A Brief History of My Social Media Use Part 3: My Cancer Diagnosis and Treatment

My social media ambivalence morphs into meaning and purpose.

I’m doing something new! My social media detox at the beginning of last month prompted me to take it back to the very beginning and reflect on my history with social media — how and when I started using it, when it stopped being fun, and hopefully, how it can be fun once again — in this new SERIES (!!) called “A Brief History of My Social Media Use.” My initial installment in this series was FREE and not paywalled, so it’s open for everyone to view and you can read it here. If you’d like to read the rest of the installments in this series, become a paid subscriber here.

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At the salon after getting my head shaved, November 2018

At the beginning of October 2018, I walked into the ER and wound up being hospitalized for a week and diagnosed with Stage 3 ovarian cancer.

During that week, I typed out a Facebook post about my diagnosis several times, and several times, I deleted it. By that point in my life, I was ambivalent about social media. But the two main reasons I was apprehensive about sharing the news of my diagnosis on social media were:

1. I was worried I was going to be overwhelmed by people’s questions and comments and feel obligated to respond to them all. The week I was hospitalized, I had other really, really important decisions to make, like whether or not I wanted to get a port, and really, important things to do, like get several more CT scans after my initial diagnostic one that landed me in the ER to make sure the cancer hadn’t spread beyond my pelvis and abdomen, and have and recover from multiple surgeries.

2. I felt like once I announced it on social media, my cancer diagnosis would be “real.”

When I was released from the hospital seven days later, I still wasn’t ready to make my cancer diagnosis “Facebook official.” This time it was more so because I didn’t want to make it “real” — I hadn’t lost my hair yet and to some people, I could still appear to be someone who didn’t have cancer. I didn’t want to lose that yet. So I spent another few weeks drafting — and then deleting — my cancer diagnosis post.

Finally, toward the end of that month, I tentatively hit the ‘Publish’ button on Facebook and shared my news. I immediately received a tremendous outpouring of support. Bolstered by all the care and compassion coming my way, soon after I shared that first post on Facebook, I posted about my diagnosis on Instagram, too. This is that post: