I had every diabetes symptom – but doctors claimed I wasn’t fat enough

Reaching for my phone when the alarm went off, I squinted to read the blurry screen.

I’d been having issues with my eyes for the past few days, resulting in having to hold food packets up to the light to decipher cooking instructions like a bartender trying to authenticate a banknote.

My vision had been 20/20 prior to this, so I put this change down to natural sight degradation that came from being in my late 30s. But it felt like the world had decreased its font size without telling me.

By that afternoon, everything was a haze. Venturing down staircases felt perilous as I couldn’t judge where to put my feet. I had to borrow my brother’s glasses to read anything. 

Then, I couldn’t see people’s facial expressions; they’d melted into ghostly apparitions.

As the emergency GP was about to send me to the opticians to investigate, she decided to weigh me. I was less than seven stone – a three stone drop in a year. 

Concerned, she tested my blood sugars, which were over 30 mmol/L – a normal fasting blood sugar is between 3.9 and 5.6 mmol/L. And 5.6 to 6.9 mmol/L is generally considered pre-diabetic. 

I was rushed to hospital, and there I was diagnosed with LADA – Latent Autoimmune Diabetes in Adults. It’s sometimes referred to as Type 1.5, because it contains features of both Type 1 (where the body’s immune system has destroyed the beta cells that produce insulin) and Type 2 (where the body does not produce enough insulin or the insulin doesn’t work properly, and risk factors include, age, ethnicity, bodyweight and family history). 

LADA is relatively rare among the 4.3million people in the UK living with the condition. Research has suggested that, globally, LADA merely accounts for 2 to 12% of all cases.

Honestly, I’ve found it easier just to tell people I have Type 1 diabetes.

Not that the news was entirely a surprise. For months, I’d relentlessly battled my rotating number of GPs to obtain a diabetes test. There’s a history of it in my family – my grandfather’s leg was amputated due to Type 1.

The saga started with bleeding gums, a year before my diagnosis. The hygienist advised me to seek a diabetes test. 

‘I’m never wrong!’ she portentously warned. 

Still, I was assured by GPs that I was too slim and active to worry about diabetes.

Then, last November, I had an unquenchable thirst. My mouth was so dry that I felt like a camel was going to traipse out of it every time I yawned, and I couldn’t stop urinating. Add to that the intense sugar cravings – I could have inhaled Willy Wonka’s entire chocolate river in one greedy gulp and still not been sated.

It was pretty obvious to me I was coming up three insulin syringes on the diabetes-diagnosis fruit machine, but my concerns were dismissed. 

The thing is, I assumed I’d have Type 2 diabetes, which can be managed by medication, diet changes and exercise. But I was blindsided – no pun intended – by LADA and what it involved. 

Lying in the hospital bed, the kindly diabetes nurse explained how to use a Micropen to inject myself with long-lasting insulin once a day and rapid-acting insulin 10 minutes before food. You have to rotate injection sites on your stomach, sides of your thighs, or bum regularly, or you end up with fatty lumps of skin.

You’re also fitted with a continuous glucose monitor, which tracks your blood sugars. An alarm beeps when you’re in danger of hyperglycaemia (too much sugar) or hypoglycaemia (too little sugar).  

It requires constant attention like a stressful version of a ‘90s Tamagotchi. To lower your blood sugar, you take a corrective dose of insulin. To get yourself out of a hypo, you consume five jelly babies (the official metric the NHS uses) then wait 15 minutes to see if your glucose has risen. 

Every pocket I have is now filled with jelly babies, like I’m Bertie Bassett’s pimp.

My previous misconception was that I’d have to radically alter my diet, but you simply add up your carb intake to work out the insulin dose required to cover it. 

At first, glancing at a Nando’s menu makes you feel like Alan Turing trying to crack the Enigma Code. But it doesn’t matter how much kale you eat – it isn’t going to result in a functioning pancreas.

I’m a syringe half-full kind of person and treated LADA like a project, trying to learn as much about it as possible. 

Telling people has been one of the trickiest parts. 

People regard Type 1 and Type 2 diabetes in much the same way I do the Kardashians: I’m aware there’s a Khloé and Kourtney, but I think they broadly perform the same function. So if people see you eating anything with sugar in it, they react like you’re gargling bleach, and sometimes they think you’ve brought it on yourself, rather than simply lost the genetic lottery.

Adjusting to eating out is taxing: do you discreetly retreat into the toilet to inject yourself or can you whip your Micropen out in public? Is it like breastfeeding? 

There were transitional aches – further sight loss (thankfully, it’s now returned to normal) and shooting nerve pains in my hands and feet as my body adjusted to stabilising blood sugars. When you see your plastic sharps bin filling with discarded needles, it hits you that this is a lifelong condition.

But no human can think in terms of forever. It’s a cliché, but you have to live day by day. I’ve had friends who’ve taken their own lives before they reached 35, and others who’ve died of cancer in their twenties.

I try not to have a chip on my shoulder about doctors’ failure to diagnose me quicker – frankly it’s just another carb to count! There’s nothing LADA stops me from doing (except, apparently, driving a HGV – which was never on my bucket-list).

Diabetes has to adjust to my routine, rather than the other way round, and I’m excited to write about it further. 

Yes, some might argue that life has handed me lemons, but that’s fine by me – ironically, on the plus side, they’re one of the foods I can eat without raising my blood sugars!

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