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Two days after her 30th birthday in
2017, Jess Braude was riding high.
She had just enjoyed wonderful
birthday celebrations with beloved
family and friends and was looking
forward to a year of happiness,
love and joy with her childhood
sweetheart Travers Marony, also 30 at
the time. Neither of them could have
imagined their world would be turned
upside down just two days later.
But then, the unthinkable
happened. Doctors found a lump in
her breast.
‘It was two days after my birthday- can you believe it?’ she asks with
a wry smile. ‘I mean, I knew there
may have always been a chance – I
discovered that I had the BRCA2
gene in October 2016, so I was having
six-monthly testing anyway. But to
find out so close to my birthday was a
bit of a rude shock!
‘On my second-ever test in July
2017, they found a one-centimetre
lump. It turned out to be breast
cancer, specifically triple-negative
breast cancer. Triple-negative breast
cancer is a cancer that tests negative
for oestrogen, progesterone and HER2
receptors.
‘Put simply, it’s the worst kind, as
it’s considered to be more aggressive
and have a poorer prognosis than
other types of breast cancer, mainly
because there are no targeted
medicines that treat triple-negative
breast cancer.’
If there was a silver lining, it was
probably that Jess and Travers had
been together for over a decade,
so the conversation about fertility
preservation wasn’t as highly
pressured as it might be for those
who’d just started a relationship, or
indeed, those who are single.
‘Travers and I had been together
for 12 years, so we were in a lifelong Jess and Travers remain positive and bouyant