Living with diabetes > Introduce yourself
Newbie to the forum, saying Hi!!
nytquill17:
I suspect you will find things a bit easier to manage on mealtime insulin than on gliclizide, at least once you get the hang of using insulin. It is in some ways more work (for example the carb counting) but its action is generally more predictable than that of glic which sort of causes your pancreas to spurt out whatever insulin it can scrape up. I wonder if that may have anything to do with the seeming "randomness" in terms of insulin production that's been observed in your case. Although that same degree of randomness is also quite commonly seen in T1, at any time, but particularly during the "honeymoon" phase (where the insulin making cells haven't all finished dying off yet and some of them are still contributing - not enough to keep you from being ill without injecting insulin but enough to make it tricky to know just how much to inject!) T1.5 is basically T1 with a sort of "extended honeymoon" period, or sometimes described as T1 that develops in slow motion. Not saying it's down to the glic OR a misdiagnosis but it could turn out to have been supporting evidence in hindsight.
Now saying that, I've been an insulin user since childhood so a) I don't have any personal experience on glic, I'm going from what I've gleaned talking to others and frankly I've not heard anything to make me a fan! but also b) if my ten year-old self could manage insulin, then a reasonably intelligent monkey could which means you are miles ahead ;) It takes time to get a "feel" for as there is a lot of trial and error involved, which is a time consuming process, but it is completely within your grasp.
Do tell us how your carb counting is going - how are you going about it (what's your method), are there parts you feel you don't have a handle on yet, things that are troubling you? I find that carb counting in itself is a relatively simple thing to grasp: find carb content per serving (either on package or via a reference book or website), find how many servings you're eating, divide/multiply as needed. I find the only tricky parts are: the "hidden" carbs, that is, carbs in things that we don't think of as particularly starchy or sweet, like sauces, gravies, certain vegetables; and the sheer hassle of it all, or to put another way the self-discipline that you may find yourself needing to count carbs on a regular basis. With time both of those things become a bit old hat thankfully! :)
Venomous:
just wanted to say good morning and welcome :)
Libra:
Hi Bob welcome from me too :)
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Pattidevans:
Bob, your subsequent posts have also made me wonder if you could be T1.5 aka LADA (Latent Autoimmune disease of Adults). As has already been said, it's a sort of slow onset T1 where you initially respond well to oral meds, but they increasingly become less effective as your own insulin production becomes less.
The GAD65 test is a test which identifies the antibodies which cause the beta cells to die off and (according to my Endocrinologist) can detect them for up to 5 years from diagnosis. The CPeptide test is used to identify exactly how much endogenous insulin you are producing by measuring the CPeptide hormone that is produced at the same time as your natural insulin. Lots of information on it here http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/C-peptide
From my own experience it's very important to have a correct diagnosis because of future treatment i.e. T2s do not get pumps, or carb counting courses and many doors that are open to T1s are firmly closed to T2s.
sedge:
That's saved me the trouble of explaining it LOL
The C-peptide test is extremely expensive and takes ages to get the results so although it's something we'd all quite like to know, as they've found in the US where they've been studying a large number of T1s year by year at the Joslin Institute in Boston, and some of those guys and gals are now in their 80's ! - some of them are still producing C-peptide and therefore, some of their own insulin. Not enough to not be T1, but some of them still produce it. Joslin wonder whether it's something which protects some or all of these people getting complications, rather than JUST being down to marvellous HbA1c test results. All of these people would have originally been on animal insulin (bovine or porcine) and in the old days, those insulins would have included some C-peptide from those animals. I myself was on porcine until 1995 sothe first 23 years of my diabetes. And I had far from perfect A1cs, it's only the last 12 months I've got it below 7.0 and the first 39 years it was higher 7's and lower 8's. So it's never been absolutely awful (but who knows, it was only done once a year and we were testing pee day to day rather than blood ....) Yet so far, no (serious) diabetic complications, and I smoke and am a couch potato ..... Fascinating ..... LOL
One day I'll crumble into a small pile of dust, with just a lopsided smile to show where I've been - bit like the Cheshire Cat - but that happens to us all eventually anyway, doesn't it !
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