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Benjamin Ryan

@benryanwriter

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NYC science writer👨🏼‍💻Columbia alumnus🎓reader📚 anti-coffee Seattle native 🌧🚫☕️recovered child thespian🎭

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What was I like in the 90s? Working for JFK Jr at George magazine. Link in bio. by @benryanwriter

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6 months ago

Calvin and Diane, my seal and blue point Siamese, turn 1 today. They are a delight. #catsoﬁnstagram #siamesecatsofinstagram #siamese #siamesecatlovers #siamesecats by @benryanwriter

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8 months ago

I spoke with @cbsnews about my reporting for @thefreepress as the only reporter to attend the entirety of the three-week detransitioner civil trial in White Plains, NY. Fox Varian, 22, won $2 million in damages from her former psychologist and plastic surgeon over the gender-transition mastectomy she received at age 16. Her mother testified that the psychologist browbeat her into consenting to the surgery with threats of her child’s imminent suicide absent the operation. But the president elect of the World Professional Association for Transgender Health testified that such a surgery is not a form of suicide prevention, full stop. by @benryanwriter

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8 months ago

Some excerpts from my video with @benryanwriter at last week's #nycpride parade. Watch the full production at benryan.substack.com #lgbt #lgbtq #lgbtqia #pride by @benryanwriter

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a year ago

Three years ago today, I was in the world’s fanciest bathroom when my doctor called to tell me that my cancer had returned. I was incredulous! I had to have chemo, which in the end was a harrowing experience. It took me a year to recover from it, both because I got terribly out of shape and I suffered from grinding fatigue. I wasn’t sure whether I was ever going to get better. That part of it was really hard to deal with.

I still have neuropathy, which sometimes hurts quite a bit; and from time to time it causes me to fall flat on my face, because my feet are kind of numb and I can’t feel the ground very well. I also struggle to remember names and sometimes certain vocabulary words. But I think even that has improved a bit lately.

I’m glad I don’t die though! 55 years ago I would’ve been dead within a year, most likely. But thanks to the advent to the mega-toxic platinum-based chemo, I’m still here. I wouldn’t have minded it if someone might’ve thought to develop a less toxic drug for me!

I have to have just one more follow-up CT scan—that’s coming up soon—and then my risk of recurrence is basically nil. Last year, I was scared out of my wits for the scan, because I’d read in a book what high-dose chemo and a stem-cell transplant—the treatment I’d need for a second recurrence—is like. But this year my mind is on other things and I haven’t really thought about it that much. And then there’s the 1% chance I get leukemia from the toxicity of the chemo. Ugh!

Here’s to all my fellow survivors, and also to those who haven’t been so lucky. I’ve got a friend whose husband is dying of the same brain cancer my mom died of 26 years ago. They’ve got two young kids. It’s just so unfair by @benryanwriter

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a year ago

Fantastic health news: I had my year-two cancer follow-up CT scan and remain cancer free! This was the first time in my cancer experience that began in Dec 2021 with my first diagnosis that I was scared out of my wits about a cancer screening. I made the mistake of reading a harrowing account of the impacts of the treatment I’d need for a second, and therefore aggressive, recurrence—high-dose chemo and a stem-cell transplant—and have been in a doom loop for weeks imagining that this was my inevitable fate. Even though at this point I probably only have a 2.5%-3% chance of recurring by 2027. Not to be in 2024! My CT scan from yesterday came back clean. Of course I danced around the apartment to “Let The River Run” like the last scene in Working Girl. Somewhere Joan Cusak is shouting, “He did it! He did it!!” #cancer #menscancer #menscancerawareness #cancersurvivor by @benryanwriter

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2 years ago

I flew to Montreal and back today for the #eclipse. It was amazing! The weather just cooperated. #solareclipse taken in Montreal Airport by @benryanwriter

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2 years ago

I lost my mom 25 years ago today, to brain cancer—a glioblastoma. She was pursuing a PhD in comp lit in her final years. She taught H.S. English and poetry to my lower school and TA’d for undergrads. She was kind, gentle and loving. And fiercely demanding. I miss her every day.

When I got cancer myself in 2021, and then a recurrence in 2022, it was poignant to say the least that I followed in my mom's unfortunate footsteps. But she was the truly unlucky one, developing the most insidious and terminal cancer. I was lucky and got the most treatable one. by @benryanwriter

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3 years ago

My latest for @NYTimes, and my first time covering #HIV for the paper, 27 years after I was a 17 year old intern at the Northwest AIDS Foundation tasked with clipping the newspapers for HIV articles and first began reading seriously about the subject. The articles in the Times were the best. For the complete article, visit my website, link in bio. by @benryanwriter

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3 years ago

Today marks one year since I completed my fourth and final cycle of chemo, which ultimately cured me of cancer. This year has been arduous yet rewarding: a determined climb back up a slippery slope toward finding myself again. Or finding the new person I would become.

Many of you have been very kind along the way. But I have also lost friends to their own apparent discomfort with sickness and death--some because they simply stopped speaking to me, others because they were so unsupportive, I couldn't bear to have them in my life anymore. I knew this would happen, having been abandoned by so many of my peers when my mom got cancer 25 years ago. I was just sorry to have to go through that process all over again. People can be so predictable, I'm afraid.

Today, I am as recovered as I might ever expect to be. Life is different now. My body is different, I look different, my sense of my own mortality is different. I've battled months of fatigue that was a mortar seeking to grind me into a fine powder. Thank heavens that's better now, even if I remain wary that it might always be waiting in the wings.

I continue to grapple with neuropathy, trouble remembering words and names, and the occasional tremor. And above all, I've wrestled with identity confusion. Who am I today and what are my wants, needs, preferences and priorities after experiencing such a brutal medical treatment and its long, in some cases permanent, aftermath?

I've watched with amazement as people who do battle with my intellectual positions on Twitter have used my cancer history as a cudgel with which to pummel me with cruelty and derision. I don't often take personally the vile things people say to me on Twitter, where I've become a lightening rod over the past year. But it does hurt my heart that anyone would stoop so low.

Above all, I am proud. You may recall that I was determined to face cancer not with blind optimism, but with courage. And so I did. I thought of something my mom said to me when she was dying and, due to her brain tumor, struggled to put words together. She managed to say of my accomplishments in life: "You're a brave gay man.” by @benryanwriter

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3 years ago

My latest for @NYTimes. Visit my website to link to the full article. Link in bio. #STIs #pregnancy #maternalhealth by @benryanwriter

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3 years ago

The beautiful Opening Number cast of #BroadwayBares 31: Pleasure Park! #dancernyc @bcefa taken in Hammerstein Ballroom by @benryanwriter

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3 years ago