I watched a documentary on Amazon Streaming the other day (free with Prime) called "Adopted." It follows two different stories: an adult Korean-born woman who was adopted into a white American family at the age of 4 months, and a white American couple in the process of adopting a baby girl from China.
I like reading blogs and watching documentaries that feature adoptees. While my brother Dante is the only adoptee I've been close to, we were never close enough to talk about it. I knew almost nothing about adoption before I found my biological father. What I think interests me most about adoption -- or, more accurately, adoptees -- is that, while it's distinctly different from my donor conception, a lot of adoptees and donor conceived people seem to share a lot of the same feelings of genetic bewilderment, wanting to know where they came from, and wanting people to stop telling them they should be grateful to be alive.
I know a fair number of donor conceived people who feel adoption is different primarily because the children exist before the "intended parents" find them, unlike in donor conception, but the more I read, the more I believe children (and often mothers) are commodified in adoption just like in donor conception. Most adopted children are not actually "saved" from some unspeakable fate (though some people like my mother like to tell them they were). The bigger difference, as far as I can see, is not between intent but between how many biological ties are broken at birth, and in some cases of donor conception and surrogacy, all biological ties are broken just as in a typical adoption. Lines start to blur. We have a lot in common. There are very few blogs by donor conceived people that have been updated in recent years, so I read adoptee blogs and breathe a sigh of relief that someone else gets it. Someone more daring than me is blogging the outrage I'm afraid to show.
I enjoyed the "Adopted" documentary. I don't share much in common with Jennifer, the Korean-American adoptee, but I related to her. She grew up with white parents who had been raised "not to see race" and refused to recognize that she was any different from them, as well as classmates who mocked her for her physically Asian qualities. As I've heard many transracial adoptees say, she felt white. She wanted her outsides to match her insides. She wanted blue eyes and blond hair and felt somewhat bewildered looking into the mirror as she grew up. As a white donor-conceived woman who has experienced this phenomenon -- aspects of my face and body looking "off" because I can't place them in the context of my family, long before I knew this was a phenomenon that existed -- I can only imagine how Jennifer must have felt. As she got older and attended a high school where she wasn't the only Asian student, she tried to pass as a "real Asian" since her new friends wouldn't immediately know she hadn't been raised in an Asian family. When she reached adulthood, she even moved to Korea for a time, but still she did not fit in. In Korea, where she'd been born, she was too American.
My best friend Jerry and I were talking about "Adopted" when she mentioned the fact that no one ever feels like they fit in -- that the very idea of fitting in is a fantasy that only makes people sad, like finding the meaning of life or finding one's soulmate. While I agree with her to a certain extent, I think there are different levels of Not Fitting In that we experience. I don't feel like I fit in most places or with most people -- I think I'm pretty common in this -- but I've got this Great White Halloween Costume I wear everyday that usually makes it look like I do. I think my problem is less serious in part simply because it's less visible. I don't expect everyone with "costumes" like mine to feel that way, but blending in has always meant a lot to me. I've been in situations in which I stood out uncomfortably because of my race, and I've been in situations (most situations) in which I blended, and having the option to blend in simply by changing my clothes or hair or behavior -- whether or not I feel like I fit in -- makes a pretty huge difference. This is only one of the struggles facing transracial adoptees, and it didn't even occur to me it existed until I started reading blogs in which people talk about it.
A lot of parents take their children's life challenges as personal insults. As a parent, I get that. It's annoying though, both for parent and child. It makes parents defensive and children either angry or overprotective of their parents' feelings or both. It creates an unhelpful barrier to communication. Jennifer wanted validation from her adoptive parents, who she loved and cherished and cared for both physically and financially, but they seemed to treat her problems as a transracial and transnational adoptee as made up problems she'd invented to garner attention and pity. What did she want them to do about it now? They'd done the best they could. They'd been raised not to see race and they never saw her as any different from them. How could she ask for any more than that? And these were good parents. Loving, adoptive parents.
