#5: My father
I’d write a better excerpt about my Old Man, but I don’t even think he’s even worth that effort.
Ever since he left my life, I have never once called him “Dad.” He is always referred to as “Old Man”….if I refer to him at all. If people ever notice that I never talk about him and ask about his whereabouts, I simply answer that I won’t discuss that subject. But today I speak.
My father’s side has been cursed with Huntington’s Disease which has a 50% success rate of being passed down to offspring. My grandfather got it in his fifties or so. Old Man got it far sooner during his thirties/forties. So if I have it and that trend continues, I could have it….right around now.
There is a test I can take to determine if I have Huntington’s, but risky as health insurance companies can use the results to deny you coverage. This is known as “genetic discrimination.” Even though GINA (Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act) was passed in 2007, it is still a concern to people like me. Health insurance companies are crooked; they will find loopholes and excuses around things. Whether you trust his filmmaking or not, I recommend Michael Moore’s movie Sicko which deals with the subject of corrupt healthcare.
This is an unfair burden to have been placed upon my shoulders. People are born to two healthy parents all the time, why not me? I can’t imagine how it would be if I were to get married and had kids. What would my wife think as she continued to watch her once strong, proud and handsome husband degenerate into a drooling, shaking vegetable? What would I tell my kids if they came up to me and asked with worry in their eyes and ask “Am I going to get it too?” How the hell do you look your kids in the eye and answer something like that?
My selfish father had absolutely no right to procreate. If I have the disease, then I’m going to have to be responsible where he wasn’t and not procreate. I can still have protected sex (for as long as I can), but I cannot pass this down to another child. I am the very last member of my bloodline still alive, and that will end with me if I wish it so.
But it may not have to come to that, there is hope. Unlike Old Man, I live in a more modern world where scientific and medical advances are coming closer and closer to a cure. There is also a strong possibility I don’t have it to begin with and I escaped my grandfather and father’s fate. I also take comfort in the fact that I am ALL my mother. I look just like her; most of my genes had to have come from her.
Unfortunately things are not so rosy on my mother’s side, either.
Honey Says:
March 27th, 2008 at 8:23 pm
Oh, The Virgin, I feel for you! Believe it or not my mother (and her father) had a genetic disease that is very similar to HD. Fortunately advances in genetic coding mean that, if they haven’t already, they are working to identify the affected genes. Additionally, scientists have developed what they call small interfering RNA (siRNA) which, while it won’t change your genes (which is the only way it could be “cured”) show GREAT promise in permanently suppressing all symptoms.
But I agree with you that insurance companies’ exclusion policies make it a bad idea to get tested. I’m fortunate in that me and my BF don’t want children anyway, so unless and until federal laws change, there’s no incentive for me to get tested.
Honey Says:
March 27th, 2008 at 8:27 pm
That is unfortunate, but geneticists are busily identifying genes from these sorts of inherited diseasees all the time, and small interfering RNA (siRNA) shows great promise in (if not curing these diseases, as they can’t alter your genetic makeup) permanently suppressing any symptoms.