There are so many hereditary debilitating diseases that most people are not aware.
My brother died last November from another one...Ankylosis Spondylitis.
It's very rare...both parents must have it genetically to be passed to a child and even in the rare case both parents carry it, it's still extremely rare for it to be passed on.
Like MHE it attacks a person from the inside out. It dissolves away all the connective tissues that hold bones together and keep joint bones from rubbing together which causes extreme amounts of pain. After a while it causes the bones to start fusing together which severely inhibits movement and causes intense pain. Eventually the person dies from this disease.
This disease usually lies dormant in a person until something in the aging process triggers it out of dormancy.
Before my brother, the earliest case of onset was 55 years of age and the youngest after him was 65 years of age. The doctors believe that some or a mixture of some of the chemicals my brother used in the Navy triggered a response in the brain which triggered the Ankylosis Spondylitis to come out of dormancy early.
My brother became ill at age 19 with this disease. He was hospitalized by the Navy in California when he was 20yo and it took till he was nearly 22yo for the doctors the Navy brought in from across the world to diagnose him with A.S. since no one ever had it at that early an age before. My brother hung on through intense agonies until last November and died before Thanksgiving. He was 46years old. He shouldn't even had been sick yet.
Becoming aware of the ailments in the world and among people you work, play, and live around is a great eye-opener. I hope we all do what we can to find cures for these diseases, to pray for those suffering, and to be thankful for what we have in our lives.
