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Creating Caring Connections

Personal Web pages can keep you connected during cancer

When you or a loved one is diagnosed with cancer, keeping friends and family updated can be difficult. Repetitive explanations and endless phone calls and e-mails are time-consuming and emotionally draining. Fortunately, many Web services (see below for a list) provide friends, families, and communities with a central hub to keep in touch, stay informed, and share support.

These types of websites can allow you to:

• Communicate with others when you feel up to it. This reduces the burden of having to respond to an overwhelming number of phone calls and e-mails.
• Share the news just once. Sharing health updates can be stressful and time-consuming, especially if you have to tell your story over and over again.
• Reserve your energy for healing.
• Document your experience through blogging, journaling, posting photos, or creating art. These types of creative outlets have been shown to aid in the healing process.
• Keep your personal information private, or viewable only to those whom you choose.
• Easily manage schedules and organize family members, friends, and volunteers. It is often difficult for people with cancer and family caregivers to ask for help. And if help is offered, coordinating family, friends, neighbors, colleagues, and church or synagogue members who do not all know each other can be complex and time-consuming.
• Send and receive messages of encouragement and support.

Staying Connected During Cancer

The following are just some of the many websites where you can keep friends and family connected online during your cancer journey and beyond.

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