# How do we determine if a child was 'caught early'?



## rspence (May 1, 2010)

My thought process comes off the back of Kei's thread about her sons hideous honeymoon period. (poor them) Thought I should start a new thread to save that one being taken over!

I totally appreciate the answer might be 'everyone is different' or 'we don't really know' but just in case its related to numbers, DKA, and length of time symptoms were present before dx I thought I'd ask the question.

I've read a few posts that say their child's diabetes was 'caught early' and I suppose I'm wondering if that would be true of JP or not!

Am interested in your thoughts,

Rach


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## Gemma444 (May 1, 2010)

Hya Rach 

Im  not sure if J was caught early. I work at the hosptial so if it wasnt for me taking a wee sample in to be tested i could of been given the run around like many parents have by their GPs saving it was a virus etc. 

Gem x


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## Kei (May 1, 2010)

If I remember rightly, you said JP was in DKA when he was diagnosed?  In that case, I wouldn't say he was "caught early".  The diabetes has progressed quite a bit by the time they get to DKA.

I say my J was "caught early" because we spotted the symptoms before he started becoming very ill with them.  He was wetting the bed and had started drinking more than usual, but he hadn't started losing weight or becoming exhausted, and he only had a fairly low level of ketones in his blood when we took him in to hospital.


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## Patricia (May 1, 2010)

I also wonder if HbA1c is relevant here. I remember thinking we must have 'caught' E early because his diagnosis hb was 7.6 or thereabouts. He also was not in DKA and had not lost weight etc. However, he was never on mega-low insulin doses for his weight as some can be? Seems more about body and metabolism, that?


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## Heidi (May 2, 2010)

We too were told we'd caught Ross's early - he wasn't ill at all, had only been thirsty for about ten days and had been getting up to pee during the night for about a week. We tested his bg because my dad is Type 2 and has a meter - we did it from curiosity rather than believing he was diabetic :/ 

When he went into hospital he did have quite a high level of ketones in his urine so again we couldn't have been *that* early in diagnosis. 

The important thing in all of this is that our children have been diagnosed and we can now try to keep them as healthy as possible - even if that's damned hard.


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## Monica (May 3, 2010)

We were told that we caught it early in C, even though we were actually dithering for one week, wondering whether it might be Diabetes. Nowhere online did we find anything about the urgency to go to hospital. We eventually phoned NHS Direct on Saturday afternoon 2pm and asked them if it could be Diabetes. They didn't call back until 12.30 am. When telling her the symptoms and thinking it might be Diabetes, she said, yes it might be. Just give her lots to drink and make an appointment with the doctor on Monday. We didn't get an appointment with the doc until 5pm, so C insisted she wanted to go to school, as she wasn't feeling poorly.
At the doctors, we told the doc the symptoms and he asked ME what I thought it might be. When I said Diabetes he agreed. The wee wee test confirmed it. Straight to hospital, her blood was in the 30s, she did have DKA, but she didn't need a insulin drip.

When we told our DSN about the NHS Direct's answer she was livid, as they should have told us to go to hospital. 

I'm glad we caught it "early". If C had been further on she could have collapsed and died, because we listened to NHS Direct's advice, as we didn't know any better.

As everyone else, we didn't know much about diabetes before, only what the symptoms were if you were undiagnosed.


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## gewatts (May 3, 2010)

We were told that Katie was caught early. We thought she had a bladder infection and so took a urine sample. I phoned the GP surgery and spoke to the nurse. She said that Katie was probably drinking a lot and on the loo a lot because of the hot weather. She asked if her wee smelled funny. I said it did (even though it didn't!) so that she would test it. I took it down to the surgery and she told me to wait in the waiting room while she checked the sample. And so it went from there. Her bloods were 22 mmols but luckily she hadn't started to lose weight and she wasn't ill.


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## Monica (May 4, 2010)

gewatts said:


> We were told that Katie was caught early. We thought she had a bladder infection and so took a urine sample. I phoned the GP surgery and spoke to the nurse. She said that Katie was probably drinking a lot and on the loo a lot because of the hot weather. She asked if her wee smelled funny. I said it did (even though it didn't!) so that she would test it. I took it down to the surgery and she told me to wait in the waiting room while she checked the sample. And so it went from there. Her bloods were 22 mmols but luckily she hadn't started to lose weight and she wasn't ill.



Wow, that's what I call early!!!! I forgot to mention above, that C lost a lot of weight too. She weighed about 4lbs more (aged 10) than her 7 year old sister who was at her ideal weight for age and height. It brought tears to my eyes when I saw her naked the first time in hospital. Before I didn't notice as it was winter and she wore baggy sweatshirts to school.


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