Running With Ghosts: A Memoir of Surviving Childhood Cancer

by Matt Tullis

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.

Genres: Memoir

220 pages, Paperback

Published August 29, 2017

Reviews

[Glenn Stout · Rating 5 out of 5]

Full disclosure, I was the author’s editor for the original story that Matt later expanded into this book, and became a friend. And for those readers unfamiliar with Matt, he passed away a few weeks ago following surgery for a brain tumor he developed as a direct result of the cancer treatments he underwent as a teenager. I guess that qualifies as a spoiler, one I never wanted to write.

This isn’t like most memoirs, because in many ways its not about Matt at all. It’s about other people, all the doctors, nurses and, most of all, the other kids Matt met while undergoing treatment. Major publishers passed on this because it didn’t have the redemptive happy ending they wanted. But it has something even better, I think, the lesson that life is never about ourselves, only those we meet and connect with.

I shared many things with Matt - a similar background and upbringing, chronic childhood illness (not nearly as severe) and a love of words. Maybe that’s why this book made me cry my eyes out, something I’ve never done before or since, not through sadness, but because it did what only the best memoirs do - cause me to reflect, to find my own story, or parts of it, in his.

I often tell writers that a successful story changes the reader’s life in some way large or small, and that’s the only measure that matters. That’s what this book does. It may not be a “happy” ending, but it is something even better: a real and lasting end that will continue to live on in the readers of this book after the final page, unforgettable as a life, or a friend. Something genuine and true. Something you will remember and carry with you afterwards, forever changed, simply by words alone.

[Maddie Gibson · Rating 5 out of 5]

i had Matt as a professor during my fall semester of senior year of college. i can truly say that he was my favorite professor and i was heartbroken when i found out about his passing a few months ago. Matt always looked at life positively and truly showed the beauty of it all, and emphasized that when teaching his students. after reading his story about his battle with cancer, the heart wrenching experiences he went through, it is amazing how one can still be such a positive, strong, and selfless individual. he always put others first and made sure that everyone told their own story, as he reflected in this book as he told the stories of those he met along the way. that’s just who Matt was, and it doesn’t surprise me, and i am so fortunate to have gotten to know him. miss you Matt hope you’re continuing to “run with the ghosts” up there ❤️