to read my work. Now I breezed in every morning, a young woman with a high-powered, high-paying job writing for a popular TV show. But I was far more battle-worn than I appeared; I had recently experienced profound loss, and the interior of my life was not anywhere as neat as the facade. That said, there was no denying that I had been showered with great good fortune.