Diabetics share struggles, strength online

It started out as a college assignment, but creator Emily Hooven wants to keep the site going.

Diabetes Diaries is a channel on the video-sharing website YouTube. Anyone can go online and share their fears, hopes or experience with the disease. It’s an online therapy session for some.

Hooven, a sophomore at Temple University, said there is too much secrecy surrounding diabetes.

“People said that they knew people that went into the bathroom to give themselves insulin or test their blood sugar and that they really didn’t talk about it a lot,” she said.  “So we hope that the website will offer some sort of release for these people, so they can finally just talk about it.”

Hooven was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes when she was 10. Every day since then has been a challenge. And she hopes this site will be an outlet for anyone else struggling with the diabetes.

Kathya Zinszer,  with Temple’s  podiatric medicine department,  said she sees too many diabetics lose a foot or a leg simply because they procrastinate about controlling their sugar levels.  Zinszer said support and encouragement from peers are just as important as proper medical care.

“I think that it’s going to put a different face on diabetes,”  she said.  “I love that it is a younger generation, students, as well as different ethnicities who are speaking  up about what their struggles are with the diagnosis.”