D-Blog Day 2011
The blog topic for this year is: Why you feel the Diabetes Online Community is so important? especially to you personally? Give examples of other diabetes involvement may you have, on or offline, how it helped you etc… How do you think “we” as an online community can band together to reach broader audiences to help even more people living with or affected by diabetes.
Diabetes is a disease that requires more management from the patient, than the doctor. It would be impossible for me to call my doctor 15 times a day and have him help me make decisions on how and what to eat and how much insulin to give and when to give it. I have to be able to do all that. Because of this fact, diabetes puts an immense amount of responsibilities on the person who has it. Out in the workforce, jobs with more responsibility typically pay more. Diabetes doesn’t pay and it doesn’t necessarily play fair. One can keep rather good diabetes control and still succumb to complications.
So due to all the above, a long term stress management solution and support system is in order. One important aspect to that would be a community of people who listen to and support each other through their unique struggle. The Diabetes Online Community gives people with diabetes a place to constantly connect and relate and get support and feedback.
For me personally, the DOC has been an amazing learning experience. When other people share what works for them, I pay attention. Every time I get feedback on a post, I am educated. When others express different opinions, my mind is opened. When it comes to my thirst to always learn more, the DOC is priceless and irreplaceable.
And then there are the people with diabetes I’ve had the pleasure to get to know. It’s been so great to find friends who I can relate to AND who get what I’m going through. I only wish we all lived closer to each other. If computers died, I’d snail mail you all.
I think that we as an online community can reach more people by doing a lot of what we have been doing. I think we need to walk the walk as much as possible. We need to try and keep an open mind and avoid assumptions about each other. We need to be bold and step out into our communities if we can. Something I plan to do when my children are older is get involved offline and help those who are perhaps unable to get online much. We can all do something to help, it just means recognizing our individual gifts and using them. So many people in the DOC do just that, and it’s incredibly inspiring.
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