Allison Gilbert's Blog

Read a Q & A with Allison Gilbert about her harrowing 9/11 experience and learn how all sales of Covering Catastrophe support the National September 11 Memorial & Museum.

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Read a Q & A with Allison about writing Always Too Soon.

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My public journey into surgery was inspired by a courageous young woman I’ve never met. I read about her, like so many of us did, in the New York Times. Deborah Lindner tested positive, like I have, for BRCA1, and decided to undergo a mastectomy to head off cancer before it had a chance to take hold. But in the process of ridding her body of breasts, she did so much more. By choosing to share...

The post 40 Days and Counting: My Journey to Prevent Ovarian Cancer appeared first on Allison Gilbert.

Why now? Since I started writing about my journey into surgery, people have been asking me why I chose to do the surgery now. It’s a great question, of course, because it’s a decision I didn’t arrive at quickly or without a great deal of research; I’ve been grappling with it since my mother died of ovarian cancer 11 years ago. My doctor had warned me early on that I should remove my ovaries after...

The post 44 Days and Counting: My Journey to Prevent Ovarian Cancer appeared first on Allison Gilbert.

Last night, I went to a support group for women who have tested positive for BRCA1 and BRCA2. If you didn’t know the reason we were coming together, you would have thought we were gathering for a book club or PTA meeting. We look just like you, except there’s this one little problem with our DNA: a mutation that makes it more likely that we’ll develop breast and ovarian cancer. The meeting takes place once...

The post 49 Days and Counting: My Journey to Prevent Ovarian Cancer appeared first on Allison Gilbert.

Back in April on this blog, I wrote about my ovaries. I wrote about my fear, that one day, the same tiny nuggets that allowed me to give birth to my two young children, might actually kill me. This is not hysterical, this is my reality. Ever since my mother died of ovarian cancer in 1996 — when she was just 57 years old — I’ve been on high risk medical surveillance. I’ve been watched....

The post 51 Days and Counting: My Journey to Prevent Ovarian Cancer appeared first on Allison Gilbert.

When my mother was dying of ovarian cancer, I was twenty-five. Back then, now more than a decade ago, I took advantage of the kind of freedom I would never know again; not yet married, without children, I was able to put my life on hold and focus completely on the end of hers. I took time off from work, left my boyfriend alone in our apartment, and moved back home. Under the same roof...

The post My Two and a Half Centimeter Time Bombs appeared first on Allison Gilbert.

Are schools creating a new breed of helicopter parent?  Teacher Terri Reh wants parents to monitor their children’s entire educational career online. “I post all my students’ responsibilities, their current and upcoming assignments, and timelines for every project they have,” says the teacher at Flagstaff Academy in Longmont, Colorado…Continue Reading

The post Do Schools Share Too Much With Parents? appeared first on Allison Gilbert.

Before dropping off his son at Colgate University a few days ago to begin his freshman year, New York advertising photographer Robert Tardio went on one last summer vacation with his family. While his wife and youngest son were out exploring the quaint streets of Montreal, Robert took his eldest, college-bound teen out for a beer…Continue Reading

The post Is Underage Drinking Ever OK? appeared first on Allison Gilbert.

I’m not a helicopter parent and my children would tell you I don’t bake cupcakes for their birthday parties. But I’d readily cut off my breasts for them — and recently, I did. Removing breast tissue uncompromised by cancer is relatively easy. It took the breast surgeon about two hours to slice through my chest and complete the double mastectomy seven weeks ago…Continue Reading

The post My Preventive Mastectomy – Staying Alive For My Kids appeared first on Allison Gilbert.