Spotting the signs of diabetes

Understanding the signs of diabetes is vital for all healthcare professionals.

Diabetes week is from the 13th-19th June, and the team at the Leicester Diabetes Centre are running a campaign focussing on spotting the signs of diabetes. It is vital for all to understand the signs and symptoms of diabetes and promptly act on them by seeking help from a healthcare professional, so they can perform an assessment to determine if someone has diabetes.

James Ridgeway, EDEN educator and diabetes specialist nurse shares his personal experience of spotting the signs and being diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at the age of 23. An experience which became a key motivation to James becoming a nurse specialising in diabetes.

“It has been just over ten years since I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and I remember the experience like it was yesterday. At the time I was a student nurse on an accident and emergency placement, which was expectedly fast paced, exciting, and stressful, but with many learning opportunities.

My placement began a few weeks before I was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes and I noticed that my body was behaving ‘oddly’. I started to feel more tired than usual, but I simply put it down to working placement hours in a busy and stressful environment.

Around the same time, I also started to notice an urge to drink more than normal, which got progressively worse as the days went on. I would wake up in the morning with an unquenchable thirst, and a tongue that felt as dry as the desert. I would then guzzle down a substantial amount of clear fluid in the hope that it would quench my thirst. It didn’t. What did become noticeable was a need to urinate much more often than normal.

Just experiencing these two symptoms alone was quite unsettling, as one led to worsening of the other. Yet I was just thinking to myself that all will be fine and simply go away, I was being stubborn with myself.

For the few days that followed, I attempted to carry out my normal activities of both placement and social life. However, it became harder and harder to do. In addition, I began to experience more unusual things happening to my body. In particular I noticed that I was experiencing thrush that wouldn’t settle and that my eye sight had started to become more blurred than usual, which hampered my ability to see normally.

The addition of these symptoms became the final straw for me to accept that something was wrong and that I needed to get help. So, I rang my local GP surgery where I was studying to inform them of my symptoms and ask for an appointment, which they booked me in a couple of days’ time.

At the appointment I explained my symptoms to the doctor and expressed my concern that I may have diabetes. The doctor then said ‘’Don’t worry James, you likely don’t have diabetes, you are probably just stressed from your placement. However, just to be sure we will do a fasting blood test in a few days time’’.

The doctor turned to their computer and began documenting, paused and turned back to me and recommended in the meantime to ‘’Go to the local sexual health clinic due to the presentation of thrush just in case it isn’t a sexually transmitted disease, and go to Specsavers to have an eye test due to the sudden eye sight changes’’.

I left the GP surgery feeling slightly reassured that the doctor did not think I had diabetes, yet not completely satisfied due to the symptoms I was still experiencing. Two days passed and I had managed to attend a sexual health clinic and was told to wait a few days for the results. I was also able to have my eye sight tested which showed a worsening of my vision, and an order of a new prescription and glasses had been made.

Whilst waiting for the blood test, which was due on the Monday, it was a case of tolerating my symptoms. When it came to the day before the test, the Sunday, I was doing a long shift on my placement. Even before the shift had begun I already felt exhausted from having a bad night due to the symptoms. The thought of doing a whole long day feeling as I did was an upsetting thought. Still I started about my day, trying to simply cope with the symptoms.

A few hours had gone by during the shift and I was realising that I wouldn’t be able to get through its entirety. I was feeling tired, so thirsty, and needing a toilet break every few moments, all whilst struggling to see. It had become all too much.

So I spoke to a doctor within the department who asked me to have a finger prick test taken, just in case. A nurse then kindly supported me, wiped my finger clean, pricked my finger and waited for the result. The result came back and the nurse stared at the monitor, longer than I would expect to be a normal amount of time. She looked at me, then looked at the machine, I asked what was wrong.

The nurse then showed me the monitor which read as 30.6mmol/L. She then got the attention of the doctor straight away, who appeared to be as surprised as the nurse, ordering another finger prick test to be taken with a different machine just in case. The same result came back, and from there I went from being a student nurse to a patient lying on a hospital bed, receiving my first insulin injection.

The doctor returned to my bedside a little while later and I asked the obvious question ‘’Was it diabetes?’’, and he said ‘‘Yes, type 1 diabetes’’. From that moment on my life changed forever.

Following my diagnosis I was given excellent support and discharged the following day. A few days later the sexual health screening results came back, they were unsurprisingly negative. I also noticed that my symptoms were starting to ease, which became a great relief, especially as I could get a better night sleep.

When the time came to collect my new glasses I noticed that my eye sight was also starting to get back to baseline. I popped the new glasses on and strained my eyes. I realised the new prescription was completely off. I then had another eye sight test done straight away and the optician told me that my result was very similar to my usual prescription. I simply left the shop how I had entered.

This experience was one I will never forget. A moment that could have become much worse had a finger prick test not been done at the time it did in the accident and emergency department. Had a simple finger prick test been done at the original appointment, my diagnosis would have likely come sooner and smoother. Also if I truly listened to my body right from the start then my diagnosis experience may have been much less distressing.

The moral of the story is to spot the signs and act on them as soon as possible, whether you are the individual affected or the supporting healthcare professional.

Find out more about Diabetes Week and download the spot the symptoms poster here.