Genetics isn't exactly a new science. I'm not going to bother googling and I didn't really do "science" as a thing when I was getting my multiple degrees in the subjects where it's OK to invent things that are true if you just argue them hard enough. So I'm going to say genetics has been around at least since the time of, let's say Albert Einstein and his theory about how all things have to do with your relatives. That's a pretty hacky joke, but keep in mind the only thing I know about Einstein for sure at this point is that he was Swiss and was also somehow Meg Ryan's uncle. I'm working at my limits here.
I am finding it's becoming more and more interesting to me what little time bombs are lurking in the strands of the DNA I never asked for. I'm fairly fortunate that, as I approach a half century of life, both of my principle genetic donors are still going concerns on this side of the veil, sputtering on (separately and yet somehow cosmically and temperamentally conjoined) out of a combination of inertia and bloody-mindedness. Neither one will die due to a) having had kids pretty young, so they're not THAT old yet and b) a common allergy to the idea of anyone or anything "getting one over" on them, up to and including human mortality as a concept. Though I'm not much like either of my parents in many ways, I will cop to sharing the idea that being dead sure feels like a ripoff. What's in it really besides "rest" I suppose, but I was just as nonexistent before the day I was born and have been exhausted every day since then, so how restful could it have been really?
I'm doing all the stuff you're supposed to do to manage your health: I exercise, I get the tests, I don't smoke or drink... this is where I'm supposed to also say "I watch what I eat" but I already said I don't smoke or drink, there's only so much dopamine a human body will make unprompted. It turns out mine needs a lot of cream cheese frosting to achieve what my therapist calls "balance." There's a chicken-egg question about motivational salience, but I don't really eat eggs anymore either, what else do you want from me?
Even with all that in mind, I can't help but watch my parents slough slowly into decrepitude and wonder, incredibly selfishly, which of their maladies or ambulatory inconveniences are theirs alone or ours as a cursed bloodline. It's not easy to fish out either when one or both of them have had deep, sensual, life-long affairs with cigarettes, alcohol and homemade mac and cheese (did you know you can make it with heavy cream?) at clinically inadvisable levels. As a variety of their joints lock up or capillaries cease being able to capil, how am I supposed to know which proactive prophylaxis to opt for and which are programmatically unavoidable, no matter how hard I swerve?
The obvious (and stupidest) answer, of course, is: I can't. It's 2023 and everyone is still fucking guessing. Not only do we not have medical certainty, a non-zero portion of the population is reflexively rejecting the parts we already do know, like basic germ theory. I look forward to some investor figuring out a way to monetize that distrust into a new kind of hokum "medicine," based on literally nothing, that the skeptical can opt for instead of, you know, antibiotics. It wouldn't be unprecedented though. That's the kind of thinking that got us Scientology and chiropractors.
Your parents aren't your destiny, of course, no matter how much your co-dependent mother would like that to be true. All I can really do is take the best advice of non-chriopractor doctors and try not to stress when I follow their advice imperfectly. Diabetes is not a desirable outcome, but neither is a lifetime devoid of cake. The goal is to land somewhere in the happy medium between amputated toes and red velvet.
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