For more information on my journey with cancer please follow me on twitter or if you're interested in the larger story see my new Boobs on Ice blog.
Debra Hamel says Twitter is . . "thousands of interconnected, opt-in communities in which people are tweeting their whereabouts and current reading and lunch plans and health updates to the members of their virtual communities--which may include people in their real-life communities too, like family members and work mates."
She's right. If you don't tweet , aren't one of my children or their friend, my spouse or someone he works with, OR a friend of someone in my twitter community you don't know that I have been diagnosed with invasive cancer and on Friday, I will have surgery to remove a breast.
I found a thickening on December 5th, saw my doctor and spent the afternoon with a diagnostic radiologist on the 6th. I have been sharing the story in 140 character format on twitter ever since.
People who I am connected to through twitter have given me referrals, done research for me, baked for me, cheered for me, knitted for me, prayed for me, shared their stories with me, rallied around me, and started a fundraising campaign for the American Cancer Society in my name.
They know when my surgery is and have "met" my doctors before my busy suburban neighbors know that there is anything wrong at all.
There are lots of twitter detractors out there. They say it is pointless and self absorbed. In Ian Hockin'g blog This Writing Life he writes about twitter "I'm sorry, but if you don't think this is simply awesome as a piece of global, human expression, then I can't help you. . . Twitter is a conversation. It's a communicative technology, and attacking it is as pointless as attacking two cups and piece of string."
In the end, attacking twitter and social networking is essentially attacking the human need to connect.
