Todays post is all about how I was first diagnosed as a type 1 diabetic. I'm not gonna lie, todays post is going to be a long one. The story of how I became a diabetic was such a rollercoaster for me - and not the fun quick kind that's over before you know it either, it was long and scary. I want to be truly authentic and real with my discussion of how I was first diagnosed. Therefore some of the photos I have attached may be upsetting to some readers. Those pictures are placed at the end of the post and are numbered for reference so that those who do not wish to see them, do not have too. Now lets go back to the beginning of my story..
At the end of 2019 I was diagnosed with prediabetes. I constantly felt tired regardless of my sleep patterns, diet etc. and had already been diagnosed with having low iron levels. It was because of this I was having regular blood tests. At this point the doctors had noticed that my Hemoglobin (HBA1c) levels had risen to 37 which meant that I was prediabetic. Initially my doctors thought that I was starting with Type 2 diabetes as I had no other symptoms other then my tiredness. To coincide with this they thought I had a condition called 'skinny fat' which is where your body appears a healthy weight or 'skinny' but your actually carrying a higher percentage of fat around your organs. They told me to lose weight, eat healthy and exercise, which to me felt unnecessary as I was already a healthy BMI. My height at the time of my diagnosis was 5ft 7, I weighed 10st 11lbs and I didn't exactly eat unhealthily. I had also already been regularly exercising but despite this I still decided that come January I would sort it out. I started out gently, slowly reducing my carb intake and increasing the intensity of my pre-existing work outs. I then continued this until we went into the dreaded first lockdown.
At this point I was working as a reservationist from home 9am-5pm, 5 days a week which during a lockdown was very intense. I was extremely stressed working and living in the same environment as I didn't have an 'office' that I could shut the door of and forget about for the night. My only outlet for this pressure was exercising with at least 3 high intensity work outs a week amongst other training sessions. Alongside this I was dieting so that I was in a calorie deficit, this meant that I started to lose a few pounds slowly. I then tried the 'keto' diet as this was recommended by my doctors when I was first diagnosed. (For those who don't know this is an extremely low carb diet where you eat under 20 grams of carbs a day or less if you can manage it. Your body then uses the ketones that this produces to burn fat quicker then normal weight loss).
Personally I didn't find that the Keto diet helped me that much and I was just constantly miserable from not eating any 'nice' foods. This meant that I quickly reverted back to a low carb diet of less then 60 grams of carbs per day and 1200 calories total.
Towards the end of July I was the healthiest and strongest I'd ever been (See body shape pic). At this time I had some annual leave to use up and it was during this week that I slowly started to feel weaker and weaker. As I am quite a strong willed person I mentally pushed through it. I just assumed it was because I was doing a lot more and making use of the sunshine. (During this period I even climbed the highest hill in Cornwall despite my feelings of weakness!) It was after this annual leave that I started to go down hill fast. At first I started out with stomach issues and was extremely constipated (It took nearly 4 days of being on laxative style medication to start things moving slowly). This cleared up after about a week but I was still very fragile and just generally exhausted. I ended up having to take time off work to recover due to the severity of it.
I had gone from being the healthiest I had ever been to not being able to walk down a flight of stairs without feeling breathless. From when I first started feeling ill to when I was diagnosed was roughly a 3 week period. On the Tuesday of the second week I spoke to my doctor for the second time and she suggested that I get signed off work. She booked me in for a blood test but this wasn't until the following Wednesday. During that week I also took a covid-19 test as I was so ill that I wanted to rule it out, especially with all the breathing issues I was experiencing (This came back negative). I phoned the doctors again on the Thursday in floods of tears requesting they pull my appointment forward. I explained that I'd never felt so ill in my life! I couldn't breath properly, could barely walk or talk and I was downing litres and litres of water. Alongside this I was losing weight at an alarming rate. Unfortunately the outcome of this call was that I would still need to wait until the following week for the blood test.
The start of the last week before my diagnosis I was so ill that I would need to 'take a breather' walking roughly 7 steps from my bed to the bathroom! I also had to talk in between breaths as I really struggled to take in enough air. For those of my readers who are Disney fans, my speech was so delayed that I literally spoke like Flash the sloth from Zootopia! It was difficult to do anything and so I spent nearly 3 weeks in bed doing nothing but watching tv and sleeping. I was so weak I couldn't play any games and just generally didn't have the energy to entertain myself - My Netflix subscription was certainly put to good use that week! -
My poor boyfriend Darren had to do everything for me. He waited on me hand and foot, made sure I had all the medication I needed, cooked all my food and helped me to walk when needed. I'll forever be grateful for the love and support he gave me and continues to give me now. (He's a keeper 😉)
Its safe to say that the last week before I was diagnosed was pretty rough. Alongside the above symptoms I also had a horrible metallic taste in my mouth which made all of my food and drink taste foul. I was also excessively needing to pee, especially on a night time. During this period I lost a lot of weight very quickly. The first week of my diagnosis period I was at my ideal weight of 9st 10lbs and started to experience a lack of appetite. The last two weeks before my diagnosis I had a rapid loss of over a stone which took my weight down to 8st 6lbs, despite me not moving out of bed. It got to the point where my family were commenting on how skeletal I looked. (See picture 1). I then finally had my blood test and got called into my doctors surgery 2 days after to discuss my results. It was then that they said I needed to go to hospital asap and that I wouldn't be out for at least a few days. At this this point I was so ill that I didn't really feel very 'with it' mentally and I have patches that I don't really remember.
My mum had taken me into my local hospital and stayed with me whilst I was in triage. The doctors on the ward were very shocked that it had taken so long for me to get a diagnosis and the help that I needed. My body had gone into a state of Ketoacidosis (Full information on this condition can be found here). The short version is that there were so many ketones in my blood that it had turned acidic and was destroying my muscles etc. from the inside.
For reference of the severity of my condition my vitals were as follows: My Hemoglobin (HBA1C) should have been under 37 to be 'normal', mine were reading at 127. My blood sugars should have been between 4-9mmol and they were 42. My ketone levels should have been under 0.5 and they were either 6.0 or 6.3 which meant my PH level was off the chart! - The breathlessness and metallic taste I was experiencing was because of these ketones. My body was trying to regulate my blood acid levels by almost hyperventilating, this was getting rid of any excess carbon in my system and trying to make my blood more alkaline.
Whilst in hospital I had wires attached to me everywhere and multiple drips. At this point I had my mum take a picture of my state as I wanted to have something to remind myself in the future of how far I'd come. See picture 2. The doctors said that I was so far gone that a drastic response was needed. They were pumping me full of large 'roughly' measured doses of medications to try and radically bring down my vitals. This was called a 'sliding scale' as they would put a high amount of one substance into my drip and then switch to a different one, kind of like a seesaw of one to the other. Sadly they then continued to say that if I had come in any later I wouldn't have made it and that there was still a chance of this. Also that my family should prepare for the worst as it was still 'touch and go' as to whether I would fully recover. They then took me onto an intensive care ward and from that point on I was alone due to the covid-19 restrictions.
The first night on the intensive care ward I didn't sleep very much at all. I had to have hourly blood sugar tests and 3 hourly blood tests to see what the affects of my ' sliding scale' treatment were. This was also to make sure it wasn't then pushing my body too far the other way. I'll never forget the nurse on that ward that made my experience SO much easier than it could have been. She was also a type 1 diabetic and we spoke a lot in the night. She was telling me all of her experiences and it was so unbelievably comforting, I'm not sure I would have been so positive if it wasn't for her!
Luckily for me I was okay and after 24 hours I was moved to the Endocrine ward who specialise in cases like mine. It was there that I started to feel better. They showed me how to use insulin pens, check my own blood sugar levels and just generally bombarded me with tons and tons of information. After 3 days I was released from hospital with my world having been flipped upside down and back to front! Just like that I had to adjust to my new normal..
Despite all the negatives, I found my self feeling very positive through out this whole experience. Don't get me wrong, there was also ALOT of tears on my behalf too; when I'm stressed or ill etc. my bodies reaction is to cry and boy did I cry a river.. After all, my life had completely changed! I was alone and scared being bombarded with information I hardly understood, I couldn't have any visitors to cheer me up or comfort me and on top of all that I was still poorly and just generally feeling sorry for myself.. But despite it all I was also weirdly full of gratitude and positivity.
I spent a lot of my alone time in hospital thinking about my life and how that could have been the end of it, game over. It was strange because all petty things that may have stressed or angered me before just disappeared and it was like I was seeing my life in a new light. No anger, no stress, just gratitude. I never dwelled on the negatives of now having to inject daily etc. I just accepted it. The nurses were genuinely shocked at how quickly I picked it all up and how little they had to persuade me to give myself my first injection. The way I saw it was, this is my life now and I cant change it, there's no point dwelling on that fact or the past, I have to be present in the moment and take it as it comes. I turned it into a positive and to be honest I was just extremely grateful just to be alive! I was grateful for having even a semi normal life after what had happened and it was just relieving to finally have a diagnosis.
So that's my story, my bumpy road of being diagnosed. It can be SO difficult at times being
a diabetic, you certainly cant be positive all the time. I often have to take a time out and allow my body and mind to process my feelings. Daily plans can flop due to unexpected hypos, random bouts of tiredness and just generally feeling tired and low for no reason. But we all work through it, there's over 400,000 people in the UK alone fighting the same fight! This is why I wanted to start this blog. To have a platform to show the good, the bad and the ugly, as well as supporting others who are going through the same.
I hope you've enjoyed my journey and I hope to see you around soon!
Vic xx
Photos:
Picture 1-
This photo was taken just before I went into hospital.
You can see on my ribs hips, collar bone area and even my hands how little fat I had on me at this point!
Picture 2 -
This was just before I was moved to the intensive care unit, I was quite disorientated at this point.
Pictures 3 + 4 are the damages to my arm from all the drips as well as the bruising from the bloods and lines that came out of my hand.
