Kirtan Nautiyal

What can positive thinking do for a cancer patient? | Aeon Essays Warren met his cancer diagnosis with tenacious optimism. But can positive thinking really affect the course of the disease?

Warren met his cancer diagnosis with tenacious optimism. But can positive thinking really affect the course of the disease?
aeon.co/essays/what-... @knautiyal.bsky.social

What can positive thinking do for a cancer patient? | Aeon Essays Warren met his cancer diagnosis with tenacious optimism. But can positive thinking really affect the course of the disease?

For years Warren's told me that positive thinking was the key to curing his stage IV rectal cancer. Today in @aeon.co I ask - what if he's right?

TY to the editors & staff & (especially) Warren for working with me on this piece for nearly a year!

aeon.co/essays/what-...

@longreads.com

Thank you for reading! Great to find you here.

It is mostly bad news down here, but I guess we will take what we can get 😥

Thank you so much for reading. Writing about medicine is a little new for me, so I'm excited and interested to see where this goes (and how it coalesces into a larger project!) Stay tuned! I have another related piece coming out next month.

Oh awesome, small world. Glad you could read the piece and glad you were able to find me here! I haven't gotten too regular about posting here, but maybe we'll get back to that if there's another good group read 😀

When do you know when it’s time to stop cancer treatment? She knew – her final act of control My patient Betsy Lewis has found the balance in which we neither welcome death nor push it away – and still celebrates her life while she can

Since my father’s death, I’ve thought a lot about how much we control our own lives, if at all.

Today in The Guardian, I wrote about a patient of mine, Betsy, whose final act of control didn’t turn out the way either of us had expected.

www.theguardian.com/society/ng-i...

@longreads.com

Oh hey, I wrote a short profile for EL on my friend Kiran and his ongoing online novel-in-stories Girar. I examine, among other things, what role travel might play in the examined life. Kinda sorta feels good to have something out in the world after so long in publication hibernation.

David Graeber (co-author of The Dawn of Everything): Are You An Anarchist? The Answer May Surprise You! “Anarchists are simply people who believe human beings are capable of behaving in a reasonable fashion without having to be forced to.” [theanarchistlibrary.org]

Reading applications for a summer workshop, I'm reminded of my firm conviction that the care with which you write one sentence is the care with which you write any sentence.

The first words of a personal statement usually tell me as much as a thirty page writing sample.

Finished draft number five of my manuscript today. Lucky number five, is that a thing? Only took me seven years to get here. That's not too bad, right? Right?!

Moving, imaginative, and inventive fiction written by and about the Indian diaspora (@anitafelicelli.bsky.social) electricliterature.com/13-books-by-indian-diaspora-authors-you-should-be-reading

The book you give your friends when they ask you what kind of music you listen to and you don't want to say something as pretentious as "underground techno" so you say electronic and they reply, oh like EDM?

What are your favorite books describing a subculture you hold dear?

In this long season of revision, I repeat to myself, only half-convinced - I don't have to publish anything. I don't have to produce anything. I don't need any recognition. I just have to keep doing my thing. In silence. On my own.

I'm a few weeks into the research for my piece on our unwavering cultural belief in "the power of positive thinking" to fight cancer.

Overestimated how much of doing journalism was finding out interesting things & underestimated how much of it was ppl not responding to your emails 😅

You have a baby & every other haggard parent you meet will tell you, "It only gets worse! Just wait till they're a toddler!"

People have been telling me that everything only gets harder since the day I was born.

But doesn't our capacity grow along with our challenges?

Heck ya. Horse Stories is a criminally underrated record.

It's absolutely the best show on "television" these days. In addition to everything you state, it's a love letter to a part of the country that doesn't often get one.

Your agent probably loves to hear this! 😀 I tried to conceptualize a rewrite as a memoir for my manuscript but I scrapped it for the exact reason that I would have had to drop much of the researched stuff I'd dug up over the years. Good luck!

Wrote an essay for y'all last year!

I had a patient with stage iv pdac who went on one last vacation to Europe and what shocked her most was how cheap creon was in Switzerland (and that it was otc). Needless to say she filled a suitcase full before coming back.

Here too, I guess!