#1515 Shay and the Motorcycle

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Shay, 27, was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at 8 and now juggles multiple autoimmune conditions—Addison’s, endometriosis, Raynaud’s, and more. When she’s not managing her health, she’s riding motorcycles.

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Scott Benner 0:00
Friends, we're all back together for the next episode of The Juicebox Podcast. Welcome.

Shay 0:13
My name is Shay, and I was diagnosed with type one diabetes in 2006 so I would have been eight years old. Nothing

Scott Benner 0:22
you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan. AG, one is offering my listeners a free $76 gift. When you sign up, you'll get a welcome kit, a bottle of d3, k2, and five free travel packs in your first box. So make sure you check out drink A, G, one.com/juice box. To get this offer, don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com. All you have to do is use the offer code juice box at checkout. That's Juicebox at checkout to save 40% at cozy earth.com the podcast contains so many different series and collections of information that it can be difficult to find them in your traditional podcast app. Sometimes. That's why they're also collected at Juicebox podcast.com go up to the top, there's a menu right there. Click on series defining diabetes. Bold beginnings, the Pro Tip series, small sips, Omnipod, five ask Scott and Jenny, mental wellness, fat and protein, defining thyroid, after dark, diabetes, variables, Grand Rounds, cold, wind, pregnancy, type two, diabetes, GLP, meds, the math behind diabetes, diabetes myths and so much more, you have to go check it out. It's all there and waiting for you, and it's absolutely free. Juicebox podcast.com Today's episode is sponsored by the tandem Moby system with control iq plus technology. If you are looking for the only system with auto Bolus, multiple wear options and full control from your personal iPhone, you're looking for tandems, newest pump and algorithm. Use my link to support the podcast, tandem diabetes.com/juice, box. Check it out. I'm having an on body vibe alert. This episode of the juice box podcast is sponsored by ever since 365 the only one year where CGM that's one insertion and one CGM a year, one CGM one year, not every 10 or 14 days ever since cgm.com/juicebox

Shay 2:32
My name is Shay. I'm actually turning 27 tomorrow.

Scott Benner 2:36
Happy birthday. Thank you. And

Shay 2:38
I was diagnosed with type one diabetes in 2006 so I would have been eight years old. Eight years old. You're going

Scott Benner 2:46
to be 20, just about 20 years Yep, wow. One of my daughter's good friends when they were youngest named Shay. So it's gonna, oh, that's cool, yeah, not spayed, not spelled the same way. Hers is spelled after the stadium. Oh, okay, yeah, it's a different name, though, isn't it yours?

Shay 3:01
Yeah, it is. I don't see it that often. I was gonna say I don't either.

Scott Benner 3:05
It took me by surprise when it popped up in front of me. So diagnosed as a child, you're in your late, you know, mid to late 20s. Now, I'm sure you don't think of it as your late 20s, no. But what's it been like having type one?

Shay 3:18
Well, it was a lot different back then, before technology got so good. So I'd say for the first 510, years was pretty rough for me. I was doing probably 20 injections or more a day, and just really struggling to keep it kind of even it was, I'm always like, up and down back then, and this was when Dexcom, I think they were on, like the g4 when I started, or g3

Scott Benner 3:55
Did you have a Dexcom from The beginning? No, no, I did.

Shay 3:59
Finger prick for years, and then when they couldn't get me under control, then they were like, Okay, your blood sugars and your a 1c is bad enough. Your insurance will cover a pump and a Dexcom. And I was really scared. I mean, I I forget how old I was, but I think I was maybe 12 or 13, and I was just like, I don't want something attached to me all the time.

Scott Benner 4:26
I was gonna say, tell me what was scary about it. It was hard for me

Shay 4:30
to be okay with being like, different than kids around me. Yeah. So I would always hide the fact that I was diabetic. So it just terrified me that people would be able to see that. I guess something was different about me, just based off of stuff, like hanging on me and that mixed with, like, the technology just kind of overwhelmed me.

Scott Benner 4:53
Were you managing mostly on your own? Yeah,

Shay 4:57
that's the thing. My parents were. Very involved with my care. And it was kind of like they taught us food groups and stuff like that. And then they were, my parents were like, Okay, you can figure this out. So,

Scott Benner 5:11
Shay, let me ask you, like, were you figuring it out? Like, did you have, like, awesome, a one, CS, No, you were up and down all the time, right? No,

Shay 5:19
yeah, it was horrible. I didn't know what I was doing. I the only thing I remember from that class, when I was eight, when they found out, was that they used fake fruit. I don't remember any information like, I just remember visuals of the fake fruit and being like, scared and nervous and not knowing what was going on. Oh, literally, like someone

Scott Benner 5:39
held a fake banana up in front of you. It's like, if you're bolusing for a banana, it might be this many carbs, and that's your recollection exactly how it went. Did your parents know that? I'm so sorry to ask like this, but were they like, did they just abandon you on this? Or did they not know you were struggling?

Shay 5:55
Yeah, they kind of just didn't want to deal with it.

Scott Benner 5:59
Were you super excited to deal with it. No,

Shay 6:01
I was just confused and yeah, lost, but yeah, even to this day, they they don't know the difference between, like a Dexcom and an Omnipod. So I'm so sorry

Scott Benner 6:13
to go down this road, but I want to understand, do you have other other siblings? Yeah,

Shay 6:16
I have a brother that's 11 months older, but he has no health problems at all. Are they involved in his stuff? Yeah, he I guess so they kind of resented me for having health problems and kind of blamed me for being so expensive, I guess. Really, yeah, so I just didn't have a good childhood in general. So I really was, like, completely alone through the diabetes and the diagnosis at eight years

Scott Benner 6:44
old. What's your relationship with your parents like now?

Shay 6:47
I always see them every once in a while, so I don't see them too often, but getting married soon and gradually, my mom went with me to try on wedding dresses, and she asked me if I was going to hide my Dexcom and my pump because it looked bad with

Scott Benner 7:06
the dress right back in the game. Mom was, huh,

Shay 7:09
yeah, yeah. So I'm like, Yeah, that's typical. Listen, I

Scott Benner 7:13
feel bad saying this, but are your parents generally heads, or is it just about this?

Shay 7:17
They just weren't good parents to begin with. I think, yeah, how come? Do you believe? I don't think they were ready to have kids, and they planned my brother, but obviously, 11 months later, they didn't plan me.

Scott Benner 7:32
You were the hey, you know, we haven't had sex in a while, baby. Yeah, I was the oops. Well, that's first of all, listen, you don't need me to, you know, say I'm sorry, but that sucks. I I'm sorry. It's a perspective that I think a lot of people have and don't share very often, so it's very nice of you to spend time talking about it so you don't dislike your parents or anything like that. You're just not particularly close with them. Yeah,

Shay 7:53
I mean, I was upset with them for a while, but it's just kind of the way it is. So there's no point in getting upset when I know they're going to be like that about my health. Yeah,

Scott Benner 8:04
somebody once told me that you can't ask more of people than they have to give. Yeah, that's pretty much it. You're not harboring any resentment, but you do believe that if it wasn't for diabetes, do you think you'd have a different relationship with them, or do you think they would just have found another thing to be upset about and because they weren't really looking to be parents? Yeah,

Shay 8:25
I think it would have been negative no matter what, but it did. It put such a damper on, like, taking care of myself, because I was constantly worried about what people were gonna say or think about me, because my parents weren't great with it, so I never, like, truly embraced it and wanted to hide it as much as I could, because

Scott Benner 8:46
if people realize you have diabetes, somehow the conversation leads to the fact that you're alone in all this, and then you have to tell people you don't have parents that seem to give a about you. Yeah, pretty much. How old were you when you thought about it that way? Like, gosh, they don't care enough about me to, like, help me with this. I

Shay 9:03
kind of caught on even at eight years old, because I had to give myself my own injections. And it's crazy. I look at eight year olds now and I'm like, that was me, but giving myself injections and keeping myself alive and not knowing what I was doing, yeah,

Scott Benner 9:20
there's a balance, obviously, between letting kids fumble around and grow, and I'm for that, you know, but not on this thing. Like, this is a weird place to like, you know, there's stuff like, my kids will come to me and they'll be like, What do you think of this? I'm like, you'll figure it out, don't worry. And you want them to, like, live through it and figure it out. But not when you're eight, right? Not to me, at least I it's just not how I think about it, I guess.

Shay 9:44
Yeah, and there's nobody in my family that's type one at all, so I don't know anybody. Yeah,

Scott Benner 9:50
you wouldn't have anybody to ask, right? Jeez. So, okay, so we're back to being 12 or 13. Things are bad enough that they're like, You got to use this game. Year you're like, oh God, if somebody's gonna see it, I see where that comes from. Because, you know, 15 years later, your mom's like, oh gosh, you're not gonna let anybody see this. Are you, yeah, but you get the stuff anyway. Does it end up helping? Why would you settle for changing your CGM every few weeks when you can have 365 days of reliable glucose data? Today's episode is sponsored by the ever since 365 it is the only CGM with a tiny sensor that lasts a full year sitting comfortably under your skin with no more frequent sensor changes and essentially no compression lows. For one year, you'll get your CGM data in real time on your phone, smart watch, Android or iOS, even an Apple Watch, predictive high and low alerts let you know where your glucose is headed before it gets there. So there's no surprises, just confidence, and you can instantly share that data with your healthcare provider or your family. You're going to get one year of reliable data without all those sensor changes, that's the ever sense. 365 gentle on your skin, strong for your life. One sensor a year, that gives you one less thing to worry about. Head now to ever sense, cgm.com/juicebox, to get started. Let's talk about the tandem Moby insulin pump from today's sponsor, tandem diabetes care, their newest algorithm control iq plus technology and the new tandem Moby pump offer you unique opportunities to have better control. It's the only system with auto Bolus that helps with missed meals and preventing hyperglycemia, the only system with a dedicated sleep setting, and the only system with off or on body wear options. Tandem Moby gives you more discretion, freedom and options for how to manage your diabetes. This is their best algorithm ever, and they'd like you to check it out at tandem diabetes.com/juicebox when you get to my link, you're going to see integrations with Dexcom sensors and a ton of other information that's going to help you learn about tandems, tiny pump that's big on control tandem diabetes.com/juicebox, the tandem Moby system is available for people ages two and up who want an automated delivery system to help them sleep better, wake up In range and address high blood sugars with auto Bolus.

Shay 12:23
Yeah, it completely, like changed my life, pretty much. At first it was, it wasn't like an automatic fix, but it took a while to learn, like the settings and because they didn't have closed loop back then, so we had to really be strict with the settings and everything, which my parents would take me to the endocrinologist, but they wouldn't like, they would wait outside. They wouldn't wait, wait,

Scott Benner 12:49
get the out of here, really, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 12:52
like, they pretty much just dropped me off. You're 12

Scott Benner 12:55
years old, and your parents would like, dump you out on the curb and then go get cigarettes and come back for you an hour later. Just

Shay 13:02
wait in the car. Yeah? Oh, my God, that's terrible.

Scott Benner 13:05
Yeah. I was in the car the other day with my son, and we were leaving a mall situation, and there was this old man, like, parked, like, in the fire lane by the mall, you know, just sitting there smoking a cigarette, waiting clearly, for his wife, who he, like, wouldn't have gone into a mall for for anything, you know? Yeah, I said, Gosh, when I was young, I pointed to him, and I said, when I was young, guys did this all the time, like, they'd sit outside of grocery stores, they'd sit outside of like, malls, or, like, I'm not going in there, and they just sit in their car. And my son was like, really? And I was like, hey, because I hate going to the mall, but he's like, but, you know, I go in when my my girlfriend goes, and I was like, right, right? But this old man was just, like, such a, like, a throwback to another time, like, just like that. Like, you go do it, and I'll wait here. You go do woman things, and I'll sit in the car. But they did that to you when you were a kid. Yeah, that's enough shape at the time. Did you know, like, did 12 year old Shay walk in there going, like, man, I've got crappy parents. Or are you just, like, I'm brave. I can do this on my own. Like, how does it feel to you? I

Shay 14:10
thought it was normal then, like, I really didn't see anything wrong with it until I was, like, closer to friends and talking to them and seeing how their parents were, yeah, I was like, wow, mine are not involved in anything I do at all.

Scott Benner 14:26
Did the doctor ever say to you, where are your parents? Yeah, I would just be like, Oh, they're waiting

Shay 14:30
outside and they don't want to talk.

Scott Benner 14:33
Shay, you realize now, like, if you do even the tiniest good thing as a parent, one day you're going to be like, I'm so good at this. Yeah, right. Try not to tell your kids that kind of stuff. Don't. Don't do the um, like, you're lucky. I'm doing this. My mom wouldn't even go into the doctor's appointment with me because I found myself telling my kids at times. I'm like, Oh, my God, you have no idea. The 70s, somebody would have kicked your ass for that, but that's for but you're younger, though. How old are your parents now? They're

Shay 15:00
in their 50s, really? Yeah, wow.

Scott Benner 15:03
All right, listen my last question about your parents, then we move on, unless they come up again, drinkers, drugs, anything like that.

Shay 15:10
Yeah? My dad, heavy drinker. My mom, she has, like, mental health problems. So, like, what she is, bipolar, I think type one. So she has all these medications she takes, and sometimes she gets, like, manic and stuff like that.

Scott Benner 15:27
I say they were challenged too. Then, yeah, yeah. How about you? Do you have anything else besides the type one? Oh, yeah, I have a list. Go ahead. What is it? So

Shay 15:35
I have endometriosis, which I got surgery for two months ago, and they found out it's stage four. So it was really extensive, Hashimotos, Raynaud's disease and Addison's disease. Holy Hell

Scott Benner 15:50
yeah. How does the endometriosis present? So

Shay 15:55
I had been in like, debilitating pain for like, years, and no doctor would listen to me. They just wanted to give me birth control, or, you know, tell me just eat better, or don't eat this. And nothing helped. I was in pain so much I just couldn't deal with it anymore. So I finally got someone to listen to me and said they would go in, and while they're looking, they would remove anything they needed to. So that turned up as a three hour surgery, which was supposed to be 45 minutes long. Yeah, so when they got in there, they saw it was a lot worse than they expected, and ended up getting it all out. So I've been doing really good, a lot better so far explain

Scott Benner 16:41
endometriosis to people. What were they in there looking for? So

Shay 16:45
it's like, your uterine tissue, like grows on the outside and grows on other organs, and then it causes really bad pain and other issues, because it's like growing on the nerves and I had organs attached to each other because of this, so they had to go in and cut them free.

Scott Benner 17:07
Will this happen again? They

Shay 17:09
said there's a 60% chance of it coming back within five years. But I'm pretty hopeful, because I'm really healthy and I do a lot of healthy eating and exercise, so I'm hoping that'll help. But I know that doesn't always keep it

Scott Benner 17:26
away, and if it doesn't, then the idea is they go back in and hack away again.

Shay 17:31
Yeah, pretty much do it all over again. Jesus, that

Scott Benner 17:35
sucks. Is this gonna impact you having kids? Yeah,

Shay 17:38
they said I have some like, blockage of my, like, fallopian tubes and stuff like that, so they're not sure, but I'm not that interested in having kids anyway. Oh, why not? It's just not for me. I

Scott Benner 17:54
met you know I was making fun of your parents. Is there any other like bipolar in your family is your mom the only one? Yeah,

Shay 18:03
just my mom, my dad's family. We don't know them because he's adopted. So,

Scott Benner 18:10
jeez. Well, what a show, yeah? What made you want to come on the podcast? Maybe

Shay 18:16
there's other people with just as much as a show, has me that would want to hear

Scott Benner 18:22
it. There definitely is, Shay, don't worry. Yeah, you came to the right place. Yeah? There's plenty of people out there right now going, I have all that stuff. Yeah, Hashimotos, you manage just with like Synthroid that i

Shay 18:37
They've told me for probably the whole 20 years now that I have Hashimotos, but I still don't need

Scott Benner 18:44
medication for it. What is your TSH, when they test it,

Shay 18:47
that's a good question. They do test it probably once every six months for me, and it's fine every time. So they just tell you, it's in range. Yeah, it's sometimes it's borderline, but they still say, I don't need the medication yet. Do

Scott Benner 19:01
you have any symptoms of it? Are you tired? Does your hair fall out? Are you cold? Like anything like that?

Shay 19:08
I'm constantly tired, but I feel like that's because I have so many different auto immune issues, and then I am always cold, but I have anemia, so I it's, it's like, I'm not sure what is causing this symptom today, kind of thing. We're gonna

Scott Benner 19:24
get you all straightened out today. Okay. Do you have access to your labs? Yeah, I do you get them all right. Cool. We'll keep talking. So what about the anemia? Did they ever give you? Did they ever do a full iron panel? Do you know what your pattern level is? So all

Shay 19:39
they told me was that it was low, and this was at my endocrinologist, and they weren't sure like what to tell me for milligrams of iron to take every day and that I needed to go to my primary care physician for that awesome. So I just thought that was so ridiculous.

Scott Benner 19:58
What a great help they are. Yeah. We'll figure it all out together. Don't worry. So your ferritin is low, your eye your iron panels came back abnormal. They didn't give you anything for it. Told you to go to talk to a different doctor about taking an iron tablet, which you're not going to do. Do you have heavy bleeding around your menstruation? Yeah,

Shay 20:12
like so much that I would faint and stuff like that, which it's been better since the surgery. But, yeah,

Scott Benner 20:20
okay. How about your digestion? Does the food go in and come out the way you want it to? Or do

Shay 20:24
you have I have horrible digestion problems, and they can't figure it out. It's been pretty much like six months. We've been trying to figure out what's going on with my stomach. And I don't eat much at all because everything hurts. Food

Scott Benner 20:40
goes in. You have pain in your stomach. You don't eliminate every day that kind of stuff.

Shay 20:45
Yeah, it's more like constant diarrhea no matter what I eat. Awesome. Okay, yeah, yep,

Scott Benner 20:53
I'm not laughing at you. It's just horrible. So I'm gonna guess that the diarrhea is about the thyroid that nobody's helping you with. Probably tell me when you have your when you have your labs in front of you.

Shay 21:06
Oh, okay, one second. Yeah, I also the Addison's disease, which is pretty rare for humans to get. I mean, dogs get it all the time, but humans don't get Addison's disease much, so that took forever for them to figure out what it was, and no one believed me. I was down to, I'm five seven, so I'm pretty tall for a girl, but I was down to, like, 95 pounds. Oh, wow,

Scott Benner 21:33
my daughter is five seven, so sick. Yeah, you know how thin she'd be if she was 95 pounds. We've had people on that have Addison's. There's a great person in the group that has it. So there's people that we could kind of hook you up with too to try to find, yeah, that'd be cool. But dig out your labs and I'm gonna find I have them. Okay, your last TSH was,

Unknown Speaker 21:57
what? 2.65

Scott Benner 22:01
okay? And your ferritin under the iron panel, 37.4

Unknown Speaker 22:09
Ng, slash, ml, yeah, yeah,

Scott Benner 22:11
okay. How would you like to feel insanely better in a month? That would be eight. Awesome. Here's how we're going to do it. Your TSH is too high, your ferritin is too low. Now you have insurance, awesome. You want thyroid replacement hormone. You want to tell your doctor that you want to medicate. Your TSH to under two you have thyroid symptoms. And I don't care if the test tells me I'm in range, I know that if I can medicate my TSH under two that a lot of my thyroid symptoms will go away. And then list all of your thyroid symptoms for them. Okay, okay, then you have to make an appointment with your general practitioner and tell them that you have significant low iron symptoms, for instance, general fatigue and weakness, definitely, persistent tiredness, definitely you have muscle weakness. Yes, you feel sluggish or drained. Yep, you experience brain fog, dizziness, lightheadedness, mood swings, irritability or increased anxiety or depression, all of those. Okay. Do you have shortness of breath when you mildly exert yourself? Yes, a rapid heartbeat, cold hands and feet. Yep. Is your skin pale sometimes? Yeah. Are your nails brittle? Yes? Have you experienced hair thinning? No. Do you bruise easily? Yes. Do you chew ice? Yeah, actually, uh huh, frequent infection, slow healing, restless legs, especially at night.

