How did you find out you were diabetic?

21

it was nearing the end of my uni semester when i started showing all the symptoms. really tired, thirsty all the time, and using the loo frequently. i thought it was exam stress and a flu i’d caught from someone so i just self-medicated with flu tablets and sleep. then midway during my exam period, these symptoms just got worse and worse. i’d even started feeling nauseous but i put off seeing a doctor because i didn’t want him to write a medical cert to excuse me from taking my papers. i remember being so exhausted and fatigued i couldn’t even push a trolley at the supermarket while grocery shopping on the way home. two days after my exams ended the situation got worse - i was breathing very heavily and actually vomiting. so my mum rushed me to a gp who diagnosed a lung infection and gave me ventolin. that was probably because i failed to mention the drinking of litres of water and frequent trips to the loo. the next morning at 1am, i was hyperventilating and i could barely walk properly. i was probably near unconsciousness but made it to the emergency room at the nearest hospital (five minutes away, thank goodness singapore is so tiny!) more or less conscious, but groggy and alive.

blood pressure was high for someone my age (20) and they ordered an ECG and blood sugar test. my blood sugars had shot up so high they were off the meter. one urine test later ketones were found and the emergency room doctor diagnosed DKA. my electrolytes were crazy and they spent a few hours pumping me with all sorts of things to stablise me. next thing that happened was the fact that they found infectious tissues on my groin which i got sent for surgery to remove. pretty serious. i was stuck in ICU for 2 or 3 days, and spent about 18 days in a general ward recovering.

i know for sure i am diabetic, it just remains a mystery what type of diabetes i’ve got. because of the seriousness of my condition my body basically shut down for a while, especially my pancreas so the endo decided it would be smarter to conduct my diagnostic blood test at a later date (mid-july). so currently insulin therapy is my only treatment. and i was diagnosed just under 2 months ago.

22

Growing up in an extended family of Type 1s, I knew each and every symptom, but ignored them. I was thrilled to have lost 10 stubborn pounds, and ignored the constant need to pee and drink several quarts of water daily.
I was a freshman in college, and after returning from spring break I went to the clinic on campus and burst into tears. They did a test-tape (urine dip) and it turned black (dark green was considered high). I was inconsolable. The nurse phoned my mother, who lived about 50 miles away. She was so upset that she asked my g’ma to also come with to get me. Sooooo many tears, amid the drive home in silence. I immediately went to the hospital, had a glucose tolerance test the next day, and started on one huge injection of NPH per day, the standard exchange diet, and urine testing. Makes me very sad just to think of it. Things have changed a lot since then, and, I am thankful.

23

I was feeling sleepy often and when I stood up I often felt light headed. I went to the doctor and my nonfasting bloodsugar was around 370. I came back for a fasting test and it was about 270. I was diagnosed with type 2. That was in 2002 and I was in 30s at the time. There was no family history of diabetes and I was no more than a few pounds overweight.

24

I was diagnosed on October 8, 1994 at the age of 11. The summer leading up to it I had lost about 30 lbs in the middle of a big growth spurt. At first I was excited because I was a little chubby to start with, but it started going too far the other way. Basically, I had all the classic symptoms. The day before I was diagnosed was picture day at school, so you can imagine what I bedraggled scarecrow I looked in that shot. My mom thought I had a bladder infection and took me into the doctor’s Saturday morning, where he had me pee on a stick. It turned dark brown.

We went to the local hospital to have a blood draw and when it came back 780 mg/dL, I was sent to a larger hospital for admittance. I stayed there for four days (over a long weekend off from school, I might add. I was really mad about that) while they slowly brought my BG down with IV insulin and gave me lots of one on one education. I also got to practice giving injections to an orange, and I kept thinking, “Now I’m just like Stacy from the Babysitters’ Club.”

That was back in the days of two shots a day with Regular and NPH. Because of that they kept telling me that it was very important to eat at the same time everyday. Meanwhile, they always delivered my food two to three hours late and being hospital food, it wasn’t very appetizing. I remember there was a little mini kitchen on the pediatrics floor that they kept a few things in, so I wound up eating wheat bread for most of my meals, with fruits and veggies that my parents would bring in from home, since they switched of staying with me nights. At one point I almost thought about eating that orange I had been practicing injections on.

