I HAVE CANCER. I AM NOT ALONE. CANCER DIRECTLY AF- fects at least one in four Americans. There is a similar rate in Europe. It would be difficult to find one person in our global community who does not have a relative or close friend with cancer. Yet many of us experience, along with our disease, a devastating loneliness.
Another set of numbers: 40 percent of American homes now have computers, and 16 percent of all households have computers with modems that allow them to communicate over telephone lines. If you don’t have a computer, you soon will and you will surely know someone who does.
Soon after I was diagnosed last year, my wife and I found we had to leave our longtime hometown of Geneva so that I could receive extensive surgery, radiation and chemotherapy in an unfamiliar city. It could have been a depressing experience of isolation under any circumstances. But thanks to computer technology and Internet access through a local Internet provider, not only were we ““wired,’’ but both my wife and I expanded our horizons during this time of uncertainty.
I’d used the Internet before to maintain professional contacts and keep in touch with friends. But as I underwent my treatments, I discovered e-mail, fax and home pages on the World Wide Web provided an adjunct therapy for cancer – and for all disabling diseases – whose value should not be underestimated.
The treatment of cancer is not limited to surgery, radiation and chemotherapy. Almost every oncologist, even the most dyed-in-the-wool research scientist, will tell a patient that human contact and a community of support help people with cancer get on the road to recovery. Yet in our daily workaday worlds, most of us are unable to be physically present with those loved ones or friends who have cancer. And that’s where the computer and the Net have helped us. The World Wide Web is indeed a fitting name. The web of support extends through family members, old friends, lost high-school and college classmates, and colleagues to professional contacts from one side of the globe to another.
When I type in ““cancer’’ on one of the search engines of the Internet, I will immediately see by the overwhelming number of responses that no one is alone with this disease. All of us have different needs and different ideas about how to deal with the daily uncertainties of cancer. Physical disability and pain may accompany many forms of cancer; physical and emotional isolation occur frequently. The fluctuating and unpredictable side effects of treatment – with this or with any other disabling disease, for that matter – leave victims susceptible to depression and withdrawal. But on the Internet and through e-mail I find dimensions of communication for emotional and psychological support that you may not have imagined. It never interfered with my treatment, but I never felt as if I were suffering in a vacuum. It enhanced relationships with my wife and close friends, as they shared, too, in communications with this global web of support.
Some suggestions for others:
The ability to discover addresses on the Internet is truly amazing. Through the Web or Gopher sites, as they’re called, or with electronic telephone books, you can search for the e-mail addresses of friends and colleagues, even those you have lost touch with. Http://home.netscape.com/ home/internet-white-pages.html is a good place to start.
Sources of information. Search engines like Webcrawler, Excite, Magellan, Lycos, altavista.digital.com and www. hotbot.com are the key to exploring this new world. But be prepared to be disappointed from time to time. Some Web pages only announce information, and the details that you expect may not be there. In some cases that may come only by post. As you become more adept you can pursue the Internet resources more efficiently.
Mailing lists. You can set up an e-mail mailing list to contact all your family members at once. You can do the same for your circle of close friends and colleagues. And the Internet may be a venue to make new friends.
Special interests. To my amazement I found myself visiting libraries and museums, enjoying art, music and even other countries, all on the Internet. These options are constantly evolving with pictures and sound. Via the Internet, you can dream of travel without leaving your room.
Keeping up with the news. Try for the familiar at first, the local paper’s stories. Then go national – The New York Times at http:// nytimesfax.com provides an eight-page version; The Washington Post is at www.washingtonpost.com. For an international taste, try Le Monde, the London Sunday Times, Tribune de Genve.
Group communications. Bulletin boards (a.k.a. newsgroups, on the Net) and chat groups on commercial services like America Online provide additional options for establishing personal contact. Even if you are a neophyte on the Information Highway, the rules of the road, the Netiquette, is easily picked up.
It’s true that unlimited advice on treatments of all sorts can surface through the Internet, and not all of it is worthwhile. But there’s a simple way to protect yourself. The first rule is to talk with your physician before embarking on any independent treatment advocated as the result of an uninhibited Internet odyssey. At its best, the Information Highway can provide up-to-date data on the latest clinical trials for cancer of all types, as well as the range of possible treatments. If you give your physician the Internet address where you’ve discovered something interesting, he can check on it with his own computer from anywhere in the world.
With access to the Internet, you never have to feel as if your life has come to a stop. You can maintain contact with your work environment and communicate with all those people, whether old friends or new Internet acquaintances, who will support you – and those whom you love – in the battle to conquer cancer, disease and disability.
