What would have happened?

[chili]

As above generic question regarding diabetes. I was diagnosed as type 2 in 2011 ish, now the only reason i went to the docs was because i kept feeling tired, i worked in the steel industry which was quite hard anyway so i put my tiredness down to the job working 14hr days and nights, but i was tired on a morning after a good nights sleep hence visited the doc and was given glucose test at local hospital and told type2.

So what would of happened had i not gone to the docs, carried on eating all those lovely carbs i would of generally been oblivious to my diabetes.
How did you find you had diabetes by chance/luck/hereditary?

 

[Northerner]

Sadly, many people do not visit their doctor and put all the symptoms down to various other things going on in their lives - I know, I did this myself, and didn't even take the hint when I found myself drinking 30-40 pints of milk a week to try and quench my thirst, not knowing that my body was craving the sugar/lactose in it because my brain believed I wasn't getting enough! 😱

However, in a way I was fortunate to contract a stomach virus which tipped my pancreas' ability to marginally cope with things over the edge, and I ended up in A&E with diabetic ketoacidosis. If I hadn't got ill, I suspect I would have carried on for many more months oblivious to the fact that I didn't need to feel so tired, thirsty and depressed so much of the time With Type 2 it can be even worse, with people running high blood sugar levels for ten years or more without getting diagnosed, and possibly the first real signs of things going wrong might be developing complications

Over the years on this forum I have read of all sorts of reasons why people got diagnosed, and it is often pure chance when they are being tested/examined for something else, or in a health event at work - some people experience no symptoms whatsoever, even with levels in the 20s 😱 This is why the events that Diabetes UK organise in cities around the country are important for getting people to have a quick test and questionnaire, and hopefully getting diagnosed before it becomes a huge problem for them 🙂

 

[grovesy]

I read somewhere quite some time ago that a high proportion of Type 2 Diabetics can have had for number of years before diagnosis, and there is a high number predicated to be walking around without knowing it!
People might have complications from having it untreated. I believe they automatically check blood glucose on people with or suspected heart attacks!
Personally I had in my family, and for 4 years impaired glucose tolerance( now tends to be called Pre Diabetes), I was initially tested as blood pressure slightly elevated. I for 4 years had annual testing!

 

[AJLang]

Untreated diabetes can lead to complications which can possibly include blindness, kidney failure and amputations!! Treated diabetes can still cause complications but the risks are much, much less than if the diabetes is not treated effectively.

 

[Mark Parrott]

I had a sore tongue for ages so went to the docs. There were no obvious signs of what was causing it so they did a blood test. Things is I got a phone call just 2 days later as they were concerned about my HbA1c, but not from the blood test that had just been performed (the results weren't back yet) but a blood test I had 6 months earlier & wasn't picked up at the time (it was 56, which should've been noticed). I made a complaint to the original doctor who checked those blood test results & although he did apologise for this oversight, he didn't think a HbA1c of 56 was too concerning! So I have still shoving cherry bakewells down my cake hole totally oblivious to the fact I had Type 2!

 

[Lilian]

I am not a person who normally gets headaches, so when I kept getting excruciating headaches at week ends only, I decided to go to the doctor about them. He asked me to go away and drop a sample of my urine into the surgery that day. I did and about an hour later I got a telephone call from him to come into him that afternoon as I have diabetes. As my mother, her mother and all her brothers and sisters had diabetes I was not surprised. Why the week ends. Well during the week I worked, missed lunch going for a walk or working, hardly ate anything as I was busy looking after home and family as well. Week ends would be time for cake for tea, ice cream, a roast dinner with potatoes, Yorkshire etc. starting off with a Friday night Chinese takeaway.

 

[Ralph-YK]

I was lethargic and tired for a couple of years. A lot worse in the second year. I did mention it to a doctor. No tests were done. 8 months later I had my second bout of cellulitis (infection in the legs), was admitted to hospital where they asked "are you diabetic?" Then they told me 10 days later that I'm T2
First infection was in January, second in December of the same year.

 

[eggyg]

Well mine's a strange one, I was waiting for diabetes! I had a partial pancreatectomy and was told either I would come round from surgery totally type one diabetic or not. I didn't luckily and managed to hold it off for three years, I was told if I felt unwell at all I was to go to GP and it was also recommended I bought a meter. I was even put on metformin! I lost weight, watched what I ate but the inevitable happened, I have never suffered the extreme highs some of you do, but I believe that's down to watching my diet knowing what was going to happen. I am now on insulin, my little bit of pancreas I have left is dying I'm afraid. I have a Freestyle Libre and try and eat a low carb high protein diet, it's the only way I can keep my numbers down. I have no complications, eyes are fine and I have been told I have a "smashing" pair of feet! It's not easy but without the op I may not be here!

 

[Stitch147]

I Found out by chance as I had no symptoms. I went to a health fair where I work and they done a finger prick test that came back at 26.4. She gave me a letter to take to my gp and 2 weeks later I got the diagnosis from the Dr. I do often wonder what would have happened if I hadnt gone along to that health fair.

 

[Ljc]

Back in the 90s I had a uti , sugar showed up on the dipstick test the GP did.
I had absolutely no symptoms, a few months later at the diabetic clinic at st George's hospital I was told I'd had it for at least 10 yrs and it had already affected my kidneys.

