I picked up a dose of flu when I was working away from home. Felt like I had a cold on the Wednesday, felt like I'd been beaten by Thursday, but as I was going home Friday took a dose of HTFU and carried on. Spent the weekend on the sofa.
Symptoms started appearing not long after that including the typical massive weight loss (I went down to 60kg / 9 1/2 stone), massive eating, massive drinking etc. The photos looking back are quite horrible.
During this period I carried on working and training as normal, but started getting night sweats, cramps, tiredness, fatigue etc even to the extent of sleeping on a towel. Instead of jumping out of bed at 6am I was crawling out of bed at 7 or 7:30, no morning runs and falling asleep by about 10pm or earlier. Running performance did not seem to suffer though, although my resting heart rate went up by 10-15bpm.
Early May I went offshore on a large platform (4 platforms with bridges, 7 floors and no lifts) even eating 3 cooked meals a day and puddings plus snacks I lost more weight. I started looking on the internet and came up with thyroid problems (diabetes never entered my mind) and made an appointment to see the doc in early June.
Sunday 2nd June 2013 I was up in Cumbria, to run The Yomp Mountain Challenge, 23 miles in the Cumbrian fells with about 1800m of climb. I finished in 4hrs 25 mins having eaten almost nothing all the way round, but suffered from nasty cramps from about halfway/two thirds distance. Drove home eating a whole pack of dates and another 250g bag of mixed fruits and nuts, maybe a muffin with my coffee as well.
Monday - visit doctors, wee in a pot, he says "probably diabetes" come back tomorrow for bloods. Tuesday bloods, Wednesday on my way home from London on the trains, get a call from the surgery " go to Addenbrookes now, they're expecting you". They weren't, I waited 3 hours to see someone (apparently I should not have been sent to A&E but straight to the medics), was admitted and stabilised, out the next day, travelled up to Aberdeen the following Monday.
My BG on admission was about 26 and Ketones around 3 IIRC.
I went back the following year and re-ran the race, finishing in a better place (25th) and in 4 hours 19 minutes including time take to stop and check BG.