Running with my Crohn's-ies

Even with everything going on in the world right now, it would have felt odd to follow my last entry with anything other than an update on Dad. I'm sad to say that Dad passed away on Saturday, March 14th. The official cause of death was complications related to Prostate Cancer. You can read his obituary  here. Obviously, this will be a bit of a lengthy entry, so here's the TL;DR edition: Dad went to hospice; Angie got married early so Dad could be there; Dad passed away; we planned his services with the added layer of a global pandemic; I faced the challenge of writing my own dad's eulogy. Overall, the family is doing ok. Less than 2 days after I posted the last entry, I received a text from my sister, asking if I was available for a call. Knowing that dad had been moved to the hospital in response to some fluctuating blood level markers, I was expecting this call to be an overview of the latest news and what was being done to even out his numbers. Instead, we were...

I obviously spend a lot of time in this blog talking about my 'C-Word' - Crohn's - and how it affects my life. This entry is going to be a little bit different, as I'm gonna take some time to talk about a much bigger 'C-Word'... Cancer. Specifically, my dad's metastatic Prostate Cancer, and what's been happening with him the last couple months. I've mentioned before that when it comes to my Crohn's, my main trigger is stress... but a particular kind of stress. I can handle 'tight timelines, high-expectations' stress. Its when I'm faced with the kind of stress that comes from having no feeling of control in a situation... that's when I feel it. So I guess it shouldn't surprise anyone that I've been experiencing symptoms a bit more lately, as my dad's health took a major downturn the last couple months. You might remember my dad from a previous entry... proud smile and signature train conductor hat. Dad was...