In December, Stephanie, Greg and I sat down in the studios of Metro Cable Network to tape a segment of the Atheists Talk TV show.  We talked about us, about you and about how we all find each other and promote each other and be social atheists from distances sometimes made near.  Because in the video I read the intro too quickly, here is the transcript of it:

Social media include a growing collection of software services through which people share information in what is now approaching true real-time communication. Events happen, and are shared as soon as they happen across the world through such services as live-blogging and Twitter.  Blogging creates a space for diverse voices and viewpoints that traditional media has never provided.  Networking services including Facebook, and now to a lesser extent MySpace, which were at one time intended as a way for existing friends to keep up with each other, now provide for groups to update their members on activities, events, causes and issues.

We’re not going to list all of the services that people use, but to discuss ways in which atheists and skeptics have been able to use social networking to gather, to find each other, to respond to conflagrations and to create them on our own.  We might even talk about our own blogs and what we have done with them.

Cue Stephanie.

The Podcast is up in its entirety here and it is broken into segments at Greg Laden’s Blog.

Now, before I go on, let me just note that I might not have survived these months without the help of my husband. But if he doesn’t already know how wonderful he is, I’ve screwed something up badly. This particular post isn’t about him.

It is a bit about my “meatspace” friends, though. It’s about the people I met years ago who have told me my welfare is still important to them. It’s about the ex-boyfriends who have reached out (almost uniformly) behind the scenes to tell me they’re keeping up and hoping things go well. It’s about the people I don’t see nearly often enough who have reminded me that they’re there. Not only if I decide I need them; just there. (And about the ones who say, “Hi. We’re showing up with soup tomorrow afternoon. We can’t stay, but we want to do something.”)

This little internet thing also means that when I do see the people I see regularly, the whole thing doesn’t get derailed by me having to tell them what’s going on. I’ve posted relevant blog updates to Facebook, which means I don’t have to tell the story over and over again each time I run into someone who sincerely wants to know, “How are you?” Even my mother knows she can get all the information she wants and more online. When we talk, we can talk about something else, something that doesn’t involve me being defined by illness.

Speaking of not being defined by illness, this internet thing is great for that too. I haven’t been blogging as much as usual (hanging out inside my head long enough to articulate what I think about a topic hasn’t always been appealing or possible), but I’ve still been able to argue about important things and trivial ones. People have sent me wonderful distractions, things to make me laugh or growl or think, both in response to requests and through the passive magic of Twitter and Facebook, which make healing time vanish (and any other time as well).

Then there are the people I don’t know in meatspace or have met only briefly after getting to know them online. I’ve been the recipient of virtual hugs (none of them the least bit squicky) from a remarkable number of countries. One person offered to travel halfway across the country if she could be useful here. A couple said, “Here’s my phone number if you need to call someone in the night. I probably won’t be asleep.” Others shared their stories so that neither of us would need to be so alone in this.

Jason put out the call to my minions (old joke) and reminded me I haven’t yet run out of SIWOTI to deal with. Mike reminded me I’m needed for other things as well. All my usual bloggy friends have been faithfully sweet. People I’d argued with came out to thank me for arguing with them. Others treated our disagreements as the irrelevancies they are. People who have been reading me but not commenting delurked; people who have never read my words before empathized with a single post. And the admiral won’t let me forget I’m part of the crew, as though I’d want to.

In addition to all the wonderful people, there is also the opportunity that’s been provided to me to turn this mess into something worthwhile, something educational. I haven’t only been writing about this because it’s been difficult to write about anything else. I’ve also been doing it to provide a counter to some of the anti-vaccination hysteria going around.

The vaccine = autism crowd have some heartbreaking stories in their arsenal. While I sympathize with the stories–Autism Spectrum Disorders are not strangers to my family or friends–I also understand that they’re wrong in where they place the blame. I’ve been working for a while to counter these stories with the stories of what happens without vaccination. The big difference right now is that the story is mine.

The other difference is the help I’ve had spreading the story. Greg, as usual, has been amplifying my voice, keeping people up to date on my spotty posting schedule and saying exactly what I needed to hear. PalMD spread the word and added information on the medical aspects, both at Scienceblogs and on Daily Kos. Abbie gave me and others reason to hope that widespread adoption of the vaccines could effectively eradicate the most common cancer-producing strains of the virus. PZ Myers reminded his hordes that there are effective actions to be taken.

And on top of all that, the internet has been a great source of information. Getting good information has required that I be careful about my sources, but it’s been worth it. I was able to go into appointments with a sense of the range of things my doctors might tell me, which helped me remember what I actually was told. I was able to understand the severity of what was going on. I was able to think ahead of time about the decisions I might be asked to make. From beginning (“What’s this CIN 2-3 my doctor’s talking about?”) to end (“Why isn’t Vicodin helping with this awful headache? Oh, it might be causing it.”), I’ve had a much better understanding of where I stood.

All in all, the internet really is a great place to be sick. I wouldn’t want to do it anywhere else.