Please look at what happened to me. I have never seen someone with such a similar diagnosis as me. I feel your pain, I was not diagnosed type 1 until 26 years old.
Chicken pox did it for me.
The death of my husband is what I think triggered it. I thought I was loosing weight due to stress. WRONG!
Life…
I had the flu and chickenpox within a month of each other. I also was losing weight and had unquenchable thirst at 11 years old. Got diagnosed when my bg was 48 (my normal is supposed to be 5-8 in case anyone else uses the other bg measuring system)
I read somewhere once long ago that large babies had some tendency for developing diabetes. I have never really been overweight, but I did weigh 10 lbs 14 ounces at birth. Always made me wonder. I do agree with Jen that getting sick kind of prior to diagnosis is due to the beta cells dying off. I dropped like 70 lbs in 3 ½ months prior to diagnosis. Luck of the draw I guess.
I think its common for us to all have a hypothesis. "What in the world happened!?"
My first personal hypothesis starts when I was around 17. I was undergoing a lot of testing to determine whether or not I may have had Lupus (which if anyone knows, is a bag full of tricks to diagnose). I had a lot of internal inflammation and some swelling of my extremities and lips/throat accompanied by some intense headaches. So, this may have been a starting point; considering the destruction of B cells in the pancreas/autoimmune disorders are directly associated with crazy amounts of internal inflammation.
My second hypothesis corresponds with my taking of Seroquel from age 16-diagnosis at 20. Seroquel is an anti-psychotic drug associated with Bi-polar disorder/Schizophrenia. Do I really think I needed Seroquel? Who knows. Its what I was prescribed and I complied. Studies have shown that Seroquel can be directly linked to causing T1/T2 diabetes due to its high glucose/sugar concentration and unknown effects on the pancreas.
So maybe it was a combination of my bodies slow onset of personal rebellion and outside factors. I guess I'll never truly know. Either way, my B cells are shot and I'm gonna keep trucking along with this disorder forever :)
I think mental/physical trauma/stress is highly underrated for a cause of T1 diabetes! Your story seems very similar to others and a part of my own story that I did not share. Hopefully more research will be done on that front :)
Brianna, it is just ignorance but we are doing our best to educate people, that is about all we can do then move on. I think it makes many people upset, my family does not even know what it takes, they see me taking my needles, or using my pump but they do not know how many times or what I go through in a day, they are blind to it. We know that we are doing what is right for us and if we aren't we can change that in time people will understand.
i had a cold & was given amoxicillin & claritin. I had been really sick for a few weeks. I finally ran out of breath simply brushing my teeth & didnt have enough energy to reach and get a shirt off of a hanger. My cousin had recently been diagnosed, so my parents knew it was time to bring me in.
Go figure, it was diabetes and my endo contributed it to the amoxicillin attacking my pancreas instead of the virus.
it obviously is in my family (since my cousin got it too) so that genetic predisposition would have probably made it come out, but perhaps later in life.
the amoxicillin and being sick got me.
I have no idea but I feel like there's a multitude of things that could of lead to it. I wonder how long I've had it though, my blood glucose was not tested at all in my life other than maybe when I was a baby? I can't find anything about it on anything in the past, so I have to wonder due to having symptoms for years, if I'm lucky to be alive? My earliest possible symptoms were in the summer of 2012 though.
What I suspect:
-I was born prematurely (at 29 weeks) and my immune system eventually worked against me, who knows when though.
-The time I got really sick on my 21st birthday kicked it off and I somehow survived that long without a diagnosis (that would be November 2011)
- Some various employment related stress in summer of 2012 could of triggered it. I was dating a guy and I realized how much I had to urinate and I had constant urges to urinate and it kinda disrupted a few of our dates. That could still VERY EASILY follow the previous theory though too. After that I had pretty frequent urination especially when stressed/anxious (stress is a huge trigger for blood sugar swings for me even if I eat like crap, if I'm happy and stress free, no swings)
-The stress from losing my job in may of last year made me like suicidal level depressed and stressed my body to the limit. That's the only way I'd say it was quick as that would mean just regular ol' fast onset type 1 because I was diagnosed on June 14th/15th which would be about 5-6 weeks after losing my job.
I think all of these sound pretty reasonable
My immune system sucked from the very childhood, so I do not even question that my diabetes is directly linked to that, especially that I have hypotheroidism too now. So, yes, I had a very bad flue and after 6 month I was diagnosed with diabetes.
I still can't believe science is still so premature that can't even tell the root cause of the disease, i guess once they will know will be much easier to find cure, but again that is like a dream zone...
My youngest was diagnosed at 11. No other known T1s in my husband’s or my families, but other autoimmunes in both. I have 3 myself. She was much healthier than her older siblings…rarely sick until her T1 diagnosis. Oddly, she now seems to come down with every bug going around.
I don’t remember a single illness during the 4 years prior to her diagnosis, so I can’t pinpoint a trigger. With what we’ve learned over the last 4 1/2 years, I believe there were signs something was amiss from very early on. Tummy issues started when she was about 3 months old. I’ve read this is common. Normal birth weight but she was the biggest kid in her class the first 3 years of school. Wetting accidents that, in hindsight, always happened on “party” days at school where full day sweets consumption was the norm. Days when she seemed to just be exhausted & would sleep most of the day, with no symptoms of illness. Her pediatricians through the years always had explanations for behavior/symptoms, but her glucose was never checked. During the year before diagnosis, she had more frequent stomache aches, & began complaining of headaches. These usually followed odd/unruly behavior. Her very active dance classes almost always ended with headaches, & she could barely stay awake when she got home. The weight loss was so gradual I put it down to puberty…she was just losing her “baby fat” & the 2 inches she’d grown in height was redistributing what was left.
I believe she was genetically predisposed, & her beta cells were slowly being attacked all along. The onset of puberty just helped speed up the process.
My daughter had flu shot before she was diagnosed and I really think this set it off. She was diagnosed at 18 months of age.
I had strep twice in the prior 5 or 6 months to my diagnosis. I got sick in the middle of a test at school, and went to the doctor that same day. I had lost 20lbs in the month between my last round of strep and that trip to the doctor.
I went to a diabetes camp with other kids who had also contracted strep just prior to their diagnosis as well.
My pediatric endo gave us the same theory my parents came up with, that the strep virus triggered the T1.
I have no other family members with T1. My uncle and grandmother both had T2, but were diagnosed much later in life than I was (age 8).
viral. No family history.
I was a blue baby, and had the sterile hospital environment. I think that is what set it up, as I do have a lot of problems with my health. Then it was the flu I think that triggered T1 into action for me. That is my thoughts.......
I had pneumonia just before Christmas when I was two. Not long after they found the diabetes just before my third birthday. We do have a family history of diabetes. My great grandmother on my dads side. And we don’t know who on my moms side.
I was too awesome and God thought I may get out of control...so he gave me diabetes to keep me in line.
...Jokes...the only thing I can think of is that it was hereditary. Genes. Something was wired in my body wrong. My sister has it too and shes 3 years older than me and was diagnosed before I was.
My belief about why I was diagnosed was that when I was a infant I was given cows milk. The way that your body sees cow milk is pretty much the same way it sees your pancreas. And your body will attack the cows milk anitbodies (since they're not supposed to be there anyway) and then your body gets confused and starts attacking anything that resembles the cow milk. And thats pretty much my theory on what happened to me.