The new world of cyber support.

Yesterday went well. I didn’t feel too sick and had a nice time with my visitors. Just after everyone left and Patrick and Emma were about to leave, Patrick went off to the toilet and Emma who had been sitting on my bed, decided to do a runner down the hall way. By the time I had unplugged my drip from the power point and gathered all the cables, she had made a bit of distance. She was having a lot of fun and I guess it was funny. I was hoping her good cheer would last the night out but an hour later, Patrick phoned and Emma was a bit hysterical. She was crying out for me and it was very distressing to hear her crying out like that on the other end of the phone. I jumped on to iChat to start a video chat and as soon as she could see me her breathing started to calm down a little. But the crying continued. I started to sing to her with actions - the old ladies looked up in bewilderment probably wondering why I was twinkling my fingers into the monitor while singing. But Emma’s face started to beam. She put on a big smile. It was just amazing. I told her it was late and that she needed to go to bed and that she should drink milk from the cup. She lifted up the cup as if to make a toast and said ‘milk’. Then she blew me a kiss.

I am just so lucky being able to go through all this and having all this technology available to me. Firstly I have the blog where I can express myself and share my stories with others. I love having the feedback. It is especially rewarding when I hear from people I have never met, who have come across my blog and taken something from it. Sometimes they email me or comment on the blog. There are stats that blog owners have access too. I can see how many visits I have in a day and even where they came from - which country or how they linked to the blog. For example, from google or from the link I put up in a Facebook status message. If they google, it tells me what keywords were used. Fascinating really but in the last week my visits have been quite huge and growing each day. In the 3 years I have had this blog, I have had about 1400 visits but yesterday alone I had 94.

Another amazing thing has happened recently in cyberspace. Facebook support. A few years ago, a blog called My Meso posted about my story after i made it onto the front page of The Age newspaper. When I went to the My Meso blog to check it out, I saw they did another story about a UK woman, Debbie Brewer who was also battling mesothelioma. I contacted Debbie who also has a blog and we also became Facebook friends. Debbie introduced me to Cher Bright, a woman from Perth also battling with meso. Since then, Debbie has been instrumental in getting mesothelioma sufferers and their families hooked up as Facebook friends - the Mesowarriors. Now we make a habit of suggesting each other as friends as more people hook up. What has happened is that an amazing cyber support network has evolved where we are becoming close and looking out for each other without most of us having ever met.

I hear all the time from people in the real world, that they are against joining up on Facebook. True, it has had a lot of bad press but for many of us who have come to treasure its benefits, it has been priceless. It’s the new world of cyber support.