[Melinda in TN]

I’ll be 70 in October and I’m rarely sick. I get my preventive screenings but like you I usually wait stuff out. My family is long lived. My grandmother died at 95 and my mom passed young at 86. I remember my great grandfather. He was born in 1865 and died in 1963. Lol

Tennessee doctors aren’t the best. Maybe better in the big cities but I just stay away

[mass55th]

I never knew any of my grandparents. They were all gone by the time I was born in 1947. The only cousins, four of them, I had were from one brother on my father's side of the family, and they're all gone too. His youngest brother served in WWII and died from blood poisoning at the age of 40, less than a year after I was born. My mother had one brother who served in WWII as well. He and his wife never had children, and they lived most of my early years in California, so we never got to see them. When he got very ill, they sold their house and moved back east, and stayed with us until he was placed in a VA hospital. He died in 1964 at the age of 48.

I was the only one in my family that didn't smoke. My only brother, a Vietnam Vet died at the age of 51 of a massive heart attack. My mother and father also died of lung cancer. My father at 73. My mother at 69. My sister was also 69 when she passed of lung cancer. The only one who lived longer than them was my oldest sister, who was an alcoholic, and was basically institutionalized the majority of her adult life. She died of a massive stroke at the age of 74. Had she not been put in psych centers and assisted-living homes, and instead had been living on the street all those years, she never would have lived to be 74. You can understand why sometimes I feel like I'm living on borrowed time.