Fighting Disease...

The internet is invaluable for people needing medical information. A quick search with a major search engine can return hundreds if not thousands of resources not available at the library - or from you doctor.

Several years ago I was diagnosed with a disease. My Doctor was able to give me almost no information. When I first started using the internet in 1995 my online searches for this rather obscure disease returned almost nothing. Today in 1999 when I do the same search I find significantly more information. If you are interested, here is what I learned just today. Everyday more information is being put online ...

Sometimes there is so much information about a particular disease or medical condition that it gets hard to find the most relevant. That's where you can come in. You could aggregate the most relevant info about the subject of your interest into one easy to use website. At the most basic, you could create a page of useful links. That set of links could be made more useful if you fully annotate and organize them. You can share your knowledge and experiences. You can search out and report on new research and new treatments. You can discuss alternative treatments and the issues involved. You can provide your thoughts on living with the problem.

Creating such a website will help you organize what you learned. It will help you see what you want to know more about. The project will very likely bring you into contact with new sources of information and resources you didn't know existed.

Just as important as the information is the sense of community experienced when you realize you can communicate with others sharing your medical concerns. It may feel like you are alone but there are of course hundreds if not millions of others sharing your pain, fear, or concerns. Creating a website about your situation will bring you into contact with others interested in helping.

Some diseases and medical conditions carry social stigmas. For some people it doesn't bother them to talk about the problems in public - the American politician Bob Dole publicly talking about his "erectile dysfunction" must have been enough to make his family cringe! Most of us find such things hard to talk about. The good thing about a webpage is you create one where your identity is superfluous to the useful content you create. Using a pen name, you can enjoy creating and being part of a community whilst being effectively anonymous. Don't worry about using your own email address for your site and your correspondence - you can get as many free web-based email accounts from DesignStop.Com as you want. Use one with your pen name. Get them here. If you think your web activities might generate some snail mail but you are hesitant to use your "real" address, rent a post office box for your website.

I hope this page has been of some encouragement to you. If you decide to create a "disease" page as a result of this encouragement I hope you'll and tell me about it. I look forward to hearing from you!