Happy 1st Birthday to Beth’s Adventures with Carcinoid Cancer!

Today marks one year of writing my blog.  When I started posting, I was frustrated by my experience in the medical system and concerned that I did not have a doctor that I could trust.  Now I am on my third carcinoid specialist and feel comfortable that my doctor is working with me not against me and that there is a strong team backing her up.  I’m still frustrated with the medical system but have learned that I can’t change it so I will work with it. 

I didn’t really have any expectations for this blog except to discuss my experiences and vent my frustrations.  As of today, Beth’s Adventures with Carcinoid Cancer has had 10,000 visitors!  I’m quite happy that the blog reached that milestone so soon and exactly at the one year mark. Over the past year, I’ve met some nice people and learned a lot from my writing experience. Not being a super savvy computer user, I’m not sure if the 10,000 visitors are distinct users or could be 1,000 different people visiting 10 times each. 

I am a bit of a data geek so I find it interesting to look at the numbers that Google gives concerning visitors.   For example, the top 3 posts are as follow:

Post	Number of Visits
The Difference between a Flush and a Hot Flash	920
September 11th	666
Bitter Pill and Gorillas in CT Scans	325

I think a lot of people get here by asking a search engine “what is or how do you tell the difference between a flush and a hot flash?” Then my blog comes up.

When looking at where the visitors come from, it is very US focused but many visitors have also come from overseas.  Just yesterday there were 20 visitors from Jordan!  I wonder how that group found this blog on the same day – perhaps they were together in a class? The table below shows the top 10 countries visitors came from:

Location	Number
US	6,160
France	709
Germany	380
UK	355
Russia	240
Canada	172
Sweden	102
Australia	66
Mexico	49
Singapore	40

I also get information on what operating system and browser the visitors are using and it looks like this:

Operating System	Percentage
Windows	74%
iPad	7%
Macintosh	6%
iPhone	5%
Linux	2%

Browser	Percentage
Internet Explorer	33%
Firefox	28%
Safari	17%
Chrome	11%
Opera	5%

Other information that I can’t get from online users are facts such as whether more women than men are viewing my blog, their average age or the type of cancer they have. I’m guessing that more women than men are viewing it because of the popularity of the flushing vs. hot flash post.  It could also be because that post mentions “Fifty Shades of Grey”.

Overall, I’m in a better place now than I was last year at this time and I think this blog has helped me get there.  On to year two!