Various Health Updates

Apologies to anyone waiting on email from me. We’ve been dealing with family health issues for the past 2+ weeks. Nothing life-threatening, but rather incapacitating until we can get things treated. Hopefully one of these days the various doctors will stop sending and losing referrals and handing us off to someone else without actually doing anything, and maybe one of them will actually help…

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In personal health news, I’ve learned I’m officially a mutant. The BRCA1 gene helps suppress tumors and fight cancer. Turns out mine is broken.

In women, this mutation drastically increases the chances of breast and ovarian cancer. (We started testing family members when my cousin, who has breast cancer, tested positive for the mutation.)

In men, the risk is much smaller, but it’s still there — increased chances for breast, pancreatic, and prostate cancer, and melanoma. But that increased risk is still in the single digits for all but the prostate cancer, and that last is maybe 1 in 4. So I’ll be starting screening earlier than I otherwise would have, but I’m not losing sleep over this stuff yet.

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Hope you’re having a better December than we are!