Katie's Story

must have had symptoms for a good couple of months before I actually did anything about it...It was summer holidays and we had gone to Rome for a long weekend… we walked everywhere, I was shattered by 9pm every night & I couldn’t stay awake to enjoy the evenings… put it down to all the walking we had been doing. I was soooo tired all the time… had massive dark circles under my eyes… I’d also started doing Pilates DVDs at home. I was made up because I lost lots of weight…it just dropped off, looking back I actually went very skinny, unhealthy looking. The thirst was ridiculous, drinking pints & pints of water, especially at night… & then consequently needing to go to the toilet constantly. Blurry vision…. Sat watching TV and not able to concentrate or see properly. Put it down to tired eyes… Back to work after the summer holidays, think it was my 2nd day back in class (I’m a primary school teacher) and I thought ‘I’m not right, I need to call the doctor’ So I did. Spoke to them over the phone and they asked if I could go in for a blood test the following morning. I did… and a few hours later they phoned me back… please come to the surgery now. I went in… went through all my symptoms again with the doctor, he wanted to do a dip urine test (at that point I still had no idea what was going on) and once I’d done that… he checked the little strip and told me to go straight to the medical assessment unit at Arrowe Park, my local hospital. I went to the hospital where they did more blood tests and urine dip. I was then put on a drip (insulin and saline) and told because of the high level of ketones in my body I was at serious risk of Diabetic ketoacidosis (DKA) when there is severe lack of insulin in the body. This means the body can’t use sugar for energy, and starts to use fat instead. If left unchecked, ketones can build up and make your blood become acidic. If I hadn’t called the Dr when I did… I would have been dead within a week.