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Sugarbum

Sugarbum

Well-Known Member
Relationship to Diabetes
Type 1
I have my 4th diabetes birthday on February 14th and I always find I am reflective in the time coming up to it, perhaps looking for clues or signs of what was happening to me and my body at that time.

Knowing what we know about certain stresses in life can contribute to the onset of Type 1 diabetes, I have looked through my diary, tried to trace my shift pattern, all sorts of things, Im genuinely interested in what was going on in my life at the time but perhaps I am also seeking 'the answer'.

Has anyone on here found anything interesting out about their diagnosis time?

Not knowing the 'trigger' I find harder to accept than knowing it I think. Does that make any sense?

Curious as to whether anyone else has these thoughts?

Lou x
 
Yeah Lou totally my 1st anniversary as i call it in in 3 days and alot lately i have been thinking if only id looked after myself alot more and got my absesses seen to earlier that is what triggered my diagnosis, i left them for ages as i was to nervous to go to the doctor and thought ohh they will go away but of course they got worse i kick myself most days thinking if only if only but i guess i cant dwell.
 
The nurse I saw yesterday asked if I had a virus that they think triggered it. As far as I can remember I didn't have anything wrong with me before the symptoms started, so I have no idea why I was randomly given type 1!

Do you have it in the family Lou? No one in my blood-related family has Diabetes, i'm just that lucky :(
 
katie said:
The nurse I saw yesterday asked if I had a virus that they think triggered it. As far as I can remember I didn't have anything wrong with me before the symptoms started, so I have no idea why I was randomly given type 1!

Do you have it in the family Lou? No one in my blood-related family has Diabetes, i'm just that lucky :(
Click to expand...

no immediate family have diabetes in my family i have 1 type 1 uncle .
 
I think I know what my trigger was. I was really badly bullied at school for years and at the time was about to sit exams etc and I really felt overwhelmed but everything plus we were going through stress within the family and I am a massive worrier... I worry and stress over things almost till my head explodes. I think the combination of all these factors were my trigger
 
My dad is type 2 and my mums brother.

I could probably have delayed it or reduced the effects by being slimmer and fitter, but with everything else going on, I didn't always have time.

Growing up I remember my mum off and on diets, and being on the big side it put me off exercising. I wish I'd had a slimming buddy and a fitness friend then, wouldn't mind them now either...
 
I have no idea why diabetes picked me, health was fine, stress levels were fine, was a bit overweight but otherwise its a mystery, have been told that diabetes can 'just happen' so guess that's always made it easier for me to accept? x
 
Exactly one year to the day (well almost) before Alex got diabetes - he had an absess on his bottom (hope he doesnt read this!) and needed surgery to remove it. From that day he suffered with 'odd' feelings like shaking when he came home from school and needing a banana very quickly. Also he would feel full of energy and a bit hyper - obviously high levels etc..So the clues were there - but i didnt know i was supposed to be looking...Just thought he was a bit more willfull than my girls had been! He was also quite sweaty at night time and i had to remove his quilt etc..He also started using the loo in the night for about 5 months before diagnosis...but i thought it was just a 'boy' thing!😱


His great great great great grandmother died of diabetes type 1 (well we think she did as it said on her death cert that she had gone blind and lost half her body weight within 3 weeks - put down to natural causes - but this was in 1902 or something!) - so lots of reasons why we should have *known* but we missed them all...🙄

Anyway, I hope you dont feel to upset on the anniversary - it affects people in different ways. When it was Alex's 1st year in November I didnt mention it to him - not sure what to say - but he remembered and i asked if he wanted it to be a 'special' day - but he looked horrified and said 'why would i want to celebrate remembering a time when i used to be normal'?:(Bev x
 
I had my 10 years aniversarry 2 days ago and have also been feeling very reflective with it being a bit of a landmark.

I hadn't really thought about what triggerred off my diabetes. It is interesting though. I was going to get diabetes it was in my genes but no specific clues as to when. So why that particular time? I'd been bullied at school, was quite low at that time, already had the start of an eating disorder that I struggled with for more than 5 years. So maybe it was all the stress of the time.

I hope that being reflective doesn't get you down. I know I was feeling pretty sad about it all, but then I have to look at the positives and the plans I am making currently wouldn't have happened without diabetes.
 
Piecing things together, it seems that I may have started losing beta-cell fuction from mid-2006. I was under a lot of stress at work due to a takeover and outsourcing of jobs, and felt it was affecting my health so I quit. From that time I began losing weight (although I hadn't been over weight). I progressively lost 2 stone until mid-2008 when I caught a virus that probably scuppered my ailing pancreas and sent me into DKA. The DSN said later that my running had probably helped me to spin out whatever insulin I was producing by making me more sensitive to it, but with hindsight I had a lot of clear symptoms. So I'm probably a LADA(Type 1.5) although never diagnosed as such.

