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How long was I diabetic before I was diagnosed?

I have just been thinking about how long I had D1 before diagnosis and found this interesting thread! I was diagnosed in January 2014, aged 46 . After googling thrush, thirst, blurry vision and weight loss I got myself a urine test and knew I had diabetes before I went to the doctor. The thirst, weight loss and blurry vision were very recent. The initial diabetes 2 diagnosis was changed when, after a week on Metformin, my sugars were still around 19 and later tests confirmed Type 1. After an unsatisfactory few months on mixed insulin, I am now on basal/bolus and my diabetes is now 'under control' with all the usual ups and downs that we are familiar with! My diabetes care has been a bit hit and miss and this forum plus 'Think Like a Pancreas' have been lifesavers. I have recently been wondering how long I had it - and worrying about damage done. On reflection I know I had it for at least 6 months (persistent thrush!) but now I am wondering whether I had it for a lot longer. Symptoms that I now know are associated with diabetes (itchy skin, hard skin on fingers, fatigue) had been around for years and I was reflecting today that the itching has completely gone with good control.

No point worrying though! What does concern me is my very slow digestion and I am wondering whether this too is a diabetes complication. It makes injecting tricky as sugar spikes can occur long after I have eaten. Am going to ask the DN about this at my annual review.
 
Slow digestion could be gastroparesis which is relatively normal in diabetics according to dr Bernstein
 
It could be that - I think you can test - but the good news is, as Bernstein says, if it is gastroparesis, it will fix itself if you get BGs down to true normal and keep them there. Really, really motivating !
 
I had symptoms at the age of 6. I was diagnosed when I changed drs at the age of 32. Hum... still not happy about the drs in 70s ignoring symptoms. Mother had me constantly at doctors but brushed off.
Well I've been on insulin for a year and its been a struggle.
At least I can say I'm part of a community which fight to stay healthy no matter how many bad vibes anti type 2s gives me.
 
Hi guys i am really confused here. Whenever I get a cold or infection my blood sugar levels shoot up and then i go to the toilet like 5-6 times a day. I recently had a uti and was going to the bathroom a lot with smelly urine. My parents always tell me i don't drink enough water and always have dark pee, i have allergies as well which would explain my dry skin, but this has been a problem since I was a kid! I am 29 now. I go to the bathroom less now after the uti is getting better (still smelly pee if i don't drink much water). I generally don't ahve much tolerance to sugary things which decreases with age, but both my parents are like that and hardly eat any sugar. In their blood tests they both have high blood sugar but are not diabetic. Is it possible I simply do not have much tolerance to sugar naturally? Today I only drank around 2-3 glasses of water and went to the bathroom 3 times a day. Surely a diabetic person would go more than that? I have lost 2-3 kilos over the past month or so but now am gaining it back again, my weight has been stable for the past 8 years.
My mouth usually feels dry but i do not feel like i am dying of thirst that has been a symptom for years and i put it down to allergies, usually feel much better after antihistamines. I have blurry vision if i provoke it since 18, but i had many eye tests and all doctors say all is well, except of course my short-sightedness.

I find that if I look after myself I feel in the best of health. I was wondering if i am diabetic but really confused about it. What I do in my life is now I just avoid sugary things as much as possible and get on with it. I have no problem-consuming things like milk, its the added sugar things like soda that get me all weird!
I have had blood tests when I was a kid which showed everything to be normal (they did say my urine was very concentrated and to drink more water!)
It will be interesting if i am eventually diagnosed as diabetic, so this could be a case of the slowest LADA ever as I have had some of these symptoms for around 10 years now!
 
I am a blood donor. Some exams like the fasting BG were borderline but cholesterol was out of spec. My GP sent me to a specialist visit for cholesterol, then I was put on statines with very generic dieting advices. Cholesterol gone down but fasting BG was around 5,5 5,6.
My GP wasn't concerned. Then I had a period where i gained weight rapidly because I was always hungry, got blurry vision, peeing a lot, and at a donation they sent me a letter with a fasting BG level of 15. Meanwhile I got a new GP, he looking at my older exams said I probably was prediabetic for years.

So I was prediabetic for at least five years before and with full uncontrolled diabetes for six month, at least.

I am lucky to being a blood donor.
 
