Myth: My child will never be able to go to summer camp.
Fact: Not only are there plenty of camps specifically for children with diabetes—fully staffed with medical personnel, and with every camper and counselor having diabetes—there are plenty of “regular” camps with full-time medical personnel who are very comfortable treating campers with diabetes. It just takes a little research to find them.
Myth: People with Type 1 diabetes die young.
Fact: This used to be true, and it also used to be true that type 1 diabetes was fatal. The Nobel Prize for Medicine was given for the researcher who discovered insulin in the 1920s because he had “cured” diabetes, making it no longer a fatal disease. As research and treatment have improved over the last 75 years, so has the life expectancy of people with diabetes. Of course there are young people who die from type 1 and its complications, but they are the exception and not the rule. I believe that the children today who have type 1 will not be old ladies and old men with diabetes—I believe there will be a cure in their lifetimes. They’ll just be old ladies and old men who used to have diabetes … back in the old days.
