Breaking the Digital Divide: Have You Met a Fellow Smart Patient This Summer?
We asked this question after hearing a few stories about Smart Patients meeting each other over the summer months. The responses included stories about coincidentally living on the same road, members finding each other at medical conferences, or finally meeting for dinner or coffee after years of only talking online. There were too many great ones, so we are sharing just two stories about friendships that grew over time.
Gary and Roy
Awake at 5 a.m. in Gold Coast, Australia, Gary was sitting in his friend's den when four kangaroos hopped across the backyard. Due to esophageal cancer, Gary hadn't traveled much over the past few years. He mostly stayed near his California home and played golf. But this trip was different: He'd flown across the Pacific to finally meet, in person, a man he'd talked to almost every night for a hundred nights straight. It was his online friend Roy.
Gary met Roy on a Facebook esophageal cancer group in 2022 and quickly brought him over to Smart Patients. Roy was newly diagnosed and scared. Gary read his message and invited Roy to call him, and they talked for an hour straight. They continued their daily talks for roughly 100 days. Six p.m. in California was 11 a.m. the next day in Australia.
"Gary... you're my cup of tea," Roy told him once, crying, on one of their first calls. Gary still remembers it exactly.
Gary walked Roy through every stage of treatment: what to expect, what the odds were, what the surgery would look like. Roy had his esophagectomy on Valentine's Day, 2023. After surgery, Roy found his pathology was worse than hoped (nine positive lymph nodes). He started adjuvant treatment that turned out to be rough – but six months later his scans were clean. Gary and his wife decided to fly to visit Roy, staying with his family for eight days. Besides seeing kangaroos in the backyard at dawn and kookaburras outside the window, they talked for hours like the old friends they were. They all made plans for Roy and his family to visit Gary's family in California for Christmas the following year. Unfortunately those plans were canceled; a recurrence prevented the trip. Gary said, "I still can't get over losing him. Such a wonderful human being."
Gary has said goodbye to more than one friend this way. He and fellow Smart Patients flew to upstate New York once to see a friend in hospice, surprising him when he opened the door. They also have met in Las Vegas to get together to check in on another friend's widow. He doesn't frame any of it as only sad. "Cancer is a nasty business," he says. "It has brought me many worldwide friendships... and has taken many away from me too. We carry on."
Road Trip
Another person had Smart Patient encounters this summer while on the road from Colorado to southern California to Canada (Banff) and back: our longest Smart Patients moderator, yes, our own Robin M. She and her grown son turned the long drive for a convention and vacation into a series of memorable first meetings and reunions, all of which included hugs.
In Los Angeles they revisited a couple who've been part of Smart Patients since the beginning and also enjoyed meeting a new coworker and his wife. Driving north in California, they met another Smart Patients employee for the first time after two-and-a-half years of working together remotely. On one of their days in Washington state they separately met two long-time members and their husbands for the first time, The second couple was mid-move between apartments – fortunately within the same complex, yet still exhausting. With boxes everywhere, they shared a long dinner and a conversation that, as the members said, "could have lasted all night."
And oh, yeah – Robin met Gary at his California home on a road trip a couple of years ago!
Everywhere Else, All Year Round
If this summer proved anything, it's that this community doesn't stay on the website. These vignettes are just a small sample of what we received in response to the question. We love that Smart Patients seek each other out in person. It’s exciting to see how our community spreads. It drives across time zones and flies across oceans and sometimes sits at a kitchen table. All the stories shared a common takeaway: There's instant connection, and more to talk about than there's time for.
Thank you to all the Smart Patients who shared their stories! Till we meet again!