My diagnosis was as a result of me badgering medical professionals to stop treating symptoms, and get to the bottom of why I didn't heal and ended up with chronic Cellulitis and Lympheodema in my right arm, chest and back, and a bout of septicaemia, being hospitalised, and spending months on end on powerful antibiotics after having had surgery/treatment/radiotherapy for Breast Cancer dx in August 2008.
By the following Spring 2009, I was really sick - and not because of the cancer. Eventually my GP got me screened for everything that could be responsible for my failure to heal. Type 2 Diabetes was the culprit. I found this strange as I had no signs of diabetes up until this point, and all my blood sugar tests going back to 2001 and been well within normal ranges.
Consequently, I have to be very careful with keeping my blood glucose in normal ranges as any excesses quickly translate into the re-emergence of infection, and the vicious cycle of high BG levels feeding the infection, and in turn the infection increasing my BG levels even more. It took me months to get this cycle under control, and I had to remove all refined sugars etc from my diet to achieve it and still maintain a good level by eating a low GI diet and avoiding all sugary foods (so no cakes/sweets/chocolate/alcohol etc ) and cooking all my food from scratch so I know exactly what's gone into it. Its a bit of a pain, and I am now experimenting with how near to a normal diet I can get without disrupting my healthy BG levels.
In January this year, I had to have further major surgery, a total hysterectomy and bilateral salpingo oophrectomy, and had to fight hard to stop them routinely administering me with an insulin/glucose infusion for the week I spent in there and to allow me to control my diabetes myself through Metformin and diet. The diet aspect was tricky as a lot of the food had sugars in them, even the porridge! Anyway, I survived in fresh fruit, sandwiches, and salads, and maintained a BG level of below 7mmol/l the entire week. One of the nurses said to me on discharge ' I am glad you were so stubborn, we usually mess up the diabetics totally'. The result of my stubborness was I didnt end up back in the infection cycle and my recovery from the surgery has been much better because of it.
I was also told I have backgound Retinopathy when I had the routine eye tests they do for Diabetics last August. I had hoped that it was drug induced, as Tamoxifen, one of the cancer drugs I take is known to cause Retinopathy occasionally. I have since seen a specialist eye surgeon, who has ruled out this theory in my case and told me its related to the Diabetes, but he was unable to expain to me why I had it so soon after my initial Diabetes diagnosis. If anyone can throw any light on this I would be grateful.