Top all-time · #2675
Bess Stillman
Personal blog · bessstillman.substack.comhealthwriting
Bess Stillman writes Everything Is An Emergency, a personal blog at bessstillman.substack.com about health and writing. Since 2023, 24 different Hacker News readers have linked it 90 times, most often “A Physician's Guide to Saving Her Husband's Life via Clinical Trials”. It is still writing: the last post was on 2025-09-18, and you can follow it by feed.
Most-linked posts?
- A Physician's Guide to Saving Her Husband's Life via Clinical Trials7 people · 15 mentions · first linked 2023-10-19
- How to let go: One life ends while another begins4 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2024-08-06
- FDA is regulating patients to death3 people · 6 mentions · first linked 2024-07-02
- Forever is such a short, long time3 people · 4 mentions · first linked 2023-10-10
- Dumping the Elderly at the ER Is a Cherished Tradition3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-11-23
- It Only Takes 200 Joules to Restart a Heart3 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-09-17
- The unexpected gift of long Covid2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-02-28
- Uncertainty is the state of being alive2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-11-04
- /2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2024-01-18
- Just because you won't see it, doesn't mean it isn't there2 people · 3 mentions · first linked 2023-11-30
What Hacker News says?
I hope too to accomplish at least two concrete ends: 1. Help and educate other people who are suddenly facing the opaque clinical-trial system: https://bessstillman.substack.com/p/please-be-dying-but-not-... 2. Ultimately, reform and speed FDA approval for fatal diseases like recurrent / metastatic head and neck cancers: https://jakeseliger.com/2024/01/29/the-dead-and-dying-at-the... . A drug like petosemtamab (MCLA…
Comment linking /p/please-be-dying-but-not-too-quickly
on “Starting Hospice”Submitted The year I didn't survive as a story · 949 points
HN discussionHacker News, thank you for all the links and all the great reading. Now I have to say goodbye. I’m with my wife Bess ( https://bessstillman.substack.com/ ) and my brother Sam, and crying, but it is okay. At the end of Lord of the Rings Gandalf says to the hobbits, "Go in peace! I will not say: do not weep; for not all tears are an evil.” And that is how I feel now. Ending prematurely hurts, but all things must end,…
Comment linking /
on “Starting Hospice”Submitted Grief gets an expiration date, just like us as a story · 461 points
HN discussionfrom his wife Bess Stillman - https://bessstillman.substack.com/p/in-memory-of-jake
Comment linking /p/in-memory-of-jake
on “Jake Seliger has died”Submitted Debugging the Doctor Brain: Who's teaching doctors how to think? as a story · 116 points
HN discussionhttps://bessstillman.substack.com/p/the-drugs-killing-dying-...
Comment linking /p/the-drugs-killing-dying-patients
on “Jake Seliger has died”Submitted mRNA vaccines: let's eradicate herpes, cure cancer, and be sick a whole lot less as a story · 112 points
HN discussionWith regards to the mention on Tabarrok's post, her piece on FDA deregulation should be highlighted, I think: https://bessstillman.substack.com/p/the-drugs-killing-dying-...
Comment linking /p/the-drugs-killing-dying-patients
on “Jake Seliger has died”Submitted In Memory of Jake as a story · 24 points
HN discussionArchive: < https://archive.is/76NRN > The post in question was shared to HN, though without much comment: < https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=41173695 > And the blog entry itself: < https://bessstillman.substack.com/p/how-to-let-go-one-life-e... >
Comment linking /p/how-to-let-go-one-life-ends-while
on “Jake Seliger has died”Submitted FDA is regulating patients to death as a story · 9 points
HN discussionJake posted as jseliger on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jseliger He blogged at < https://jakeseliger.com/ >, and numerous of his blog articles were submitted to HN: < https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=jakeseliger.com >. That includes numerous topics, over the past year or so his experience with cancer, often concerning frustrations with the process and mechanism. His essay on agenticness especially…
Comment linking /
on “Jake Seliger has died”Submitted How to let go: One life ends while another begins as a story · 8 points
HN discussionJake's wife on FDA deregulation https://bessstillman.substack.com/p/the-drugs-killing-dying-...
