Just about to start insulin

Hi. I'm sure you will find it no problem at all with the insulin and the ability to control your blood sugar will be a relief. You shouldn't need any time off work. I suspect you will be started on two insulins called Basal/Bolus or MDI (Multiple Daily Injections). The 24 hr one you can take night or morning so not at work and the Bolus fast acting you will take before any significant meal. Ensure you have your test kit with you at work and possibly have two kits so you can have one in the car and one at home. You may be started on a fixed dose of Basal for meals and probably a bit lower than optimum to minimise the risk of a hypo. Later you will start carb-counting where you will adjust the amount of Basal to match the carbs in the meal. Initially you may be worried about injecting 'in public' but you will soon not worry as most people don't notice. Good luck.

No, I started insuline as Daibell describes late December and took no time off at all - you'll be fine I'm sure.

Interesting that you were diagnosed Type 2 in 2013, I have been treated as Type 2 since 2012, until 18th December last year!.....same story as you - not at all overweight, lost a heap went down to 9 stone! We're not that rare it seems from spending a few weeks on this forum - though I think you and I are slower-developing than many.

Do you know if you had a GAD antibody test recently? And was it negative or positive? I was negative (T1 are commonly but not always positive) - but there is no doubt that I am no longer producing insulin. I'd just be interested to know a bit more about GAD's in long-term mis-diagnosed T2 that become LADA/T1 - my consultant did say that I could well be negative and that I may have been positive in the past.

You can do it! I was diagnosed last August (aged 35, type 1 / lada) and was put on injections the next day. I was off work on bereavement leave (bad timing), but was back in the next week, injecting at my desk. My colleagues asked lots of questions so they knew what to do if I had a hypo etc, and now they’re completely used to it.

JPW1 said:

Interesting that you were diagnosed Type 2 in 2013, I have been treated as Type 2 since 2012, until 18th December last year!.....same story as you - not at all overweight, lost a heap went down to 9 stone! We're not that rare it seems from spending a few weeks on this forum - though I think you and I are slower-developing than many.

Do you know if you had a GAD antibody test recently? And was it negative or positive? I was negative (T1 are commonly but not always positive) - but there is no doubt that I am no longer producing insulin. I'd just be interested to know a bit more about GAD's in long-term mis-diagnosed T2 that become LADA/T1 - my consultant did say that I could well be negative and that I may have been positive in the past.

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NICE say that the longer you leave it for a GAD test after being 'diagnosed' the less reliable the GAD test becomes. The C-Peptide is a much more useful test as it measures the state of your beta cells regardless of the cause and is the most reliable test as time progresses. Sadly the NHS has relied too much on GAD to diagnose T1 assuming T1 is mainly caused by GAD antibodies. In practice it probably isn't the main cause. There are other antibodies and viruses can cause beta cell death as I believe it did in my case.

Daibell said:

NICE say that the longer you leave it for a GAD test after being 'diagnosed' the less reliable the GAD test becomes. The C-Peptide is a much more useful test as it measures the state of your beta cells regardless of the cause and is the most reliable test as time progresses. Sadly the NHS has relied too much on GAD to diagnose T1 assuming T1 is mainly caused by GAD antibodies. In practice it probably isn't the main cause. There are other antibodies and viruses can cause beta cell death as I believe it did in my case.

Click to expand...

Thanks - that makes sense - and coordinates with my own thinking (and I believe my consultant's) - I may well have had loads of antibodies years ago maybe in 2012!