I think genetically some people are more predisposed to being diabetic. Both my parents hardly eat any sugar, so I will just follow their example and see how i get along. Both parents also have high cholestrol and blood pressure, so I guess I just have to be careful with my health generally and avoid the diabetes in the first place (if i can). I think it is no coincience the diabetes rates are shooting up all over the world, and I think type 1.5 is having a prevalance due to bad diet while type 1 pure is purely autoimmune/genetic. I may even be diabetic without needing insulin, I guess I will find out over the coming years, but I feel controlling diet may slow its prevalence.
 
I've just noticed this is in the type1 section so over to type1s for their imput.
 
See your doctor if you think you may be diabetic. Blood sugars for non diabetics do rise after eating or drinking lots of sugary stuff but this does not mean they are diabetic. And get into the habit of drinking more water.
 

Are you saying you got tested as a blood donor? I wasn't aware they did any tests like that - I give blood every 12 weeks and have definitely been diabetic during for over a year before my diagnosis in the summer.
 
AlexMagd said:
Are you saying you got tested as a blood donor? I wasn't aware they did any tests like that - I give blood every 12 weeks and have definitely been diabetic during for over a year before my diagnosis in the summer.
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I can't donate blood because of diabetes. But I don't think the blood donation place screens you for it, they probably ask you. Maybe Type 2's can donate blood?
 

Perhaps you are unaware that type 1.5 is in reality type 1. It is late onset type 1 and therefore is an auto immune disease, nothing to do with diet, and is slow to develop. Because of this, it is often the case that insulin injections may not be required for a period of time. It is not the same disease as type 2 although frequently misdiagnosed as T2.
 
AlexMagd said:
Are you saying you got tested as a blood donor? I wasn't aware they did any tests like that - I give blood every 12 weeks and have definitely been diabetic during for over a year before my diagnosis in the summer.
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From what I have understood they always test for some parameters and antibodies, and every six months or year (if all seems ok) they run more tests to verify you don't are developing other conditions and they send you a letter with the exams results.
 
AlexMagd said:
Are you saying you got tested as a blood donor? I wasn't aware they did any tests like that - I give blood every 12 weeks and have definitely been diabetic during for over a year before my diagnosis in the summer.
Click to expand...

I don't believe he lives in the UK so probably different rules.
 
TheBigNewt said:
I can't donate blood because of diabetes. But I don't think the blood donation place screens you for it, they probably ask you. Maybe Type 2's can donate blood?
Click to expand...
You can donate blood if you aren't using insulin or other pills that could cause hypoglicemy AND you have a controlled diabetes with a low hba1c. So basically if you are a Type 2 you could donate if you are stubborn like me.
Noticed that now that I was reading the T1 section.
 
Hi all, just wanted to share my take her and maybe get some feedback. I feel that I have had type 1 diabetes all my life. I struggled with gaining and losing weight as a young girl, my mom says I had a "lisp" when I was a baby (seems like slurred speech to me), always hungry, and then I developed an eating disorder where I ate only fruit and worked out excessively and lost a bunch of weight around age 13. Moving on to highschool, I did a lot of sports and would come home and binge on a bunch of food because so hungry (I feel like my blood sugar was probably super high after working out and I was hungry of course). I would always binge and then starve myself. During highschool I would drink with friends and always get "too drunk" to the point of blacking out and it was like I couldn't control myself. Waking up the next day and eating highly-processed fast food meal or anything I found would most likely bring my sugar super high up, then running it again with friends became a dangerous cycle.
I had mentioned to my parents that I wasn't feeling okay, I was buying herbs to help with my severe anxiety...substance abuse was a huge issue, got fired from one of my jobs outside of lifeguarding. This whole time my mouth was as dry as the sahara and smoking weed was not helping that ofcourse. I bought slippery elm bark powder and mixed it with water around junior year and was drinking that daily to keep my mouth wet because it was so chronically dry I was finding it difficult to speak.
I would have mood swings and angry bursts, I remember deliberately throwing my phone at a chair when I got mad at a friend (I get irritated when my sugar is high) and I was always breaking my phones. I had dropped out of online college because it felt like too much to bear, addiction with xanax (somehow made me feel better), homelessness, had two kids, living in apartment with my boyfriend, had DKA with 600 blood sugar and went to hospital in 2023 - a1c was around 12 something and now I am taking insulin for type 1 diabetes and in my "best health yet".... to me, it only makes sense that I would have had the disease my whole life - maybe it makes me feel better to be able to blame my past experiences on it, but either way, I'll never know for sure - at least that's what my endo says and she says it's impossible to have diabetes my whole life like I would have died but ya know who knows.
 
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