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.