1996 was the final year we lived in the land of pretend, my sister and I. I took her side, always when she called to rant and rave about what her estranged-husband was now ‘accusing her of’ or demanding she do. In return, she made regular visits with her son, my delightful nephew who had just turned 14. I had always felt that my nephew and I shared a special connection. Where Deb and other members of the family, chose defense mechanisms of extreme silence for shutting out painful eve

When you come to awareness of the risk of Huntington’s Disease a bit later in life, the Birthday business takes on new meaning and import. Huntington’s was not a fact of my life until I stared down its most obvious symptoms as they manifested in my older sister. She was 41 at the time and I was 38. I played a numbers game with the next few years, our next few birthdays. Each time she added another candle to her cake, I was subtracting instead, watching her closely as she waved the cu

In 1992 Nancy S. Wexler wrote “The Tiresias Complex: Huntington's disease as a paradigm of testing for late-onset disorders” from a purely medical and personally predisposed perspective. She begins this paper with: “The Blind Seer Tiresias Confronted Oedipus with the quintessential dilemma of modern genetics: ‘It is but sorrow to be wise when wisdom profits not.’ (“Oedipus Rex” by Sophocles) How ironic that Sophocles would make the blind seer Tires

The birth of my grandson in August 1995 was less than a blessed event for me. While my 17 year old daughter basked in the attention of laboring and birthing new life (with myself and 9 of her friends in attendance), and then the visits, presents and adoration of her son in those early post-partum days, my emotions were being tossed as though through a cement mixer. I wanted to love and embrace my grandson, wanted to congratulate my daughter as I passed the torch of motherhood her way. The proble