RENNER: Dana-Farber matters to me

F— cancer.

You could even get it printed on a T-shirt — although I can’t imagine why you’d want to. These words aren’t worth $24.99 plus shipping and handling. They aren’t even worth 11 characters of your tweet.

I’m pretty sure Dana-Farber Cancer Institute, the cancer center affiliated with Harvard University and multiple other institutions, f—ing hates cancer just as much as Joe Schmoe on your Twitter feed. But oddly enough, in the two years I’ve been following the institute on Twitter, I’ve never seen a tweet like that. Instead, I see smiling children with shiny heads and links for parents to click on when the smiles go away. I see little white pills and people in lab coats, with clever hashtags and hugging families, all scattered between retweets that show people’s profound gratitude for Dana-Farber. As of Wednesday, the account has almost 39,200 followers.

That’s more than the Red Sox starting pitcher Eduardo Rodriguez has. I asked myself, why on Earth would almost 40,000 people be following this account? No offence to Dana-Farber, but that seems oddly high. Before I could answer, I had to ask myself the same question. Why am I following this account?

In 2013, my family and I visited Boston. We shopped at the Prudential Center, ate in the North End and made an appointment with a multiple-myeloma specialist at Dana-Farber. It was just over one year after my dad’s diagnosis, and he was very sick. Dana-Farber was his last hope.

It’s not like it was mentioned at his funeral, or anything significant like that, but I still feel as though Dana-Farber had some kind of profound role in my dad’s life. I feel as if I have a connection with it — and that’s why I hit the little white “follow” button on Twitter. If you think about it, that’s why we follow anyone on Twitter. We want to feel that connection.

This kind of connection, however, only goes one way — I didn’t get the follow back. Now, I’d be a little ticked if it was my friend good friend Dana, but in this case, I find myself glad the feeling isn’t mutual. There’s something comforting about looking on from a safe distance. It’s like I’m a part of this world — of disease and death and loss — but I’m an outsider. I can read about Dr. Joyce Liu’s work on ovarian cancer or Khalid’s international journey to remove his brain tumor and feel like I’m in involved. But when I sit in my dorm room, listen to music and weed through all the junk on my Twitter feed, it’s comfortable. It doesn’t feel like I’m in a stark white hospital room being told my dad’s going to die.

I wonder if 39,200 other people would agree with me. I wonder if that’s why everyone else follows Dana Farber, too. As much as my self-centered, 18 year-old self might want to think so, that’s probably not the case. I’m sure there are 39,200 other backstories, other brushes with this disease or with this institute, other reasons to hit that white button. But I do think that if you put all 39,200 of us in a room, we’d agree on at least one thing. We’d agree that cancer has affected us in some way.

This is something that — if I may be so bold to say — I think every single Twitter user could connect with. Every cat-vine-sharing, LOL-ing social media user in the whole world would probably agree with me. And yet, Dana-Farber only has 39,200 twitter followers. And even though this number seemed huge to me before, now, it seems small. Out of 304 million Twitter users, the American Cancer Society’s account only has 250,000 followers, and the Mayo Clinic clocks in at a weak 1.2 million.

But to the 303 million of you who do not follow one of these accounts: it’s okay.

For some, the draws of following the account that I described earlier do not apply. Seeing constant updates on a horrible disease may be morbid, uninteresting or anything but comfortable — and that’s okay. I’m not saying you should or shouldn’t do anything. I do, however, strongly believe that it’s important for you to recognize that the happenings in the cancer community affect you. It’s important to think about your role in this world. And, whether it’s following Dana-Farber on Twitter or reading my weekly column, I can assure you that your purpose is more than just tweeting “F— Cancer.”