An Electronic Cure for Despair

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Week by week, as Sigrid slogged through procedure after procedure, the flood of life-sustaining e-mails never faltered. When Sigrid was moved to a ward that had no Internet access, I was able to print out her e-mails during my daily trip home. Ultimately, her monthlong hospital battle ended, alas, in failure. Sigrid returned home to hospice care and death two weeks later. Yet in one final e-message, miraculously received the morning of her death, Sigrid learned that Postimees, the leading daily newspaper in Estonia, the country of her birth, planned to devote an entire page to an article on her book. She would be famous in her homeland.

At Sigrid's memorial, friends said they had been as heartened by the e-mail extravaganza as had Sigrid. "Everybody aches to support a sick friend," explained one, "but usually you can't do much—a card, a bunch of flowers. E-mails kept us in constant touch, and a chance to feel I was really helping." The ease of the Internet is key. Almost everyone sits down at a computer each day, and a message can be tapped out in a matter of minutes. I believe this simple act by her many friends and acquaintances helped sustain Sigrid in her final months of life. I believe it could help others in similar predicaments and that many will survive because of it.

Even for those who don't, like Sigrid, there is a final benediction. Sigrid enjoyed, while she was still alive, an outpouring of love, respect and admiration that otherwise her friends could only have shared among themselves at her memorial, after she had died.

Thomas lives in Potomac, Md.

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Posted By: Johnny47 @ 03/27/2008 3:16:36 PM

As a one who is suffering from cancer, I know how important that is. When some one reads my blog, www.Surviving-Oral-Cancer.com, and then emails me to tell me they have been through it, it really perks up my day. Sometimes you think you are all alone in this, it is nice to hear from others who have been through simular situations. There have been days when I just wanted to hang it up and s simple email comes and changes everything. Compassion, like chivalry is not dead, just not seen as often as we would like.
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Posted By: SLangshur @ 03/21/2008 5:08:07 PM

I was heartened to read this column describing how the outpouring of e-mail messages raised the spirits of Rich and his wife Sigrid as she battled cancer. My husband Eric and I had a similar experience 10 years ago when doctors told us our firstborn son Matthew had a congenital heart defect. With help from my brother, we set up an interactive web page, mostly to update family and friends about his condition. Before Matthew was 2, he had undergone three surgeries and multiple hospitalizations, and we had received literally thousands of encouraging messages, many from people we had never met. What was most surprising was how much their support meant to us, how it made us feel connected to the compassion and love that we all express more readily during difficult times. This experience changed our lives and led us to found CarePages.com, a community with more than three million members. Like Sigrid???s online friends, they too are helping others with health problems find emotional comfort and healing. - Sharon Langshur
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Posted By: andy232 @ 03/19/2008 1:18:23 PM

This was a great article. My family and I read emails to my mom (the screen was too far away to see) while she had cancer. Even though she ultimately lost her fight, it was something special to share. Carepages and caringbridge are two wonderful web sites that have sprung from this, and I commend the people who started them.