Shay 23:49
Oh my gosh, yes, the restless legs. For sure, you have

Scott Benner 23:52
low ferritin. So I want you to tell your doctor that you want your ferritin level to be at least 70, but you'd prefer it to be higher, and you would like to get iron infusions. Okay, you're gonna have to go to a hematologist, and the hematologist is going to be where you get the infusions, depending on what your insurance will cover, you'll either get like, two infusions, one a week apart, or you'll get five, depending on the medication, like a week apart, you'll then have the iron in your system that your system needs, and the next time your blood cells regenerate. So what's happening is your blood cells are being regenerated, but you don't have enough iron to build them properly, and that's why you're having the problems you're having. So then your red blood cells will get regenerated properly, and all of that will just go away. Interesting. It's incredibly possible that you might not need the thyroid medication, that getting your iron up, your ferritin level up, might take care of the things that look like thyroid symptoms. But having said that, also know that bad iron also impacts your thyroid. Numbers. Low ferritin can impact thyroid function, particularly TSH thyroid stimulating hormone levels, but the duration of the effect depends, so that's why it's bouncing around on you. So low thyroid can lead to a higher TSH level. Oh, okay, that may be why your TSH is bouncing around. So I'm gonna say, based on everything you've said so far, and the fact that I am not a doctor, I barely got out of high school, and I only have a podcast. I am going to say to you that if you get your ferritin raised through an iron infusion, that it's possible that the next time they check your TSH, it will look better.

Shay 25:34
Okay, yeah, I know a lot of Addison's people need to get infusions too. So that makes total sense, yeah, except

Scott Benner 25:43
nobody's helping you with it, which is, of course, being an enemy. Yeah? Would this impact

Unknown Speaker 25:52
bow habits, low

Scott Benner 25:54
far Can, can absolutely impact bowel habits, including causing loose stools or increased bowel movements. Yeah, you are literally a few infusions away from all this going away. That's

Shay 26:04
crazy. I feel like my endocrinologist just doesn't want to listen at all.

Scott Benner 26:09
Yeah, skip them, go right through a hematologist, okay, yeah, that's a good idea also, because when you have low ferritin, you're going to get poor nutritional absorption, right?

Shay 26:20
Yeah, I am very vitamin deficient and like, vitamin D, um, think it was vitamin

Scott Benner 26:27
E. Your food's not being absorbed correctly, makes sense. Yeah, they're gonna say, Well, why don't we try taking an iron supplement? And you go, like this, uh, no, okay, because that'll take too long, my numbers are too low, and I'm not waiting a year to maybe raise my ferritin level 20 points, yeah, I want to get jacked back up again, like, yeah, and then you got to get it checked again, because the sadness here is Shay. If you don't figure out why this is happening, your iron levels are going to drop back down again. Now, if they were because of heavy, excessive periods, are you still getting excessive periods? No, not like that anymore. So it's possible you get jacked up one time. Your body starts absorbing your nutrients better and the minerals that you need, you're not bleeding as heavy, and all this clears up. And then you, one day, decide to buy a puppy, and you name it, Scott, because you're so thrilled with how much I've helped.

Unknown Speaker 27:22
Yeah, sounds like a plan. All right, let's do it,

Scott Benner 27:25
and don't take no for an answer. You're young, so let me tell you that. Just don't let them tell you no. Yeah, okay. You know what to tell them. You know how to how to make this happen. Yeah?

Shay 27:35
I mean, I'm gonna write all my symptoms down and tell them I have been taking iron pills, but I feel like they don't do anything. Really haven't been

Scott Benner 27:44
Oh, yeah. Oh, if you've been taking them to say, look, I've been taking these, they don't do Yeah, I need the juice. Give me the juice. That's what you say. Give me juice. I'm telling you. Like, if you have great insurance, it might cover something called injector, which you'll probably just need to get twice. If your insurance is a bunch of cheapskates, I think they're gonna give you something called Benner for maybe I forget the names. Exactly one of them, you have to take more frequently to get the same thing. But the good news is, is that there are infusion centers everywhere, and so, like, it's not really hard to, like, you just go into infusion center. They pop into your vein real quick. It takes 30 minutes to put the stuff in, and you're on your way.

Shay 28:18
Yeah, that's not bad at all, no, especially if I can feel better, it's not

Scott Benner 28:22
gonna be like eating a cheeseburger and afterwards you're like, that was satisfying. Like, you know, you're not gonna feel any different that day. But I'm telling you, like, once your red blood cells cycle one time with the proper amount of iron in your system, you're gonna be like, Oh my god, I can't believe how much better I feel. Yeah, well, now I'm excited. Yeah, good, excellent. Well, yeah, listen, I've now done more for you than your parents. Yeah, right. All right, tell me more about this. Addison, so how long have you had this diagnosis?

Shay 28:50
I got diagnosed in 2020, in January. Okay, so it's been five years. Um, like I said, I was really sick for a long time. No one could figure it out. I mean, I couldn't even stretch in the morning without collapsing and just being so out of breath from just from stretching, and I couldn't keep anything down. I would throw up every morning after waking up. And I brought these concerns to my endocrinologist, and they said, Oh, maybe you're pregnant. I said, I'm definitely not pregnant, but all they did was get me a pregnancy test and say, Well, you're not pregnant, so we're not sure. Everything else looks fine.

Scott Benner 29:35
Everybody sucks, especially in your life, Shay, yeah, but everybody, everybody just sucks. Can you give me, generally speaking, where you live in the country, Central

Shay 29:43
Pennsylvania. Oh, I know the area,

Scott Benner 29:47
yeah, all right, I'm not totally surprised. Okay, you're so close to good health care too. I know, right, yeah. Could just go a little towards Pittsburgh, a little towards Philly, you'd be okay, but you're stuck right in the middle. There.

Shay 29:59
You. Yeah, yes, Pittsburgh and Philly, they're over three hours away from me. Yeah, you're literally

Scott Benner 30:05
right in the middle. Yeah, gotcha. There's got to be somebody who can help you. And I think you just have to take it upon Listen, I know that after stuff like this happens over and over again, it gets defeating and frustrating, and you think, like, oh, somebody says no, and you just kind of give up. But trust me, if you get this iron infusion, it's going to rectify a lot of different problems for

Shay 30:26
you. Yeah, I've been just going, Okay, I guess whenever they say, we can't figure anything out, because I've I feel like hopeless, like, what else am I going to say to them to get them to believe me and look into it more? You

Scott Benner 30:40
don't need them to believe you. You need the iron like, yeah, in the form of an infusion, and you're gonna be so much better. I mean, honestly, like, we can sit here and be angry. It is very frustrating to me that somebody doesn't see a ferritin of 37 and all of your symptoms and go, oh gosh, you need an iron infusion. Like, I can't believe somebody didn't say that. But I guess we can't count on, I don't know. Maybe we can't count on people to do their jobs all the time, or to know what their jobs are. But they the Addison's is crazy. What do they do for that? So

Shay 31:10
I take hydro cortisone, so steroids and pill form every day. Take them morning, afternoon and night, and then, of course, I have to take more if I'm, like, under a lot of stress or doing a lot of exercise and stuff like that, because my body doesn't produce cortisol itself, so I'm basically giving it cortisol when it needs it, and just guessing when I need it. That's

Scott Benner 31:38
a, I would say, a crap shoot, too, right? Even understanding it's

Shay 31:42
really it was really hard to figure out at first, especially like when I turned 21 and drinking, I really struggled, and ended up in the hospital like two or three times because I just didn't know how to co exist and still go out and have fun with all my health problems, because with Addison's disease, you need a lot of sodium, and I constantly have low sodium. So if I'm not keeping up with, like, sodium and water intake, and it's like, all a balance game, then I get really sick fast, and then it goes downhill from there. Yeah, I'm

Scott Benner 32:18
sorry. I know it's not an easy thing, obviously, auto immune. So you have, we don't even know about the rest of it, like we can't even talk about your digestion until you maybe get the iron address.

Shay 32:32
Yeah, they had thought it might be celiac disease, but it's not. I don't know. It came back negative, but at that point, I hadn't had any gluten for months, so that could have impacted the test too.

Scott Benner 32:45
Yeah, do you think that's a consideration? I

Shay 32:48
guess it's common, but I feel better not eating gluten, but that could be in general, because you're eating less diabetes anyway, or celiac disease. I'd be

Scott Benner 33:00
so super interested just to see what the iron does for you again. Because also, like, I mean, there's obviously overlapping stuff with Addison's low iron and thyroid, like the fatigue, your low weight, that could be a couple of different things, even the like, any irritability, muscle weakness, depression, that kind of stuff could overlap through all those things, which is what makes some of these autoimmune issues so terrible, like, they all look like each other. So, yeah,

Shay 33:27
exactly. It's so hard to tell what is giving me which symptom,

Scott Benner 33:32
yeah, but I would say that the iron is a good first step, because it's outside of these other two issues, outside of Addison's or possibly Hashimotos, like, right? And you can address it, and you will know, like I said, You'll know in four to six weeks if it was helpful. Yeah,

Shay 33:49
yeah, I'm definitely like, getting on this today. Good,

Scott Benner 33:53
good. I'm glad. What else should we talk about? What else you got on your list over

Shay 33:56
there? Well, I have kind of a horror story, awesome of the hospital a couple months ago. So Shay,

Scott Benner 34:04
you're the podcast guest that keeps on giving. Go ahead. What happened?

Shay 34:09
So this was for my endometriosis surgery. This was my first surgery ever. I've never been like, put under for surgery before, and when you're put under you need extra steroids for the Addison's disease. Well, they gave me extra during the surgery, and then when I woke up, the team called My endocrinologist and asked if they should give me more. And they said, No, I was unaware of this, obviously, because I just got surgery and was so out of it. Well, they sent me home the same day, and I got home, took a nap, woke up, had to go pee, went pee, and immediately just passed out on the bathroom floor because I was in so much pain and was just drenched in sweat. I had no idea what my. Blood sugars were luckily, my fiance is really good with blood sugars, and was looking at them for me, but it hurt so bad. I just I couldn't stand up. I was on the floor and couldn't keep anything down, not even water. So I had to be taken back by ambulance, which they told us to go to the ER, well, they made us wait four to five hours, so I couldn't keep my medication down. At this point, my blood sugar was running extremely low because I could. I hadn't had food in so long, and I couldn't. Since I couldn't keep things down, I had no pain pills in my system and this, and I'm fresh out of surgery, right? So this was like the worst pain I've ever felt, and they made us wait so long I was passing out on the hospital floor, and we made like a little bed in a really wide window, so for me to try to get some sleep, and it was horrible, but I feel like if they just would have given me more medication, then I wouldn't have had to go back and be in that situation. You think it was an adrenal crisis that you're at? Yeah, it definitely sent me into crisis, for sure. So I felt kind of like, if my endocrinologist can't tell them the the proper thing to do. Like, I really am alone in this.

Scott Benner 36:23
Yeah, no kidding, I guess, talk about that for a second. Like you have a number of different competing issues. The loneliness. Is it a thing you can over match, or is it too much to get over?

Shay 36:35
Yeah, it's really tough. Like, I've just been starting to go to therapy recently, which she's the one that told me about the Juicebox Podcast. So your therapist did, yeah, she did, yep, awesome. And yeah, it's really difficult, because having all these health problems like so young, everyone looks at me and assumes I'm healthy, or if I don't feel well, they think I'm exaggerating, because I look perfectly fine, but it's really hard, like, just to be feeling decent for one day,

Scott Benner 37:07
yeah? And so it's just a struggle to feel normal,

Shay 37:11
yeah, pretty much. And then, of course, it gives me anxiety going out of the house, like, what if my blood sugar drops? What if I need a bunch of salt? What if I start getting shaky, or I don't feel good, or I feel pain? So for a while, I would just stay in my house a lot and not go out. But I've been working on that, like I said, with my therapist.

Scott Benner 37:35
Also, I have to tell you, I mean, the Addison's, the possibility of thyroid and the low ferritin, these are all things that could make anxiety worse?

Shay 37:42
Yeah, definitely. The Addison's disease too. The anxiety gets really bad when I need extra medication. It's sad

Scott Benner 37:51
because you're young, you know what I mean, and you've been through a lot already. We've been doing a good job of laughing about it, but you had a pretty crappy start, and then, you know, you've had these issues and the endometriosis, would you say was stage four, yeah. And then, you know, you're in pain for years, and people don't like appreciate that. You don't mean pain once in a while. You mean pain constantly,

Shay 38:12
yeah? 24/7 pain for years and years, yeah?

Scott Benner 38:16
And then, you know, and then on top of that, the low iron and all that comes with that one. It's a lot, and you're on your own too, because I'm sure you have friends. It sounds like you met a boy, which is nice. It's a lot. You know what? I mean? Like to not have parents to go talk to or somebody to get your back. So glad you found the therapist. That's awesome, too. Yeah. How did you know to do that? To go to a therapist like it doesn't sound like you you grew up in an enlightened household, so I'm wondering who, like, where did you think

Shay 38:43
to do that? I guess I was just tired of feeling the same way all the time, like, just feeling like crap about myself really, like, Why do I it was always like, Why me? Why do I have to deal with these health problems? Until I was like, you know, I can change my outlook and how I look at things, and I've been through a lot, and that just means that I'm stronger than most people dealing with all of this at the same time, too.

Scott Benner 39:13
Sounds like it? Yeah, it really does. Okay. So you just were like, I need help from somewhere, and I don't know, like, nothing's going my way. I've got to go talk to somebody. Yeah,

Shay 39:23
I was feeling really down, like, borderline suicidal over the pain I was the physical pain I was feeling every day and not thinking that it would get any better. I just, I didn't know where else to go. Yeah.

Scott Benner 39:38
Like, do you ever go to your mom? I know this is a weird question because of her situation, but did you ever go to her? Yeah,

Shay 39:44
but she, she had endometriosis as well, but that, you know, that was so long ago. They don't do it the same way now. They used to burn it off, which they still do now, but they shouldn't. They should be cutting it. Out. But yeah, if I talk to her about it, she would kind of act like she knows more than me, kind of thing, and it would just irritate me, and we would get nowhere.

Scott Benner 40:10
Gotcha, gotcha, even though you're not all the way through this. Do you feel like you're in a better place than you were a year ago?

Shay 40:16
Yeah, definitely much better than a year ago, especially because going to therapy, it's not only changing, like my mental health, but it's making me realize there's other things and steps I can do for my physical health that would make me also feel better, as in, like, making more appointments, not ignoring things and symptoms.

Scott Benner 40:41
Yeah, that's tough lesson to learn, but it sounds like you have it. Yeah, yeah. Okay. So do you think you have a doctor that you can talk to about the fart and idea? I

Shay 40:51
don't think I have one currently, but I just switched over to all new providers, so it shouldn't be an issue finding one.

Scott Benner 41:00
Yeah, if you switch providers, did you have to do a physical? Yeah,

Shay 41:04
they had me go in for a physical. And the doctor was just shocked. He was like, You're so young and you have all this going on, but great.

Scott Benner 41:14
Can you help me with it? So right, can you look and see the 37 next to the word ferritin? And think to yourself, that might be a problem, which

Shay 41:22
they're the ones that did that blood work. You said everything looked fine, yeah. So

Scott Benner 41:27
nobody knows the they're talking about, right? So why don't you how long ago was that?

Shay 41:32
That was right before my surgery? So probably four months ago, awesome.

Scott Benner 41:37
So it's pretty recent. So like, yeah, I call them back and I say, Look, I've been doing more research, and I've learned that many, many practitioners believe that a ferritin level under 70 for a menstruating female is too low. Mine's a 37 I found a bunch of people who have had the same problem. They've all had it alleviated by getting an iron infusion. I'd like you to get me an iron infusion. I've tried taking the iron tablets. They're not working. Here are all of my symptoms. I want to get my iron up to where it belongs. And I want to, you know, wait a little while, and then see how I feel. I think a lot of my my symptoms, then you list off the low iron symptoms are going to go away, and the ones that don't, that's okay, because once we know my iron is higher, now we can look to see if maybe my thyroid levels could be managed better, or if this is more about digestion and the uptake of minerals and vitamins, etc. But I think that we can't figure any of that out till I get my iron higher. I've been struggling and long enough I want to go get a an infusion. Because if they try to tell you about more iron tablets, just say, Look, they're not working. They're going to constipate me. They make me sick, like, say, whatever you got to say to get your thing. You know what I mean? Yeah, I mean,

Shay 42:57
I'm going to tell them the truth. I feel like I've tried everything to feel better, and nothing is working. I mean, I don't the amount of food I eat or don't eat, really is crazy. I barely eat anything. The only thing I eat is fruits and vegetables, sometimes beans, like, everything else just hurts my stomach and just doesn't make me feel good.

Scott Benner 43:19
Yeah, don't let them like, when they start going like, well, that could be celiac. Oh, wait a minute, that's fine. Maybe it is. But first we're going to get my iron up so we can figure something out. Like, that's what you just keep them focused, because otherwise their little brains, like seeing a like a bird, they'll pivot. You know what? I mean, they're like, Oh, what was that? Did you say? Did you say your stomach hurt, you might have celiac. Stay focused. All right. We're gonna get my iron up. After my irons up, we're gonna see how I feel, and if I still have thyroid symptoms, then I'm gonna address my TSH level like so once you get my iron back up, if my thyroids come if my labs come back, and my TSH is still over 2.1 then I'm going to ask for Synthroid to manage my thyroid better. Yeah. And then for the rest of it, I think you ought to go into the Facebook group and talk about your Addison's a little bit if you want help with it, because I think people who live with it are going to have better advice. Yeah. Okay, that's pretty much where I'm at for you. You feel good about this so far. All right, what else is on your list, like, besides, go, wait, wait. So you went to the hospital, and they did all that to you, and eventually you had to go back to the hospital. You rebounded. Okay. How long did it take them to get you back from all that?

Shay 44:30
So I didn't really finish that. I just realized, yeah, they didn't give me anything but pain pills there, and they said there was a national shortage of fluids, so they wouldn't give me fluids, because my case wasn't bad enough, even though I could not keep water down, so I was extremely dehydrated, and yeah, so they sent me home. I just remember sleeping forever, maybe a whole day I slept. Left and I woke up and still didn't feel great, but just kept taking as much extra hydrocortisone that I could, and took me about a month to fully heal enough to go back to work and get out of the house again.

