diabetes awareness month - the weirdest thing about my health

the weirdest thing about my health?

well that's fairly simple seeing as i have a weird type of diabetes.

basically my pancreas works part time (hence the name of the blog) and yeah i know that sounds impossible.... i mean, surely it either works all of the time or none of the time? but no. for me my pancreas works nights only.... or it works if my sugar levels go over 20mmols. my consultant says that's impossible... yet another thing that I'm making up... but i promise I'm not.

i can sit all day in the teens, go to bed on a 14mmol reading and wake up to a beautiful 5 on my meter. why i can do that i don't know, but it happens. i can see what other diabetics are thinking... why complain about something like that, i would love to wake up to great readings every morning? but then, it makes basal doses (insulin which keeps my sugar levels constant) really hard to figure out.. and it affects my hba1c (average sugar levels over 3months) I've never had a hba1c over 7.5% even when my levels were constantly above 10 because of my morning readings lowering it.... not a bad thing, but then it means my consultant doesn't believe that my levels have been that high... he thinks that I'm making it up or exaggerating how high my levels have been.

then theres the part where my pancreas suddenly works if my levels go above 20mmols.... i can test and be like 20.2... then an hour later be 13.4 without taking any insulin or having active insulin in my system.... yet again, its not necessarily a bad thing, but it makes correction doses more difficult as i don't know when or if my pancreas will kick out insulin by itself meaning i don't need to inject extra.

at the moment I'm waiting for test results to come back to tell me if I have a fairly rare form of diabetes called MODY (maturity onset diabetes of the young) with this form there are several different types under the one heading of MODY. i fit several of the characteristics of MODY such as the pancreas working when levels get really high and the sensitivity I've had to different tablets. If i test positive for this there will be other things to think about as i get older as its a genetic condition, but that's for the future :)

at the end of the day i know that my health is fairly weird, but that doesn't make it any less real or problematic.