A Family Tradition - a Column by Carlos Briceño

The first time I realized our kitchen had become a kind of care unit, I was standing by the sink watching my wife, Jill, pour iced tea. It was a quiet morning, the kind we used to move through without thinking. She reached for the pitcher, and her hand made…

Years ago, my wife, Jill, was at a party talking with a friend. The conversation turned personal, and her friend asked a difficult question. It was the kind of question people sometimes ask when they want to be reassured but are afraid to hear what someone who knows them well…

My wife, Jill, who is gene-positive with Huntington’s disease (HD), has always believed that if something matters to you, you should pay attention to the people in charge of it. Lately, that has meant watching U.S. lawmakers much more closely. As someone living with a rare disease, she sees…

For families affected by Huntington’s disease, some courtroom trials — especially those involving a defendant’s deteriorating mental health — are impossible to watch without feeling the weight of the tragedy at their center. The recent Lindsay Clancy trial is one example. Clancy was a nurse from Massachusetts whose…

I never met Dolly Parton, but like millions of others, I felt like I knew her. It’s easy to feel this way because of her music, laughter, generosity, the stories she told, and the remarkable way she seemed to make room for everyone. She was successful, wealthy, and larger than…

Imagine anger residing at one end of your home and autonomy at the other, with Huntington’s disease (HD) sitting right in the middle. Before my wife, Jill, found out eight years ago that she is gene-positive with HD, she could usually tell when she was becoming irritated. She…

My wife, Jill, who is gene-positive with Huntington’s disease, and I don’t usually associate Legos with cancer. Those are two worlds that feel like they belong on completely different shelves in life. Yet American households collectively owe at least $220 billion in medical debt, much of it tied…

My wife, Jill, was watching a show about survival the other night, the kind where people are pushed to their limits in the wilderness. When it ended, she turned it off and sat quietly for a moment. Then she said, almost to herself, “It’s wild how far people will go…

Disability benefits is one of those topics that my wife, Jill, and I never thought much about until Huntington’s disease forced it into the center of our lives. Before Jill was diagnosed as gene-positive in 2018, I vaguely pictured disability as something that happened to other people, a…

Years ago, our daughter, Alexus, asked where her favorite “coat to steal” was. She described one of my jackets. I pictured my closet and came up blank. “I don’t know what you’re talking about,” I said. She described it in detail: the color, the fabric, and how it hung on…