Has anyone here ever gotten one of those home DNA tests?

[JDTAY]

You know, I'd hate to start getting hypochondriasis again, but there is a certain tenderness in the right side of my chest that isn't in the left.

Yeah, I'm not even gonna bother getting that checked. If I do have something there, I have to turn in my man card.

 

[JDTAY]

You know, I've been searching more, and the Invega I'm on can cause gynecomastia, which could explain tenderness in the chest in males. It even says it can cause a lump right below the nipple, which is great, because that's about where the tenderness is.

Edit: To add to this, male breast cancer is actually usually painless from what I'm hearing, so this makes more sense.

 

[JDTAY]

So, um, I was able to talk to someone at my doctor's office about CHEK2, and they made an appointment for me for the 19th. Not sure if they're gonna do a full hereditary cancer panel or just check the one gene, but it sounded like they were going to do something. Three weeks is a bit long for someone like me to wait to get this checked, but like I said before, the only recommendation for males with CHEK2 is to get colonoscopies starting at age 40 instead of 50, so it's not really that urgent.

 

[JDTAY]

Darn, you guys, I've run out of stuff to find out about CHEK2. Well, mostly. I've been trying to talk to my sister again to see exactly which mutation she had. It's most likely CHEK2*1100delC though, since that one is the most prevalent one and is correlated with my Northern European ancestry. It doesn't do anything weird, just deactivates the entire CHEK2 gene.

 

[JDTAY]

Now I'm learning stuff about CHEK2 that I don't even need to know. It's been linked to osteosarcoma, but I think that's a mutation other than CHEK2*1100delC. That's a weird one to be linked with though, since it's rare as heck.

They only officially link CHEK2*1100delC to breast cancer (both sexes) and colorectal cancer right now, but apparently they've been looking into prostate cancer.

 

[JDTAY]

I was wondering if they could just test for the protein that CHEK2 produces, but I don't think it's that simple. Apparently, CHEK2*1100delC still produces a protein, just a non-functioning one. So yeah, I think they have to look at your genes, which takes a while.

 

[JDTAY]

Heh, I just learned that despite mutations doubling breast cancer risk in women, CHEK2 is classified as a "moderate risk" cancer gene. BRCA1 and BRCA2 are still the superstars.

You know, if you search "CHEK2" on Bing, the following paragraph comes up:

At this point in time, testing adult family members for a moderate risk gene mutation does NOT provide the same clarity or guidance that testing for a high risk gene mutation does. This is because moderate risk gene mutations should not be assumed to be the sole explanation for a particular family's history of cancer. For example, a family could have additional unidentified genetic and/or non-genetic risk factors contributing to the development of cancer seen in family members.

So, long story short, given my family medical history, I probably have even more problems than CHEK2.

 

[JDTAY]

I've been scaring myself with the possibility of BRCA2 now, because like I stated in my last post, CHEK2 alone doesn't necessarily explain why my mom and her sister both died of breast cancer. Meh, the sooner the 19th comes, the better. Though, it could be up to four weeks after that to get results.

 

[Bosbeetle]

I've been scaring myself with the possibility of BRCA2 now, because like I stated in my last post, CHEK2 alone doesn't necessarily explain why my mom and her sister both died of breast cancer. Meh, the sooner the 19th comes, the better. Though, it could be up to four weeks after that to get results.

Don't try to control something you can't control, and don't make the mistake to reason 'if x happened to family member y it will happen to me to' or 'if x could go wrong, it will go wrong for me'.

I know this is not easy and seems impossible but please try to loosen up. Not everything is important. Try to emphasize this for yourself, most potential threats are just that 'potential' and thus not important.

Anxiety is difficult thing, learning not to feed is is not easy but worthwhile.

I have a girlfriend that has a brca1 mutation and trust me it won't releive you of any of these issues or even make them worse if you know you have this mutation. I would advice anybody to get screened if it runs in the family, but I would be cautious is you have a history with anxiety.

 

[JDTAY]

Good news and bad news. The good news is I specifically asked my sister about BRCA1 and BRCA2, and she said she did get tested for them and didn't have mutations in either.

The bad news is I learned that even though she's been having herself and my nephew genetically tested to find out about his developmental delays, that's not actually how she found out about the CHEK2. Apparently she had a skin tumor, so they did a hereditary cancer panel on her. She didn't mention the tumor being cancerous at all though. CHEK2 being a tumor suppressor gene though, the mutation probably causes more non-cancerous tumors as well.

 

[JDTAY]

I just read a blog post about a woman who found out she had a CHEK2 mutation, then did a thyroid self-exam, and found thyroid cancer. You guys know from the Caring Corner how I freak out about my thyroid because I have low body temperature and obesity. Fortunately, thyroid cancer is easy as heck to survive. Unfortunately, my neck is probably too damn fat for a self-exam of my thyroid. The test mostly consists of looking at your neck in the mirror while drinking water.

