March 19, 2005: I can’t believe that this is happening to me. I actually have to make a choice whether I should have my boob cut off or expose myself to radiation for 6 weeks. Worse yet, how is my family going to react?... I’m envisioning [my mother] screaming and crying....That is, if she doesn’t have a stroke first. This is not good. This is not happening. This is not happening!!!

July 30, 2005: ... I have been from the very beginning completely sold on the idea that I am going to beat cancer. I don’t know when it’s going to happen, I don’t know how it’s going to happen. I just know it.... I know [the hospital social worker is] trying to prepare me for what, statistically, is my probable outcome. But, she doesn’t know me. I AM NOT A STATISTIC!!

Welcome to the world of blogging, the hugely popular form of online communication where anyone with a computer and an opinion can share her thoughts with potentially millions of readers. A decade ago, fewer than 30 online journals existed; now, according to Technorati, a site that tracks Internet data, there are some 112.8 million. What’s more, over 175,000 new blogs are being created each day.

A growing part of this dynamic “blogosphere” are diaries created by women with breast cancer who share their highly personal journeys—from first diagnosis through treatment, from fears of death to exuberance after a cancer-free checkup. Karen George, who wrote the entries on the previous page, is one of them. Only 30 when she was diagnosed with stage IV breast cancer, she never intended to share her experience with anyone outside her family.

“Without my knowledge, my husband created a cancer blog for me (www.fighting-breast-cancer.com), sat me down in front of the computer and told me I needed to tell my story to help other women,” says George, who lives near Phoenix. “I said the only way that I would blog is if I could be completely honest. That meant writing about the way he reacted to my cancer—which was not good. He started drinking heavily and crying a lot, which showed me my cancer was harder on him than it was on me. He agreed. And with that, a blog was born.”

Who blogs and why?

The blog phenomenon has grown so quickly that the academic world is only just beginning to investigate it. Sociologist Victoria Pitts-Taylor, Ph.D., of Queens College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York, has been studying the phenomenon of women who share their cancer stories online. “We are beginning to understand that illness is an experience that people feel a need to narrate in order to make sense of it,” she explains. “While we were once cautioned against being public about illness—people used to whisper the names of diseases—we now experience many aspects of our lives, illness included, as something that can and must be dealt with in the open.”

Keeping a blog is one way for women to share their often-raw feelings about a life crisis like breast cancer while still maintaining a comfortable distance from their audience. “One appeal of blogging is that it’s both very public and also, in some ways, anonymous,” says Pitts-Taylor. “One can share her experience with hundreds, or even thousands, of readers, without necessarily discussing it with her neighbor or colleague.”

A Google search for “breast cancer blog” calls up some 23,400 results, either the blogs themselves or sites that link to them. The entries and observations are as varied as the women who write them, right down to their blog titles. Some are straightforward (“My Breast Cancer Blog”), some are reflective (“Imagine Bright Futures II”), others full of attitude (“The Cancer Grrrl” and “Von Krankipantzen—Kicking Cancer in the Pants, Sir!”).

“I do struggle with the question ‘How are you?’ I haven’t found a consistent answer yet,” writes Jayne England Byrne on www.jaynesbreastcancerblog.com. “To me, it is quite the paradox that I’ve let my fears and emotional ups and downs show more here—on this very public place!—than in daily conversation.”

At cancerspot.org, Jacki Donaldson discusses a recent fender-bender: “In the whole realm of life and death, it’s nothing really. I’m not receiving massive doses of radiation so that I can live to watch my boys grow up... Nope. I’m simply driving a mini-van that looks a little more like a jalopy than it did a few days ago.”

On her Life with Breast Cancer blog, Kathy-Ellen Kups talks about being a carrier of a BRCA mutation. “I have been dealing with anger and disappointment... and regret,” she writes. “What if I had known earlier...? Would that have impacted my decisions? You bet!” Kups blogs about breast cancer on a commercial general health site. Her blog address is blog.healthtalk.com/breast-cancer/life-with-breast-cancer. The site is called HealthTalk.com.