It is common for ill treated CAH to lead to diabetes.  Either over treatment or under treatment can lead to an imbalance in blood sugar and also insulin either way.  This is what leads a CAH’er to suffer diabetes.  Treat it correctly and it should occur less for children or adults. 

Having diabetes from being a small child or baby would simply mean you are like a person born with CAH.  It’s something you learn to accept and become used to.  How can it be anything else when your don’t know any different?  You don’t know what normal is unless you have been there.  I don’t know what it’s like to live with CAH or diabetes, because I haven’t been there.    Touch wood I never have diabetes.  What I am trying to say is, a child with CAH and a child with diabetes don’t know any better because they learn to accept the treatment and monitoring.  So it is senseless debaing which is hardest to live with.  There are serious disadvantages to having both conditions and neither one of them should be taking any less lightly than the other.  

Any adult healthy or a CAH’er being diagnosed with insulin dependant diabetes would rather not have it.  That’s because they know what it is to just either have CAH or normal health and being diangosed with something extra to hat you have become accustomed to for the majority of your life  IS a big deal.  However, children whom are born with it and parent’s bringing them up see it as no big deal eventually and live with it.  Simply put, as an adult being diagnosed because you know what you were missing when life was far more simple-- i.e. normal health or just treating and trying to control one condition, it is a big deal.  However, it does not mean to say one is anymore or less important or easier to treat than the other.  As I mentioned above though, any child or adult with CAH can develop diabetes if they are not controlled properly and under or over treated.  That’s because of the way cortisol affects the blood sugar levels and the insulin levels.  But then anyone using this board could develop diabetes just by merely eating junk, too much sugar and not keeping fit.  I have a friend that has done that and she is now insulin dependant.  However, she was warned by her Doctor that it could be kept to just the diet side of things if she ate the right things and kept her blood sugar under control. 

On the other hand I had a boyfriend whom had diabetes and epilepsy some ten years ago and he never even bothered about his diabetes and said he was used to it.  However, the epilepsy he was diagnosed with in his twenties was the thing he hated the most and could not get used to.  This is as I have explained above because when having one condition, it is bearable, but being diabgosed with something else on top of the other condition is quite difficult.  Anyone would find that hard.      He was diagnosed at aged 19 yo with insulin dependant diabetes and knew there was a possibility it could occur as his Father had insulin dependant diabetes.