I got the impression what might have helped was if they'd recognized that any daughter who loved them and cared for them as much as theirs always had was not baring her soul to hurt them. She loved her parents and wanted to feel seen by them in her entirety. She wanted them to understand and love her for all of who she was, and that included being Korean and an adoptee and not just a chameleon who could and would change who she was to gain their approval. I get that. I'm a chameleon too. I think it might have meant a lot if they'd said, "I had no idea. I'm sorry you've felt so much pain. I did the best I could, and it's hard to hear you felt this way, but I understand that you didn't have the words to express these feelings earlier. Thank you for trusting me with this now. I've always loved you as my daughter, and it didn't occur to me that you might still feel adopted or want to know about where you came from. Is there anything I can do to help?" Empathy is important. Validation is 50% of every cure.
Friday, March 18, 2016
Tuesday, March 1, 2016
Sherri Shepherd Remains Legal Parent
The Pennsylvania state Supreme Court has decided not to hear Sherri Shepherd's child support appeal. She remains the legal mother of the child she and ex-husband Lamar Sally commissioned to be born with his sperm and a donor egg via gestational surrogate, and she will continue to pay monthly child support. She has still never met the child.
I wonder whether Shepherd will eventually file for shared custody under the logic, "I'm already paying for it; I might as well use it" (or sole custody under the logic "spite").
I look forward to Lamar Sally Jr.'s tell-all book thirty years from now.
I wonder whether Shepherd will eventually file for shared custody under the logic, "I'm already paying for it; I might as well use it" (or sole custody under the logic "spite").
I look forward to Lamar Sally Jr.'s tell-all book thirty years from now.
Satirical Rhyming Verse
One of the ways I've processed my anger since childhood is through satirical rhyming verse. This is the sort of passive-aggressive, Triumph the Insult Comic Dog coping mechanism I learned growing up with my family. Where sharing your feelings would get you in trouble for inadvertently offending a parent or for "being too sensitive," mocking whoever upset me didn't seem to have a downside back then. Not even my parents wanted to lash out just to be accused of "not being able to take a joke."
I remember turning in a poem in elementary school about going out to dinner with my family. Each stanza featured a different dish my mother sent back for its unexpected imperfections. As I recall, she was more regal in my version, but also less embarrassing. I drew a picture of her cheeseburger and chocolate malt "with dots in it," as she'd complained repeatedly to the waiter, to accompany the poem. I got an A on the assignment, as per usual, and it even hung on display for my school's poetry month, to my mother's relatively quiet embarrassment.
In high school I penned a series of mocking poems about a character named Fattie. Sometimes Fattie was my mother; sometimes she was a classmate. They were vague enough in terms of detail that the people I wrote them about could never seem to identify themselves. I encouraged them to read the poems and then, when they laughed at my depictions of them, I fed off their reactions in a Palpatine-esque fashion. One particularly difficult classmate who had bullied me from before I knew who she was started collecting my poems to make into a Fattie Anthology, never knowing the first one she'd read had been about her.
A December or two ago I started writing a Christmas song about my dad. It includes lines like "My asshole dad, my psycho brother / I wonder how long till you kill each other," and ends with "Merry Christmas / I won't care when you die." It's cheerful and up tempo. I never finished it.
I remember turning in a poem in elementary school about going out to dinner with my family. Each stanza featured a different dish my mother sent back for its unexpected imperfections. As I recall, she was more regal in my version, but also less embarrassing. I drew a picture of her cheeseburger and chocolate malt "with dots in it," as she'd complained repeatedly to the waiter, to accompany the poem. I got an A on the assignment, as per usual, and it even hung on display for my school's poetry month, to my mother's relatively quiet embarrassment.
In high school I penned a series of mocking poems about a character named Fattie. Sometimes Fattie was my mother; sometimes she was a classmate. They were vague enough in terms of detail that the people I wrote them about could never seem to identify themselves. I encouraged them to read the poems and then, when they laughed at my depictions of them, I fed off their reactions in a Palpatine-esque fashion. One particularly difficult classmate who had bullied me from before I knew who she was started collecting my poems to make into a Fattie Anthology, never knowing the first one she'd read had been about her.
