Dave Taylor
What I learned from dying; Nothing will ever be the same
Dave Taylor pre-cancer / Dave Taylor today The other day my girlfriend Jamie asked me how I feel my chemo treatments are going, but then asked me a bigger much more difficult question: how do I think my cancer story will play out? For those seeing this column for the first time, I was…
Read MoreVastwood Park beach opens Monday after six years
After being closed for over six years, Hancock County Fiscal Court voted last month to open the swimming area at Vastwood Park for the summer. The beach opens this coming Monday for Camp Vastwood, and is open only for the attendees of the camp the first four days. Camp Vastwood serves as a trial run…
Read MoreMcCaslin going for world record
Nick McCaslin spends hours every day in a small structure behind his house, far away from prying eyes, mixing a myriad of ingredients and studying them in a microscope in the hopes that he can build the perfect monster. He’s like a modern day Dr. Frankenstein, only the monster he’s creating is a monster watermelon,…
Read MoreWhat I learned from dying; Men can be sick too
I told my girlfriend Jamie to get pictures of me working during my chemo treatment Monday but that I didn’t want them to be posed. I didn’t get much work done and she got a picture of how the day really went. This third round of chemo has been rough and the main thing keeping…
Read MoreWhat I learned from dying; The lull
I’m a little more than a month into my little cancer journey, and now that the initial maelstrom is over I’ve reached a bit of a lull. It’s not relaxing and it doesn’t feel much like a break, but more like an in-between, sort of a wait and see. Each day has become a…
Read MoreWhat I learned from dying; What about all the good parts of having cancer?
Dave Taylor and his nephew Mitchell Smith, walking in to chemo treatment Monday I’ve actually had a pretty good week. I walked into chemo treatment this week instead of being wheeled in as before, and a new medicine was approved for my esophageal cancer that has been shown to extend life spans exponentially. Through…
Read MoreWhat I learned from dying. Who wants my stuff?
Like most things medical, I’ve been willfully ignorant about chemotherapy. I’ve always considered myself healthy as a horse – and I in fact have outlived several horses – so I never needed to know about anything about it. I started my chemo regimen on Monday and I’m told that on days three through five after…
Read MoreWhat I learned from dying
W Last Tuesday I found out that I have stage 4 gastric cancer that has spread to my liver. I think this means I’m dying. But being a journalist, I can’t pass up the opportunity to tell the story of a man whose life and plans might be cut short unexpectedly, so this column will…
Read MoreHancock Clarion loses devoted employee to COVID Virus
This is not the story I was supposed to be writing. This story was supposed to be about how I and Hancock Clarion office manager Tomi Mathew had both battled COVID-19 and won, each in our own stubborn ways, and each with such disparate symptoms. It was a story of the curiosity that one virus…
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