It’s hard to know when it started, I think by the time I was diagnosed I had probably had some symptoms for around a year. The last few weeks leading up to June the 7th definitely saw this speed up though!
Looking back over photos I think you can start to see things like my hair thinning and weight loss from around November ’22 time. I experienced the usual classic symptoms;
- Thirst
- Going to the bathroom more
- Weight loss
- Tired all the time
- Change in mood
The ‘problem’ with most of these symptoms was that I was also training for an Ironman at the same time and so could attribute these with that! I was thirsty because I’d just run 10 miles, or spent 3 hours on the Wattbike. I was going to the bathroom more because I was so well hydrated because I was drinking so much! I was losing weight because I was doing 15 hours of high intensity training each week, I was tired for the same reason and I was grumpy because no one seemed to understand this!
So my partner and I talked about the symptoms, especially the weight loss and decided we would do something about that. So we bought mass gainer shakes, smoothies, fruit to snack on, increased my carbohydrate portions at breakfast, lunch and dinner and still watched the weight fall off. By trying to simply increase the amount of calories I was getting we were feeding me ALL OF THE SUGAR!
I am 5 foot 5 and when I was admitted to hospital in June 2022 weighed 41 kg (6.5 stone or 90 lbs).
Looking back it’s all very obvious now, but masked by the training and me being stubborn and English and not wanting to waste the doctors time I did nothing about it. I finally gave in and went for a check up at the doctors where they took some blood. Fast forward a week I get a phone call from the receptionist asking me to come to the surgery immediately. Now, for those of you reading this in the UK, you know that that is not a good sign! Receptionists are there to keep patients out of the surgery as much as they can so when they say come in now you start to worry!
Off we go and are given the T1 news and told to get to the hospital immediately where they’ll be expecting me.
I’ll save the write up of the 1st hospital admission for another day!