The mystery that led this family to get their stomachs removed
4/27/202613 min
When Karyn Paringatai learned about a pattern among her family members, it changed the course of her life: A lot of people died young. As Karyn dug into her family history, she learned many Maori families, like her own, suffered from a rare form of stomach cancer called diffuse gastric cancer. Sarah Zhang recently wrote a story on this kind of cancer as a staff writer at The Atlantic. Today, she gets into all the details with Short Wave host Emily Kwong: the mutation that causes it and the life-changing decision people with the mutation have to make – risk dying or get surgery to remove their entire stomach?
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First 90 secondsSpeaker 00:00
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Emily Kwong· Host0:16
[shortwave music] You're listening to Short Wave from NPR. When Karen Pirangatai's father died, she did what a lot of people do. She reconnected with his side of the family, and a pattern she learned on that side of the family changed the course of her life. She noticed that a lot of people on his side had died young. Not just her cousin, but her cousin's sister, her cousin's mother, and her cousin's grandmother all gone.
Sarah Zhang· Guest0:46
So the family started to realize there must be something wrong.
Emily Kwong· Host0:51
Sarah Zhang is a staff writer at The Atlantic. She recently wrote a story on Maori families like Karen's, where long lines of people have died from a rare form of stomach cancer called diffuse gastric cancer. It causes cancerous cells to percolate undetected in the stomach lining, only becoming obvious in advanced stages, but by then it's usually too late to treat. That's what happened to Karen's cousin.
Sarah Zhang· Guest1:16
And so after this, uh, Karen hears from her Auntie who tells her, "You know, you need to get tested because there's this mutation that's running through our family that gives you a really high risk of stomach cancer."
Emily Kwong· Host1:27
Now, if she tested positive for this mutation, Karen