A Healing Blog

I began to write. I called my site DiabetesMine.com—a play on words for "It's mine, I'm stuck with it" and the notion of "a gold mine of straight talk and encouragement for people living with diabetes."

And the people with diabetes came. They gave me great tips about coping with diabetes. Sometimes they argued with me. Often they said thank you for putting myself out there and helping them feel less alone. A few of them actually made me cry.

I've been writing my Web site for three years now, and some amazing things have happened. First, I learned all sorts of facts about my own health that doctors never told me. I learned that thousands of other people out there have been diagnosed with type 1 diabetes later in life, like me—a condition called LADA (latent autoimmune diabetes in adults). From other patients I also learned essential basics about related conditions, like gluten intolerance (celiac disease), and Raynaud's syndrome, a circulation disorder in the hands—both of which I suffer from, along with the diabetes.

Second, a whole community of "patient bloggers" has grown up around me—hundreds of other people sharing their health challenges on the Web. We exchange treatment and insurance tips, hold online chats, link to each other's sites, and even manage to meet in person sometimes.

Through blogs and online communities, an enormous army of increasingly well-informed patients is forming, and we're actually challenging the traditional model of health care in this country. With free access to all sorts of medical information, patients like me can drive our own care for the first time in history, by asking the right questions and demanding the latest and greatest drugs and devices. So ends the stranglehold of doctors and health insurance companies on information and treatment options.

I soon discovered that my own little blog had upward of 50,000 readers each month and comes up in the top three when you Google "diabetes blogs"—a search that thousands of surfers must be doing every single day. Now I find myself suddenly being approached by dozens of companies interested in my site. They either want me to review their products, have my Web site linked to theirs, or even offer me money to advertise—a direct channel for the 21 million Americans living with diabetes.