"Will my children inherit this?"

I was born on the 17th August in 1983 at around 8pm. 

My Mother went into labour when she was opening her birthday presents (yes that's right, I was the best present ever!), and I wanted to get in on the action, despite not being due for another week.

My sister was a premature baby and therefore came into the world 'via the sunroof', as I like to say. As such, that meant I too took the same exit route.

As far as I am aware, I was a healthy baby. The usual bugs, viruses and infections, but nothing to write home about. However when I turned 14, things started to decline.

I began develop palpitations in my early teens. Initially I had no clue what it was, it just felt like a small butterfly had flown into my chest for a mere second and then disappeared, but three years later, they were much stronger, more frequent and lasted up to 5 hours, at their longest. 

It felt like my heart would beat out of my chest at times, I could literally feel it rocking/swaying as it thumped away.

It needed to be recorded on an ECG machine, so trips to the hospital became all too familiar. By the time I'd gotten there and waited to be seen, the damn things always stopped.

I was prescribed beta blockers at just 17 years old. 

Eventually they recorded it in an ambulance after I had an attack in the supermarket, where I'd worked, and I was finally diagnosed with supraventricular tachycardia (SVT). It meant that the electrical wiring in my heart wasn't quite right, and it created a rapid 150+ beats per minute, at the flick of a switch. 

I began to become very familiar with hospitals, scans and procedures at this stage.

Eventually I had an operation in 2005 to correct the 'glitch'.

Just as I began to get back to 'normal', I began to experience regular bouts of tonsillitis. They eventually decided to remove them when I had 6 infections in 12 months. 

From then I've had a stomach bleed, ovarian cysts & investigative operations, 3 knee operations, countless steroid injections in my hips, neck and knees, not to mention a tour of all hospitals within a 20 mile radius, and you get to that point where, all of this can't just be 'bad luck', right?

Was I Adolf Hitler in a former life, or are genes really the culprit. Exactly how much of what we experience in ill health, can be explained by our genetic code? 

I was diagnosed with femoral retroversion last year, a hip condition I know is genetic. It affects my life everyday and is unbelievably painful most days, in fact I can't remember my life without pain anymore.

I'm often asked, "how do you just get on with it", and the answer is simply, take each day at a time. Looking at what the future might hold, more operations and procedures, it can overwhelm you, but only if you let it!

However that said, the older I get, the more I worry about the conditions I may or may not pass onto my children, children that haven't even been conceived yet. I'm aware this 'irrational thinking' is actually perfectly normal now, especially given my experiences.

I've read so many stories from parents who have to watch their children deal with conditions they know they've passed on, and the truth is, I have no idea how they stay so strong, it must be heartbreaking!

It makes me wonder though, with hindsight, would they make the same choices? Could I?