I was in the hospital for a back injury. I had never been in the hospital before, I was scared, in pain and could hardly walk. The neurosurgeon told me Saturday night surgery was necessary or I would be in big trouble and if it was possible was even more scared than before. Sunday Morning the phlebotomist came in to draw blood for presurgery labs and by Sunday Night my primary doctor came in and said you have some problems with your cholesterol and blood sugar but we would talk more about it later. HUH? A few minutes later the nurse came in with a syringe and went for my arm. I said doesn’t the pain meds go in the iv? No, it was insulun. I still didn’t get it. One of my coworkers brought a basket of fancy cookies, and I ate every one before leaving the hospital. I even offered some to the nurses. They never said a word about what I was doing to myself. I left the hospital 5 days later with instructions to visit my primary doctor with nothing but a card which explained what a 1200 cal ADA diet looked like and a prescription for 500 mg metformin.
Fortunately I had 3 weeks at home to recover from the back surgery and did a lot of reading then took classes from a CDE which helped a lot. In two years I have gone from an A1c of 11.9 to 5.8 and have been able to keep it there. May 5, 2007
It was the first time I saw my father cry. I was nine. The nurse came into the exam room and told my family I had diabetes. My father started to cry and I gave him a hug and told him everything would be OK.
I lost about 25 pounds which was very significant when I am a athletic build to begin with and started out at 145, drinking water and getting up 10 times to go to the bathroom during the night. I was in high school and my friend had happened to have done a report on diabetes a few years back and recognized the symptoms. My mom, being a lab technologist drew up my blood and took it to test at work that day.
Meanwhile I’m at starbucks slurping down a frappacino!
We left for the hospital as soon as i walked in the door. I was in DKA and was admitted for 3 days!
The most memorable thing for me was the night after getting home from the hospital that was still the best sleep of my life, no trips to the bathroom and no noisy hospital!!
my story starts off with me reading the baby sitters club. one of the characters, stacey, had type 1. i remember reading about her symptoms and saying to my mom, “ma, i think i have diabetes.” of course, she scolded me and told me not to say such things.
however, she kept a close eye on me. she noticed i lost a ton of weight (i think 10 pounds in a month, which is a lot when you’re in 3rd grade and like, 3 feet tall). we’d go to the supermarket and i’d run to the bathroom every other aisle (and the other aisles were me running to the water fountain). finally, my dad took me to the doctor. i was diagnosed that morning with a bg of 327 mg/dl, which is fairly low considering where others have been when they were diagnosed.
the day i was diagnosed, i didn’t cry until i heard my mom crying over the phone when my dad told her the diagnosis. i started crying not because i was going to be different, but because i knew my parents were hurting (i’m the only child). in my 9-year-old mind, stacey got through it, even though she was a fictional character, and i would too.
thank god for the baby sitters club and my parents keeping a close eye on me!
I craved sugar so badly that I would have licked the paint off the walls had I thought it would have been sweet. I became a semi-crazed person driven by the compulsion to try and satisfy that craving. If there was someone between me and a source of sugar it took all I had not to elbow past them and lunge for it. I remember eating and eating and eating all day long and still loosing weight like crazy. I thougt it was possibly due to some supplements I was taking to help me lose.
It was the P.A. that I see for the annual exam who actually found it. She ordered routine bloodwork one year and all was fine. The following year in August, she called me one morning before work to tell me that my BG was over 300 and I needed to see a regular pysician ASAP.
The doctor who offically diagnosed me was a nazi and terrorized me so badly that I ran away from it completely for several years. It took me a quite some time before I sought help again. I was in a state of disbelief, hoping it was a mistake and that I could improve it through diet. Now, a couple of drs. later, I’ve found an absolutely wonderful dr. Her husband and son both have T1 so I feel that I am truly working with her rather than her dictating what I will do. I am very informed and committed to keeping my numbers down. She lets me work with things, experimenting, as I try to find what is going to work with me long term.
