Why Was I So Tired and Thirsty All the Time?

Life can be exhausting-but a dangerous underlying condition makes it so much worse.

- EMILY GOLDMAN

MY DIAGNOSIS

Have you ever suddenly had to pee so badly that all the hair on your arms stood up, as if there were an electric current humming through your body? This happened to me regularly almost 10 years ago, when I was a freshman in college. I must be drinking too much water, I told myself. Most days I'd also wake up feeling as if my mouth were full of cotton balls and my arms and legs weighed an actual ton. I must be under a lot of stress, I thought. I spent over a year figuring out how to survive without letting others know that I was just barely getting by.

MORE QUESTIONS THAN ANSWERS

I had routine blood work done that spring and got a diagnosis and a prescription that shocked me. "You have prediabetes," I was told. I had to start taking metformin, a drug that helps manage the way the body stores glucose, but I was told I was otherwise healthy. After a few days, though, I knew something was wrong. My stomach cramped, and anything I ate would go right through me. I decided to stop the medication and saw an endocrinologist and a nutritionist over the next few months. One of the tests I was given came back indicating that I could have type 1 diabetes, but my doctor brushed it off, saying, "That usually happens in little kids. Your numbers aren't that high you're just prediabetic."