Are you tired/fed up about being questioned about the veracity of your diagnosis? Just because I was dx at a late age as t1 doesn’t mean that it can’t be so. Just yesterday I was at the local branch of the CDA with a couple of questions and I was asked-again-if I was really t1. I’ve been questioned by the pharmacist ( who told you that you were t1?) and the family doctor when the endo transferred me back to him. It just ticks me off.
Your not the only one who has faced this I was in my endo office he has one of the young doc’s in who is working her own way into being a endo herself and the first words out of her mouth to me after hello was “So your a Type 1?” and I said no I’m a type 2 she was like “you can’t be your to young to be type 2” which really got me ticked thankfully my endo came in and didn’t read the riot act to her but it was a good sound lecture that she was given on the matter.
But its still one of those things that I face in and out of the office, since I am on insulin many assume that I have to be type 1 because only type 1s are on insulin type 2’s don’t use insulin, which is a lot of bull but the stereo type is that if you are type 2 you do not use insulin and if you are type 1 you have to use it - its annoying that people think this even doc’s who are treating you or learning to treat people like yourself, but its something one learns to deal with.
I’ve not had to deal directly with anyone from the CDA (I am canadian born and raised) that I know of, but when I was for a short time down in the US with my husband, I got a lot of flack from a couple of the doc’s down there who should have bloody well know better the difference between a type 2 and a type 1.
It’s sad, isn’t it? It’s like the only disease in which doctors and organizations are allowed to not know a damn thing. lol
Yeah, it irritates me the MOST when it’s another medpro who does that. Or they take what you tell them at face value, only to mix up the types in their head. My last OB/Gyn actually told me having T1 put me at a higher risk of developing PCOS because of the insulin resistance involved! At the time I was very strongly honeymooning and was using maybe 12u a day of insulin. Yeah, real resistant I was… NOT!
Interestingly enough no endo I have ever had has questioned what type I’ve told them I am - I’ve switched a lot due to various reasons. The only one who ever ran antibody testing was the first one I saw - but that of course came after several months of dealing with an internal medicine doctor who refused to do the testing. However, with the ability to spike VERY high and the fact that I develop ketones at the drop of a hat any more, I don’t truly think it would be in question much 
Not only was that ignorant (concerning the Type 1), but it was wrong, too (concerning the PCOS)… PCOS is not caused by insulin resistance. It is triggered by hyperinsulinemia, which in many women, may eventually lead to insulin resistance. Without the type 2 genes, though, many women just suffer from a lot of Hypoglycemia issues, from the hyperinsulinemia (as I did, most of my childhood and teenage years)… Oddly enough, I have met quite a few Type 1’s who have PCOS. No one knows exactly what triggers the hyperinsulinemia, though. There is no known cause. Such ignorant fools. lol
I actually expect people (including doctors) to be ignorant, especially as I’m LADA, which is the least recognized. I generally like educating people, though have to be careful not to sound too pedantic (I’m a teacher). Sometimes I forget the incorrect assumptions though, like last week I saw a cardiologist and told him right off I’m a type 1 diabetic. We talked and he kept referring to my risk factors. It wasn’t until the end of the session that I realized he was assuming I’d been type 1 all my life, not only three years, and by then there was no time to ask if everything he’d said was still true given my short time diagnosed.
Told to me by an older phlebotomist (blood-taker) a few years back, who noticed the A1C box was marked by my doc on the test form: "Oh, A1C too? Well, don’t worry about that, dearie, I’m sure it’ll turn out OK, anyways I can tell just by looking at you that you don’t have diabetes."
I’ve also been told by pharmacists on at least two occasions, that I can’t have Type 1 diabetes or juvenile diabetes, because only kids have that.
I’ve had T1 diabetes for 30 years now :-).
Tim.
Aside from the many adults who are diagnosed with type 1, what do they think happens to all those “juvenile diabetics”? They grow up!
The reality is that the vast majority of new-onset Type 1 diabetes is seen in adults, not children. The myth that Type 1 diabetes is a childhood disease is so pervasive, and really hard to change. I have some stock answers that I use with people, since I was diagnosed with Type 1 at age 35, but frankly I don’t get questioned much these days. What I get very frustrated with is the fact that in all forms of media, in the U.S. they go to the American Diabetes Association (ADA) for stats on Type 1, and so you always see that Type 1 is 5-10% of all diabetes (not true, it’s more like 20% if you throw all the adult-onset T1s in) and that Type 1 is most commonly seen in children and young adults (again, not true). It’s actually ADA’s peer-reviewed scientific journals that give the correct info about Type 1, but the left hand (ADA’s journals) is not talking to the right hand (“corporate” ADA).
There is such ignorance of Type 1 versus Type 2, then don’t even get started on the ignorance about MODY!