Feeling Better on the Internet

If you were diagnosed with a terminal illness, what would you do? How would you cope? Would your support network be there for you if it’s composed of people scattered across the country? Sigourney Cheek's family and friends were far flung when she was diagnosed with cancer. It took her a year to battle—and beat—lymphoma, but she did, and it was with the help of her virtual support network that she kept alive in an emotional sense. Patient Siggy is the true story of a woman who found “hope and healing in cyberspace” via an e-mail network of 160 friends whom she kept regularly updated about her diagnosis, treatment, and recovery, and who responded with love and empathy. "I continue to feel the power of your love surrounding me," Cheek writes to her network in the midst of chemo and an exhaustion that would have made individual phone calls or letters impossible, "and I know I am healing." The book is personal, touching, and real, and it serves the opposite purpose of internet communication: while internet communication is fast and voluminous, this book collapses all the most important communications into one clear, readable document, with plenty of narrative by Cheek herself. Both "Siggy" and her online friends agree that the e-mail network is beneficial to their well-being; one friend writes, "It is also strange for me to say I feel I was blessed by your illness, to be part of such abundant caring, courage, and strength—to feel the spiritual dimension so palpably nearby."