Sharing My Diagnosis and Updates

By Racheli Alkobey

1 min read

We are all going to address the updates and process differently, that’s for sure. For me, it was the easiest to create content that updated everyone at once so I didn’t have to answer a million questions about my treatment plan, progress, and side effects.

There are many sites like Caring Bridge, Instagram, Facebook, Tumblr that you can see how to navigate the general updates. This is what worked for me. I’m interested to hear how you chose to update people! Let me know in the comments.

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Amanda Brunson Moderator & Contributor
I used Facebook and IG to keep everyone updated. I did hear about care bridge, but Facebook and iG were my main source to get updates out. Your so right getting asked the same questions over and over had me too overwhelmed and often made me cry. This was a great solution to help me stay balanced. Amanda🐼(Blood-cancer.com team member 💚)
Katelynn Bauer Moderator & Contributor
I'm going to talk about the last time I had cancer because that was the worst time: In the beginning I mainly had my room mate update everyone on facebook for me. I was overwhelmed because all of my friends would message me at once even when I asked to be left alone, plus I felt like crap on top of everything. So my room mate would make little videos while I sat off camera in the background to make sure what he said was accurate and what I wanted to convey (it always was). After a while I started making my own updates on my facebook. I have a lot of people I care about in different states so it made sense to just put it all on my wall and if anyone wanted to know they could just look. I still had people message me too much but what can you do.
Ramae Hamrin Moderator & Contributor
<inline-mention username="Racheli Alkobey" user-id="3651245"/> I was a high school math teacher and mom of 3 (with 1 in college, 1 in high school and 1 in middle school) when I was diagnosed. I updated my own kids personally but updated everyone else on Caringbridge. After my stem cell transplant 9 months later, I started a blog called Incurable Blessings. I don't use it as much to update others on my health updates (there really aren't many these days), but I generally just write about life with blood cancer (mostly the good things). I never had the guts for a video update, but if someone I knew was going through cancer treatment, it would be nice to see their face and hear their voice, not just read their words. I have to say I always appreciate your videos!
Ronni Gordon Contributor
<inline-mention username="rachael-y" user-id="3654764"/> My first go-round was so long ago (2003) that my sister did it through a humongous email list. I don't think we knew about CaringBridge. Later I did it on my blog, <a href='https://Runnerwrites.blogspot.com' target='_blank' rel='noopener noreferrer ugc'>Runnerwrites.blogspot.com</a>. I think that people who do it on Facebook miss out on the chance to have a record of it.