Anybody have any interesting observations about diabetes that they would like to share the wonder if anybody else has thought about yet?
Just to name a few areas that this might cover:
David, there is a chapter in my book that explores the causes/triggers of Type 1 diabetes. If I get started on that it will take a lot of room here. Lol! I will copy and post a link that deals with this later today.
I was diagnosed a week before Christmas, years ago. But during Thanksgiving prior to diagnosis I was so violently sick! I think I vomited so much, that my insides were coming out. (Sorry for the frankness) At any rate I believe that is when my diabetes began. I really never got my strength back after that flu. At the time I didn't equate the two, but over the years it has become obvious to me that that was the beginning of my d. No actual proof, but I am highly suspicious. I share this because I am curious if anyone had similar occurrences?
[quote user="Dan"]
I think I vomited so much, that my insides were coming out. (Sorry for the frankness) At any rate I believe that is when my diabetes began. I really never got my strength back after that flu. At the time I didn't equate the two, but over the years it has become obvious to me that that was the beginning of my d. No actual proof, but I am highly suspicious. I share this because I am curious if anyone had similar occurrences?
[/quote]My daughter has always had weird symptoms. She rarely seemed to get the usual illnesses, like runny nose, coughing, sneezing, but she had violent vomiting attacks (crazy projectile...) every six months or so for years. The doctors never knew what to make of it. The last one she had, right before she was diagnosed, was the first one where I was absolutely convinced something was wrong beyond a stomach bug. She woke up vomiting on her bed, so my husband told her to run to the bathroom (hoping, obviously, to limit the damage as Sarah's ability to vomit seemed endless), which she promptly did. But instead of leaning over the pot to vomit in it, she sat on the pot and got the floor and walls instead. I now know that she was probably incredibly high and confused.
It was the day after this that I took her back to the pediatrician and adamantly told her that something was wrong. She took all the usual bloodtests and told us Sarah probably had a stomach flu and sent us home. On our way to dinner several hours later, the pediatrician called and told us to go to the nearest ER because her assistant had miswritten the results of Sarah's keytone test and based on that the doctor was certain Sarah was diabetic. And here we are...
Our "trigger" was the H1N1 shot. She was diagnosed 6 weeks later. As far as an environmental cause I wonder because no one else in our family has trype 1 so I don't see genetics here but a lot of other people do in their families. We live in California.
The pump has made our lives easier and I am sure as we learn more about it will only get better. I would like to see a cell phone like device with a key board that I could make notes and enter food that would be a meter too and a remote for her pump so it would have all the info in one place. I feel like when I download her meter I then have to pull out food logs and it is like putting a puzzle together and sometimes I don't have all the pieces and it is fustrating.
Ice cream is a killer, stays in her system for 4-6 hours so now we trying to figure out the right dose and timing for that, i.e. delayed dose. Dougnuts are hard too.
Heat spikes her sugar unless she is really active in the heat and then it always makes her low if we are not on top of it constantly.
-Meg (emmies mom, diagnosed 10/29/09 at age 4)
totally changing the subject...
i like the idea of ALL insulin pumps being tubeless. i'm tired of getting caught on doorknobs and hinges. what if i want to carry my insulin pump around in my sock? well, i can't! because the tubing isn't long enough. (ok, i would probably never carry the pump around in my sock, but you get the point!)
i also like the idea of making the pump a little more "fun". for one, more colors. what if i don't want pink, blue, or green? what are my options then? right now, i have can silver or black. BORING. what about orange? turquoise? burnt sienna? i want a crayon box of insulin pump colors.
and how about a little music? my current alarm sounds like something from the bowser's castle level on mario brothers. i'm not running through lava and dodging fireballs! i want to download a song (something less annoying) and make that my alarm! maybe i want my low insulin alarm to be "getting low" by lil jon and the eastside boys.
and touch screens! oooo... shiny!
and i want more pumps integrated with CGMs. (work faster on this, animas!). i don't want to carry around two different little machines. just one would suffice, thanks.
at least make it look cool!
Response to various emails so far:
If they could standardize the strips to use a new micro-usb element, then many smartphone devices could have something where you could insert the strip.. You would just load the manufacturers smartphone app. This would allow devices like DSi, psp, phones, etc to use the various strips. Wouldn't it be cool if kids with diabetes could use their DSi to load/test and graph the results?
I have weird fits of vomiting every now and then as well. I just throw up over and over. It does not seem even to be related to flu as far as I can tell. I have had them when I was low mostly I think. One low I was even 38 or something like that and could not keep anything down. I was real scared I would not be able to fix my low. I wonder what the connection to diabetes is with this. Maybe I have a virus that causes the diabetes, and it raises its ugly head like a cold sore every now and then?
I was diagnosed in October during the State Fair. I wonder how many people ar diagnosed around October - December (flu months).
To date I have not noticed a correlation to heat and lows. I have done saunas and hot tubes with no issue as far as I can tell. This heat topic has come up in other threads. I do notice I sweat something awful, which is bad when I play pool at the local bar. I see everybody else is dry as can be, but my shirt is soaked and I have to mop my brow with paper towels.
That is very cute. I am glad bayer did that. However, I was thinking of bypassing the other component and cable. They would add as a standard on the DSi itself a new super mini usb slot that other electronic components could plug into, but also a strip could go in it. Then you would download onto the DSi, for example, the application that can scan the strip and return back a result. This would require the strip to be a smart strip--in that, the microchip or whatever needs to analyze the strip would be in the disposable strip. The DSi or whatever (e.g., cellphone) just displays back the results using its smart app.
Ah, gotcha. Yep, that would be pretty sweet!
[quote user="C"]
maybe i want my low insulin alarm to be "getting low" by lil jon and the eastside boys.
[/quote]Btw, I LOVE this. Giggles!
I know that type 1 often follows a viral infection. For me, my diagnosis followed a bout of mononucleosis (Epstein-Barr virus) in 4th grade. Instead of attacking just the virus, the immune system attacked my pancreatic islet cells.
As for _why_ exactly type 1 follows viruses so often, doctors know less, or else we'd be much closer to a cure. :)
A few other theories I have heard: exposure to cow's milk as an infant instead of regular breast milk (which doesn't apply to me, being entirely breast-fed as an infant), an imbalance of gut pH/bacteria/whatnot in the intestine that promotes odd immune behavior, and genes (particularly HLA-DR).
Interesting information on the bacteria/milk. The Epstein-Barr attack informaiton was interesting too. I always wondered if stress played a role in this as well. In that, the virus/sickness, stress, no sleep, etc. helping lead to the outcome.
Ooh! Ooh! I have an idea. I would like an insulin pump with camera. The function of the camera would be to take an image of the food you are about to eat and tell you how many carbs it is!! Wouldn't that be great? If we never had to guess?
[quote user="Abbey"]
Ooh! Ooh! I have an idea. I would like an insulin pump with camera. The function of the camera would be to take an image of the food you are about to eat and tell you how many carbs it is!! Wouldn't that be great? If we never had to guess?
[/quote]
i like the way you think!
Dan, I think it may have been stomach illness, too. It was longer ago than traditional medicine would put my "trigger" based on when my diagnosis was (only 2 and a half months ago) but I was horribly, horribly sick about a year and a half before I think I started having symptoms of high blood sugar.
But then again, I also spent the last year and a half fighting off way more colds than usual, and a lot of those colds were bad enough to then become coughs... so who freakin' knows?