Randi Eichenbaum: BRCA2, Access to Care, and the birth of MOTA
Release Date: 10/08/2026
Randi Eichenbaum: BRCA2, Access to Care, and the birth of MOTA
Walking the Genetic Line
Episode summary Randi Eichenbaum was 19 when her mother died of ovarian cancer. Somewhere in those years she absorbed a quiet belief: this is going to happen to me too. Years later, a new OB-GYN recommended genetic testing based on her family history. The BRCA2 result came by phone from a third-party lab while she was at work, followed by an emailed PDF that no one walked her through. She put it in a drawer, literally and figuratively, and went back to work. What followed was a series of turning points. She became a mother and experienced acute postpartum anxiety. She had a prophylactic...
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Jaclyn Carnevale: From Cancer Diagnosis to Embryos Without the Mutation, A BRIP1 Previvor’s IVF Journey
Walking the Genetic Line
Episode summary In May 2022, at 30 years old, Jaclyn found a lump in her breast. Her doctor, seeing no family history and a young, healthy patient, suggested she wait a week and see if it was still there. Jaclyn didn't take no for an answer — she asked for a mammogram, and within a single day learned she had DCIS, an early-stage breast cancer. What came next moved at a speed she describes as "medical timeline on fast forward": genetic counseling that flagged something didn't add up in her family's supposedly cancer-free history, a large genetic panel that turned up a mutation called BRIP1,...
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Walking the Genetic Line
EPISODE SUMMARY Kathy Baker grew up in a family that, as she puts it, "looked like a poster for a BRCA mutation" — a sister diagnosed with breast cancer at 31, a mother with three primary cancers, a grandfather lost to aggressive prostate cancer, a great-grandmother lost to pancreatic cancer. And still, when genetic testing became available, Kathy said no. Not out of denial exactly, but out of a fierce instinct to protect her own life from being lived under a shadow. She was diagnosed with breast cancer herself in 2000, treated without ever seeing an oncologist first, and then spent nine...
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Walking the Genetic Line
EPISODE SUMMARY Sharsheret is the Hebrew word for chain. Not a ribbon, not a fight, not a cure — a chain. Twenty-five years in, that name turns out to be the most precise available description of the work: over 40,000 people who have shared their experience, peer matches made not by mutation status but by the specific thing you are afraid of, social workers and genetic counselors who answer the phone, pre- and post-surgery kits arriving at the house wrapped and unbilled, and more than a million dollars a year moving quietly toward the non-medical costs that make a diagnosis expensive in ways...
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Holly Taylor: Hard-Earned Wisdom
Walking the Genetic Line
Episode Summary A visible tumor changed two lives at once. When Holly Taylor’s sister was diagnosed at 45 with simultaneous stage 3 ovarian and breast cancer — tumors large enough to see with the naked eye, discovered only after years of avoiding care without health insurance — genetic testing entered Holly’s life as an extension of her sister’s crisis rather than a decision of her own. An initial variant of unknown significance sat unresolved for two years before being reclassified as a pathogenic BRCA1 mutation, arriving in the middle of a four-and-a-half-year caregiving arc that...
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Marleah Dean Kruzel: You Make the Best Decision You Can — A Researcher’s Honest Take on BRCA and Uncertainty
Walking the Genetic Line
Guest: Marleah Dean Kruzel, PhD Theme: Uncertainty as a Lifetime Companion, Not a Problem to Solve Episode Summary Marleah Dean Kruzel was 8 years old when her mother found a lump. What followed were years of surgeries, chemotherapy, radiation, and a childhood lived largely in hospitals — experiences that eventually became the foundation of a research career dedicated to understanding what previvors actually go through, and what the systems meant to support them consistently fail to provide. She tested positive for BRCA2 in 2013, after letting the test kit sit in the back of her safe for...
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Natalie Samson Hart: How Integrative Genetic Counseling Changes What Comes Next
Walking the Genetic Line
Guest: Natalie Samson Hart, MS, CGC, INHC Theme: Genetic Counseling as a Gateway to Whole-Person Care Episode Summary Natalie Samson Hart didn’t come to oncology genetic counseling through a tidy career trajectory. She came through loss, confusion, and proximity to illness — a brother whose neurodivergence led her toward the intersection of science and human connection, a father diagnosed with stage 4 cancer while she was still in graduate school and rotating through cancer wards. That collision of the personal and professional is what eventually pushed her out of traditional...
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Walking the Genetic Line
Guest: Krista (Oncology Nurse Navigator) Theme: Self-Advocacy, ATM Mutation, Cancer After Previvorhood EPISODE SUMMARY When Krista's mother was 48, she became the first known cancer diagnosis in their family. She tested negative for BRCA mutations and felt relief — relief that she wouldn't pass anything on to her children. Twelve years later, just before entering hospice, she was offered expanded genetic testing and found out she carried a pathogenic ATM variant. She shared those results with her children. A few months after her death, Krista — 38 years old, a nurse, carrying...
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Walking the Genetic Line
Guest: Ali Hall Theme: Queer Identity, Bodily Autonomy, and the BRCA Diagnosis Nobody Saw Coming Episode Summary When Ali Hall stole a 23andMe kit from a family white elephant exchange, she wasn't looking for anything life-changing. Five years later, an email arrived while she was picking her kid up from school: her results had been updated. She had a BRCA mutation. What followed wasn't panic — and that itself is the story. Ali's response was shaped by something older than the diagnosis: a lifelong pattern of minimizing her own experience when people around her were...
