The things we inherit...

I often wonder what my life would have been like if I had been born 'normal'.


Instead, I was one of the babies born after their mum's had taken the Thalidomide tablet for morning sickness.


In my case, though, I was fortunate that mum had felt worse after taking it a few times, and so stopped, which meant that I was only born with 2 rather interesting growths; one in the centre of my forehead, that mum said looked like a perfect little finger, and another from my nose.


It wasn't until quite a few years later, that my medical history was put together by a blood specialist, and it was realised that my autoimmune system was affected, too!


I remember spending a goodly amount of time in and out of hospital as I was growing up, having operations on my eyes, which had also been affected and, also, for unspecified reasons, other visits where I was prodded and tested, but never informed why (when I was growing up, it didn't seem to be the done thing to inform children what was wrong, or what was to be done, so a lot of the decisions made about me were things I've never been told about, even to this day. I must get round to asking about looking at my medical records one day!). The only time that is really vivid, was when I had peritonitis, though.


Because of the autoimmune problem, I seem to have inherited any, and all, of the genetic problems that my family carry in their DNA:


Like mum, and her mum, and her great-gran, I have arthritis.
Like mum, I have IBS, and my daughter has also inherited it.
Like mum, I have constant dry eyes and mouth, and have been tested for diabetes so many times it's ridiculous!
Like mum, I have also inherited primary Lymphodaema, where my knees and ankles swell up like balloons if I'm not careful, and when I don't keep up with the Lymphatic drainage, a form of massage that keeps the lymph glands working properly.
Like my grandad, I have Antiphospholipid Syndrome, a blood disorder that can cause Thrombosis, which he died of when my mum was only 12 and which, thankfully, no-one else in the family has inherited.
I also have Fibromyalgia, Cluster Migraines and, it's been discovered recently, I also have Positive Anti-nuclear Factor in my blood, but I won't know what this signifies until I've seen my Rheumatologist on the 23rd of this month.


What I do hope, is that the blood thing will explain why I've spent the last year or two battling with sleep - in the first year, it was not being able to stay asleep, but now, since I had swine flu last year, it's more a case of not being able to wake up!


I had a look online to see what this anti-nuclear thing might be, although it's not, as mum laughingly suggested, a new and cheap form of energy that I could sell to the national grid {grin}


I seem to have quite a choice, as it happens. There's Rheumatoid arthritis, which is a possible choice; there's Sjogren's Syndrome which, with the dry eyes and mouth is also a possibility; there's Lupus which, although I do have some of the symptoms, I don't think this can be it, as I don't have the trademark butterfly rash across the bridge of my nose and my cheeks, which seems to be a key symptom of the disease. 
Apart from these three, there seems to be a score of other possibilities, so I'm going to leave all the guesswork to my Consultant, as he's the one with all those funny letters after his name!


I'm just hoping, and praying, that it's something that's fixable, curable and, just for once, not inherited!