Our Cancer is About Us

The new Our Cancer community has been live for less than 24 hours and I'm happy to report that people are beginning to use it. As of this morning, around 50 of you have joined the group, and a number of you have started posting introductions about yourselves.

A few people have asked me if Our Cancer is just a new name for the blog, so I wanted to explain a bit more. Our Cancer is whole new thing that's a direct offshoot of the blog, which you can find at npr.org/ourcancer. On the blog, Leroy or Laurie would write something each day and publish it. Then the rest of you would then post a comment as a reply to whatever they wrote. It's a great way to collect responses from people, but doesn't make it possible for everyone to start their own conversation.

With Our Cancer, any of you can begin your own discussion or share your own story. For example, if you wanted to start a conversation about who's thinking of getting involved in a particular clinical trial, you could go to Our Cancer's discussion board, click the "start a discussion" button and begin a conversation about it. For example, Liz L. has already started a discussion about chemo fog. Or if you wanted to share a story of your experience at your first chemo session, you could create your own blog post by clicking the "add a post" button - and maybe even write other blog posts as you complete your treatment. That's why it's called Our Cancer -- it's a place where all of us can share our experiences in Cancer World in a collaborative way.

To get involved, please visit npr.org/ourcancer. We really hope you join us; the more of us posting there, the more useful it'll be for all of us as a community.

-- Andy Carvin

11:16 AM ET | 01-27-2009 | permalink

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