What's it like to be T2?

[shawncee]

I was recently diagnosed as T1 but I was just wondering. So what's it like to be T2? I get that T2 is insulin resistant? Sorry if I accidentally offend anyone with weird questions!

 

[NoCrbs4Me]

It's awesome!

 

[sally and james]

Well, this is a question I don't think we have had before, so, in the interests of a new experience, here goes:
First, I should admit that I am not T2, my husband is, so this is more a matter of observation than experience. So, my answer, in a nutshell, is "boring". Every Tom, **** and Harry seems to have it these days. Tell the waiter in a restaurant that you will skip the chips because you're diabetic and every other diner pops up to say they are too, but why are you not eating chips?
And then it's a bit of a "here today gone tomorrow" sort of experience. One moment you have an HbA1c of 95, then you stop eating carbs and before you know it, the HbA1c is a mere "thirty something".
Time to get my coat?
Sally

 

[Squire Fulwood]

It's a bit like not being on the same planet as the rest of the population. You get questions like, "Have you got the good one or the bad one?". Someone offered me a hamburger saying, "I know you are not supposed to eat them", to which I said, "I am more worried about the bun". Everybody laughed at my wit.
There is no end to it. Even my DN looks puzzled when my numbers go down instead of up. She said I should talk to someone. Who if not her?
I was once berated by a fellow diabetic for using a meter. "Why do you want that, you will never go hypo? No, the diagnosis was made due to my blood sugar being too high, not too low and I can only treat it with food.
It is a strange world of not being able to adequately communicate socially. My friends want me to attend a re-union in a pub 50 miles away. I would need a map of every toilet between here and there and I dare not think about the journey home.
It is endless.

 

[shawncee]

Well, this is a question I don't think we have had before, so, in the interests of a new experience, here goes:
First, I should admit that I am not T2, my husband is, so this is more a matter of observation than experience. So, my answer, in a nutshell, is "boring". Every Tom, **** and Harry seems to have it these days. Tell the waiter in a restaurant that you will skip the chips because you're diabetic and every other diner pops up to say they are too, but why are you not eating chips?
And then it's a bit of a "here today gone tomorrow" sort of experience. One moment you have an HbA1c of 95, then you stop eating carbs and before you know it, the HbA1c is a mere "thirty something".
Time to get my coat?
Sally

I heard that a lot of people had type 2 but I never realized how much until my mom told some of her friends I was diabetic and she returned home knowing that 7 of her friends are or are married to type 2s and that her lawyer is also one.

 

[shawncee]

It's a bit like not being on the same planet as the rest of the population. You get questions like, "Have you got the good one or the bad one?". Someone offered me a hamburger saying, "I know you are not supposed to eat them", to which I said, "I am more worried about the bun". Everybody laughed at my wit.
There is no end to it. Even my DN looks puzzled when my numbers go down instead of up. She said I should talk to someone. Who if not her?
I was once berated by a fellow diabetic for using a meter. "Why do you want that, you will never go hypo? No, the diagnosis was made due to my blood sugar being too high, not too low and I can only treat it with food.
It is a strange world of not being able to adequately communicate socially. My friends want me to attend a re-union in a pub 50 miles away. I would need a map of every toilet between here and there and I dare not think about the journey home.
It is endless.

I love the comparison. It's how I feel almost every day.
I got the same question mostly from family members which made no sense to me because I'm not the only diabetic in the family.
My grandmother often tries to take food away from me claiming that it'll "make my illness worse". She doesn't even know which foods would spike my blood sugar. She tries to take chicken away from me.
Sometimes I struggle trying to explain certain things to my friends.

What's your average blood sugar?

 

[ladybird64]

It's awesome!

Gotta admire your enthusiasm, but nope, it's not. Different strokes of course..

 

[Squire Fulwood]

My grandmother often tries to take food away from me claiming that it'll "make my illness worse". She doesn't even know which foods would spike my blood sugar. She tries to take chicken away from me.
Sometimes I struggle trying to explain certain things to my friends.

What's your average blood sugar?

Yes I find that the greatest experts on the subject of T2 diabetes are the people that don't have it. They are trying to be helpful but at the same time demonstrate that everyone talks lobbox about things they know nothing about.
My average blood sugar is about 6.5 currently but I don't have a strict regime about when I take a reading, just at interesting times and so I am not sure what it is an average of exactly.

 

[KevinPotts]

I heard that a lot of people had type 2 but I never realized how much until my mom told some of her friends I was diabetic and she returned home knowing that 7 of her friends are or are married to type 2s and that her lawyer is also one.

Yes, we are at pandemic proportions and yet it still does not shake the good and the great within medicine, politics, food manufacturing. Current estimates suggest that by 2020, there will be 52% of the U.S. Population diagnosed as T2 or undiagnosed but with it or at least pre-diabetic. The global economic burden is truly staggering!


