Haunted by the past and the sins of our fathers...

Things have been going great with dad. I decided I would give him tiny bits of my past at a time. Just to give him time to digest it all.
In my last letter I told him about Heather's liver disease. For those that aren't aware, Heather is my 12 yr. old that was born with a chronic liver condition. At one year of age she was diagnosed as having Byler Syndrome. 9 years later, the Dr's would just call it simply "PFIC" or progressive familial intrahepatic choleostasis. Soon after the initial diagnosis, she received a surgery called a biliary diversion. Her bile is toxic to her liver, it causes cirrhosis.
We've never known what caused her disease. I didn't drink, do any drugs, and I quit smoking very soon after finding out I was pregnant.
When they initially diagnosed her as having Byler's, they asked if we had any amish family members. The disease Byler sydrome is common among the amish.

So anyway... I told my dad about it. Mostly because he's mentioned a lot of health issues that he's dealing with. He's got a genetic disorder that causes spinal degeneration, and type 2 diabetes. I thought he may want to know.
He wrote me back a letter later on and asked if her Dr's had ever inquired about Agent orange. I've been studying up on it ever since, and I'm disgusted that the chemicals that caused all this damage are still causing damage generations down the line from the soldiers that were told to do a little gardening so they could kill more people. He explained that one of his jobs as an airplane mechanic involved working on the planes that distributed Agent Orange.
The information makes me feel a little to blame for her problems. Just because it came from "my side".

Ok.. that's enoguh for now. I'm averaging about 1 blog a week. Yikes... I need to make mini posts. TTFN!