If you ask me, I will tell you that you just have to ask them how they died, those who are dead.
Finding out from what they died of, whether from sickness or accident, or even from preternatural forces, you will be in a position to not die similarly if the kind of deaths they ended with is not acceptable to you, or the improvisionality of their deaths. What’s that? Meaning, dying too early, too young, that is. Then also dying without providing for the details of your earthly remains and your affairs post death.
Similarly, it might be of use to you to find out whether when they did die, people were happy, relieved or saddened. You get what I mean?
OK, go and do or not do likewise, so that you will live longer and better, and die in peace and with ‘applause’ from your fellowmen.
History of diabetes, premature heart disease (before age 50 is more significant), history of breast, cervical or ovarian cancer, history of bowel cancer, then a wide variety of inheritable genetic and other disease such as sickle cell, cystic fibrosis, Huntingdon’s chorea, or any oddball diseases that cropped up.
A history of depression, bipolar illness, schizophrenia, suicide, etc. might also be helpful.
It’s overkill, but it is thorough. If it’s too much, just review it and pick the ones which concern you the most, in addition to ones I list above. I’ve probably left out a few key ones, but knowing the above will give you lots more info than most people have.
The q doc covered the conditions. Who? Well full blood more than half, & the closer the more important. It’ll only take a minute or two to pick his brain about family history, so it can’t hurt to go back a couple generations.
I just went in to see a new doctor not long ago, and she asked about siblings, parents, and grandparents - perhaps aunts and uncles too but I can’t recall exactly. I know it was no further back, and did not include cousins either.
I’m working on a legal case where family medical history is relevant. Information was gathered on the people’s siblings, parents, and grandparents only.
I do think, however, that getting full information on aunts and uncles would be very helpful to you, as they had the same genetic inputs as your parents. Also, they were probably raised in roughly the same conditions as your parents.
I don’t know that I bother to collect full information on your second cousins or your grandmother’s half sister, but it might be helpful to collect some basic information, like date of birth, date of death, age of death, and cause of death. Also, any major conditions that they might have had. If half the people on that side of the family died young or had diabetes, it would certainly be worth knowing about.
A particular doctor may not ask for that full information, but it sure would be nice to have it. Your grandmother’s sister’s heart attack is probably irrelevant to the orthopedist that you see for your sprained ankle. But your cardiologist would probably want to know, even if it isn’t on the questionnaire on the intake form.
Good luck. And good thinking on doing this while you know you have the chance!
p.s. And thanks for bringing this up. My husband has a somewhat tenuous relationship with his dad’s side of the family, and he also has very limited childhood memories, so he knows very little of the medical history on his father’s side. I think I’ll make sure to get as much medical history from them as soon as I can ASAP.
Come to think of it, I might as well get as much as I can from all sides of both families. Couldn’t hurt. Could help.
I wonder if there is some kind of “family medical history” workbook out there. QtM’s reference is very helpful, but I expect there is something out there in a slightly different format that would be more directly suited to this inquiry.
You know, I say that a lot when reading Susma’s posts.
Susma, you post a lot of what looks like gibberish. Whilst that’s mostly harmless, it can be quite serious in medical threads. Please pay more attention to your word choices and syntax in the future.