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Jennifer Mercer: Lynch Syndrome Awareness and the Weight of a Father's Legacy
Walking the Genetic Line
Episode Summary Jennifer never knew her biological father growing up — and when she finally let him back into her life at 25, what he brought with him was a medical history that would change everything. Phone call after phone call, a new cancer. Eight-plus organ cancers. Over a hundred skin cancers. Years before anyone thought to offer him a genetic test. When Lynch Syndrome MSH2 was finally identified, Jennifer wasn't ready — she was a single mother, financially stretched, emotionally guarded, and carrying decades of unresolved grief toward a man who had never shown up for her. She put...
info_outlineEpisode summary
Randi Eichenbaum was 19 when her mother died of ovarian cancer. Somewhere in those years she absorbed a quiet belief: this is going to happen to me too. Years later, a new OB-GYN recommended genetic testing based on her family history. The BRCA2 result came by phone from a third-party lab while she was at work, followed by an emailed PDF that no one walked her through. She put it in a drawer, literally and figuratively, and went back to work. What followed was a series of turning points. She became a mother and experienced acute postpartum anxiety. She had a prophylactic hysterectomy and oophorectomy three to four months after an emergency C-section. Then, while her preventive mastectomy was delayed, a routine MRI found stage 1 breast cancer.
At almost every turn, someone in Randi's personal life opened a door. Her mother's best friend, a longtime UCSF nurse, urged her to see a genetic counselor. Her sister-in-law, a breast cancer survivor, insisted she see Dr. Anne Peled. Randi and Sara explore the tension Randi names directly: feeling deeply lucky, and also a little bit pissed that this kind of care is the exception rather than the norm. That tension became MOTA, a digital companion for people with hereditary cancer risk, starting with BRCA1 and BRCA2 carriers. Together they talk about why a provider's experience and steadiness matter emotionally as well as medically, why surgical menopause carries so much fear, and why there is no real "other side" of carrying a genetic mutation.
We cover
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Growing up with a parent's ovarian cancer diagnosis and the internalized belief that "this is going to happen to me"
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Dissociating and building a career as a way of moving forward after loss
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Receiving a BRCA2 result by phone from a third-party lab with no one to walk her through it
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Emotional compartmentalization: putting a result "in a drawer" until life makes it impossible to ignore
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How approaching 40, the age her mother was diagnosed, and becoming a mother brought the urgency back
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Postpartum anxiety, grief for her mother, and choosing a hysterectomy and oophorectomy months after giving birth
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The relief of partnering with a genetic counselor and having an actual plan
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A stage 1 breast cancer diagnosis found on a routine MRI while preventive surgery was delayed
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The surgeon whose first words were "I'm sorry this is happening to you, but it's going to be okay"
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How access to excellent care often travels through informal networks, luck, and privilege
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Why a provider's familiarity with hereditary cancer risk affects how safe a patient feels, and which options get pushed
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Fear and misinformation around HRT and surgical menopause
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How MOTA works: a personalized roadmap based on NCCN guidelines, planning tools, a directory of providers experienced in hereditary cancer care, reminders, and mental health referrals
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The wounded healer: turning one of the hardest chapters of life into something for the community
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Why carrying a genetic mutation is lifelong, and what it means to trade one mental load for another
Highlights & takeaways
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"I'm sorry this is happening to you, but it's going to be okay." Randi recalls the first words her breast surgeon said to her, and the moment that became the foundation of MOTA.
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"There is this tension of feeling very lucky, but also a little bit pissed." Gratitude for good care and anger that it isn't the norm can live side by side.
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Getting a result is not the same as being supported to understand it. Randi had a phone call and a PDF. What she needed was a person to help her build a plan.
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A provider's comfort with hereditary cancer risk shapes the patient's experience. When carriers are an outlier on a caseload, fear can enter the room and push people toward the most cautious options without room for the rest of their lives.
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"We never want to explain ourselves." Working with a doctor or therapist who doesn't understand this position can feel isolating, even after years of therapy.
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"I've traded in one mental load for another." Finishing a surgery doesn't mean you are done. Carrying hereditary risk is a lifelong experience with new chapters.
Content note
This episode includes discussion of a parent's death from ovarian cancer during adolescence, a breast cancer diagnosis, postpartum anxiety, an emergency C-section, prophylactic hysterectomy and oophorectomy in the postpartum period, surgical menopause, fear of dying, and gaps in medical care.
Resources mentioned
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MOTA: A free digital companion for people with hereditary cancer risk, starting with women who carry a BRCA1 or BRCA2 mutation. Offers a personalized roadmap based on NCCN guidelines, planning tools, a provider directory, and mental health referrals. mota.care | Instagram @mota.care
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Randi Eichenbaum: Share a provider you recommend or feedback on what you wish you'd had: randi@mota.care
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Dr. Anne Peled: Breast surgeon in San Francisco, mentioned by Randi and by a previous Walking the Genetic Line guest, Violet Page
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Rachel Frankenthal, PA: Menopause specialist at UCLA Health and member of MOTA's advisory team
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UCSF genetic counseling: Where Randi met with a genetic counselor to build her plan
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NCCN Guidelines: The clinical guidelines MOTA's roadmaps are based on
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The Breasties: Online community and app for people affected by breast and reproductive cancers
Connect
If this conversation resonated, follow Walking the Genetic Line, rate and review the show, and share this episode with someone who is holding a result they haven't known what to do with.
Connect with Sara Champie, LCSW at sarachampielcsw.com and on Instagram @SaraChampieLCSW.
Let's walk this line, together.