Last month, I wrote about my Ideal Diabetes Support Group for the April DSMA Blog Carnival. At the end, I mentioned that I’m looking for my first support group meeting.
So I started looking for an adult type 1 support group. Man, is it hard to find a support group in Maryland! At least in Baltimore. I checked the local JDRF chapter’s website and found an adult type 1 meeting on the 2nd Monday of every month. I called the contact number and asked about the group, and found out that it doesn’t happen every month anymore. Instead, it’s a quarterly meeting. And it’s not really a support group as much as it is a peer group meeting. I’m not sure I know the difference between the two, but it looks like this is the only get-together for adult type 1’s in either Baltimore or Baltimore County. An area with a population of over 1.5 million people.
Should I be ticked off about that? I don’t think so. After all, I didn’t even think of beginning a search for a support group until a couple of weeks ago. And I suspect that others may be exactly like I was… eager to live as normal a life as possible, and not eager to sit in a sanitized room at a hospital or doctor’s practice, staring at others who remind us that we’re not always as normal as we would prefer.
Maybe I need to take matters into my own hands. Start my own group. Set my own agenda. That’s a great idea, in theory. But do I really have what it takes to lead a group? And even if I do, can I actually recruit others for a regular get-together?
I’ve got some thinking to do. And some more work to do. This process is far from complete.
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