Eyes 2

Hey so I know I talked about the whole eye thing last week but there where a few things that I didn't touch on last time.

As you know I have sight problems but there are two other things that have gone wrong with my eyes that relate to the health thing,

The first is Uveitis which is inflammation of any part of the eye, mine was in the iris. It gets very light sensitive, (it felt like the light was burning my eyes out of my head to be honest) it can also lead to blindness. It's something that happens spontaneously and there isn't a cure, just eye drops that are suppose to help. I had to wear sunglasses, but that didn't really help that much, it feels like one huge migraine. It can last a day or two and then not happen again for ages. Very hit and miss. A very painful hit and miss. I have no idea why it happened but it did pop up when my bloods where out of control, with my eyes already going down the 'lets not work properly' route I can only guess that it was helped along by that. I've been lucky to not have had an episode in a while, knock on wood.

The second is Horner's Syndrome which is a constriction of the pupil and Ptosis (which is dropping of the upper eyelid) while it effects the eye/s it's caused by a disorder of the sympathetic nerves in the brain-stem or neck. It's not so bad anymore, you can notice it a whole lot more when I'm very tired, ill or my bloods are going high again. It looks like I have crazy pupils though, one is huge and the other normal. It can be a right pain when you're trying to even out your eyeliner lol. Again not to sure where this popped up from, it have this weird nerve thing in my elbows, when I've got them bent for a little while my hands go numb, I've had the MRI's and CAT scans for that, but it's been around as long as my bloods where crazy, but this has stayed with me, better but still there.

I know it's been a rather short one this time, but I felt that these should be mentioned too because they are a side effect of everything that has happened and while somethings can go away with time, others to stick with you.

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.
 

The First Step

(sorry for this one being late, Forgive me!) 

Ok so just touching back to last weeks post, 

 I want you all to understand that even though I put myself through all that crap, I got comfortable with the routine, which is so stupidly ridiculous I know. At the time the hospital was the only place I felt safe, not that I wasn't safe at home, I guess it was more safe from myself, I was stable and I got to spend time with my mum (not the most ideal place to have family time), Ma and I started talking more and getting on better, I would be well for a little while and then things would start crashing all over again, like a wave. It was that kind of process in my head. 

 I decided to get my act together. Now this wasn't one of those, I woke up one morning and realised what I'd been doing and I started to change my life tha very day kind of things. It had been playing on my mind for a while. I had lost major contact with a lot of my friends at school even though I was still going (well only half the time, I was in hospital or off ill the rest, or there was that one time I called in every day for a month pretending to be my mum, which later was my downfall as she is Canadian and I don't have her accent, in my defence she sounds like she has an English accent to me), The novelty of a sick friend had worn off and they didn't care so much, you truly find out who is your real friends when you go through something like that. My grade weren't the best either, even though i still passed my GCSE's and got higher grades then they predicted, I know I could have done so much better, if I wasn't and idiot and skipped school. 

  It was when I'f gone in for one of my hospital appointments (every 3 months in those days, they did want once a week but we couldn't get there that often) and the doctor was chewing around the same old speech, I'd gotten bored and was thinking about something, it obviously showed on my face. He stopped and looked at me properly for the first time in that whole appointment (I was the one they would all groan at when they saw my name on the list, different doctor each time) and he turned to me and said 

 'Alex, you are going to die, you are slowly and horribly killing your body, you wont live to see 21' 

I'd gone in on my own that day, I was in my teens so it's not like I needed a hand to hold when I went, but I could have really used it that day. It was one of the few times a doctor has made me cry (I didn't do it in front of him, I went to the bathroom, how sad a cliched is that right) 

 I was 1^ when I heard that, I had 5 short years apparently and it was all because of me. 

 Know I'm not going to tell you that was the point I changed my whole life, bad habits die hard, but it was the point in my life that I asked for help. The help to try and sort out all that crap going around in my head, that was tinting the world. 

 So I got help, once a month I went to the hospital to talk to someone and it wasn't just about my Diabetes, it was anything and everything that I need to get out, (not everything but the major things at the time that was the most bothering). 