Comment linking /p/the-drugs-killing-dying-patients
on “Jake Seliger has died”Submitted On Writing (or not): Bad habits and why the voice in my head needs to shut up as a story · 6 points
HN discussionI just wish they'd stop trying to add AI and automated topic highlighting which clearly doesn't work. A bunch of companies are also doing or attempting to do AI and automated trial finding for clinical trials, and that's not working either: https://bessstillman.substack.com/p/please-be-dying-but-not-... . Fortunately, the stakes are low, since patients who don't find the right clinical trial for cancers will only di…
Comment linking /p/please-be-dying-but-not-too-quickly
on “Google helped destroy adoption of RSS feeds (2023)”Submitted The drugs killing dying patients are the drugs they can't get as a story · 5 points
HN discussionI know of a couple of people I really trust that tried to explain to me how they feel when they try math or programming and it's more like a physical pain almost than frustration. For a lot of people writing prose is like this too ( https://bessstillman.substack.com/p/on-writing-or-not ). Back when I taught English to college students, it felt like getting students used to creating the smallest fraction of writing p…
Comment linking /p/on-writing-or-not
on “Fast Crimes at Lambda School”Submitted The Seliger Act (HB701): Testimony for a New Law as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThe biggest question in oncology today is whether this approach could also be used for solid tumors Yeah. I'm dying of a squamous cell carcinoma infestation: https://jakeseliger.com/2023/07/22/i-am-dying-of-squamous-ce... and the most recent clinical trial drug that was working, has stopped working: https://jakeseliger.com/2024/05/20/in-which-the-antibody-dru... . One of the options for a next trial is from TScan, "…
Comment linking /p/the-drugs-killing-dying-patients
on “Immunotherapy Is Changing Cancer Treatment Forever”Submitted How to let go: one life ends while another begins as a story · 4 points
HN discussionThe essay in question: https://bessstillman.substack.com/p/forever-is-short-long-ti...
Comment linking /p/forever-is-short-long-time
on “The one-year anniversary of my total glossectomy”Submitted In defense of boring: Sometimes, nothing changing is the exciting as a story · 4 points
HN discussionI'm not 100% sure, but I've heard from oncologists and other docs that people with bad diagnoses often lash out at doctors and family who are trying to help them. Some people also go into denial about what's happening, and denial can be fatal. This is not quite 100% on point, but my wife wrote a story about meeting a patient whose large mass on the side of her neck had not been there for just a couple days: https://…
Comment linking /p/just-because-you-wont-see-it-doesnt
on “The one-year anniversary of my total glossectomy”Submitted Remembering things that haven't happened yet:a love story about predictive power as a story · 4 points
HN discussionYou're welcome! I've been "reading the Internet" since the late '90s with sites like /., and, when I got diagnosed with the death sentence sentence—recurrent and metastatic head and neck cancer—I began looking into clinical trials, and I realized that I'd never read any good descriptions of what clinical trials are like from the patient's perspective. So my wife and I decided that the thing that we needed to exist i…
Comment linking /p/please-be-dying-but-not-too-quickly
on “The one-year anniversary of my total glossectomy”Submitted An Atlas of Vanishing Places as a story · 3 points
HN discussionIs Boeing terminally ill? </rhetorical> Jake Seliger, HNer, jseliger - https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=jseliger , who died a couple of years ago, had exhausted the current standards of treatment for head-neck cancer. Drugs available through clinical trials were his last option. But the workflow to access drugs via clinical trial is terrible. Directions/Instructions aren't documented. Unwritten limitations and o…
Comment linking /p/the-seliger-act-testimony-for-a-new
on “FDA approves first in class targeted therapy for metastatic pancreatic cancer”Submitted The dangers of walking include falling in love as a story · 3 points
HN discussion
