I met Michelle Zimmerman at an event for femtech startups last year. It was the kind of thing where you mingle and work your way around the room, but when Michelle and I started talking, we stayed talking for a long time.

We have a bunch of things in common: we’re both Canadian, and we’re both ‘previvors’ - a term and a concept that Michelle’s company, ‘Previvor Edge’, a cancer prevention and early detection clinic, is built on.

Even after my mom was diagnosed with ovarian cancer, it took me years to make the decision to get a genetics test. The exact moment when I found out I was positive for a gene mutation that predisposed me to cancer is documented in this episode, all the way back in season 1.

That genetics test kick started a series of events: removal of my fallopian tubes and ovaries, which in turn led to surgical menopause, and eventually HRT to manage those debilitating symptoms. It changed the way I live, and think about my body, and women’s health more broadly.

Michelle’s experience mirrored mine. “I've been steeped in this space for almost a decade, and even I get anxious when I think about cancer. I got anxious when I took my own genetic test, even though I knew that that information would be empowering, because cancer is scary.”

And she explained: the question isn't whether you should get tested, but whether the information you get back is actionable: will knowing change what you do, how you live your life?

Michelle’s company has developed an assessment “to give people a quick pulse on where they are at with respect to their cancer risk” which you might find a useful starting point if you want to embark on this journey yourself.

If you’re a previvor too, I’d love to hear your experience.​

What else is going on with me:

• I heard from several of you after my last newsletter on pain - thank you for sharing your stories and your thoughts on this (and also well wishes!). I’m still digging around for the origin story of the pain scale, but this episode is in the pipeline. Please keep sharing your stories with me, and send me a voice memo if you’re open to me using that story on the show. Do you remember a time the pain scale worked or didn’t work for you? I put this question out to my LinkedIn network, and Alison MacAdam (a fantastic audio editor I worked with) wrote this:

Join the conversation on LinkedIn, or reply to this email with your experiences of the pain scale.

• We're talking about previvorship, but survivorship is also very much on my mind at the moment: my mom was back in hospital in January, for a whole 10 days, and this time around I stayed with her - it felt like 10 months. I think survivorship sometimes looks like this, going in-and-out of hospital regularly.

During that time, when I couldn't sleep at night, I would walk the hallways of Victoria General to get my step count up, and developed a familiarity - maybe a Stockholm Syndrome-like affection for this old, weird relic of a hospital.

I spent last month watching medicine at work in so many ways, and in the quieter moments it’s given me much to think about for material on Overlooked in the coming months. Mom is home from the hospital now, and recovering in body, mind and spirit.

Wishing you the best of health,

Golda
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