Illness blogs, the new therapy

(China Daily/Agencies)
Updated: 2008-09-25 09:37

Writing online blogs offers a good way for many seriously-ill people to cope with their challenges. Quanjing

Is blogging good for your health? Ian Spratley believes so: He wrote an online diary throughout his treatment for advanced bowel cancer, and believes it was as crucial as the chemotherapy and surgery were to seeing him through.

"There were some very bleak times - at one point I was given a less than 50 percent chance of survival," he says. "I had amazing support from my partner and my family and friends, but reasoning my situation out through a blog was the best way of dealing with it for me."

More and more people are turning to the Internet in the wake of a diagnosis of serious illness. It tends to be the bloggers who die who make it into the press - such as 26-year-old Adrian Sudbury, who died of leukaemia last month after documenting his battle with the illness at baldyblog.freshblogs.co.uk - although many others are chronicling their conditions through to recovery.

Spratley says that the experience of recording his journey through diagnosis, surgery, hospital stays and ileostomy bags (for faeces) was not only "hugely cathartic" but it felt healing, too.

"At times," he says, "I felt my cancer was leaving with each word I wrote. I was amazed at how much it helped me to deal with the issues, and how much better it made me feel."

Kevin Leitch, 38, blogs on his battle with manic depression, which he was diagnosed with as a teenager. "It feels like all the stuff that's been swirling round my head since I was a kid can come out in my blog," he says.

"It's giving me a way to categorize and articulate and work through my experiences. I don't feel any better about what I've been through, but I do feel I can look back and understand what was happening to me. It's helped me make sense of things."

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