‘My ‘UTI’ turned out to be type one diabetes’: How one teenager is using tech to keep herself alive – Yahoo News UK

Leah Dunbar is one of 400,000 people currently living Type 1 diabetes in the UK. (Supplied)

Doubled over in agony, Leah Dunbar struggled to concentrate on what her college tutor was explaining in class. 

For two weeks, the 17-year-old criminology and forensics student had been experiencing increasingly excruciating pain when passing urine and had lost more than a stone in weight.

“I had been eating normally but I was exercising too so I put my weight loss down to that,” says Leah, who is now 19 and lives in Southampton. “But I went from 8.5 stone to 7 stone, and it was still coming down. I thought the urinating pain would just pass and that it was perhaps a urine infection, but when it started to interfere with going to college, I made an appointment with my doctor.”

At the surgery, Leah underwent a urine test, which showed there was glucose present in her urine. The nurse then carried out a finger prick test and to her shock, Leah was told that she has suspected Type 1 diabetes.

Read more: Lack of diabetes care due to COVID could be a healthcare time-bomb

About 400,000 people are currently living with the condition in the UK, including around 29,000 children. Type 1 diabetes is when the body’s immune system attacks and destroys the cells that produce insulin and is controlled by daily insulin injections. Famous people with the condition include actress Sharon Stone, Olympian rower Sir Steve Redgrave and former UK Prime Minister Theresa May.

Sharon Stone, Theresa May and Steve Redgrave all have Type 1 diabetes. (Getty Images)

Today ahead of World Diabetes Day (14 Nov) Leah is speaking out to warn others about the dangers and how to spot the symptoms.

“When the nurses took me into a different room and said they’d have to call an ambulance to take me to A&E, I was in shock,” she says. “I didn’t expect anything like this. I was just expecting to be prescribed some antibiotics and then head home. I was feeling really worried.”

Once at Southampton General Hospital, the teenager underwent more tests and stayed in overnight before she received a positive diagnosis. She was told that she couldn’t leave the hospital until she could show the doctor she was able to inject insulin. But Leah, already a needle-phobic, found it difficult.

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“The first time the nurse had to do it for me as I didn’t want to do it,” she says. “But the second time, I did it myself as I was so desperate to go home,” she …….

Source: https://uk.news.yahoo.com/uti-was-diabetes-type-1-155621474.html