Cancer, my dads battle with Crohns Disease

My father served in Korea as a marine, then returned to the USA and changed branches to the United States Air Force as one of the first technicians for flight simulators.My father and mother married in Las Vegas, around the time when the Tropicana Resort & Casino Las Vegas was opening.

I think it was about that time he started becoming sick a lot, but his Crohns Disease was undiagnosed. After 15 years in the USAF our family moved to the Midwest. He sold life insurance or car insurance or gave auto insurance quotes or just insurance quotes, I can't remember.I think he applied for college loans through the military to continue his education. But would become sick and would have to go the hospital. In the early 70's they did many exploratory surgery's but I don't think the doctors knew what they were dealing with.

He would come home under a lot of sedation and continue to work hard . He was building our house,juggling a mortgage for it and trying to buy a convenience store all while sick but wishing to provide for his family. He was a very proud man and even though sick beyond belief, things like charity or government aid or today's financial tricks of, refinancing mortgage's or maxing out credit cards and "pay for it all later" just weren't an option.He was old school. A life, a home and family in a place with the cheapest gas and electricity and hardest work,meanwhile constantly sick and in the hospital. There was constant exploratory surgery from Veterans Hospital slowly whittling his insides away and throwing up their hands.
The medical bills started mounting up and the family and relatives around that time began to implode, some relatives moved to Arizona, divorced or moved apart .My parents also divorced.
But dad got lucky. He eventually found a doctor that suspected Crohns Disease. He removed most of his intestines (ileostomy) The procedure was rare at the time and life expectancy was very low 1-5 years I believe . He lived 30 .

Crohn's disease is known to be an autoimmune disease and occurs when  the body's immune system attacks the gastrointestinal tract. There are suggestions that there are genetic factors associated with Crohn's disease, putting  relatives and offspring at high risk. People that smoke tobacco are three times more likely to develop Crohn's disease, than people who do not smoke.  Crohn's disease affects around half a million  people in North America. Crohn's disease sometimes appears in the teens and twenties, and also in the fifties to seventies, although it  can occur at any age.

There is no known cure for Crohn's disease at this time.

Burrill Bernard Crohn, is who the disease was named after . Crohn, along with two colleagues,observed patients with inflammation of the terminal ileum, the area most commonly affected by the illness.

New England Journal of Medicine

Crohn's disease is one of two idiopathic inflammatory boweldiseases that affect approximately 1 million people in NorthAmerica. Despite important advances in diagnosis and treatmentin recent years, the underlying cause of the disease remainsunclear. As a result, the available therapies are not curativeand may pose a substantial risk of side effects. A current theoryregarding the pathogenesis of Crohn's disease suggests thatthere is an overly aggressive immune response against commensalbacteria in a genetically predisposed person. In this context,the activation of lymphocytes and the overexpression of inflammatorycytokines represent a common effector mechanism leading ...