I thought knowing I had the 'cancer gene' would cast a shadow over my life. Now I have it, I realise how wrong I was | Hilary Osborne

Despite the history of breast cancer in my family, I chose to be blithely ignorant. Now I have the disease, I realise that knowledge is power

The results of the genetic test didn't really come as a surprise. My mum died of breast cancer in her mid-30s, and I'd recently had it confirmed that my great-grandma on her side had it on her death certificate too.

Yet when I was diagnosed with triple negative breast cancer last year - the most likely to be linked to a gene mutation - I hoped against hope that it wasn't inherited. In part because of what it means for my relatives, in part because of what it means for my children and their children, and in part because I didn't like to think that what I was going through now had been pretty much inevitable from the minute I'd been conceived, and I'd made no effort to find out about it.