Occasionally I blog about my health. Often it's to do with giving up chocolate/biscuits/etc. This is the hardest thing I've ever tried to blog about.

On Saturday, 26th August 2006, I was diagnosed with Type I Diabetes. This kind of Diabetes is not caused by life style or diet and cannot be cured as of this stage. It's an auto-immune disorder where there immune system attacks the beta cells of the pancreas. The beta cells produce insulin which is used to move blood sugar out of the blood stream and in to the body as energy. Without insulin, this cannot happen.

These last few weeks my health deteriorated rapidly. I was drinking around 6L of water every day, constantly going to the toilet, was very hungry, my eyesite has become blurry and more. I have been fatigued in one way or another for the last few years and I never knew why. Now it's all quite clear, slowly but surely my immune system was taking away my ability to produce enough insulin to deal with the amount of sugar I was eating (or carbohydrates).

As a result, the body starts to consume the fat. I was 96kg's around this time last year. Two days ago I was 62kg. When the body burns away the fat for energy, it releases an acidic compound called a Ketone in to the blood stream. When these build up enough, you go in to a coma with Ketosis. I had a Ketone level of 2.5mmol/s and a blood glocuse level that was marked as 'Hi' by the machine. That meant it was over 25mmol/s. A normal glocuse level is 4 - 8 and coma occurs at around 40ish.

I was started on insulin on Saturday and as of this moment, it's past lunch on Monday and my Ketones are very low and my glocuse level is about 7.6. I guess I'm lucky that I went to the doctor when I did, otherwise I may have found out I was diabetic by waking up in the hospital after a black out or worse.

I'm very new to Diabetes and honestly the whole thing is incredibly depressing. But I'm alive and I will be able to live the rest of my life relatively side effect free.. but it involves constantly checking my blood levels and injecting myself with insulin in the stomach twice a day (at the moment).

I'm going to keep blogging about this if I can handle it. Right now I'm extremely stressed. I came to work for the company of my coworkers instead of fretting at home. One nice thing has been the support from family, friends and colleagues.

Also, many people I talk to already have stories of other people they know with Type I diabetes. It is comforting to know that many people are aware of the disease, though most seem to be more familiar with Type II than Type I. The two disorders are completely unrelated except that they have the same symptoms.

Diabetes Type I: It is not understood how any one gets it, how to do detect if you're likely to get it and there is no cure. Even stem cell cloning to make new beta-cells may not be a cure! I read that there's a possibility that replaced beta-cells may simply get attacked by the immune system again. Thankfully there is a lot of research taking place in to the causes and cures of this disorder. Hopefully in my lifetime there will be a cure.

That's all for now. I hope my health will improve over the next two weeks and I'll be back to my usual self once more. I've got a heap of work to catch up on and I have feeling guilty for not having done it.