'What do you mean, you just take the stomach out'' Karyn Paringatai wondered, when doctors first said her stomach had to be surgically removed. Could she still eat' Yes, but differently. What would replace it' Nothing. She would have to live the rest of her life missing a major organ. Paringatai was not actually sick, not yet. Her stomach was fine. But her cousin, just a few years older, had recently died of an aggressive stomach cancer at age 33, leaving behind three children. In a video recorded after her diagnosis turned terminal, the cousin told her little kids to be good for their father. 'Please don't be too mean to the lady that he meets,' she added, anticipating how the void left by her death might be filled. But she must have known that this void could not be filled, not ever. The cousin's own mother had died young of stomach cancer. So had her grandmother. So had her sister. To the doctors who saw Paringatai's cousin in Tauranga, New Zealand, this pattern was hauntingly...
learn more