 That was the first step, admitting I needed help, going to my ma and asking her to help me to find the person or people that could help me. 

 It's hard to watch someone you love go through something hard and it's harder still to know it's themselves that are causing most of the trouble, but it doesn't matter how much you love them and try to help, in the end it's them that needs to admit that there's a problem and ask for the help, because then they are doing it for themselves and not any body else. 9 times out of 10 it will work and stick when it's them that makes the first move rather somebody else pushing it onto them.

Sorry if it sounds like I'm repeating myself, I just want you guys to understand where this can come from, why someone can stop looking taking the medication that is keeping them alive.

Bad Intentions

Getting DKA is bad, as I've already said. Getting DKA when you've been sick is horrible because not only are you feeling absolutely crappy from being ill but then your blood decide they no longer need to be nice and have a party and that sends you into DKA. Not very nice at all.
 Like I've said I had my first stint with DKA when I got ill, the second time it happened all I can put it down to is I was still run down from the previous time and because of the whole puberty thing my hormones where all over the place coursing havoc and with insulin being a hormone itself they don't mix well. That time wasn't quite as bad as we knew what was happening, still hospital admitted but not for quite as long. Again I came out looking like death warmed over and still run down but better and ready to put all these episodes behind me, I was starting secondary school in the fall and I had to be ready and prepared.
 All was fine for the first year, which was great, but something happened over that summer holiday and I don't really remember what. We'd gone to Canada to visit family had a great time, like any other visit, but that time I came back and had gained quit a bit of weight .. like 2 stone (thats around 28 pounds) .. I ballooned! I came back a different person (probably the new me devoured the old me!).
 Things got hard for me after that. My friends didn't act any different, my school life wasn't really any different but boys only really saw me as the friend type after that and because of the drastic change of my appearance I had to get new clothes (now normally that would be cause for celebration but not when you've gone gone up 4 dress sizes and you want to cry for the rest of existence).
  I got very bad emotionally very quickly.
 But then I remembered what happened to me when I got DKA.

 Now you're probably shouting at the screen .. No Alex you didn't!! .. well yes I did.
 I started to purposefully not take my Insulin, it would only be the odd one here or there at first. At the time I was on a four a day injection plan. The long acting at night and 3 quick acting (one for each meal) at night. But it steadily got worse of course, it turned into only doing one injection a day. I got sick and it wasn't real quick either, I was having just enough insulin to get me through but it wasn't enough to survive on. So obviously I went into A and E with DKA .. I was in for about 5 days and I lost quit a bit of weight.
 (Do you guys remember that big fad diet the Atkins diet? .. yes well that's just another name for DKA)
 I was happy because I'd lost weight. But it didn't last long, because they put my insulin doses up thinking I wasn't having enough. Do you know what high doses of insulin can do to you? .. it make you hungry so you eat more so you have to inject more but then you feel hungrier, see where this is headed? .. One great big huge emotional catch 22.
I ate what I wanted, didn't really care what it was, hardly injected if at al I stopped doing blood tests all together because I didn't like seeing the numbers climb, I knew that shouldn't be that high that it was wrong and it upset me so I thought if i didn't do them at all then I wouldn't need to seem them so I wouldn't know if they where high or not basically slowly started to destroy my body, but not only my body, I wasn't the most happy person, I became clinically depressed and put on the happy pills. I was in and out of the hospital every 6 months, had to see the doctors every 3. Missed half of my school life and wasn't only screwing up my life right then but my future too.
 I was young and had then mentality most of the young have, that want happen to me. My diabetic control was gone, the diabetic team I had didn't help in any manor. All they saw was a out of control teen and nobody wanted to deal with that, it was like they saw me coming and had the tape ready to play on loop.
 My teen years where very dark for me. I didn't want to acknowledge what I was doing to myself wasn't the answer, it was a quick fix for a problem I didn't see any way out off (for a smart person I can be very dumb sometimes). This wasn't the solution, but part of the problem was that I didn't have someone to slap me out of it, to sit down and say What the bloody hell are you doing to yourself. My poor mum tried but we didn't really get on at the time and bless her she didn't really know how to say that, she was stressed out and frustrated so most things turned into verbal fights.
 But at some point through all that it became less about the weight loss from hell but to rebellion, At that time it was the only thing I felt I had any real control over and it was truly my choice if I injected or not and at that time I didn't really care if I lived or died, it was my choice either way.
 I did that for 5 whole years.
 DKA isn't pretty, it's horrible and the effects it can have on your body are horrible too. But it's not only the side effects that happen right then, the build up of everything and having your bloods running at over 20 for 5 years can have devastating effects that might not show up for a few years.

