can bowel cancer be gentical?
im 13 years old and my dad died of bowel cancer when he was 33 years of age. my mom doesn’t talk to me about it much and i don’t know if it was genetical. he always ate healthily and had a healthy lifestyle so i think it might have been. is there a bigger chance that i can get it now? i also heard that this kind of stuff usually skips a generation so if i get kids would they be at high risk of getting it?
Tagged with: 13 years • 33 years • bowel cancer • dad • healthy lifestyle • high risk • mom
Filed under: Bowels
angie (68)
Colon cancer does tend to run in families; yes, there is a genetic link. It does NOT tend to skip generations. However, just because your dad had it does not mean you will get it.
This does not mean you need to panic, especially at your age. What you should do is keep your family history in mind as you grow older and let your doctor know about it. Your doctor will probably want to start doing colonoscopies on you at a young age- by this I mean in your thirties or so- because colon cancer is very treatable when it is caught early this way.
A generic answer is that having a family member with cancer increases your possibilty by 10%. If you have two family members it is still 10% and not 20%.
In some situations genetic testing is available for people with a strong family history of bowel cancer so they can find out if they have inherited