I had to take a test with the diabetes educator before they would discharge me on a 150 page book filled with step by step injection techniques, the symptoms of hyper and hypoglycemia, and the action times of all the insulins available, even the ones I wasn’t taking. I studied really hard because I wanted out, but I passed and I got to go home and take the rest of the week off from school. I spent the rest of the week weighing food and putting stickers on all the food packages that said “wheat thins, X number of crackers = 1 carb exchange and 1 fat exchange.”

25

When I was 10 back in 1973 I would drink anything in site and want more. If I walked down my grandparents driveway and back up I could feel my heart beating in my chest. I was always tired and had to go to the bathroom to urinate all the time. My mom took me to the big town of Savannah (pop maby 20,000 but then again I was from a real small town with a pop of 532) to a country Doctor wh0o sent me to the country hospital to draw blood then home til his office called. Later in the day they called telling me to hurry and get to Jackson TN to The Children’s Clinic and see a Dr there I had diabetes. I cried all the way from Milledgeville to Jackson because I had a cousion who had diabetes and had to take 2 shots everyday. Got to Jackson and sseen the Dr then wound up in the hospital for 3 weeks til they could get my insulin adjusted, Atleast thats all I can remember now that was 34 years ago. Oh 1 more thing I got to miss the first 3 weeks of school and thought I was big! HA!

26

I had gestational diabetes in 1997. I asked the doctor if I had to worry about diabetes later in life. He told me, “Soon as that placenta comes out, you no longer have diabetes and you will never have to worry about it again.” Ha. I’ve read recently that OB/GYNs are being encouraged to better advise their patients regarding the risk of developing diabetes later in life.

Nine years later,I had routine labs drawn as part of my annual physical. My BG came back high, and I was diagnosed as Type 2. About a year later I was rediagnosed as Type 1.

That’s the short version. The longer version can be found on the Six Until Me “Your Story” section.

27

I was between my 8th grade year of school and my 9th grade year. I over that summer lost 30 pounds and weighed in at 99 pounds. I of course was delighted to have lost all that baby fat. I had extreme thirst and constant need to visit the bathroom. It was not great. I would get 6 ounce cans or 12 ounce cans of frozen orange juice out of the freezer and just eat them frozen. It was soothing. I continued to loose weight with no regard to what I was eating. The local Dr said she needs to go to Iowa University Hospitals for evaluation. My parents were very busy with the fall harvest and getting it to the elevator and said I could not go so far away. 4 hours distance. So ended up in Blank Children’s hospital where I was admitted on a Sunday evening. Of course they took lab work the next morning and not 2 hours a nurse came into the room to give me a shot. I asked what that was for and she said this is your Insulin. I still had not been told and my parents also did not know. My mother came to visit that afternoon and I said what the nurse had given to me when she started to cry, I realized that what I had was not something small. This was in 1960 and the syringes were all glass with 25 gauge stainless steel needles that were sent back to Central Supply where they were resterilized and wrapped in Linen wrappings. When I learned to give my own Insulin had to learn how to open these wrappings to get the syringe put together to take an Injection. Then testing the urine with Clinitest tabs and acetest tabs. Boy have we come a long way. My Dad would sharpen my needles with a fine whet stone and them Mom would re boil them and put them into a case that was filled with 99 % Isopropyl Alcohol. To draw up the dose of Insulin had to air dry to allow the alcohol to not be present, then draw up the dose to give the shots. This was 47 years ago and now can use an pump with glucose testing.

28

Nine years ago, in the doctor’s office for my zillionth urinary tract infection they found I was spilling sugar in the urine. They spot tested me with one of those old blood calibrated meters at 240 mg/dl. (That would be 260 now.) They took some blood, but since my fasting was well under 140 and my A1c in the low 6% range, they told me I was “fine” and said “it must have been a fluke.” I had previously had two gestational diabetic pregnancies starting from a normal weight, and they’d told me that was a “fluke” too. Flukes R us!

Fortunately, I ran into a copy of Dr. Bernstein’s book at the library, and my spouse had a meter someone had given him because he had hypoglycemia, so I kept testing my blood sugar and I found I was almost always going into the mid-200s at meals if I ate anything like a normal amount of carbs. Bernstein’s book told me that meant I was diabetic and I got serious about control.

