I just found this thread. I was diagnosed with type 2 diabetes in 2017 when I had an issue with my eye... it was red and sore and very sensitive to light. I couldn't even use the computer because the screen was too bright. After 2 weeks it hadn't gone away, so I went to the ED. Which was a challenge in itself because I had to go into Medicare to get a medicare card first. Don't ask me why, no one can explain it, but I just never got one of my own when I became 18. I'd never needed one until then.
Anyway, it was resolved with a treatment of drops for a couple of weeks. He said it was like 'arthritis' of the eye... whatever that means. But in examining the eye he asked if I was diabetic. I said I had no idea and he suggested i should go see a GP because there were strong signs of it in the back of my eyes. So I went and got a GP as I hadn't had one of those since I was a child either.
I got my blood sugar under control pretty quickly and it sat at around 6 until last year. Hormone therapy messes with your metabolism so I was warned about a rise in my blood sugar! So I'd cut out most sugar straight away after being diagnosed, mainly due to panic, but carbs are far harder. No one can survive without carbs!
The main ongoing issues for me was that my blood sugar was clearly quite high for quite I while before it was discovered. Some slight foot neuropathy, but the main one has been the postural hypo-tension. I was told than when you stand, the central nervous system increases your blood pressure to compensate for gravity. Due to some nerve damage, mine doesn't anymore so when I stand my blood pressure drops by about 20-30 almost instantly.
It took my GP quite a while to discover this, so for a few years I would be standing up while doing something physical and always feel light headed and after a short while a desperate need to sit down quickly. It seemed to be getting worse and we had no idea why. I had felt it on occasions for the previous 10 years or so. It happened on occasions, but not often or bad enough to concern me. But it was quite bad by this stage. Even walking through the supermarket, I would often need to leave my partner to continue and I would need to go sit down for a few minutes.
Once we discovered what was happening it became a lot easier because I could manage it a lot better... mainly by avoiding standing for extended periods and watching how much I physically exert myself while standing. Naturally this made it difficult to do many every day tasks and it was extremely frustrating and I felt like I was being lazy and would push myself too far and spend the rest of the day lying down, feeling terrible and with a massive headache. Knowing those limits and sitting down, if even for a minute or so, before knowing when enough is enough helps now but i'm still limited and it's still very frustrating. We have someone to mow our lawn and I still feel terrible when I hear him out there because I feel like that should be me. I know I can do it. It takes me a long time and lots of rests and I feel like crap after it but I still feel guilty about it. If I vacuum, I use a chair to sit in, do everything within reach, move the chair along a bit, and so on.
I have started reading through the whole thread. I saw the pancake recipe @Shaz51 shared with the maple syrup that doesn't spike blood sugar! I . Need. That. Now. 🙂 It sound like witchcraft to me but I'd only just discovered maple syrup before I was diagnosed! 😞 I used to always have lemon juice and sugar on pancakes and loved that so I never tried anything else.
So while my main mental struggle with it is the postural hypo-tension it has had benefits. It meant I started seeing a GP regularly and that is the only reason my prostate cancer got detected when it did so I was very fortunate in that regard. It's still a fight with its own mental struggles ('struggle' is probably underselling it) but it could be so much worse right now, so I do try to look at the positives.
It was very interesting to read in the first post that depression and anxiety can make eating healthy more difficult. I have always struggled with all of those throughout my life and one of the things that still does bother me about diabetes is that when I'm really feeling down, it feels like the only pleasure left in life is a nice chocolate donut or a kitchener bun and I can even have them!
