The family tree...

[peeonme]

I saw my Aunt today and she has gone in to a state of dementia, maybe at 91 it is common.
My mother did the same at 72.
I look at the family and wonder... schizophrenia, dementia, alcoholism, drug abuse and lung cancer seem to end most of the lives.

Many never lived past 50. My Aunt is an anomaly and her dementia became more and more obvious, but physically she does well.

I have been fortunate, at 65 I do well and the only thing I abused was tobacco and quit that some time ago.

How is it in your family?

 

[ChickenGuy]

My late grandma who passed away a decade ago aged 94, but, really sadly, she had spent the last 25 years of her life doing nothing but lying in her bed. It's a mystery what exactly happened to her, because before it happened she a fit and healthy woman, vibrant, fun, and a gymnastics instructor to boot.

According to my dad (I was too young to remember) she went on a train to visit relatives and never appeared, and she was found in a confused and agitated state and brought back home, where she then just gave up and stayed in bed and never got out again (except on very extremely rare occasions but only then to sit in a chair by the window). My mother had to cook her food and take it up to her house daily until a home-help was arranged.

I can only think it was some kind of breakdown. Strangely, it happened at exactly the same time as her only daughter was giving birth to a child in another part of the country.

In later years she got dementia. She finally had to go to a nursing home after spending 25 years in this state, and she died a couple of years later.

 

[eastofeden]

Immediate family...so far...

Pancreas Cancer - Liver Cancer - Suicide

Grandparents...

Lung Cancer - Heart Disease - Heart Attack - Dementia (but he wasn't my biological relative)

The one I take after the most and even looked like at the same age if you looked at a pic of him at 20 and me at 20 ect ect most of my life was my grandfather. I looked more like him than my Dad...and like him...I have Heart Disease already...but he lived into his 90s.

 

[medic1]

My mother died aged 54 from a stroke, after a small cardiac event. My father died aged 72 from lung cancer. My maternal grandmother died aged 70 from a stroke, my maternal grandfather died aged 47 from abusing alcohol.

My paternal grandmother died aged 40 from a fall, my paternal grandfather died aged 67 from lung cancer.

Like most people they died from afflictions affecting either the lungs or the brain.

 

[Willie Boy]

I never knew my family. Spent the first year or two in an orphanage, I think, then the next 9ish years in a "foster" family, of pedophiles. After I escaped that I spent 4ish years on the streets. I was somewhere around 15 when I was taken in by the man I call my father, who also adopted me. He taught me his business, got me a tutor so I could have an education...... When he died, he left everything to me I took what was his and increased it into nest egg it is today. I'm retired, and if I miraculously live another 50+ years I'll never worry for money, vacation locations, or anything else. If society collapses in my lifetime (with trump in the White House it could easily happen any day) I'm even prepared for that.

I;ve already far outlived any family I once had, regardless of what took them.

 

[freefall]

Is this supposed to be disease lineage in the family?

Mostly the classical: diabetes and heart disease and hypertension. My father's father and mother died from eye infection resulting in sepsis (worsened by diabetes) and repeated stroke respectively. The rest of my father's family have very ugly history of the three above.

My mother's parents died due to unknown causes, complicated by dishonesty and conflict in her family. Until today, my mother still doesn't know what the causes of death were.

Although from my mother's side there is glaucoma: my grandmother was blind from it, my mother currently struggles with it, and from several past examinations there is high chance I might have one in the future.

And my mother's brother might be schizophrenic and died in incarceration (precise cause also unknown). Also, albeit non-descriptive, I think depression also runs in the family judging from the stories and situation.

In short: my father's lineage are of classical metabolic diseases, whereas my mother's are shady as fuck. My mother even doesn't want to have anything to do with her family once her parents had died.

 

[Alistair]

My mother's side of the family are all strong healthy Irish women. My mom's 74, doesn't look 60. (She gets carded for her AARP card) my grandmother died at 96 (only because of a poorly tested blood thinning drug that actually killed her) I have a great aunt that is 104 and one that is 106. Still alive today.

My dad's side dies young of heart disease and colon cancer. So I'm already getting all the tests that I would usual start 10-15 years later. So far the Irish in me is winning over my father's side. No ill health so far.

 

[Rickrock]

My father's family mostly had heart trouble, but those of them that lived past the initial problems in their 60's and 70's made it into their 90's. My mother's family had diabetes or cancer but still lived into their 80's. It looks like I am developing diabetes.

 

[Essex Boy]

We're long-lived on both sides of my family. No centenarians yet but there have been quite a few who lived into their nineties. The family diseases are arthritis and glaucoma, neither of them killers. I've been spared both of those. It's often cancer that finishes them off but they tend to develop it in old age, it's not that we're especially prone to it.

My father died aged 81 from cancer of the bladder. My mother lived for fourteen years after being diagnosed with breast cancer and died aged 88, but not from the cancer. It is not so deadly post-menopause. Towards the end she developed stomach cancer too and I was amazed at how little it impacted her day-to-day life. She was worn down by all the medication, which impairs kidney function, and a host of other complaints from time to time, especially anæmia. In the latter part of 2014 she started saying she only wanted to live to see my birthday and then she wanted to die (It sounds morbid when I repeat it like that but both she and my father were quite matter-of-fact about that sort of thing). On the afternoon before my birthday I got her in to hospital because she'd been passing a lot of blood. She was quite alert. Early the next morning the hospital phoned and told me to come straight away. When I got there she was dipping in and out of consciousness and too weak to talk. I sat at the bedside all day and she faded away at 6:17 pm, so she got her wish more or less to the minute because I was born at 6 pm. Perhaps she thought that's it, I've reached my destination and now I can go. There's lots more I could tell you but this is about hereditary killer complaints rather than actual deaths so I'll spare you any more details.