Facebook and Twitter kept me in touch in the hospital

16.06.2011
When emergency room doctors told me in late April that I needed surgery soon for suddenly dangerous gastrointestinal problems, the first thing I did--after calling my wife and parents to let them know how dire things had become--was whip out my iPhone and update my status on Facebook and Twitter.

"Surgery for sure," I wrote. "Apparently this is quite serious and disturbing. This account may be dark awhile."

And I meant it. I assumed that if I wasn't too overcome with pain to care about social networking, then I'd at least choose to be stoic and not inflict the details of my illness upon my friends.

Who was I kidding? I'm a member of the social networking generation! I'm not one to endure pain--or, really, anything--silently. Indeed, my first update to Facebook (dictated to my wife, apparently, through a morphine haze) came just a couple of hours after I emerged from the operating room.

"Surgery done," she typed on my behalf. "Colostomy! Diverticulitis! Pain!"

And over the next 24 hours, my friends made 26 comments on that status.