ABSTRACT
Families with members who have disAbling conditions are at high risk of becoming fragmented. In my family of origin there were twelve siblings. The size of our family almost guarantees that we will probably have more medical problems than other families. Each of us-those with obvious disAbling conditions, those with invisible disAbling conditions, and those without any apparent disAbling conditions-has learned to cope in different ways. There is also survivor’s guilt, which is experienced by those who have no disAbling conditions, and this will be discussed later in this book. A genetic factor that comes into play in our family is Huntington’s disease/chorea (HD). Our maternal grandmother, mother, and her brother had HD, and owing to the inherited nature of this disease, each of us in our family has a 50 percent chance of acquiring the disease. Since symptoms usually are not apparent before the late thirties and early forties, most of us had children by then. For those who will acquire the disease, there is a 50 percent chance that their children will also get it. If a person lives a normal life expectancy and does not get HD, then their children will not get the disease. Although there is now a DNA test to determine if one will acquire HD, there are many factors to take into consideration before getting tested for many genetic diseases; these will be discussed later.
