Running With Ghosts: A Memoir of Surviving Childhood Cancer

by Matt Tullis

Overview

In Running With Ghosts, author Matt Tullis reminds us that surviving childhood cancer can be a challenge as formidable as fighting for your life—and more enduring. The eldest of three sons born to a trucker and an office-worker, who lived in the idyllic village of Apple Creek, Ohio, Tullis was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia at age 15. In short order, the sports-mad teenager found himself on the cancer ward of Akron Children’s Hospital. One of the lucky ones, he walked out and kept on going.

Years later, as a journalist and college professor, Tullis began to wonder about all the friends and caregivers he’d left behind on 4-North. As his curiosity intensified, he decided to seek them out. Running With Ghosts is about friendship, loss, triumph, and closure: one man’s effort to understand more fully a life shaped by a random mutation in the code of his DNA.

"In his unflinching memoir of sickness and salvation, reporter Matt Tullis tells the story of his coming of age through cancer. With equal parts grace and gravitas, he resurrects the people who helped him survive – but didn't themselves."

-- Kim Cross, New York Times best-selling author of What Stands in a Storm

Product Details

BN ID:	2940154553695
Publisher:	The Sager Group
Publication date:	09/15/2017
Sold by:	Smashwords
Format:	eBook
File size:	673 KB

About the Author

Matt Tullis is an assistant professor of digital journalism and English at Fairfield University. He is the host and producer of Gangrey: The Podcast and is an associate editor for River Teeth: A Journal of Nonfiction Narrative . He has an MFA from the University of North Carolina Wilmington and has been noted in The Best American Sports Writing three times, and The Best American Essays once. He lives with his wife and two children in Newtown, Connecticut.

Table of Contents

Dedication /// v

Epigraph /// vi

Author’s Note /// ix

Prologue /// x

Part I: Sick Cookie

1. It Begins/// 3
2. First Night/// 9
3. First Meeting /// 15
4. The Purge /// 21
5. The Fever /// 33
6. The Infection /// 41
7. Intensive Care /// 51
8. Going Home /// 57

Part II: Outpatient

1. The Clinic /// 63
2. Road to Remission /// 73
3. Camp CHOPS /// 81
4. Good Morning America /// 91
5. Road to Remission, Interrupted /// 99
6. Orrville /// 105
7. Final Visit /// 109

Part III: Ghosts

1. Scars /// 117
2. Searching for My Doctor /// 125
3. Another Call /// 133
4. Running With Ghosts /// 137
5. The Planner /// 147
6. The Finest Physician /// 153
7. The Search for Todd and Tim /// 163
8. Melissa’s Faith /// 173
9. Back to Clinic /// 183
10. The Marathon /// 195
11. Lessons /// 201

Acknowledgements /// 205

About the Author /// 207

About the Publisher /// 208