When Somaya Ishaq of Irvine was told she had a 95 percent chance of getting ovarian cancer, she decided to be proactive. This is her story:
We had two girls in two years. My husband and I planned on four kids.
But I had complications after the birth of No. 2 in 2015. A year and a half later, I still wasn’t well. I’d studied to be a physician’s assistant before I got married, so when an exam showed a lot of ovarian cysts, my background and my intuition told me there might be something else going on. I got a genetic test done at Hoag Hospital. The test showed that I had a 95 percent probability of getting ovarian cancer due to a mutation in the BRCA2 gene. It also showed a high risk of breast cancer. My family has a huge incidence of cancer— my mom got ovarian cancer after I was born, a 40-year-old cousin has stage 4 colon cancer, many aunts have had cancer.