Hello everyone - I joined here a few months ago. This is my first post. :) I have diabetes in my family - my mom and my older brother, both typical T2s (taking those news reports with a grain of salt that say all T2s are overweight). My mom died eight years ago at age 80 of a non-specified autoimmune disease that her doctors said caused cirrhosis and eventually complete liver failure. Which autoimmune disease? They had no idea. One that attacks the liver I guess. They said her diabetes didn't cause it. My brother just learned about his diabetes.
I've always been thin - 5' 6" and around 110 lbs. Each of my children weighed nearly 10 lbs when they were born. The nurses always asked me if I was diabetic. My eye doctor asks (I have some vision problems). No, and no. I was tested during my last pregnancy however, ten years ago, and I had gestational diabetes. (fyi - I weighed over 10 lbs too when I was born). And now some doctors will automatically ask me if my children are overweight because they weighed so much at birth (citing the "studies say" thing). But they're thin like me. Makes the doctors go..hmmmm. I've always had a ravenous sweet tooth - especially for chocolate, and if I get up in the morning with a headache I go straight for the chocolate (M & Ms), or cookies, or anything sweet that we have in the house (chocolate frosting right out of the can). It helps my headaches dissolve - strange, but true. I've had off and on had dizzyness, vertigo, shakiness, since my early 20s. But my fasting blood sugar isn't low. I am pretty sick to my stomach because I'm starving by the time I get to the lab. I have low blood pressure, 85/60 usually, so maybe that's it?
I feel like I'm 48 going on 108 these days. Within the last year I was diagnosed with Crohns (had that for years now that I finally know what it is), Hashimoto's thyroiditis, lupus and rheumatoid arthritis - like a walking autoimmune disease. This past summer I was filing away my old medical labs and noticed that doctors had circled and marked some of the glucose readings as "borderline." They never brought it up to me so I guess it was no big deal. But I got curious enough (I'm a health writer - we're a curious breed anyway ;) to enter a LADA study where researchers were trying to learn more about diabetes. Just a simple fasting blood draw - easy. My FBG was normal. My A1C was 5.8 (nearly normal, they said), my C-peptide was "low normal" and my GAD was negative. They did note that if I ever gained weight (hard to do though, with Crohn's) that I "might" become T2. I'm thinking - are you kidding me? Has anyone else had a similar experience? Thin, dramatic cravings for sweets, a few "borderline" glucose results, previous gestational diabetes? But not diabetic? Does any of this make any sense? I'm confused and I've read studies and written about health topics for years! There's a lot of inherited autoimmune disease in my family, especially on my mom's side, but only spotty diabetes connections. Glad to be a member here, especially because of my family history I've always been interested in diabetes. But maybe it's my other autoimmune diseases that occasionally skew my glucose results?
