[sable_032592]

in my case, i was lucky to be able to pinpoint when i became diabetic, or in effect, what caused it...

in early 88, i got pneumonia, but the doctors i saw said it was a cold, so no meds to treat it... by the end of 88, i had had enough and went to a civilian doctor (my father is in the air force and we were stationed in lahr, germany, i was 12)... the new doctor said i had pneumonia and gave me meds and declared that i had asthma as well... early on in 89 (february), i went to an endo because i was gaining weight, he ordered tests and said i had hypothyroidism, among those tests was a blood glucose test, which he never told me the results...

upon my return to canada in july of 89, i had to find another endo, who never told me my bs levels either, but i had my medical files from germany with me and my parents looked at them (my mother was a nurse), and they noticed that my sugar levels were higher than normal, they knew this because my father's mother is T2, though no one has diabetes in either side of my family, grandmother's T2 caused by old age and something else, i can't remember...

so we went to my endo and asked about the high sugar levels, he said it was normal for an overweight person to have higher than normal levels... but then in march of 92, i was diagnosed with T1 and from my past blood tests for by thyroid, the doctors said my diabetes was caused by the delay in treatment of my pneumonia in 88, the virus ran amuck in my body and the doctors said that it must have touched my pancreas, therefore destroying the insulin producing part of it...

they also said i was lucky, the virus could have touched my heart or brain, causing more serious problems and even death...