A December or two ago I started writing a Christmas song about my dad. It includes lines like "My asshole dad, my psycho brother / I wonder how long till you kill each other," and ends with "Merry Christmas / I won't care when you die." It's cheerful and up tempo. I never finished it.
Tuesday, February 23, 2016
"Don't You Even Know How to Use a BROOM?!"
There wasn't a lot of regular cleaning in my house growing up, as is typical in a hoard. At least once a week my mother or dad would demand, "Go clean your room!" but I wasn't allowed to get rid of things I'd inherited from Dante (like entire collections of books) or anything someone had made for me (such as nursery decor). I had no idea "getting rid of things" was something most people did. As far as I can tell, when I was in elementary school I still had every toy and piece of decor I'd owned since birth, which made tidying up problematic.
I remember my dad helping me clean my room by parking his wheelchair in the doorway so I couldn't leave, watching me, and occasionally yelling at me to clean. I remember my mother helping me once by actually sitting down in my room with me and then rifling through my belongings until she found something I had written, read it aloud in a mocking voice, and laughed.
On one of the few occasions that the floor of my room was mostly clear, my mother presented me with a broom and told me to sweep. I was maybe seven at the time. I had never seen someone sweep in real life since you can't sweep hoard, so I brushed from side to side haphazardly like I'd seen Cinderella do in the Disney animated movie. My mother stopped me, shouting, "GAWD! Don't you even know how to use a BROOM?!" and took the broom away to show me the "right way," the way janitors do it on TV (my frame of reference for normal household behavior will forever be what I've seen on television, I just realized).
I don't understand why she thought I would know how to sweep a floor when I had literally never seen it done. She had similar reactions to other chores, such as getting angry that I "never washed the dishes without having to be told" when I was eight and had literally never washed dishes before, or been told to wash dishes, or been permitted to wash dishes. Wanting to help out also tended to get me yelled at for getting in the way or doing things "wrong." "Why don't you know how to do this?" she asked me about various skills throughout my life. "I remember teaching Dante this when he was six!" Dante is seven years older than me.
I remember my dad helping me clean my room by parking his wheelchair in the doorway so I couldn't leave, watching me, and occasionally yelling at me to clean. I remember my mother helping me once by actually sitting down in my room with me and then rifling through my belongings until she found something I had written, read it aloud in a mocking voice, and laughed.
On one of the few occasions that the floor of my room was mostly clear, my mother presented me with a broom and told me to sweep. I was maybe seven at the time. I had never seen someone sweep in real life since you can't sweep hoard, so I brushed from side to side haphazardly like I'd seen Cinderella do in the Disney animated movie. My mother stopped me, shouting, "GAWD! Don't you even know how to use a BROOM?!" and took the broom away to show me the "right way," the way janitors do it on TV (my frame of reference for normal household behavior will forever be what I've seen on television, I just realized).
I don't understand why she thought I would know how to sweep a floor when I had literally never seen it done. She had similar reactions to other chores, such as getting angry that I "never washed the dishes without having to be told" when I was eight and had literally never washed dishes before, or been told to wash dishes, or been permitted to wash dishes. Wanting to help out also tended to get me yelled at for getting in the way or doing things "wrong." "Why don't you know how to do this?" she asked me about various skills throughout my life. "I remember teaching Dante this when he was six!" Dante is seven years older than me.
Wednesday, February 10, 2016
The First Time I Self-Injured, I Thought I'd Invented It
[Trigger warning: This post is about self-injury. Also, I lifted most of the title from a Chuck Palanhiuk novel. That's probably not a trigger, but I want you to know I know.]
When I was in high school, I started hitting myself in the head. Slapping quickly progressed to closed fisted punching. Eventually I escalated to banging my head against the wall of my bedroom.
The first time I did it was fairly instinctual -- I think. I don't remember if it was before or after I'd first heard of cutting, but the idea of cutting was unappealing to me because I was self-conscious enough about my body already and didn't want to add scars to the list of attributes I felt I had to hide. When I hit myself though, it was instinctual. I didn't know anyone had ever done that before. The physical pain anesthetized my emotions. It was immediate. It felt good simply because I didn't feel as bad anymore.
