Laveta Hoskins, who has greatly appreciated the care she has received at Eskenazi Health since 2010, recently learned that like many of her father’s side of the family, she has diabetes.

“Once I found out that I was a diabetic a year ago, it was a little terrifying because I didn’t know what to eat, I didn’t know what to do, because as a diabetic you think you gotta cut out some food. I cut out sweets, sugar and salt because I thought I can’t have that anymore.

“But when I talked to my doctor, Sharon Riesner, who is a nurse practitioner but I love her, I told her my concerns and she suggested that I talk to a nutritionist, Emily Dawkins, and that was the best thing ever. I started talking with her and she told me some things to do and she suggested some classes for me to take for diabetes. So I took a couple of classes and that was the best thing for me because I learned so much that I didn’t know anything about. I got to see a therapist who talked about how diabetes affected my feet, and an eye doctor who taught me about my eyes, and then I met a lot of wonderful people who were going through the same thing that I was. Some had been going through this for years, while others were getting started with it just like me. 

“If it hadn’t been for Eskenazi Health, I probably wouldn’t know as much as I know now about how to treat my diabetes and how to eat because that was my biggest thing, and now I eat what I’m supposed to. Like everything I’ve done with Eskenazi Health, this has been a wonderful experience.”