Mandy's Story

What a turnaround

Northern Wellington local Mandy started her diabetes journey with a visit from prediabetes. With tiredness a symptom, she had put it down to her pernicious anaemia and sleep apnoea.

The diagnosis had her making some positive changes, and the numbers duly dropped, but she went back to normal and didn’t think about it for a few years.

Then in 2021 she had a followup HbA1c blood test, and soon after her doctor called to book an appointment and told her, ‘You’re at 58. Not prediabetes. Officially, diabetes.’ Mandy says it was a shock.

THE LEAD UP

Some years before this, Mandy had endured a string of diagnoses. Before the pernicious anaemia, she was having headaches and noticed her vision becoming blurry. A pituitary tumour was discovered, and surgery and radiotherapy remedied that. But that same radiation that saved her from the tumour also messed with her thyroid, and so she began medication for that.

Mandy says this is when she put on extra weight, and before long both her weight and HbA1c had ballooned.

With all the weight gain, she developed gallstones and experienced a couple of bouts of pancreatitis, which is an inflammation of the pancreas, commonly caused by gallstones. Seven years later, her gallbladder had to be removed.

SO NOW, TYPE 2

Mandy says she was stunned but not totally surprised with the type 2 diagnosis. Having heard enough warnings from her body, she ignored them, Mandy finally listened to her body, which was now speaking loudly to her, ‘Get your life in order, lady. Otherwise you’re going to have so many additional problems, on top of the ones you’ve already got.’

Mandy says she jumped straight into changing her diet but took it more slowly when it came to exercise.

‘I had really bad knees because I was literally carrying around another person. I couldn’t do stairs very easily. Going down was extremely painful. And my back – if I had to wash a few dishes in the sink, it would be killing me.’ She couldn’t walk far either. Walking past 10 neighbours’ houses and then back was all she could muster in a day.

But it was a good start, and, as it became easier, Mandy did a bit more. She gradually increased her short walk by repeating it several times a day so that it wasn’t too much in one go. Then she headed down to the local park and did laps.

Mandy’s daughter bought her a Fitbit for her 60th birthday, and she credits that for keeping her motivated. She was able to monitor how much she was doing and set herself goals. As well as recording her steps, she entered everything she ate into the app’s food diary and through this has gained an understanding of energy-in versus energy-out.

RESEARCH

The diabetes nurse gave Mandy the two free Diabetes NZ booklets, which she says were a good starting point, but she wanted more. Now hungry for knowledge, she started trawling the world wide web.

Read the full story in the Spring 2023 Edition of Diabetes Wellness