"I'm facing down a fatal disease": when Katie Moser, 27, decided to get tested for a rare genetic disorder that killed her grandfather, her life changed in ways she never could have imagined.(THE COSMO POST: Real-Life Reads)

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The night before I got my test results, my friend Colleen and I went out for dinner, but I didn't eat much--it felt like I was being served my last meal. I don't recall how Colleen and I got to the office of my genetic counselor the next morning. I just remember that when the counselor walked in, I could tell she was upset. That's when I knew I had the Huntington's disease (HD) gene. I was 23.

The disease is a progressive, degenerative neurological disorder that slowly takes away a person's ability to talk, walk, and reason. I describe it as a combination of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's. Every child of a person who has HD has a 50 percent chance of developing the disease. My grandfather had it, which meant I had at least a 25 percent chance of being a carrier ... and if I was, my symptoms, based on my family history, would probably start showing up in my late 40s. Eventually, it would kill me.

Taking Control

I was in middle school when I first learned that my grandpa was sick. Sometimes he'd stay at our house, where I'd witness his dramatic mood swings and unsteady gate--his frequent falls and involuntary spasms actually broke furniture. At dinnertime, he'd impatiently pace the floor, waiting for food, unable to focus on anything else. It was scary to watch.

In my 10th-grade biology class, we studied genetics; it was around then that I researched HD and found out there was a blood test that would predict whether or not someone had the mutation. My morn, who had never been tested, asked why I wanted to do a project on a disease that was killing my grandfather. I told her I thought that was the perfect reason. Her response was to scream something like "If you have it, I have it ... and I don't want to know!"

It wasn't until after college, when I was working as an occupational therapist in the same nursing home in which my grandfather died, that I finally decided to get the test. When he was sick, I hated that place because my family made the disease--and the bizarre and frightening behavior it caused--seem so shameful. But when I began to work with patients who suffered from HD (including my cousin James), I came to understand it differently. Yes, patients would get angry and out of control, but they'd also talk lovingly about their families ...