RIP Daria

I found out this morning that one of my fellow bloggers, Daria Maluta, who also had metastatic breast cancer, died early this morning. She reached out to many people and had many people following her blog and lots of friends on Facebook. She will be missed. She was participating in a clinical trial and while it seemed effective on her liver mets, it may have been too much for her body.

Daria blogged at Living with Cancer. Please send her family our thoughts and prayers.

Two More Succumb to Cancer

In recent weeks, two other people I know, both Arctic anthropologists, have died because of cancer. I worked with both individuals at some point.

Ernest "Tiger" Burch died on September 16, 2010. While the obituary didn't give a cause of death, they are saying that donations can go to the American Cancer Society. He also last emailed me last year asking how I was doing. He told me he was okay. He also old me to "stay tough". Tiger gave me a lot of encouragement, mostly when I was just starting out, with my dissertation research, and most recently giving me comments on an article I had submitted for publication.

The other sad loss to Arctic anthropology is Herbert Anungazuk . I knew that he had been fighting cancer for a few years as well. I did some fieldwork with him in Wales in 2003, I think. He always spoke so lyrically of the way of life of his ancestors.

Damn cancer.