I have not posted anything in this blog for the last 5 weeks, and I don't expect to for the next few weeks. That is because my father has passed away. It was not sudden or unexpected, but it is still very shocking. He was diagnosed with terminal pancreatic cancer about six months ago, and was slowly declining. However, in mid-May, he started quickly declining, and died on 10 June 2025. His cancer had nothing to do with diabetes, although it did cause him to have high blood glucose for the last few months of his life.
My plan is to take a break from blogging for the rest of June and July, but then start blogging again in August.
My dad taught me several things which have directly shaped this blog, including:
- Optimism, which is why I blog on cures, even as we are so far away from a cure, but also allows me to do something (blogging) that I had never done before, and in an area (medicine) that I have no special skills or training.
- As a small kid and repeatedly throughout my life, he told me: when talking to someone else (anyone else), to always be willing to talk about what they were interested in. Learn why they liked it, why they found it exciting, and the complexities they found in whatever was important to them. Reading other's research is similar to talking to them about something they are very, very interested in.
- As a young adult, he reminded me that "your children will take you in directions you would not have gone yourself". This blog is a testament to an unexpected place that my child has taken me.
- My dad understood that facts were just web searches. But the important thing was understanding why something was true, how it was true, what it meant, how changes in the world would change the fact, and how changes in the fact would change the world. These were the questions that interested him, and you can see how those questions fuel this blog.
Joshua
