New type 1

[crazymumma]

Hello, i have recently (in Jan) been diagnosed as type 1, at 42 years of age. I had a massive DKA with unrecordable BG levels at hospital > 80mmol and had to spend 5 days in ITU.

I have got used to injecting pretty quickly, BG levels came quickly down to normal range. Seriously upset by having a 3 year driving licence, with little kids and living in the sticks i need to drive.

I have been feeling lucky to be alive but just had my first diabetic eye screening and it shows "some background retinopathy" and i find that seriously depressing. Mind is currently filled with the what ifs.....

 

[stephknits]

Hey, welcome to the forum. I too was diagnosed at 42 with two young girls at the time. We also live in the middle of nowhere and I was and am concerned about the driving. However I am lucky to have not yet needed help with my hypos, and am careful to check whenever I drive. This is not to say something couldn't go wrong, of course it could, but I try not to think about it.
This is a great place and people get what you are feeling. Glad you found us 🙂

 

[SB2015]

Hello, i have recently (in Jan) been diagnosed as type 1, at 42 years of age. I had a massive DKA with unrecordable BG levels at hospital > 80mmol and had to spend 5 days in ITU.

I have got used to injecting pretty quickly, BG levels came quickly down to normal range. Seriously upset by having a 3 year driving licence, with little kids and living in the sticks i need to drive.

I have been feeling lucky to be alive but just had my first diabetic eye screening and it shows "some background retinopathy" and i find that seriously depressing. Mind is currently filled with the what ifs.....

I am another late starter, at 53, and understand the shock that you will have had. The problems with your eyes is likely to have developed whilst the condition was developing, but now you have the diagnosis, and have already seen that you can manage your levels. T1 is a manageable condition and there is plenty of help available on here. The renewing of ur driving licences is dependent on a report from your consultant and as @stephknits has said we just need to be careful about our levels when we are driving. Which makes sense anyway.

What insulin’s have they put you on? Have your team started you on carb counting? This is the key to managing your condition, learning how to adjust your insulin to match your needs. There is an education course for T1, usually called Dose Adjustment For Normal Eating (DAFNE), which I found very helpful, partly because of increasing my understanding of what was giong on, but also as a chance to meet other people with T1.

A book that I found very helpful, and still do, is Type 1 Diabetes in Children Adolescents and Young Adults by Ragnar Hanas. Ignore the age reference, it is just as helpful for us as T1 is T1. It explains things very clearly and deals with the practicalities of life with T1.

There is a lot to learn at the start, but it is manageable, and with your children to care for, and where you live, learning as much as you can, tapping into the support available will help you continue in the way that you have started. We are here to help, and no questions is considered silly on here. Just ask, or for that matter have a good moan. We really do ‘get it’.

 

[mikeyB]

Hi crazymumma, welcome to the forum. 🙂

Don’t worry about that background retinopathy, if you get your blood glucose levels back in the normal range, that won’t change, or might even self repair. Just concentrate on the learning curve, and as folk have said, any question you ask has been asked by all of us at some stage, so ask away🙂

 

[trophywench]

Hear Hear - I've had background retinopathy since the mid 1990s and I still have it. I also had a mild extra bleed after I first went on a pump about 10 years ago and got my BGs a bit lower - but by the next photo 12 months later it had gone.

I was a late starter with the driving - didn't learn to do it until 1986 (aged 36) so have never held a full licence for longer than 3 years anyway ever since I passed my test. Current one expires when I'm 71 in 2 years time.

They send us the renewal reminder 3 months before expiry, we complete the forms, it's not a problem unless we have no hypo symptoms and have needed A&E.

If we start losing our hypo symptoms it's pretty easy to get em back as long as we find out what to do asap, but we do actually have to do something so should this start happening - ring your clinic - or ask on here - and get advice. Just need to run our BG higher for a bit - a month-ish usually does the trick (or rather it's done it for me when it's happened in the past) which is a flippin nuisance when we'd rather not have it any higher - but needs must and we just have to accept (and so do our NHS medical team!) that going much lower generally has proved to be NBG to me and so I shouldn't do it else the same thing will happen again. Each of us will be different cos nobody's innards are the same as anyone else's - even identical twins. (I knew a T1 identical twin years ago - but his twin didn't have diabetes)

So the message is simply - Don't panic Mrs Mainwaring!