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Chattanooga: Cancer patients chronicle their journeys for family, friends on new Web site

By: Clint Cooper
(Contact)

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Sally Ostheimer

Instead of having to repeat the same news about a cancer diagnosis to Aunt Mabel and Cousin Frank and neighbor Jason and mother-in-law Rita and the 77 others who ask, a Memphis nonprofit organization has established a Web site on which patients and their loved ones can create journals to share their news.

Hope Prevails (www.HopePrevails.org), which went live late last month, allows cancer patients to write about the progress of their treatment and their feelings about what they are going through. In return, friends, family and sympathetic others can leave messages of support on the patient’s page.

Rick Tarr, whose wife, Nancy, had breast cancer and was the inspiration for the Web site, said journaling on a specially created site and the feedback she got from it played a big part in her recovery.

“The No. 1 killer besides the disease is mental attitude,” he said. “She never had this poor-poor-pitiful-me attitude. Attitude plays a huge part. What (her site) did was to add to (positive) attitude.”

When Mrs. Tarr, a FedEx employee, was diagnosed with cancer, she was bombarded by well-meaning friends, family and co-workers asking her to tell her story. To help, friends and fellow Memphis residents Rick and Sally Ostheimer set up a Web site so she could communicate with everyone instead of having to tell her story numerous times.

“It was our way of helping her out,” said Mrs. Ostheimer.

A little more than a year after the original Web page was created, the Ostheimers rolled out the public site.

“That was the catalyst,” Mr. Tarr said, “and it’s grown from there.”

While some hospitals offer individual Web sites for their patients, or the families of patients, to detail progress of treatment, what sets Hope Prevails apart is that it is focused on cancer and allows users the opportunity to make a donation for the American Cancer Society or St. Jude children’s Research Hospital, said Mrs. Ostheimer.

She said either the patient or a friend or family member can create a page on the site. And the page itself can be available for anyone’s comment, upon their log-in, or be available only to persons permitted by the patient.

“The individual (patient) has complete rights,” Mr. Ostheimer said. “They can pull (a comment or picture) if they want. They have complete editing capability.”

The Webmaster also will monitor the site for inappropriate material, he said.

If a friend creates a page, the patient has the ability to turn it down.

“I can understand that,” Mrs. Ostheimer said. “Some people are very private, but most people have been very embracing.”

She said news about the site is presently spreading by word of mouth, but organization officials are hoping to give it wider exposure. Her husband and others are trying to interest corporations in the value of investing in the site for their employees.

“We (also) hope to get our foot in the door at cancer clinics, hospitals and the kind of places that can share it with their patients,” Mrs. Ostheimer said.

Amy Fields, communications and marketing specialist with the American Cancer Society in Knoxville, said she had not heard of the site but was grateful for support of the organization.

“It’s important for people to have an outlet and to get well-wishes from others,” she said. “I think it’s a phenomenal idea.”

Mr. Tarr said the original site gave his wife an opportunity in her journal “to write, when she felt like it, what she was going through. If she was resting, we could say she was resting and can’t talk. It gave her time to rest, and she didn’t have to answer all the questions.”

Many of the entries in her DreamBook — the portion of the page where people can add comments — offered prayers and inspiration, but also laughs, he said.

“I would come home and see her laughing,” Mr. Tarr said. “She would read the things that were all positive. I believe that had at least a 50 percent impact on her recovery — all positive.”

Today, his wife’s tumor is no longer detectable by doctors at West Clinic in Memphis, he said.

The site, Mrs. Ostheimer said, “is our way of giving back because, thank God, our health is good.”

However, she said, “cancer is not going way.”

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