Talking with Family Members
Starting the Conversation
Start the conversation by sitting down with your parents and asking them about their medical background, ethnicity, and environment growing up. Some helpful questions to ask are listed below 1.
- Where were they born and where did they grow up? Specifically a city, farm, or small town?
- What ethnicities run in the family and their ancestors?
- Were they near factories or work in factories? If from a small town, did they spray crops?
- Did they ever get seriously ill or were hospitalized? Did they ever get cancer? If so, at what age, type, and where were they treated?
Questions like these are very important as environment plays a big role in contracting many cancers. After learning more about your parents’ background, you have a foundation to learn more about their parents, brothers, and sisters. Asking these same questions regarding your grandparents, aunts, uncles, and cousins is extremely vital to obtain a complete family medical history.
If you have lost a parent or are no longer in touch with them, it is still important to ask these questions to another relative you may be closer with such as an older sibling, aunt, or uncle. Every answer provides more information to protect you and your family in the future.
Works Cited
1Family History. (n.d.). Retrieved March 25th , 2019, from Lynch Syndrome International: https://lynchcancers.com/lynch-syndrome/family-history/
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