As someone whose wife was perfectly healthy, 5 months ago, and is now (with full self awareness) slowly and painfully dying, this piece brought me to tears.
One of our cats died of squamous cell. Nasty stuff.<p>With her, because the cancer occurred in her throat, the tumor was growing quickly enough to block her ability to eat or drink anything.<p>We only found out after seeing blood in her wet food and wondering why she stopped playing with us and hid more often.<p>I made the call to euthanize her because that was better than seeing her slowly die every day. It was a terrible day, and I still miss her.
My Father recently passed of Cancer. Now I find my self looking for records of him. We made no videos, I regret that. I found a voice message on my phone that I've safe to remember his voice.<p>A blog like Jake's is a gift to those he leaves behind. A small record of his thoughts. I'm sure they will treasure this.