Nils Palsson
Summer Update, Birthday & NEDfest 2023!

I hope you are well! It has been a while since I’ve shared an update, and as we near my 38th birthday (on August 2nd!) — along with the two-year anniversary of the completion of my treatment for cancer and the beginning of a long recovery journey — I wanted to reach out with a few kind words and good tidings of what’s to come.

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Summer Update, Birthday & NEDfest 2023!
Nils Palsson
Only Getting Nedder!

I hope your springtimes are progressing in vivid color, and that your summer is shaping up to be a great one. I just wanted to share with my loved ones out there a couple of pieces of good news. 

First: My MRI scan a couple of weeks ago yielded another negative result, showing no evidence of disease and further documenting my complete remission! I welcome and celebrate the clean bill of health!

Only Getting Nedder!
Nils Palsson
Annual Letter, 2022-23

2022 has been an amazing, humbling, sweet year — one of physical rehabilitation, family connection, spiritual expansion, celebration of life, and working to create a rich, new definition of “normal” after last year’s remarkable struggles and powerful lessons. It was also a year replete with its own challenges and surprises — but are these not essential aspects of the privilege of being alive?

What can we do but smile and give thanks for it all?

Annual Letter, 2022-23
Nils Palsson
Happy NED Year!

After a couple of really challenging years — a dance with cancer that included major surgery, brutal chemotherapy, and months of uncertainty with irregular scans ever-trending in the right direction but stopping just short of the longed-for resolution of “complete remission” — it finally happened.

I went in this November for another CT scan… and at long last...

It was NEGATIVE!

Happy NED Year!
Nils Palsson
A Graduation for Us All

…If you caught my last post, you saw that I just celebrated my 37th birthday (while on an overnight train in northern Finland, no less)! Over the next few weeks, as I settle back into life at home, I’ll be integrating my experience and sharing stories and media from the road (to augment the brief photo chronicles I’ve already shared on Instagram and Facebook).

For now, though — as I pivot somewhat abruptly to Back-to-School Mode — I wanted to take the opportunity to share a video of a very special occasion that took place earlier this summer.

Watch the video

A Graduation for Us All

"Find your wings... by jumping."

"Find your wings... by jumping."

As I cross the finish line of Round 3 of chemo (in humble and groundless uncertainty of what's to come), I wanted to celebrate this moment of graduation by sharing a video of the commencement address that I offered to the graduating class of 2021 at the high school where I've taught for the last three years, Quest Forward Academy in Santa Rosa, CA.

When I gave this speech at the ceremony in June, I was in a great deal of back pain, and I didn't know why. Less than a week later, I would be admitted to the local emergency room, where I would learn through a CT scan of the testicular cancer recurrence I've been battling and dancing with ever since.

The theme of the speech is finding our wings by jumping into the abyss.

Birthday Reflections from the Infusion Chair

Birthday Reflections from the Infusion Chair

As I mark my solar return in Ye Olde Chemoe Chaire, I’m engaged in the sort of life-contemplation that I typically get into around this time of year — considering where I’ve been and where I’m headed, meditating on what I’ve accomplished so far in this life and what I wish to create with the rest of it, looking at what appears to be working well and where I’ve been missing the mark.

I just started chemo.

I just started chemo.

Back in January, I was working on this holiday card for you along with a year-in-review letter I was going to send out to all my relations. I was in the midst of my third year as a full-time teacher (and my first year as Dean of Faculty) at a high school in Santa Rosa, and Satya, now 8 years old, was halfway through the second grade — during the ‘pandemic year’ that came to be defined for so many of us by coronavirus — when I was diagnosed with testicular cancer.

Overcoming Crisis

Overcoming Crisis

When the pandemic hit in the spring semester of 2020, our Academy was uniquely situated to prosper and thrive (all things considered). As a small school with an amazing team, we had already demonstrated the institutional grit and agility to weather unexpected phenomena. In recent years, we endured together the wildfires, floods, and outages that seem so endemic to modern life.