I don't remember what prompted each occasion I hit my head, or any of the occasions. I had a hard time living at home with my parents, especially after the dawn of adolescence, which also coincided with the start of my mother's prescription drug abuse. I had plenty of friends and did well in school, but I was not entirely well and home was not a happy place. I hit myself a lot the year I was, I think, seventeen. Seventeen was hard. I remember dreaming that I was graduating and moving away and then awakening to find myself still a junior in high school. I cried and cried. The cheap wood-paneled walls of my bedroom gave a satisfying vibration when I slammed my head against them.
I eventually developed a dull, lingering headache that lasted for weeks. I don't often get headaches, so I was a bit alarmed. I think now, in hindsight, I had possibly given myself a minor concussion. At the time though, I thought I might have caused a brain bleed. My grandmother suffered a brain aneurysm not long before this time, and I worried that I might have caused some kind of hemorrhage in my brain that was going to kill me. My primary concern wasn't so much the dying as the possibility that God would count my self-initiated brain hemorrhage as a sort of "long con" suicide attempt and that I would burn in hell for all eternity for instigating it.
In a panic, I bargained with God that I would stop hitting myself in the head if he would excuse me from dying of a brain hemorrhage and burning in hell. I stopped hitting myself, and within a couple of weeks my headache subsided.
I took up banging my head against the wall again in the final year or two of my contact with my mother. I don't remember the circumstances. My mother was at her worst in terms of leaving me raging voicemails and waging campaigns against me with family at that time. It was around the same time I started drinking and actively researching suicide techniques (spoiler alert: the most effective ones sound horrifying). I don't remember any of this in reference to self-injury though. I just remember the apartment where I lived at the time. My bedroom had an exposed brick wall, and I made the mistake of banging my head into it. Just once. It hurt. It hurt really, really bad. There was no satisfying vibration or echo or even a thud. It barely made a sound and it HURT, and the bricks were actually sharp. I remember that wall. I stopped not too long after that and haven't taken it up again.
Now I know that 45+ minutes of high intensity cardio creates the same numbing effect in me, except my head doesn't hurt and the only physical sensation is a sort of warm, sore, jellied feeling in my muscles. It isn't as immediate an effect, but it's close enough. This end note sounds off here to me, like it doesn't belong with the rest of the story, but I think it's worth noting it's hard to quit self-injuring without finding a coping tactic with which to replace it. I didn't come up with exercise right away either. I don't remember that time all that well, but I probably just drank more for awhile, until that stopped helping too.
When I was in high school, I started hitting myself in the head. Slapping quickly progressed to closed fisted punching. Eventually I escalated to banging my head against the wall of my bedroom.
The first time I did it was fairly instinctual -- I think. I don't remember if it was before or after I'd first heard of cutting, but the idea of cutting was unappealing to me because I was self-conscious enough about my body already and didn't want to add scars to the list of attributes I felt I had to hide. When I hit myself though, it was instinctual. I didn't know anyone had ever done that before. The physical pain anesthetized my emotions. It was immediate. It felt good simply because I didn't feel as bad anymore.
I don't remember what prompted each occasion I hit my head, or any of the occasions. I had a hard time living at home with my parents, especially after the dawn of adolescence, which also coincided with the start of my mother's prescription drug abuse. I had plenty of friends and did well in school, but I was not entirely well and home was not a happy place. I hit myself a lot the year I was, I think, seventeen. Seventeen was hard. I remember dreaming that I was graduating and moving away and then awakening to find myself still a junior in high school. I cried and cried. The cheap wood-paneled walls of my bedroom gave a satisfying vibration when I slammed my head against them.
I eventually developed a dull, lingering headache that lasted for weeks. I don't often get headaches, so I was a bit alarmed. I think now, in hindsight, I had possibly given myself a minor concussion. At the time though, I thought I might have caused a brain bleed. My grandmother suffered a brain aneurysm not long before this time, and I worried that I might have caused some kind of hemorrhage in my brain that was going to kill me. My primary concern wasn't so much the dying as the possibility that God would count my self-initiated brain hemorrhage as a sort of "long con" suicide attempt and that I would burn in hell for all eternity for instigating it.
