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By Mary KearlLike AOL Health's Twitter alias Healthpop, you might find most trending topics on Twitter fleeting and superficial. Recently, however, we found a trend worthy of spreading around the Twitter-sphere and the rest of the internet -- "Blame Drew's Cancer."
On May 20, 2009, Drew Olanoff, 29, was diagnosed with Stage III Hodgkin's Lymphoma. Instead of grieving for this personal tragedy he has taken an activist approach, capitalizing on the viral nature and tremendous reach of Twitter and Facebook trends to raise money to defeat cancer in a unique and viral way.
As he explains on his Web site Blame Drew's Cancer, "Ever since that day, [I have] blamed everything on [my] cancer. Losing his keys, misplacing [my] wallet, Twitter being slow, the Phillies losing, etc. Why? Because you have to beat up on Cancer to win ... and you can help out." Now, anyone who mentions "#BlameDrewsCancer" in a Tweet is helping raise money too. How? The Blame Drew's Cancer Web site is keeping track of each Twitterer who takes part while Olanoff is treated for cancer and sponsors will donate a dollar for every participant to the American Cancer Society (ACS) and the Make a Wish Foundation (MAWF). As of the posting of this article, 8,243 people have blamed 14,670 things on Drew's cancer. Among them Twitter user @J_Dubbers #BlameDrewsCancer "for the vending machine not taking my quarters... I wanted that Milky Way," and @lost_N_texas #BlamedDrewsCancer "for it being so darn HOT!!"
On Facebook, Olanoff set up a "causes" application that he says has already raised more than $1,000 for the ACS by allowing Facebook users to make a donation on behalf of Blame Drew's Cancer which in turn goes directly to the ACS.
"The American Cancer Society is probably the organization that everybody thinks of when they think of cancer," Olanoff says, explaining how he chose which organizations to give money to. "And The Make-A-Wish Foundation means a lot to me personally because I've seen first hand what they've done for kids with terminal illnesses." Olanoff is such a fan of the MAWF that in March of 2009, before he was diagnosed with cancer, he offered up space on his body to tattoo the highest Twitter bidder's name, with all the proceeds benefiting MAWF. Twitter alias @MelanieMitchell won with a bid of $2,112. AOL Health had the opportunity to talk to Olanoff about his diagnosis, chemotherapy treatments and how he came up with the idea for his own cancer-fighting Twitter trend.
AOL Health: How did you discover you had cancer?
Drew Olanoff: I had just gotten a new job in L.A. and was planning to move from San Francisco [where I was then living] to L.A. and all my family and friends are in Philadelphia so I came to visit because I hadn't seen them in a while. I noticed a lump on my neck and my mom's a nurse, so she was saying, "It could be an infection. It could be a number of things." So I went to my family doctor. He looked at it and noticed some other swollen lymph nodes and ordered a CAT scan and blood work. The CAT scan showed masses in my neck and chest, so I was passed off to an oncologist who ordered a lymph node removal for my shoulder and that was tested and about three days after that, it was diagnosed as Hodgkin's Lymphoma. After that I went through the staging -- the heart scan, the lung scan, the PET scan, and some more blood work and a bone marrow biopsy. After that I was diagnosed at Stage III [which indicates extensive disease that is treated with chemotherapy and/or chemotherapy and radiation].
AOL Health: How did you react?
Olanoff: When I went to the oncologist, and then the surgeon, they both said "We can't tell you what it is until we do the biopsy [but] it looks like Hodgkin’s Lymphoma." So I tried to prepare myself for it and I'm a super hypochondriac, so I assumed the worst. It couldn't be Hodgkin's, I thought, it had to be worse. Before I was even staged, he set a date for my first chemo treatment, which was last week [June 2009] so I felt like, since I'm in action, since I’m moving forward… it's going to be okay. It is what it is. Here's when the first chemo is, and the second chemo, and I just need to do whatever the doctors tell me to do.
AOL Health: How did you come up with the idea for #BlameDrewsCancer?
Olanoff: Even before I was diagnosed, I assumed that whatever was going on wasn't good because of the lump on my neck. I didn't have any symptoms, which made it weirder and I was doing some Googling and probably way more searching than I should have and Hodgkin's kept coming up as a potential diagnosis, so I would just try to keep myself in a good frame of mind and if something bad happened, I would blame it on my cancer. You know, if I spilled something, I’d say, "That's my cancer. I'm blaming my cancer." And at first, my mom was kind of mortified at the thought of it, but once I was diagnosed I think it caught on. I talked to a bunch of people because I didn't want to do something that would upset anyone, and I'm not making fun of cancer. So I just registered the domain Blamedrewscancer.com and talked to my friend Mike who I worked with when I was living in Seattle who was diagnosed with Hodgkin's in 2007 and who has been in remission as of August of 2008. He's been helping me through the process as far as telling me what to expect from treatments, from chemo and everything. He's a developer and I told him about the idea and he ran with it.
AOL Health: How do you describe it to people who aren't on Twitter?
Olanoff: Just think of it as an awareness type thing. Cancer scares a lot of people. They don't like to talk about it. So, I'm in Philadelphia right now, if the Phillies lost, I'll blame Drew's cancer. Obviously, somebody who overhears that is going to say, "What did you just say?" and then, that's just the way to explain it, with a little bit of humor, which is how I always face adversity is with humor. I'd say "Oh, well, there's this thing, you can blame Drew's cancer for anything. You know, you break a nail, for the GM downfall, for the band Nickelback … anything." I just see it as a humorous way to raise awareness. I'm just using Twitter as a tool to get it out there and it's the easiest way people can do it.
Next: Olanoff Discusses Chemotherapy and His Chances of Remission
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