Since I've been off with real-life friends today (and about to take off again for another meeting), I'm just going to wave a quick "Hi!" here and recognize Gina's announcement that today is the fourth annual D-Blog Day. While I've been a member of STARFLEET's "FleetDiabetics" list since diagnosis, and I joined dLife shortly after it's first episode aired, it's only in the past year that I've gotten involved in the social networking aspects of the online diabetes community... and my first forays into blogging. I've virtually "met" so many great people -- here, on DiabeticRockstar, DiabeticConnect, Diabetes TALKFEST, on dLife, and of course, through many of the online blogs as well.
This morning I saw a Discovery Health show on a family with a child whose medical issues are much rarer than ours – she has primordial dwarfism, which is a very rare condition even among Little People. The New Zealand family made connections through the Internet, the girl meeting other children “just like her”. It reminded me very much of many of our own members’ feelings of social and medical isolation, our LADA members’ often-frustrating quest for correct diagnosis, and how much our communities have been able to help each other understand our symptoms, the progressions and ameliorations of our conditions, and just sometimes the idea that folk who do not live with diabetes don’t always, viscerally, understand some of the issues we deal with as regularly as breathing.
The Internet brings us all closer, and regardless of our medical needs, our social communities help us understand and better care for ourselves, and help advance the body of knowledge about those conditions. Many of us dream of the day that everyone with a life-threatening medical condition will be able to receive rapid diagnosis and appropriate care… or that that condition be completely exterminated from our gene pool. One day, that will come. What day, is in the Creator’s Hands. Until then – and I dare say, even after – we are there for each other.