It took me another couple years to get a doctor to treat me, because of that near normal fasting test and A1c. So I ate almost no carbs for 6 years. I kept thinking if I could lose enough weight I could lose the diabetes, so I lost 30 lbs and exercised and my blood sugars got worse. The one endo I saw back then told me he wouldn’t bother treating me because my A1c was too low–6.2% and that was eating only 6-12-12 grams of carbs, per Bernstein!

That is what impelled me to do all the research that is on my web site, because nothing they told me about diabetes matched what I was going through.

I only really found out what kind of diabetes I have a year and a half ago, when the doctor let me try a little insulin and I discovered I wasn’t at all insulin resistant. It’s a HUGE relief to know what is going on and why my diabetes is SO different from other people’s,

29

I took a physical for life insurance and got the news.

30

I’ll just copy and past what I have on my blog about it all ;0)

On August 16, 2005 I went to the E.R. for Kidney Stones. While there, I was diagnosed with Diabetes with a Fasting Blood Glucose Level of 355 (well at least that’s what it was when they admitted me) and they said I had acetone in my blood or urine (not sure which) and either the word Ketosis or Ketoacidosis was mentioned, I remember an “osis” being mentioned anyway, in regards to the acetone! [I was HIGHLY drugged up on Dilaudid at the time, so my memory isn’t so keen ;)].

As well as the Diabetes, they also told me I had gall stones, an umbilical hernia, a UTI, a yeast infection (my first EVER!!!) and a ‘growth’ on my right kidney of “unknown origin”! OH JOY! Thankfully the ‘growth’ turned out to be an isolated angiomyolipoma, after another CT scan a couple of weeks later, and is NOT cancerous. [Thank God]

A little bit of my history with Diabetes:
In Sept. 1986, when I was pregnant with my daughter (fourth month of my third and last pregnancy), I was diagnosed with Gestational Diabetes.

In August 1993 I was diagnosed with Borderline Diabetes (now called “pre-diabetic”) with a blood glucose level of 140, two hours after drinking the “goop”.

November 2002 I purchased a Blood Glucose Meter and started randomly checking my blood glucose levels. They averaged in the 200 - 300+ range, yet, I had not been to the doctor to have it checked out. I most probably had high blood glucose since at least 2000. If I only knew THEN what I know NOW!!! I am SO very lucky to not have any complications because of it!

Diabetes runs in my family on my Dad’s side. My Dad, at least 3 of his 4 sisters, my younger sister, at least one of my cousin’s and one of her son’s as well, my grandmother (dad’s mother), my great grandmother (grandmother’s mother), as well as quite a few more distantly related relatives(second cousins, great aunts, great uncles, etc), all with the same family ties. So as you can clearly see, it runs rampant in my family! I’ve always known, since getting Gestational Diabetes, that I would eventually get it too!

31

I was just your typical 16-year-old, super busy, skinny, active high school student. After a long bout with mono, I was just starting to feel better when the fatigue came back again full force. Only this time, I drank about 2 litres of water per class period, and was constantly being accused of being anorexic due to extreme weight loss (down to less than 90 lbs).

Finally on Valentine’s day 2002, thinking I had strep throat, I went to the local clinic. Nope, not quite strep throat, they said. Instead, by blood sugars had been so high I had a ridiculously bad case of oral thrush. They told me to get myself over to the hospital, but being the obstinate student I am, my reply was only “but I have a chem lab this afternoon!”

Needless to say, I never made it to the chem lab, and life definitely has not been the same since.

32

We just moved to Texas, so I thought it was normal that my 20 month old son was asking for tons of water, we were outside all the time playing. But one morning we woke up in a puddle of pee (we cosleep), then later that day he was throwing up. I could keep fluids down him but then he couldn’t even keep water down. I called the doctor for an appointment, thought it was the flu bug-he had that late last year. By the time we were heading to the doctors, he was breathing real heavy and wouldn’t stay awake. At the pediatricians office, they told us he’s dehydrated and has strep throat-so we took him to the e.r. for an i.v. where they discovered he was in diabetic ketoacidosis. It took them two hours to get an i.v. in him, they tried every limb a billion times and even his head! They took him to another hospital by ambulance and he went straight to their PICU.

