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Accepted Paper:

Truncated time; experiences of surgically induced menopause amongst women at risk of hereditary breast and ovarian cancer  
Alison Witchard (Australian National University )

Paper short abstract:

I explore the experiences of young women at risk of hereditary breast and ovarian cancer as they make decide to undergo prophylactic surgery and surgically induced menopause. I consider how premature menopause disrupts one’s sense of temporality and ageing as embodied time horizons become disordered

Paper long abstract:

With the advent of genetic testing, individuals can now be identified as positive for biomarkers of cancer susceptibility, such as the BRCA1/2 mutations linked to hereditary breast and ovarian cancer (HBOC). While having the mutation does not necessarily result in cancer, the lifetime risk for women with either BRCA mutation to develop breast cancer is estimated between 55-85% and 10-60% for ovarian cancer. Current risk-management processes recommended for women at risk of HBOC includes a bilateral salpingo-oophorectomy before the age of 45, resulting in the onset of premature menopause. Based on two years of ethnographic fieldwork within genetic cancer clinics and support groups in Australia and the United States, my research considers the ways in which these women's experiences of ageing, that is, the narrative or plot-like unfolding of a person's life and those around them, are thrown into confusion by the need to undergo a surgery resulting in early onset menopause. I explore how these women's understandings of their past experiences, present time and future possibilities are exposed as intrinsically uncertain as they decide whether to have a surgery that could save their life but accelerate their ageing in profoundly embodied ways. I focus on how these women are faced with a certain time-consciousness of life as lived -- undergoing surgery may help them reach old-age cancer free, a opportunity not afforded to their own mothers and grandmothers, but necessitates early-onset menopause, an event often considered to mark a transition stage in a woman's life, sooner than desired.

Panel Tem04
Queering temporality: rethinking time in/from the anthropology of ageing
  Session 1