- Messages
- 21
- Type of diabetes
- Type 1
- Treatment type
- Insulin
Dear DOC,
Two weeks ago I learned that I have Type 1 diabetes. I'm feeling everything you'd expect, and the confusion and sadness is compounded by the fact that I have been diabetic in the past (gestational diabetes) and am struggling to adjust to a completely different paradigm. I've come to this Forum many, many times in the past: usually at 3am, as I sat in the dark breastfeeding my daughter, worrying about my weirdly high blood sugar levels, with no-one to talk to. Now the diagnosis is official but I've hesitated to post on here. Where to begin? But I guess everyone feels that way. Thanks in advance for reading, and for your solidarity.
I'm an historian of science and medicine. Historians like investigating causes and origins, and make sense of these by constructing narratives. So here's my story. It begins officially with gestational diabetes in both of my pregnancies. (Although thinking about it lately, I developed dysglycaemia in my early 20s: I regularly fainted while waiting to be seated in restaurants, which is handy for making a table appear as if by magic, and in church, where I was asked a few times whether I had been overcome by Holy Spirit--people were disappointed when I said no, I'm just hypoglycaemic). My GD was picked up in my first pregnancy by a routine glucose tolerance test. It came as a surprise to everyone as I didn't have any of the risk factors. A diabetic specialist midwife told me the ways my child would die if I didn't control my blood sugars. I am a perfectionist by nature and very disciplined, and so threw myself at the diagnosis by following a strict dietary and exercise regime. I hesitated to undergo a second pregnancy because of all this, but at least was prepared when GD reared its head. (I should add that GD seems to be a poorly understood condition: this time round my midwife kept stating that I must have brought GD on myself by eating sweets!). I managed my bg levels immaculately during both pregnancies, ignoring NHS eatwell guidelines and following a lchf diet, using food combining and aggressive exercise (4 hours/15 km speed walking per day) to keep my levels within a 4-7 mmol/L range. After I gave birth, I ate all the treats in my hospital bag and was confused when the hospital team tested my bg and started freaking out because I had a reading of 20.5. Surely this was to be expected, as my hormones return to normal, I thought? Realising that I was never going to get 'normal' bg readings on a hospital diet of carbs, and needing to get home to my older child, I self-discharged. A month ago, I had an episode of hyperglycaemia and an HbA1C showed I had become diabetic. My GP told me I was Type 2 and recommended a low carb diet but ordered further tests, as I didn't fit the typical profile. Just as in the past, I threw myself into diet and exercise. A fortnight later I got a call from the Hospital telling me to come in immediately to begin insulin, which is how I learned I have Type 1 diabetes. During the intervening 2 weeks my body was unable to extract enough glucose from my starvation diet, seeing how I have few functioning beta cells left, and so I lost a lot of weight, my infant daughter lost weight, I developed vertigo, numbness in my face, and started to have out-of-body experiences. You would think I would have been worried about all of this but I was so out of it with starvation ketones that it's only now that I've started to get treatment that I realise how crazy it was.
So much for history, now back to the present. I was very 'good' at being a gestational diabetic. Illusory as this surely was, I felt in control of the condition for those 3-4 months. I felt similarly 'in control' during that fortnight when I believed I was Type 2: I know what I can do to help my bg levels, my thinking went, so I should get on with it already. But this paradigm has just imploded. My team have not yet put me on basal insulin (I suspect because I am breastfeeding on demand, esp. many times through the night, and they are concerned about hypos) but have instructed me to take Novorapid with meals. Before I inject I stare at the needle for what seems like hours. Even my five-year old tells me, 'Hurry up Mummy, you've done this before! As a gestational diabetic my bg had to be below 7.8 at 1 hr and below 6.4 at 2 hrs. So when I check at 2 hours after eating half a sandwich and salad and see a 16.6, I feel like I failed! and then within 3 hours I am dealing with a hypo and feeling completely rubbish. I used to consider myself a pretty stoic person, good in a crisis etc., but now I keep dissolving into tears.
As a graduate student, I loved 'The Normal and the Pathological' by French philosopher of medicine Georges Canguilhem. Canguilhem argued that biological normativity is life’s adjustment to its internal and external environment. Put another way, it is normal to get sick and for our body to change. Pathology is when we can no longer adapt to fluctuations. He meant this in a biological sense, but it seems to me there is a huge psychological dimension to this, for managing diabetes at least. Right now sadness infuses each day and I can't go through a meal without feeling tremendous anxiety. I guess I'll have to let go of the illusion of being in total control. I'm hoping though that with practice, experience, and study, I will find a new normal. Along the way, I'm planning to read up on all your experience for clues, tips, good humour, and the occasional whinge. I'm grateful for your camaraderie.
