Cancer Gave Him a Roller Coaster Ride

At 42, with three young kids, I got a diagnosis that would have me dead in a year. That was, somehow, just the beginning. https://t.co/KWx2pdbiWo

— Slate (@Slate) March 13, 2026

Longtime Neatorama readers might remember Christopher Ingraham, who crunched the numbers to rank all the US counties by scenery and climate and found that Red Lake County in Minnesota was the worst of them. The reason you might remember that is because Red Lake County invited Ingraham to visit, and the people were so friendly and he liked it so much that he moved his family there in 2016. 

What's happened since then? In 2022, Ingraham received a diagnosis of cholangiocarcinoma, or cancer of the bile duct. This cancer has a survival rate of about 10%, with most patients dying within a year. He was only 42. The best treatment is get a liver transplant, if you are medically eligible. Ingraham has written about the ordeal of facing death at a young age with three young children for Slate. Here is an alternate link. There are two surprises at the end. -via Metafilter