Symptoms and Signs

Hi everyone! I am going to start this post with some of my symptoms and the warning signs of T1D.

During my stay at the hospital the nurses would educate me about different symptoms and ask if I had experienced them. These symptoms include fatigue, hunger, increased thirst, vomiting, excessive urination, blurred vision, weight loss, and headaches. Now, that might seem like a pretty big list and if all those things were happening at once, you would probably notice, right? Well, I had no clue. While in the hospital, my parents, siblings, and I thought back to certain events during the past couple of months and now we knew why I was acting the way I was. I have some pretty funny stories due to these symptoms, but of course at the time none of us thought something was wrong. There was always an explanation for everything.

In the beginning of May I was in the middle of lacrosse season and always really tired, but I thought it was because I either had practice or a game everyday. I would come home and nap after practice even though I’m not usually a “napper”. Ever since I was little, I didn’t like to nap and my mom could attest to that. But again, the explanation was lacrosse. Then, it was summer, lacrosse was over, but I continued to fall asleep wherever I laid my head. I thought, it’s summer, it’s hot, and I’m tired. No biggie.

On top of the fatigue, I was constantly thirsty. I would fill my camelback water bottle and drink that around the house because I was tired of refilling a cup all the time. I remember one time my sister had a basketball tournament up in Scranton and as soon as we got there I was so thirsty. We sat down at the restaurant attached to the hotel, we ordered drinks, and I could not wait for mine to come. I can’t express how thirsty I was. I was in, no joke, survival mode. We laugh looking back at it now, but in the moment it wasn’t funny and I would do anything for some water. I literally stole my friend’s glass, chugged it, and then finished off my brother’s before the waitress even got back to our table with mine. I’m telling you, it was pretty embarrassing.

One time, my family and I were on our way home from the beach, down in Wildwood Crest, so about a two-hour car ride. About three quarters into the drive I had to use the bathroom and I couldn’t hold it. This was strange because I was always able to hold it. I never used public bathrooms; I always waited until I got home. While my brother and sister thought it was hilarious, I didn’t. I was squirming in the back of the car, in the middle seat, right in between the two of them. It got to the point where I actually started to cry. My mom was teasing me from the front while I was looking back and forth from the GPS’s projected arrival time and the actual time. I seriously wasn’t going to make it. I made my dad pull over at the Starbucks on the highway, praying that it was open. I ran in, didn’t even wave to the one guy working there even though I saw him wave to me and about two minutes later I walked gracefully back to the car. There were many more instances where I woke up 4-5 times throughout the night just to pee. I started to get so used to it that I would plan when to drink water before I was going to leave the house. Towards the end, I probably used the bathroom 10 to 15 times in one day. At the time, I also had a reason for this: I was drinking so much water, so of course I had to go to the bathroom more often! Duh!

I can recall one time I was at the mall with my mom and I noticed that I couldn’t read the signs in the stores. I also noticed that the signs on the roads weren’t very legible either, but I wear glasses/contacts so I thought that I just needed a new prescription. Again, there was an explanation for everything.

When I weighed myself at the doctor appointment before the doctor even came in, it read around 110 pounds. That’s about 10 pounds lighter than I was just 6 months before. What was weird about that was 1) I wasn’t trying to lose weight at all and 2) I was probably eating more than I ever did during that time. One Sunday, my dad went out before church to get us breakfast from the bagel store and brought back bacon, egg, and cheese sandwiches with ketchup already on them. For all who know me, you know that I’m Miss Plain Jane. I don’t tend to try new things and I definitely do not like my foods touching. Well, I usually get a plain bagel with butter and I really never waiver off of that. But, I was so hungry when my dad came home that I just ate the bacon, egg, and cheese, which is something I tend not to like, especially with ketchup. I also don’t have a big appetite, so when I finished the entire bagel it left my dad surprised. On top of that, I had two donuts afterwards. I was never full, which is very unlike me. This was also odd because people noticed that I had gotten skinnier. I had all these symptoms, but I never thought too much about them. Now, I can truly explain everything. When we started to pick apart each scenario, it began to make sense.

All these symptoms are a result of a lack of insulin and too much sugar in the blood. I use this analogy to help other people understand: The insulin is the key to the doors of my cells, which let the sugar in. With my pancreas not producing any insulin, there was no sugar going into my cells and it was just sitting in my blood stream. In order for my cells and myself to have energy, I need sugar. My body was so desperate for energy that it made me thirsty and hungry all the time. This is obviously a very simplistic way of explaining it, but it is true. My body wasn’t breaking down the carbohydrates itself, so it thought by eating and drinking more that it would get the nutrients it needed, but instead it was just a continuous cycle. I also had ketones, which is an acid and is due to the lack of sugar inside the cells. My body was using fat for energy instead of the sugars I was eating, which explains why I was losing weight. This was the only way I was getting energy, but it meant that I had diabetic ketoacidosis and it could have become life threatening. Thankfully, we caught my diabetes soon enough where I hadn’t gotten too sick yet. If just one more week went by, I would’ve ended up in the ICU.

One afternoon in the summer, I had a basketball game in a really hot gym and I noticed in warm-ups that I wasn’t feeling exactly myself. At the beginning of the game, I was already exhausted. My mouth was so dry, I couldn’t even talk and I was really slow. My running was slow and my thinking was slow. Nothing was clicking. When Coach subbed me out I went to the bathroom and washed my face thinking I just needed to wake up. By the end of the game I didn’t feel good. I thought this was because I was just out of shape and because the gym was super hot. Little did I know that my blood sugar was probably through the roof from whatever meal I had before and my body didn’t have enough energy to do any exercise. I don’t really know how to describe the feeling well enough, but it’s like running through quick sand or water. I wanted to run faster and knew I could run faster, but my legs just didn’t move. I was constantly dizzy throughout the game and I wasn’t thinking straight. It was awful, and now, if my blood sugar is high during a game or practice, I still have these symptoms.

As I got insulin through my body the first couple of days in the hospital, I started to look and act a little more myself. But, if you could remember from my last post, I was struggling with the device/sensor on my stomach. It never started to work and I just wanted it off. I complained to my parents that I didn’t want this annoying piece of plastic on me if it wasn’t going to do anything. Once it was off I was able to lie comfortably and I felt “normal” again.

The rest of my hospital stay was so I could learn as much as I could until the doctors felt that I was ready to go home. I had to learn how to give myself shots, which wasn’t as hard as I anticipated and I got the hang of it pretty quickly. By the third or fourth day I just wanted to go home. I gave myself all the shots, pricked my own finger, did the calculations myself, and even began to understand and wrap my head around everything. I was ready. I was ready to go home and handle this.

On one of my last days in the hospital, my other aunt came to visit me with two of my cousins. Once again, they walked into my room and I started to cry. I hated for my little cousins to see me like this, but I couldn’t keep it in no matter how hard I tried. I cried into my aunt’s arms as she hugged me and tried to comfort me. That was the second time I cried. I’m not the type of person to show emotion or anything, but it was all becoming too overwhelming for me to continue to hold in. I left the hospital a couple nights after, knowing what to do in certain life-threatening situations, but by no means was I exactly prepared for what was to come. I was just glad to finally sleep in my own bed.

Thank you all for reading and I look forward to sharing my next post with more (now) funny stories and life-changing experiences.