In a panic, I bargained with God that I would stop hitting myself in the head if he would excuse me from dying of a brain hemorrhage and burning in hell. I stopped hitting myself, and within a couple of weeks my headache subsided.
I took up banging my head against the wall again in the final year or two of my contact with my mother. I don't remember the circumstances. My mother was at her worst in terms of leaving me raging voicemails and waging campaigns against me with family at that time. It was around the same time I started drinking and actively researching suicide techniques (spoiler alert: the most effective ones sound horrifying). I don't remember any of this in reference to self-injury though. I just remember the apartment where I lived at the time. My bedroom had an exposed brick wall, and I made the mistake of banging my head into it. Just once. It hurt. It hurt really, really bad. There was no satisfying vibration or echo or even a thud. It barely made a sound and it HURT, and the bricks were actually sharp. I remember that wall. I stopped not too long after that and haven't taken it up again.
Now I know that 45+ minutes of high intensity cardio creates the same numbing effect in me, except my head doesn't hurt and the only physical sensation is a sort of warm, sore, jellied feeling in my muscles. It isn't as immediate an effect, but it's close enough. This end note sounds off here to me, like it doesn't belong with the rest of the story, but I think it's worth noting it's hard to quit self-injuring without finding a coping tactic with which to replace it. I didn't come up with exercise right away either. I don't remember that time all that well, but I probably just drank more for awhile, until that stopped helping too.
Tuesday, February 9, 2016
Get Rich Quick Scheme #2: Mailing People Money
Get Rich Quick Scheme #1 was the paper route, by the way.
When I was in middle school or so, my mother stumbled across another get rich quick scheme. I don't know where she found it -- the mail maybe? -- but it involved mailing two dollars each to a long list of people. If I recall correctly, she requested a second list because she wanted to earn double the money. I remember my mother sank over $500 in postage and envelopes stuffed with two dollars a piece. It seemed like a massive sum of money to me back then, and I questioned how she could possibly recoup her costs.
"Why are you doing this?" I asked. "What is this supposed to do?" She claimed she would receive $2 each from even more people, and it would be like winning the lottery. What were they paying for? What were they being paid to do? It sounded fishy to me. And nonsensical. If someone mailed me $2 and some instructions, I'd put the money in my wallet and throw the instructions away (those charities that mail people nickels and address labels must hate me). My dad explained that it was a pyramid scheme. This was my introduction to pyramid schemes. My primary takeaways at the time were that it was a scam and that only the people at the top of the pyramid would make money. Everyone who joined later -- like my mom -- was going to lose their money. We had this conversation in front of my mother, but she did it anyway. She was sure she was going to be rich.
Ultimately my mother received one envelope with $2 inside. She argued that the net loss was actually less because several of the envelopes were eventually returned to sender.
When I was in middle school or so, my mother stumbled across another get rich quick scheme. I don't know where she found it -- the mail maybe? -- but it involved mailing two dollars each to a long list of people. If I recall correctly, she requested a second list because she wanted to earn double the money. I remember my mother sank over $500 in postage and envelopes stuffed with two dollars a piece. It seemed like a massive sum of money to me back then, and I questioned how she could possibly recoup her costs.
"Why are you doing this?" I asked. "What is this supposed to do?" She claimed she would receive $2 each from even more people, and it would be like winning the lottery. What were they paying for? What were they being paid to do? It sounded fishy to me. And nonsensical. If someone mailed me $2 and some instructions, I'd put the money in my wallet and throw the instructions away (those charities that mail people nickels and address labels must hate me). My dad explained that it was a pyramid scheme. This was my introduction to pyramid schemes. My primary takeaways at the time were that it was a scam and that only the people at the top of the pyramid would make money. Everyone who joined later -- like my mom -- was going to lose their money. We had this conversation in front of my mother, but she did it anyway. She was sure she was going to be rich.
