Yes, I am still alive

Since it has been so long since I have actually posted on my blog some of you might have been wondering where I have been and what I have been doing.

First I now have a new website that I have been working on. It isn't done but it is online. The URL is: http://cawildflowr.wix.com/linda-family-tree. Come check it out, feel free to leave a message. One on the nice things about using Wix for my webpage is that I am able to link this blog to my webpage so that people can read the blog right from the webpage. That means you only need to bookmark my webpage to be able to see the webpage AND my blog!

This has been a rather tough week or so for family health news. A first cousin once removed on my maternal line has been diagnosed with Acute Lymphoblastic Leukemia, she is only eleven years old. Prayers for her and the family are greatly appreciated. A GoFundMe account has been set up to help with medical expenses: Prayers For Gracie.

On the other side of my family one of my cousins received the report back from his biopsy and it is Pancreatic Cancer. This is what my mom died of so it was devastating to hear this. Not only for my cousin's sake, but because it stirred up all the memories of what we went through with my mom. Prayers are greatly appreciated for him and his family. He has a sister that has been battling cancer for a number of years and last I heard had been given a year. If that proves true this may be an extremely tough year for our family.

Another cousin on this side of the family sent me an email this past week saying that he had had a heart attack while he was out at the mall three weeks ago. He says it was a good thing it happened while he was out and about because if it had happened while he was home he probably would not have survived it since he lives alone. He is home now and hopefully follows doctors orders so we can have him around for many more years.

With all this new family health news I am making sure I am updating my list to take to my doctor so he can include it in my file. Have you written your Family Health History for your medical provider? Prevention is usually more effective than trying to repair the damage, and our doctors are better able to know what to look for if they know our family health history. Don't put it off, write that list today.

Then there are my own personal health struggles. Fortunately nothing as major as cancer or heart attacks, but they still interfere with what I want to be doing. I still have to deal daily with the limitations that my Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) and Fibromyalgia (FM) put on me. Then I am scheduled to have the rest of my teeth pulled because I had no dental insurance for six years to take care of problems when they were small, now it means pulling them and getting dentures. After that is taken care of I will go back to the Orthopedic Dr and talk about joint replacements, probably starting with my right knee. Then to top it off the eye doctor told me last week that he could probably justify doing cataract surgery. Like the Garth Brook song says "Lord I’m much too young to feel this damn old" after all I am only 57!

But hopefully when those issues are taken care of my general health will improve and I can do more of the things I love and want to be doing. No it won't cure the CFS or the FM, but with less stress on my body due to these other issues maybe the symptoms will be less severe.

In the meantime I have started playing around with Genome Mate Pro which allows you to download data from the different DNA Testing Companies and puts it into one database on your computer. This allows you to track your matches, compare matches and try to find the most recent common ancestor (MRCA) by triangulating people who share dna with each other on the same chromosome segments. It also allows you to have multiple profiles within Genome Mate Pro so that if you manage tests for yourself AND other family members you can keep track of everything within one program.

So, I am learning about how to use Genome Mate Pro, the Chrome Browser extension AncestryDNA Helper , the Chrome Browser 529andYou (used for gathering data from 23andMe matches) and will also be learning about the program DNAGedCom

I had played with the older version of Genome Mate but there were limitations on how much data could be stored. If you used the old version or have never tried this program I urge you to consider doing so. There is a Facebook group for those who might want to talk with others about their experience using it.

Using DNA Test to Find Relatives.

I have mentioned in previous posts (see blogs dated 2 Aug 2014; 24 Apr 2013; 2 Sep 2012; 8 April 2012) that I have tested with both 23andMe & with ancestry DNA tests. And that 2 of my 4 children have also taken the 23andMe test. A paternal male cousin (our fathers are brothers) has too, so that should get us the Newman line. This cousin's son has taken the ancestry DNA test, so I have a link to my paternal line on that site too.

I have done a little bit to try and contact those that are matches on to me on those 2 sites. So far no close relatives have responded to me. However I have been able to connect my 2 kids to three 2nd cousins from their fathers side. One from their paternal grandfathers line and two from their paternal grandmother's line. One of those from their grandmother's line was part of a closed adoption so doesn't have any clue to her ancestry. It made me happy to be able to tell her that while I couldn't tell her who her mother or father was, and I could only tell her that her grandparent was 1 of 13, I could tell her that her great grandparents were Thomas Francis Riordan and Grace Lillian Janvrin. I am really hoping my kids will reach out to this 2nd cousin and maybe together they can find out more for her, or at very least be a connection to her birth family for her.

On a personal side I have just joined a facebook group called "Ancestry-Gedmatch-FTDNA-23&me-Genealogy and DNA" It is a pretty large (6000+ members) and active group and I hope to learn more about how I can use these DNA tests to connect to my relatives.

I have also uploaded the raw data from the 23andMe test to FTDNA, and if I get 4 people to add their DNA test through this link I will fully unlock the site and be able to find matches on their site too for free.
Click Here if you are willing to upload your raw data to FTDNA and help me unlock the features. If I don't get 4 others to help I will have to pay $39 to unlock it and I really don't have that in my budget currently.

The people in the group have also been talking about genmatch, and when I went to upload my raw data to that site I discovered I had uploaded it July 2011! My kit number is M173936 if you are also on genmatch and want to see if we have a match.

To help me remember where I have memberships and subscriptions I have started a sheet in my research log for "online presence" where I can list all the links to websites where I have an account of some type. I have a columns for website name, url, username, password, subscription information (for those that are subscription sites), and notes. Hopefully that will keep me from forgetting where I have uploaded trees and other info!

Doing a happy dance

There are some who don't like Facebook and won't use it. I can understand there are privacy concerns, but you can make your settings so that only those you want to see things can see them. Me, I have mine pretty broad for most things because I post a lot of genealogy stuff there hoping to connect with both close and distant relatives. Let me tell you what happened this week for our family because of Facebook.... Several weeks ago I search for Facebook looking for the children of one of my cousins who had distance themselves from the family for many years. I sent several messages out hoping one of them would contact me back. Finally this week one of them did, they hadn't seen my message when I first sent it because it hadn't gone to the main inbox. I started chatting back and forth with them, they were glad to be in contact with someone from our side of the family. I let this person's aunt know I had made contact with them, and it has snowballed from there. Not only have connections been made between me and these 1st cousins once removed, those young people are now in contact with their aunts and uncles. Then the big surprise today, my cousin that had distanced themselves set up a facebook account and has now friended not only me but his siblings! All because I took a chance and sent a message to a possible relative on facebook.