Dating With Medical Conditions

Ricky Durham watched for fifteen years his younger brother’s love life and launched a dating website for people with medical condition.

Ricky Durham watched for fifteen years his younger brother’s love life and launcheda dating website for people with medical condition. His brother with gastrointestinal inflammatory ailment known as Crohn's disease had quite a challenging time trying to date.

"He had a colostomy bag, and this is a very good-looking boy," said Durham, 46, of Atlanta. "I started thinking, 'When do you tell someone you have a colostomy bag?' He didn't know how to approach this at all."

Inspired by his brothers conditions Durham decided to launch an Internet dating company where people with medical conditions could meet a love interest. The site, Prescription4Love.com, is less than two years old and has 1,000 members.

The site was launched after his brother’s death in 2004.

The American website called prescription4love.com enables people to openly and honestly seek love with people happy to share their medical problems.

It is a dating service specializing in many health conditions (cancer, obesity, deafness, diabetes IBS and IBD (Crohns and Colitis) Allergies, Obesity, Deafness, and Recovering Alcoholics), including STD dating services (AIDS/HIV, herpes and HPV).

Dating with a Health Condition or STD can be awkward, especially when it comes time to divulge your situation, so an online service such as Prescription 4 Love could be just the outlet for such people. Such a service allows the person to take the friendship and relationship to next level honestly.

Such service also allows for the development of a support group of like-minded people such as paraplegic, quadriplegic, and people with other medical conditions. These groups help support one self but also help others understand their situations much better.

There are many such sites on the scene now. PositiveSingles.com, for example, is for members with herpes, HIV, HPV or other sexually transmitted diseases.

Another Web site, DAWN-Disabled-Dating.com, is for singles who are "differently abled," said Wendy Wolf, founder of Different Abled Winners Network (DAWN). Wolf was inspired by her experiences as a quadriplegic. "I had polio when I was 4 years old," said Wolf, 59, of Tucson, Ariz. "I was completely paralyzed; I couldn't move a muscle." On reaching she found herself lonely as all her friends started dating. The feeling of being alone inspired Wolf to not exclude any member when she started DAWN in 1993. She acknowledged that her site is aimed at people with physical disabilities, but no one is denied membership.

DAWN is more like a matchmaking service. Members sign up online, but Wolf does the pairing. Each member is required to write a letter of introduction that she sends to potential matches.

Prescription4Love.com, however, follows a more traditional online dating setup. Members can search by ZIP code and medical condition. The site allows users to search more than 20 medical conditions and send e-mails to members of interest.

Source-Medindia
BIN/C