OXFORD – When you’re a child or a teen, there’s a fine line between “unique” and just plain “different.”

For young people with Type 1 diabetes, the routine of managing their disease too often pushes them clearly into the “different” category.

Camp Hopewell, a Presbyterian Church (USA) facility near Oxford, runs a week-long session for kids ages 8 to 16 with what used to be called “juvenile diabetes.” It’s a chance both to teach them to manage their disease and to give them a few days to feel – well, normal.

“This is a place where they’re in the majority and not the exception,” said Allyson Ashmore, activities director at Camp Hopewell. “When they’re in school, they have to go to the nurses’ office to get their insulin or change their (pump) site. Here, they do it wherever they are. Everything’s out in the open, and everyone’s comfortable with it.”

That’s how the youngsters describe it, too.

“At school, I’m the only one checking my sugar or getting out my pump and giving myself insulin,” said Claudia Bounds, 13, of Amory. “Here, everybody does it.”

Said Michael Curtis, 14, from Memphis: “It’s like, I can hang around a lot of diabetics and do not have to explain what diabetes is. It’s just cool to be here. If my sugar level’s low, I can tell anybody. They’ll understand what to get for me.”

At the diabetes camp, kids swim, canoe, do crafts, take on the “high challenge” course just as their non-diabetic counterparts would, but with a clear “health first” commitment to managing their disease.

“If you have activities scheduled and someone is having blood-sugar issues, you adjust the schedule,” said Dr. Rebecca P. Winsett, a retired nurse practitioner who first worked with the diabetes camp in 1987, 11 years after its founding, and is today its director.

“One of the mantras you often hear is, ‘You can’t have that; you have diabetes.’ Our philosophy is, ‘You can have it. We’ll figure out a way to make it happen.’”

Campers learn to count carbohydrates and to adjust their insulin accordingly. They learn a great deal about diabetes and how it is affected by nutrition.

“We’re trying to improve how they feel about themselves dealing with a disease that’s going to be lifelong,” Winsett said. “We spend a lot of effort just talking and ‘living it out loud.’”

Having such a specialized camp is reassuring to parents as well, she said.

“You can imagine the difficulty parents would have sending their child to camp, not knowing who knows how to take care of their child – whether they have diabetes or asthma or a seizure disorder,” she said. “They feel confident that there are people here who can handle it.”

This week Camp Hopewell will hold a Type I diabetes minicamp for 6- and 7-year-olds, and in October it will host its first-ever minicamp for children and teens with Type II diabetes, which is often traced to obesity and other lifestyle factors.

In both cases, the goal is much the same.

“We train kids to live successfully as adults,” Winsett said. “The health of these kids now will determine how long they live.”

Contact Errol Castens at (662) 281-1069 or errol.castens@djournal.com.

For more information, log on to www.camphopewell.com or call (662) 234-2254.