My Relationship With My Doctor
I was 63 in 2017, when I first met my current cardiologist, and I’d come prepared. After spelling out my family history — father and brother dead at 50 and 27 ...
The Emotional Impact of Living With Familial Hypercholesterolemia
I always assumed I’d die young. This may sound shocking to most people, who hope and even expect to live well into their 80s, 90s, and beyond. For those ...
What It Was Like to Find a Treatment That Works
The year was 1976, and I was 21. My 50-year-old father had died 10 years earlier, after suffering a massive coronary. My only sibling had died in 1975 ...
What It’s Like to Pass a Genetic Condition Down to Your Children
There are as many ways to parent as there are people. But, with rare exception, the one thing we all have in common is the intense desire to ...
How to Protect Your Family When You Have a Genetic Illness
You’ve been diagnosed with familial hypercholesterolemia (FH), the genetic form of severely high cholesterol, which can lead to early heart events or death ...
Early Diagnosis and Putting a Name to My Condition Prevented an Early Death
Some of the best advice I’ve ever heard boils down to this simple idea: Naming something doesn’t give it power, it gives us power ...