What can I do at Careplace?

At Careplace you can connect with others who's lives are like yours. Discuss treatments in online forums, create personal webpages, show support with virtual hugs, send private messages, create your own photo albums, groups and online journals.

• Join or start a group - Groups are places that people can organize to discuss common interests. If you take a certain medication and want to discuss your progress or side effects, you can share with other group members who take this medication. You can also create groups about fishing or baseball, anything goes!
• Join a discussion - Forums are where people come together to support one another, ask questions and share news or experiences.
• Send a private message - Sending private messages is a great way to get to know others better, share a friendly greeting or ask them for more information about something with which they have some experience.
• Send someone a hug - Sending hugs are an easy way to show someone you care and remind them they are not alone.

Careplace is a knowledge portal that isn't bogged down with medical jargon and words you don't understand. The pages have lists of personal experiences people have had with medications,treatments, doctors and hospitals.

After my breast cancer diagnosis, I received endless offers from friends and family who offered to help me. I was offered meals, babysitting, errands, escorts to appointments, and two faraway friends even told me they would hop on a plane in an instant to come stay with me. I accepted a tiny bit of help -- like a meal here and there and a morning of babysitting -- but I really did not want much assistance. Mostly because I am do-it-myself type of person and however unhealthy this can be -- especially in the midst of a health crisis -- I wanted my life to remain as normal as possible. And if that meant taking care of my kids, despite nausea and fatigue, I wanted to do it. I wanted to be the one in the driver's seat on my way to treatments and procedures. And I wanted to run my own errands. Part of me believed that accepting help meant I was really sick. And I couldn't admit that. Yet it was true. I was sick. I needed help.

And I need help now too -- while I am healthy and strong and able to do everything for myself. And maybe that's why I am able to ask for it -- because it doesn't require my confession that something in my life is not alright. And actually, asking for this type of help helps me express that I am really okay, that I am able to use my health to help others.

In the second part of the two-part exclusive interview with ABC's Good Morning America Diane Sawyer, Sheryl Crow shares she is cancer-free and feeling great as a breast cancer survivor. The diagnosis of breast cancer came as a surprise as she is not a smoker and has no family history of the disease. She received enormous support from her family and friends during treatment, whom she refers to as "this incredible tribe of women." Before Dana Reeve died of lung cancer, she gave Crow advice on dealing with the emotional aspects of being a newly-diagnosed cancer patient and dealing with the recent separation from Lance Armstrong by telling her that the only way to go through grief was to grieve.

Crow talked about meditating and changing her diet. "I kind of went into a full-on Eskimo diet, where I ate a lot of salmon. In fact, I'm salmoned out of my brains ... and really green vegetables, just eating really clean, organic food. Listen, I haven't had a doughnut in I can't remember when."

Breast cancer forced Crow into an introspective place of self-realization in facing and overcoming fears -- and the wisdom that comes with that when she said she tried to at least address her fears and not be overcome by them. "The fear of things not always working out. You come to a point in your life where you realize it's not my job to prove to my parents or to my record label or to the world or to my lover that I matter. The fact is that you matter."

"It's not a good place to be concerned with always being right with everybody, always pleasing people, because ultimately you wind up betraying yourself a lot."

Crow shared that she sees her breast cancer diagnosis and being a cancer survivor as part of life's deepening experiences where obstacles are removed and opportunities come in.

Last Friday night, Crow joined the Dave Matthews Band in a concert at Fenway Park. But before she went onstage -- in part of giving back as a cancer survivor --  she made an unannounced surprise visit to Boston's Dana-Farber Cancer Institute to visit children with cancer at the Jimmy Fund Clinic.

Some people detail their journeys with cancer through journaling -- like me -- and some use other mediums to express their emotions about this life-threatening disease.

Marilyn Whitney uses watercolors to sum up her experiences. As she underwent all sorts of procedures for breast cancer, two thoughts kept crossing her mind. One thought was the tendency to flee and the other was that there must be some way to help others by describing her procedures.

So after each hospital session, Marilyn would go home and craft a watercolor of what she had just seen and experienced. Then she would add a poem so the viewer would fully understand the message she was trying to convey.