Mom blogs through son's cancer struggle

While keeping people updated on the latest entertainment news and my random thoughts isn’t an uworthy goal, Oklahoma City mom Carrie Black used her blog to deal with her son Ian’s battle with cancer.

 Here’s their story, which ran in the “Know It” feature on cancer in Sunday’s The Oklahoman. You can find all the cancer stories at www.newsok.com/news/cancer.

Sharing your story

Blogging options on the Web

“When your 3 ½-year-old tells you that his pee looks like a strawberry slushie, you sit up and take notice.”

Oklahoma City mother Carrie Black vividly recalls the Sunday in July 2005 when she realized something was wrong with her middle child, Ian.

The next day, Ian visited his pediatrician, but by that night, the boy was in the emergency room with abdominal pain caused by a ballooning tumor on his left kidney. He was transferred that Tuesday to Children’s Hospital, where the family learned Ian had Wilms’ tumor, a rare childhood kidney cancer.

When the Blacks arrived at Children’s, volunteers advised Ian’s parents to set up a free personal Web site on CaringBridge.org. Before Ian underwent surgery the next day to remove his left kidney and the tumor, his mom started blogging about his ordeal.

Through her son’s operation, chemotherapy and radiation treatment, Black used the site to keep relatives and friends updated, find other families coping with Wilms’ tumor and air her thoughts.

“It was a good place for me to just kind of vent,” she said.

Ian, now 6, has been off treatment for 26 months, but his mom has kept up his CaringBridge page, recently blogging about his tonsillectomy. His page is at www.caringbridge.org/visit/ianblack. 

Last year, she also started www.myspace.com/kidsgetcancertoo. Her blog there is a personal outreach project to offer support and information regarding childhood cancers.