Here are things that I deal with every day for the past year:

• Fatigue: Your body isn’t getting the energy it needs from the food you’re eating, so you may feel very tired.
• Extreme thirst: No matter how much you drink, it feels like you’re still dehydrated. Your tissues (such as your muscles) are, in fact, dehydrated when there’s too much glucose (sugar) in your blood. Your body pulls fluid from the tissues to try to dilute the blood and counteract the high glucose, so your tissues will be dehydrated and send the message that you need to drink more. This is also associated with increased urination.
• Frequent urination: This is related to drinking so much more in an attempt to satisfy your thirst. Since you’re drinking more, you’ll have to urinate more. Additionally, the body will try to get rid of the excess glucose through urination.
• Extreme hunger: Even after you eat, you may still feel very hungry. That’s because your muscles aren’t getting the energy they need from the food; your body’s insulin resistance keeps glucose from entering the muscle and providing energy. Therefore, the muscles and other tissues send a “hunger” message, trying to get more energy into the body.
• Weight loss: You may be eating more but still losing weight. Since your body isn’t getting energy from food, it turns to muscles and fat and starts to break them down in order to create energy. That will cause you to lose weight.
• Infections: The effects of type 2 diabetes make it harder for your body to fight off an infection, so you may experience frequent infections. Women may have frequent vaginal (yeast) and/or bladder infections.  That’s because bacteria can flourish when there are high levels of glucose in the blood.
• Slow wound healing: Similar to the body’s inability to fight off infections, it might take longer for wounds (even small cuts) to heal. The high blood glucose level affects how well the white blood cells (which are in charge of healing wounds) work.
• Blurry vision: In an attempt to get more fluid into the blood to counteract the high blood glucose level, your body may pull fluid from the eyes. You may have trouble focusing then, leading to blurry vision.