Columns

In late July, before my nephew, Dylan, moved to the Georgian capital of Tbilisi, in the Caucasus region, for several months, I played several songs for him while we were in his car. One of them was a live version of “Fragile” by Sting. I know Dylan’s taste…

Getting a new treatment to people with rare conditions like Huntington’s disease is difficult. It takes lots of intelligence about a specific topic and immense time and energy. It requires funding to fuel the time and energy of those intelligent people. It depends upon a correct hypothesis that is executed…

Huntington’s is a strange and deadly disease. It’s not like cancer. Only 5-10% of cancer is hereditary, and what’s passed down is the abnormal gene that can lead to cancer, not the cancer itself. It’s not like heart disease. Certain risk factors, such as high cholesterol, can be…

For more than two years, I have shared my family’s journey with Huntington’s, including learning about the disease, living through my wife and daughter testing gene-positive, and working to accept their diagnoses. This time, I want to share some advice from Jill, my wife: Let go of people who are…

A soundtrack has been playing in the back of my mind for weeks now, ever since I last saw my wife, Jill. Following are some of the songs that have been on my mental playlist: “So Far Away” by Dire Straits “So Far Away” by Carole King (different…

My wife, Jill, and I celebrated our wedding anniversary last month. We like to joke that we don’t keep track of the years because it seems like yesterday when we got married. Some years, as a gift, I like to write her something romantic or funny. This year, I decided…

I’ve found that having a parent with Huntington’s disease makes you value every moment with them, even in unfortunate situations. For instance, normally I wouldn’t volunteer to go on a road trip from Massachusetts to Illinois, but I would for my mother. As I’ve previously written, my mom was…

“Parting is such sweet sorrow,” Shakespeare once wrote. And don’t I know it. Recently, the big news in my home is we’re moving to the East Coast, as my wife, Jill, and I want to move closer to our daughter, who lives in Boston, and other family…

Dear people working to find a cure for Huntington’s disease (HD), I imagine you all have various reasons for seeking a cure. Near the top of your list is probably a love for science and a challenge. Or, perhaps you view HD like George Huntington, whose medical observations of people…

One afternoon in May, I got a call from a number I didn’t recognize, and I rejected it immediately. Given the number of spam calls today, I wouldn’t normally log that in my memory, but then I received a voicemail from the hospital where…