I heard an interview on the radio last week about how terminally ill are blogging about their disease and how it’s affecting them. I thought about the post from Karen previously, on digital immortality, and thought that this might have some relevance to that.
There is a pretty brief article on the subject in one of the news papers (there’s also the audio from the radio show, but that’s all in Swedish). The interview was with one relative to a cancer victim who passed away a year ago and with the author of a book (Sabina och draken) about this patients blog and what happens outside of her blog. In the interview they do mention the fact that some of these blogs are continued after the subject has passed away (as is the case of this patients blog). It also points to the fact that these blogs can be an excellent way of making the subjects life easier if they gain positive followers/readers. On the flip side it would be pretty depressing to write your heart out in your blog and find that no one cares. Or worse, that you’ve managed to attract the worst of the internet…
Art imitating life 😉
Funnily enough I was watching TV last week… it happens occasionally 😉 and House was on, you know that weird eccentric doctor that seems to get away with being quite impolite to those that happen to be unlucky enough to be in his proximity. Well there was a whole session on a patient who lived through her blog… and sure enough it was used to help diagnose her… although it didn’t help much in the end as she didn’t blog about the symptoms that were most important, as they were too embarrassing even for her to make public.