The Deepest CutThe author of a new memoir talks about her decision to have her breasts removed to lower her cancer risk, and her desire to be a mother.Stephanie Queller was an unreconstructed glamour girl who worked as a fashion designer and wore Manolo Blahniks and rhinestone-studded tank tops. Cancer, first in her breasts and then in her ovaries, destroyed her body, leaving her unable to eat or care for herself, before killing her at the age of 58. Eleven months later her daughter Jessica, a writer for the TV show "Gossip Girl," tested positive for the breast cancer gene mutation BRCA1, at the age of 34. Queller learned that she had an 87 percent chance of developing breast cancer and a 44 percent chance of developing ovarian cancer. At the time she was hoping to get married and start a family. Instead she had to decide whether to remove her breasts and ovaries to reduce her odds of developing the disease. In her new memoir, "Pretty Is What Changes," Queller writes that "deciding whether to go to law school or take one's chances as a writer is a hard decision … Deciding to cut off your breasts when you don't have cancer and possibly never will? To me, that was insanity." Yet she ultimately decided to have a prophylactic double mastectomy, reducing her risk for breast cancer to just 3 percent, and plans to have her ovaries removed before she turns 40. (She's now 38.) Her sister Danielle also tested positive for BRCA and had a prophylactic mastectomy as well. Queller spoke to NEWSWEEK's Jennie Yabroff about her choice, her plans for children and her hopes for the future of breast cancer research.
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