Scott Benner 45:16
Incredible. They wouldn't give you fluids. Nope. They

Shay 45:20
literally said, Your case is not bad enough because we have a shortage

Scott Benner 45:24
to get just IVs. Yep, they got

Shay 45:28
none of that. I did. They never even gave me a bed to lay in. I was in one of those upright chairs just screaming in pain. He had to

Scott Benner 45:38
move a little closer to the ocean. I don't know another way. I don't know another way to put it. And listen, I want to say, as a person who's been spending the last three days thinking, I want to move a little close to the center of the country. I'm going to tell you, like, the one thing that slows me down about that is health care. Yeah, like, it really is. It's the one thing that's like, when I say to my wife, like, can we move What did I tell somebody this morning here? I'll share, I'll share directly with you. I told somebody this morning in a text message, I'm going to find the exact wording I used, because I want to be clear. Seriously, I'm sick of food people in the weather is that I think I'm officially old. And I was talking to my daughter the other day and I said, like, I don't know. Like, I'm older now, like, I'd like to just move somewhere a little less congested with people, and, you know, I'd like the weather to be a little better, like, I'm not looking for this snow. And she's like, where are you gonna go? And I was like, I have no idea. Like, I talked about it, but places. And in the end, I said, I'm not gonna do it, though. And she said, why? And I was like, healthcare. Like, I'm just, like, I talked to too many people were like, telling me stories. I'm like, where are you at? And you're like, I'm in and they always list the places that I think it would be cool to go live, right? You know, like, I'm older, so what am I going to get there? Need health care and have somebody look at a lab, see a 37 Fer, and go, This looks awesome. Yeah, yeah. Are you sure? Because I'm dying. You sure there's nothing on here that doesn't like? Do you have any idea what you're looking you're looking at? They go, Nope, you're good. All the stuffs green. Like, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, awesome. So anyway,

Shay 47:10
we, we say the same stuff pretty much every day, because we did a trip in Europe, and it's so completely different. And we're like, we want to just go live over there. Listen,

Scott Benner 47:19
I would like a little bit of land, not a lot, right? I'd like, can I tell you what I want? I just

Shay 47:25
want a greenhouse. Oh, yeah, I would love that. I just

Scott Benner 47:29
a little greenhouse on my property where I could put my plants when it gets cold. Like, that's really all I want, like, a little bit of grass, the mess around in, like, you know what I mean? Like, a place where I walk outside I don't see another person. That's good. I don't want to be attacked by a bear or rattlesnake or anything like that. Like, I just want to, like, you know what I mean, and it's okay if it gets cool in the winter, but I don't need it snowing anymore tonight. I don't know where that place is, though. Like, some people will tell you, Oh, here's perfect. I'm like, great. It's like a million dollars to rent, like, a four foot apartment, right? Great, that's not what I want, either. So I think I'm stuck, you know what I mean, but you live in that. You live right through the like, that mountain range goes up through Pennsylvania. People don't even realize that, I would imagine, but, yeah, you're probably like, in one of those, like, horrible weather gullies, like, we're the way, yes, we are. You just found the podcast. How long ago? Maybe, like, a month ago? How'd you get on the podcast so quickly? My

Shay 48:28
therapist told me about it, so I started listening to you guys, like every day at work. And then I was like, maybe I can be on it. So I messaged you, and now we're here. I got

Scott Benner 48:40
you. I'm quick. How about that? Look at me. I'm glad you're here. Your story is insane, you know, really upsetting. How does the boy work out with all the health issues? Oh,

Shay 48:51
he's great. I have no complaints. He's a pro with diabetes stuff. Now he'll stay up late when I go to bed early to make sure I don't go low or anything, because I don't wake up to my alarms. So yeah, he's really good with everything, and it kind of radicalized him in a way, because he always thought that, you know, you don't feel good, you're sick, you go the doctor, they'll fix you, yeah, until he saw being with me and going to all these doctors appointments, and not one of them listening to me now he truly sees like, wow, they really do fail people every day.

Scott Benner 49:30
Yeah. I mean, listen, there's plenty of good doctors. You're just not finding them.

Shay 49:33
Yeah, exactly. Seriously, Katie, you and I, I'm

Scott Benner 49:38
sorry I'm picking around on the internet now I think you're riding the same motorcycle I used to ride. Ah, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 49:43
now I have a GSX 8r and an SV, 650

Scott Benner 49:46
I used to ride a GSX r7, 50.

Shay 49:50
Oh, nice. The 8r just came out this year. Yeah. Or 2024, I should say, How long have you been riding since I was 19?

Scott Benner 49:58
No kidding. What do you like about it? Well,

Shay 50:01
I really started to ride because the gas prices were crazy at the time, yeah, and I had to commute to college. I was like, I'm just gonna get a motorcycle. It's gonna be cheaper. And then I fell in love with it. And I've been working at motorcycle shops for since I was 19. No kidding, so I just let just, I love it. It's just the freedom you can really like, just take your bike and just ride somewhere and find cool spots to just hang out. Yeah?

Scott Benner 50:28
I agree with you. I am. I got my first motorcycle because I couldn't afford car insurance. Yeah? So same idea, yeah. It was $100 a year to insure the motorcycle. Yeah. I remember asking the person, why is it so cheap? And they said, Ah, because if you have an accident, you'll be dead. And I was like, oh, okay, you won't need your motorcycle replace. I was like, Is that why it's so inexpensive? My gosh, I've ridden, I've owned three different bikes in my life, and I put over 100,000 miles on the three of them together. Nice, yeah. Like I rode a lot. And I just I used to ride 24/7 365, like, in the Me too. Actually, there's days I'd get up and I'd like, I gotta go to work. I gotta go to work. I gotta go to work. I'd stand next to the heater, and I'd run outside after get the bike warm, and I'd jump on and try to ride. I only like, a 15 minute ride to work. By the time I got there, I was completely frozen, yeah, and I'd get out and stand in front of another heater until I warmed up. And then on the rainy days, you had to bring clothes to change into when you got to work, because you're going to be soaked when you got there. But, yeah, I couldn't afford any I couldn't afford anything else. So, and I had the same problem. You know, eventually, what's the fastest you've ever gone? I'd say like 180 wow, I get the 165 ones. Nice. Well,

Shay 51:41
my 180 was on a track, so, oh, wasn't on the street. I was

Scott Benner 51:46
in Philadelphia, so, um, oh, my God, it was. It's very late at night. No, there's nobody else out. I just, I lost my nerve for it one day. Yeah, I get that. I can't explain it. I was such a, like a free and Easy Rider. I was fine. I went into a store one day. This is no no lies. Exactly what happened. I went into a store, I put my I parked my bike. It was really hot out, and the kick stand melted into the black top, and the bike fell over. Oh man, and I stood it up, and there was so much damage on the side of the bike, and for the first time, like, I'm not lying to you, I've been riding for years, years and years and years, and like I said, over 100,000 miles, and I saw the damage that happened, and I had been in an accident before, like I've laid a bike down, like I've been hit by a car, like I've had motorcycle accidents. But there was something about the fact that the bike fell over, did $1,000 worth of damage and was ruined, and it wasn't moving, yeah, and I thought, and it somehow, like sparked my brain to go, oh, you should wonder what would happen if you were moving. Then I started worrying about it. I couldn't stop thinking about I had to sell the bike. I could barely ride it to sell it. It was crazy, like how scared I got in the end. So I hope that never happens soon, because I miss it

Shay 53:03
a lot. Yeah, I've had accidents too. So far, I still want to ride. Yeah,

Scott Benner 53:08
I got clipped one time. This lady said she was making a left turn, and she stopped, and she had her turn signal, and I went around her on the right. She told the cop, I remembered I wanted to go right. She said, wow. So she just, without looking, turned right, caught the rear wheel of the bike, and spun the bike out from under me, like I remember going up in the air. And I remember throwing myself away from the bike. You know what I mean? Yeah, I pushed off of it, and then I came down on the side of my head of my shoulder, and I eventually had to have my shoulder replace, like, repaired years later because of the damage from that. So were you

Shay 53:47
wearing like, an armored jacket? Oh, stop it. I had

Scott Benner 53:50
a help. I was probably wearing shorts, like, I don't know, like, yeah. Like, yeah, that was that one. And then once, just after the thaw, like, you know, there's still cinders on the road, and they send the Street Sweepers out, but the street sweeper left like this thin line of cinders in the road. I hit that thin line of cinders, and the bike just like slid out from under me. I stood up in the middle of a four way intersection with cars on every side of me, and I was like, I cannot believe I didn't get hit by a car. And that's crazy. And then I looked around, I couldn't find my bike. It must have slid for like, another 40 or 50 yards after I stopped insane, and then I picked it up, got on it, and rode it home. That didn't bother me at all. Then years later, it falls over, and I'm like, I can't do this. This is too dangerous. Every spring, you know, when it's still cool, but this it gets warm, you know, in the sun, and then the air freshens up. I miss my motorcycle that time of year. Yeah, I know exactly what you mean, yeah, yeah, I really do. So, oh my gosh, yeah. Well, that bike's awesome. Both ears are really cool. Thank you. Yeah, I don't know the does your boyfriend ride with you?

Shay 54:58
Yeah? He. Rides too. He has different style bikes, though he does like the adventure style, okay? And cafe. He has two Ducatis. Nice,

Scott Benner 55:09
yeah, I rode a Harley one time, and I hated it, Yeah, same. I got back, and the guy's like, what'd you think? And I was like, I was like, sitting up so straight. And he's like, I don't know how you lay forward. I'm like, I don't know how you sit up, like that. Those bikes, the one you ride, the one that I've ridden, is they're so comfortable that I almost feel like I could go to sleep, like, like sitting on it, like I'm so comfortable in that position. Anyway, what do we not talked about that we should have? I think that's it. You sure? Would you let me know how this goes?

Unknown Speaker 55:41
Oh yeah, for sure. Yeah,

Scott Benner 55:42
I'm super interested, because I think you're gonna feel a lot better, like, I said about four to six weeks after you get an infusion.

Shay 55:48
Yeah? That gives me a lot of hope, because I'm like, I don't even know where to go at this point. Yeah, no.

Scott Benner 55:54
I mean, again I do that, then I'd wait maybe two months after my last infusion was done, and I'd get my labs drawn again, which they're going to want to do anyway. And then when they draw your labs, to look at your iron panel again, tell them, like, let's look at my my thyroid again too. Okay. And then if you see what, where your TSH goes, if your TSH goes back under two, then awesome. But if it's above, like I said 2.1 and you're still having some symptoms of hypothyroidism, that's when I would ask for that, like Synthroid or something like that, to address your T for, yeah, you know. And then once you've got those two things set up, gosh, I don't know how to say about the digestion part, but I would think the iron is going to straighten out your digestion? Yeah, I hope so, yeah. And then from there, just like, Get get on, like, vitamins and and eating a little better than you are now, because I know how you feel, because I've, by the way, the reason I know about most of this because I've had very low iron and needed iron infusions in my life. Oh, okay, I was wondering, plus people coming on the podcast, but that whole digestion, part of it, that makes sense to me, with the low iron. So I think you could have a lot of improvements again this spring. You could feel differently. Yeah, that would be great. Yeah, okay, well, I wish you a lot of luck. I hope you find somebody to help you. Yeah, thank you. You're welcome anything, nothing else. We're good, yeah, I think we're good. Awesome. I appreciate you doing this very much. Thank you for having me. Oh, it's a pleasure. Hold on one second for me. Stay with me. Okay, okay.

The podcast you just enjoyed was sponsored by tandem diabetes care. Learn more about tandems, newest automated insulin delivery system, tandem Moby, with control iq plus technology at tandem diabetes.com/juice box. There are links in the show notes and links at Juicebox Podcast com. I'd like to thank the ever since 365 for sponsoring this episode of The Juicebox Podcast, and remind you that if you want the only sensor that gets inserted once a year and not every 14 days, you want the ever since CGM, ever since cgm.com/juicebox, one year, one CGM.

Hey, thanks for listening all the way to the end. I really appreciate your loyalty and listenership. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast. My grand rounds series was designed by listeners to tell doctors what they need, and it also helps you to understand what to ask for. There's a mental wellness series that addresses the emotional side of diabetes and practical ways to stay balanced. And when we talk about GLP medications, well we'll break down what they are, how they may help you and if they fit into your diabetes management plan. What do these three things have in common? They're all available at Juicebox, podcast.com, up in the menu. I know it can be hard to find these things in a podcast app. So we've collected them all for you at Juicebox podcast.com the episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way, recording, wrong way, recording.com you.

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Kristen, 36, is a mom navigating anxiety and control while raising her 10‑year‑old son with type 1, diagnosed the same week the world shut down in 2020.

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Scott Benner 0:00
Here we are back together again, friends for another episode of The Juicebox Podcast.

Kirsten is the mother of a child with type one diabetes. She has some anxiety and control issues. We talk about them today. Please don't forget that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan or becoming bold with insulin. Don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com All you have to do is use the offer code juice box at checkout. That's Juicebox at checkout to save 40% at cozy earth.com. AG, one is offering my listeners a free $76 gift. When you sign up, you'll get a welcome kit, a bottle of d3, k2, and five free travel packs in your first box. So make sure you check out drink ag one.com/juicebox to get this offer. If your loved one is newly diagnosed with type one diabetes and you're seeking a clear, practical perspective, check out the bold beginning series on the Juicebox Podcast. It's hosted by myself and Jenny Smith, an experienced diabetes educator with over 35 years of personal insight into type one. Our series cuts through the medical jargon and delivers straightforward answers to your most pressing questions. You'll gain insight from real patients and caregivers and find practical advice to help you confidently navigate life with type one. You can start your journey informed and empowered with the Juicebox Podcast, the bold beginning series and all of the collections in the Juicebox Podcast are available in your audio app and at Juicebox podcast.com, in the menu. US med is sponsoring this episode of The Juicebox Podcast, and we've been getting our diabetes supplies from us med for years. You can as well us med.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, use the link or the number. Get your free benefits. Check and get started today with us. Med, this episode of the juice box podcast is sponsored by the Omnipod five. Learn more and get started today at Omnipod com slash juice box. Check it out. I

Kristen 2:22
am Kirsten Santos. I am 36 years old. I've been married to my husband almost 14 years this year, we have a 10 year old son who is a type one diabetic, and he was diagnosed no lie, the week the world shut down, in March of 2020, we were in the hospital when they started shutting everything down. Wow, crazy.

Scott Benner 2:49
Good times. Did you make it into the hospital where they would still let you and your husband in at the same time?

Kristen 2:54
Yeah. I mean, it was, obviously, it was, like, on everybody's minds, what's going on, what's happening, but the way that I figured out that that was going on with him was an even crazier story, because we don't have this in our family. My husband, he's got a cousin who's got a son that has it, but it's that's like a distant, sort of distant relation, so there's no history of it, and our family other than that. And it was like a flip of a switch. It was the weirdest thing. He was five in that January, he started eating more, becoming more thirsty. You know, your typical signs. But you know, as a mom of a young kid, he's, he's my only one, all I could think was maybe this is some kind of weird growth spurt. So one day, I picked him up from school, and he had been wetting the bed every night that week, multiple times getting up multiple times to go to the bathroom, and then the night before, seven times he got up. And I'm like, This is not normal. This is like, something's wrong. And my husband, he's like, No, it's I'm sure it's fine. And, you know, of course, what do moms do? We Google, we Google. And I Googled, and that was the first thing that came up. And he says, There's no way that that's what's going on. And I, I'm thinking, No, it's there's got to be something else. There's got to be some other crazy, simple explanation.

Scott Benner 4:14
Google doesn't know about you did something that everyone does. Yeah, I'm just going to point it out today. You said, there's no history of this in our family. And I thought to say, oh, there is, now and then you said, except for my somebody's cousin son. And I'm thinking, I know that's not how people think of family history, but that's in your family like that makes sense to me. You know what I mean? So anyway, also I want to tell you, and this gives you a chance, in the beginning to relax and get settled that last night, I had a dream that I was peeing in my closet. I opened my eyes and I was like, I gotta go the bathroom. And I got up and I went to but in the just want to be clear the dream, the dream I. I was standing in my closet peeing, like, viciously, like, like a fire hose, like, it was, it was, it was comical. Goodness, I couldn't stop peeing, but I kept reaching out and trying to move my wife's clothing so it wouldn't get messed up.

Kristen 5:12
It's like, I don't want to get in trouble for this, so at least I'm gonna sort of prioritize her in this moment. So

Scott Benner 5:18
I'm like, in the bathroom, in the dark, in the middle of the night, now, going to the bathroom, and I'm thinking like, I'm scared of being married in my dreams, and I've been mad, and I've been married for three decades, three decades, and I still in my dream, was like, Oh, I can't pee on Kelly's stuff. Do you think when people are listening, that they think, you know, every once in a while, Scott, if you just stopped and said, I'm so sorry that happened to you and your family and your son, it doesn't occur to me to to, like, turn these into like, pity sessions, you know what? I mean, like, but I am like, it sucks, you know?

Kristen 5:53
Well, yeah, but at the same time it's, I mean, in the moment it sucked, you know. And still, sometimes it sucks, because it just sucks to suck. You know, you just kind of learn to adapt, and then it just becomes, like, the ugly step child. You know what I mean? Like, I don't know, like, if that's awful to say, but that's just only for step children. Nothing that step children are ugly because they're not. Let's

Scott Benner 6:18
choose it up a little and say red headed step child, and then that way we can offend two groups of people, right? No, but I understand. It's sort of like off on it the corner, it's there. It exists. But it doesn't feel like it's, oh god, this is horrible for step children. It doesn't feel like it's part of the core of what's happening anymore, right?

Kristen 6:36
And, but, and that first, like, year, because, I mean, the whole everything shut down. So it's like, that's all we did, you know, like everybody else was binge watching Netflix, and, you know, gaining 75 pounds. And here we are trying to keep our kid alive. If it had to happen, God forbid, it had to happen. But if it had to happen, that was probably the best time, because we were both home, my husband and I to just learn this new life. But, you know, it just, it was just, it was just crazy, just how it all happened. Because one day, everything's normal. And I say, you know, we're given seven, eight injections every day, and it's just, you know, to it to a kid who is terrified of needles, you know? And so it's, it was just, it was a huge growing experience for for all of us, and it

Scott Benner 7:19
saved you from the tiger King. So that's pretty great. It did not. Oh, Jesus, sorry, it

Kristen 7:24
did not. It it did not. No, no, it did not save us from the tiger King. No, we've, we've broadened our horizons when it comes to different things that we watch. And Tiger King was one of the ones that we, uh, watched to uh, entertain ourselves during that, gosh,

Scott Benner 7:41
I watched so many different, so many different television shows that I don't believe I would have watched otherwise, and some of them were awesome. Yeah, but sure, yeah. Okay, so let's just go down this road for a half a second Kristen before we move on. I've investigated the etymology of red headed step child, and it's okay, obviously, originated in American colloquial speech, possibly in the 20th century. 20th Century, with negative associations linked to red hair and of the concept of step children being neglected. Oh, yeah. No, hold on. There's anti red hair sentiments and notions that step children's receive less than favorable than biological ones. Geez. This is terrible. This is probably a colloquialism we shouldn't use anymore. It

Kristen 8:22
probably is not no. And the second I said, I'm thinking, You know what? I

Scott Benner 8:26
heard it in your voice. You're like, I could have said something else. I could have said something else. Yes,

Kristen 8:30
I could have, yeah, yeah. When you, when you're when you are brought up, and you just, you grow up around these sayings, and you're just so used to inserting them in conversations. And then it's like, wow, um, I'm not

Scott Benner 8:41
policing you don't worry. I was just thinking we could figure out where it came from. But yeah, doesn't look like it. It's not giving me much more anyway. So

Kristen 8:50
we're not now. We're educating everyone that this is probably not something we should say

Scott Benner 8:53
going forward. I would not say it if I was them, unless, well, no, let's see. I'm older Kristen, so I was gonna say, unless there's no redheads or step children around that, it's probably it's funny because it is just a colloquialism. It makes a point. You know what I mean? Like as you hear it and you understand what somebody means immediately. It is very unfair to the people who are called out in it. So, right. Anyway, moving on. So the kid gets the type one. Let's go back to the idea that during COVID, having time to focus on it was important, because I think there's a there's a good threat in there, so So you're all home able to focus on it. What is it that that time gave you? My daughter is 20 years old. I can't even believe it. She was diagnosed with type one diabetes when she was two, and she put her first insulin pump on when she was four. That insulin pump was an Omnipod, and it's been an Omnipod every day since then. That's 16 straight years of wearing Omnipod. It's been a friend to us, and I believe it could be a friend to you, Omnipod. Dot com slash juice box, whether you get the Omnipod dash or the automation that's available with the Omnipod five, you are going to enjoy tubeless insulin pumping. You're going to be able to jump into a shower or a pool or a bath tub without taking off your pump. That's right, you will not have to disconnect to bathe with an Omnipod. You also won't have to disconnect to play a sport or to do anything where a regular tube pump has to come off. Arden has been wearing an Omnipod for 16 years. She knows other people that wear different pumps, and she has never once asked the question, should I be trying a different pump? Never once omnipod.com/juicebox get a pump that you'll be happy with forever. I used to hate ordering my daughter's diabetes supplies. I never had a good experience, and it was frustrating. But it hasn't been that way for a while, actually, for about three years now, because that's how long we've been using us Med, usmed.com. Med.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, us, med is the number one distributor for FreeStyle Libre systems nationwide. They are the number one specialty distributor for Omnipod dash, the number one fastest growing tandem distributor nationwide, the number one rated distributor in Dexcom customer satisfaction surveys. They have served over 1 million people with diabetes since 1996 and they always provide 90 days worth of supplies and fast and free shipping us med carries everything from insulin pumps and diabetes testing supplies to the latest CGM like the libre three and Dexcom g7 they accept Medicare nationwide and over 800 private insurers find out why us med has an A plus rating with a better business bureau At US med.com/juice, box, or just call them at 888-721-1514, get started right now, and you'll be getting your supplies the same way we do. It was a benefit and a curse. Tell me how it

Kristen 12:11
was a benefit, because I don't like change, you know, and so I had to basically redefine my definition of motherhood, you know, here I go from someone who is protecting and, you know, sheltering and you know, nurturing, to someone who's inflicting pain and who's, you know, holding down a child who doesn't understand and is screaming at the top of his lungs and he's saying, Mommy, like, Why are you hurting me? Don't do it anymore. And all these things are like it's all going against everything I believe as a mom, and so I had to go into a room separately to then address myself and say, You're doing this for his benefit. It's it's not hurting him, it's helping him. And I, you know, and having this separate conversation with myself,

Scott Benner 12:58
How old was he? Again, remind me five? Okay, yeah, geez, no. It sucks. He said those words, why are you hurting me? Yes, yes, awesome. Do you respond? Yeah,

Kristen 13:11
my response really was to get through it at first to then address that later. You know, you spend three days in the hospital. They give you all of this, all this stuff, and then it's like, All right, good luck. And you go home, and I remember, like, the first day we got home and we checked his blood sugar. It was 239 and I'm like, Oh my God, what do we do? What do we do? What do we do? I'm looking at my husband. I'm like, I don't, I don't remember. I don't remember anything. Like, I don't know. I know nothing, yeah, what do we do? And he said, just call the Endo. So I called the Endo. She's like, it's fine. This is what you'll do, follow the paper. And I'm like, Oh my God.