 

[JDTAY]

Hey guys, I signed up for a 14-day free trial of Ancestry. I don't even need a DNA test, because my research shows that even though my parents are an Englishman and an Irishwoman, both sides of my family are lousy with German.

One interesting thing I already knew about but was reminded of, I saw that my dad's maternal grandmother died at age 36, so I asked him what happened there, for medical reasons, and he said, "That was suicide." Man, probably shouldn't have brought that up.

 

[JDTAY]

You know, researching my mom's side of the family more, I can't find where it goes back to Ireland. Apparently it was a long line of English people with a usually Irish surname. Now I feel all inbred because I might be English on both sides. I was already German on both sides though.

 

[levi]

You know, researching my mom's side of the family more, I can't find where it goes back to Ireland. Apparently it was a long line of English people with a usually Irish surname. Now I feel all inbred because I might be English on both sides. I was already German on both sides though.

You can be both. Even if you don't believe the bell beakers were people who moved to England, and were merely a culture that communicated, we then had the angles invading and then the saxons and then the normans (but they were more French).

 

[JDTAY]

Another thing I just learned about my dad's mom's mom that committed suicide. Her father was about 73 years old when she was born, on his second marriage. I'm sensing a disturbance in the force.

 

[JDTAY]

You know, I've been thinking about DNA. Entire chromosomes are inherited at once, and you only have 46 of them. You get 23 from mom, 23 from dad. They also get 23 from each parent. Here's the weird part, depending on which 23 you get from each parent, it's possible you might not share any genetic ancestry with one of your grandparents. The odds are like 1 in 8 million for each grandparent, but it is a possibility. Man, I wonder if they have a term for someone who doesn't share any genetic ancestry with one of their grandparents. I'm too lazy to google it right now.

Edit: This is more important the further back you go. Six generations back, you have 64 ancestors, but only have DNA from up to 46 of them.

 

[JDTAY]

You know, I was just thinking, it might be cool to make a character creator for a game where instead of being freestyle, you have to choose chromosomes from two fixed parents. Still results in 70 trillion possible outcomes.

 

[JDTAY]

Double checked, the parent info for my mom's 3rd great-grandfather was unreliable, so I still have no idea how my mom got her maiden name. I am back to assuming she's Irish now though, since her family is huge and Catholic.

 

[Bosbeetle]

You know, I've been thinking about DNA. Entire chromosomes are inherited at once, and you only have 46 of them. You get 23 from mom, 23 from dad. They also get 23 from each parent. Here's the weird part, depending on which 23 you get from each parent, it's possible you might not share any genetic ancestry with one of your grandparents. The odds are like 1 in 8 million for each grandparent, but it is a possibility. Man, I wonder if they have a term for someone who doesn't share any genetic ancestry with one of their grandparents. I'm too lazy to google it right now.

Edit: This is more important the further back you go. Six generations back, you have 64 ancestors, but only have DNA from up to 46 of them.

You are missing homologous recombination, you inheret a mixture of both moms and dad chromosome mixed up. Lets call your moms chromosome 1234 and dads abcd you get 12c4 or 1bcd or a23d (or any other combination) on average there is a crossover (that how they call the connection between mom and dads crhomosome) of three or something but they dont always cross over in the same place. Thats why you are not your sister and even dont share one single similar chromosome with her, exept for your x chromosome because that is not crossed over with your dads y chromosome.

It's and intriging idea especially if you consider there is a space in time during the making of spermcells or eggcells that your DNA is completely cut up in pieces and then sown together again (that is where the homologous recombination happens) so in you sperm youve got a mixture of mom and dad chromosomes and your child will get those.

Post automatically merged: Jul 2, 2021

You know, I was just thinking, it might be cool to make a character creator for a game where instead of being freestyle, you have to choose chromosomes from two fixed parents. Still results in 70 trillion possible outcomes.

There is (kind of) it's called massive chalice where you can choose to either figt with your fighter or marry them and let them make new fighters with aspects of both mom and dad.

 

[levi]

It's and intriging idea especially if you consider there is a space in time during the making of spermcells or eggcells that your DNA is completely cut up in pieces and then sown together again (that is where the homologous recombination happens) so in you sperm youve got a mixture of mom and dad chromosomes and your child will get those.

There should be no DNA originating from mom in the sperm before it enters the egg I'd have thought. It might be identical to DNA from mom's chromosomes, and it may be recombinated to form that but the only source of DNA in sperm should be daddy's genome, I'd have thought.