“Now I think the family carried cystic fibrosis. There is no confirmation of this. It is personal observation and the scant information of how the children died. Both were boys and were the only boys.”
My mother was the youngest of 14 children (9 boys 5 girls), born in 1930. None of the boys lived beyond their first year of life. My mother remembered that the doctor told my grand mother that she’d “never raise a boy”. My sister, a nurse, had asked fellow health professionals what may have been the cause and why it affected only boys. She was never able to come up with any reasonable conclusion.
How did the boys die? What were the symptoms? Did the girls marry and have boys??