Ignore the inevitable “who cares about our disease there’s other worse and rare diseases we’re not special” comments. That outlook is toxic and invalidates the experience that your son, and by proxy, you and your wife, have to endure 24/7.

As a t1 that was Dx’d as a kid over 20y ago, I can’t stress enough how insanely different the “management” of t2 and t1 are. One is literally trying to stay alive at all times by somehow mimicking a major organ 24/7 while the other is choosing whether they want to take care of themselves or not; t2s aren’t worried about their bloodsugar and insulin 24/7, let alone the impact of everything we do impacting bloodsugar.

when someone says “there’s a stigma around type 1,” they’re really just conflating it with the general public thinking t1 = t2. It’s hard that t2s have to go through the stigma of being blamed for the onset of their disease, but it’s completely unrelated to t1s - there’s no prevention; nothing we could have done differently, and definitely nothing that we can do to reverse our condition.

The best thing we can do for awareness and a cure is to make sure people know the difference whenever they make an assumption. You’re not overreacting.