Eyes

There are many things that can go wrong with Diabetes and having DKA makes even more complications, apart form the obvious, your bloods being out of control. There are many long term affect that might not crop up straight away. I've been going through that the last 5 or 6 years now, although it seems to be settling down now (fingers crosses).

 The first was and is my eye sight. Now at first I didn't really pay much attention to this, when I was small I had to wear glasses for a bit, although I did grow out of them, most of my family (if not just about all) wear glasses, so I just thought it was my family traits coming through.
 I was 16 when I finally let myself be dragged to the opticians, not thinking much about it, turned out I had to have glasses, no biggie, it was going to happen at some point. I really didn't realize how bad my eyes where until I put the new spec's on, Everything was in HD (which is a stupid thought but true lol). I've got lots of different styles by now and although I go through the faze of wanting to get contacts I don't think I look the same without glasses now.

 When my bloods are fine, it's not bad, although my eye sight has gotten worse over the years. But when my bloods are high, that's one of the first signs (apart from the normal, tiredness and thirst), my vision gets worse. Everything goes slightly fuzzy.
 A few years ago, when I was working so hard to claw my bloods back down to normal, I went to my yearly opticians appointment. The guy found something bad at the back of my eye and referred me to the hospital eye clinic. I was curious but not scared. Turns out he thought I had a detached retina, I didn't, thank god, but I still wasn't lucky.

 Because of my blood sugars being so drastically high for so long my body had started to grow extra blood vessels at the back of my eye so that my oxygen levels to the eye didn't drop. But my body doing that was putting my eye sight in danger, I was slowly .. well actually not that slowly I had a year and a half tops of sight left in my life.
 That scared the absolute crap out of me, going blind. I sat there on my own and it just kept hitting me over and over again.

I was lucky that I went to the opticians when I did and that he noticed that something wasn't right (although what he thought it was turned out to be wrong it was still down to him for finding that something that was wrong). I had to have laser eye surgery.

Now the type I had isn't what people go through to correct their sight. You know that machine you have to sit behind while your'e getting your eyes examined, where the optician shines that light in your eye and the looking into the back of the eye. I had to sit at one of them, my chin in a holder and my forehead presses to a bar. The lady had me open up my eye as wide as I could, put numbing cream on the end of this little telescope thing and rested it onto my eyeball.
 That telescope thing was to focus the laser toward the back of my eye so that she could burn the extra blood vessels away.

It was one of the most painful things I've ever had to go through. My eye sight was red for a good few hours, light sensitive and a massive headache and  had to find my own way home, try getting on 2 different buses with the worst hangover headache ever and you kinda know what I was going through lol.
I'm lucky the treatment worked and I'm extra lucky because I only had to go through it once. (I danced out of the clinic when the Doc said I didn't need another treatment) But my out of control blood sugars had caused my body to try and help it's self which in turn actually hurt me.

You need to be so careful with your eyes. I never would have imagined that my blood sugar control could so effect my eyes. It's the things that you don't notice or don't think twice about that end up causing the most trouble. You should alway go to the Diabetic eye screening clinics (even though they can be a right pain) or even go to the opticians once a year just to keep on top of things.
I would never wish that pain on my worst enemies.
Please look after your eyes.