Author Kage Baker has been battling metastasized cancer for quite a while, but only just now has gone public with the information. She was originally diagnosed with uterine cancer, for which she underwent seemingly successful surgery. But in late December, the cancer was discovered to have metastasized to her brain, and she had brain surgery on 26 December (which removed an inch-long tumor from her cerebellum). Three weeks later, the tumor had regenerated to the size of a golf ball. She is now undergoing both radiation and chemo therapy, and according to her caretaker, Kathleen, “they do seem to be helping: but it will be a week or two before we know if they are making a sufficient difference to save her life. At this point, it is a race to see what dies faster: Kage or the cancer. There are also five tumors in her lungs, though all of them are mercifully smaller; they are responding fast, too, and she said tonight that she can breathe a bit better already.”
The 57-year-old’s first story appeared in the March 1997 issue of Asimov’s Science Fiction. Since then, she’s published twelve novels and two collections, and won the 2004 Theodore Sturgeon Award for her novella “The Empress of Mars”.
Full details on her condition are available in this post.
Notes and letters are welcomed at either materkb at gmail dot com or 331 Stimson, Apt. B, Pismo Beach, California 93449 USA.
[Update 29 January 2010: Bad news, see this article.]