Hello Listers: Our old friend and consultant Valentine has added some suggestions to the plan for gathering Health information of our relatives: ----- Original Message ----- From: .... valentine53179 To: Dave Witthans Sent: Thursday, July 13, 2006 6:29 AM Subject: Re: [IL-CHICAGO] Form for Relatives documenting health history? i have always promoted that people record clearly along with mentioned symptoms AND WHEN THESE appeared in the genealogy charts... it is nice to have the death record notation regarding cause of death and the OTHER issues that were happening at that time... it is a little aggravating when the dr says pneumonia when for 10 years earlier everyone knew that the person spent hours in the bathroom with a colon cancer or stomach cancer.... and no mention of it is made on the death cert... I havent looked in detail at the program that elain suggested but if the form doesnot allow for WHEN the a symptoms of the disease first appeared then i would suggest that it be added...ditto with detailed occupational data... as in what was the job..for duration, in what plant, in what city and what kind of hours and FOR EACH OF THE JOBS he/she has held..... this little notation will help the doctors determine if the disease is more hereditary or more environmental... for instance... if the parentage does not have a cancer but the person develops it in his/her 40s and it is found that his job was shovelling coal for 40 years, then the suspciion would be environmental... etcetcetc my family, great aunts and great uncles and downward is packed with cancer... not a single one the SAME cancer and i can peg it to one man... a locomotive enigneer, steam, who started at 18 years old and died about a year after he left the RR service at about 76.... of cancer... his father before him died just of old age at 96. I attribute it to to a gene affected by the work he did and it spread thru all 13 of his children and their children... save ONE, who is now 96. I do think medical genealogies are a good thing... even for those items that do not apparently kill us... for instance, a young child breaks their arm. i think it should be recorded... or if a person walked stooped over or with a limp or with a cane or wore glasses or a hearing aide or held papers at a distance to see or attached to their nose (because some just wouldnt wear glasses or couldnt afford to get them) i also record those physical features such as balding and early hari color changes if it is mentioned..and if i am doing a REAL interview with family,i do ask those things... Making mention of brittle fingernails too, or nail biters or those who have shaking feet or nervous legs or restless sleep or snoring... all these are things that can point to medical problems inthe future stemming from the past and now.... we can see images of people and their weight but when did that weight start to accumulate? in youth? to me, if it was in youth and the kid was on a farm, then i have to wonder why a kid on a working farm would ever beable to keep that kind of weight on..... so yes, i think a medical genealogy, aka a physical assessment chart, is in order for any person, genealogist or not... it is also important that we know the old names for diseases... for instance, i believe that dropsy would now fall into the category of congestive heart.... how many have asked people they interview if they have tattoos? and about those mini art forms? and about where they got them... who they were with, the reason for the time and money to get them.... and do you have a photo of these.... ? and if mushy, perhaps a drawing overlay on the tattoo to show what once was so clean and neat and perhaps colorful? if you haven't and those tattoos are still walking around, get the camera and the video and get the story... doesn't make any difference if you have heard it a million times... get the story now.... get all those W's answered... the punctures have stories too... just when did you decide on pierced ears? or was it decided for you as a child..? tell the stories.... and if you have a child or two who have gone this route of marking and piercing, write your thoughts about them and when you first noticed them(if done on the sly) and just whatever comes to mind about the existence of these on your babe's skin that your mind's eye still says is a newborn!