 I will always be haunted but what I chose to do, my life could have gone so differently, but then through everything I put myself through I honestly shouldn't be walking on this earth anymore. But I am. I made me the person I am today and maybe I am a stronger person today then I would have been.

 I do NOT recommend what I did as a good idea!! DO NOT DO IT!!! Please take it from me .. learn from me .. I will tell you everything that went wrong all the problems I have had because of that choice, you don't want to go through what I did, It was hell!

Injection Sites

I think people should be more aware of injection sites. 

When the doctors tell you to rotate your injection sites DO, because if you don't lots of bad things can happen, trust me, I know.

From experience you can get very comfortable with a certain area, either for easy of access or it's less painful. It gets less painful because you can kill of the nerve endings in that site, so you don't always realize whats happening because the feeling isn't there anymore.

 There's always the major risk of building up the insulin too. When you inject the insulin it absorbs into your body, if you inject into the same area each time (or the same few) then over time (and surprisingly it can be quick) the insulin builds up as it waits for the last lot to absorb, that's where the lumps come from. So you think your inject 10 units of insulin but in reality you might only be getting half of that because of the build up. So then you have to start injecting more and more to combat that which in turn makes the build up bigger and bigger, it's a real catch 22. I did this with my stomach when I was young. I disfigured my stomach horrible because of it, its taken nearly 20 years (and that's not exaggerating) to get back to a more normal shape, it's the one area of my body that I am most weary of. It also started to build up on my thighs to, but never as bad as my stomach. 

 Because of the build up and then because of the huge doses of insulin I had to inject, I became insulin resistant (which isn't what you need for an insulin dependent Diabetic lol) 

 But it isn't always injecting in the same sites that can build up insulin, it can also be the size of the needle your using. 

 Again when I was quite young I found the normal sized needles painful (I was stick thin, no meat on my bones at all) so my mum got specially ordered extra short needles, which was great for me because they didn't hurt as much, but the insulin wasn't going in deep enough so was taking longer to absorb. That also doesn't help with the lumps. So not only do you get the umps but you can also get bruising too and damage nerve endings. 

Injecting isn't just dialing up how much insulin you need and sticking it into your body. It's a delicate balance that most forget about, but it can help so much for the future not only for your control but beings happy in yourself too.

The First Signs of Trouble

When I was young my Diabetes was great to control. I did every blood test that could fill the book, injected each time I was suppose to, never ate what I wasn't aloud. But it wasn't easy.
 It's hard growing up and trying to be normal. You look normal, there isn't anything outwardly wrong with you, yet you can't do everything they can.
They would eat chocolate and sweets in front of me but at the time I wasn't aloud them. Having to go out of class and do my bloods and insulin (because it was a distraction to the other kids in class). But you make it work and you carry on. Of course you have good days and bad days, just like anyone else, and sometimes the kids would tease (one of the big things that would come up was about using my Diabetes as a tool to get out of classes).
 Sometimes it's just because they don't understand what Diabetes is, so to help things I set up this mini workshop with my Diabetic nurse, she came to my school and during lunch she taught my friends what Diabetes was all about and even how to inject themselves. It helped with school life a lot because half the time my friends would notice my bloods dropping quicker then I would.
 Primary school was easy when it came to my Diabetes, they where understanding and helped when they could, it also helped a lot that one of the teachers there happened to have a son who was Diabetic so she knew a lot to help when she could. It was when I started down the whole puberty route that things started to turn ugly. It's hard going through puberty at the best of things times but having your bloods out of control added on, not very peachy.

