Following stabilisation at A&E, they then look into what type they think you are based on a variety of reasons.
I've been really surprised by the number of threads asking about docs not being sure about whether it's T1 or T2. I thought it was a binary situation, but seems not.
I didn't leave them much doubt, although they still got it wrong initially.
I'd been feeling more and more wabbit going through my final exams for a post-grad diploma (the examiner followed me after I went to the toilet for the 5th time during the conveyancing exam, thinking I'd hidden books in the cistern!).
My dad picked me up at the end of it, says he's taking to me hospital right now. The A&E doc said it was exam stress and a touch of thrush in my throat, sent me home.
The parents popped their heads in before they went to work the next day, I was unconscious, full on end stage DKA, got bluelighted to hospital.
I don't remember any of this because I was unconscious for about a day, but my sister told me later that she'd phoned in for a report and was told, "the doctors reckon he won't wake up."
A family friend worked at the hospital, and told me that the A&E doc got an absolute bollocking from the diabetes consultant for missing the most obvious case ever of T1 - she was only half joking when she said he needed some emergency treatment after it!.
Anyway, I spent a few days in hospital being tended to by a lovely young Italian nurse, not a bad gig for a 21 yr old after exams, and the more elderly Sister Carmichael, who told me a lot about digestive biscuits and old school "carb exchanges" and filled me with confidence, and one of the younger docs who had treated me on admission said to me, "thanks, Scott, I'd only ever read about Kussmaul breathing in books, so it was interesting actually seeing it."
I wonder sometimes whether a T1 dx is easier to cope with psychologically when you've almost died, instead of just seeing a gp when feeling a bit under the weather.
Having almost died through DKA, the idea of life long injections really didn't freak me out that much, I'd much rather that compared to how I felt for those few weeks. If I'd been dx'd while just feeling a bit wabbit, I might have taken a different view.