Scott Benner 13:44
I called the endo the night we left the hospital at, like, it could have been, like, three or five in the morning. I literally called her cell phone and said this, like, guys, like, here's the number. I don't know what to do. Yeah,

Kristen 13:58
yeah. It's like, it's like, you have so much being pushed into your brain. You're expected to remember it. Now they, you know, they say remember it, but then they also say you're gonna have questions. So it's like, there's almost like a hit in there, saying you're never gonna, you're not gonna remember all this. You're gonna be calling us like 24/7 and that's okay, yeah. But me being the independent person that I am and the perfectionist that I am, I'm like, I don't want to call them 6000 times. I want to get this right the first time. And so that was kind of like, going back to the original thought of COVID is, you know, here we have, like, this nine month time where we can figure it out and, you know, in my mind, get it right, you know, once we get it right, it'll be fine. It'll you know, and that's just my naive a misunderstanding of what diabetes really was at the time. Like, I

Scott Benner 14:46
just got to move a couple of pieces around. This is all going to be okay, yeah? And it'll be fine. Everything's gonna go

Kristen 14:51
back to normal, you know, lo and behold, obviously, not. But, you know, us being home, it the house got very small very quickly, yeah, which I'm sure did. For everybody else, but it's almost like this elephant in the room that was just there all the time. And, you know, what do we what do we do? How do we do this? You know, who's holding them down this time, and who's who's wiping the tears away and who's grabbing the band aid and, you know? And so my husband and I, we just, really just had to hunker down and focus and figure out, you know, our new routine and our method, and that time gave us the chance to do that, but at the same time, it also grew the monster in me that is the perfectionist, and it's I still to this day, I and I'm not I know I'm not the only one I have sugar may up on my phone all the time when I'm at work, when I'm laying in bed, when I'm as I am a full time college student do? How long

Scott Benner 15:42
has it been now since the diagnosis, five years and you're still staring at the numbers? Are you still still staring at the numbers? Yes, I'd like to dig in a little more. So let me work backwards. What's his time and range as a 1c that kind of stuff like present day, present

Kristen 15:57
day time and range. You know, we're gonna say it's 81% 82% okay?

Scott Benner 16:04
And is a one sees what? Like 6264,

Kristen 16:08
this last one. Yeah, he's gone through a couple growth spurts that have made his sugar a little more resistant.

Scott Benner 16:14
It's still awesome. That's a great a one thing. And then so my question is, is, why are you staring all the time? Like, are you constantly fiddling with it, or are you, is it anxiety?

Kristen 16:23
It's probably both. It's the need to control it, even though I know it's not controllable 100% it's like this. Lie I tell myself. It's like this. You know, if I'm looking at it, then I have better control over it. It's, it's some kind of like mental thing. I think

Scott Benner 16:40
I thought you're gonna say illness. Were you like this prior? As

Kristen 16:43
far as being controlling, yeah, I guess so. Yes, always, yes. I am a. I am a type A to the core. I have to have everything lined up, because if something catches me by surprise. I come undone. I come unglued. And part of me thinks this is life's way of trying to retrain me and say, Hey, you can't control everything. So you know, here's something that is completely uncontrollable. Kristen,

Scott Benner 17:15
you'll take this well, because I see I see you and I have a good vibe together. What did you use to point you're crazy at before diabetes, my husband was gonna say in my if I was married to you, you'd been in my dream telling me, Don't pee on that. Don't be on that. My husband, yeah, 100% to the point where, so you guys were younger. I know this. It's funny. You said you were married for 14 years, and I thought, Oh, I'm at the part of my life where I thought, oh, that's quaint. So you've been How old are you? Tell me how old you are. I'm 36 All right, so you've been married since you were 2422 22 I was gonna say 22 Why did I stop myself? So since you were 22 and he's your age,

Kristen 17:52
he's a couple years older than me, so he's, he's gonna be 38 so

Scott Benner 17:56
what'd you do? You found a fixer upper. He was almost good, and you had to fix him.

Kristen 18:00
You know what? He came to me and he fixed me. Oh,

Scott Benner 18:03
yeah. Oh, tell me about that. From we're gonna get to how this relates to diabetes, but how to tell me about that, if you will.

Kristen 18:10
So I grew up in church. My dad was in ministry. I've been exposed to that my whole life, and a part of that my whole life. And when you brought up in a Pentecostal upbringing like I was, there's a lot of expectations with that, and I think that played into a lot of my control issues. I think there was just like, a level of expectation and not enough grace. And as an adult, I understand that a lot more, and I try to introduce grace to more people, because, you know, we just, we all screw up all the time, but I think there was just a level of expectation. What's

Scott Benner 18:50
that mean? Like expectation, like Jesus is watching

Kristen 18:53
to always, always be on, always be presenting myself the way that I needed to be because

Scott Benner 18:59
he was the pastor, and people were looking or because God's gonna send you to hell if you don't. No,

Kristen 19:04
not, not that. It was a lot of, you know, we're an example. My because I have a younger sister, my sister and I, you know, were examples that he, he didn't pastor a church. He was just on ministry, like in this, like on staff, okay, part of the ministry. But you know, people were they look to people in ministry for how are their children behaving? Like, what do they do when crisis happens? How do they handle things? And so, you know, I think that it was more of that, rather than like, you know, if you make a mistake, God's gonna send you to hell. Because I never grew up with that connotation.

Scott Benner 19:35
What it was was the congregation is looking to us to be an example, example, right? And an example that probably doesn't really exist in the world, because nobody, nobody's perfect, right? And so you Sorry, Mom, your parents put on you to be perfect, or you felt like you needed to be I felt like I needed to be okay. Are you just protecting your mom now? Or is that true? No, no,

Kristen 19:57
I'm not protecting them or my dad. No, huh? No, it was a pressure I put on myself. And even even now, like having conversations about my childhood, she you know, my mom, she would tell me, she's you would be so much harder on yourself than we would be. She said, You just take something and you take a mistake and you just take it one step or two further to punish yourself, and you just drag it out. She said, You know, I didn't want you to hold on to hold on to that. I don't want you to feel like we put that on you. She said, maybe, maybe we did. I don't know, and if we did, I'm sorry, but I always have a tendency to punish myself way more than I'm being punished or I'm being reprimanded or criticized, because I just had this high expectation of myself. Why? I don't know it's always been that way. So do

Scott Benner 20:41
you have any health issues at all? Like, do you think you're like, you have thyroid or anything like that? I

Kristen 20:48
don't have thyroid. I went through a series, like in high school, where that was depression. Thought it was couple of different things, that I was bipolar. At one point, I would just go through these moods. And turns out it's just anxiety. And so I take, I take medication for it, but finally nailing it down to that. But as far as, like, medical No, I mean, I get migraines, but, I mean, my thyroid is in great shape, and everything else is in great shape. So I don't, I don't know,

Scott Benner 21:16
it took you years to figure out that you just you had anxiety.

Kristen 21:20
Yeah, anxiety wasn't something that people talked about. No, I know when I was growing up, you know what? I mean, like in the night, like in the 90s, nobody, nobody said anything about anxiety, nobody said anything about depression, nobody said anything about any of that. Like, it was taboo to talk about it, especially like in the church, you know? I mean, it's a lot more talked about now, and I think it's important, because a lot of people struggled with it internally. And you can see it in how they are adults now, you know. And so it's like,

Scott Benner 21:45
you think people didn't talk about it when you were young. You should try to go back 20 more years

Kristen 21:49
where, yeah, I bet I can't even imagine. Like, let me tell you,

Scott Benner 21:53
it was super simple. People were stupid, crazy assholes. That was it. Like, that's it. That's just we had people broken up into small categories. That was, that was it? Yeah, it didn't matter. Like, I mean, if somebody would have known back then that you had an issue, they would have just been like, oh, there's something wrong with him, right? Like, that would have been the end of it. No desire to see what was going on with people. Like, nobody was even looking right? I know you. Mean, like you have anxiety as a kid when you were growing up, even then they're going to tell you, Oh, you're depressed, yeah, yeah, for sure. And then, yeah, yeah. So, so you work through that, like, but how does your husband save you from it? Also, let's not give him too much credit, because it doesn't sound like you're all the way there yet. But now does he start moving you in the right direction?

Kristen 22:39
I you know, like, my dad stepped away from Ministry after a while, just because it was he needed to provide for a family. And there's not a whole lot of money in ministry. It's just, it's a very, very low income. Oh,

Scott Benner 22:50
that was a job that wasn't like a thing you volunteered for on the weekends. It can be for some churches. It just depends on the size of the church. But he was making an income from it, but just making

Kristen 23:00
an income. Yeah, he was. And it got to the point where, you know, you got two growing daughters who are learning about fashion and learning about, you know, all these different things that bills need to get played, right? And so it's like, yeah, we gotta, we gotta do something about that. So my dad eventually, ironically, he was a bartender when my parents met. So, right, did you go back to that. No, he went into the restaurant business. Okay, so, you know, he's always good at managing things. He's always, he's great with people, he's great with. And so that's, that's why he did great in ministry, because he's just a great person to be around. And, yeah, very easy going and,

Scott Benner 23:34
like, how to chat people up stuff like that.

Kristen 23:36
Yeah. And so restaurant business was perfect for him, but it's also, you know, long hours. You're talking about 6070, hours a week. And so I never saw my dad, so, you know, hello, boy issues, you know. Oh, okay,

Scott Benner 23:51
so he saved you because you went out with a string of shits. But, yeah, okay,

Kristen 23:56
I got it. I, you know, it's not easy to it's not hard, it's hard to figure out. I mean, it's, it's a common story, you know? It's just like, you know, here's this girl that all these bad relationships because your dad's not around as much as she would like him to be. And, you know, then here comes this guy, you know, and he's beautiful and he's strong and he's confident, and I'm the first girl he ever dated, you know? What? What girl doesn't love that? You know? I

Scott Benner 24:20
mean, Chris is like, I got him before he knew how messed up I was. Basically, yeah, what I did was I tricked him, and by the time he figured it out, it was too late, so he decided to hang around and see if he could help. Is this what happened?

Kristen 24:33
This is a he fell in love and he wasn't ever gonna let go. Yeah, I

Scott Benner 24:37
hear it now. You're making me think maybe Arden has difficulty finding boys she likes because I'm so fantastic. I'm just kidding.

Kristen 24:44
Well, if that's the case, hey, kudos to you, Scott for that. Because keeps them away. Because that's, that's rare. It's, it's, yeah, it's great in her

Scott Benner 24:53
Jetson a couple boys for being dopey. Hey, yeah, the minute they do something too crazy, she's like, I'm not up for this. And I was like, oh. Awesome. Well, okay, so you meet him, he kind of saves you in such that, like you're not going out with questionable people anymore. And he's a good he's a good guy and everything. And

Kristen 25:11
that grounds, yeah, he's grounding. He's I balance him out. He balances me out. He's the analytical one. He's the one who criticizes. He's the one who is sees everything in black and white, and then here I am. I see everything technic, color. What

Scott Benner 25:24
do you add? Like, a little excitement to his life? Oh, yeah,

Kristen 25:27
yeah, exactly. A lot of excitement. He says, I'm the only one that can actually, like, really make him angry. He's got a very, very long fuse. I'm the one that shortened that by a long

Scott Benner 25:35
shot. So I meant excitement, like, fun. But you were like, No, I can really piss them off.

Kristen 25:40
Excitement too. Yeah, sure, yep. I mean, we'll add that in there. But, I mean, you know, probably 50% of it is like, Oh my gosh. What like are you're crazy. But then the other 50% is, hey, you're fun. So I said to

Scott Benner 25:53
my wife one time, I was like, do you think, like, every 10 years, legally, we should be allowed to punch each other in the face once?

Kristen 26:01
I like that idea. You probably go for it too. She,

Scott Benner 26:04
she was like, I'll definitely hit you. And I was like, awesome. Yeah, I get what you mean. Like, you're just around people for a long time, and you can bring, like, passion out of him, but do you bring it out of him passionately, or do you nudge him till he just explodes? We've

Kristen 26:17
learned, you know, being together we, you know, we started dating in 2009 we've really learned a good balance, if I'm being honest. I mean, you know, for the first five or six years, it was a little crazy, just, you know, figuring out how we can communicate, because we that's like the biggest thing is, like, just figuring out how to communicate.

Scott Benner 26:36
Okay, do you both struggle with it? Or just, yeah, yeah,

Kristen 26:39
we both struggle, because, like, his upbring is a whole other different, like, I mean, a whole other different thing, and very different from mine, even the fact that he was raised in a in a Christian home too. So we've got a lot of that background as the same, but as far as you know, just different family situations. It was very different than mine and

Scott Benner 26:56
Kristen. Can I ask a question there? Because, like, and this is gonna sound rude, but I don't mean it rude. Like, what is it about his upbringing that let him put up with what you were doing? You see, I'm saying, like, how come he didn't like, like, how come he didn't look at you and go, No, thank you. Like, there's a reason. Like, something, what'd you do? Are you super pretty? Or like, I'm not, I'm not even kidding. Or like, is it like, do you just think you were just so different than what he was used to that it was fun. Like, what do you think that's

Kristen 27:24
a question I've ever been asked before, um, even by, even by counselors, I've never

Scott Benner 27:27
been asked that's because they don't have a podcast. But that's okay, right? I honestly,

Kristen 27:31
I think, and this is going to sound like such, like a cookie cutter answer, but I really think this is what he would say if he was sitting right here. Okay? He would tell me, and he would say it's because he saw the bare bones of what I what I actually am, and who I actually am, besides all the crazy, because the crazy came from circumstances, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't like that growing up, I was a very happy go lucky kid, and I had a great childhood, and you know, a lot of The pressure I put on myself. And so having him kind of be around to kind of alleviate that pressure, and kind of like help me realize I don't need to put that much pressure on myself, it kind of unearthed who I really am. And I think he saw that and I and I think that's kind of what he why he stuck around, because there's more than just the crazy potential. And I really think that's, yeah, I think that's, I really think that's what he would say, yeah.

Scott Benner 28:26
I think that's what a lot of people would say. Because I know my wife wasn't like, buying what was for sale. She was buying what she thought could happen, yeah. And I think I was too like, you know, and my wife grew up in a in a weird situation, not as religious as yours. I had similar feelings when you were younger. I was like, this is a great person. Like, she's been through some stuff, but, like, I can see it in her, like, I told her when she was really young, God, we were like, in our early 20s, I was like, you're gonna be a really terrific mom one day. I was like, I could just tell and she really is, like, it just, you know, like it was in there. And, you know, anyway, you understand. I want to talk about all of this to get back to why you're up that kid's mess about the diabetes. Yeah, so, okay, so I think we have enough background now. So present day, well, let's go through diabetes management a little bit. Would you say you have it together, like, you understand how to manage things. And, you know, it's not easy every day, but like most days, you it's manageable.

Kristen 29:29
Yes, yeah, most, most days I i understand what's going on. Of course, you know, there's going to be days where, like, I really have no idea what's going on, like, you know, but for the most part, yes, I have an idea of what's going on and and a lot of that, you know, being home and being here and doing it every day for nine months without any kind of, you know, extra curricular anything going on. You know, I didn't have a job to do. I didn't have a I have anywhere to go, and so I. That's it became my life, and I got hold of it a lot faster than I think a lot of people do, because, you know, I read stories about people that have, they get died diagnosed middle of the school year, and then they got to turn around and go right back to school and figure that out. And we did everything in steps. And it was, you know, okay, we're home. We're home for the foreseeable future. Let's figure out how to do diabetes at home. Oh, and then

Scott Benner 30:27
Kristen, let me tell you, I think that if everybody had that break at it at a pivotal life moment like this, the people

Kristen 30:33
would be better off. Yeah. And I agree, yeah, especially

Scott Benner 30:37
in America where, like, there's other countries, you know, people get pregnant in Canada, they don't come back to work for a year. Yeah, yeah. That's, I mean, like, Here they're, they're, you know, you're leaving on a gurney from your job to have a baby. And they're, like, will you be when will

Kristen 30:51
you be back? Like, see you in three weeks. We got

Scott Benner 30:55
a little taste of it here. I mean, it sucks, COVID. Part sucks, obviously. But like, you know, I definitely I see that but, but here's the question, though, like, now you've got it, why are you still acting like you don't have it?

Kristen 31:07
Well, I'm working on that, okay, and I'm working on that. I've been working on that because I was seeing what it was doing to me, good, because I he went to kindergarten that following fall, but the kindergarten didn't have a full time nurse. So it was up to me, either he's an only he's only child, he will only ever be an only child. We tried. I lost two babies in the process. It just never gonna happen. Yeah, I'm sorry. Oh, it's okay. Um, so him being in school is important for his mental health and for his emotional well being, yeah, so what I did was they didn't have a school nurse. It was a it was half day kindergarten. I sat in the parking lot every day for nine months watching Netflix, just because I would have to go in and I would have to dose him for snack, or I would have to dose him for lunch, or, you know, whatever it was, you know, figure out recess. And I want

Scott Benner 32:04
to tell you, I don't think that's I'm gonna sound crazy now, but I don't think that sounds crazy. Okay, I think if you got caught in that situation, then I understand, like, I tried to listen when Arden was little, I want to say there was no CGM, there was no, like, sharing and stuff like that. Of like, data. She didn't have a pump, but I wanted Arden to go to like a preschool thing, so I sat, I took her to a half day preschool thing, and I sat in the parking lot while she was

Kristen 32:28
out there. Yeah, okay, so, so okay, because I, when I tell people that, they look at me like,

Scott Benner 32:32
no, it's situationally I understand, like, yeah, if your house was too far away and there was nobody at the at the daycare or the preschool or whatever that could give them insulin or whatever. Then, I mean, what are you going to do? Right? You're trying to give them that experience. But the problem is, is that you, it sounds like you conditioned yourself to believe that's your situation, but it's that's not your situation any longer, right,

Kristen 32:55
right? Yeah, the following year, we put him in a school that with a great nurse, and she's amazing. And so I started getting a little bit of a taste of independence, but I didn't want to step too far out of that. So guess what I did? I got a job working at the school.

Scott Benner 33:07
Oh yeah, that's pretty crazy. Okay, so why did that happen? Why did that happen? Like, why did you say, hey, there's a good nurse here. This is going to be okay, but I still have to be there. Like, why are you so special? Well,

Kristen 33:20
part of it was because I needed, we needed extra income. Oh, okay. And so it's like, Okay, do I my husband? He's in ministry full time, so I won't care. Full circle, so my husband, my husband, my husband's a worship pastor at our church, and he does that full time, and so, but our church is 45 minutes away, so you know, if, if an emergency were to arise, who's going to be the closest me? Who's going to get there the quickest me? So what a better way than to just go ahead and work at the school. So in case anything happens, I'm already there and I'm making money at the same time. It was, it really was a great situation, because then I got off work when Elijah got off work, that's our son's name is Elijah, and I got off work and, you know, we went home and we had the night. And it schedule wise, it worked out great too. So it's like making money I'm there schedule wise, it was great. Has there

Scott Benner 34:09
ever been an emergency? No, okay, does that not make you feel comfortable that, like it's been five years now and there hasn't been an emergency, which

Kristen 34:18
is why I am working two jobs outside of the house and going to school full time. Awesome.

