Hi everyone. I’m a mom of a 12 year old with aspergers who was recently (this past week) diagnosed with diabetes based on a few blood tests and A1C (12, then 10 repeated). Here is our story, and a few questions…
I was diagnosed with T2 in April. I am overweight and had high triglycerides, blood pressure, elevated liver enzymes—the whole works. My genes plus lifestyle choices made this possible, but in that short amount of time, I’ve lowered my bg to non diabetic range, lost weight, and all my labs are now great. Docs are impressed. No drugs or insulin. I believe with continued fitness and diet changed, I will stay normal (fbs 80s, daily 80-105 max).
So when my son was thirstier than before and had been eating a really crappy diet (the goal with his sensory issues was to get calories in and let him just “graze”, he was so picky about all foods), I decided to just test him. He isn’t overweight so I hadn’t considered diabetes, and we don’t have a significant family history (just great uncles/my great grandmother), but he has a spare tire around his waist. He hasn’t lost weight, he’s gained, gotten stockier but is still average size. He isn’t as active as I’d like, plays video games a lot, and just wanders around outside—not driven to move. He is great at karate though.
Anyway, his fbs was 200. He then ate some pancakes with real maple syrup (quite a liberal amount according to dad who fed him) and he spiked to 400, then 500…I took him to the local (non pediatric) ER (this is over July 4 weekend) and they didn’t give him anything. He had glucose in his urine, and was sent home with instructions from our pediatrician to just treat with low carb until office hours which was in two days. We did, no carbs but berries and veggies, and he dropped down to 90s-100s, consistently.
The Ped swore he was normal and didn’t have diabetes. She took his blood, he had no glucose in urine, didn’t fit either type 1 or 2 profiles, and just said we’d wait for the A1c. She was shocked the next day when it came back at 12! She didn’t understand. So she said we just caught it early and said if he had large ketones to go ahead and bring him to the ER. He did (largely from the lchf diet he’d been enjoying), so we went. He was rosy, chipper, and at the ER (children’s this time, downtown) they thought he looked great, assumed he had type one bc of age and non-obese and we just caught it VERY early…even though it looked like he had had elevated bg for some time. The ER doc told him he could have a bunch of high carb crap and of course he ate it, which sent him over 300+ with ketones, so I was pretty pissed off at that point.
We still had not taken insulin. Five days, no insulin, bg 90-mid 100s on just diet.
The next day we met with the endo and she said we had to wait on the anti bodies testing which would confirm his diagnosis, but they were still pretty certain he was type 1 bc of age and not obese. We started him that night on 3 units of lantus and that’s it. His bg has remained in the 90-130 range (with a couple of 160 spikes when he’d eaten something more carby) but nothing has really changed. His fasting bg is still 100-115.
Is it weird that I am suspicious that he has type 1? I honestly thought that came on pretty quickly, and this was NOT the case with our son. His presented quite similarly as my own T2, around the same time frame, after the same (unfortunate) habits. He has had no viral infection, no injections/immunizations, and no other symptoms aside from drinking more water and peeing more. I know about the “honeymoon” period…but I also assumed that was after a child had a significant DKA event which prompted diagnosis, then responded really well to insulin treatment/had to decrease amount. We’ve been steady across the board.
I want to brace myself for the inevitability that he is, in fact, T1-insulin dependent, but he really doesn’t fit the mold. His diet and activity level seems more T2, our lack of T1 in our family, but I definitely could be wrong. Sorry for the length, but I’d love your thoughts.