One night I was very sick, I couldn't stop throwing up, At first my mum thought it was something to do with left over stress from my exams (the judged what levels i would be placed in secondary school) but then as the night progressed and the vomiting didn't stop she started to think it was the flu or something along those lines. When it was morning and I was still ill ma took me to the hospital. Turns out that I had ketoacidosis. (It's when theres to much sugar in the blood and not enough insulin to combat with it, so the body uses fat instead, but form that you get something called ketones, to much of these and it starts to poison the body)
 It was horrible and most of the time I wasn't awake enough to know what was going on. My friends from school came to visit, my mum and step dad stayed as long as they could everyday. I got better after a week or so, my insulin was adjusted and I was sent home. Things went back to normal.
 I was still very tired the first few days home and i'd lost tones of weight (not that I had a lot to loose at that time in my life) and I even passed my exams with better grades then predicted. But it was a horrible experience and the whole family was shaken up by the whole thing but we moved forward and things went back to normal for a little while,

The Discovery!

I was officially diagnosed with Diabetes when I was 5, but the symptoms started way before then.

 I don't really remember a lot about that time, so most of what I tell you from this is from my mum. I was extremely thirst, it got so bad that ma would catch me with my head standing on a kitchen chair with my head under the kitchen tap, guzzling as much as I get. So obviously from the extreme drinking I was basically living on the loo too. That constant wanting to drink anything is the body trying to flush out the poison and the longer you go without either having insulin or being diagnosed the more poison builds up and the more your body wants to flush it out.

 The longer I went the more tired I got tired. I honestly was falling asleep on my feet. So I'd wake up long enough to guzzle as much water my little body could hold, pee for Briton and then fall sleep again.

It wasn't to that extreme straight away of course, it built up and got worse over time until my parents rushed me to hospital.

 Again I don't really remember all that much, just snippets here and there. Like when they initially took me in, I was laying on this bed and the nurse came over and slathered this thick white cream on my hand and a giant see through plaster, it was squidgy (it was a type of numbing cream the hospital hand for kids to help with putting cannulas in)  and then I was moved into this room, so they could put the cannula in, the ceiling was decorated with birds.

I  don't know how they teach people now a days but I was taught how to inject with a syringe and an orange. Later I had a go on ma (with saline not actual insulin). That was one of the moments I actually remember quite vividly, I was very very scared to inject my mum. I had syringes for a long time, I didn't have the fancy pens until I was around 6/7 and then when I did get them I didn't stay on for long, there was a lot of trouble with jamming and not delivering properly, so I ended up going back to syringes and staying with them until I was in my teens. That was my preference, insulin pens are a lot better now then they where. But everything has it's ups and downs.

There is on other thing I remember about my hospital stay. We where in a huge room with tones of beds (probably wasn't as big as I remember but it seemed huge at the time) and there was an older girl on the next bed from me all I remember is her name was Jessie and she was really kind to me, always talked to me and included me in things, I named my favourite Barbie after her, which I still have to this day (she was my favourite Barbie because she wasn't like the others, dark shoulder length hair and flat feet) having that person to even say 'how are you doing today?' really helped.

Sometimes when people are diagnosed they have to change their whole life styles and food habits. It was easier for me, not only because I was so young I didn't really know any different but I was never aloud to have lots of sweets, chocolate or stuff like that so it never was a drastic change for the family as a whole. I always think that was lucky to get it so young so I wasn't stuck in bad habits that would be so hard to break (not that I don't have any now).

Going through that whole process was hard on me because of what your body is going through and then the learning to not only do blood tests but injections and the like but I think it's harder on the family because they have to watch whats happening and feel helpless. I can't imagine what my poor mum went through hoping for me to have the lesser of two evils, she told me she sat there and hoped that it was Diabetes because at least I could survive.