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For the average woman, undergoing a double mastectomy at the age of 30 would be a daunting experience. But for The Block Australia's outspoken star Sarah-Jane Wilson, "it was just something I had to do", she says.
"And why wouldn't you? It means I'm going to be around a lot longer for my daughter." The 30-year-old social worker, a mum to one-year-old Cleo, started to look into the procedure after her mother Tanya was diagnosed with breast cancer twice - once at 34 and again at 45.
After several tests, Sarah-Jane was told she had the BRCA1 gene, which increased her risk of developing breast cancer to around 45-90%.
"It was devastating to hear that," she tells Woman's Day of the diagnosis.
"I went from walking around thinking I had the same chance as every other female of getting breast cancer to like, 'Oh, actually no, I have an 80% higher chance. It was a lot." She immediately placed herself on the waiting list to undergo the surgery that removes all of the tissue from both asts.
In some cosmic twist of fate, just one day before this year's Block auctions - and five years after her initial diagnosis she received the phone call saying she was in.
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