The Rev. Paul A. Elliott was sitting at the kitchen table in his Stone Mountain home when his right hand started to tremble.
Uh-oh, he thought, this can’t be good.
Just a few months earlier, the 61-year-old Episcopal priest had suffered a heart attack.
Now something else was happening.
He tried to dial his wife, but he couldn’t speak. Just then, his wife, Beverley, pulled up in the driveway and came into the house. She immediately gave him aspirin and called 911.
Elliott, the rector of St. Michael & All Angels Episcopal Church in Stone Mountain, had suffered a mild stroke, which left him with weakness on one side and slurred speech.
But Elliott’s mind was on how he could allay parishioners’ fears about his health and return to the pulpit.
At a time when more people are taking to the Internet and social media to document their health challenges, Elliott decided to start a weekly video blog, "The Journey to Wholeness," with the help of parishioner Letty Guevara-Cuence.
“They see me. They hear me. They can go ‘ahhhhh’,” Elliott said in a thick Australian accent. “They breathe out. He’s not gone. He’s still here.”
In one recent post, Elliott talked about a therapy session in great detail — from picking up little pegs on a pegboard to stacking wooden cubes. “I’m a little tired today,” he tells viewers.
Experts say social media has pulled aside the curtain of privacy on topics that were once taboo — such as cancer — or talked about only by close family members. From car accidents to illness and even eventual death, it can be found on YouTube, Facebook and Twitter.
One reason people turn to the Internet and social media “is to try to find meaning in what is happening in their lives,” said William Brown, a counselor with Equality Counseling Center in Atlanta. “Social media allows you to share your experience. It speaks to people who are going through the same thing or people who know someone who is going through the same thing. Physically, a person might be limited, but this gives them the ability to reach out and feel connected.”
But social media also can provide a way to leave behind some kind of recorded history. “It’s become an integral part of how we communicate today,” he said. “I have aunts and uncles in their 80s who post every day.”
Elliott said he’s able to chart his progress after the stroke. He can see how his speech and mobility have improved.
“I follow the rule that the main aspect of spiritual maturity is the manifestation of humility,” he said. “Seeing myself in this condition, not dressed to the nines, but wearing slippers, track suit pants and a sweater because I can’t button my shirt and I can’t manage to get the zipper on my pants has been very sobering.
“The goal is to be real.”
Sue Gelting, a parishioner and a member of the vestry, an elected governing board for the parish, said Elliott’s blog is comforting. “It’s reassuring to see he’s making progress,” she said. “It reinforces what parishioners have been told is actually happening.” At the same time, “it allows people to connect with Father Paul so they don’t feel abandoned and so they won’t fear what will happen next.”
The act of sharing such things online has developed a strong presence. For instance, an estimated 46 million people visited CaringBridge.org, a social networking site, in 2012, and more than 435,000 personal sites have been created since the organization was founded in 1997. The site is designed to keep families and friends connected during any health event.
Social media became a virtual lifeline for newlywed Jaimie L. Moore of Decatur after her husband, Jimmy, was paralyzed in a car accident in 2011. Both worked for a local television station in Spartanburg, S.C. Her husband was on his way to an assignment when a spare tire from a pickup truck dislodged, sending it careening down the interstate. Her husband swerved to avoid the flying tire but lost control of his car. It hit the median wall and flipped.
She took to Facebook, Twitter and CaringBridge to update friends and family about his condition. Two weeks after the accident, he was transferred to the Shepherd Center for care, and the couple recently moved to Decatur.
“In the beginning, when everybody wanted to know about Jimmy, it gave me time to be with him and not be on the phone constantly updating everyone on his condition,” she said.
Jaimie Moore, though, soon needed her own outlet. She already wrote a blog, so she decided to change the title to “The Flying Tire.” The blog allows Jaimie Moore to share “one of the hardest things I’ve had to go through in life.”
The blog became “a place just for me,” she said. “I’ve always admired people who can be honest with their personal experiences and really let people in.”
She’s written about efforts and disappointments of trying to have a baby. She talked about the stresses of being a caregiver and wife.
“Writing has been so therapeutic for me,” she said. “My blog is my healing space.”