Scott Benner 34:22
What are you going to school

Unknown Speaker 34:24
for? Business Management? Nice.

Scott Benner 34:26
Listen, it seems to me that you're an anxious person who has probably some control issues, and your kid gets type one diabetes, so that stuff gets magnified, fair enough, and you get put into a couple of situations where you make some decisions, where other people can look and scoff at you, but them who cares? And then you saw what's going on, and you're moving through it, and you're making steps to move away from it. Like, do you not feel like you're doing well? I do.

Kristen 34:54
I feel like I'm doing well. I feel like I'm doing a lot better than I was in the beginning. For me. It's just had to be a process. It's had to be, I can't just, like, let go completely. And my husband, he can do that. He's he is easy going enough to do that. I'm not. And so it's had to be, it's one finger at a time. You know, I've had my my hand clutched around this diagnosis from the beginning, and so one, one finger at a time, I'll let Okay, I can't let that go. And I only have four, four fingers clutching. Can only have three. I don't think

Scott Benner 35:26
this sounds like a bad idea at all, actually, like I feels like you're making good, good motion and going in the right direction. I

Kristen 35:32
think so. Yeah, I do. I think so, because I I've gotten to the point and and some of my decisions that I've made have been because of him. I went back to school thinking I wanted to be a teacher, and then I became a teacher. I became a music teacher for a year at a school because they needed someone interim. And that's what I did, because that's my music's in my background, and I'm like, I don't want to be a teacher. I don't want to be a teacher. Then again, that is that whole persona of, you know, taking care of a bunch of little kiddos and being responsible for them and having to get it right. And because, if not, then, you know, I'm a part of that journey where maybe they're not reaching their benchmark and all that. And I'm like, I don't, I don't

Scott Benner 36:13
need that pressure. Your anxiety is not good for that,

Kristen 36:17
right? It's not. And so it's like, what can I What can I do to where I'm I can Bloss into the person that I want to be? Because I always thought I was just going to be a mom and stay at home, mom and a wife, and there's nothing wrong with that. Like, that's what I that's what I dreamt about, that's what I wanted to be. And then I think this, this diagnosis, really pushed me to think outside of the box just a little bit more. And it's like, Yes, I can be a stay at home mom, and I love it, but I also have this side of me that's creative and is innovative and is, you know, I can be audacious and I can think and come up with ideas. And so what can I do with that? And so I work in a nonprofit, and then I am also a assistant manager of a of a retail shop. So I'm doing two completely opposite things, but it's also giving me great experience, and I feel like I'm becoming my own person, I think, for the first time, really awesome.

Scott Benner 37:12
So really, I'm excited for I was a stay at home parent for a really long time, and there's some aspects of it that are awesome, like, really, genuinely awesome. And you know, my connection with my kids is one of them, you know, being around for people when they need people is is awesome, like, the less money things not as awesome. But I hear you, like, the entire time you're doing it, you think there are other things I could be doing, and I, I'd like to go find out what those things are at some point. You know, it's funny, I still do it. We have a situation that our situation currently is that, you know, Arden went to college for a couple of years and just really didn't, for a number of reasons, didn't like being away, had some bad luck with a with a place she was at. And, you know, she's home now, and she's commuting to college, so she's here now, which is fantastic. Yeah, my son got out of college, got a job, went off to another you know, he went halfway across the country, worked there for a year, said to himself, like, this isn't right. I know which direction I want to go into. Can I please come home? I need to work on something. Came home, taught himself how to code, and got a job. He's doing great now, but, you know, instead of sending him right back out to go pay for an apartment, again, that was, you know, just sucking his money dry, he said, you know, could I just maybe stay, you know, a little bit and save some money up so when I leave, I could buy something instead of, you know, instead of renting forever, and we just like, yeah, that's, that's fantastic. So they're still here, yeah? But now my son's, you know, 25 and Arden's 20, and I don't take care of them. Obviously, I'm not running around picking up after them or anything like that, but I still do the things I do, like, you know what I mean? Like, there's still times where, like, I mean, they do their own laundry, but there's times where I'm like, Hey, I'm doing laundry. If you have something, put it here. Or, you know, like, my son's gonna, like, get a break after a meeting about, you know, a half an hour from now, and you and I are gonna be done, he's gonna be like, Hey, you hungry, and I'll I am hungry, and I'll probably make breakfast for both of us. And last night he was in the kitchen. He's been messing around, learning how to whittle, like, and it sounds weird, but like, but he's like, he's like, I'm gonna try to, like, you know, carve stuff out of wood. It's like, as this kind of a thing to do while I'm sitting down like, you know, at the end of the day. So he's making a bear for his girlfriend for Valentine's Day. That's amazing, because she said I'd like a bear, so, like, he's been working on that. Arden was sitting there. She's not feeling well. Her lady time is upon us, yeah, and we were all kind of sitting around, and I had to at some point, I was like, I'm gonna go clean up the dishes. So I'm washing the dishes. And behind me, Arden sitting with Cole. Cole's whittling. Arden's doing something. I think she was doing homework on her laptop. They both had something up on the television. They were watching, like, I don't know, some roast or something. And I just got real still for a second, and I thought, like, I don't want to forget this. Yeah, yeah. So like, it felt weird, like to turn around and take a picture of them, so I didn't do that. But later that night, after everybody dispersed, there was still, like, wood shavings on the table and like stuff. And I took a picture of the table, and I thought that's gonna come up in my memories, like, 10 years from now, and I'm gonna remember standing here at this sink, right? That's the stuff that being a stay at home parent taught me right right now, as awesome as that is, if I would have to do that for the rest of my life, I would have, like, I would have jumped out of a window. Yeah, I had things I wanted to do as well. And you guys probably don't know this, but, like, I think the podcast exists in part because when I was 2021, 22 years old, like, I wanted to write movie scripts, wow. Like I thought, like, I could probably write a really good movie. And then, I don't know, I tried a little bit, but then I got married, and then we had kids, then I stayed home with Cole, and then, before you know, it, like, that doesn't happen. I did get to write a book, but I think this podcast is important enough for people living with diabetes that I can give my time to it. Now as an adult, like, you know what I mean? Like when I was 25 you would have told me, like, go off and just screw around and write or something, and I wasn't married or anything like that. I would have been like, Yeah, fine. Like, I have that personality, I would have done that. But now, as an adult who's responsible for people, I can't waste my time away like you don't even, can't just sit around like I want to be doing something important while I'm working, right? But I think that's what the podcast does, is it lets me be creative and at the same time do something that I think is valuable. Exactly, yeah, that's what you're looking for. Yeah, yeah. Well, you'll find that. I found it. I used to work in a sheet metal shop,

Kristen 42:07
and yeah, look at you. Now, how many, how many episodes in Are you? Oh, god,

Scott Benner 42:13
oh, it's in front of me. I put up episode 1425, today. It's called voluntold. I believe the man was told by his wife to come on the podcast. I think that's how we got that yesterday, I put up an episode with a para cyclist who has type one diabetes. It's incredibly uplifting and hopeful. She's like a force, and I think she'll help somebody. And the truth is, is that months from now, your episode will go up, and it's going to help somebody too, because there's a ton of people out there who are parents who feel like raising their children is stopping them, maybe from doing other things, but they know how important it is. There's definitely people out there who have anxiety and feel like they have control. You know? They want to be in control of everything. That's a terrible thing to have with diabetes. Yeah, you know, so every story helps somebody, yeah. So, okay, so, did you mention therapy? I

Kristen 43:07
did, but it was unrelated to this. It was actually before this part of me wants to do therapy at this point, just just to be able to talk it out. Um, you know, my husband and I, we talk about we talk about it all the time. We talk it out. And, you can talk about it with other people that are in the situation, not in the situation, but are extensions of the situation. My parents, my in laws, both sides of grandparents, they both watch Elijah, and they are very forthcoming and wanting to spend time with him and make sure that they're always learning, and they're always paying attention, and while also uplifting him and being a part of his life. But you can sit down and talk to them about all of this, and they can understand to an extent, but you know, when you're living with it every single day, it's just different. And so you know, talking with my husband, it's more of vent sessions than anything, and you know he'll turn on ven to me. And so, you know, it's just more just blowing off steam. But I am an advocate for therapy, just because of how much it's helped me in the past with other situations. I'm hesitant to go now, because I know what they're going to tell me. They're going to tell me that I need to relax and I need to help my son kind of walk into this independent season he's going to be walking in as a teenager and as as a young adult. And he's, he's a little bit of a control freak like me, and so that's going to be an advantage to him, in a way, because he's going to want to take control of his, you know, of his own diagnosis, but at the same time, he's also has some of my husband and him, and he's easy going. And so I think that will, that combination is going to serve him well with this. I'm encouraged by that, and he understands, and he grasps, and he wants to learn, and he wants to be independent. Still wants mom to do things for him, but still wants, but still wants to learn to be independent. But I and then the older, and the older he gets, the more I see, the less I worry. I'm always going to worry I'm his mom. It's this just, that's just what. We do, but I think he's really going to take this and kind of figure out how it works for him, and not the other way around. And that gives me peace. And I think that's kind of also what has allowed me to step back and not be so on top of it, you know, and need to be on top of it, and I've learned to let go a little bit in that way, just by not being as much around as I have been, you know, I've been basically the main one, the last, you know, the three, the three, first three years, and now working two jobs and going to school full time, I am not the main person. I'm still a main person, but I'm not the main main person. You know, I it's, we're now sharing it. And so that's given me a chance to relax, but also giving me a chance to just kind of discover who I am as a person outside of it, and even outside of being married, outside of being a mom, who I am as a person, as an individual, you know, as someone who's wanting to develop a career and, you know, make make waves in the world in my own way, you know. And but I think the therapist would just turn around and tell me, gotta relax, man, just a little bit more. You just gotta just,

Scott Benner 46:03
don't you think they help try to help you with tools to relax? Not necessarily just say, like, just relax. That's a stupid thing, like a podcaster would say to you, but like, don't you think they would maybe help you find ways to mitigate those feelings so that you can keep growing? Yeah,

Kristen 46:18
and then there's what. That's where the crazy comes in. Because I'd be like, I should have thought of that myself. Why didn't I think about this myself? And why am I paying some somebody $75 an hour to just tell them something I should have thought of and say I should have just went ahead and thought of that's crazy in

Scott Benner 46:31
me. You'll beat yourself up for not figuring out on your own, right? That's a vicious circle. Yeah, I don't have that. So I I'd just be like, Oh, I'd be like, Oh, awesome. We got an answer. Here we go. I don't know, where are there ways you could do it for cheaper? I'm

Kristen 46:47
sure there is. And it's just a matter of of looking into it and not being stubborn, and not, you know, thinking I don't have time, and I don't, you know, what am I going to do that? And I got all these other things that I'm trying to do. And can you

Scott Benner 47:00
help me? I'm going to ask pretty bunch every person who ever tells me they're anxious this, can you help me understand why? Like, what's the mechanical function that stops you from just doing what you know is the right thing to do? Like, do you understand? I mean, I know it's happening to your question

Kristen 47:15
because, because I I've been asked that before. If you have a potential solution in front of you. Why you're Why aren't you heading towards a solution? Yeah,

Scott Benner 47:24
yeah. I mean, like, you know, like, it's funny, because you're talking about yourself like you're not you, that's awesome. Like, you don't even mean, like you're like, you're describing the things you're doing that you don't want to be doing. Like, why not just not do them? And I know that I'm not saying, I'm not saying, Yeah, I'm trying to say, like, what's the mechanism that stops it. Are you aware of the mechanism? I

Kristen 47:42
am aware of the mechanism. I so for me personally, and I'm just going to be really honest, because I see the solution, I know the solutions there, it really just boils back. Sometimes I just want to really feel sorry for myself and just kind of wallow in that overwhelming feeling. And I I'm not sure where that comes from, you know, if I'm really trying to dissect it, when I'm in that state of mind, you know, my the focus is on me. And I think that's really where it comes from. Again, probably diabetes related, because we're always focused on the diabetes and, you know, working our life around it. And so I think, you know, kind of internalizing all of that, but then you bringing it out when I just need someone to pay attention to me and to, you know, nurture me and to baby me, just a little bit. Honestly, I think that's where it comes from. So,

Scott Benner 48:38
so when you don't feel like somebody's babying you your word, right? Yeah, you do it for yourself, yeah, yeah. Is it wallowing, or is it not sad? Is it just like I'm gonna sit here for a while and have the feelings that I deserve to have before

Kristen 48:53
it was I just feel this way, and I'm not sure why, but as I've gotten older, I think it's I feel this way. I'm gonna allow myself to feel this way. I'm gonna give myself permission to feel this way. But

Scott Benner 49:03
do you feel that way for a minute, an hour a week, a month a year? It can

Kristen 49:07
be a couple of days, and then I pull myself out of it, and I and a lot of it is keeping myself busy and having goals. And I've, I've learned that about myself too. You know, if I, if I don't have something I'm working towards, I could sit there and I could wallow for weeks, and I could just be in that state of mind for weeks.

Scott Benner 49:22
Is there a benefit? Is there? Do you feel like when it's over? Do you say to yourself, like, Oh, that was good time spent, or that was not time well spent?

Kristen 49:29
It was not time well spent. It's never time well spent, at least not for me. It's not time well spent. I mean, there are healthier ways, at least for me, and I say all this in pertaining to me, not anyone else, obviously, because everybody's got their own way of dealing with things, but I feel better when I'm busy, but there's still this part of part of me that feels I need to just be in my feelings and just validate that in myself and then move on, even if, after I do that, it's like, well, it helped, but it didn't, I don't know how much, but. Benefit that gave to me. We're just okay. We're just gonna move on now. And so I that's, I think that's just kind of like, still, that part of me that I'm still learning to grow and I still need to grow in to just, there's got to be a healthier way to do that. There's got to be a better, more beneficial way to do that. Then I have this routine of, okay, these feelings are here. How do I urge them in the right way to where I don't disrupt the flow? Because when I disrupt the flow, it just sets everything off, and everything's just, I've got to take extra steps to get back on track.

Scott Benner 50:34
Did the medication you mentioned earlier help that at all it

Kristen 50:37
does? Yes, it does. It took a while to figure out what we needed, what I needed to have. And so there was different times where I was taking different things, and sometimes it helps, sometimes it didn't. Now we finally, my neurologist, of all people, put me on it. What'd they give you? Lexapro? Okay, yeah, and I, and I can tell when I don't take it, or when I forget to take it, or, you know, I I fall asleep, you know, on the couch, and I wake up the next morning and I'm like, Oh, I forgot to take that last night. I can, I can feel it when I don't take it, because I don't feel as steady. I feel a lot more even when I take it compared to when I don't. And I have way less I need to be in my feels when I take it compared to when I don't. So again, all part of the process of,

Scott Benner 51:24
yeah, no, I hear you. I appreciate you sharing this too. Thank you. Yeah, sure, not a thing that I think people who don't go through it could probably understand, and the people who are going through it, or, you know, can use somebody else saying that's happens to me as well.

Kristen 51:39
Yeah, it's just it. My husband doesn't understand it. He kind of knows his cues. I guess there's certain things that I need from him. And he's like, okay, like, this is what's going on with you. You feel, you know, a little panicky. You feel like you're going to come out of your skin. You feel you can't, like, sit down and settle. And he recognizes all of that. And so he's learning to kind of figure out how to respond. Then I get past it, and then I'm fine. He's really great that way. But for someone who doesn't deal with it like he does, he doesn't understand. He's like, he's like, I just, I don't, I don't get that, you know, I don't, you know,

Scott Benner 52:11
is there really anything anybody could do, right? You know? I mean, like, I hear people say all the time, like, I just, I need to be supported by the people around me, etc. But you ask them what that means, and they never seem to really know what that means. So

Kristen 52:22
for me, when I say, like, I just need you to support me. I don't want him to dissect the problem. Like, don't try and figure out, like, okay, like, what's causing this? I just need you to just sit here and just be in this moment with me while I work through it.

Speaker 1 52:36
Does he do it? He does, and he'll, sit there

Kristen 52:40
with me and, you know, and then I'm like, okay, I'm good. He's like, all right, you're good, okay. He's very like, let's deal with this and move on. And so it's like, it goes a lot smoother if I'm upfront with him and telling him, hey, this is what I'm going through right now. He's like, okay, let's deal with it, and then we can move on. And rather, when I just I'm like, you know, dropping bread crumbs, it's like, no, figure this out. I'm trying to drop you clues, and you're, like, completely oblivious, and I need you to understand what's going on right now. But I'm not actually gonna physically say it, because I want you to figure out, you know, the whole thing, you know, like a lot of women do, yeah. Are you

Scott Benner 53:11
trying to scare young men from getting married right now? Is that what you're

Kristen 53:15
doing? I'm trying, no, I'm trying to give a little bit of a women have really have no idea what we're doing. We never know what we're doing. There's no There's no, yeah, we say that we know what we really don't know.

Scott Benner 53:27
I imagine your husband goes and meets buddies later, and he's like, she told me to sit with her. I sat with her. She said she was okay. Then I don't know what the hell happened if I'm being honest with you, do you think that's how he feels?

Speaker 1 53:37
I Yeah, yeah, yeah. What if

Scott Benner 53:41
that's not what he thinks? Is there value in him not telling you what he thinks? Or is there no value in it? If he had, like, a different thought, if he's like, look, Kirsten, I think you should try this. Or I think you should maybe work towards this direction instead of trying the thing you're doing, which is, you know, where we end up all the time and doesn't seem to get us anywhere. What if you tried this? If he did that. Would you be like, get the hell out of here. Or would you be interested? Or what do you think the

Kristen 54:05
grown up part of me would be like, oh, yeah, that sounds like great suggestion. But the girl in me says, I don't want to hear that.

Scott Benner 54:11
Okay, yeah. So then that's where you need the therapist, yeah, yep, yeah. For whatever your whatever your your relationship with your parents is, or was it feels like you're probably stuck there a little bit, right? Yeah, so you have to go figure that part out so that you can have an adult conversation with your husband. So when you have a problem and he has an answer that's different than what you're thinking of, you can be open to hearing that answer, right, right? That makes sense. Absolutely,

Kristen 54:42
that's more productive. And it's, again, like you just said, that's more of an adult conference conversation, rather than, I'm not going to insert my input. I'm just going to sit and be and let you deal with it, and then, you know, we'll wait, we'll wait for the next come around. So,

Scott Benner 54:57
I mean, the point, like you said earlier. You guys balance each other out really well. But then, Then aren't you ignoring his perspective? If you, if you forced him to have your perspective? Sometimes,

Kristen 55:10
yes, and I'm working on that, and that's part of the where it boils down to the communication aspect, because there was a lot of time where we didn't communicate. We didn't. We just kind of assumed the other understood. And a lot of our breakdown came with that. So I

Scott Benner 55:27
was just explaining to somebody the other day that I believe wholly that in every every communication situation, when there are a group of people around, every forget perspective. It's easy to say people have different perspectives. I guarantee you that I don't know how you think this is happening. You don't know how I think this is happening. Like, if we put four people in the room, you know, it's a simple, simple statement. If you if four people watch a car accident and then they later take a report, you get four different reports about what happened, right? Yeah, I don't think it's just because your perspective of where you're standing when it's happening. I think it's because we experience things differently, yeah, like, just just in general. Like, that's why sometimes I look up at my wife, I'm like, I don't know, like, what is she even saying? Like, it feels like she's not here, and I know she's looking back at me thinking the same thing, like, how is he not getting what I'm seeing here? But I just think that that's the thing you have to understand now, whether you can hear somebody else and melt their ideas in with yours, or even take time to consider them, even if you don't want to, you know, commingle them with your thoughts later. Like that's the part that I think any therapist that's trained in a certain way would say that this is a problem that you had with your parents growing up, that you're infantile, you're you're somehow infantilized somewhere, like you don't want to hear it. Do you know what? I mean, yeah, like somebody's gonna tell you something you don't need them telling you something. I don't even know if that's the way people grow up. I don't know that might just be human. I it could be. I mean, is there anything worse than somebody can telling you something? Like, I hate, I hate being told, yeah, I hate it, but it doesn't stop me from telling other people, right, right, you know. So I'm like, I have a ton of opinions too. They are they're like, I don't want to hear your opinions. I'm like, I know you don't, because I don't want to hear yours either. But here's mine anyway, right? That's the human part. I don't know. I know for sure that people be married for a while listen to this, going like, yeah, yeah, yeah. They're not saying anything. I don't know. I just think that the next step of it is, what do you do, right? Like, what do you do with it? So that day to day, you're not beating yourself up about diabetes, and you're not dismissing your husband, he's not dismissing you, and you know, you're not in this situation where you you think, Oh, he's able to just walk away from it. Because I guarantee you, if I got him on here and I said, are you really able to just forget about your son's diabetes, he'd be like, No, but she's so twisted up in it, like, I can't be involved in it. Yeah? You know what I mean? Like, you're probably eating up all the air. And that's, yes,

Kristen 57:59
yeah, yeah, you, you nailed that perfectly. No, thanks.

