In the Beginning, a story of being both Type 1 and Type 2

Community Share Your Stories
1

You're about fifty years old and you've been working in the back yard. It's been
pretty hot so you've been drinking iced tea. Over the last week, you've been
kind of drinking to much tea and having to go to the bathroom at night so
you've been trying to cut back but you have been thirsty.

You come back into house and stand in the kitchen
munching on a few teacakes. You're thirsty, got to go to the bathroom and
you're a bit woozy. You wait a little bit, probably a bit of blood pressure.
Suddenly, your wife pulls you into a chair and calls your name. You snap out of
it. You're nauseous, weak and you're having a hard time catching your breath.
911 is called and the next thing you know you're in a hospital with all kinds
of tubes running out of you and they're telling you you're diabetic and you're
in ketoacidosis.

Diabetes? You were at the doctor's office six
months ago for your checkup but you're blood sugar was fine. I mean, you were
having some problems with being stiff and tired but, let's face it, fifty means
a certain amount of aches and pains.

A couple of days later you're home and are taking
blood sugar readings and giving yourself insulin shots. You have to admit
you're feeling better and your blood sugars are going down. The surprise is
that they keep going down and now after only a month or so from joining the
diabetic masses you are introduced to a new term - hypos.

The same dose of insulin that brought you down to
normal is now taking you to low blood sugars. This is just great. You almost go
into a coma from not having insulin and now you almost go into a coma from
having too much. The docs tell you to keep reducing the insulin till finally
they have to take you off insulin completely. They give you Metaformin and tell
you to watch your diet and get some exercise and off you go.

Two months ago, you were a regular joe then you
became a type 1 diabetic. Another month later, you're off insulin and now
you're a type 2 diabetic. What nexts, type 3?

If you in any way fit this description, welcome to the world of Ketosis Prone Diabetes!
Pull up a chair and sit down because we have a lot to talk about.


Mike

2

Thanks for sharing your story. These days, everyone gets lumped into broad categories and when you have a fairly rare condition like you do you can suffer greatly by being treated improperly. I hope there are others that read your story and are helped by your experience.

3

Thanks for the comment. My hope is that people will recognize this. There is one thing though, it isn’t rare. Most of the people admitted to hospital for DKA are of this type. This means there are thousands of us.

Mike

4

Did the doctors test you for antibodies to see if you have autoimmune diabetes? Also, you should have a c-peptide test to see how much insulin you are producing – and also to know is it is decreasing over time. If yes, then that would indictate LADA.

5

This is another part of the weirdness of KPD. No antibodies and a normal c-peptide. The other thing is that this does cut across many lines. I know LADA’s that are Ketosis Prone as well. Guess I need to blog on this. Thanks for reading.

Mike

Mike

6

How are you doing on the Metformin? How are your BGs?

7

Me? I’m doing okay. My A1c is 5.2 and I’m on 500 met 2X a day. Can’t handle carbs though and my post prandials are hard to control. I don’t think the met is doing much though. KPD’s tend to use excercise to control are diabetes because we seem to have some other things going on. This is the reason for this blog. We need to share knowledge because the scientific community has basically let us hang.