Ultimately my mother received one envelope with $2 inside. She argued that the net loss was actually less because several of the envelopes were eventually returned to sender.
Wednesday, February 3, 2016
Genetic Counseling for the Donor Conceived
I'm getting to the point where I'm posting enough stuff my half-siblings know that, if they stumbled across this blog for whatever reason, they would be able to identify me. This makes me nervous, but not nervous enough to stop posting. Obviously.
My half-brother Hans emailed me the other day to say our uncle had tested positive for some sort of mutation that puts people at higher risk for specific types of cancer. He said our father had asked him to let me know in case I wanted to get myself or my daughter tested. Below Hans' note was a series of emails between my biological father and my uncle's wife. She had the job of informing my uncle's family members that they might want to get tested. There was a limited amount of information exchanged. The emails were from several months ago, but the dates showed my biological father just had forwarded them to Hans to forward to me this week. It reminded me vaguely of how people who find out they have an STD are supposed to reach out to everyone they've been intimate with. "Hey, it's Joseph. Yeah, the Joseph who sired you about 30 years ago. Good times, huh? So anyway, I tested positive, and it turns out you might want to get yourself tested too..." I wish I had more known half-siblings, just to add to the comic effect.
I had a check up scheduled with my doctor for just a few days later, so I brought a print-out of the email chain to my appointment and asked my doctor what he thought of genetic testing. I'd assumed he would say there wasn't much point in it if I'm not planning to have more kids and there is nothing actionable I can do with the results anyway. When I'd brought up prenatal testing before conceiving my daughter, my OB/GYN at the time had said, "What for? If you don't even know your family medical history, how can we know what tests to run?" I hadn't known who my biological father was back then or anything about his family medical history, but I thought there were standard tests doctors could run for common disorders.
To my surprise, maybe because I have more family information now, my current doctor had a different reaction. He referred me to a local cancer center that does genetic counseling and strongly recommended I do it. He said that, while there isn't often something actionable to be done with a heightened cancer risk, there might be more screening options in the future, and the field of genetics is progressing constantly so it would be good to have my results on file.
I called the genetic counselor to make an appointment. She asked me if I had a copy of my uncle's report because there was relevant information in it that they could use in testing me. I told her I might be able to get a copy. She stressed the importance of it until I finally explained that my biological father was an anonymous sperm donor and I'm still a secret to most of his family, said uncle probably included. I told her I would ask my brother for the report, but I wasn't sure I could get it. She told me it was okay. While it's useful information and would inform what genetic tests would be done on me and would probably make my testing cheaper, they can work without it.
Then she asked me to compile a list of every member of my extended family who has had cancer too, as well as which type of cancer and at what age it developed. I know some of that. I know what I know anyway. I don't know when their various cancers developed, but I know they all died soon thereafter or as a result of the cancer, and I know when they died, so surely that counts for something. My information isn't lacking enough that I would try to ask for more anyway. Most of the cancer in my family is on my father's side. All of the "lady cancers" are, and those are the ones whose risk are heightened the most dramatically by this particular gene mutation.
I told my brother thank you for the information and thank you when he got me the extra pages from our uncle's report. He's always very prompt in his replies. I didn't mention that I already have heightened risk for colon cancer, which I inherited from our father's genes, in spite of our father pointing out in the email chain that he thinks he got "the good genes" because he hasn't yet had the same colon issues his brother or mother have had. I'm not going to tell any of them the results of my genetics testing either, both because I don't think they want to know and also because I want to have information they don't have for a change. I'm not mad at my half-siblings. They are nice and kind to me, but I'm angry at my father every time I remember he exists, not just for this. I get so angry when I think of him that I often cry in impotent rage, and I don't want anyone in his family to know that. I want them to think I'm calmer and cooler than them, as I've always pretended to be. I do not want them thinking I'm irrational and ungrateful or expecting too much. I will take what I can get. I will take months' old forwarded emails indicating that my daughter and I might want to get ourselves checked out for new and exotic cancer risks, carefully funneled through a third party so that I don't dare take liberties with my father by responding to him directly. I know I have more than most DC people already. But I'm still angry.