Scott Benner 58:03
Anyway, if you want him to be more involved, you should probably act like there's space for him, and then his involvement would very likely alleviate your stress. Yeah, yeah. You can decide how this goes next. Do you know what I mean? Like there's stories where you get to pick, like, what happens next? Yeah, you get to pick the interactive stories. Yeah, you pick the right thing, right? You keep picking, stay here and be in this part. Yeah, yeah, just pick the next story. Yeah. That's all, yeah.

Kristen 58:35
Move on to the new chapter. Stop reading. Keep stop reading the same one over and over and over again. I

Scott Benner 58:40
would also like caution people, not just you, but about like, saying things like, Well, I'm gonna go to college now, and that'll change my life. Or I'm gonna do this now, and that'll change my life. Like, you can just change your life right now, right? You know, you can be a college student doing the things that you don't want to be doing, or you can be a stay at home mom who isn't doing the things you want to be doing, like, I don't think the place you are or the thing you do or the thing you are is going to magically change this part. Like this part is just a, I think it's a conscious decision just not to do it anymore, yeah, you know, and then when you see it happen, just don't do it. Yeah?

Kristen 59:15
Because you can, you can try a mask it as much as you want to, with situations or, you know, things to get involved in, but it still doesn't change the root of the problem, right?

Scott Benner 59:24
You know, you're just putting a different face on it. What did they say, like, putting makeup on a pic or something like that? Is that a something like that? Yeah, that's probably, uh, offensive too, probably. But yeah, like you're just, you're not changing your situation, you're changing your surroundings, hoping it changes your situation, right? Yeah, that's not how that's going to work.

Kristen 59:41
No, because that's not life. Yeah, you

Scott Benner 59:45
just all you, yeah, all you got to do is, listen, here's all you have to do, whatever you're stuck on at whatever age you're stuck on, just get past it. That's what you're trying to do now, it's obviously not that easy. I think you go to therapy and you say, I want to know what happened in. My life that makes it so that as an adult, this is my reaction, right? That's what you're trying to figure like, forget the rest of it. Don't go in there telling stories and like, you know, trying to explain to the therapist what you think is wrong. Just say, Look, I have this reaction as an adult. I need to figure out why, and I want to stop it. I don't want you to, like, I don't need coping tools to make my anxiety less impactful, like I need to know why this is happening so it can stop now, some people would tell you at this point that there's studies going on at Hopkins where you could just take some like mushrooms or something, and you'll it'll be gone the next day. But I don't know how accurate that is. Have you heard about this? No, I have not. I guess there's a couple of studies going on where people with trauma of all different kinds are going on a very low dose, you know, guided by a medical physician trip. I guess I'll call it like for on mushrooms, and they, a lot of them, report waking up and all the anxieties going like, there's this one story about the he's a military guy who whose wife just said, like, he came home a completely different person. And they eventually got into this study, this trial, and he went off and got his, you know, his, like, one dose of it, and came back and she reports there. That's the guy that, that I knew before he left for war. Like, just like,

Kristen 1:01:23
sounds that sounds like something out of Alice in Wonderland. Yeah, I don't know

Scott Benner 1:01:28
if it's true or not. I'm just the thing I've been hearing in a couple of different places lately. So wow, it occurs to me that, like, and by the way, that doesn't mean you should go get a mushroom and try it yourself. Like, yeah, I'm certainly not saying that. I'm sure, I'm sure if you listen to the doctors, there's very specific dosing. And I actually think there's a heart issue that you could have while you're using it if you do it wrong. So like, you want to be around medical people while it's happening. Obviously your medical professional, yes, I'm certainly not telling you this is how to handle it. I'm just telling you I've been hearing stories about it. The reason I share it is because what it makes it seem like is that you mentioned earlier, like a switch gets flipped. Like it almost feels like that they're looking for the way to, like, switch it back off again, right? You know. And I think that would be such a miracle for people if that could happen, because your story, like, and the things that burden you, and the things that burden me and my wife and everyone else. Like, just imagine if those things were gone, you know, like, that's pretty awesome. Like, how alcoholism would go down and drug abuse would go down, and probably people hitting each other, and the way everyone yells at each other online, and, you know, all the other things that come with it. Like, if you weren't feeding the 12 year old inside of you, who was, like, somebody can pay attention to me, like, like that. You know what I mean? Yeah, yeah. Anyway, I have it too. We all have it, yeah. Well, this is up cursing. I can't believe we did this. This is awesome. And I curse now, and I just, you know, what the craziest part is, is that before we started recording, I used an example of something about somebody's father being a pastor, and I had no idea about your background at all. Well,

Kristen 1:03:01
that's why I laughed, because it's, there's some things going on too, where some things are getting revealed locally, with some churches and stuff. And it's,

Scott Benner 1:03:09
it's like, yeah, it's just people are just people. Kirsten, it doesn't, people are people. Are people? Yeah, it doesn't. It

Kristen 1:03:16
doesn't matter what position you're in, people are people. That's right, yeah, it's

Scott Benner 1:03:20
okay. Listen, so the world goes, gives us something to talk about. Yeah, exactly, yeah. If everything was perfect, what would we talk about? It would be so boring. See, you know, what isn't that interesting? Like I heard somebody saying the other day that essentially, it's a personal conversation I was involved in. And someone said, Hey, isn't there a possibility that eventually, if we just got an AI to be the government, that everything would be better. And I was like, Oh my God, it was, like, interesting, like, big idea question, like, so you're saying, if we put something in charge that would always do the right thing for everybody as much as possible, and there wouldn't be any fraud or people, you know, power trips or money stuff, like, Wouldn't better decisions get made? And I said, perfect world I see that. I see what you're saying. You know what I mean? Like, like, if everything was perfect and we didn't have people, like, greedy and, like, all the stuff I'm like, you'll hear people talk about, like, well, what if the computer messes up, or what if somebody gets in charge of it and they're greedy? Like, I hear all that. But this person was saying perfect world situation, imagine if there was just, you know, the Great and Powerful Oz. And I know that's a bad example, because I believe he wasn't, like, really looking out for people either, but, but like, imagine there was, imagine there was the thing that actually was just doing it. Would that make society run smoother? And I thought, in a perfect situation, I think it would. And then my next thought was, oh, that might be boring. Isn't that crazy, like that? Is it crazy that? My next thought was, like, oh, that might be boring, you know, like, what would we do? Then just get up and everything would be perfect. All the time. I'd get up, I'd go to work, I'd make a certain amount of money, I'd have enough money to do the like, can you get the Star Trek? You know what I mean, where everybody. Just out there doing the right thing and enjoying their thing and painting, if they're a painter, and, you know, like that kind of, I don't know, I have no idea. But anyway, I thought it was interesting, and I thought, and it makes me think about that, like, what you just said, like, maybe it would be boring than if everybody wasn't like this. I don't know. It

Kristen 1:05:16
would be. It would be boring, and there wouldn't be any really, really good Netflix shows to be created,

Scott Benner 1:05:22
because where would all the intrigue be, and where would all the intrigue be?

Unknown Speaker 1:05:26
Where would the creativity be? Yeah, let

Scott Benner 1:05:28
me just say, I just finished the diplomat. Oh, I was super pissed that there was only six episodes in the second season. I was having such a good time. I actually have a friend who's related to a diplomat. And I say, can you find out if any of this is real, please. She said, I don't think it is. And I was like, it might be. I need you to find

Kristen 1:05:46
out. I need to know. Because I just, I just invested so much of my time, I needed to know if any of this is actually real.

Scott Benner 1:05:52
Like, which parts of this are just bullshit, like, TV stuff, and which parts of this are, like, super accurate, you know what I mean? Like, that's what I wanted to know anyway. I don't know. Like, here's my hope is that if you get to somewhere where we're not just arguing about the same stuff all the time, over and over again, personally, politically, world, you know, everything, if everything just ran smoother, like, would we all just level up? Like, maybe, you know what I mean, like, maybe there'd be a lot more time and head space to do amazing things that would just make humans better and and make everybody's lives easier. I don't know, like I don't know, but anyway, at the moment, just the Wild Kingdom. So all right, Kirsten, you were terrific. I appreciate you doing this. Would you hold on one second for me? Yep. Thank you.

The conversation you just enjoyed was sponsored by Omnipod five. You want to get an Omnipod five? You can you want to make me happy? Do it with my link. Omnipod.com/juice box. A huge thanks to us Med, for sponsoring this episode of the juice box podcast, don't forget us. Med.com/juice, box. This is where we get our diabetes supplies from. You can as well use the link or call 888-721-1514, use the link or call the number get your free benefits check so that you can start getting your diabetes supplies the way we do from us. Med,

hey, thanks for listening all the way to the end. I really appreciate your loyalty and listenership. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast if you're living with type one diabetes, the after dark collection from the Juicebox Podcast is the only place to hear the stories that no one else talks about, from drugs to depression, self harm, trauma, addiction and so much more. Go to Juicebox podcast.com up in the menu and click on after dark there, you'll see a full list of all of the after dark episodes. The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording, wrongway recording.com, you.

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#1513 Flying Floozy

You can always listen to the Juicebox Podcast here but the cool kids use: Apple Podcasts/iOS - Spotify - Amazon Music - Google Play/Android - iHeart Radio -  Radio Public, Amazon Alexa or wherever they get audio.

Lori, 56, has type 2 diabetes and takes Ozempic—her husband has type 1. We talk life with two types under one roof and how the podcast became part of their daily routine.

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DISCLAIMER: This text is the output of AI based transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors and should not be treated as an authoritative record. Nothing that you read here constitutes advice medical or otherwise. Always consult with a healthcare professional before making changes to a healthcare plan.

Speaker 1 0:00
Welcome back friends to another episode of The Juicebox Podcast.

Lori 0:14
Hi, I'm Lori. I'm 56, year old. I have been diabetic type two for five years due to having a very good endocrinologist, had some very good success with those. Empi, nothing

Speaker 1 0:28
you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan. AG, one is offering my listeners a free $76 gift. When you sign up, you'll get a welcome kit, a bottle of d3, k2, and five free travel packs in your first box. So make sure you check out drink. AG, one.com/juice box. To get this offer, don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com. All you have to do is use the offer code Juicebox at checkout. That's Juicebox at checkout to save 40% at cozy earth.com check out my algorithm pumping series to help you make sense of automated insulin delivery systems like Omnipod five loop, Medtronic 780, G twist tandem control IQ and much more. Each episode will dive into the setup, features and real world usage tips that can transform your daily type one diabetes management. We cut through the jargon, share personal experiences and show you how these algorithms can simplify and streamline your care. If you're curious about automated insulin pumping, go find the algorithm pumping series in the Juicebox Podcast. Easiest way Juicebox podcast.com, and go up into the menu, click on series, and it'll be right there. Today's episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the contour next gen blood glucose meter. This is the meter that my daughter has on her person right now. It is incredibly accurate and waiting for you at contour next.com/juice box. This episode of the juice box podcast is sponsored by us Med, US med.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, US med is where my daughter gets her diabetes supplies from, and you could too use the link or number to get your free benefits check and get started today with us. Med. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the twist aid system, powered by tide pool that features the twist loop algorithm, which you can target to a glucose level as low as 87 Learn more at twist.com/juice, box. That's twist with two eyes.com/juice. Box. Get precision insulin delivery with a target range that you choose at twist.com/juice, box, that's t, w, I, I S, t.com/juicebox,

Lori 3:04
Hi, I'm Lori. I'm 56 year old, mother of two and grandmother of two. Live in the beautiful gateway to the west metro area, and I have been diabetic type two now for five years, and I have, due to having a very good endocrinologist, had some very good success, and especially with the medication we'll be discussing today, which is ozempic. So Well,

Speaker 1 3:33
listen, before we get into all that, Why have I never heard anybody say gateway to the west before? But that's what the arch is, though, right? Yes, sir. I've just never heard that phrasing,

Lori 3:44
beautiful gateway to the west. For some of us anyway, are very proud of that. That brings the historical aspect as a the expansion to the West as our nation grew. And I to me, that's, that's important, pretty cool. I'm educationally. I think it's very important to always respect those things.

Speaker 1 4:06
Yeah, I want people to also. I don't want to bum you out. Lori, but there are two other places that are also frequently called gateway to the west. You know what they are? No, I'd love to know what are they Pittsburgh, PA, because it was key transit hub during early American expansion, and Omaha Nebraska due to its role in western migration and as a major railway hub. Wow, so you're fighting with two other places for that moniker. Wow.

Lori 4:33
Thank you for that. Wow, that's all. I did not know that. Lori, none of us did you learn something new every day, which is what my mother, God, rest her soul, has told me I need to do all the time. How

Scott Benner 4:48
old was your mom when she passed? Way too

Lori 4:50
young. She missed her 67th birthday by

Speaker 1 4:54
three weeks. Oh my gosh. Now how long has she been gone? 10

Lori 4:57
going into June of 20. Five will be 11 years now, I ask,

Speaker 1 5:03
because at 56 you have two grandchildren. And I thought, Yes, this is a family of people who gets out and gets going. Because if your mom's gone already and you're, you know, 56 years old, then I thought, oh, maybe that's same thing. So did your mom. You know how old your mom was when she had you, I

Lori 5:19
think in in her very early 2021 22 something like that.

Scott Benner 5:25
And how about you with yours?

Lori 5:26
I, because of part of what figures in for me medically here, I didn't have my first one of my two children until I was 29 pushing 30,

Speaker 1 5:42
pushing 30. Yeah. So how it felt?

Lori 5:46
Literally, I was in between the two she was, she was a June baby, and I'm born in September. So I was 29 but I would that September, right after she was born, in June of 1998 I was going to be hitting 30 years old. I

Speaker 1 6:05
hear you. Okay. So you've got two kids now, and they're how old my

Lori 6:09
eldest, our daughter is sick. A is 26 and my baby is 22 my our son is 22 and he and I, oddly enough, work at the same place, just in different departments.

Speaker 1 6:25
Interesting. Now, you said that you were diagnosed with type two. How long ago? Five years,

Lori 6:30
five years. But I was gestationally diabetic with both of the kids, both of the kids worse with my second one than the first one. Okay,

Speaker 1 6:41
so do you first by far? Now, let me so, let me ask you a question, like a diagnosis five years ago. Did it come on all at once? Have you ever looked back and thought, oh, maybe this had been going on longer, but this is just when it got to a crescendo.

Lori 6:54
It was because I had been, as I was saying, gestationally diabetic, and my with, with some blood line history of it in the family, I knew that after being gestational at some point it was going to be, I was going to go, I went pre diabetic, and then I ended up going type two. So it wasn't, it wasn't a great surprise. And

Speaker 1 7:21
no, no, no. So as a gestational they told you, hey, you're probably gonna have type two diabetes one day. Yes. Okay, yes. And then when do you think you were pre diabetic? Like, when did that start happening?

Lori 7:32
I was pre diabetic when my by the time my youngest was born, which would have been 2001 2002 I was pre diabetic at that point.

Speaker 1 7:44
Okay, and then how long did that pre diabetes part last? I can probably do, but probably,

Lori 7:52
well, almost 20 years. Yeah, almost 20 years. I want to

Speaker 1 7:56
jump into that point. So the pre diabetes point for the last for those 20 years, what did doctors tell you? What did you learn on your own? What did you try to do? If anything, the brand new twist insulin pump offers peace of mind with unmatched personalization and allows you to target a glucose level as low as 87 there are more reasons why you might be interested in checking out twist, but just in case, that one got you twist.com/juice, box. That's twist with two eyes.com/juice. Box, you can target glucose levels between 87 and 180 it's completely up to you. In addition to precision insulin delivery that's made possible by twist design. Twist also offers you the ability to edit your carb entries even after you've Bolus. This gives the twist loop algorithm the best information to make its decisions with, and the twist loop algorithm lives on the pump, so you don't have to stay next to your phone for it to do its job. Twist is coming very soon, so if you'd like to learn more or get on the wait list, go to twist.com/juice. Box. That's twist with two eyes.com/juice. Box. Links in the show notes, links at Juicebox podcast.com. You've probably heard me talk about us Med and how simple it is to reorder with us Med, using their email system. But did you know that if you don't see the email and you're set up for this, you have to set it up. They don't just randomly call you, but I'm set up to be called if I don't respond to the email, because I don't trust myself 100% so one time I didn't respond to the email, and the phone rings the house. It's like, ring. You know how it works? And I picked it up. I was like, hello, and it was just the recording was like, US med doesn't actually sound like that, but you know what I'm saying. It said, Hey, you're I don't remember exactly what it says, but it's basically like, Hey, your order's ready. You want us to send it, push this button if you want us to send it, or if you'd like to wait. I think it lets you put it off, like, a couple of weeks, or push this button for that. That's pretty much it. I push the button to send it and a few days. Later box right at my door. That's it. Us. Med.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, get your free benefits checked now and get started with us. Med, Dexcom, Omnipod, tandem freestyle, they've got all your favorites, even that new eyelet pump. Check them out now at us, med.com/juice, box, or by calling 888-721-1514, there are links in the show notes of your podcast player and links at Juicebox Podcast com to us, med and all of the sponsors. Contour next.com/juice, box, that's the link you'll use to find out more about the contour next gen blood glucose meter. When you get there, there's a little bit at the top. You can click right on blood glucose monitoring. I'll do it with you. Go to meters, click on any of the meters. I'll click on the Next Gen, and you're going to get more information. It's easy to use and highly accurate. Smart light provides a simple understanding of your blood glucose levels. And of course, with Second Chance sampling technology, you can save money with fewer wasted test strips. As if all that wasn't enough, the contour next gen also has a compatible app for an easy way to share and see your blood glucose results. Contour next.com/juicebox and if you scroll down at that link, you're going to see things like a Buy Now button. You could register your meter after you purchase it. Or what is this? Download a coupon, oh, receive a free contour next gen blood glucose meter. Do tell contour, next.com/juicebox head over there. Now get the same accurate and reliable meter that we use. I

Lori 11:43
was trying to watch my diet at times, probably better than at other points. I can be sometimes sort of a rascal rebel, but I knew enough because family connection is that my mother became insulin dependent type two diabetic when I was freshmen in college and her mother was was

Speaker 1 12:16
insulin dependent diabetic. How many kids did your mom have?

Lori 12:19
Well, she miscarried one, and then she had, she had me, and then she had my younger, my only other sibling, my sister, who is still living, and she is, she's diabetic as well. She's on 11 year.

Speaker 1 12:35
Okay, so this is a family game. Everybody has type two.

Unknown Speaker 12:38
Yeah. Okay, yeah,

Speaker 1 12:40
all right. Well, that unfortunately, no, but that's interesting. That's, I don't know Lori how transparent I am. This is why I asked a lot of questions about your mom when we were starting, I just, I didn't jump on I was like, I wonder if I can make Lori sad about her mother. Like, that's not what I was doing anyway, if I did that, I'm sorry.

