There are plenty of cathartic blogs out there. Actually, cathartic may be too kind a word as many are just endless sequences of vague and meandering rants. What I haven’t seen much of is blogs that profile real people dealing with serious struggles. That is, until my wife started her own blog.

Ever since my wife got about halfway through her pregnancy (just over a year ago), she has had extreme joint pain. Her doctors weren’t too worried at the time since this sort of thing happens to pregnant women. But when it didn’t go away after my daughter was born, we were a little more concerned. The doctors were about 90% certain that she had rheumatoid arthritis until we got the unfortunate news a couple months ago that it was actually an extremely rare, often fatal auto-immune disease.

After finding this out, my wife decided she would start writing about her experiences with all of this. With her sore joints, writing by hand would be very difficult. We naturally have our share of computers here, but I bought her an iBook so she could write wherever in the house she was most comfortable.

What surprised me was that instead of writing on OpenOffice or some other word processor, my wife decided to start her own blog. It isn’t just about her illness, but that is certainly an underlying theme (just as it is in our lives). I can tell that it’s been helpful for her to get her thoughts out by pouring them onto the Web. It’s even been helpful for me in a way, getting to see her releasing some of the frustrations and reveling in the small victories that she experiences with each day.

One of the unexpected benefits is that it gives us a place to send our family and friends. That way, we aren’t having to explain the details of each doctor’s appointment over and over again. It even gives them a place to ask questions, if they want to.

As time goes on, I’m sure her blog will get more visitors, many of whom will have had similar experience. I look forward to this, as it will give both her and those visitors chances to share their heartaches and triumphs, and to build on each others’s strength.

Who would have thought… something good actually coming out of a blog?