The Year I Was Supposed to Die
March 24, 2026 at 04:21PMA vanishingly rare, highly terminal diagnosis placed Christopher Ingraham on a precipice and left him there for a year before another diagnosis pulled him away from the edge. What lingers, in this rollercoaster of an essay from Slate, is the precision of Ingraham’s interiority. He charts the rise and fall of his dread like a tide; he begins to strategize about eventualities that are impossible to perfectly plan for. He looks down for a long time, and returns with perspectives that some of us don’t necessarily have the time or good fortune to develop.
I couldn’t believe I would be dying in fucking Minnesota, of all places. I wasn’t even from here. I had only ended up here because of a stupid article I had written on a lark a decade ago. “Reporter moves to town he called America’s worst place to live” was a good viral story, a great hook for a book. “Reporter gets cancer and dies there” was, in some ways, even better, a darkly funny prank played by an indifferent universe.
from Longreads https://longreads.com/2026/03/24/ingraham-slate-cancer-bile-duct/
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