So thanks to a good friend that has his own battle with cancer – he told me a while back about support groups in Facebook. Great tip! I am currently in 3 Facebook support groups. One for Lung Cancer and 2 that are more directed to EGFR. All are pretty darn good and they are private groups, which is great … meaning that my Facebook friends can’t see / don’t know that I am in these groups. This is crucial as I have not come out on Facebook with my situation. I like the EGFR ones more. The posts are less frequent (they don’t take over my Facebook wall) and they are more directed to my situation, having EGFR. The Lung Cancer support group has over 9,000 members while the 2 EGFR groups have much less (one has over 700 members and the other has over 400 members). The challenge here is some days my Facebook wall can be all “Cancer Posts”, thank goodness for the 30 day snooze in Facebook, I can easily take a break from these posts showing up on my wall. The other bummer with the Lung Cancer Support Group, having so many members, there are SOO MANY posts about people “Earning their wings”. This can take its toll on me, heck, this can take a toll on any cancer survivor (I think I prefer “cancer warrior” over “cancer survivor”). I yearn for positivity, good vibes, good posts, good news … too much death is not good for one’s keeping a positive attitude. Kinda funny, a couple of months ago, someone posted that there was just “too much death” being posted and this person while sympathetic was hoping for more positive posts. I was 100% in agreement with this person and applauded their honesty … unfortunately, not everyone agreed … WOW! that was a lot of angry Cancer people commenting on that post. I understand where they were coming from, but I also understand / relate big time with the person that made the post. Another good / bad thing about these support groups, there are a lot of people out there that are not as educated as much as I believe they should be on their situation. There are also a lot of people out there (in my opinion) that don’t have top notch doctors (from what I can see). Seeing what a lot of people post, it makes me feel SO GREAT about my support team. I shared this tidbit with Jennifer (my Nurse Practitioner) and she was kind and told me that I am much more educated on my situation than many patients are. Whether that is true or if she was just being really nice to me – I would think someone with Cancer would want to be as educated as possible about their situation, after all, we are talking about surviving / beating Cancer, why would we not want to arm ourselves with as much information as possible. Anyway, that is my shtick on Support Groups. They are so great in providing lots of information & support, but too much “cancer” on my Facebook wall is not good – just continuing to try to find that perfect balance.
