Just out of hospital

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Dandubs

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Type 1.5 LADA
Hi all. Scary few days!
Admitted with acute ketoacidosis on Sunday, thankfully home to my family tonight. Have been on type 2 pathway for 2.5 years but turns out I'm LADA. Need to get my head round insulin therapy and living as a type 1 but hoping it may actually be more straightforward than the increasingly unsuccessful type 2 stuff I was doing. Immediate concern is edema following all the fluids they gave me in hospital. How long does it last? What is the best way to alleviate/fix it?
 
Welcome to the forum Dandubs

Sorry I can’t answer your question about edema.
I am pleased that you have finally got the correct diagnosis, but sorry that you had to suffer Ketoacidosis to get this. I am sure that it should be a lot easier now and you have a good start with some knowledge of Diabetes already, albeit a completely different kind.

Which insulin’s have you been given? Have they given you separate basal and bolus insulin? This makes life a lot more flexible and as you become an expert in calculating carbs and sort out your correct ratios, you can fine tune this.

I would recommend the book Type 1 Diabetes in Children, Adolescents and Young Adults by Ragnar Hanas. Ignore the age reference. I was diagnosed at 53 and still find this book very useful 10 years on. All very clear and I found things a lot easier when I understood what was going on.

If you have any questions feel free to ask. No questions are considered silly on here. Just ask.
 
Hello, Dandubs, and welcome to the forum. I too was misdiagnosed as Type 2, because of my age at diagnosis (51), and none of the treatment was working. Luckily, the light dawned on my diabetes team before I reached the ketoacidosis stage.
 
Thank you both, will look up that book SB.
Also wish I'd taken advantage of all the experience and expertise on here in the early days!
 
Thank goodness we have the NHS. I was inside a couple of months ago & had 1 tube down my thought & 2 in my nose a few in each arm its nice to be out :D
 
Hello Dandubs. Welcome to the forum. I’m am glad you now have the correct diagnosis but sorry you had to become very ill to get the right dx (diagnosis).

Hopefully soon your body will start to sort out the excess fluid , if the swelling is just in your feet and legs when your sitting down it can help if you have your legs raised up.
Though if it is more extensive or you are worried then I suggest you contact your Gp or maybe your diabetic team can help that’s assuming you are now under the specialists at the hospital rather that nursie at Gp.
 
I'd lost so much weight pre diagnosis (classic T1 here) it might have helped me keep my underwear let alone my outerwear in situ when I came out of hosp.

Coincidentally my husband is in hospital at the moment because he's apparently got COPD and has suffered what the medics call 'exacerbation' due to a repeated really bad chest infection that 3 separate weeks of steroids and ABs failed to sort out so by Tuesday morning unable to breathe in enough oxygen to walk more than a few steps before he was ready to drop - 999 was called and they gave him oxygen immediately, did BP an ECG and a BG test and hauled him off to A&E pdq and trundled straight into 'Major' without passing Go, etc. Millions of tests and all sorts of questions that neither of us were expecting, the ones we were eg smoking, any previous lung damage seemed to be less significant than these odd ones - a major one of which was whether he'd noticed any swelling in his hands or feet. In fact that very morning he'd struggled to get his shoes on in order to depart in the big white taxi with the flashing blue light parked outside our house on the double yellow lines. And his hands and feet had both been freezing cold despite him being inside all day with the heating and warm clothes on.

Turns out in his case - it's a classic symptom of nowhere near enough properly oxygenated blood reaching the extremities and flowing round them which if it goes on long enough, itself causes fluid to build up there. I never knew that before neither did he.

Applying it to your situation and thinking of what happened to me pre-diagnosis (and very luckily I was whisked into hospital PDQ before I actually went into full blown DKA) all my internal organs were suffering apparently including my heart - I had been experiencing heart palpitations on top of the other symptoms of T1 which is why I really thought I'd better go to the GP in the finish. Now then - if the heart is struggling to pump the blood round the body
because it's full of acid and poisonous anyway - couldn't much the same thing have been happening to you as has happened to my OH?

Just calling up @mikeyB - cos he has one helluva lot more actual medical knowledge than most of us lot - so when he has ad time to take a read of the thread he might be able to give you some proper/better info. He usually can! LOL

It would be nice for us both to have some idea when the oedema might dissipate - but you take priority here!
 
Thank you so much for these replies! Swelling has reduced slightly since discharge from hospital, combination of gentle exercise and elevation when at rest..and oddly enough plenty of fluids.
Slowly getting to grips with what being on insulin is all about, so much to learn and change to the way I live. I've had quite a chequered past medically speaking, with a number of auto immune conditions (e.g. hypothyroidism, vitiligo) and a nasty lymphoma 10 years ago..so the lada diagnosis isn't necessarily a surprise. I'm now under the care of the diabetes team, having only ever seen a GP practice nurse up to now. One thing for sure is that I'm taking my time to fully appreciate what's ahead of me before I go charging back to work!
 
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