Hacking Cancer: A Personal Odyssey With Death

Presented at HOPE 2020 Virtual Rescheduled, July 29, 2020, 10 a.m. (60 minutes)

The kindly doctor says something you never want to hear; "I'm so very sorry to tell you it's terminal." What the actual fuck do you do?

Karamoon heard those very same words in July 2016. Aged 36 with two young kids, he was diagnosed with Stage 4 (terminal) colon cancer. Due to the level of spread to his liver, lymphatic system, and abdominal membrane, a realistic life expectancy was just seven to nine months.

When faced with a crisis, your natural reaction is to start asking questions, learn as much as you can, and get hacking. And that's exactly what he did. Hacking, after all, is a survival trait more than it's a hobby....

This practical talk will be about how Karamoon went from "You need a friend or family member with you before I give you this news" to "We can find no evidence of disease" in the space of four years. It's also about the incredible support he's had from members of the international hacker community.


Presenters:

  • Karamoon
    **Karamoon** is a British hacker based in Tokyo. His main interests are intertwingularity, deep hypertext, Raspberry Pi, and Amiga games. His life changed dramatically when he picked up a copy of *2600: The Hacker Quarterly* in late 2001. In 2016, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer. He lived to hack, now he now hacks to live.<br>

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