So, I think he has it. Huntington’s Disease. I was writing an email to someone the other day and I remembered my mom imitating his mother lighting a cigarette and I realized that it’s the exact same thing I saw him do repeatedly with his coffee cup the last time he was here.

Talking about a nasty feeling in the pit of your stomach.

So this led to a flurry of research and anxiety over the weekend. I read horrible, horrible things. I couldn’t stop myself. Things about personality changes and spouse abuse and violent tendencies and financial ruin and paranoia as the brain begins to atrophy. Things about divorcing one’s sick spouse and using the disease’s propensity to cause child abuse as a way to get custody. Things about ‘Don’t you dare test unless you have health insurance, life insurance, & long term care insurance paid for, because they will discriminate against you if they find out you have the gene.’ And things about many, many people showing emotional/behavioral symptoms younger than I am.

For the most part, I am only thinking about my own reaction, and spouse’s. I can’t think about the kids because that will kill me. And every so often I think of my dad . . . always a quirky individual, I thought he was getting even more jaunty as he aged. And he may be, but now I realize part of my thoughts were a mis-interpretation of his movements. But then, hey, if we managed to connect a little more because I was finding him witty, all the better, huh?

He wants to come up for Big Kid’s birthday. The routine is that every couple months he comes to visit for a couple hours. Other than that our contact is minimal emails. Supposedly he was a completely different creature before his mom was diagnosed (when I was three), but after that he just sort-of shut down and between that and trying to deal with a developing child of the opposite sex, well– communication has always been strained. So he wants to come visit and part of me, after all this weekend’s research and anxiety, I just want to run screaming. And then I remember there’s a person in there. A person who researched this disease and felt the way I am feeling, and watches it take over him. Heh. Then I feel more compassion towards him but I’m still afraid to see him. I don’t want to think about that being my future. I don’t want to think about spouse’s life becoming a tragedy. I don’t want to think about my kids only remembering me after the disease took over. I don’t want to think about trying to find a Kevorkian in my state only to realize that I may not have my wits about me to decide when it’s time and who could look at their kids and decide this is the last time they’ll see them anyway?

So I’m trying not to think about it.

Last night I sat down to try and figure out: what attitude do I need to take to get through these next couple days until I can push this out of my head again? And I decided that the real deal is– whether I have the gene or not — it does not affect how I will live this next week or this next month. It’s just not relevant in this moment, and the panic can wait.