Annie Parker has had cancer three times — and lived to tell about it

Twelve years later, her sister Joan died from breast cancer.

At 29, Parker was showering and felt a lump - smaller than a pea - on her breast during a self-examination. After doctors’ visits and ultrasounds, she learned that she, too, had breast cancer. In 1981, she had a double mastectomy.

“With breast cancer, they felt that they had got it all, and there was no follow-up back then,” said Parker, who eight years later at age 37 was diagnosed with Stage 3 ovarian cancer. “The ovarian cancer really threw me for a loop, because I was having a lot of symptoms. So I kept going back to the doctor, who thought I was a bit of a hypochondriac.”

Meanwhile, Dr. Mary-Claire King, a geneticist at the University of California, Berkeley, was researching the genetic roots of breast cancer and discovered the gene that leads to many breast and ovarian cancers: BRCA1. In 1994, Parker was one of the first women in Canada to be tested for the BRCA1 gene mutation; she tested positive.

In 2005, Parker’s cancer came back for a third time with a tumor located behind her liver. She was 54. Doctors removed the tumor and part of her liver, which is an organ that can regenerate.

In 2013, a film about her and King, called “Decoding Annie Parker,” was released. Parker subsequently wrote about her journey in the book “Annie Parker Decoded.”

Parker recently spoke at the Day of Caring for Breast Cancer Awareness event at the Intercontinental Hotel in downtown Miami.

Jessica Macks, 46, was one of those attending.

“I have family history ⅛of cancer⅜ so I opted to go through the BRCA, I tested positive, and I decided to go for it,” Macks said. “I had a double mastectomy and double hysterectomy.”

Parker could relate.

“Everybody has a story. Everybody here at this event and all the events that I speak at has a story so I’m just one voice,” Parker said.