I remember it well… I had to change doctors cause our company got a new insurance and my PCP was’nt on the list. I wanted a female Dr. so I made an appt. and went to see her. Her nurse had called me earlier in the week to have blood work done so that Dr. G could have that for first Appt. ( what a great Dr. huh?) So when I sat with her she explained that i was Anemic and that i did not have good controll of my diabetes. ( Here is where the organ plays) What diabetes? MY mom was with me and she cried for me and prayed. My mom was the only other person with diabetes in my family. She has since passed due to complications of diabetes. And that DR. is still my PCP. I remember that first night i had to test my sugar I broke out into sweats . I could’nt test i was so frightened to poke my finger and now i had to do it forever…that was in March 1997…now i don’t give it a second thought i test 8 times a day… When my great nephew visits he always wants to see aunt Letty stick her finger with a needle. LOL now i"m just a circus act for the great nieces n nephews… LOL
OH and I forgot to add I also had very bad leg Cramps. And feet cramps … And still do… Today is a bad day…Thank God for Pain meds…Has anyone ever gotten an answer for this problem? Kristin? I believe u were the first to mention this…Anyone…?
I had lost about 20 pounds, really thirsty, and going to the bathroom a lot.
I, with my parents, was visiting my brother, who happened to be a medical resident, in Seattle. In the early morning, I woke up to go to the bathroom, which is something I’d never done before. So I took out my laptop and googled my symptoms and diabetes kept coming up. So I thought, “**** no, I don’t have that.” So I went to bed and woke up feeling a little strange but still up to a day of sightseeing. When we got back to my brother’s apartment, dad decided to get glucose strips to pee on. It changed to indicate the highest level of glucose. So we called my brother, who was on call for a 30 hour shift at the VA, and he told us to go to the ER immediately. So, we waited in the waiting room for about 2 hours watching Michael Phelps (Olympics were on). They finally had a room and when they checked my blood sugar; it was 295. So it was caught pretty early. My brother kept calling about every hour or so to check up. I was in the ER for a few hours and the next day they scheduled an appointment with their diabetes center.
I was so lucky that my brother was a doctor. He helped explain a lot. I also had a really hard time checking my blood sugar and working up the nerves to actually give myself insulin. He really helped in both of those. I guess I was pretty lucky with where and when I was diagnosed.
I never thought I was sick, I had lost over 50 lbs and collapsed at work one day, while I was out I was having seizures and was brought to a doctor. My blood glucose level was over 600 and I was in the stages of ketoacidosis. I was lucky enough to not have done too much damage to my kidneys, its a struggle everyday though.
I had all the symptom too, lost 40 pounds, always thursty, and going to the bathroom a lot, but I never thought I had diabetes, I’m very active and just thought I was over doing it, cause I felt fine, but about 2 months ago I had bad pains in my stomach and was passing blood so that really scare me. My brother took me to the Emergency Room and there was about 100 people waiting there, so he took me back home and called 911 cause he was worried. The paramedic checked me out and my BS was 303 and they took me too the hospital. The doctor told me the next day that I had Type2 diabetes, I ended up being in the hospital for 9 days. I thought my life was over. I didn’t know anything about diabetes. The people at the hospital was super nice and very helpful cheering me up and giving me info about diabetes. Two months later I’m feeling fine, I’m still active and have a great doctor,so I’m just taking it one day at a time and trying to stay positive. Good Luck everyone, and God Bless
Diabetics often get leg cramps as a result of losing many micronutrients in urine, as a result of needing to clear out excess glucose via it. So what happens is that the necessary levels of magnesium and potassium (perhaps other things too) drains away when you test high. Those things are needed to avoid or prevent leg cramps like this.
Of course it’s also important to know that these 2 minerals must be controlled very well. You can’t buy potassium in larger than 99mg tablets without a prescription, since potassium (especially) and magnesium levels need to be within a fairly small range. Too much or too little potassium can kill you, so check carefully with your doctor, who can guide you most precisely, at least if he understands such things well enough.
