At 3 a.m. on a warm August night, Susan Frisius pulls off the highway in Buffalo, N.Y., and closes her eyes for a catnap. It has been hours since she left her South Hadley, Mass., home, and another full day's drive stretches ahead of her.
In the back of her rental car, packed carefully in a cardboard box, are 18 gifts. Frisius doesn't know what is underneath the bright paper and ribbons. She is traveling 900 miles to deliver them to Patricia McCombs in Kokomo, Ind. -- a woman she has never met.
Frisius is making the journey not only for McCombs, but for 18 other women who began talking through the Internet after each was diagnosed with breast cancer. Frisius, now in remission, created the electronic support group because she wanted to ease the emotional isolation that can accompany the disease, but knew a traditional meeting would prove too difficult.
"I was told if I joined a support group, it could double my life span," Frisius said. "But I was sleeping 23 hours a day, and couldn't possibly have gone to a meeting. On the Internet, you don't have to wear a wig, you can sit in your bathrobe, and you can stay for only five minutes if you want to."
What began as an occasional discussion between a few women rapidly expanded into a national network. Every night at 8, the "BC Forum" opens for women to listen to each other's stories, and to share their fears (at www.lifetimetv.com, search term # BC Forum). Sometimes, family members and close friends of those stricken with breast cancer log into the support group. Other women come back long after they enter remission.
The women may not know basic details about each other, such as that Frisius once worked as a bird breeder, and that she has opened her home to mentally and physically disabled women who need a place to stay. Yet group members often relate to each another on a deeper level than they can with even close friends and family members. From behind a veil of anonymity, secure in the knowledge that they are connecting with an empathetic audience, women are able to engage in truly free exchanges, participants say.
"People who know you in the real world don't understand that fear you get every three months when you make a doctor's appointment," said Frisius, who has been cancer-free for four years. "You get a sore throat, and you think, `It's a cold.' I get it, and I think, `Cancer.' And for us, sometimes it is."
Patricia McCombs, first diagnosed in 1992, went into remission but her cancer returned in July 1997. By then, it had spread to her liver and her bones. During the last months of her life, realizing the preciousness of her time, McCombs wanted only close family members and her pets to visit her. Yet again and again, she logged onto the Internet support group.
"The women on the Internet could understand my mom, even more than I could," said McCombs' daughter, Michelle Nearon. "They knew the ins and outs of cancer. They knew the fears, the `Why me's.' "
When Frisius asked Nearon if she could surprise McCombs by visiting in person, Nearon didn't hesitate. By then, the women were calling each other sisters. "Sometimes total strangers walk into your life and they just keep you going," Frisius said.
Other women in the support group knew it would overwhelm McCombs if they visited too, but they wanted to do something for her -- something that would symbolize how close they felt to her.
And so after Frisius arrived at McCombs' home, after they hugged and talked quietly for nearly an hour, as she stood to leave, Frisius placed the box of gifts beside McCombs' bed.
"Open one each day," she said.
Inside were pressed flowers from the garden of one support group member, the favorite book of another, and, carefully wrapped in tissue paper, a collection of angels: Ceramic angels with painted faces, tiny angel pins, and delicately crafted angel candles.
"When you're diagnosed with cancer, that's what you hold on to,"Nearon said. "You hold on to angels."
After McCombs' death on Dec. 15, Frisius erected a memorial on the Internet with a photograph of McCombs and space for support group members to share memories.
"When she came to BC Forum, she always brought a feeling of gentleness into the room," Frisius wrote. "I will miss her."
BCforum is the chat room where the Internet Breast Cancer Support Group meets. If you need support either because you have breast cancer or know someone who does, I urge you to come join us. We meet at 8 pm EST every evening for information, hugs and laughter!
We also have meetings for the men in the lives of those with breast cancer. These meetings are held Wednesdays at 8 pm EST (New York time) in the Men'sRoom. If you're a person with breast cancer, please tell your husband/significant-other/son/brother/father/friend/co-worker the room is for them. The Men'sRoom is hosted by David, his wife was treated for breast cancer in 1993.
To get to the Men'sRoom click on the heart. 
Please email me if you have any problems accessing BCforum or the Men'sRoom!
A percentage of each item purchased through the link on my site
will go to help those with breast cancer who have met on the Internet,
meet in person!
