What Happened

On Dec 11, 2022, I woke up dizzy and with blurry vision. I remember walking down the stairs like a drunk zigzag, but I thought it was normal since I woke up. Even though that never happened before (mental state altered). I managed to make it down the stairs slowly but surely. My mom saw me through this and said I looked like a skeleton and something was wrong with me. I brushed it off. Sick me is so confident.

My mom suggested to call the ambulance but I refused. After feeling worse myself over the next 30 minutes, I relented and my parents called the ambulance. I was put on the stretcher and arrived at the ER. I got a room quickly. Got some insulin and fluids and 5 hours later, transferred to the ICU for 2 days before being in the ward for a day and released. I was diagnosed with extremely high blood sugar, DKA (diabetic ketoacidosis). It was due to type 1 diabetes, which means my immune system killed off most of my insulin cells. On my mom’s side, my grandma and uncle both have it as well, surprise. My mom is of 4 kids, 1 has it. My parents have 3, 1 has it. 25% and 33% hit rate. Imagine how little chronic diseases would exist if those with them did not have kids! Such a simple solution to preventing lifelong suffering. I don’t suffer though, I spend 10 minutes max a day on it. I eat healthy and inject insulin painlessly and with correct dosing into my belly every time after eating. I’ve optimized my management, time and cost wise. But 95% of type 1’s have horrible blood sugar averages (a1c > 7) and it will definitely take years off their lives.

Back to my story, for the past month before diagnosis, I was peeing 1.5 hours after drinking anything more than half a cup of water. I had unknowingly lost about 20% of my body weight. I got cramps in my thighs and wrists out of the blue. I had 13x the average amount of sugar in my blood, 66mmol vs. 5mmol. Turns out over the past few months, my immune system had killed off most of my insulin cells. It’s a different disease than type 2 diabetes, the one 95% of diabetics have. They’re both called diabetes but they have totally different root causes. Type 2 is when your cells become resistant to insulin, usually due to weight and bad diet (too much sugar/carbohydrates).

Type 1 is the easiest chronic disease I would say. But when not managed right with healthy eating and correct insulin dosing, it has one of the worst effects a human can get. Losing eyesight, needing a kidney or pancreas replacement. Wound healing impaired. Heart disease, stroke, studies even show higher cancer incidence. But if you keep your blood sugar average at a nondiabetic level, you have no risk, as if you are a nondiabetic. This has been me for the past 1.5 years. It’s even noticeably increased my remaining insulin production according to a clinical trial I’m in that measured my remaining insulin production. My blood sugar average is better than the average nondiabetic actually, at a 5.0. My mom was at a 5.2 once, my sister at 5.5, and my dad at 5.7. I’m doing great and it’s just 10 mins a day. Have to poke a small 4mm needle to inject insulin in my stomach every time I eat, but it’s usually painless and when it hurts, at most a 5 second forgettable sting.

When I got out of the hospital, I spent 20-40 hours reading research article after article to know everything around this disease. It was very interesting. If you are a guy with type 1 diabetes, your children have a 6% chance of getting it. My grandma and mom’s brother got it as adults, 25 and 32 respectively. I got it at 21. My siblings have a higher chance of passing it on as well, our bloodline is cursed.

Now a few months after getting out, I requested my medical records out of curiosity. When I compared my treatment with treatment guides written by doctors who figured out the ideal treatment plan, I was surprised. My ER doctor, who also specialized in endocrinology (diseases such as diabetes), made embarrassing mistakes that could have killed me. An older nurse may have saved my life. The bastard doctor gave me 6x more insulin than he should have without any potassium (which care guides always say to give upon presentation). Too much insulin can cause brain swelling and kill me, aka cerebral edema. It’s actually the biggest killer during treatment of high blood sugar. That huge amount of insulin also caused my potassium to drop severely low and my heart started to hurt soon after getting insulin. I told the nurse my chest hurts. And then within 30 minutes, a critically low reading came back for potassium. The doctor then according to the logs gives me potassium, but doesn’t stop the insulin. Really dude? That older nurse who wasn’t mines but from the room next door, saw me soon after and suggested to the doctor to turn it off. She was concerned when she saw me, I remember her telling my nurse, “he’s so young”. I remember her walking up to me and turning it off by twisting the plastic valve on the wire. I whispered “don’t I need it?”, through my dry throat that could barely speak due to extreme dehydration. She said “yes, but wait”, and came back with a potassium pill. Soon after, heart pain went away. Who knows what could have happened if she was not there.

I wrote a full explanation on the doctor’s mistakes, 3 of which could have killed me. Link. His name is Fady Alla Hannah-Shmouni. This was at the Mississauga Hospital in Ontario, Canada. Here is his Twitter. I tried emailing him asking if he’d be willing to answer a few questions but like the upright gentlemen he is, I got no response. I enabled open tracking using the hubspot extension and saw that he had opened the email.

This was the start of my interactions with doctors, and reading up on them, that showed me tha most doctors know very little about medicine. I believe LLM’s are smarter and more logical than most doctors. Most of medicine is memorization and following basic flow charts. A DKA treatment plan tells you what to do given x potassium reading and x blood sugar. There is not much room for creativity when millions of others have been treated for the same disease in the past. I found that most doctors, generalizing from endocrinologists, don’t read the latest research findings and willingly give misleading, even dangerous advice to protect themselves (out of paranoia for medical malpractice lawsuits). I write about how endocrinologists do this with advice about your blood sugar in the intro in my guide on how to manage type 1. Only a few doctors, such as Dr.Bernstein, actually keeps up to date with the research and gives medically sound advice. He in his 80s and is type 1 himself. He actually became a endocrinologist in his 40s because he suffered from the horrible side effects of keeping the high blood sugar that his endocrinologist recommended. He found a way to keep his blood sugar at nondiabetic levels and reversed many of his complications. He is probably the single person on this earth who knows the most about type 1 and type 2 diabetes. Yet his advice is not followed by most endocrinologists. Medical education is outdated like most education in my experience.

The education system is taught by people who don’t know or care about what they are teaching. They are just there to get a paycheck. My brother is in medical school and I once saw him attend a online lecture once. It could have been a recorded video, which would be even better actually as one can rewind and sped up. And in North America, everyone needs to do a useless 4 year undergrad just to apply for medical school. Rest of the world doesn’t have this arbitrary requirements, medical school is right after high school. You see how the system is bloated? Bloat implies ineffective teaching, which carries over to bad doctors. You have to read the scientific articles yourself.

Next time you go to a doctor, always research about your condition before you go, and after the visit about whatever they tell you. Don’t trust them. Most are clueless in my experience. My mom’s doctor dismissed her concern of peeing as “getting old”. She actually had a UTI that turned to a kidney infection that gave her severe pain. She could have died. And so could I.