Actually I don’t remember much about it at all, since it was 53+ years ago, hit me when I was 5. Things have been related to me since though, so I can tell you something about it. I was getting sicker by the day in early April, 1956. Family hadn’t really had much reason to take any of us to any doctors, so they chose the doctor that lived next door. Poor choice, he said I was getting too much sun (we were Yankees in Richmond, VA…) and gave bad advice.
Mom kept asking him if it might be diabetes since her Grandfather had had it early in the 1900’s, and her sister developed it after they both were married, so Mom didn’t really know much about it. GP kept saying I couldn’t possibly have diabetes since I wasn’t an obese middle aged man… Mind you Type 1 diabetes, then known as Juvenile Onset diabetes, had only been clearly recognized and defined in 1952, 4 years before, and most doctors didn’t understand it at all yet.
BTW, you can see a write up about it at: http://www.alldiabeticinternational.org/mystorytedmarch2007.html
Anyway a week later I had such bad stomach pains and apparently flu that I begged to go to the hospital and they tookme the morning of Mom’s birthday. A surgeon saw the chart, decided I MUST have acute appendicitis, which matches some of the symptoms I had, and started operating. I went into diabetic coma on the operating table. Mom & Dad had called in a newly licensed pediatrician in the meantime who agreed immediatley that I had Juvenile Onset diabetes. As soon as he could after the operation he got me started on insulin, and I broke the hopsital’s record for initial insulin in a new dabetic: 1050 units (according to Dad).
So if anyone thinks diabetes is hard to correct now be glad you didn’t get it THEN. I’ve been training endos ever since, and many diabetics in vaiours computer networks since 1986.
It was right before Thanksgiving last year that I got what i thought was the flu. I’m in chiropractic school so I thought that when I didn’t get over the flu that it was just because I was run down from school. Right before Christmas I woke up with pain in my legs that was so bad I couldn’t walk. My friend took me to the ER and they did xrays and said that I needed to schedule an appointment with my primary because they think I have cancer. Well, that scared the **** out of me and I did as I was told. My primary ran tests and she literally said to me, “Well, everything looks good, you’re low in Potassium and your blood glucose is a little high (I got those labs and it wasn’t a little high, it was 270!!!), but I don’t know what to tell you about the pain that you’re having, but here’s some pain meds.”
I began to notice that I losing a little weight, not much, and that my liquid intake had doubled. I just ignored my body and pressed through school. I had failed a couple of classes which isn’t like me, I graduated magna cum laude and summa cum laude from Florida state.
The week before I was diagnosed, I was sick again with the “flu” and was pretty much useless. I missed a week of classes and then I woke up on a friday and was having trouble breathing. I thought, well, it’s just the flu, then I started throwing up. I called my mom, a RN, told her what was happening and she said for me to go on to the ER. I’m a bit stubborn and decided to sleep it off. I slept for 27 hours, interrupted by the bathroom breaks, and woke up on Saturday and felt a little better. I took my dog to the park and I got there and began getting ill. I couldn’t breathe and decided to text my sister-in-law to have her take me to the ER. I got there and the ER doc told me that I was having an asthma attack, I don’t have asthma, and that they were going to give me a breathing treatment and a shot of steroids and send me on my way with a script of prednisone to take at home. On the way home, I had my SIL stop off at mcdonalds because I had to have a Coke. I drank three 32oz Cokes in 10 minutes. I went home and laid down. I woke up 6 hours later and couldn’t move. My SIL called me and I couldn’t physically pick up my phone. Thankfully, she decided to come over to my apartment and found me. She took me to the ER and I was taken back and the ER doc said that he wouldn’t leave my room until he figured out what’s wrong. When they finally got blood to send to the lab and the report came back, the ER doc said to me that I didn’t tell them I had diabetes and that my BS was 972. My SIL told him I didn’t have diabetes and he said well, now she does! I was obviously in DKA and was very sick.
Three days in ICU and eight on another floor, I learned how to give myself shots, count carbs, and all the other wonderful things we do on a daily basis. It’s been a little over 2 months since my diagnosis and I’ve learned so much, but yet there’s so much i don’t know, it’s amazing.
