Am I human again?

I was diagnosed in March.

Prior to going to the doctor & being referred straight down to the hospital, I felt dreadful, tired, thirsty and pretty much run down. Within a couple of days of starting insulin, I felt better than new physically with all my energy & more back.

Since then, I've worked at getting my dosages right, I eat so much more healthily & generally sleep much better. I cant remember feeling more healthy in years... I was 28.5 & ketones 3 on diagnosis.

I think once you understand how to control things, then mind set seems to be the next key step...

6 months sounds fine Emmotha and so pleased you feel much better in yourself, much like Jackois I felt better within days of starting insulin but it was many months down the road before I fully recovered from the ordeal of pre & post-diagnosis.

Hi emmotha, im nearly six months also - im doing fairly well with my control but i havent put any weight back on yet unfortunately. This is prob because i dont sleep well and am running on adrenalin to keep myself going thru the day. I have a long commute to work and am a single parent to my gorgeous 9 yr old son so life is fairly hectic, Im hoping things will settle soon. I was told to give myself 18months to adjust so i think u r doing v well! I see glimpses of my old self at times and then i have times where i cant quite believe i have type 1 diabetes and its all a bad dream. If only i was sleeping ha!

noblehead said:

I felt better within days of starting insulin but it was many months down the road before I fully recovered from the ordeal of pre & post-diagnosis.

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Hi guys,

I felt a lot better as soon as sugars were down to 6-ish/7-ish, but not recently and I th now it's because that's just too high for me. So being more aggressive with food regime/insulin now. I want to feel like a human being. I think now the brain fog I've had for the past five years is really too-high blood sugar. And I still have it.

As for general stress - not over that yet. It's still a roller-coaster of worry and fear, and a bit of panic when I realise there's no one who is going to solve this for me but me, because the doctors have higher target BS levels than us. I've spent the last five months a bit lost in a world of diabetes anxiety. The plan is to be rational and do the diabetes thinking once a week, then put it out of my mind, but when the numbers don't go right, I can't.

So I've been somewhat wiped out by my first five months.

Lucy

I am just coming up to my first year anniversary of diagnosis (January '15) and, although sugars are under control, I still have my ups and downs. I have felt like my old self again from time to time, but I now find it harder to cope when other stresses come into play (being unwell, family stuff, work, etc.) I am still working on feeling that diabetes is part of normal life. Looking back now, I would say that at 5 months I was still in the early days but also a big factor was that I wasn't put on basal/bolus until then. That was such a positive turning point for me as it made it so much easier to control my numbers. Before that I was on humulin twice a day and trying to eat to match the insulin was really hard.

Good luck with it all!

It helps when a decision's been taken about what to do. Last time that happened it didn't solve the problem. Now that I've decided on increased basal plus Metformin plus really strict Bernsteinian carb/protein schedule, I can relax a bit and wait to see how that works.

Hope that works well for you! Have you been well looked after by the professionals?

Yes, they've been good. Just the usual problem that their ideas and your ideas of what works for you don't always match. We all have that.

I've just passed my 5year mark (4 on insulin). My first year was horrible as I tried to manage Type 1 on diet and exercise - just ill, frightened and feeling like a failure the whole time. When I went onto insulin and was rediagnosed with LADA, I felt better immediately and within 6 months I felt great and wondered why other Type 1s were making such a fuss - it was easy to keep my BG good. This year has been my toughest yet though. My BG has been unpredictable, my control nowhere near as good and for no obvious reason, arguments and disagreements with my Consultant to the point where I'm now stressing because I want to change consultant, and a very depressing and demoralising DAFNE experience at the start of the year. All together, these things have made me fear for the future again and lose confidence again - sometimes to the point where I feel I've made no progress over the 5 years.

I guess the point is that Type 1 is for life and there will be times when it can take a back seat and be part of life but other times when it needs the attention and life has to work around it. I don't think there is a time limit for when you accept it and feel like yourself again - in my experience it goes in waves and fully accepting it means learning to adapt to and accommodate the changes to your diabetes over the years. Even 5 years is a relatively short time.

Smidge

Basically when it works we feel fine, but when it doesn't work, it's frightening and horrible. No?