Re: e-mail tutoring

["David J. Coogan" <coogan@charlie.cns.iit.edu>]

Bobbie --  

I enjoyed reading through your message about your Aunt.  Mostly, I
appreciate your tactful optimism, affirming both her struggle in/with her
body, but also that flicker of hope--ok, hope lined with some
remorse--that we will never know how she might have experienced the
internet.

I wanted to add a footnote, on a similar note.  Last year, my wife was
diagnosed with leukemia. And though she's fine now--in remission, back at
work, doing wonderfully--it was hard for a while.  When she finally
returned home from the hospital and was home to stay (after about five or
six months of on-again-off-again treatment), she joined a listserv for
folks suffering with leukemia, all of them in various stages of illness
and wellness.  And though I won't presume to talk for Joan, I will say
that that list gave her solid information, connections, friends,
solidarity, and hope.  To her, CMC was not impersonal or impossible. It
didn't erase everyone's differences. It made those differences--in age,
background, etc--a focus of conversation.  Some folks wrote from the
hospital with laptops.  

So I want to say that for every loss there is a gain and for every gain
there is a loss.  

Best,

Dave Coogan