Josie: My Cancer Curse
1 x 60'
A Matchlight Production for BBC3
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Josie Bellerby is a typical, if fortunate, teenager. She lives in a lovely home in York with her radio producer parents Julia and Jules; she has two loving older sisters Lucy and Emma; she’s studying A’ levels; has bags of mates and realistic dreams of becoming an actress. She’s young, vivacious, never afraid to speak her mind and gorgeous as well. But life isn’t as blessed as it might seem.
That’s because Josie might be living with a deadly inheritance - like her mother, aunt, grandmother and great-grandmother before her, she could be carrying the cancer genes that means her risk of developing breast cancer rockets from 1 in 9 for a typical woman, to just 1 in 2. Josie has known since she was four years old - when her mother had one of the UK’s first preventative double-mastectomies - that she might also be living with this ticking time bomb.
In this film Josie follows one sister as she goes through the testing process to find out whether she carries the gene and interrogates the other about why she won’t be having the test; she goes out on the town with Britain’s youngest preventative double-mastectomy patient; she visits the scientist who is trying to develop gene therapy and meets a young breast cancer sufferer who is undergoing chemotherapy. That way, whatever decision Josie makes – to take the test or not – she’ll be able to persuade her family that it is the right, and informed, one.
A negative result would mean health and freedom from worrying that she might develop cancer. But what the rest of her family know so painfully well is that a positive result would mean having to face a future that includes dramatic body-changing surgery and fast-tracking decisions on fertility, relationships and her looks.
This film traces Josie’s journey to decide whether to take the test or not. And it explores how her family – and the experts she encounters – help shape her decision.