Ten years ago today,
I launched this blog to explore the depths of living at risk for Huntington’s
disease and to unburden myself of the fear of its inevitable symptoms.
Frankly, I did not
expect to still be writing at 55.
At that age, my
mother had developed chorea (the involuntary movements associated with HD) and
was experiencing serious emotional and cognitive symptoms that would soon
prevent her from speaking and caring for herself. This year marks the sad 20th
anniversary of her official diagnosis. She died of HD in February 2006 at the age of 68.
I tested positive for
the HD genetic mutation in 1999.
I strongly believe
that my work on this blog – research, reflection, writing, advocacy, and
networking – has helped me delay my own HD onset.
I cannot
scientifically prove this, but evidence strongly suggests that mental stimuli
and other forms of enrichment can positively affect the course of this disease
and other neurodegenerative conditions.
Researchers have told
me privately that they believe my mental activity has helped keep me stable.
“Keep doing what you’re doing,”
they say.
Gene Veritas with his tenth anniversary blog posting (photo by Gene Veritas)
Launching the blog
Life can be an
emotional roller coaster. HD families ride the tallest and most twisted one,
with HD gene carriers like me facing a terrifying descent into symptoms.
Starting in 2001, I
wrote and edited Conquest,
the tri-annual newsletter of the San Diego Chapter of the Huntington’s Disease Society of America. However, while revealing the stories of many
HD-affected individuals and their families in Conquest, I never wrote about my own family’s
plight.
I started At Risk
at the urging of Norman Oder, a fellow Yale University graduate and colleague
at the Yale Daily News.
As a young journalist
in the 1980s, Norman by chance wrote an article about a New York area HD
family. After we reconnected years later, he edited some of my Conquest articles. Coincidentally one told the
story of that same family, part of which had moved to California.
In the early 2000s
Norman and I brainstormed about how to increase media coverage of HD, including
my own story, as a way to strengthen the cause and attract potential donors.
With that goal in
mind, I initiated the blog to address the many complex issues faced by
presymptomatic mutation carriers like me as well as untested at-risk
individuals.
I didn’t realize at
the time how much it would help me sort out my thoughts, engage with others in
the HD community, and nudge HD activism. In February 2011, I examined this blog as an advocacy tool during my keynote of the Sixth Annual HD
Therapeutics Conference, sponsored by the CHDI Foundation, Inc. In June 2011 I was named HDSA’s
Person of the Year, an honor I never could have achieved without this forum. “I know, too, that this
award is not just for me,” I wrote,
“but for everybody affected by HD: the at-risk, the gene-positive, the
symptomatic, the families, and the unsung heroes of America, the caregivers.”
From the start,
Norman has applied his editing skills to virtually every article, almost always
sending back revisions within a few hours. He has also suggested a number of
topics and pushed me toward rigor when it’s tempting to just hope.
Norman is my “HD
alter ego,” and a great friend.
(Later in 2005,
Norman began his own long-running blog, a daily account of Brooklyn’s most
controversial real-estate project, now called Atlantic Yards/Pacific Park Report.)
A stalwart supporter
of my activism, my wife Regina has reflected with me on the content of numerous
articles. Our daughter Bianca has witnessed me writing and posting articles.
Now a teenager, she has a record she can consult of her grandmother’s demise and
her father’s writing and coping strategies.
Explicitly and
implicitly, Regina and Bianca permeate the pages of this blog. More than
anything else, their presence and love motivate me to fight HD and to improve as
a husband, father, and human being.
Gene Veritas (left, aka Kenneth Serbin), Norman Oder, and Regina Serbin (photo by Bianca Serbin)
Bringing hope
In that first year
(2005), I wrote 17 articles. However, over the next three years I could only
write 18 articles. I was distraught over the death of my mother from HD. I even
acted out HD symptoms.
During those first
four years, I focused primarily on my family’s struggles to care for my mother
and how living with the gene affected my feelings and life.
With the help of my
psychotherapist and a more effective set of medications for depression and
anxiety, I started to turn the corner in late 2007.
In late 2007 I also
wrote my first blog article about the potential of stem cell research
for finding HD treatments. Along with other southern California advocates, I
set up the very first presentations about Huntington’s disease before the
state’s stem cell agency.
From that point on,
the hope for treatments buoyed me emotionally and became a frequent theme of At
Risk for Huntington’s Disease.
Expanding the
research updates that I wrote for Conquest, I started doing on-the-scene
reporting and in-depth interviews with researchers. In April 2008, I visited
Isis Pharmaceuticals, Inc., in nearby Carlsbad, CA, to produce an
article on the company’s ambitious efforts to stop HD very close to its genetic roots.
This year Isis will
conduct the long-awaited Phase I clinical trial to test its potential
gene-silencing drug.
Broad coverage
The blog expanded to
cover many of the difficult issues impinging on the HD community, including
abortion; advocacy for a congressional bill to update the government’s
disability criteria for HD; the
difficult discussions young at-risk people face during dating; and the
challenges of finding adequate nursing home care for HD patients.
“I really absolutely admire
your bravery in exposing this disease in a realistic and unapologetic way,”
wrote Stella, another HD blogger, in a comment on one of my articles. Such comments help keep me going.
Writing
the blog helped me think through the process of going public about my HD status
after nearly 15 years of advocating anonymously and seven years of blogging
under the pseudonym “Gene Veritas,” which I maintain as a symbol of our
community’s fight for the cure.
Now, as
I meld my HD advocacy with the career of Kenneth P. Serbin the professional historian, I have come to view the blog as a primary historical document of the
“new and harrowing human
experience of living in the gray zone between a genetic test result and onset
of a disease.”
An emotional vent
Above all, the blog
is an emotional vent.
With you, my readers,
I can share my feelings about facing a terrible, currently untreatable disease,
build forces to defeat the profound stigma surrounding HD, and bolster advocacy
to improve care and seek the cure.
Through At Risk
for Huntington’s Disease – and the HD community I have reached on Facebook
– I have gained many new brothers and sisters determined to survive HD and
passionate about the noble aim of bettering humanity by solving a major medical
and scientific puzzle.
Often, producing
articles for the blog envelops me for hours and sometimes days as I research,
travel, photograph, shoot video, write, revise, and post, and then engage with
readers via e-mail and social media.
Sometimes I go to bed
too late – not good for someone at risk for a disease that disturbs the body’s
natural rhythms.
As I prepare to post
an article, I experience a torrent of emotion, followed by a deep sense of
relief.
The memories of
twenty years of dealing with HD come flooding back, but in the end I have hope.
Awaiting effective treatments
This article is
posting number 197 in At Risk for Huntington’s Disease.
I am grateful that
very soon I will be able to post number 200.
Tonight I will raise
a glass to the blog.
I know it’s still a long shot because of the inevitability of HD symptoms, but I want to remain
healthy long enough to write the article celebrating the discovery of a
treatment so effective that I can stop worrying about HD and retire the blog.