33

I’m 53 and have had hypothyroid for a couple of years. After my meds were adjusted correctly I still felt tired all the time. Then I suddenly developed high blood pressure and my doctor ordered a bunch of tests. My A1C was 7.2. She told me I had diabetes and I started testing and counting carbs. The dietician told me to do 16 carb exchanges a day and test after 2 hours and my numbers were great. The endo I saw told me I didn’t have diabetes, or even impaired glucose tolerance because my fasting and 2 hour numbers were really low. But I still felt terrible, had no energy and was thirsty all the time. I started testing at an hour and found that my BG would shoot up to 180 and then crash back down to 80 and it was the spiking that was making me feel bad. Extreme low carb dieting kept my numbers steady but I kept losing more and more weight. I did my own research online and persuaded my doctor to order the antibody tests. She had never heard of LADA but sure enough, I was positive for islet cell antibodies. I am lucky to have caught this so early- and am hoping with insulin and a low carb diet to be able to maintain some of my Beta cell function but we’ll have to see.

34

It is amazing some of the details that the older T1s remember.

I was diagnosed over 20 years ago and remember almost nothing of the symptoms that lead up to me being diagnosed - except I kept urinating in my bed and I had NEVER done that as a child.

I just remember my mom took me to some kind of clinic one night and they drew blood and as I was coloring in a book, my mom was talking with the doctor. He came over to me and said " I think you have something called diabetes." He tried to make sounding like going to Children’s Medical Center of Dallas was a field trip, but I wasn’t buying it and begin bawling.

When I got to the hospital (the most AWESOME children’s hospital in the world) the nurses and doctors kept me occupied by showing me how the bed moved up and down and all that jazz. I was in there for a week and stabbed plenty of oranges with my syringes and even went home with a diabetic “Dolly” who I could give shots to - and throw around later when I couldn’t eat something sweet. lol

35

It was July 2, 2002, the Friday before the 4th of July (talk about inconvenient), and I was getting a physical so I could go to a summer camp the next week with my church. I had been losing some weight, but nothing so drastic as to worry anyone, and as a teenage girl, who could complain about that? It had been a pretty hot couple of months, and I had been drinking a lot more water than usual, and I remember being so thirsty sometimes it would send me into a panic, so I started carrying a bottle of water with me wherever I went. I had also taken to sleeping a lot in the afternoons, and felt run down and exhausted most of the time, but it had been a very stressful junior year, and I could explain away most of my symptoms as being due to that stress. So, I went to the doctor for my physical, and she did a routine urine screening. I can remember sitting in the room and hearing the nurse who took my sample call the doctor from down the hall. I felt my stomach drop out from underneath me, and knew something was wrong. Then they called my mom into the room, and told me that I had sugar in my unrine and, with a bloodsugar of 328, the most likely cause was diabetes.
So, it being the Friday before a major holiday, I was unable to get to a hospital and actually begin taking insulin until the following Tuesday. It’s funny, but at the time of diagnosis, the thing that upset me more than anything else was that I was going to have to miss a week of fun with my friends because of this thing that I knew nothing about. No one in my whole family has type 1 diabetes, and I didn’t really even know there were different kinds of diabetes to get until I had it myself. The diagnosis itself was just too big, too life changing, and in my warped teenage way, all I could think about was the here and now. In the months that followed, I got to learn first hand all of the other ways my life would change, and at 17 years old I had to relearn everything I knew about eating and freedom and life. Needless to say my senior year was not exactly what I originally planned it to be.
Less than a year after diagnosis, I was on an insulin pump and planning for college, trying my best to convince my poor mother that I would indeed be alright and could take care of this thing on my own. I am convinced there must be a special place in heaven for mothers of diabetic children, by the way, and I know she suffered at least as much if not more than I did that first year or two after diagnosis. Her feeling of helplessness was certainly bigger than my own, and just as she started giving me my freedom, her immediate reaction to the diagnosis was to wrap her arms around me and protect me from this thing that she couldn’t fix.
Now, 8 years later, I still have my ups and downs about this disease. Sometimes it just pisses me off that I can’t have that piece of cake without consequences, or go on a river trip without having to plan out all of the possible things that could go wrong diabetically speaking, or start a family with my husband without majorly clamping down on my lifestyle. But another part of me, deeper down, knows that diabetes has formed such an enormous part of who I am, not that it defines me, but it has made me stronger and braver and healthier than I ever could have been without it.