 

[pottersusan]

'So I'll be diabetic after having my pancreas removed', says I to surgeon. '
'Yes', says he.
'Will I be T1 or T2?', says I.
'Yes!', says he.
Which sums up my weird and wonderful diabetes.

 

[Amigo]

I had a family history of type 2 and it was always a concern to me. To some extent I was in denial because although I'd had regular blood tests, they were always on the acceptable side of high. I had a hospital admission for sepsis and an infection of unknown origin. Even though I was in nearly a week and had all the symptoms, the one thing they didn't check were my BG's which seems incredible to me now. They checked it on admission, it was 8.6, not re-checked but were concentrating on another possible diagnosis and missed the most obvious. What's absolutely crazy to me is one of the Consultants overseeing the ward I was on is actually an endocrinologist! He was convinced my infection was something entirely unrelated and life threatening.

It was the nocturnal peeing that eventually took me to my GP about 4 months later. By then my legs hurt, my feet were burning and my sight a bit blurred. The rest they say is history....

 

[Lindarose]

My diagnosis was fairly straightforward. There is a lot of type 2 in my family plus an aunt who's now in her 80's had gestational diabetes and I believe is still on insulin. I asked for a check and got a GP phone call to repeat the test. That was it! Better to know!

 

[eggyg]

'So I'll be diabetic after having my pancreas removed', says I to surgeon. '
'Yes', says he.
'Will I be T1 or T2?', says I.
'Yes!', says he.
Which sums up my weird and wonderful diabetes.

But if you add type 1 and type 2 together Susan that comes to Type 3 which is apparently what we have. So he was right in a way! Lol!

 

[pottersusan]

But if you add type 1 and type 2 together Susan that comes to Type 3 which is apparently what we have. So he was right in a way! Lol!

Yes! Then his colleague told me I am T0!

I think I'll stick with 'Susan's diabetes' , but I will ask my new consultant when I meet her in a few weeks...

 

[trophywench]

A gang of us decided yesterday that Type 3 was actually what our spouses/partners get when we're diagnosed - let's face it - they have to deal with the ups and downs and adjust their heads to look at menus etc with half their eye on 'What can Jen have on here?' - to know that we have to carry hypo remedies and all sorts of extra baggage when we step outside of our homes - much more than a casual observer would. Especially with older men (not certain it's changed much with the younger ones!) 'the wife' suddenly has to know a lot more about the content of her menus than she ever dreamt she would need to, too.

They may not actually HAVE diabetes - but diabetes absolutely affects their lives.

 

[malturn]

I started loosing weight and drinking gallons of water, as a first-aider at work I knew that one of the ladies in the office was type 1 so I aksed her if she thought it might be diabetes. She told me she would bring her meter in with her in the afternoon which she did and tested me 😱 Her meter just said HI?😱 and she almost dragged me to the drs. Telling me that I must get to him ASAP . At the time my reading was over 12 in old money so they put me straight onto Metformin and Gliclazide. This was about 1998ish. Now on Insulin and feeling much better.

 

[Diabeticliberty]

In answer to the first question posed which was 'What would have happened?' Nobody knows the answer. I suspect your health would have deteriorated and you would have started to feel steadily worse over a period of time but maybe not since we are all different and to varying degrees the condition affects us all very differently. Regarding your second question 'How was I personally diagnosed?'. Coincidentally enough I suppose, I had felt absolutely dreadful forever. When one of my friends caught a cold and passed it on then I would be laid up for 3 weeks with with chest infections or similar. Looking back I had been like this for about 2 years but oblivious of the underlying cause. Then one Christmas I got really ill. We went out for food and I ate 3 spoonfuls of rice in a Chinese restaurant and drank 24 pints of orange juice and kept going the toilet. On the way home I asked my girlfriend who I later married (not that night, of course) to stop at a McDonald's as I was being questioned heavily as to,why I was not eating anything? I picked up a Big Mac and when we got home took a bite out of it. When my girlfriend went to the toilet I stuffed the Big Mac in my pocket as I was really embarrassed as I thought I had developed an eating disorder I was extremely thin at that time. I went and saw my doctor who would have struggled to diagnose lycanthropy had I been foaming at the mouth and barking at a full moon. He diagnosed me with 'overactive nerves in my stomach' and gave me a prescription. I took it to the chemist who ripped up the prescription and sent me merrily back to my doctor. He gave me a script to memorise to tell my doctor and insisted under no circumstances could I tell my doctor that my chemist had diagnosed my condition. My doctor, whom it seems strangely out of place to actually call a doctor, Coco The Clown with a stethoscope seems far more appropriate gave me a blood test and 30 minutes later I was in hospital on an insulin drip and practicing self injections with half an orange. 2 weeks later I went home and 32 years later here I am posting some rather ropey jokes and generally being a pain in the arse to most of you 🙄

 

[Ljc]

@Diabeticliberty .Thank god for that chemist else we might not be enjoying your jokes now.

 

[khskel]

Had I not been admitted to hospital with Ulcerative colitis I would have been an emergency admission with DKA within a few days. With hindsight I had all the classic symptoms, constant thirst, weight loss, peeing for Britain, total loss of appetite, general weakness and in addition I was passing blood. Convinced I had bowel cancer I was quite relieved when it was only T1D