After I got Diabetic Echoes up and running as a website, I noticed that my college campus needed a place for diabetics and those interested in diabetes. So I went about setting up the organization with my campus. It was a long process, which took careful planning and creativity.

The group started last semester with four members including myself. We met every other week to prepare for this semester, talk about the JDRF Walk, and discuss things that were happening in our diabetes lives. Finding other members proved difficult, although I wasn't ready to give up just yet (after all, we raised over $1000 for the JDRF Walk).

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My addiction with diabetes blogs began in September of 2006 when I stumbled upon the Diabetes OC. We had spent the first couple of years or so of Charlie’s diabetic life insulated in our own little world. For whatever reason, we rejected the notion of support groups, stubbornly thinking it could not help us.

But I was also going through my own honeymoon period in the very beginning, as Susanne says. I bought into the rosy notion that everything would be fine as long as we tested his blood sugar just four times a day and simply counted carbs correctly. When Susanne insisted that we get up every night, I sided with the doctors who said it wasn’t necessary. I was wrong. In doing this, Susanne took the lion’s share of the worrying during the first six months. (READ MORE)

The Web Warren

I am personally involved, to one degree or another, in several online diabetes communities and social networks. Each has a different
set of features and a different communal attitude -- but what they all have in common is that they provide a level of psychological support for their members. In each, I find members who credit these communities for their continued quality of life.

Today, many of us work crazy hours, or we're single parents who can't drop off the children to head to a traditional support-group
meeting, or we're transportation-limited in some way or another. Online communities are in many ways the evolution of traditional support
groups into the digital space, providing support that transcends time zones and physical distance.

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