Is this just unlucky or is there something really wrong?

[belledechocchipcookie]

I live in a small cul de sac, there's only 4 houses. Over the past 2 years all of my neighbours (apart from 1 house) have become ill in varying severity:

House 1: mum age 40 diagnosed with ME, her child is currently having tests for digestive problems.

House 2: bloke, never at home, no health problems.

House 3: (me, age 33), initially had digestive problems, then diagnosed with MS, my son has previously had digestive problems and now has a wheat intolerance.

House 4: mum age 26, diagnosed with bowel cancer.

This is odd right or am I just being silly?

Hard to say. Could be bad luck. Is there anything close that might pose a hazard to health?

Not that I know of. Some bloody tosser built a couple of houses at the bottom of our gardens though, everything seems to have gone pear shaped since they were built.

hmmmmm not sure but where i live there are three people i am aware of who have me.
i think jury is still out on this sort of link but there may be clusters of certain illnesses discovered to be connected in the future.
you may find that if every person in a typical street was asked there would be some type of pattern - cancer is becoming inc common - it may be coincidence it may not.

There's only 4 houses here though so that makes 75% (the bloke at number 2 is never here!). This is a huge percentage right?

Poor woman next door had no symptoms other then waking up one day with a bloated stomach.

Something wrong with your water supply?

I'm not sure. They tested it a few years ago and said it was OK, we have a different supply to the rest of the street though (we're sticking out of the side IYKWIM).

I would say without any doubt that it's a coincidence. None of those illnesses are massively rare, so it's entirely within the bounds of probability that they could happen to a group of people at around the same time.

Bowel cancer at 27 is rare, really, it is. MS with no family history of it isn't common either.

Whilst its awful for you all, I think 4 homes is far too small of a sample to make any scientific conclusions.

I suppse it is, I wouldn't want to go knocking on all of the other houses on the street to ask if they are unwell though.

it would probably be quite unusual to find a house without any illnesses tbh - thinking of my family groups there has been something in all sets of parents and children iyswim.

I'm crap at explaining stuff like this, but honestly, weird coincidences like this do happen. The human brain has evolved to see 'patterns', but in cases like this they are not patterns, but just the weird way that random events sometimes occur together.

These are not the flu though, they are all pretty serious illnesses.

I'm off to bed, thank you for hearing me moan.

Also, the pathology of all those different illnesses is very different. If you said that you'd all developed the same kind of leukaemia (for eg) then it might be a bit more convincing that there was a common causal factor - but even then it is still more likely to be just chance with a sample of only 4 houses!

Are you near any electricity pylons or electricity sub-stations? Or mobile phone masts?

There's mobile phone masts everywhere!

Spoke to other neighbour (number 1), she mentioned something about houses being on lay lines or something feng shuey IYKWIM