I started it because I couldn't find any other man willing to talk about their experience. So, being me, I started a blog, talking into the wide universe and hoping someone would talk back.
No one ever did, really. I didn't have any kind of celebrity status, no book to sell, and no hospital endorsement...
I got an occasional reply or observation or comment. And that was good enough for me, because something even more important happened: I learned about breast cancer and Alzheimer's -- and I hope others did as well. But after more than a decade, nearly six hundred posts, and over 100,000 views, I'm hanging it up. I'll leave the blog here for a while; eventually close it -- or let it die a natural death.
Why? Well, the first month I wrote, I got (if the Status chart is accurate!) about 60 views. Last month, I got...a hair over a hundred and fifty last month.
At the height of the blog, which was November 2018, I was sharing my thoughts about both breast cancer and Alzheimer's and something like 2700 people stopped by the site each month, long enough to be counted -- or long enough to read what they were interested in.
Dad's diagnosis of Alzheimer's several years before he started to show obvious signs of AD launched me into a new line of research, and I found those people willing to talk about AD about as chatty as the ones who had thoughts about breast cancer.
But as the months and years have passed, so has FaceBook and EBlogger. Shorter, more interactive sites -- TikTok, Instagram, YouTube (my grandson expects NOT to have to go to college as he will be a popular YouTuber... 8-/ ) have taken over and can give fast, less-thoughtful answers than my blog. The service I provided -- like Translating The Doctors; AD and BC Research RIGHT NOW!; Encouragement; and recently, ancillary issues related to both AD and BC -- don't appear to be needed anymore as time has become more and more of the essence, and people don't really WANT to talk about BC or Alzheimer's.
So -- explore the site, and for a while the features that are RIGHT NOW! should remain fairly pertinent. But, as time passes, they'll grow out of date, and eventually, EBlogger itself will wither, die, and vanish.
I've thought of printing everything off, but that wouldn't be helpful to anyone -- except maybe Posterity. My grandkids might be interested in reading the posts, but that seems unlikely -- I rarely look at pictures of my parents any more and can't imagine the science will hold up well in another eleven years...2033?
WHOA! In the meantime, I hope my brief time here was helpful to you --whether as a comfort, a resource, or just simply to read and know that treatments and the horror of Breast Cancer and Alzheimer's have come a long way...
Thanks for reading -- some of you through the YEARS...farewell.
Image: https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/farewell-written-sand-fading-flood-78677870.jpg
Dad's diagnosis of Alzheimer's several years before he started to show obvious signs of AD launched me into a new line of research, and I found those people willing to talk about AD about as chatty as the ones who had thoughts about breast cancer.
But as the months and years have passed, so has FaceBook and EBlogger. Shorter, more interactive sites -- TikTok, Instagram, YouTube (my grandson expects NOT to have to go to college as he will be a popular YouTuber... 8-/ ) have taken over and can give fast, less-thoughtful answers than my blog. The service I provided -- like Translating The Doctors; AD and BC Research RIGHT NOW!; Encouragement; and recently, ancillary issues related to both AD and BC -- don't appear to be needed anymore as time has become more and more of the essence, and people don't really WANT to talk about BC or Alzheimer's.
So -- explore the site, and for a while the features that are RIGHT NOW! should remain fairly pertinent. But, as time passes, they'll grow out of date, and eventually, EBlogger itself will wither, die, and vanish.
I've thought of printing everything off, but that wouldn't be helpful to anyone -- except maybe Posterity. My grandkids might be interested in reading the posts, but that seems unlikely -- I rarely look at pictures of my parents any more and can't imagine the science will hold up well in another eleven years...2033?
WHOA! In the meantime, I hope my brief time here was helpful to you --whether as a comfort, a resource, or just simply to read and know that treatments and the horror of Breast Cancer and Alzheimer's have come a long way...
Thanks for reading -- some of you through the YEARS...farewell.
Image: https://thumbs.dreamstime.com/b/farewell-written-sand-fading-flood-78677870.jpg
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