I'm deficient

My father recently found out he has the gene that causes Alpha-1 Antitrypsin deficiency, and I found out today that I probably have it too. What the hell is that you ask? Good question.

Antitrypsin is a protein that gets sent to the liver and the lungs. In the lungs there is an enzyme that ‘eats’ dead cells. Apparently, the lining of your lungs sheds just like your skin. Who’d have thunk it?

So Antitrypsin keeps that enzyme from going crazy and eating all of the healthy elastic cells, causing a form of emphysema. This is all a relatively new discovery in medicine. My grandmother died from emphysema in the late 70’s. She had never smoked in her life, but the doctors just assumed she must have been around someone who did.

To test for the gene is not only expensive, it could prevent you from ever getting health insurance, if you find out you do indeed have the gene. So, doctors like to avoid testing you for it. Instead, they can do a blood test to see if you have a deficiency in the protein. Having the deficiency doesn’t mean you’ll ever have any problems. If you smoke and have a deficiency, you’re kind of screwed. You can have one copy of the gene (from one parent) or two copies of the gene (one from each parent). If you have two copies, you’ll probably get emphysema even without smoking, like my grandmother.

The point of this post however, is to merely point out how much your parents have you by the short hairs no matter how much you try to rid yourself of them. The doctor wanted to know all of this stuff about my dad. Does he have the gene once or twice? Was he having trouble breathing? How the fuck should I know? My brother is the only sadist interested in talking to him. I don’t talk to either of my parents anymore. The irony is I stopped interacting with them for health reasons.