My paternal grandmother, my dad & most of his siblings had diabetes. So far in my family I'm the only one with diabetes. It first showed up with my second & third pregnancies, with gestational diabetes, controlled with diet & only about 3 units of insulin daily.
Later on at the age of 39, I began to feel what I knew to be the symptoms of diabetes: fatigue, extreme thirst, losing weight for no reason. I did have type 2 diabetes. Using oral medication & exercise, walking up to 3 miles daily, I was able to keep it somewhat under control.
Over the years I've had to change medications since they stopped having an effect after about a year or so. Finally, at a time when my oral medication was due to change, I told the doctor that I'd had enough of the pills, and would just rather do shots of insulin.
Lantus was added along with the regular insulin & that was helping. Next I was put on the pump. Last check of A1c was 9, down from 11 previously, which is good,for me anyway. I'm so looking forward to my hmo covering the continuous monitoring. I'm tired of the finger sticks, but at least I have a monitor that communicates with my pump, so I don't have to do the math each time.