A Murmuration of Demons
A True Tale of Love, Life, Hardship, and Loss
by Robert F. Stump

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After two failed marriages, Bob meets Jessica. One whirlwind romance, transcontinental move, and medical degree later, the two have built a life together in El Paso, Texas. The beginning of the end starts when Jessica is diagnosed with a smoldering form of blood cancer: essential thrombocythemia. Bob has grown accustomed to practicing emergency medicine on patients at the razor’s edge between life and death, but still he is not prepared to bear witness to Jessica’s terrifyingly swift decline as her condition progresses to leukemia. After twenty-nine years of marriage, Jessica is admitted to the hospital on Valentine’s Day 2023. Bob loses Jessica forty days later. The map of a cancer journey is individual, but it is the tragic truth that for many, the destination is the same. In A Murmuration of Demons, Bob chronicles Jessica’s hard-fought battle with scientific precision laced with a deep sense of powerlessness, both qualities heightened by his medical training. In this moving and candid memoir, he explores what it means to live a good life, to let go of loved ones, and to accept that some debts can never be repaid.

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Robert F. Stump was an emergency medicine physician for decades prior to retirement in 2019. He earned a BA and an MS in chemistry, with specialization in physical and quantum chemistry, and a PhD in cell physiology and biophysics before attending medical school. He lives in El Paso, Texas, but frequently travels to the Philippines, where he is encouraged to write by his family’s midnight-snack-loving Chihuahua mix, Maximus.

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Robert F. Stump