OrganizedWisdom Health Blog

Why hide illness behind closed doors?

Film critic Roger Ebert was never known for his movie-star looks. Still, it startled some people when he made plans to appear at a film festival after cancer ate away part of his jaw. Two operations to replace the missing section had failed, and he had lost the ability to speak, wore a gauze bandage on one cheek and had a drooping mouth. (Photo by Dom Navolla, Chicago Sun-Times)

So why appear in public? "We spend too much time hiding illness. There is an assumption that I must always look the same. I hope to look better than I look now. But I’m not going to miss my Festival," Ebert wrote. "I have been very sick, am getting better and this is how it looks."

In decades past, cancer was whispered about, feared, hidden from others. It was ground-breaking when First Lady Betty Ford went public with her own experience of breast cancer. Today, Newsday reporter Lauren Terrazzano, who has lung cancer, has written a dozen stories under the title "Life, With Cancer." Presidential candidate John Edwards is continuing his campaign while coping with his wife Elizabeth's incurable breast cancer. This spring, thousands of ordinary people will wear "I'm a Survivor" shirts while they walk to raise money during the annual Relay for Life.

The decision to go public about a disease or treatment is an intensely personal one. That's why OrganizedWisdom allows users to post their wisdom under a screen name of their choice, or even anonymously if they choose.

Yet increasingly, public figures and ordinary people are refusing to stay "in the closet" (in the medicine cabinet, maybe?) about their illnesses. When disease doesn't hide behind closed doors, then we can talk about it, see what it looks like, share information about it, and reach out to help those who need it. At its best, that's what OrganizedWisdom is about -- giving illness and treatments a real voice, a real face and real wisdom.

New OrganizedWisdom editor

Greetings!

My name is Pat Washburn, and I started work this month as the new Editor/Content Manager for OrganizedWisdom. My jobs include generating great new WisdomCards on the site, communicating with our users in e-mail, and communicating with the OrganizedWisdom community through this blog.

I've been a Web content professional since 1995, after a career in newspapers. I've been a content producer for Boston.com, the Boston Globe site (among other things, I was one of the crew on duty when the Red Sox won the '04 World Series). Most recently, I worked as an editor at Eons.com, a content and community site for people 50 and over, where my duties included composing a Motown trivia quiz and interviewing Engelbert Humperdinck.

I became specifically interested in the health aspects of Web social media last year, when I was diagnosed  with an unusual condition called lipedema. It is frequently misdiagnosed or undiagnosed by doctors, so many of the people who have this condition have formed online groups to exchange information about treatment and symptoms. I started my own blog to help get the word out and to talk about what worked and what didn't.

Now, thanks to Unity and Steve at OrganizedWisdom, I get to take that understanding of how the Web can function at its best in the world of health, and apply it to a much larger world. I'm looking forward to being part of OrganizedWisdom's growth and learning from our community!

Put OrganizedWisdom Health Feeds on Your Site

We have recently launched a new widget that enables you to feed WisdomCards and health content on over 30 major health topics directly to your site, blog, or health group.  You can see an example of this widget on the right column of this blog.

Putting the code on your site is a snap. To get the code to put this widget on your site, click here.