The social side of serious illness

I originally published this blog in December 2010. In light of my renewed interest in blogging, online marketing and all things digital, I'm giving it a second life.

There was a time, not so long ago, when terminal illness was a personal thing. If you had cancer the people close to you knew – your family, your coworkers, your friends, your church – but the knowledge stopped there, close to your inner circle. Now, with Facebook and Twitter, everyone’s life is an open book – and that includes their cancer. The question is, does social media make it easier or more difficult to deal with terminal illness?

This question has special poignancy to me because of a little girl I never ever met. Her name was Lucy, and she was diagnosed earlier this year with a rare form of brain cancer. She and her sister attended the child care center where my daughter works, which is how I came to know about her story. All through the summer and fall the family kept everyone who wanted to follow Lucy’s progress updated via something called The Caring Bridge, which I think is basically a blog set up by the hospital where Lucy was being treated. Through ups and downs, progress and setbacks, the family kept everyone apprised of Lucy’s condition.

While the family blogged and cared for their daughters, the community around Lucy grew. Team Lucy – made up of everyone from Lucy’s immediate family to complete strangers like me – participated in Kansas City’s Head for the Cure 5K last summer. A smaller group joined the Lawrence, KS version of the same 5K. More recently, my daughter and I attended a fundraiser for Lucy at Hamburger Mary’s. It was bingo night, and all the proceeds from the evening went toward Lucy’s skyrocketing medical bills. I was happy to give what little I could and grateful that I’d never had to hold a similar fundraiser for any of my children.

I guess all of these walks and fundraisers could have happened without Facebook and the blog, but I don’t think they would have had as big a response. The details the family posted online made everyone feel like they were part of the team rooting for that little girl, and the more dire her situation became it seemed like everyone fought even harder for a happy ending.

Sadly, Lucy lost her battle with cancer the weekend before Thanksgiving. The family is still posting their story online, albeit with much less frequency now. I guess it’s hard to let go of that grassroots community that sprung up around their little girl. Maybe some of the relationships they’ve forged will live on in her memory. I know my daughter will never forget Lucy, and even though I never met her, neither will I.

Not everyone can or wants to make their battle with cancer as public as Lucy’s family did, but I guess at least in this instance, social media helped a family cope with their grief.

Blogging lessons learned from Percy Jackson

In my last blog post, I started a review of the new Seth Godin book. And although a couple of weeks have passed, I'm no further along in the book. But I have been to the movies a lot, and one in particular got my blogging juices flowing.

I didn't even plan to see Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, but my daughter insisted on going since she read the book. It was pretty entertaining for a kid's movie, and it offered me some subliminal advice on blogging strategies. Here are a few of my takeaways:

Take poetic license
Who says everything has to be all accurate and verifiable in a blog? The Greek and Roman myths have been around for centuries, but the stories were conveniently modified to suit the movie plot line. Take the gods' cool weapons ... flying shoes, lightning bolts, swords that fold down into pens ... I don't remember reading about any of these in Mythology 201. But without them, there wouldn't have been much of a story, so bring on more of the ancient powers with a high-tech toy spin!

There were myriad examples of twisting traditional myths in the movie: the doorway to Mount Olympus on the 600th floor of the Empire State Building ... Medusa separated from her head with help from the reflection in an iPod ... the bottom line is that the movie will probably get a whole new generation interested in mythology, and that's a good thing. Once the kids read the stories and find out they're slightly different from the movie version, they'll probably be too engrossed to care.

Keep readers on their toes
This strategy may be a little harder to pull off in writing that in multimedia, but not impossible. One of the things I liked best about the movie was that nobody was who or what they seemed on the surface. Percy, he's the son of Posideon. His friend with the arm braces? No cripple at all -- he's actually a satyr who can kick some serious butt when Percy needs help. The beloved teacher in a wheelchair? None other than a noble centaur charged with educating Percy on the ways of the gods. It might mean blogging a little more on the fiction side, rather than the non-fiction, but convincing readers something is one thing when it's actually something else could make for some interesting blogs.

Exaggerate for effect
Percy Jackson was able to hide his identity until he reached his teen years because his stepfather smelled so bad he covered Percy's natural demigod aura. Really? That is some powerful b.o.! Now that I think of it, a lot of the glowing reviews of Linchpin were pretty exaggerated imho, so if you can't beat 'em, join 'em!

End things ambiguously
This should come as no surprise to children raised on Harry Potter, but the movie ended with a lot of questions in the air: Will the heroes hook up? Are there more demigods waiting in the wings? If demigods have a baby are they semi-demis? These questions and more are sure to be answered in the next Percy Jackson movie.

As for my own try at endings that could go either way, if you're waiting with bated breath to see whether I find any zen-like clarity in the second half of Godin's book, guess you'll have to check back too.