My Family History Reminder

I’ve spoken about the importance of family medical history before. This time though, it was a patient who reminded me of the importance of reaching out to your family members to learn about your family history.

Earlier this week, I had a lovely woman and her daughter in my office. The woman had recently been diagnosed with breast cancer, similar to many of my patients, and, also similar to many of my patients, she and her daughter spent some time trying to recall their family history.

The conversation went something like this:

“I think Aunt Joyce* died from stomach cancer. Or well, maybe it was ovarian cancer.”, “How many brothers and sisters did your father have?”, and “I think grandma was one of seven girls”. “Did any of them have cancer? I can’t remember..”

At the end of our discussion, my patient realized that she really didn’t know much about her family medical history. As they were on their way out, my patient’s daughter stopped and asked, “Can we have a copy of that family tree too?,” pointing to the pedigree which I had constructed from our family history discussion.  This caught me a bit by surprise, as most of my patients just accept that they don’t know much about their family histories.  “Absolutely!,”  I said.

After realizing how little they knew about their family medical history, my patient and her daughter decided to go back to their family members (my patient’s father is in his 90s!), using the pedigree I drew as a starting point. They are going to compile a record of their family medical history, so that my patients’ children, grandchildren, and great grandchildren will know what medical issues existed in their family and will be able to use that information for their own wellbeing.  I am so proud!

Most people usually don’t get the opportunity to sit down with generations of their immediate and extended family members for an extended period of time, but with Passover coming up, you have a great chance to speak to your family and gather information about the family history. If you’ve already listened to my nagging and collected a family history, use this opportunity to update your family history and find out if anything has changed in the past year. Remember, family history is not stagnant, as medical issues develop over an individual’s lifetime.

For instructions of how to collect family medical history and resources to help you, see my previous post on the subject here.

*Names have been changed for privacy purposes.