Former Bachelor star Lesley Murphy has been very open about her double mastectomy after she tested positive for the BRA 2 gene, but that doesn’t mean it was an easy experience for her.
The 31-year-old opened up about receiving the devastating phone call to Us Weekly and what it was like to face something so scary while still being so young.
“It was a sobering moment. I remember kind of turning the music off and just sitting there with that news,” she said.
“My heart kind of sank because I remember, a week prior to that call, I went in to get this simple blood test, and my mom said, ‘You know, your two sisters have already tested for this. You’re home for a week or so, you should go do it.’
She continued, “And I said, ‘You’re right. I should get the blood test. It’ll be nothing.’ And the last thing she said to me was, ‘It will be negative.’”
The Bachelor Winter Games star’s mother, who was diagnosed with breast cancer and is the reason Lesley got tested, felt as though it was her fault.
“[She] felt so guilty because she essentially passed down to me,” she explained.
“I have said this before and I’ll say it all day, that if that’s the worst I get from the genes I’ve received, then I’ll take it all day, because my parents have given me so much.”
She continued, “It took a lot of nerve and courage and gut to undergo that surgery, but now it’s all taken care of and I’m so glad I’m on the other side of it.”
Though undergoing a double mastectomy was definitely scary, Lesley is ultimately thankful for the journey.
“I was taken aback a few different times during the process, and the first time [I saw my new appearance] was the day after the double mastectomy. When I caught a glimpse of what I looked like through a FaceTime call … I will never forget,” she said.
“I looked like a corpse. I looked like I had been in a bear fight and lost, and it’s so interesting to know that you can look that bad and you can look that bruised and beaten and heal so incredibly well as if nothing bad ever happened.”
She continued, “The human body really is amazing and I think that’s what I found so neat about the whole experience. I mean, I really did begin to love that whole journey because it was kind of like I was in my own little Grey’s Anatomy episode.”
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