My mother was diagnosed with breast cancer several years ago, and soon after that my childhood best friend with ovarian cancer. Others close to me were diagnosed as well and it seemed cancer was all around me. Because I knew something about computers and the Internet I was often asked to search for information. After many hours at the Search Engines I said to myself,

"Tens of thousands of people are going through what I am right now across the country and around the world. I wish I could find a place on the Internet where I could just put in the diagnosis, and the treatment and drugs being recommended, and see what hundreds of other people who have already been through this have said."

I still am confounded as to why there isn't such a place that everyone knows about and adds to. If you want a book, you go to Amazon.com, right? Where is the Amazon.com of cancer experiences?

We have created this web site to gather the first-hand accounts of cancer patients and their caregivers. The site does not purport to give medical advice. There is plenty of medical information available from health practitioners, the government and the pharmaceutical industry. While obviously essential, most of the medical information left me feeling sort of numb rather than empowered.

What I found I enjoyed reading was the text of real people's experiences, where you hear the individual human voice of each unique person confronting the same monster: Cancer.

I have to rely on word of mouth because I haven't a budget to promote the site and buy key words on the major search engines. I pray a generous soul out there will like to buy the key word "cancer" or "chemotherapy" at any of the major search engines and point it at this site.

Imagine if every cancer patient and caregiver left an outline of their experience....If I was one day diagnosed with cancer such a site would be very important to me.

If you have found this tiny corner of the internet in any way valuable, please alert others with cancer experiences to the importance of contributing their story. Encourage them to visit SharedExperience and leave footprints. Thank you.

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To watch, to listen, to resonate, to mirror-these are skills that bond, relax and reassure. Empathy is the essence of connection.

 

Terry Halsey
November 12, 1998
New York City, NY
mailto:terry@sharedexperience.org