# I wasn't lovesick ...I was dying: Hannah Waterman



## Northerner (Dec 4, 2011)

Hannah Waterman posed on the cover of her exercise DVD, bronzed, beaming and dressed in a midriff-revealing yellow top. The petite 5ft 3in actress had undergone a remarkable transformation ? shedding 3st and dropping five dress sizes to a six in just five months ? and she wanted to tell the world.
Yet behind the glossy, air-brushed photographs things were starting to go wrong. Although healthy at the time of the DVD launch, soon Hannah ? daughter of Minder actor Dennis Waterman, and a former star of BBC soap EastEnders ? was spotted looking worryingly gaunt.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/a...h-Waterman-weight-loss.html?ito=feeds-newsxml

Actually not a bad article by Daily Mail standards


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## Jennywren (Dec 4, 2011)

Interesting , but you think that the rapid weight loss would have been a clue


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## cherrypie (Dec 4, 2011)

The article is better than most health topics they write.

Wonder if she is going to refund the money to people who bought her weight loss DVD?


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## FM001 (Dec 4, 2011)

Just goes to show how fast your health can fail once diabetes takes hold.


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## Northerner (Dec 4, 2011)

Jennywren said:


> Interesting , but you think that the rapid weight loss would have been a clue



I don't know. I lost 2st over the two years prior to my diagnosis for no apparent reason. I also had pretty obvious symptoms (with hindsight!), and in the three days leading up to my diagnosis I lost 17 pounds, but never suspected diabetes. I was unfamiliar with the symptoms of Type 1 and even back then the general press about Type 2 suggested it was a result of being overweight and inactive - I was about 20 BMI before those final 3 days and about to run a marathon, so certainly wouldn't have suspected Type 2. I suspect that if I had gone to the doctor when I first started losing weight and drinking 30 pints of milk a week then I would have been treated as a Type 2.


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## FM001 (Dec 4, 2011)

Northerner said:


> I don't know. I lost 2st over the two years prior to my diagnosis for no apparent reason. I also had pretty obvious symptoms (with hindsight!), and in the three days leading up to my diagnosis I lost 17 pounds, but never suspected diabetes. I was unfamiliar with the symptoms of Type 1 and even back then the general press about Type 2 suggested it was a result of being overweight and inactive - I was about 20 BMI before those final 3 days and about to run a marathon, so certainly wouldn't have suspected Type 2. I suspect that if I had gone to the doctor when I first started losing weight and drinking 30 pints of milk a week then I would have been treated as a Type 2.





I hadn't even heard of diabetes when the doctor told me, no family members or friends with the condition, just like you and Hannah I had lost weight and was drinking for England and was ready for dropping.


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## vince13 (Dec 4, 2011)

Having read the article I felt that it was quite well-balanced - urging people to be aware of the symptons but saying we can live a perfectly normal life as diabetics once it's diagnosed properly and we know how to deal with it - rather different from the piece on the girl from X-factor (going blind onstage etc) the other week.


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## ypauly (Dec 4, 2011)

I was slightly different in that I had the symptoms and new what they were due to many members of the family being diabetics, it was just better to not have it and bury my head.

It sounds stupid looking back, but I was in the mindset that if I have it I don't want to know.


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## trophywench (Dec 4, 2011)

Makes a very pleasant change to read a sensible article, doesn't it?


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## Pumper_Sue (Dec 4, 2011)

The bit that made me cringe was "dieticians helping her understand the glucose in foods."


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## Ellie Jones (Dec 4, 2011)

Les said he had ever increasing symptoms with increased thirst over a 6 month or so period..

When he did seek some advice as he felt awful, couldn't quench his first and every time he was on duty he had to get his colleagues to stop their land Rover to he could get out for a wee every couple of miles   The RAF medical officer told his it was his duty rostor which was 24 hours on, 24 hours off..

It wasn't until he went home on leave and his mum clapped eyes on him, and sent him straight to the doctors who did a dip stick test, told him to go home have his tea then report to the local hospital had he diabetics and was being booked in

Me, I thought the ickie feeling I had was because I suspected I was pregnant and gone to the doc's to have it confirmed, so doc sent my sample of for testing  and booked me in for a GTT the next day, then I got both results back in the same phone call, diabetic and pregnant and into hospital for 3 weeks


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## Estellaa (Dec 4, 2011)

i found this article very funny in a weird way. as my mum use to be best friends with her and   my doctor use to be Dr Rayman haha, it just amused me very muchly.  x


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## HelenM (Dec 4, 2011)

A lot of it rings very loud bells. I remember  not being able to be far from a bottle of water, going into bars and having syrop de cassis which comes with a carafe of water and just gulping it down. Obviously it was the  French hot weather. The weight loss was due to increased exercise. Actually, I knew something was wrong but society is such that as a woman  it feels great to   become  extremely thin. Everyone  compliments you on it.Other symptoms   can be swept under the carpet. (I had a standing order for anyone coming out from the UK for caneston... again blamed the heat).   
She was v lucky that her Australian doctors diagnosed her correctly.  Many doctors wouldn't have tested for antibodies and she would have been diagnosed with gestational diabetes.  
One glaring error in the article...her liver was making insulin, I think they mean glucose!

I think she seemed to have been developing it before pregnancy but there are a lot of women who are eventually diagnosed with T1 who start of with what appears to be gestational diabetes.
Good blog post http://www.tudiabetes.org/profiles/blogs/autoimmune-gestational


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