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[ickihun]

Being type 2 is like you're allowed to eat but if you eat it can poison you. Really you need to eat 600-800 calories a day, well intermittently for the rest of your life. That's if you don't want to eventually rot away!
I could have sugar coated it but there's enough of that already.
In the future there will be carb farms and sugar farms but fat farms will be reserved for non-diabetics.

 

[Brunneria]

Having T2 is weird. Very weird.

It is invisible, usually painless, and fairly symptom free. To start with.
You get a diagnosis, and some pills to take. Your doc and nurse dont seem to take it very seriously.
So you go away, and think 'well, they arent worried, so why should I be worried?'

You eat, and drink as normal, and take your meds every day. If you remember.
And you think 'They are right, this is easy, no biggie. What's a pill or two?'

But you never feel well. Always tired. Every dragging day. Stairs look like mountains. You need to sleep after meals. You don't do well at your job because you feel like a zombie.
And you are always going to the loo. Several times a night. So you dont sleep well and get more tired...

Then, after a few years, your doc and nurse give you more drugs, because the old ones dont work any more.
And you feel worse.
It begins to dawn on you that maybe it IS serious. That is a shock. Very bad news.

You google diabetic complications and see pics of amputations and read about going blind. Kidney failure. Heart attacks and strokes. Early death.

No one warned you! This could kill you! Horribly. And if you had help, professional, good help, maybe things would get better? Please can they get better? But your doc and nurse just say 'take this tablet and eat carbs' and that makes you worse...

Eventually, one day, you are on the Internet, desperately hoping for a miracle, and you find this forum, and you discover that you are not alone, you can get your life back, you just have to change everything - food, drink, lifestyle, exercise...

So you don't get your old life back, you get a whole new one instead.

 

[zand]

This is a great question! Thank you for asking and not making assumptions. I have been T2 for 4 and a half years.

For me the worst thing about having T2 is the judgement of others that I brought it on myself by being lazy and eating sweets all day. I have battled with my weight for 30+ years. I have been told by a GP that being fat is a lifestyle choice. Really? I don't remember waking up one day and saying "I wish I was a size 28, where's the cakes?!" 10 years ago my health started to suffer because of my weight. I went to my GP, she gave me 2 useless diets ( I put on 8 pounds in 2 weeks doing the GI diet that she recommended). Then I went to a nutritionist. Then a naturopath. The naturopath helped me a little with my thyroid and liver, but then she left to have a baby. I slowly stumbled across a lower carb way of eating on my own after that.

Last week I went to a new naturopath (practices Ayurvedic medicine amongst other things) and she told me I have adrenal fatigue and that is why I got so fat and can't lose weight. A friend here gave me a link to a site about it, and yes that all makes sense. There were pictures of the body shape of folks with adrenal problems. Yep that's me.

Sitting in a café yesterday I watched the people walking by. Several had my body shape. We have an obesity epidemic here and the obese themselves are being blamed for it. We are a drain on the NHS we are told. That's the not way I see it. The NHS has let us down. We are forced to go to alternative practitioners for help if we can afford it, if we can't then there's advice on forums like this one. How ridiculous is that? We pay our taxes and NI contributions like everyone else, yet we aren't given the diagnoses that would help us to lose weight. Instead we are told to cut down on sugar and fats and cut calories. That simply doesn't work for everyone! It's that advice that saw me end up morbidly obese. We need to know why we are fat and then we can take steps to help ourselves. It's not always a case of overeating and under exercising, in fact over exercising can cause weight gain too if you have hormonal problems as it increases stress on the body and causes the adrenal glands to go into overload.

Yes you are right. T2 causes insulin resistance which makes weight loss difficult (impossible even when you add the fact that other hormones might be out of kilter too, not just insulin. )

So I don't eat the high carb foods - sugar, flour, bread, rice, pasta, potatoes and most fruits. That's OK it helps me control T2 without drugs. It's not usually a problem and if I slip up very occasionally it's not too drastic.

I would prefer not to be T2, but I would rather be T2 than T1 because I didn't become T2 until I was 53 and I had therefore had my children already so I didn't have the added problems of being pregnant with diabetes. Also I had had all of those years without an official label of T2, but really for me, it started way back in my 30s when I started to put on weight and could no longer control it.

 

[Squire Fulwood]

I have copied and pasted this from another thread but it is a post that I wrote so it is not plagiarism. It seems relevant to what it feels like to be a T2 so I thought I would post it.

"This thread has made me think and it hurts. I think back to the first two years after diagnosis when I played the mushroom to DN's electric fan. No progress, lots of pills, no feedback except for a Post It note she gave me one day when I summoned up the courage to ask her if I could be told what my Hba1c number was. There was no hope. I was going to go blind, lose my feet and die. No point in arguing.

I was given a meter to see if I was hypo before driving. I used it to lower my blood glucose figures instead. I had made a difference which is something the pills never did. Now there was an incentive. Not only could I fix my Hba1c but I could also sit with a smug grin on my face while DN tried to figure out what happened. It started to be fun. I got better at eating the right thing and I lost 13Kg in weight. DN said I was thought provoking.

