@JBB70, a few words about Diabetes diagnosis which might help with understanding where Health Care Professionals (HCPs), the ill-informed media and "the person nearby who doesn't have diabetes" are themselves coming from:
A diagnosis of Diabetes "Type" comes from the cause, not the treatment. Almost all Types as diagnosed and labelled are a mixture of meaningless numbers and letters.
In UK there are c4.5 million folk diagnosed with Diabetes; elevated blood glucose that needs distinct treatment to manage this medical condition.
T2 covers the majority of those with D, about 90%. This in itself is tricky since there are several causes of T2 and there can be a subtlety and complexity to their D that is comprehensively obscured by such a generic diagnosis title. However in very general words T2s make lots of insulin naturally and their body is strongly resisting their natural insulin. Most T2s manage their condition from diet and/or oral meds; a few need extra insulin.
T1 is in theory a very precise diagnosis, in that the cause is (as
@Inka has already explained) from an autoimmune condition. This has its own consequences and sometimes vulnerabilities, that need a clear medical awareness. T1s make up about 10% of those with D. T1s need extraneous insulin to stay alive (with a miniscule no of exceptions; my great niece is confirmed T1, currently coping by diet and oral meds).
All the rest of us fall into a tiny percentage of less than 1% - of those with D. The only one that has a title that helps explain is Gestational Diabetes. These other Types are some form of T3: D because of damage to our pancreas, making our ability to produce insulun impaired. A proportion of T3s manage with oral meds, it appears that most T3s end up needing insulin. In theory there are T3 a-k Types; these descriptors are rarely found, partly because the notion of T3 is recent and there are still many HCPs who (shamefully) are out of date. Consequently there can be folk with D, diagnosed as T2 or even T1, but who have their D from damage to their pancreas and should be T3 something.
You and I are T3c: this subgroup includes pancreatic damage from pancreatitis as well as damage from major surgery including partial or total removal. One normal common denominator is the panc'y damage includes damage to our production of digestive enzymes and we have that Pancreatic Enzyme Insufficiency (PEI) that needs Pancreatic Enzyme Replacement Therapy (PERT) in the form of Creon, or other PERTs. Needing PERT is far from unique to just T3cs; it helps with an array of gastro problems, unrelated to D.
The message from all of this is that many HCPs can be unaware there is this "other" diabetic condition and not only don't understand but try to see us as some other part of the T2 population. I have been continually surprised to find this, having to explain that I need to pay attention to what I'm eating, particularly its carb content so I can get my insulin dose correct; also not understanding that my T3c originates from a fundamentally different cause and brings its own challenges. I think it is helpful to at least be aware that our condition is not frequently encountered in GP Surgeries or even on Hospital Wards; fortunately this does seem to be slowly improving!
I've seen your response to my initial comments. Glad you are at least back home, yet sorry that it all seems like you are in for a long haul. You've already heard from some of the T3cs on this Forum as a result of pancreatitis; you could fairly deduce that your T3c has very different origins to mine and what I know about pancreatitis is solely from what I've read since joining this forum.
What I do know is that there is a lot of help here, a fair amount of knowledge from the practical experiences of others and suggestions for finding other help. One source for the more generic aspects of managing your D is the DUK main site; this Forum is sponsored by DUK which most helpfully provides us with a platform. But we are independent of DUK and I would encourage you, in due course, to go rummaging in DUK's Learning Zone (drop down menu top left and orangey tab at the bottom) as well as in the main site. There is also good info on the National Pancreatitis Support site. In almost the same breath I would caveat "be cautious" about generic Internet searches; apart from there being a lot of ill-informed stuff out there, in practice you are best served by reading from UK sites. This is not because we have a monopoly on what is correct, but your treatment is from the NHS and there is little point in reading about some miracle solution that can't be provided by the NHS.
