John Gowdy services and burial

Hello, my name is Jessica Gowdy and I’m raising funds to cover final expenses for my father, John Gowdy. He was diagnosed with Renal Cell Carcinoma in 2015. They removed his kidney. In 2021 he was diagnosed with Stage 4 renal cell carcinoma. We leaned that this is an extremely aggressive type of cancer that is treatable but not curable. He was not well in the beginning but immunotherapy really gave him a fighting chance. He had ups and downs over the years of treatment. The cancer had spread to his abdomen and one of his lungs. By the end it had spread to his bones and they believe his bone marrow. By October 2022 he had become very sick. He had said he didn’t think he was going to make it until the end of the year. We had 2 Christmas celebrations with him after that. He had just started to receive Hospice in home care on Thursday. He wasn’t very happy because he felt like it meant giving up. On Saturday he had said that he was done with doctors appointments for now. He still had hope until the very end. I keep telling people that he pushed his body as far as it would take him because it’s true. He would have never stopped fighting. Even through the aggressive treatments that made him sick. He fought so hard and it’s so hard to know that he lost the battle.

He had always planned to buried and did have plots purchased in Alden, IA in the early 90s. We had him cremated since we couldn’t afford a burial. We would like to bury his ashes in one of those plots and purchase a headstone. His parents were buried in Alden which is why he purchased those plots. These funds will help cover the cost of a proper urn, cost of opening and closing the earth, and the headstone to match his parents.