You only need incentive and going to see DN every six months is mine. Now I tell HER what I am going to do and have become pushy. Lotsa fun."

 

[julie56]

Hi @shawncee , Initially was a bit of a shock finding out that my body was malfunctioning and it took a while to adapt. Now I just find that it is like being in boot camp every day - watching what I eat (keeping carbs to a minimum) and exercising every day. The upside is that I have more energy and generally feel healthier - so it's not all bad - just something that is always in the back of your mind. I am only 2 years post diagnosis, so things may progress, but hopefully not if I do my best to maintain my grip on things. Hope you are managing with your Type 1 - it must be quite a challenge.

 

[andcol]

For me it was an eye opener and a life saver. It made me buck up my ideas and change! I am now recorded as in remission on my medical notes and have been in this state after the first few months from diagnosis. It has been hard work to break the insulin resistance and would have been so much easier just continuing but that is not my personality.

Having the insulin resistance is a pain. If you eat you go up, if you don't eat your liver releases constantly and you go up, if you exercise your liver releases and you go up. It is a balancing act between not raising your glucose levels too much so your pancreas can release enough insulin for your cells to eventually consume it and btw for some that isnt even a jelly baby!

This just gets worse because the more you have high insulin levels the more your pancreas breaks and the cycle gets worse. and....... now there is another dimension. The more insulin you have in your body the more fat you store. The more fat you store the more insulin resistance you get!

Oh and by the way lets also add that with the insulin resistance your muscles can't get the glucose they need so your brain is continually telling you to eat more because you are short of energy and more goes to the fat cells and the cycle goes round and round.

What is it like? Annoying and different from T1 but also the same in so many ways. T2s can really inject insulin to bring levels down as easily as a T1; it just drives the cycle more. It is all a vicious circle... You have to recognise the cycle and break a link to improve things. Some do it with changing food other with exercise and some with driving out the fat storage

Hope that helps

 

[shawncee]

@zand
You're funny. There's an obesity epidemic in my country as well. They recently started offering national health insurance but it doesn't make that much of a difference because it gets you a visit but not help. When I was diagnosed all the doctor said was "you have diabetes", prescribed some novolin, gave me the number for the local DRI and told me to go buy syringes. No pamphlets, no instructions on how to give a shot and no hba1c. It wasn't until my mother took me to a different doctor for a second opinion that I got all that stuff, insulin pens, dexcom education, and booklets on diabetes. I also got a dietician and my hba1c taken. I didn't even know what this "hba1c" thing was. She also put me in contact with 2 diabetics close to my age so I wouldn't feel so alone. It was a good thing we had insurance though because even though I got all that stuff it was really expensive.

When you first cut out all the high carb stuff was it hard? My friend wants me to try this paleo diet with him because he thinks I'm in the honeymoon stage but I've never been good at dieting so

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[shawncee]

I have copied and pasted this from another thread but it is a post that I wrote so it is not plagiarism. It seems relevant to what it feels like to be a T2 so I thought I would post it.

"This thread has made me think and it hurts. I think back to the first two years after diagnosis when I played the mushroom to DN's electric fan. No progress, lots of pills, no feedback except for a Post It note she gave me one day when I summoned up the courage to ask her if I could be told what my Hba1c number was. There was no hope. I was going to go blind, lose my feet and die. No point in arguing.

I was given a meter to see if I was hypo before driving. I used it to lower my blood glucose figures instead. I had made a difference which is something the pills never did. Now there was an incentive. Not only could I fix my Hba1c but I could also sit with a smug grin on my face while DN tried to figure out what happened. It started to be fun. I got better at eating the right thing and I lost 13Kg in weight. DN said I was thought provoking.

You only need incentive and going to see DN every six months is mine. Now I tell HER what I am going to do and have become pushy. Lotsa fun."

I'm so glad you figured it out! I'm going to get my second hba1c soon and I hope it's in target. What was your first hba1c if you don't mind my asking? Did everything get easier as time passed?

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[shawncee]

@julie56 It was a shock to me as well. I didn't even know we had diabetics in my family.
I used to try to keep it in the back of my mind at first and forgot i was diabetic for a while. Not a good thing because i did a lot of foolishness in between remembering and regretted it after testing my blood sugar.
I'll be three months in on Tuesday but can't celebrate making it this far and improving because of exams. I will get my Hba1c taken though. I hope you continue to do great with your management

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[shawncee]

@andcol
...That got really complicated really fast ._.
Is T2 amylin resistant as well? I'm just asking because you said that if you don't eat your liver still pumps out sugar.
Sounds like it's all directly proportional. That doesn't sound like a lot of fun.
How'd you know which link to break in the cycle?

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[Squire Fulwood]

I'm so glad you figured it out! I'm going to get my second hba1c soon and I hope it's in target. What was your first hba1c if you don't mind my asking? Did everything get easier as time passed?

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