Bright Side: At least it's not ALS. I scoured my raw genome data from 23andMe, and I'm definitely not getting ALS.
My half-brother Hans emailed me the other day to say our uncle had tested positive for some sort of mutation that puts people at higher risk for specific types of cancer. He said our father had asked him to let me know in case I wanted to get myself or my daughter tested. Below Hans' note was a series of emails between my biological father and my uncle's wife. She had the job of informing my uncle's family members that they might want to get tested. There was a limited amount of information exchanged. The emails were from several months ago, but the dates showed my biological father just had forwarded them to Hans to forward to me this week. It reminded me vaguely of how people who find out they have an STD are supposed to reach out to everyone they've been intimate with. "Hey, it's Joseph. Yeah, the Joseph who sired you about 30 years ago. Good times, huh? So anyway, I tested positive, and it turns out you might want to get yourself tested too..." I wish I had more known half-siblings, just to add to the comic effect.
I had a check up scheduled with my doctor for just a few days later, so I brought a print-out of the email chain to my appointment and asked my doctor what he thought of genetic testing. I'd assumed he would say there wasn't much point in it if I'm not planning to have more kids and there is nothing actionable I can do with the results anyway. When I'd brought up prenatal testing before conceiving my daughter, my OB/GYN at the time had said, "What for? If you don't even know your family medical history, how can we know what tests to run?" I hadn't known who my biological father was back then or anything about his family medical history, but I thought there were standard tests doctors could run for common disorders.
To my surprise, maybe because I have more family information now, my current doctor had a different reaction. He referred me to a local cancer center that does genetic counseling and strongly recommended I do it. He said that, while there isn't often something actionable to be done with a heightened cancer risk, there might be more screening options in the future, and the field of genetics is progressing constantly so it would be good to have my results on file.
I called the genetic counselor to make an appointment. She asked me if I had a copy of my uncle's report because there was relevant information in it that they could use in testing me. I told her I might be able to get a copy. She stressed the importance of it until I finally explained that my biological father was an anonymous sperm donor and I'm still a secret to most of his family, said uncle probably included. I told her I would ask my brother for the report, but I wasn't sure I could get it. She told me it was okay. While it's useful information and would inform what genetic tests would be done on me and would probably make my testing cheaper, they can work without it.
Then she asked me to compile a list of every member of my extended family who has had cancer too, as well as which type of cancer and at what age it developed. I know some of that. I know what I know anyway. I don't know when their various cancers developed, but I know they all died soon thereafter or as a result of the cancer, and I know when they died, so surely that counts for something. My information isn't lacking enough that I would try to ask for more anyway. Most of the cancer in my family is on my father's side. All of the "lady cancers" are, and those are the ones whose risk are heightened the most dramatically by this particular gene mutation.
I told my brother thank you for the information and thank you when he got me the extra pages from our uncle's report. He's always very prompt in his replies. I didn't mention that I already have heightened risk for colon cancer, which I inherited from our father's genes, in spite of our father pointing out in the email chain that he thinks he got "the good genes" because he hasn't yet had the same colon issues his brother or mother have had. I'm not going to tell any of them the results of my genetics testing either, both because I don't think they want to know and also because I want to have information they don't have for a change. I'm not mad at my half-siblings. They are nice and kind to me, but I'm angry at my father every time I remember he exists, not just for this. I get so angry when I think of him that I often cry in impotent rage, and I don't want anyone in his family to know that. I want them to think I'm calmer and cooler than them, as I've always pretended to be. I do not want them thinking I'm irrational and ungrateful or expecting too much. I will take what I can get. I will take months' old forwarded emails indicating that my daughter and I might want to get ourselves checked out for new and exotic cancer risks, carefully funneled through a third party so that I don't dare take liberties with my father by responding to him directly. I know I have more than most DC people already. But I'm still angry.
Bright Side: At least it's not ALS. I scoured my raw genome data from 23andMe, and I'm definitely not getting ALS.
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