Hi Evie, I think alarm beels would have really rung with me if I lost 5 stones - over what sort of time period? Do you have any history of diabetes in your family? I'm wondering if you may actually be a slow-onset Type 1 - has this been investigated, do you know? I'm gussing the answer will be 'no', given the lack of care you have received up until now. It's possible that you pancreas has been slowly losing its ability to produce insulin, leading you to very poor blood sugar control - without insulin your body can't process the glucose created from the digestion of your food, and this can lead to rapid weight loss as your body has to turn to other sources of energy, such as body fat and muscle fibre. It can also make you feel very ill, and metformin will not help. Also, if you are a slow-onset Type 1 (sometimes also called Type 1.5 or LADA - Latent Autoimmune Diabetes in Adulthood) then gliclizide may also be of little use, as it works by prompting your pancreas to produce more insulin - if it actually can't produce more then the medication won't really help.
I'd suggest you ask whether you might be a slow-onset Type 1 - there are some tests they can do to help determine this and a lot of what you say suggests it may be a possibility. It's relatively rare in the population so many GPs wouldn't be aware of it, or consider it, assuming an adult must be Type 2, but we have had many, many members here over the years who have been misdiagnosed. It's most important that you get the right diagnosis so you can receive the appropriate treatment 🙂
) that you were not given better advice. I'd still ask about the potential Type 1 as suggested in my previous post