Climbing the diabetic LADA

There are 2 kinds of diabetes, right? Type I is often called juvenile diabetes. It's autoimmune. You're pancreas is DOA. It makes no insulin. You can be irritable and have mood changes and unintionally lose weight. It's autoimmune because your idiot body thinks the insulin producing beta cells are foreign invaders and it kills them. After the friendly fire, you make no insulin.

Type II is developed over time. Your body makes insulin but doesn't know how to use it. Stupid body. We also don't know why we become insulin resistant exactly but there are several potentially contributing factors. Weight is one of them. And you don't unintentionally lose weight with the type of diabetes that often needs you to lose weight. Stupid, stupid body. This is the kind that often costs you your feet...  and vision... oh, and life.

Now you understand how you can have Type 1 or Type 2. But if you're really lucky, you can kinda have both. It's called LADA - Latent Autoimmune Diabetes in Adults, which should by LADiA I guess, but we don't include prepositions in acronyms. Poor, left out prepositions.

Like Type 1, you can't produce insulin. Usually there's a trauma or attack that causes your body to attack itself. SO stupid. Are you seeing the pattern here? And you don't need insulin right away because your pancreas is a scrappy little guy and keeps fighting through it. Unless you're me and you've got LADA for a while. This is why it's called 1.5. It's autoimmune in that the pancreas was attacked by another part of the body until it was killed. But Type 2 in that it presents as insulin resistant since it's not an open and shut case of worky/no worky.

This is why it's hard to diagnose. Doc says "Oh, looks like Type 2. Watch your diet. Take this preemptive medication to help your body use the insulin. Check back in 6 months." This happens all while there's a war going on in your gut. And then one day you look and feel like shit and fly home in diabetic ketoacidosis and barely survive.

In my case, my pancreas was a hell of a fighter. The onset of LADA must have been going on for a long time, and my pancreas fought for survival. Being like Type 2 I was making insulin while my pancreas clung to dear life but used it poorly so I had high blood sugar with the expected lethargy. I also just finished a year of almost 70,000 miles of travel. Of course I was tired. And then when he couldn't hang on any longer and died, it became like Type 1 and I started to drop weight. I was working out and trying to eat better and drinking more water. Of course I was losing weight. And hiding in plain sight was this whole situation, until it was nearly too late.