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When my parents died, they both were 47, and they died of complications of different diseases, one being diabetes. I became a diabetic at 17 and went on this road of kind of self-destruction, eating-wise, until I was 40.

My dad had an aunt at the turn of the century who died from diabetes, but she was the closest affected relative in my family.

I was 19 when my father died from a heart attack. He was a 55-year-old college professor and had led what was by all appearances a risk-free life. But he was overweight, and heart disease runs in our family.

Both my parents were doctors, and my mother had her surgery in the house. There were six children.

My father passed from cancer in 2000; his brother died of cancer before that. My grandfather died of cancer.

Diabetes affects my family. One of my kids is affected by it.

My mother had early-onset Alzheimer's, and it took her four years to die. She was only 44; I was 14.

When I was a child, doctors sent my grandmother home in a wheelchair to die. Diagnosed with end-stage heart disease, she already had so much scar tissue from bypass operations that the surgeons had essentially run out of plumbing. There was nothing more to do, they said; her life was over at 65.

I had an older brother who passed away recently, an older sister and a younger brother.

When I was young, my parents were these titanic, infallible figures. But Mum's illness and Dad's battles with diabetes and heart attacks had a ripple effect on me - reminding me of my own mortality and that these illnesses are genetic.