36

I never gave much thought to my health when I was younger than I am now. When I was a sophmore in college (1982), I started having to go to the rest room often – I could not sit through a one hour class without being incredibly uncomfortable – and was thirsty all the time, so of course I drank Coke continuously (needed the caffeine). The school clinic said I had a kidney infection (after they took a urine sample) and gave me some antibiotics.

When I got home for spring break, my parents noticed I had lost about 40 pounds and sent me to their doctor who did a urine test and then announced “You have 4+ urine sugar.” And I said “and that means what?” And he said, “You’re diabetic.” Then he called around to find me a specialist and his fourth choice was able to see me right away and explained what it was all about and put me on shots.

37

It was 1984 and I was 16. I was getting thirstier and thirstier, and weaker and weaker, over a period of a few months. And my weight was dropping, which as a teenage girl was a cool thing. Eventually I thought I had the “flu” because I started throwing up and could barely move, no energy to even to get a decent shower. A couple of weeks later I stumbled out of my bedroom in the middle of the night to pee for probably the 12th time that night, and afterwards I stumbled out into the living room and collapsed on the couch into a coma. Thank god I did because otherwise my mom would have left for work and I probably would have died later that day. But she found me when she got up in the morning and took me to the hospital. My BG was 1140! A couple of days later when I was feeling better they finally let me take a shower at the hospital…that will go down in history as the absolute most wonderful shower of my life!

38

I was 10 years old and was at the doctor. Not for myself but for my sister. My mom started telling my then doctor about how I was not at all like myself. I had lost alot of weight (I only weighed about 70 Lbs. at age 10) and I wasn’t eating or doing as much actuvity has I normally would. So he did a bunch of tests and everything came back fine. Then he said he was going to check me for diabetes but he really didn’t think that was the problem. SURPRISE! We waited for about 3 hours in the waiting room for the test results and they came back that I had diabetes (BS of almost 600). Needless to say we were all pretty scared and had no idea what was going on. He then told me that I needed to go to the hospital right away. All while this was happening I was sitting in his office chair listening to my mom cry while on the phone with my dad. I had no clue what was going on. So I was rushed over to the hospital, and stayed there. It was two days after Christmas, and I spent New Year’s sleeping in a hospital bed. I learned to do my own shots and have done them ever since. My favorite part in the hospital was everyone visiting me and the orange/syringe/saline they gave me to practice with. I would give the orange a shot and then try to do the next one has close to the last hole so that it would shoot out the old hole! Of course, my sister’s thought I got diabetes for the attention. But after the fact of getting through it, they realized that it wasn’t the kind of attention they wanted. Anyway, that’s my story…and I’m sticking to it =)

39

Dec 1971 was going to the hospital to have my tonsels removed. Mom fixed me a cocernut cake for my 16th birthdayate 1/2 cake that night checked in to hospital in pre-op found BG 650 been on insulin since on the pump since Feb 2007 and love it.

40

i had just turned 7 when i was diagnosed, so most of the details are thanks to my mom. i only remember a few things from the hospital and nothing about getting there. it was summer in texas so it was really hot. i could down a gallon of water in an hour but my mom chalked it up to the heat. she said i looked thin but thought i was just going through a growth spurt. i felt ill all the time. she would take me to the doctor and would mention all these things, but for months no one picked up on it. finally in june i got severly sick and wound up in the ER in severe DKA where i was diagnosed. my triglycerides were over 1,000 and my body was covered in calcium deposits. rumor has it that i’m in a medical journal for even living. i’d love to see it sometime.

i believe they flew me into a specialist facility in galveston, TX where i stayed for probably a good month. my mom says the doctor who saw me is also a type 1 diabetic. all that i really remember about the hospital is tubes everywhere, them making my drink yoohoo after getting my blood drawn (i was 7 so i guess they didn’t want me to pass out from so much blood being taken), and this stuffed dog they brought to my room to visit me. Darren, the diabetic dog. i still want that dog, but oh well…

so, that’s my story, or the gist of it anyway. kind of a violent greeting from big mr. D