A long time ago I was listening to a radio talk program by the then popular Doctor Laura. Someone who was adopted called in and wanted to locate their birth parent. Among the reasons why was medical information. Doctor Laura said that medical science was so on top of things (in so many words) that this was a dumb reason to find a birth parent. And this was before DNA and an understanding about hereditary diseases! Needless to say I could not disagree with Doctor Laura more.
Recently I was researching for someone who has a once in a life time opportunity to tour a European country with a church group. He and his wife plan to depart from the group and spend about a week touring through ancestor homelands. He lost a young son to colon cancer a few years ago and then was diagnosed with it himself and is surviving. I'm thrilled that he will be well enough to go on this trip. So I went ahead and, beginning with his father, verified which of several candidates with a fairly common surname in a small region of a particular state was his, found his father on census records, and discovered that his grandfather, who had died before he was born, had gone through an evolution of given names, which is making finding him coming in on a steamship or naturalization records that will tell me the name of the town his grandfather left over a hundred years ago a little bit tricky. Currently I have a declaration of intent that might be his, but no completion of citizen ship documented.
I went ahead and got the death certificate for his grandfather and from the information printed on it by the attending doctor, there was a description of lesions on the colon. (The word cancer was not used.) Tears sprung from my eyes at the realization that there is a familial aspect to this cancer.
The reasons why someone dies...
I recently listened to an audiobook by a popular author who does some hypnosis to help people heal from trauma, including the trauma of their previous deaths and violent experiences, such as rape, loosing limbs, car accidents, death in childbirth. Hearing a long list of reasons why, I was reminded of all the death certificates I've seen. Some of them come with oral histories from the family, for instance a carpenter who burned up in a fire. The doctor noted his whole body was burned. The family says he was the victim of arson by the mob. Reading the death certificate I would not know that, and I may check some newspaper databases to see if there is any mention of the fire - or the mob.
One adoptee I know has made medical decisions based on the fact that breast cancer is rampant in her birth mother's line, which she would not know without having found her and done the genealogy.
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