These are words from the opening scene from Silent Witness, Season 5, Episode 1, "The World Cruise". In this episode a professor is giving an address at a medical faculty in a university in London.
This statement is unfortunately true. But do you know what's even worse???? These five to ten diseases are only the diseases which they know about. Which they know about. There could be countless other diseases which we carry in our genes which they don't know about yet. Not yet. But they'll find them. One day.
I dream about stuff like this these days. Words like this flit randomly around my mind.
I am a healthy woman. I have no problems conceiving. My pregnancies are trouble free. My husband is healthy. His sperm is healthy. Our children are perfect. Perfect. The doctors can find nothing wrong with them. Nothing.
Craig and I have already accepted that when the results from Jet's autopsy come in, it is very likely that those results will reveal nothing. Nothing out of the ordinary. The results will show that Jet was a normal and healthy boy. Just like his brother Kees and his sister Freyja. Normal and healthy.
That's because (I think) Craig and I have something genetic inside us. I have it and Craig has it. Me having it doesn't cause any harm to me, and Craig having it doesn't cause any harm to him. Quite likely, if I was to have a child with someone who didn't also have this genetic bleep buried deep inside him, that child would live. Similarly, if Craig were to have a child with a woman who didn't have the same genetic bleep, their child would also live.
Scientists only recently started researching and mapping the human genome. Very recently. What they have found to date is only a tiny percentage of what they still need to find. What they DON'T KNOW yet is at least a million times greater than what they do know.
This means that it might be years before doctors find the nasty thing which caused our children to die. But I have no doubt that they will find it. No doubt at all.
If we consider the progress which has been made and the reduction in infant deaths in the last 20-30 years, I have no doubt that in another 20 or 30 or even 50 years, scientists will be able to pin-point certain genetic markers as those causing death and disease.
Maybe there will be a time in the future where hopefully other parents will not have to go through what we have gone through.
4 comments:
I sometimes wonder if, in the future, there will be new technologies and techniques for saving premature babies.
I'm certain that you are right Mirne. I was listening to a radio programme about the mapping of lung and skin cancer genes and all the new information that has come from that process. I'm sure that these are only scratches on the surface of the knowledge that will be revealed one day.
It is so unfair and cruel that you and Craig are so healthy, that your pregnancies have been healthy and to term, that your precious children have all been healthy. All so beautiful, big and healthy. There must be something like the situation that you describe going on.
I'm so sorry. xo
Oh Mirne, I hope you get some answers. It would be too cruel to have you live a lifetime not knowing. This post is something I have thought about since you lost Jet, that probably both you and Craig carry some gene anomaly that wouldn't normally affect your babies if they only had one gene passed down. I'm hoping they can isolate what has caused this to happen to you and at least give you some answers. For Freyja and Kees and Jet's sakes. I think about you so much, and your sweet babies. I just want to cry when I think of what you and Craig have been through and I am grateful that your love for each other remains strong during these horrific times. Keeping you both in my thoughts
i hope they find something too. i, like you, KNOW the answer is there. somewhere.
thinking of you often. for some reason, your posts dont show up in my feed. maybe because it's private, i dont know. so i have to remember to seek out your blog. but im listening.
I also hope you get answers one day for what genetic problem took your beautiful babies. Sorry haven't been online much. George's 7th month anniversary was the 19th and it's thrown me crashing down again. Sending you love.
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