Extreme thirst as a sign of diabetes

Do you use a glucose meter?
The thirst in diabetes is caused by high blood glucose, using a meter can tell you if this is a likely cause of your thirst.

You are right that extreme thirst is a symptom of diabetes, but not necessarily diabetes. There are many other diseases accompanied by intense thirst (for example, kidney or liver disease, violation of the adrenal glands or parathyroid glands and etc). In order to diagnose diabetes with confidence, you should have hyperglycemia or glycosuria (I think this symptom is easier to check, because you can just buy strips for urine analysis, not a glucose meter). In any case, go to the doctor, the forum is not the place where you can be diagnosed

It’s best to do a blood test (random) to find out if you have moved on from borderline diabetes to the real deal.

In my experience, my crazy thirst was accompanied by frequent urination (including several times during the night) before I was diagnosed.

As an aside, when I was recovering from Covid, the steroids I was administered caused severe highs and even gifted me a UTI, but those highs were temporary, and stopping the steroids calmed my blood sugar down.

Whilst it can be a symptom of diabetes it can also be other things. An in reverse type 2 doesn’t always present with any symptoms. There’s a fair few of us that had none at all (or none that were recognised as diabetes). It’s well documented covid comes with a rise in type 2 diagnoses. So go talk to your dr and ask for a check based on that and the thirst symptom. Shouldn’t be an issue to get it especially if you were borderline already.

If they are difficult you could try get a fingerprick test or two at a chemist as some will do them free. Fasted would likely be the most convincing for a dr but even a high random one should make them investigate further.