Inherited causes of demise

In My Humble Opinion
21

Mom died of lung cancer related to smoking; Dad died of prostate cancer. Pretty sure neither of these applies to me ;).

Paternal grandfather died of a heart attack (I think) after years of being an alcoholic. Heart disease is always a possibility for me but not due to alcohol use. Paternal grandmother died “of old age”; she’d had either strokes or heart disease, I’m not sure which. Maternal grandfather went from Lou Gehrig’s Disease (ALS); I don’t have any symptoms of that, that I know of, so I think I’m OK. Maternal grandmother died after being bedridden for some years due to strokes.

So it sounds like a vascular disease will do me in.

22

My parents are still living - and fairly healthy in their mid 60s.

My maternal grandmother committed suicide in her 40s. Most of us have depression, but I don’t think I’ll off myself - at least not physically healthy (if I get ill, I’ll hold that card though).

My maternal grandfather died in his 80s of a stroke. He painted his own house the summer before. I could go that way. And I wouldn’t mind.

My paternal grandmother died in her 80s. She had lung cancer (a blood clot actually killed her, but we could have done surgery and let her die three months later, much more slowly and painfully, from the terminal cancer - we decided to let her go from the clot). She was a two pack a day smoker since she was 13. I don’t smoke.

My paternal (biological) grandfather is 86. He had diabetes that he has had since his 60s (my dad has it too - I limit my sugar, get exercise, and try to avoid type II diabetes). He is a little senile and sometimes hostile. But until recently, he was self sufficient.

23

Grandparents: strokes, infection complicated by diabetes, heart attack.

Parents: cancer, ruptured artery in the throat brought on by acute alcoholism.

24

Well let’s see here:

Father, age 56, cancer of the esophagus connected to alcoholism and 40 years of Camel shorts

Mother, age 95 and still going strong and living independently despite being partly blind.

Maternal grandfather, age early 80s of a second heart attack in the mid-1960s. A kind and patient man, see below. Some think he died in self-defense.

Maternal grandmother, age late 90’s of just plain mean-spiritedness. Seriously, she died of being old and she wasn’t very damned happy about it, either. For her, death involved the loss of the ability to try to run other people’s lives.

Paternal grandfather, age 83, a stroke, called apoplexy in his obituary, in 1945. I never knew him.

Paternal grandmother, age 92, of a heart attack. A sweet but somewhat ineffective lady who observed Queen Victoria’s birthday. I’m not sure she was a US citizen.

Maternal great-grandfather, age 25, froze to death in a blizzard after stumbling into a barbed wire (bob-wahr) fence in a drunken stupor.

Maternal great-grandmother (this is a prize), age 103, of complications of a broken shoulder caused by falling out of an apple tree.

Maternal great-step grandfather, age 92. Of a stroke. His friends thought he was just drunk and left him to sleep it off. He was a felon, having been convicted of assaulting a prohibition office who was removing beer from the Turner Hall in Monroe, Wis. He was also a Lafollette Republican and a Socialist.

Is there a pattern here?