Reporter who moved to Minnesota county he called 'worst place to live' says he has cancer

Journalist Christopher Ingraham has publicly chronicled much of his daily life in Minnesota since moving here six years ago.

The Minnesota Reformer reporter (and former Washington Post reporter — maybe you remember that time he called a Minnesota county ugly and then moved there?) is a prolific Twitter user, so when he had personal health news to share, that, too, went online.

Ingraham tweeted last week that he's battling bile duct cancer.

"As far as cancers go it's a bad one, right up there with pancreatic cancer in terms of grim overall prognosis," he wrote.

After he started experiencing some symptoms six weeks ago, doctors found a tumor in his liver. Ingraham is being treated at Mayo Clinic in Rochester. The tumor can't be removed, and he's exploring whether he is a candidate for a liver transplant.

Ingraham wrote that he is currently feeling better after some treatment. In an email to the Star Tribune, he elaborated:

"The only thing I'd add is that it's still very early in this process and I don't know yet whether I'll be a transplant candidate. There's still a tiny sliver of a chance that the tumor might be benign, but based on the radiology the Mayo docs are highly confident it's cancer and want to treat it accordingly. I should know more next week when the transplant board has had a chance to assess things."

Bile duct cancer, or cholangiocarcinoma, affects the tubes that connect the liver, the gallbladder and the small intestine. About 10,000 Americans develop this rare cancer each year, according to the Cholangiocarcinoma Foundation.

Living in Red Lake Falls, Minn., Ingraham is commuting more than 700 miles round-trip to receive treatment at Mayo Clinic. The drive is the least of his concerns.

"For the level of care I'm getting the trek to Rochester is nothing — people come from all over the world so it's nice to have that sort of facility in-state here," he said.

To jog your memory: Ingraham was the Washington Post data reporter who wrote a column about a U.S. Department of Agriculture ranking of American counties by natural beauty. In last place? Red Lake County, Minn.

Minnesotans were not too happy with Ingraham's report and invited him to see the area's charms for himself. He did — and he liked the place so much, he relocated his family from suburban Washington, D.C., to Red Lake Falls. He wrote all about the hullabaloo around his column and his subsequent adjustment to life in a small town in his 2019 book, "If You Lived Here You'd Be Home by Now: Why We Traded the Commuting Life for a Little House on the Prairie."

And he'll continue chronicling his health on social media.

"Anyway I just wanted to give everyone a heads-up, as no matter what happens I'll be posting through it," he tweeted. "So if you see me cracking extremely grim jokes from a hospital room you'll know why — it's how I cope."