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I was in the doctors waiting room (waiting to be seen because I had stepped on a twig and my foot had become infected) and a child was being terribly mean to my son, taunting him with toys to the point where I said “STOP!” After they put me in the exam room, they wouldn’t let me leave because my blood pressure was so high. They took some blood, the doctor came in and I don’t recall the banter about the foot infection but I do recall he yelled in my face “you’re diabetic!” as if to blame. I was so shocked because it seemingly came out of the blue, him reacting that way. To this day, I still zone out when I think about it. I don’t know what I said or did to deserve that. I found out not long after he left that office so I don’t know if he was just biding his time there or what. The only symptom I really had was thirst.
It was May, 1973 and I was 6. I was in First Grade and I got what the school thought was the flu. I was sitting on my teacher’s lap when my Dad and Mom came to pick up my identical twin and I with the baby in the backseat. Since I was sick, I sat up front on Mom’s lap. We went home and I got to spend the rest of the afternoon on the couch and the only thing I wanted was water. I had to go upstairs every 15 minutes to pee & Mom thought it was another kidney infection. After drinking water all evening, I went to bed on the bathroom floor with a towel mattress and a blanket. The next day was water, water, water until supper. I was so hungry I ate 3 pork chops, 2 large helpings of mashed potatoes, and even WANTED cooked carrots, something I actually detest to this day. My Dad was 26 and blue collar auto mechanic and ate a lot for dinner. I out ate him but was only 37 lbs and about 40 inches tall. My twin had been growing, but not me. Then, a few days later the vomitting began and would not stop. I ended up being carried into the ER by my Dad and remember the glass IV bottles and them hooking up IV’s and taking blood, but never moved because I was soooo sick. My blood sugar was 790 and the doctors were amazed that I was even talking. My hospital stay lasted the last 2 weeks of first grade and I missed the field trips to the Post Office and the Fire Station. That is the most vivid memory I recall about the day of dx.
MY D-day was horrible really i was with my grandma auntie mom and 3 of my cousins. I had been loosing weight for the past 3 weeks i wouldnt eat to much because i felt i was to fat so the loosing weight part seemed normal to me also urinating frequently for some reason seemed normal why? because it’s only ovious if you drink plenty of water you must pee it out so that was “normal” for me i had work that Feb. 7 2009 I had a cold as well i called in sick that day my mom took to Tijuana M.X.we went to a “good” doctor told me i just had a virus that’s around and gave me a shot of penacilin afterwards i would always want to get candy or something like that but this time i didnt we went to eat at a Seafood place called EL NEGRO DURAZO really good place ate there ordered a large HORCHATA that skyrocketed my BS I felt woozy i thiought it was the cold. We were on our way back i threw up and my mom’s new car funny thing it didnt smell it smelled sweet all of my family thought i was weird my mom thought i got food poisining once home she took me to the Emergency Room once there waiting for them to call my name i Started blacking out i didnt know who i was where i was at why was i threre i remember telling my mom “i dont feel good” dont remember nothing just sometimes i would wake up for a slight moment hearing my mom call my dad and telling him i was Diabetic and also calling my Step-dad to bring her some clothes 1 WEEK IN A HOSPITAL I was realeased Feb.14 I spend all my day at home not able to take my girlfriend out to eat like we had planed It changed my life a lot
I remember that I had been going to Planned Parenthood over and over because I had a yeast infection that would not go away. I was pretty grumpy about it because I thought I was turning into one of those women with chronic yeast infections, and I didn’t have all the money in the world to take care of it… And nothing was working. I remember I was so exhausted, and taking a bus out there, and walking to the clinic was not… the easiest thing to do. Once I got there, and the doc was trying to help me… she seemed kind of peeved that I was there again, but she had a hunch, and on a hunch, she took a urine sample and tested it for glucose. Sure enough, I was really high. She looked pale, and livid… when she was telling me that it was really, really high… and that I needed to go