Lori 12:56
I already am that way anyway, because I miss her so desperately. Funny, I could

Speaker 1 13:03
hear in your voice, that's why I'm I'm apologizing. Well, let's take a second. What is it you miss? Like, like, you're in your 50s, right? I'm in my 50s. My mom's gone. Like, what's gone now that you want that isn't there? Is it just a longing, or is there something like functional that's gone, that's changed her life. I

Lori 13:22
think it's the realization that I don't have her to go to now as guidance for me as a grandmother, I still there's so many times I want to go. What should I know that I don't that I'm afraid I'm not going to know when I should kind of thing.

Speaker 1 13:43
What's the thing you think she would tell you that you that you don't know already, that

Lori 13:47
I just have to keep learning each and every day. I mean, I just she, she would just say, you gotta, you gotta keep on, keeping on and and keep your focus on knowing that you want those grand babies to be, to grow up, to be healthy and happy and have a great life, but I don't know I'm hard on myself. I'm my own worst enemy that I admit

Speaker 1 14:15
that? Yeah, well, Laura, I was going to ask you, Are you are you not doing those things? Is it difficult? And her reminding you would make you remember how important it is to fight through difficult things. Like, where's the sticking point for you? I know you missed her. Like, don't get me wrong about that, but like, where's the sticking point? I think

Lori 14:32
it probably is the her reminding me that, that I know, that I do know what to do. I think it's the confidence angle, yeah, like a coach, the confidence, right? Like a like a coach.

Scott Benner 14:46
Like a coach. Do you find life difficult?

Lori 14:49
Well, let's put it this way. It's not just a diabetes that I deal with. Okay, I was born legally blind. Oh, okay, and so I'm. I only have my left eye is the only usable vision I have left that and the diabetes, and the fact that, as you know from all the other diabetes you talk to, I also have hypothyroidism, okay, and with that, Hashimotos, oh, the energy level. Yeah, the energy level can be a

Speaker 1 15:24
real struggle, yeah. So how does the Hashimotos impact? What do you have going on? A

Lori 15:29
lot of times in the morning, it's a it's an awful brain fog, horrible energy like, like, you didn't rest. I keep telling myself, you gotta move. You gotta, you gotta get that one foot in front of the other and move and go do and it's like, oh, I want to do is go back to bed and go to sleep. I have to tell

Speaker 1 15:52
you, I my wife is in the middle of a course of iron infusions. Her iron got very low again. Yeah,

Lori 15:59
I have slight anemia too. Go that angle. She's getting

Speaker 1 16:03
her third one today, but prior to it, like a month before, I talked her into believing, like, I was like, you have to go get an iron infusion. And she's like, Well, I'm gonna talk to the doctor first. I'm gonna do this. And I'm like, No, don't do that. And then that, like she was already beat up. And then over that last 30 days, then it just she fell off a cliff, and then she was, like, just laying around, unable to, like, you know, like she was barely get being able to do her job, like, for some days, I'm like, This is really bad. And so now I'm like, I'm calling the doctor. I'm doing this because at that point she was so out of it. I think she just would have continued to dwindle away, because I don't even think she had the energy to call the doctor, so I set the whole thing up. I got her off the thing. I took her to the first one. I sat there with her while she did it. She did the next one last week. She's doing another one today, and you can watch her coming back to life, right? And I said to her yesterday, we're talking in the middle of the day. And I said, is this like, just what happens to most women who don't know about this iron infusion thing, or can't get it for their insurance. Or what about in the past? Like, and I started thinking about, like, for, you know, 100 years. Like, you know, what happens when you get to menopause, or you're on your way to menopause, or you have heavy periods, or PCOS or something, and your iron levels are super low. But then you made me think of it again with the thyroid situation. Like, you know, your thyroid is way off. It's just, there's a it's a lot, yeah, I, I'm

Lori 17:24
slightly anemic, and with the hypothyroidism, I struggle with that energy level. And the hard thing is, I, I tend to be the caretaker. I when my mother was alive, Scott, I helped oversee her health care. Once she started having issues she had before she passed away, she had three light heart attacks and two major strokes. Jesus, the two major strokes happened within three months of each other. I saw the first one happened right in front of my eyes, and I will never forget it. Lori is that from high blood sugars, I believe that that was what heavily played into it. Yes, yeah, oh gosh, high blood sugars, and she was and she also had high blood pressure. So

Speaker 1 18:09
all right, listen, before we move forward, because I want to ask about all that. I just want to clean something off my desk here, and I want to make sure this is recorded. If anybody's buying this little silver flashlight from Lowe's, it's garbage. Project source, listen to this, right in the trash. What a piece of crap. Okay, it lasted for like three weeks. It's $20 just gone anyway. Project source, little, uh, silver flashlight at Lowe's. Don't buy them. They're lows. Go to hell. Just took my 20 get what I mean, gave me a flashlight for three weeks. I rented a flashlight from Lowe's for 750, a week. Is what just happened, dollar a day. Now let's move on to your your family's horrible love with type two diabetes, right?

Lori 18:50
Like I was saying, I I helped oversee my mother's health care once her health care started going down really badly, like that. That's where things for me, that part of me, but I also live with my husband, who is a on an insulin pump and type one diabetic. So

Speaker 1 19:10
wait, so your your husband is type one, yes, okay, your type two. Did your mom have gestational did they even talk about it like that back then

Lori 19:20
that? I don't know, and I don't have any way of I know that she had the high blood pressure, which, which made for the low worth, the low birth weight babies. My sister was littler than I was, and I was only four nine. I think she was four seven or four, five, yeah, like that.

Speaker 1 19:39
I have a feeling, if that, I dig back through my notes. So I'm going to learn that if you have blood sugar issues while you're pregnant, that your kids have a higher risk of getting type two diabetes. So, oh yeah, so I don't

Lori 19:51
know that they did know back then that probably did play into it. I'm I'm going to wager, to bet, because. Because both my sister and I both are type two, so I can only speculate that that probably does have some validity. Last

Speaker 1 20:08
question about your mom before we move on to you, how was her weight? Was her weight an issue? Or was she okay with that? No,

Lori 20:14
her weight was an issue. She was heavy the the best portion of the best part

Speaker 1 20:21
of your life, of her, yeah, yeah. Is that familiar as well? Or are a lot of like women in or men in your life, in your family line overweight?

Lori 20:30
Well, I know that that not only her, but my mom's brother Sam, was a trucker that died of sudden heart attack. He was diabetic. He had gone into dia diabetes by the time he had his heart attack, sudden heart attack that killed

Speaker 1 20:48
him. It's a skirt. It's a scourge on your family. Lori, for real, really, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 20:52
yeah, yeah. It

Speaker 1 20:54
was. Well, maybe, maybe this is it, the obesity, yeah. Like, let's stop it right here, right? So A lot's happened. You get your, you know, your pre diabetes goes on for a long time. Five years ago, they tell you, that's it. I guess that's how they treat it, right? You tipped over the number you have type two diabetes now, like a like a bar mitzvah. And then how do you start treating it? Five years ago? What do you do five years ago?

Lori 21:17
Five years ago, we started working with the endocrinologist that we're with right now, who is fantastic. He is a blessing. Truly, He works with us as truly, as a team partner in treatment. He truly sits and listens to us and says, What are your goals? What do you want to accomplish here and back? When I started with him, I'm really short. I'm 410, and a half, and stuck five years ago, I was 200 pounds. Dad, wow.

Speaker 1 21:54
How did you get to that? Do you think, like when you look at it, do you think this is genetic? It's food related, it's activity related. It's a little bit of each. I

Lori 22:04
think it's a little bit of each. I think it's there was some genetics with it. But I think I remember at one point and it was true, my daughter would say to me, we would go out with family to a restaurant and and I would just like, how down. And my daughter would say to me, my God, Mom, you eat like a trucker. And I hate to admit it, but it was true. It was true.

Speaker 1 22:28
So Lori, tell me something. Is it just the way you were brought up? Like, do you know the difference between healthy food and not healthy food? And you just were like, Oh, screw it, I'm eating this. Or was it just the way it was presented to you and you and you were just eating the way you've been brought up. I

Lori 22:42
grew up my dad's side of the family were farm folk, okay? Farm folk know how to put out a spread. They know how to eat.

Speaker 1 22:54
Yeah, yeah. You know what? I've had people explain that to me, like the food was so fresh at one point in their lives, like you made it, like you got it and you made it because you couldn't really store it. But then it turns into a way things are done, right?

Lori 23:07
Well, I mean, yeah, you might have the eggs and homemade bread or whatever, but you start adding the biscuits and gravy and the bacon and, yeah, grits. And I would say, give me the bacon, give me the sausage, give me the ham, give me the eggs, give me the grits, give me the whole night. I mean, I just, I would

Speaker 1 23:29
Were you hungry, like, like, did you have like, a real hunger inside of you? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 23:34
I could shovel it in. Like, Nana,

Speaker 1 23:38
do you know I'm saying though, were you eating to eat, or were you like, did you have an actual

Lori 23:41
home? No, I was hungry. I was at that point, I would eat and I was hungry. Okay, I got you. I was young enough at that point, I wasn't realizing what that was doing. Okay?

Speaker 1 23:52
So you're shorter to begin with, in stature. You don't have as much space on your body to to add weight, right? Like, it's just kind of the way it is, right? And then at what age do you think you were overweight?

Lori 24:04
That would have probably been in my middle college

Speaker 1 24:08
years. Okay, 19 ish, right around there,

Lori 24:11
probably more like 2122

Speaker 1 24:16
Okay, okay. Everybody says the same thing, right? Like, Oh, you were college. Now you're gaining weight. That's okay. It happens everybody's at the vibe you're

Lori 24:23
in college. You're doing your own thing. You know, be your own you do? You do you kind of thing? Yeah, well, you do. You only go so far. Laura's doing I'm chowing down. Bro, yeah. No, she's Bring, bring on

Speaker 1 24:38
the food. Oh my gosh. It's okay. So the eating continues at school, blah, blah, blah, you gain weight. You get married. How old? I

Lori 24:46
was 25 My husband was got married. He was 23 so we we met in university, we met in school. You get married, you start having. And the kids. My kids were four years apart. I was 29 pushing 30 was the first one, and I was almost I was 33 almost 34 was the second one, and he cost me a cesarean to bring into the world. I am so tiny I cannot carry a baby to seven pounds zero, okay, yeah. He got two, six pounds, 14 ounces inside of me. Wow. And I think that was because of the gestational diabetes. He went breach within inside of me at 26 weeks, and at 36 and five, well, 36 and four. At night, my water breaks because he there's no more room, and he's just, I'm on my way mom. What you know? So he was born by cesarean. That next the wee hours of 36 and five, and we spent five of the next days, the most terrifying days, I think, on planet Earth. My gosh, that whole situation we started out. He was not blue or gray. He was completely purple. I am laying on the or table, and all I can hear is this little instead of that lusty newborn cry, all I can hear is this what sounds like, almost like a little kitten viewing. And I've had an epidural that unfortunately went up out of the epidural space and numbed even the base of my tongue. If that doesn't scare you death, I'm wanting to scream. Somebody do something. And the team was, they were, I just, you know, I was so out of it, I really couldn't have comprehended to the full what was going on, but started out with with oxygen level issues, which, which could have meant permanent brain damage, went from that into bilirubin levels, which didn't come down with the initial therapy. So they come in one morning. Okay, we're going to have to increase the bilirubin light therapy I'm already put together. Okay, we're looking at possible brain dunes. I know enough to know you lose a liver, you lose a life that same morning, they come in and say, Now someone's heard a heart. Mum, yeah, yeah, that's a heck of a start. Yeah, my husband is at work. I am hearing this from medical team. I am psycho, Yeah,

Speaker 1 27:24
I bet you did my god. How is he now? How did things work out for him? Things

Lori 27:28
work out except for he does have ADHD. He does have some short term memory affectation. Other than that, he is 22 he drives. He is brilliant enough that he he left high school early, but he got his GED and in a class of people that was taking four plus years, he did it in three months. Gotcha awesome. He's a really smart kid. Got the biggest loving heart ever because he's got his daddy's heart. He's got his daddy's loving kindness about him.

Speaker 1 28:04
All right, so let's out of that. So what we have here now is you chugging along, and five years ago, you're overweight. They're telling you have type two diabetes. What's the first medication they gave you? Metformin?

Lori 28:16
Yes, yes. They gave me Metformin, which got my blood sugar stabilized out. But oh, my God, I hope I never have to be on that stuff ever

Scott Benner 28:26
you make Yeah, a lot, a lot of Gi problems. I

Lori 28:28
had a very rare reaction to it. Usually it gives people the diarrhea, the flying floozies me. It didn't do that, it gave me rock hard. Oh, constipation. Constipation. It, I mean, I probably will have some permanent hemorrhoids.

Speaker 1 28:54
I gotta ask you questions, but let's stop for a second the flying floozies as

Lori 29:01
well. I guess that's a probably a country colloquialism

Speaker 1 29:07
I'm looking up right now if that's the thing that, because my friend of mine used to say the trots. And now I'm wondering where that came.

Lori 29:12
Yeah, the back door trot the flying flus. It's colloquialism. Hold on

Speaker 1 29:18
a second. The Fly and floozies is definitely a creative and humorous take on diarrhea, kind of like a mix between flying fluids and an old timey term for fast moving alignment. It gives off whimsical, almost pirate era medieval vibes. If you're looking for fun alternatives, try the turbo trot, the liquid lightning, brown thunder, the galloping gut, the speedy squirts, mudslide mayhem and Hershey hurricane. And for those of you who think that AI is not helpful in this world, I want to find out if it's a well known colloquialism, huh? I know you're all like, oh my god, it's not going to spell colloquialism correctly. I did all right, so now it says here that the flying flus is not a well known colloquialism. Yes, but the runs, the trots, mud butt, the Scoots, code Brown, the Hershey squirts, Montezuma's revenge and deli belly is they are cool. Oh, my goodness, my friend Mike had the trots. Oh, what's the etymology of the trots? We're almost we can get back to it in a second, I know now you're like, wow, he said etymology, and he spelled that correctly. It's super weird slang for diarrhea. Smart man, well, I don't know about that. Oh, so Lori, my wife has to go out to get her iron infusion. I am now babysitting a puppy while we're doing this. So this is my first time doing this. Okay? He's like, 10 weeks old. He's not gonna talk, so you're not gonna know us here. But now I'm holding a puppy doing this. I puppy doing this, teeny tiny I'll tell you. Okay, so the term the trot as slang for diarrhea, comes from an idea of trotting, which implies rapid and repeated movement, similar to urgency, and no kidding, the word trot itself dates back to Middle English, meaning Trotter to move at a quick pace, referring to horses the context of diarrhea likely developed as a euphemistic or humorous way to describe the frequent urgent trips of, oh, it's probably about how people ran to the bathroom, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 31:10
yeah, exactly

Speaker 1 31:13
similar to the skitters the galloping gut and the runs, yeah. What a weird language we have. We just keep making up different terms for, like, loose stool. Anyway, I know, right, ridiculous. So Metformin gave you constipation. But what did it do for your type two? It

Lori 31:29
did stabilize out my blood sugars, so much so that our endocrinologist was able to get me off of that, thankfully, finally okay and get me on. The next thing was, he looks at me and he says, I don't know if he'll want to try this, but I think you would benefit from the GLP one medication called ozempic. I think it would help you lose the weight, which is really playing into a lot of my other health conditions. I have asthma, right on top of chronic allergies. Some it was affecting my lungs. I have a bad back. It was causing my back issues. I've had bursitis in my hips and just everything, everything that comes with pulling on everything right, right? Because I am like, I'm a caretaker. I realized I not only take care of my mom, I live with someone who's a type one that I love dearly, and I realize if I'm not taking care of myself, I'm not going to be able to take help, take care of him. That's

Speaker 1 32:41
the first time it hit you like that. Yeah, yeah. How old was he when he got type one?

Lori 32:47
We found out he was diabetic back in like, I want to say, 2012 All right, and he loops now

Speaker 1 32:56
he's a looper. Let's stick with you, though, so you have every reasonable expectation of a body that's carrying too much weight, problems like those sorts of problems, right? And you're having trouble with blood sugar and everything else, and you've described your hunger as voracious, so, right? How long ago did you start with ozempic?

Lori 33:17
Ozempic, I started almost four years ago now, okay,

Speaker 1 33:21
now. Let me ask you, Lori, are you comfortable telling me your weight four years ago like I was 200 pounds, 200 pounds, four foot 10, 200 pounds. Do you know what your body mass index was? I

Lori 33:32
know it was way. It was like two or three times when it should have done it. It was awful. Okay,

Speaker 1 33:37
I can't reach my computer now because of the puppy, but hold on one second, it was

Lori 33:41
awful. Put us that way, at 210

Speaker 1 33:45
pounds, a four foot 10 woman's BMI would be what, let's see if we can find

Speaker 2 33:50
out, or four foot 10 inch tall, person that's about 1.47 meters tall. 210 pounds is about 95.3 kilograms. So the BMI would be 95.3 divided by 1.47 squared, which is about 44.2 a BMI over 30 is considered obese, and the BMI over 40 is considered severely obese. It's always good to consult with the healthcare provider.

Lori 34:17
I think mine, if I remember right, I think I was at that, like, I want to say 40 or 4142 something like that.

Speaker 1 34:26
Yeah, that's what chat GPT said, too. So, okay, yeah. So all right, so you started a 40 BMI, which is, is it said? Very obese, awesome language, obese, very obese. Like, what's the next one? Not awful. Well, not where you want to be that awful. It doesn't to me, Laurie, I just want to say, and I imagine you know this already, or you wouldn't be here wanting to talk about it with me. I don't honestly care how you got to it. What I know is what it was doing to you. You're a person. You're lovely, and if you can get out of this any which way, as far as I'm concerned. So you take the ozempic. Starting four years ago. I want you to walk me through it. What was the first week? Like, the first month, the first year? Are you still taking it? Now? I

Lori 35:08
am still taking it now. Yes, the first week or so was not so bad, because I was. I started on the lowest, like, point five milligram, yep, which was just the beginning dose, and it really didn't do a whole lot. I was supposed to add point to 5.25, up to, like we we moved it up to a point where, where it was one milligram, that first month, or two to two, two and a half months, was really rough. That's okay, rough, how it was rough, because it was definitely cutting my appetite. But I was finding out that for me anyway, if I tried to resist, if I tried to go beyond where it was, telling me Stop, don't eat anymore. For me, it acted like an abuse.

Speaker 1 36:02
Yeah. What was the problem? So, like you, it was telling you, it would

Lori 36:06
make me suddenly, if I went over where it was telling me, you're full, it's time to stop. And I pushed it and went beyond that, it would make me physically ill, yeah? I mean, I would think I was just playing on I'm going along, I'm just fine, and all of a sudden I've got to run to the bathroom because I'm I'm going to boss,

Speaker 1 36:32
I'll tell you, like, this is great that you're here and you're so welcoming to talk about this, because this is one of the things I've been listening to people talk about, and I'm a little weirded out by it. You get this medication, and they tell you, like, this is going to take away your hunger, you're going to lose weight. Tell me first though, like, before I say what I'm weirded out by, what was the explanation to you when you were they said, here's ozempic. What did they tell you? They thought it was going to do for you?

Lori 36:56
My endocrinologist explained that it would not only to keep my blood sugar stable, but it would help me begin to gradually, over time, lose weight. Because what it was going to do was help to reset the satiety signal, I guess, the part in the brain that tells you stop, I'm full. There's there's too much here. Okay,

Speaker 1 37:25
so did anyone ever say to you, this is going to slow your digestion down, so food is going to stay in your stomach longer? They did, yes.

Lori 37:33
Okay, yes, that was my endocrinologist. Did explain that, yes. So then

Speaker 1 37:38
this is where I'm going to ask my first like question that some people are going to think is critical, but I don't care, because Lori, you're going to you're going to be the mouthpiece for everybody I've ever wondered this about. So no pressure. You're speaking for everyone. Okay, when someone tells you your digestion is going to slow down, the foods going to stay in your stomach longer, and you go, Oh, I'm full. I should stop eating. But you make a conscious decision, like, no, no, I can push through this. Is it really the medicine that made you sick?

