When I was diagnosed with LADA in June 2009, it came completely out of the blue for me. I had never had any symptoms - or so I thought. Now, after months and months of reading what diabetes is and does, I am feeling a little stupid… I have actually had symptoms for years and years and years. Some of the most striking ones:
- I have had cold feet all my life. That’s one of the reasons I had always wanted to live in a warmer climate, and eventually moved from Northern Europe to Italy. [neuropathy]
- I have had candida (yeast) infections all my life (even as a child). [yeast strives on sugar]
- I have had lows in the late afternoon for at least the last 3 years, since I have moved to Italy and my lunch was always, every day, a white bread “panino”, and without fail, I would start eating cookies at 5pm in order to make it to dinner (which had to happen by 7pm otherwise I’d feel too weak); dinner would usually be pasta with some canned pasta sauce, or, if going out, pizza. [blood sugar roller coaster]
- Quite often, I would have to go to bed right after dinner and would fall asleep straight away, not because I was tired but because my brain felt so fuzzy; sometimes, this would happen after lunch, too (on the weekend - while at work, I would just drink lots of coffee to try to lift the cloud from my brain). [high blood sugar]
- I have been drinking 2 liters of water by noon for at least the last 7 years, and shortly before I was diagnosed, I remember sitting on the bus, really wanting to get to work in order to be able to drink. [high blood sugar]
- On a holiday in China, where we ate mostly protein foods and fat (what I now consider a healthy diet!), I constantly had to “top up” with sugary energy drinks because I was feeling so faint. [low blood sugar]
- I have never had a habit of weighing myself, so I don’t really know what my weight was before I got diagnosed, but I think I was around 70kg most of the time which I thought was absolutely fine. It turns out, that was a BMI of 25 which is borderline overweight! [insulin resistance]
- Until I got diagnosed, I had never enquired about my family history of diabetes. Now it turns out that my grandmother had T2, a number of my uncles have it (but nobody knows exactly how many), a cousin has T1 and my mother is in the pre-diabetic range. [genetic]
- Whenever I would cut myself while shaving my legs, complete healing would take weeks, and scars could be seen for months. The lower on the leg the cut, the more difficult the healing. [neuropathy]
- I was never really awake before noon, even with coffee, always dozing at my computer at work - after a “healthy” breakfast of lots of oat- or other flakes and milk (no sugar but very carby anyway). Now I wake up at 6.30am, completely awake and ready to go! [high blood sugar]