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Baumgartel, 33, who lives in Boulder, Colorado, keeps a personal blog, http://www.tales ofmy30s.com, and sends "tweets" almost daily to dozens of people at a time. She may just update her contacts on what she had for breakfast, what her hemoglobin a1C level is, or how much exercise she got on the elliptical equipment at the gym. In exchange, she’ll frequently get return messages of encouragement from friends and other followers who are helping her stick to her arduous health regimen.
To the uninitiated, communicating with such frequency about banal details of daily life might seem wacky. But in the new media era, it is now the norm. More important, communication is increasingly understood as a critical way in which the chronically ill can successfully engage in self-management. In fact, Baumgartel says that using social media tools makes it possible for her to live with her disease. "Because I have people who follow me on Twitter," she says, "it means I have some kind of audience that is caring for me in the background. It’s helpful if I’m having a rough day, if things are not going so well with my blood sugar. I find support there, and it keeps me in line, too."
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