Warwick is great, he and his wife Sam helped me a lot when I was younger. I guess that's another advantage, I got to be friends with them!
I guess I feel more comfortable, there isn't the awkwardness that I get with people of average height, and I'm far less self conscious. But at the same time I feel the same with my closest friends who don't have dwarfism.
If it was a choice though of a room full of strangers who had dwarfism or a room full of strangers without, I'd definitely pick the room full of people with dwarfism, so I guess there is something.
I'm not and have never been involved in any of the sports, unfortunately my parents wanted to keep me away from others with dwarfism and forced me into living life as normally as possible, I didn't meet anyone else with dwarfism until I was 12 and that was only because they happened to be in hospital at the same time.
There is many other conditions that go with dwarfism, hydrocephalus which is fluid on the brain and why some dwarfs have larger heads, I don't have this fortunately.
Arthritis, I do have this and it's made worse by all the corrective surgeries a lot of us have. For example many will go through having their legs straightened because eventually the pain is too much, this involves breaking the legs and resetting. Some will go through limb lengthening which takes several years of incredibly painful surgeries and the outcomes aren't always successful.
Spinal stenosis is another common condition that goes with dwarfism, this is where the discs start to trap nerves and compress the spinal cord, again more surgery is needed for this and is usually a spinal fusion involving metal rods.
A lot suffer with sleep apnea too.
And as someone asked earlier it does get difficult to control your weight, as we get older especially because of the above conditions restricting our mobility.
I have arthritis and spinal stenosis, I've had over 18 operations now and need another 3 but at the moment I don't have the time to recover from them so it's easier to live with the problems.
I met my husband through a mutual friend. We've been married 10 years.