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As Dr. Michael Farmer examines X-rays, Methodist Le Bonheur director of marketing Jill Fazakerly (left) and Jen Hale (at computer) gather information for Twitter. The hospital has been documenting on the social media site a new type of breast cancer treatment.

Brenda Simmons asked her doctor if she could take a nap during one of her breast cancer treatments.

She also timed each radiation session with her wristwatch. She continued to go to work during during the weeklong series of treatments and brought her team gifts when it was all over.

They sound like personal details of a trying time, but they were put out there for all of Twitter to see.

Since Simmons’ breast cancer treatment began on March 4 at Methodist University Hospital, many of its details have been posted to the popular social media site in text, videos and photos by Methodist staffers.

Twitter is an Internet messaging site that allows its members to post comments, or tweets, about themselves, their businesses or organizations. Each comment can only be 140 letters, numbers or punctuation marks long.

“People are spending three times as much time on social media sites now as they were a year ago,” said Jill Fazakerly, director of marketing with Methodist Le Bonheur Healthcare Inc. “We feel it’s incumbent for us to be there with our message, to bring new treatment options and technologies closer to those who need them.”

Simmons was one of the first to get treated at Methodist with the SAVI, a multicatheter device that allows partial breast radiation, and Methodist said it is one of only 200 hospitals in the country to have it.

The content of the tweets about Simmons’ SAVI treatments varied from technical, “the multiple catheters offer more flexibility to contour the dose in a similar manner as interstitial brachytherapy,” to personal, “she finished her treatment this morning and headed to work.”

The tweets are certain to serve many purposes, from attracting and educating possible patients to giving doctors technical specifics of the treatment.

“Now anybody can go out there and look at the entire procedure from start to finish, and most women think it’ll be much worse than is actually is,” said Memphis Radiological PC oncologist Dr. Michael Farmer, who oversaw Simmons’ treatment. “I want people to be as comfortable as possible with their body and the treatments they’re getting.”

According to health care and social media blogger Ed Bennett, about half of U.S. hospitals are engaging in some sort of social media — Twitter, blogs or Facebook to name a few.

Bennett, who is also the director of Web strategy at University of Maryland Medical System, said larger hospitals lead the way in social media marketing as they have the resources available to do so.

As for Simmons, she said she was happy to share her story for other women who can be helped by the SAVI catheter. She never tweeted herself, but a signed consent form allowed staffers to do it for her.

However, she was still ready to quickly respond face to face that, no, she wasn’t afraid of the disease or the treatment.

“I’m pretty low key and have a high pain threshold,” Simmons said laughing. “Nothing much bothers me.”

– Toby Sells: 529-2742

Methodist onLine

Twitter: twitter.com/methodisthlth

Facebook: facebook.com/methodisthealth

Web: methodisthealth.org

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