I've had the opportunity recently to go through some old postings, beginning with the very first one. It's amazing how, over the course of almost 3 and a half years, the blog has changed. My attitude (about NHL) has changed, too.
Lympho Bob started out as a way of keeping family and friends informed about what was going on with my health. Especially in those early days, everything was kind of crazy. So many unanswered questions, so little information about me to be able to share, and so little information about my disease. So much worry. So much concern about my day-to-day health. So many comments and well wishes from everyone. It's hard to believe today that I was so worried every day back then. I knew so little in those days, and the blog really reflects it.
People in my support group say it takes about six months to get used to the idea of Watching and Waiting, and I think that's accurate. After about six months, my own feelings about having Follicular NHL began to change. You can see it in the blog. I was much less concerned with what was happening to me every day. I was much more interested in the future. And I started to get interested in the future of other people, too -- and the research nerd in me came out. The blog started changing, and it became not just a place for family and friends to get some hope when I got excited about new treatments in the news. It became a place for other people to find out about fNHL, too.
Lympho Bob is still very much about family and friends who care about me -- the videos of my kids playing in bands is a testament to that. But it fascinates me to see how many people read the blog -- people from all over the country, people from other countries, people who come to it because an entry has been linked on someone else's Facebook page or Twitter feed.
This blog has been extremely helpful for me. It's given me an opportunity to learn more about the disease, to learn a little more about myself, to vent (though there's a still a lot that I keep to myself), to share, to hear back from others. It's very cool to see how things have evolved. If it's been helpful for others, too, then that's been a really wonderful bonus.
And as much as the blog has helped me as a cancer patient, I have to acknowledge that it's helped with my career, too. After I was diagnosed, things changed for me. I slowly began to take on the attitude that, given how secure I am in my job, I don't have to waste time or energy on dealing with things that I just don't care about. I'm lucky to have a job that lets me take such an attitude. A few months after my diagnosis, I did a serious career re-evaluation, and the blog played a big part in that, as I experienced firsthand the things that social media can do, the problems it can cause, and the way it related to my job. I think, in the last two years, I've had more fun at my job than I'd had since I started. And that's happened at a time when lots of my co-workers are starting to burn out. One more thing to be thankful for, Lympho Bob blog.
Social media can be a very useful thing. Blogs, social networks, video channels, wikis, microblogs -- they allow people to connect in ways that weren't imaginable even five years ago. They provide information that was unobtainable before. If I've been able to add to someone else's knowledge, even a little, then that makes me happy. But if there's one thing I've learned in the three and a half years I've had cancer -- the three and a half years I've been writing this blog -- it is this:
Information is the lifeblood of a cancer patient. No one should keep it from us. Much of the information you can find online is comforting. Much of it is scary. But even the scary stuff needs to be made available. We cancer pateints can choose what to cling to, what to ignore, what to ask more about. But it mustn't be kept away. There's just too much good stuff out there, too many opportunities to connect with people who can help, in so many ways. Bad enough that people can't get things that will make them better. It's a tragedy that people don't even know that those things exist.
Thanks for reading Lympho Bob. It's been a fun three and a half years. I look forward to another 500 posts.
(And thanks to Stephan Pastis for not suing me for using this Pearls Before Swine strip. It's my kids' favorite comic strip -- they fight over the Sunday paper to see who gets to read it first. And it's certainly given me more than one laugh to start off my day. Here's your plug, Pastis.)
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