False health alarms change you?

[Triskeliongirl]

Shootingstar, I am only guessing here, but it sounds like you may have had a borderline high normal fasting glucose, high the first time and perhaps normal the second. I too have a marginally elevated fasting blood sugar, that may or may not be elevated in any one test. My diabetes shows up with the test your sister suggests, the glucose tolerance test. My blood sugar rises too high and takes too long to clear when I ingest sugar (or any carb for that matter). But there is one more key test, also having your insulin measured (at both the 0 and 2 hour points of the oral glucose tolerance test). If you are not overweight it may not be type 2, but can be type 1.5 which is caused not by insulin resistance but by an undersecretion of insulin. THat is what I have. Even though I lost 35 lbs and am at a healthy weight (22% body fat) this didn't go away, it never will, my body simply doesn't make enough insulin, so I can never eat very many carbs. I also had gestational diabetes for the same reason, not from being overweight and insulin resistant, but from undersecreting insulin and not being able to keep up with increased demand of the fetus. If you don't understand this stuff, at least show my post to your sister.

I don't want to scare you either, you may be normal, but if I were you I would find out more about what was tested, and consider geting an oral glucose tolerance test.

[roadie gal]

When I was 2 years old I had a painful, swollen knee that wouldn't get better. The doctors thought I had bone cancer and wanted to amputate my leg. (This was around the same time that one of the Kennedy kids had bone cancer, so doctors were very aware of it.) My parents asked them to biopsy first. It was found that I had juvenile rheumatoid arthritis, not cancer. So I got to keep my leg. To this day, whenever I run, ski, whatever, I'm thankful for my parents insistence and that the original diagnosis was false.

On the other hand, my sister has a genetically based breast cancer. So I will continue to get mammograms (and Paps, etc.). My chance of getting breast cancer from my genes is much higher than the chance that the radiation from the mammograms will cause me to get cancer. For me, the risk is far outweighed by the benefit.