I was 8 years old when I walked into my father’s room in the hospital as he laid there coma-stricken in his final days. I told him I had gotten an A on my Science test, hoping in all my innocence that an A would make him so proud that he would wake up from his coma. He passed a few days later and I was heartbroken. My father, Dr. Moti Aswani, had long-standing Crohn’s Disease which turned into stage IV colorectal cancer 13 years into his diagnosis at the age of 37 (see An Ode to My Father & Fellow IBD Warrior). You see, Daddy had been told to…
advocacy, awareness, colorectal cancer, Colorectal Surgery, Crohn's, living with IBD, Ostomy, stigma, Ulcerative Colitis