For cancer, log on to blogotherapy

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: Two months after learning she had breast cancer, Jennifer Boyd found herself sitting in the back room of a Boston salon, picking out wigs to replace her thick, sandy-brown hair, stolen in bunches by chemotherapy. She recounts the ordeal, for all the world to read, in a blog. “When do I buzz it all off? The downside to all this hair is that there is so much more to fall out and get everywhere,” she wrote. “The woman at the salon where I bought a wig last week said I would know the right time. And I’m still not ready yet.”

Boyd is one of a growing number of cancer patients turning to the Internet to discuss their disease, keeping friends and family updated, and connecting with other patients, according to oncology social workers and psychologists. Personal blogs, listservs, and sites like CarePages, CaringBridge and Breast Cancer Stories give patients an outlet to express the emotional turmoil associated with the disease, enabling a virtual catharsis for some. That was the role blogging played for Robert and Donna Gregory, the Long Island couple who died when the plane ferrying them to Boston for medical treatment crashed last week. Donna Gregory chronicled how leukemia had affected her husband’s health and the lives of herself and the couple’s twins.

And Leroy Sievers, a former television newsman who died last week of colon cancer, gained an extensive following with a blog and commentaries presented by National Public Radio. While there hasn’t been much research done on the relatively recent phenomenon, patients attest to its many benefits. And two Ohio State University researchers, conducting one of the first studies on cancer patient blogs, said their preliminary findings suggest that online journals indeed help.

“It’s definitely not hurting these folks ... it’s a good means to express yourself,” said one of the researchers, Jennifer Moreland, who is earning a master’s of health communication. “These folks will look back over the last few years and say: ‘Look at what I’ve come through. Hopefully, someone else can read this and survive as well.”’