We are a family with (at least) three generations of documented food allergies/sensitivities/intolerances, including anaphylaxis, with neurological manifestations, as well as environmental triggers for hay fever and asthma. And some other neurological and other diagnoses of inherited anomalies that have shortened lives, or reduced the quality of life in end stages. Much of this information will never be known, and lost to our family history, given medical privacy.

With respect to immune deficiencies, we like to think of ourselves as not being "disordered", but having a highly sensitive immune system. Yes, it could kill us, but we know what to do; we are just at the tail end of a genetic curve, maybe one with lots of modes -- but I like to think positively.

Perhaps one day these immune system differences (not disorders) will be more fully understood from a genetic standpoint. Until more progress is made, our immune challenged family supports research and advocacy, and chooses to live in urbanized areas with model law for emergency responders, who are provided great training, and who transport us to great hospitals with outstanding emergency and other health services. Travel outside of these areas is always a challenge, but is becoming easier. We always buy travel insurance, and register at hospitals away from home in advance of need. Families like ours develop our support networks, both medical and non-medical, and, if we can, we tend to stay in one place for a long time. We are concerned for those families with dependents who must rely upon multiple providers over the course of growing up, or growing old, and the sacrifices made by the family members who provide the primary source of income in order to make access to health care a priority.

As my family enters into a new developmental stage, supporting our children as they raise their own children, presumably with some as yet unidentified immune deficiency, I am reminded that challenges are provided to those who can meet them with the help of the medical community, as well as friends and families, and others who experience similar life challenges. For example, a neighbor child was born blind, and has become a model student in an accelerated program, perhaps inspiring its peers to study blindness. At the same time, the parent of this child rose to the challenge, and applied an advanced non-medical degree as a board member of a national advocacy organization, a role for which he did not know he had been prepared, until asked to meet this life challenge.

In sum, we are all in this together, whether or not we inherit these genetic differences in our own families. Thinking positively, those of us who know our biological heirs are more fortunate than those families that are formed by individuals who are not biologically related, including children who no longer have, or may never have had, access to their genetic history.