“My gestational diabetes turned into type 1”
2020 was a big year for everyone, but for 32-year-old Jenna Carroll it delivered more than its fair share of changes including a new baby and, two months later, being told she had type 1. It’s been a life-changing diagnosis but she refuses to let it defin
Until last year, I’d always assumed type 1 diabetes was only diagnosed in children. And I certainly never thought for a moment that it was to blame for the symptoms I was experiencing.
“In fact, even though I’d had gestational diabetes with two of my three children, when I started to feel really tired and noticed that I was drinking water like a fish and needing to go to the toilet a lot more, I didn’t think ‘diabetes’ at all.
“I’d given birth to Gracie, my youngest child, a few weeks earlier and had been having a bit of trouble feeding her, so I’d started pumping my milk for her instead. I just put what I was experiencing down to being a ‘pumping mum’.
“But when I noticed my eyes had started playing up so that my vision was a bit blurry, I rang my doctor to make an appointment. I wasn’t particularly worried but I knew something was wrong when I couldn’t read the subtitles on TV properly. Then, the afternoon before my doctor’s appointment I couldn’t see a car that was just a few feet in front of me. I was rushed to hospital where I was told my blood glucose level was incredibly high. I was heading into diabetic ketoacidosis and it was a wonder I was still conscious.”
Back to the beginning
“In 2016 when I was pregnant with my second child, Jorji, a fasting glucose test indicated
I had gestational diabetes – just. I managed it with diet and my [glucose] levels never really went crazy, but at about 36 weeks they did start to creep up a little. Eventually I was induced and after Jorji was born, my glucose levels returned to normal and I forgot all about diabetes.
“Then, when I was 28 weeks pregnant with Gracie, I just scraped into the gestational diabetes category once again. It never really caused any physical symptoms but I was concerned because it was my second experience with gestational diabetes, so I worked really hard on what I ate. This time around though I eventually ended up on night-time insulin and that made everything seem more real and more serious. Suddenly I was injecting myself, which felt quite confronting.
“But once Gracie was born in February 2020 my glucose levels went back to normal again. I came off insulin and when I tested myself a week after her birth, everything was fine.
“That’s part of why I didn’t for one moment think ‘diabetes’ when I started to feel horrible just a few weeks later – that and the fact that both times when I’d had gestational diabetes I never really felt ‘yuck’.”
Coming to terms with type 1
“Being told I had type 1 diabetes was a complete shock. When I was diagnosed with gestational diabetes for the second time, my doctor did tell me that it meant I now had a higher risk of developing type 2 diabetes at some stage but type 1 had never been mentioned.
“Even after I’d been told that my blood glucose was so high when they admitted me to hospital and even though I knew they’d had to use insulin to lower it, I was still thinking ‘well, if anything, it’ll be type 2’ and that I’d be able to control it by making some tweaks to my diet.
“But when they made it clear that I had type 1 diabetes, my heart sank. I knew that was a different ball game. So yes, 2020 was quite the year. My husband works in the bush and his workplace was burnt down in the fires and he’s also part of the local fire brigade. Then we had Gracie, COVID hit and finally I was diagnosed with diabetes.
“A year or so later, I’m now on multi-day insulin injections, anything between six and eight a day. And I feel like I’m on a bit of a daily rollercoaster, trying to calculate everything from carbs to insulin units and I struggle with a lot of hypos.
“It’s like there are one hundred decisions that I have to make now that I never had to think about before. And I’ll do exactly the same thing one day to another and get a totally different result. At the moment all of that still makes me a bit sad.
“But my healthcare team are amazing. And while my first thought when I was diagnosed was ‘it’s my fault’ or that I’d done this to myself somehow, I now know that’s not the case at all.
“I’ve also grown to understand that it’s incredibly important not to be too hard on yourself and to not let a medical diagnosis like this define you. It’s something
I’m working on every day.” ■