Hi, I'm type 1, have been for 23 years. My diabetes has always scared me and never been easy to control. After years of up and down levels I started feeling extremely Ill. I participated in Dafne, they realised I had 'bad' dawn phenomenon. Waking up on 27-30s everyday isn't fun. So I had a fight on my hands for a pump. Finally I have one, it's great! Sugars are better but my issues are not. I was convinced it would all get better.
So over the last few years I have been suffering pains all over my body muscle spasms, chest pains buzzing in legs pains in joints, tiredness. I have had my heart checked to the point of angiogram, my spine checked, full blood tests, blood tests for celiac, the doc checked my feet for start of neuropathy. I'm lost I'm suffering anxiety, am now constantly on edge. The symptoms are getting worse and more frequent since sugars have been stabilised.. Is it possible to experience pains due to the changes in my sugars now?..
I'm now being sent pain management as they just 'don't know' nor do the docs have time,
My life is non existent the majority of it I spend at home in pain worrying what it is not knowing what to do to make it stop. When it's bad I just feel I've had enough, which scares me!.. Then suddenly It'll give me a week off, every time I'm fooled into thinking it's over. Then it begins again. I have no idea if it's diabetes related, but seeing as everything comes back fine. What else could it be? :/
Confused scared and fed up
Carla x
Hi i can understand what you are going through, i to have pain hitting areas of my body, my left side is affected more than right, found this article on site maybe helpful, i hope you can get this sorted out, as i am in simular situation to you and still have not found answers,i think this must be affecting more people with diabetes.
http://health.howstuffworks.com/diseases-conditions/pain/nerve/diabetes-pain.htm
Diabetes Pain
Pain expert Dr. Scott Fishman answers questions about nerve pain:
Q: What makes diabetes painful and what can be done about it?
A: Diabetes can destroy small blood vessels, which in turn can damage the nervous system, and these damaged nerves can cause pain.
The most common forms of diabetes, juvenile and adult onset, can damage many organs and systems. Diabetes can make it hard to digest food, cause heart disease, and destroy small blood vessels, while the nervous system becomes an innocent, injured bystander. The disease's most common pain syndrome is diabetic neuropathy.
The pain arises from nerves that are injured or malfunctioning. These crippled fibers can be found anywhere along their path, from the tip of the toe to the brain. Diabetes eats away at the thread-thin blood vessels that feed delicate nerve cells.
This is why diabetes pain usually strikes first in the hands and feet. A common pain syndrome from diabetes is described as "stocking and glove" pain because it appears in the hands and feet and usually makes it painful to wear gloves or socks.
Diabetes alters sensation in the smallest nerves, which happen to lie at the end of the peripheral nervous system, in the hands and feet. Diabetes starves these tiny nerves. As a result, the nervous system becomes confused about what is and isn't painful. Stockings, gloves-anything that that touches skin served by these tiny, hypersensitive nerves-is going to send signals to the spinal cord, where they may be mistaken for pain.
It is like having a stereo with frayed wires in the speakers so that you cannot hear music at a normal sound level. To adjust for the poor connection, you crank up the stereo to the highest volume. While the music may get louder, it doesn't necessarily get clearer.
Treatments for this pain are aimed at the nervous system and calming the nerves that are misfiring. The nerves are undergoing tiny seizures and these have to be halted to alleviate the pain. I often start with a five-minute infusion of the local anesthetic lidocaine. If this diminishes the pain, I know that similar drugs that can be taken orally will work for the patient. For instance, I may start with an oral version of an anti-arrhythmic drug, a heart medication that smoothes out irregular nerve activity and acts as an analgesic.
When lidocaine is not effective, I try other types of drugs. Anti-convulsants also quiet erratic nerve signals, and such drugs as carbmazepine (Tegretol), clonazepam (Klonopin), gabapentin (Neurontin), phenytoin (Dilantin), valproic acid (Depakote), and others are as fundamental to pain medicine as sutures are to surgery.
Researchers recently have been looking into other kinds of drugs that halt or slow down the overactive nerves. Animal studies testing a class of drugs called selective calcium channel blockers are raising tantalizing results for easing pain. Scientists are beginning to learn more than ever about newly discovered calcium channels and their tendency to alter the flow of calcium and electric signals in and out of cell membranes.
For years, drugs in this class such as verapamil, nifedipine, diltiazem, nicardipine, and nimodipine have been prescribed for hypertension and arrhythmia. Now, scientists are finding new calcium channel drugs that have special properties, one of which may be potent pain relief.
