Losing my husband, 140 characters at a time

Twitter can be used for more than just high school girls ranting about how much they hate each other. It can be powerful. The author of this article, Lee Ann Cox proved this. Cox's husband, Kevin, was diagnosed with cancer. She used twitter as a way to rant about her life and the problems she was going through. She tweeted when she was upset, when she was angry, and when she was depressed. All through Kevin's treatments and surgeries, Lee Ann would tweet about the doctors, the procedures, and her husband's struggles. Cox says that she didn't "make it easy" to follow her. One of her tweets read, "One definition of heartbreak: 9- and 5 1/2-year-olds bending over a bed rail to give a last kiss & say, “I love you Daddy. I’ll miss you.” 5:34 PM Nov 17th, 2009 from web"  Cox believes that twitter really helped her in times of need and was a way of pouring her heart out. She admits that after Kevin died, she was tweeting less and less. But, she says if she thought he would ever reply to her, she would tweet all day long. 


Cox uses lots of pathos in this article. She really makes the reader feel for her. The fact that she included her personal tweets about her husbands procedures made you connect with Cox. Another example of this is, "Kevin out. Surgeon-shoes splattered red-said it was hard but successful. Says he left him with two large tubes, minus couple cups of blood. 4:38 PM Aug 19th, 2009 from web." This article really interested me because I am guilt of tweeting about pointless things that mean absolutely nothing. This made me really rethink the whole idea of twitter, and realize it can be used for things so much better than teenagers drama. 


Click here to view the article