Begin at the Beginning

"Begin at the beginning and go on the the end: then stop" 

Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll

2011 - a great year, good weather, great holidays, excellent clients, loads to do and even more to look forward to!

2011 a year of training for a half marathon in spring 2012, a full marathon by the end of 2012, and the Etap du Tour for 2013.

Training runs and rides were going great, feeling fitter, stronger, faster.  Then, insidiously, I didn't.  

Legs felt heavy and unresponsive, despite the pace being high, and my general energy levels were dropping. It wasn't until a month had passed without going for a run or ride that I even noticed I'd stopped.  By then, however, I justified it as being too busy with work and having "no time"!

Without really noticing I was also a lot more tired of an evening, less rested of a morning and generally slightly 'duller'.

Whoo hoo!  November 2011, 44th birthday! Didn't want a party, didn't want to go out. Didn't really want to do anything.  For some reason I was also, for the first time in my life, putting sugar (!) into tea and coffee..... November rolled into December and by now my thirst was not slacked by even a litre of water, no I was on three of four litres of water a day, a litre over night and consuming litre bottles of lucozade and two litre cartons of fresh orange juice in between!  A mars bar, packet of crisps and 75cl of lucozade on the way to work, same on the way home, scoffing packets of crisps like they were going out of fashion and weeing for England! 

Oddly, none of this struck me as unusual.

Along came Christmas, even less enthusiasm for doing anything, massive, constant headache; "loose stools", constant stomach ache and boy, oh boy, talk about a sense of humour failure!  There were some very dark thoughts running through my head over that month, increasingly dark.

Or maybe that was the blurry vision that seemed to have crept up on me?

"I wonder if I've been changed in the night?

Let me think. Was I the same when I got up this morning?

I almost think I remember feeling a little different."

December 28th 2011 and I decided that perhaps some exercise would help.  Went out for a gentle 2 mile run. It seemed to take forever, but actually, the pace was OK.  

The three days it took me to recover weren't.  I could hardly walk the next day, felt sick as a dog and utterly fatigued.  My wife wanted to know why my breath smelt of booze the next morning, odd as I hadn't drunk any alcohol the night before.  Three days feeling sick and just drinking water constantly.

By now the headache, night sweats, loose stools and stomach ache had even me convinced that I should go and see the doctor, so on January the 16th I duly went to see my GP.

Mmmmmm sugar in your urine, come back and let us take some blood. Was told to stop eating anything sweet and heard the word "diabetes" for the first time.

Thank you google and the diabetic online community!

26th Jan 2012 and I was on insulin.