is it possible for a type 1 diabetic to not know and live their life fully untreated? By this I don't mean every type 1 diabetic, what I'm asking is whether it's possible for someone to be like this, due to their specific health circumstances.
It is like type 1, but much, much slower progressing - hence why it shows up at adult age, compared to childhood. Unlike type 2, you can't keep it under control by lifestyle changes. My in-law is a physically fit person with a good diet, and has been his whole life.
In any case, after the onset of symptoms, he had to get treatment. No treatment leads to further organ damage, which eventually leads to death.
About 6 months ago she suddenly started dropping weight. Extreme exhaustion (winded after going up a flight of stairs), dropped 30 pounds in two months, she was starting to get skeletal. Still not being active with her healthcare, but when she went under 110lbs for the first time since she was 14, she finally found the motivation she needed to get proactive and quickly found a better team of doctors who diagnosed her with Type 1 and put her on Insulin immediately.
Today we're putting her 2nd Omnipod on her for insulin delivery. She should get a closed loop system soon, I guess the iPhone support for her Omnipod+Dexcom combo is still going through FDA approval. Her new team says she's lucky to be alive at all. They've been going through her extensive medical history, pointing at occasions when she was hospitalized during her menses and saying "here you were going through diabetic ketoacidosis, that's why you were vomiting constantly", "every evening you're going critically low, that's why family thought you were a closet alcoholic", and "on average during the day your blood glucose is far, far too high, that's why you drink and piss gallons of water per day but are never sated".
So... I guess yes you can get lucky and survive, but with symptoms strong enough that it _should_ be caught.
There is no way I'm bringing these up to her, though. For my own self-preservation. Over the last few months we've had a long-running argument about the operation of her Dexcom glucose monitor -- she's been convinced that it requires a continuous, active internet signal to function. Her proof was that every time she went into the basement at work, her Dexcom stopped reporting her glucose levels. When she comes upstairs, then she suddenly gets notified that she's been spiking or dipping for the last hour.
Everything under the sun, included the sun (remember that solar flare the other week? Yeah that was also pointed at as a problem) has been blamed for her Dexcom not informing her of dips and spikes. Yesterday evening her new Omnipod app told her to stop enabling Airplane Mode or BatterySaver, as these toggles interrupt bluetooth communications. She's been turning those on every time she goes into the basement at work to save battery.
It's just best if nothing I have touched or created is involved in any way.