The spooky think is that I had a dream in 2006, very vivid, which perfectly matched my experience in hospital when I was in the cardiac ward. I seriously wondered whether I was alive or dead. The dream had been one of the reasons I quit my job.😱

I will be celebrating my second anniversary this year, like last year, with a visit yo a beer festival🙂
 
I pretty sure it was stress and my own abuse of my body that brought on my diabetes. I was in my final year at uni, very depressed, and had had full on bulimia for about 2 years. I dont think my pancreas could cope with the mixed messages it was getting any more.
 
oh gosh we share a d-day 😱 and ten years apart too 😱
 
I have always been very overweight and every few years they would test me and my levels would come back "normal". My Maternal Grandmother developed T2 as did my Father and looking back I think my Paternal Grandmother had T2 not long before she died but was never diagnosed. So I have it going through both lines 😱 I think there are/were other cases in the maternal side of the family (estranged so dont know the medical history of any of them). So although I meet all the criteria, used to eat rubbish very overweight etc I am convinced I have the genetic predisposition to T2, maybe if I had taken more care of myself I would have been non-diabetic longer but who knows...
 
When I "caught" this thing a load of people said why why why, I didn't have the energy to, but have thought a bit since, but to no conclusion, I thought I was begining to be more healthy, drinking less, eating better, stress wasn't high, but not low. Maybe the drinking less stopped my levels going back down low, and I had been on the alcohol controlled method/diet for years before I knew it??

Hope you somehow manage to find a way to either forget about your annivesary date (I'm trying to forget about my D day!), and the quest to why, or get some answers from something.

Best wishes

Rossi
 
Wow- people have shared some really interesting and personal experiences, thanks.

I cant really link it to why it happened at that time. I had been working in a new job in a really busy Emergency Department working a bizarre pattern of days and nights and it took a fair while to take it it all on board, quite stressful, but nothing I can signficantly remember as why it got me there and then.

When my father developed Type 1, he was about my age. My mum was just pregnant with me so I wonder that is the reason why it hit me and not my older sister as no doubt his sugars were high. I am pretty sure from what I now know about my family at that time his onset was stress related and he went to prison not long after.

I think maybe I reflect like this almost because I feel he has his reason and I wonder what mine was.

Im not down about it, just thoughtful.

Like you Nikki, things in my life wouldnt have happened if I hadnt have got diabetes so that is something.
 
I got ill while I was studying abroad so I do wonder if it was related to that in some way, stresses, change of life style, exposure to different viruses or something. It's impossible to say what it actually was though I guess. I am pretty certain though that the living abroad caused the length of time between me starting to get ill and being diagnosed, I put the thirst down to the hot weather, weight loss down to the different food etc ( I was in America so how I didn't twig that it would be more likely for my weight to go the other way I don't know!). A lot of the diabetics I know became ill while abroad or on holiday so I often wonder what that link is.
I do tend to mark (celebrate seems the wrong word) my d day each year, more to distract myself than anything else, and an excuse for cake of course...
 
Yeah, I was on holiday when I started to get ill as well, although only in Scotland! But it was also the week that my Grandma died - I didn't find out that she'd passed away til later in the week, but I was stressed about it as we knew she was ill, and I always felt that the two events were linked somehow. Sometime's life just hits you when you're down!
 
i wasn't on holiday. and my parents hadn't split up at that point. But they were well on the way.

I was at school and had been ill for a while. And ended up projectile vomiting over the class whilst watching oliver twist.

looking back on it, its quite amusing. But I'm not sure how things are linked up. i barely remember a time before the D, only that i was diagnosed on valentines day and mum wasn't very happy about it 🙄
 
Not sure what the trigger was for me although i was buying my first flat, changing jobs and getting married at the time. I put this down to co-incidence, personally. Must have been some congenital weakness there anyway and maybe the stress of all this triggered it off? I was probably drinking too much at that time but so were many of my peers and none of them have diabetes to this day - and i've looked after my health a lot better than they have in the past 24/25 years. Truth is, none of us know what's round the next corner do we?

One thing sticks in my mind. One of the secretaries where i was working at the time took me to one side one day and said she'd seen me eating sweets at various time and she thought i had lost quite a lot of weight. She was type 2 and thought i should go see my GP ASAP. The rest is history. But wherever you are now Mrs Green, i still owe you one.

Great question. Made me think about the tremendous impact diabetes had on my life since that day.
 
Hi Lou

I can understand how you are feeling on the approach to your 'd' anniverary. I will be thinking of you on 14th.

Any news re your new pump? Or have i totally missed this event? I'm a bit behind but trying to catch up.

Sending hugs

Mand x
 
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