Family history of cancer

Knowing your family’s health history is an important part in understanding your risks of getting certain types of cancer. In my case it also showed how lifestyle and stress played an important role and how genes and environmental issues were likely reasons for the extraordinarily high cancer rate in my family.

On my mother’s side of the family five of seven siblings have been diagnosed with cancer. Three of four sisters were the first to be diagnosed with breast cancer. My mother was the youngest in her family and the first to die from cancer at fifty-nine when she was diagnosed with late stage colon cancer that metastasized to her liver and back six years after she was first diagnosed with breast cancer. My two aunts were early receivers of tamoxifen, the eldest of which was in her late seventies when she died from pancreatic cancer. It was her third bout with cancer, having breast cancer twice. One aunt has been in remission for close to two decades. Her breast cancer was detected early and not had a chance to enter her lymphatic system. Her husband being a retired military officer had very good health benefits and she received excellent treatment. Most importantly she completed her course of radiation. When speaking to her about the experience she was enthusiastic about having radiation treatments. All cancer patients who receive radiation tolerate it differently, but most have a difficult time. The important thing is to finish your treatments. In comparison my mother was unable to complete her radiation treatments. She did not receive drug therapy as my aunts did and avoided invasive surgery and did not change her lifestyle and continued to smoke cigarettes. My eldest uncle had a long history of smoking and using alcohol and developed lung cancer that spread to his liver. He was in his mid-seventies when he died. My youngest uncle was a retired physician who was very active and ran marathons. He smoked a pipe for eight years but quit the use of tobacco thirty years before dying of multiple cancers at age seventy. He did not have chemotherapy or radiation and only had surgery to remove tumors causing ninety percent blockage in his colon. Members of the family lived near and worked at two environmentally toxic work places. My oldest uncle died at age ten due to uncertain causes, leaving only one sibling (an aunt) who lived to adulthood that did not develop cancer. She is also the oldest sibling and the only one that did not move with the family.

On my father’s side of the family my grandmother was diagnosed and died from colon cancer in her mid-seventies. She had a history of tobacco and alcohol use and did not receive cancer treatments. My father is one of three siblings; one half sister that developed and died from an unknown cancer in her fifties and a half brother in his sixties that was recently diagnosed with lung cancer. He has not smoked in over eight years. My father is in his mid-sixties, has never been diagnosed with cancer, is a light social drinker and does not smoke. The family lived in a factory city, with my father moving away first at an early age. My grandmother never moved and lived in the same home until her death.

Tags: Jeff's Story