The Dancing Warrior with HD

  The next thing I want to share with you is about my experience with genetic testing. When I was in high school my brother, who is 10 years older than me, was getting married and he wanted to know if he was a carrier for Huntington’s Disease (HD) or not before having children. As we’ve talked about before on this blog, if a parent is positive for HD they have a 50% chance of passing it on to each biological child.  I remember my brother Courtney going through this process with his wife Jamie. He tested negative for HD and in turn he will never have symptoms or pass it on to any children. My brother now has twin boys that are healthy and happy. They just turned 14.  So when I turned 18 I decided that I wanted to be tested. Everyone thought I was too young and many people tried to talk me out of it but I was determined to get the genetic test done. I was a senior in high school when I started my testing process. It is a long process to get through. You are required to go t...

  Hello, welcome back I am Ashley Fajardo and I wanted to share a little of my history. I want to share about my mom, Sandra Lane. She was a beautiful woman who had a smile that could light up any room. She loved to travel and was always very athletic. She had a laugh, that was contagious. She loved her two kids more than anything they were her whole world, my brother Courtney and me.   However, when I was born, she was already beginning to show signs of Huntington’s disease at age __30__. Which is a neurological disorder that causes deterioration in a person’s physical, mental, and emotional abilities usually during their prime working years, and currently there is no cure. Most people start to develop symptoms in their 30’s to 50's. Symptoms usually worsen over the course of 10-25 years and affect the ability to reason, walk, and talk. It is a genetic disorder which means Each parent with a defective gene could pass along either a defective copy or a healthy copy, leaving a ...