Resilience in the face of adversity and grief

By Laura Kieger

Familial Adenomatous Polyposis accounts for roughly 1% of hereditary colorectal cancer and carries an extremely high lifetime risk of colon cancer and elevated risks for other rare cancers. By the age of 50, nearly 99% of untreated patients will have developed cancer. This is the dark shadow that has lingered over one family since at least 1911, when a matriarch was first seen at the clinic for symptoms that would become commonplace in her descendants. Three of her five children died in their thirties with what they’d come to call “summer’s complaint.” As told by a daughter, aunt, and sister who has been surrounded by its relentless destruction her entire life, Summer’s Complaint is at once a testament to the courage of those one family has lost and a journey toward understanding hereditary predispositions to disease and how best to combat them.