Daft diabetic question - serious side though

[mikeydt1]

this may sound daft but how is diabetes diagnosed or should be diagnosed? the reason for asking is that when i was diagnosed a good few years ago all i had was the Hba1c blood test and nothing else and was told type 2 and dished out with medications which had little effect so they then changed me to insulin but that was then stopped due to that quite a lot of the time i was on my own and they were concerned about me having hypo.

when i was diagnosed my levels would often hit 27 and that was on tablet form. over time my weight has plummeted and tiredness has also set in. i have questioned the type 2 but not much feed back from the doctors. although my Hba1c has now come back okay my BG levels are not okay so at a loss as to what is going on and am waiting for the doctors to get back to me on this.

some good feed back would be good here as this isn't just about me but how diabetes should be diagnosed at the onset.

 

[Boom]

My diagnosis was......
I had symptoms that were getting worse but had no idea what diabetes was.
A work colleague suggested I go to the doctors because of weight loss and drinking 8+ cans of fizzy pop daily.
Booked to see GP, relayed symptoms and all.
GP asked could I provide a urine sample there and then. No problem whatsoever
10 mins later was told that I was Type 1 and to return next morning to collect prescription for insulin, urine test strips and other bits and bobs.
Following day got a call from diabetic clinic at local hospital, spent the day with a wonderful DSN .
All this with no blood test. Everything was decided with urine test and symptoms.
None of this “ messing and fussing “ about people seem to go through nowadays.

 

[everydayupsanddowns]

As I understand it, in the UK diabetes is usually diagnosed by HbA1c and classified based on the clinical presentation - including age, weight, speed of onset of symptoms, weight loss, family history, presence of ketones.

There are additional checks that can be carried out to distinguish between the rarer types (eg MODY the monogenic form), and sometimes GAD antibody or cPeptide checks can help distinguish atypical cases (eg underweight T2 or diagnosis of T1 in later years), but these additional checks are nothing like as conclusive as we would like. eg T1s don’t always continue to have any antibodies present if all their beta cells have already been splatted.

 

[trophywench]

I presented at my GP where a urine test was done and GP had rung the hospital and arranged for me to be admitted as an inpatient the next morning. No sooner had I got back into my night clothes and got in the allocated bed when a Vampire arrived and started extracting blood, insulin jab followed after lunch, then a drip set up, phlebotomists did the Ward rounds twice a day for the next week. Don't think they'd invented DSNs in 1972, same as they hadn't invented Glucometers or anything other than porcine or bovine insulins.