Lisa Ray is learning that comfort can come from complete strangers.

The Toronto-based actress is busy this week promoting her new film, "Cooking With Stella" at the Toronto International Film Festival, doing media interviews and preparing for the red carpet. But privately, she's also battling an incurable bone marrow cancer called multiple myeloma.

Ray went public with her health crisis last week, announcing her diagnosis via her blog, The Yellow Diaries. In less than two weeks, the blog has received close to 2,000 comments and presumably thousands more readers.

Most of the comments have been from fans Ray has never met before, who write to offer their support to Ray and to encourage her in her fight.

Ray says she's a little stunned by the blog's response, but inspired as well.

"I'm putting a lot of energy into it because there's this community and support system out there, and this strange and wonderful phenomenon of people sharing and being really open," Ray told Canada AM Seamus O'Regan Monday morning.

"I'm juxtaposing my experiences with the red carpet -- we've got this great gala for 'Cooking with Stella' which is a time of great celebration -- and juxtaposing that with my treatments, my 'wetsuit' -- the extra couple of steroid inches here and there. And that's what triggered my own little social commentary on The Yellow Diaries," Ray explained.

The 37-year-old has written that when her doctors told her at the end of June she had cancer, she didn't cry. But that doesn't mean she wasn't blindsided, Ray told O'Regan.

"When I got the diagnosis, I had no experience of cancer in my family or my life. Like anyone would be, I was freaked out. Completely floored," she said.

"And then it's a process. You sort of go shwoop -- fade to black inside. And that's part of the process and it's part of the reason I decided to go public. I wanted to share and move into this full disclosure."

Ray says living with cancer can be isolating. But talking about it is allowing her to release her feelings and become strengthened by the response. As she writes on her blog: "In the arena of the Diaries it never occurred that talking openly about cancer is anything other than perfectly natural.

"...It's hard for me to live any other way than with full disclosure."

The actress's blog documents the physical toll the chemotherapy medications and steroid treatments are having, leaving her with a 'moon face,' a 'wetsuit' of extra fat, and a ferocious appetite.

Ray's charming humour has won her many fans who seem impressed with her positive spirit in the face of a prognosis that is not bright. Only about 15 per cent of myeloma patients survive 10 years. But survival rates are higher for younger patients and are growing every day.

Ray says it feels strange to have a disease that normally affects the elderly; about 94 per cent of myeloma patients are over the age of 60. But she hopes to parlay her celebrity into "a lot more awareness about this disease."

"We're very close to, if not a cure, at least prolonging life. It's all about bringing in the new sort of cocktail of drugs, and stem cell research. It's amazing how much has happened."

Her blog suggests her treatments are working, with her doctors writing to her to tell her test results show she is moving toward remission. Healing is what Lisa Ray is now focusing on.

"It's so simple to illuminate the reality of living and healing a long term illness," she writes, "We just have to talk. Openly."