And so it begins.

Today, I had my yearly womanly check up, and I had to fill out a family medical history form. Years before, I never had issues with this form. I was healthy other than my thyroid issue. The only real big events in my family was that my dad had diabetes and my mother had high blood pressure. This past year, my family has gone through a ton of medical ups and down. My father had open heart surgery with a quintuple bypass. My mother got diagnosed with osteoporosis. I had a small incident a couple of weeks ago where I went to the emergency room and most likely had viral meningitis. And three weeks ago, my brother had emergency surgery...

He went to his family doctor because he was having stomach pains. He thought perhaps he had appendicitis, and the doctor suggested he go to the hospital because he suggested to get a CT scan. Apparently, the pain got bad enough to force my brother to go to the emergency room. A CT scan was performed, and shortly thereafter, emergency surgery was performed. All we knew was that there was tumor on his colon, and it had to be removed. A week later, with my brother still in this hospital, we finally heard back from the surgeon and the pathologist that the tumor was cancer, and that the tumor had spread to 8 lymph nodes, all of which had been removed during the initial surgery.

My brother is only 45 years old and has stage 3 cancer. He will be starting chemotherapy in a few weeks. Did I mention he doesn't have health insurance either? Also, the entire family knows except for his 3 daughters because the mom doesn't want to worry them until radiation begins.

While going over my family medical history form, my OBGYN recommended that I myself get a colonoscopy at the age of 35 since most likely the cancer my brother has is genetic. She will be working on getting a written recommendation so that insurance will cover it. That is only 5 years away.

I've already visited my brother while he was in the hospital, and I will be visiting him at home tomorrow with my mom. Everybody, I know we're still fairly young and fearless, but take good care of your bodies. My brother never drank or smoked, but we think stress, environment, and diet contributed to his cancer. Something to think about.