Today I find that the consequences for my dominant left hand may be more severe than bumping elbows at the dinner table. In fact, it may kill me.
According to a study published in The Washington Post this week, “left-handed women are more than twice as likely as right-handed women to develop breast cancer before going through menopause.” The study was not definitive, but, having tested other lifestyle and background factors that could play a role, Dutch researchers were left with little doubt of the correlation.
The article reported this without emotion. After all, it is not front-page news. Most women are right-handed, and undoubtedly they skimmed over the morning headline in between their lattes and English muffins. Cancer research will not change drastically, and no one will call for a cure for the dominant left hand.
But suddenly, my mortality occurs to me as never before. Considering this study, as inconclusive as it may be, and the fact that I have a history of breast cancer on both sides of my family, I need no technologically advanced tests to tell me that this disease is a real possibility for me. Flashes of Terms of Endearment and Stepmom come to mind as I envision my future children huddled by my bedside, tears streaming. Worse are my parents’ real memories of watching their loved ones, my loved ones, suffer.
It seems unfair that the left-handed women of the world are bound together by a trait we always considered trivial, a trick of inheritance no more influential than freckles or a widow’s peak. Because of our quirk, we must worry about the risk of cancer long before our golden years, even before middle age. I don’t plan to fret away the hours and minutes in anticipation of an untimely end. This is not an issue of adolescent angst, but it does force the future into a more concrete perspective.
At this point, though, all I have is hope and the benefit of ever-improving research. Imaginis.com, a website devoted to giving information on breast cancer, reports that deaths have been greatly reduced within the last 15 years, “with the largest decreases among young women.” Breastcancer.org cautions an increase in risk for those with family members who have contracted breast cancer, but only about 15 percent of women who contract the cancer have any family history.
While relating the news of my impending doom to a friend, she interrupted me with, “I was reading an article on breast cancer yesterday, and I suddenly thought, ‘One of my friends is going to get breast cancer.”
This prediction did not, admittedly, decrease my stress. She’s probably right in saying that one of her friends will get breast cancer. And it may happen to me. But it may not.
