Blogs I Like

Technorati says there are 55 million blogs out there, and the site lists 469 of them devoted to cancer. Choosing among cancer blogs is akin to running the gauntlet of the cereal aisle at the grocery store: some are tasty but lack nutrition, others are good for you but taste like cardboard.

As I work my way down that aisle, I’ll be adding blogs I like to this list. For now, it’s just three:

My friend Jill Cohen, who also lives in Seattle, blogs about her experience with metastatic breast cancer at http://jillscancerjourney.blogspot.com/.

Jill also runs a listserv, Club-Mets-BC ( http://www.acor.org), for women with advanced breast cancer. This is a closed list. You must apply to join and give your full name. There is also an open list at http://www.bcmets.org . In addition, Jill serves on a Young Survival Coalition national task force on metastatic disease. YSC is a group for women diagnosed with breast cancer before age 40.

Jill was diagnosed with breast cancer in 1999 while working as the manager of the Northwest AIDS Walk. Her cancer returned in 2002, when it metastasized to her bones, as mine had done a year earlier. We met after Jill read a story I wrote for Seattle Weekly called Running With Fear: Confessions of a breast cancer poster child. "We who have 'mets' are the hidden story behind all the talk about breast cancer successes," Jill says of what we have in common (in addition to a love of chocolate).

Women’s Health News
A great blog I just discovered recently is Women’s Health News, by Rachel, a medical librarian in Nashville, Tennessee, who blogs about women’s health information (not only cancer topics).

Rachel is both fun to read and authoritative—I think she may be the Raisin Bran Crunch of my blog aisle.

I know I’ll go to her when I have research questions. To get a taste of her style, read Off-Topic: Baby Librarians!

Rachel also added a comment to my blog entry, Medical Mistakes--They Will Happen. Read Rachel's comments.

The Cheeky Librarian
Teresa Hartman is a medical librarian living the good life in Nebraska after treatment for cancer in her left cheek.

Teresa e-mailed me after reading some of my rants about pink ribbon marketing, and she makes a good point: “[I] am so glad to find someone else that protests the pink ribbon marketing... October is Medical Librarian month, too, and utilizing medical librarians would be much more useful to combating cancer fears and locating information on disease and cures than exploiting survivors.”

Here’s the link to Teresa’s blog: Cheeky Librarian