get some labs done at the hospital. Right then, I knew I had Diabetes… because all the memories of my dad, with ants in the toilette bowl because his urine was so sweet, came rushing back… I remember I walked over to the Subway, had lunch there… thinking it was ‘healthy’… and then I went home… and I swear, everything after that… is like a black out. It was like my body shut down, on it’s own. I didn’t faint, or pass out… But it wasn’t even 5 pm, and I couldn’t keep going anymore. I fell asleep on the armchair, and didn’t even test my blood sugar because I thought that was something you only did fasting, for some reason (my husband had a glucose meter of his own, because he also has Diabetes… but wasn’t very informed either…) The next morning, my fasting was 235… I was having problems seeing, problems walking well, or very far, problems breathing at night sleeping, problems with severe Depression, charlie horses, problems with my hair falling out… constant problems with nausea, vomiting, and diarrhea… For a while, it was just like I only had a ‘little window’ every day, of life. And then I would shut down again, and would not be able to do any more after that. It was pretty hard. I’d wake up every morning at 5 am, scared to death, to check my blood sugar, and to make sure I’d have a breakfast… and not skip meals, and fall asleep by 5 pm. For a while, my family was skeptical… they thought I was exaggerating, or dramatizing… I went from having low blood sugar issues, to high blood sugar issues… and I didn’t even notice. What difference 6 months can make, as I have so much energy now, and my fastings are usually 70-80s, now…
I was 14 years old on vacation visiting my cousin in TN. I had been peeing NON-STOP. Literally pull the car over, I’d go, come out of the bathroom and head straight back in. I was drinking more, so we attributed it to that. Of course I was still ingesting sugar all the while… I had a wretched stomach ache that turned into violent vomiting. I had one day reprieve and thought I was getting better, and then quickly went downhill. My Aunt thinking I had a stomach flu, left me in the back bedroom, and my cousin (same age) was so thoughtful bringing me gallons to drink. I was so thirsty. That night is a blur to me, and my mom arrived the next day to stay for a few days prior to us heading home. By that time I could not see at all. Could not stand, could barely speak, was green, and was panting. I had lost 30lbs virtually overnight. She saw me, flipped out, they carried me to the car, and we rushed to the nearest ER. I then fell out of the wheelchair, they asked my mom how long I had been diabetic and she was like “what? she’s not!” and they were like, well she is now, and we can’t treat her here. My sugar was around 1000. I told my mom I felt myself “going away.” So, one ambulance ride later on the verge of coma, a week and a half stay at U.T. Medical center, and lots of poking and prodding, I made it Funniest part? My best friend whom was back home awaiting my homecoming called my grandma and asked if I was home yet. My Granny told her “no, she’s still in TN and is in a coma. Here is her number, give her a call.” huh??? My friend dialed up my room, I answered and she said “are you in a coma…how are you speaking?” Haha. We still laugh about that to this day
afterwards i would always want to get candy or something like that but this time i didnt we went to eat at a Seafood place called EL NEGRO DURAZO really good place ate there ordered a large HORCHATA that skyrocketed my BS I felt woozy i thiought it was the cold. We were on our way back i threw up and my mom’s new car funny thing it didnt smell it smelled sweet all of my family thought i was weird my mom thought i got food poisining once home she took me to the Emergency Room once there waiting for them to call my name i Started blacking out i didnt know who i was where i was at why was i threre i remember telling my mom “i dont feel good” dont remember nothing just sometimes i would wake up for a slight moment hearing my mom call my dad and telling him i was Diabetic and also calling my Step-dad to bring her some clothes 1 WEEK IN A HOSPITAL I was realeased Feb.14 I spend all my day at home not able to take my girlfriend out to eat like we had planed It changed my life a lot
Funniest part? My best friend whom was back home awaiting my homecoming called my grandma and asked if I was home yet. My Granny told her “no, she’s still in TN and is in a coma. Here is her number, give her a call.” huh??? My friend dialed up my room, I answered and she said “are you in a coma…how are you speaking?” Haha. We still laugh about that to this day