Cancer Fun!

You get told you're carrying genetics that are hereditary & lethal & then you meet the love of your life- 

It's 100 years since the Battle of the Somme in a few months &  I'll be writing about the officer I knew in the 70s-80s who had a leg blown off at the Somme.

It's now 30 years since my mother's family had a fortunate diagonisis.
Back around 1980 I commented that a surprising number of my mother's father's family had died of cancer. This was in the age where cancer was seen as automatic death sentence. John Wayne had drank with my Cockney paternal grandfather in Wapping  & not long afterwards was at the Oscars claiming to have "beaten the big C", whereas he was wearing a divers suit beneath his suit to hide the weight loss.

But in 1985 my maternal grandfather became ill. For some reason an American doctor named Professor Maizie was alerted to his case, Maizie had caused a medical storm by claiming  & then establishingthat a form of cancer was genetically inherited. Not a tendency, but a genome time bomb that would unleash cancer proteins when triggered, inevitably triggered.

Maizie & his British colleague, an oncology professor & fellow surgeon at Guys were identifying families with this form of cancer.  A rare form of cancer found only in a few families in Great Britain.

They found my maternal grandfather's family were carriers, which enabled them to save my mother's life as the medulla thyroid cancer was caught early.

30 years ago it was usually fatal & left the sufferer without a voice & other complications. Not my mother who astonished the medical experts by her recovery with only a dependency on fizzy calcium tablets, however they are keeping her alive.

Then it was my turn.  Every few months Guys hospital would stick  a bloody great needle into me & take my blood away to see if it had cancer cells.

So at 14 I was being told I was probably the carrier of my own death, & clearly would pass this on to any children.  A fate which I believed I did not have the right to inflict.

At 18, the British professor, Prof. Clark, came to me as I was reading a university chemistry book as my blood was being taken & informed me that the previous results were 'inconclusive.' 2 inconclusive or a positive & they would be cutting my throat open.  This was an omen I had been prepared for since I was 14 & yet it still hit me like a bolt of lightning.

While awaiting this second test result, which took months, I met the woman for whom we both felt the same for eachother.  The difference was I kept my feelings secret, unlike her, as I believed there was no future for us. Even if the results were negative, we could never have a family together.
& that's another story