My daughter had that one friend but at this time no-out of all of her friends she is the only one with d...
Actually my son has an aquaintance that was diagnosed just two days b4 he was, unfortunatly they live on the other side of town.
Yes, my daughter has several T1 friends whom she met through Camp Conrad-Chinnock (Southern California). She feels especially close to them and takes care to cultivate those relationships. "We really understand each other," is how she views them. She loves her non-diabetic friends too, but there is a special bond with her "diabadass" pals.
My son loves his T1 friends that he met through camp, but they are all so far away (over seven hours). And there word is "diabetasttic!" There are a couple of acquaintances at school with T1, but no friends.
Thanks to all you folks who got this group together. My son is just about 16, having been diagnosed at 11 -- it'll be 5 years in June. He has no friends who are T1, although he has spoken a couple of times with older people with T1 -- a 30 something colleague of mine and a father of a friend, although both of them are old enough to be old school (injections only and control so tight they never go above 100, which is not really relevant for a teenage boy, certainly not my son).
I am actually trying to encourage my son to go to a 1-2 week outdoors program for T1 teens this summer. He never attended a diabetes camp, but from the year before his diagnosis until last summer (5 summers) he went to a regular 7-week sleepaway camp, which he's now aged out of.
I hadn't thought about it until now, but it probably would be a great thing if there were 1 or 2 kids his age with T1 he could open up to. Talking to parents about T1 management or to T1 educators and MDs at the Naomi Berrie center here in NYC just isn't the same thing.
I wish he did. I bet he'd feel better.
He did however become really good friends with a boy who is severely allergic to dairy. Alec knows his Epi-pen, and Austin knows Alec's Glucagon I guess that is friendly support.
My 13 year old son was diagnosed at age 9. He doesn't have any close friends who have T1. There is one boy he sees at golf tournaments who is his age with T1. This other boy was wearing his pump on his belt like a pager, my son always tried to hide it, now he wears his on his belt too.