32 YO not sure if I am diabetic. Long story.

Hello everyone. I am a 3d graphic artist computer guy working at a place called Digital Domain in Venice CA. I have been doing this kind of sitting at my desk kind of stuff for 15 years.

Over the last 5 years I noticed I started getting sweats after eating lunch or dinner. It started lightly but had gotten worse over the years. Sometimes it would be there. Sometimes not. Since the glass windows are cold at night I would often put my feet against them to fend off the sweating and it would regulate my body temperature down.

Anyways. I never thought much of all this until 2 months ago. Feb18th 2010

I was walking up my stairs to go to bed and hit my head really hard where the ceiling of floor one cuts into floor two. Its a spot where that little angle cuts into the next level opening up the turn in the stairs where it goes up to level two.

I digress. I don't go to sleep right away because I have heard that you can go into a coma. So I stay up a little bit, feel fine, shake it off and go to bed. The next day at work everything seems fine until 6pm. Suddenly I get a flutter in my chest and the left side of my body goes pins and needles on me. I feel really dizzy and lightheaded. I get up from work call my wife and have her take me to the hospital ER. They tell me I am having an anxiety attack and hook my up to EKG ( heartbeat monitor) and take my blood.

Blood comes up. Low potassium like 2.9. Also high white blood cell count and a blood glucose of 151. Which that said was not too high but not normal for someone who hasn't eaten dinner yet.

I get a prescription of potassium pills even though an hour before I hit my head I shared a banana with my kid. He only ate half of his so I had 1 and a half bananas and then my potassium comes up low in less then 24 hours.

Ok, ok, at this point your thinking. Why are you in a diabetes forum then? Well, Slowly over the last two months my symptoms have changed. Over time my potassium levels seem to go back to normal but I was having these heavy light headed dizzy sweats worse then ever right in the middle of the day or at night.

I start seeing doctor more often. When they draw blood though I feel fine. One time I went to the ER and asked them to draw blood immediately because the Dr said he needs to see my blood numbers while I feel the symptoms. Well I sat at the er this time going numb and cold and tingly so much that I can't keep my head up. I tell the nurse to take blood now. This was 5pm in the afternoon. I wake up on the same table with no blood drawn yet at.....9:30 pm. I figure at this point. I am conscious and feeling a bit better so any blood they draw is going to come up normal.

It does. I go home feeling defeated.

Numerous times I can't keep food down and start vomiting or having diarrhea.

The Dr prescribed me Ativan since he figured I was having a nervous breakdown from too much work. Mean while we have had Internal CAT scans done just this last friday of my insides (with the barium sulfate dye drinks so they can see my insides) as well as lots of blood work done to check my adrenals, pituitary, thyroid (cortisol), kidneys, pancrease, etc. The ativan did help me keep food down though. It also made me worry less and feel carefree but I could still feel sweats after eating. The only difference was that the Ativan seemed to calm me down.

I continued to lose weight and get sick over the last two months. In two months I lost 20 LBS. One of the nurses mentioned I might be hypoglycemic or type 2 diabetic. So I start researching diabetes. The main thing that got my attention was that going through these symptoms over the last two months I have always had a late night 3-5 am case of cold sweat with the feeling that my chest is burning and I am either sweating hot or really tingly and cold and have kind of a full body headache feeling. I read about Dawn phenomenon on diabetes boards. Also how the body stops being able to use sugar to feed itself so it eats its own fat/protean.

Usually I can't sleep when this happens so I wake up and walk around and feel the need to dink water and nibble on something. I have on two occasions taken a quarter teaspoon of pancake syrup and swallowed that down with water. It stops the body ache and I get hot inside (almost sweaty again but at least the body aches stop and I can sleep again.

I don't know if hitting my head has caused all this bad chemistry or of this is just a continuation of what I was sweating up these last 5 years.

So today I buy a freestyle lite kit with the reader, strips, lancer and lancer tips.

I take my first reading after lunch about an hour and it says 168. I then read a web page on the freestyle light saying that 180 or lower is normal for two to 4 hours after meals. I eat dinner and took a reading again about an hour later and it came up 172 and I am having the sweating feeling even though my body isn't hurting much. I put my feet on the cold sliding glass door as I always have and it goes away after 5 minutes.

My plan is to take a reading this early morning when I wake up at around 3am-5am and see what it says. After having read the different manuals and web pages I realize I needed to take a pre meal reading as well which will continue tomorrow. I have a Dr visit this week and want to have some homework done since it seems my blood works itself out by the time I get there even though I have had 2 months of not keeping food down well or it goes right through me and I keep losing weight. From 172 in mid Feb to 148 yesterday.

Sorry about the long story. I am very new to all this and am trying to be an armchair Dr until my next appointments come up this week.

I am 32 years old and have toughed out these symptoms but they are starting to win. Sorry about the winded intro. I am just hoping to find out as much as I can within confines of what I have experienced.

I am hoping this week I will get test results that help me find out what is wrong. In the meantime I am mentally prepping myself for learning about diabetes in case it turns out to be my new way of life.