And when the discussion turned to health, and I was asked about family illness, I told the reporter that recently when I’d had my first physical with a new doctor he’d asked if cancer ran in my immediate family, and I realized that, as I’d had so little contact with my father as an adult, I didn’t know. I actually knew nothing about him or his health. Then, out of the blue, in the spring of 2010, my father contacted my brother Tom to tell him he was battling cancer, and Tom and I suddenly discovered which strain of that disease’s odds were genetically stacked against us. As we were finishing,
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