Jess’s Story

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