I grew up with my parents and my older sister in a small suburb. We lived within walking distance of a school so it is no surprise that there were a lot of children in our neighbourhood. On the straight stretch of the street I grew up on there are maybe 50 houses. As far as I can remember there were about 25 kids about my age (5 years older or younger) who lived there for a long while. I was aware of but wasn’t friends with everyone, spending most of my time with the girl across from us, but my parents were friends with a few other families on the street.

I’m 34 now and haven’t kept track of most of the people I went to school with, and even less so with the people who I shared a straight stretch of neighbourhood with. But of the people I know of: one family has a son a couple years older than me who died of cancer – I don’t know what type. They have a daughter who is maybe 5 years older than me who has either diabetes or an immune condition. The family who lived right next door to us has a daughter my age who died of cancer about a decade ago – Hodgekins I think, and a son a couple years older than me who was just diagnosed with Ulcerative Colitis. Ulcerative Colitis is the auto immune disease that I was diagnosed with in 2007.

That seems like a lot of kids on the same street with serious diseases.

I’m going to put a list together of everyone else who grew up there, send a few emails, make a few calls, and see how far this thing goes. I have to admit, this freaks me out a bit.