All the very best, and be well
Hannah
Two weeks ago I learned that I have Type 1 diabetes. I'm feeling everything you'd expect, and the confusion and sadness is compounded by the fact that I have been diabetic in the past (gestational diabetes) and am struggling to adjust to a completely different paradigm. I've come to this Forum many, many times in the past: usually at 3am, as I sat in the dark breastfeeding my daughter, worrying about my weirdly high blood sugar levels, with no-one to talk to. Now the diagnosis is official but I've hesitated to post on here. Where to begin? But I guess everyone feels that way. Thanks in advance for reading, and for your solidarity.
I'm an historian of science and medicine. Historians like investigating causes and origins, and make sense of these by constructing narratives. So here's my story. It begins officially with gestational diabetes in both of my pregnancies. (Although thinking about it lately, I developed dysglycaemia in my early 20s: I regularly fainted while waiting to be seated in restaurants, which is handy for making a table appear as if by magic, and in church, where I was asked a few times whether I had been overcome by Holy Spirit--people were disappointed when I said no, I'm just hypoglycaemic). My GD was picked up in my first pregnancy by a routine glucose tolerance test. It came as a surprise to everyone as I didn't have any of the risk factors. A diabetic specialist midwife told me the ways my child would die if I didn't control my blood sugars. I am a perfectionist by nature and very disciplined, and so threw myself at the diagnosis by following a strict dietary and exercise regime. I hesitated to undergo a second pregnancy because of all this, but at least was prepared when GD reared its head. (I should add that GD seems to be a poorly understood condition: this time round my midwife kept stating that I must have brought GD on myself by eating sweets!). I managed my bg levels immaculately during both pregnancies, ignoring NHS eatwell guidelines and following a lchf diet, using food combining and aggressive exercise (4 hours/15 km speed walking per day) to keep my levels within a 4-7 mmol/L range. After I gave birth, I ate all the treats in my hospital bag and was confused when the hospital team tested my bg and started freaking out because I had a reading of 20.5. Surely this was to be expected, as my hormones return to normal, I thought? Realising that I was never going to get 'normal' bg readings on a hospital diet of carbs, and needing to get home to my older child, I self-discharged. A month ago, I had an episode of hyperglycaemia and an HbA1C showed I had become diabetic. My GP told me I was Type 2 and recommended a low carb diet but ordered further tests, as I didn't fit the typical profile. Just as in the past, I threw myself into diet and exercise. A fortnight later I got a call from the Hospital telling me to come in immediately to begin insulin, which is how I learned I have Type 1 diabetes. During the intervening 2 weeks my body was unable to extract enough glucose from my starvation diet, seeing how I have few functioning beta cells left, and so I lost a lot of weight, my infant daughter lost weight, I developed vertigo, numbness in my face, and started to have out-of-body experiences. You would think I would have been worried about all of this but I was so out of it with starvation ketones that it's only now that I've started to get treatment that I realise how crazy it was.
So much for history, now back to the present. I was very 'good' at being a gestational diabetic. Illusory as this surely was, I felt in control of the condition for those 3-4 months. I felt similarly 'in control' during that fortnight when I believed I was Type 2: I know what I can do to help my bg levels, my thinking went, so I should get on with it already. But this paradigm has just imploded. My team have not yet put me on basal insulin (I suspect because I am breastfeeding on demand, esp. many times through the night, and they are concerned about hypos) but have instructed me to take Novorapid with meals. Before I inject I stare at the needle for what seems like hours. Even my five-year old tells me, 'Hurry up Mummy, you've done this before! As a gestational diabetic my bg had to be below 7.8 at 1 hr and below 6.4 at 2 hrs. So when I check at 2 hours after eating half a sandwich and salad and see a 16.6, I feel like I failed! and then within 3 hours I am dealing with a hypo and feeling completely rubbish. I used to consider myself a pretty stoic person, good in a crisis etc., but now I keep dissolving into tears.
As a graduate student, I loved 'The Normal and the Pathological' by French philosopher of medicine Georges Canguilhem. Canguilhem argued that biological normativity is life’s adjustment to its internal and external environment. Put another way, it is normal to get sick and for our body to change. Pathology is when we can no longer adapt to fluctuations. He meant this in a biological sense, but it seems to me there is a huge psychological dimension to this, for managing diabetes at least. Right now sadness infuses each day and I can't go through a meal without feeling tremendous anxiety. I guess I'll have to let go of the illusion of being in total control. I'm hoping though that with practice, experience, and study, I will find a new normal. Along the way, I'm planning to read up on all your experience for clues, tips, good humour, and the occasional whinge. I'm grateful for your camaraderie.
All the very best, and be well
Hannah