Lori 38:05
Yes, because the medicine is designed to work with that signal enough in the way that it's trying to teach you there are going to be consequences. I'm

Speaker 1 38:20
saying, like, when you say to yourself, I'm full, and I know my digestion slower, so there's still food in my stomach that's been in there longer than not. And the decision is, I'm gonna stick more in there. You never get the feeling of like, this stomach only holds so much, and I'm gonna jam more in there that doesn't fit right now, and it's not gonna come out well, and then I get sick afterwards and say this medicine made me sick. Because isn't that it's the eating that made you sick at that point. Do you see what I'm saying? But you were looking for to do more than that for you, like you thought, if it was doing all the things I'm just trying to get to how people think about this.

Lori 38:53
I guess the way I really thought was that my endocrinologist explained to me that because it was going to slow my digestion down if I tried to fight the medication. That the medication is designed in such a way that it will, it will give you that consequence. It will, okay,

Speaker 1 39:14
yeah. So you expected not to feel well after you did that.

Unknown Speaker 39:17
Right? Okay, right.

Speaker 1 39:18
Okay, okay, I did Yeah. Then, for people who don't understand the chemical makeup of overeating, like, why did you do it? If you knew it would make you sick, frankly,

Lori 39:30
a lot of times, because this is something that's a favorite food of mine, and I want more of it, and I'm a big brat. I'm a strong audience. I'm gonna do it anyway. I'm a rumble.

Speaker 1 39:48
I'm not judging you like I'm literally just trying to hear why I know it's akin to me saying, like, hey, look, if you stay up here in the curb, you'll be fine, but there's a bicycle race going on, so if you walk out into the street, a bike might. Hit you, and five seconds later, I look over and you're laying in the street, and four bikes have run over you, and I go, Lori, what are you doing? You go, I just really wanted to go across the street. It's odd for people who don't understand overeating and that drive to just keep going. You know what I mean?

Lori 40:13
Yeah, for me, it just was finding myself just rebelling, you know, thinking at that moment, because I want that was a favorite food or whatever, I don't want to listen to the medication, because do what I want to do at that moment. You kind of go, I'm going to do what I'm going to do, damned as a consequence. Okay, I'm Irish, and I haven't been temperament, but,

Speaker 1 40:41
yeah, but Lori, what do we do about that? It's four or five years later, right? How much do you weigh today? I

Lori 40:48
weigh about 140 now, one between one, no, I'm going to say 142 143 now, I had gotten down as low as like 131 I sort of had sort of a an emotional setback, if you will, because my dad passed away in May of 24 that kind of did another emotional loop that At that point I found myself emotionally eating, even though I knew sometimes that I was pushing the envelope, I would eat a little more than I should have been. I have picked up a few of those pounds back, but that said I know what I have to do now to get it back off, and I know that I can do it, so

Speaker 1 41:44
I'm not worried about a couple of pounds while Listen, obviously, Lori, between you and I, and whoever's listening, you should probably talk to a therapist about your eating, right? Like, because you're covering for something like, obviously, the stress of your dad put you in a different direction, even with the medication. That's not what we're talking about here, though, right? Let me go back to 140 pounds from 210 I don't know you well enough, like, and there's some people who tell me I curse too much and everything, but like, a that's awesome. Like, congratulations. That is really just wonderful. You know what I mean?

Lori 42:15
Yeah, from 200 pounds to even 140 the difference in the way I feel now is, how's

Speaker 1 42:24
your hips, how's your back, how's all that? I have

Lori 42:28
not had to go to the chiropractor in anywhere near as well. I used to have to go at least every couple of weeks to once a month, if I could withstand it, every couple of months, but I haven't had to go to the chiropractor now in months.

Speaker 1 42:45
And how do your like? How do your joints feel? My

Lori 42:49
joints are fine. I'm sitting here basically pain free. I now, I won't say it's it's not cured my I do at night. I do have RLS,

Speaker 1 42:59
restless leg you have that I don't know if that's gonna cure that or not, and your your eyes, your eyes don't work right? It's not a magic medicine. It's

Lori 43:07
not but what it does when it when it gradually helps you safely lose the weight, I feel terrific compared to how you did four years ago, I felt ugly. I felt like I was unhealthy. I was having a lot more struggle with my asthma. It was awful, and I knew that I was I was tearing my body apart, right?

Speaker 1 43:35
Yeah, the weight just has implications all over the place that you sometimes you can't measure because it comes so quickly or so slowly. Excuse me, you don't realize that, Oh, my knee hurts, but it's because I'm 20 pounds heavier, or my hip hurts because I'm 40 pounds heavier. Or, like, you know what happens over time, right? Well, that's awesome. First of all, I want to apologize if anybody can hear this puppy snoring, but that's awesome, and I'm super happy for you. How are your a one CS?

Lori 43:59
My A, 1c when I started on the Metformin, Scott was like 7.5 Yeah, I want to say it was 7.5 my a, one CS generally now are all the way down to, I've had it as low as 5.8 look

Speaker 1 44:17
at you. And have you made any adjustments to the types of food you eat, or is it still very just much what it was in the past? I

Lori 44:25
try to not do as much of the some of the starchy stuff and whatnot, but to me, it's more portion portion control, because I refuse to give all of it up. I may be Irish by maiden name, but I'm I married Italian for a reason.

Speaker 1 44:40
You want that pasta. I love my pasta.

Lori 44:45
I love my pasta, that kind of thing. And I'm I'm not going to give all of it up. What

Speaker 1 44:52
about exercise? Are we exercising at all? Any weight training, like light weights, not

Lori 44:57
so much that, but I will do like low. Impact in the pool. I'll do some exercising in the pool. Kind of thing. This

Speaker 1 45:04
is more than you would have before the weight loss. Is that right? Yeah,

Lori 45:08
yeah. Before the weight was off, the doctor would say to me, how many times a week are you exercising? I'm like, dude,

Speaker 1 45:18
okay, I weigh 210, pounds, and I'm 410, I don't exercise. I'm trying to stay

Lori 45:21
alive. It's like, Dude, it hurts to walk more than about two or three blocks. It's torture. Exercise like hell. It's hard to do, right? It's, you know,

Speaker 1 45:33
let me ask you, Larry, I'm gonna ask you to make a profound statement if it's something you believe, but if it's not something you believe, you can tell me to go to hell. Okay, okay. You think you're on your way to your mom's end if you don't find ozempic, yes, yeah, right, yes, yeah, yes. Are you sad because this wasn't available for your mom?

Unknown Speaker 45:52
Very, yeah, very, don't

Speaker 1 45:54
feel guilty about that. Okay, please. You know, nobody knew. So you know, it's not like 25 years ago. Somebody was, you know, had ozempic and wasn't giving it to your mom. It just didn't your mom. It just didn't really exist yet.

Lori 46:04
So no, I know it didn't. I think, if anything, I think I felt like when I was dealing with her, I kind of felt like because of some of my dad's reactions and stuff, I kind of felt like I somehow didn't have the right puzzle piece to turn it around where she could have survived and been still alive today. But as you said about the food, yes, I'm in therapy. Yes, I'm having to.

Speaker 1 46:31
Are you really? Oh, that's awesome. That's excellent. Yeah, yeah,

Lori 46:35
I am. I am, because what the grief over her loss to be and some of the outcomes of some of the family issues that that left hard led me into, led me into major depressive disorder. And that's part of the treatment agreement is I have to go to therapy, which, which I wholeheartedly agreed to. And I'm I'm learning that I can't blame myself for something that isn't my fault. It felt like it was, but it's not really. And my therapist keep pointing out it's not your fault that it it wasn't your fault, it wasn't ever your fault. However, that idea got communicated to you? It was a lie, yep.

Speaker 1 47:24
Lori, I mean specifically about health and weight, right? If people with your genetics end up in a part of the country where that's what eating is, then that's it like, that's the That's right, that's a spark that starts the fire. And, yeah, to say to somebody when they're 40 years old. Like, you know what the problem is here? You need to go for a walk. Like, you think that's the problem. I mean, okay, like, it's a first step in this situation I'm in now. But I would have

Lori 47:48
told you, if somebody had said that to me, I would have said, dude, yeah, that's not the whole thing. That's an effing drop in the ocean. You

Speaker 1 47:58
listen to the podcast, right? Lori, if Jenny's parents would have adopted you when you were a baby, your life would be different. They ate differently. They thought about food differently. They would have raised you differently around food. That's it. Your genetics would have come into play still, you know what I mean. But you would have, you would have been in at least on a different path, and now, because, you know, instead of bumping into somebody's parents, who would have set you up in a certain way, or a part of the world where they ate differently, you found ozempic And you lost, yeah, 70 pounds off a 410, frame. That's insane, right? It is insane. Oh my god. It's absolutely insane. And you feel so much better, and your a one sees better, and you're not going to have high blood pressure, and you're not going to have a heart attack, or you're not going to have a stroke like that. Stuff's not going to happen now to you, then your kids get to see that. They have a shot at mimicking that then, and then they have a shot at this not happening to them. Now, if it should happen to them still, now they won't wait. They'll go to the doctor and they'll say, Hey, listen, my grandmother died from this. This almost killed my mom. She found this stuff. It saved her. Give it to me now, and they can do that before they have 70 pounds to lose. And then their kids don't grow up that way. And then that puts a stop to it, right? You know, you're such an important part of this piece of this puzzle for your family. You know, by doing this thing, which, by the way, I'm going to tell you, four years ago, going on ozempic, that was not a thing people were just doing all the time. Like, I know now everybody's talking about it, but that was a big jump. And, you know, you didn't know, like, we know so much more about how it impacts you now and what might happen and how to, like, navigate it. And you know what I mean, like, you got people out like me out there going like, hey, let's see if you get constipated. Take magnesium oxide, take this much and try that, or do this, or see if this doesn't work, or people are talking about it, so you can hear conversations about it and feel normal, or get tips and tricks that didn't exist for you four years ago. I wasn't around. Then,

Lori 49:56
I just would say, you know, if somebody's gonna say. I don't want to get on that, if it's going to make me sick the first couple two, two and a half months, it's only going to do that if you push the envelope. If you don't tend to push the envelope, you're not pushing the envelope where

Speaker 1 50:18
you're overeating. If you don't overeat, then it should be okay. If you don't eat a bunch of fatty things or fried things or like then it should be okay like that, because that stuff digests slower.

Lori 50:31
If you listen to your body, it's going to tell you the medicine is doing. It's going to tell you, I'm old. Yeah,

Speaker 1 50:39
stop. I met somebody two years ago who's using this, a type one, who's using it and having great success, lost a bunch of weight, a one, Cs are better and everything. And I said, How's it going? It says, I throw up every day. And I'm like, what? I'm like, What are you talking about? And then he tells me, Oh, I eat through it.

Lori 50:55
Uh huh, uh huh. That's what I'm telling you, exactly, yeah, that's exactly what.

Speaker 1 51:03
But then people hear that and they say, Oh, I heard ozempic makes you throw up. Like, nah, that's not what makes you throw up. I want to say this. Don't get me wrong. It might not be right for everybody. It might not work the same for everybody, even type ones who are having, like, luck with it. If you're not insulin resistant and type one you might not and you're not overweight, you might not see some big help from a GLP medication, right? Like, it's important to listen to how Lori, like, lays the story out. Like, yes, it helps with a one CS, but it helps with a one CS through, oftentimes, either weight loss or the implications that the medication has on a person who's actually insulin resistant, right? You know, like, that's where you're going to see type twos are obviously helped. But you also will see, like, my daughter is helped by it, because she's a type one, but she has insulin resistance. Her doctor has told me, If Arden didn't have type one diabetes, I would probably diagnose her as having type two diabetes because of her insulin resistance, right? And so, you know, like, that's, like, these nuances are so important to talk about because it gets out into the Zeitgeist and people start thinking they know what they're talking about, and they're, you know, oh, you're cheating, or you just don't just do a sit up, you know what I mean, like, that kind of stuff. Like, you don't understand Lori is an example, just through her genetics, is probably in this position, whether she lives with Jenny's parents or not. Like, you probably end up overweight at some point, just because of how your body's built and wired. And you know what I mean, and now, all of a sudden, just, I don't know, like, if you can't be happy for somebody who just lost a third of their body weight and got them down to like, are you comfortable? Do you think 140 is a good weight for you, or do you think your body's carrying too much weight right now?

Lori 52:45
I think, honestly, I need to get off the emotional thing that I've been working through over the last several months and get back down to that one 131 and I'm aware of that, and I was telling myself the other day, you know, yeah, quit using the crutch of the you know, yeah. Dad passed away and, and what he passed away of was awful. The shock of seeing what he looked like at the end was, it's not fun. Laurie, yeah, no, don't. My dad passed away finally, of Parkinson's and Alzheimer's together.

Speaker 1 53:24
Oh, sorry. But also, did he have type two diabetes? No, he didn't have any diet. He wasn't pre diabetes. Nothing, no, okay, if anything,

Lori 53:32
he probably had low blood pressure, low blood pressure or blood sugar, yeah, no, low blood pressure. Okay, oh, he would get dizzy because his blood pressure was lower. He was perhaps not allowed to do military service because he had what they called back in those days, branch bundled short in his heart. All that means is that the condition where you have that extra heart beat when you get excited, yeah, once in a while, that's what it would do to him, but they but the military wouldn't allow him to serve that So Lori, let

Speaker 1 54:10
me tell you something. I think you and I are in the same place right now with our GLP journey. And let me, if I'm wrong, you'll tell me, but I feel like I'm hearing in you thoughts I'm having, not even thoughts, just like implications, which is, if I take my GLP every week, I don't have to eat well, and I won't gain weight. I'm not saying, like, I'm having, like, 1000 cookies and cakes and snacks and all this stuff, like, I still eat pretty much the way I eat. But like, I'm saying, if I a good example this week is somebody brought cupcakes to my house, and I was like, I'll have a cupcake. I didn't eat it because I wanted it, and I didn't eat it because I was hungry. I ate it because it was a cupcake. And I was like, it's a cupcake, right? There's fun. You know what? I mean? There's like, chocolate chips on it and so but my point is that is this is like, I know if I keep taking this Med, my weight is going to stick right around where it is, around a. 80 pounds, but I don't belong at 180 pounds like I have been 174 on this medication, and I was probably five pounds away from my needed to be. I think my body is set up to be about 170 pounds before I add back a bunch of muscle like so I haven't done a ton of I'm doing a little bit of resistance stuff, but not enough. And if you heard episode 1411 recently with Dr Hamdy, he said, I don't believe that a person should be using a GLP medication if they are not getting enough protein and doing muscle weight training. And so he he's trying to tell you how important it is to lift heavy things if you're on a GLP because he takes and if you haven't heard it, go, Listen, right? Because you are going to lose muscle on this medication, and muscle is hard to get back, if not impossible to get back, especially when you're 53 or 56 like we are. And so if we're not lifting heavy things and making sure we're getting enough protein to help support muscle growth, right and strengthening, then he's like, it's just bad. Also, I'm sorry. The dog is really snoring.

Lori 56:04
I can't hear it that much, if, if at all, be

Scott Benner 56:08
quiet. Be real quiet for a

Lori 56:16
second. Oh, okay, yeah, yeah, you can hear that. Then it's your real quiet, but

Speaker 1 56:22
episode 1411 if you're on a GLP, you go listen to Dr Hamdy and heed his advice. Okay, okay, but I'm at that spot too, where psychologically and physically I've had such a change. I feel amazing right now, and it's hard, just like it was hard when I was overweight. I was living my life like I thought I'm good, and now I think I'm good, but Dr hamdy's advice was, you're not good. You need muscle training, and you need to take in enough protein. I'm doing the same thing right now that you do that. Other people do that. I was listening to an episode today with Ryan called blinded by the light that he did, I don't feel sick, so I'm not doing the things that I need to do all the time that's not healthy, and that's not how it works, because you don't want to wait. I mean, obviously I'm not saying obvious common sense theft. You don't want to wait until you're sick to do something like, now's the time, right? So I'm going to tell you, between you and I, like you and I both need to be doing the same things right now. We need to be making sure we're eating plenty of chicken, lean beef and and using a protein powder if that's not working, if we're not getting enough protein every day that way. And we need to be lifting heavy things, doing body weight squats, at the very least, like training our muscles to be stronger. And that's the way Lori, that's the way you end up being 85 and dying like a proper lady, okay? And me too, by the way, like, that's how I get to that too. Maybe

Lori 57:50
I will be one to unleash knowledge like that for others. But my husband, who's the type one, will will have to do a loop episode for you. He's now got a website. Thing he's trying to do to kind of chronicle his struggles and successes with diabetes. And he's got a site going called diabetes unleashed.com,

Speaker 1 58:15
I hope he, I hope he is able to reach people and help them. That's awesome.

Lori 58:18
That's, that's what he wants to do. Yeah, listen,

Speaker 1 58:21
Lori, between you and I, it ain't easy. Okay, Scott's out here like I'm throwing with both hands trying to keep this thing going. You know what? I mean, it's a lot of work,

Lori 58:29
I know, but I've not listened to nearly all of the episodes, but I know that we've listened to so many of them over time, and I know that I am so amazed at what a great dad, what a great seeing you learn and be able to manage this with her is just it's just inspired me like crazy.

Speaker 1 58:53
I'm glad awesome anything that happens from me that makes you feel better or healthier, you know, less sad or whatever it does for you. I think that's, that's my goal at this point. You know what I mean? Like, when, when I first started doing this, I was just like, oh, I'll just, you know, tell people what we do, and hopefully it'll help them. And then when you see it, it builds so much and helps so many people. You just like, you get up every day and you think, like, Oh, I wonder how I could reach more people today and help them understand how to do something or absolutely, yeah, I mentioned Ryan a second ago in an episode that just came out in like, the 1400s might be around 1415 I got a note yesterday. Hey, this episode with Ryan is awesome. Ryan was awesome. You were awesome. You saved him. Like, that's the note I got, and I thought I saved him. I was like, what are they even talking about now, I had only recorded this episode with Ryan a few weeks ago, and I didn't know what they were talking about, because, like, this conversation, like, even the one you and I are having right now, I swear to you, if you come get me an hour from now and go, What did you and Lori talk about? I'm gonna be like, oh, you know what? She was overweight and she had type two and her family. Like, I'll start to forget it pretty quickly. I'm gonna record again in a couple of hours. I'm gonna record again tomorrow, the next day. Gets out of my head pretty quickly. Right this morning, I, on purpose, put on headphones and I listened to my own podcast. I listened to me talk to Ryan, and I'm, I'm not even all the way through it yet, and as I got through it, I really did have this moment where I thought, wow, I I really saved him, yeah. Moreover, the guy who told him to listen to the podcast saved him. And I sent a note to that guy, and I said to him, Hey, man, you saved Ryan. That's all. I just said, almost it's awesome. And I'm sure he'll email me back and be like, Oh no, you did. And like, and we'll do this little thing together. But the truth is, is that that guy, at some point, made a decision to be a diabetes educator. He made a decision to like at some point listen to the podcast. He realized it was valuable for people. He shared it with Ryan, and Ryan went from a guy who'd had multiple eye surgeries because of retinopathy, and then you should hear a story in a long, you know, life of not doing well, to being where he is now, which is awesome. I think of you the same way good for you doing all this stuff and going out in the world and finding information and trying to help yourself.

Lori 1:01:07
It really honestly, my husband was the one that was listening to this podcast, listening to you before I even was aware of it. He told me about it, and we both started listening to it, and then we went to this take control of your diabetes conference in downtown St Louis, and this is where I heard this endocrinologist guy speak. And I said, we've got to go see this guy, because the endocrinologist that my husband was was I just not good. I wanted to strangle the guy, right? I wanted to strangle him, but this endocrinologist is i Oh, man.

Speaker 1 1:01:51
Lori, in the end, you need good direction. You need good coaching. You need good ideas. You need a way to implement them. Need Somebody along the way to help you out and to pat you on the butt until you're doing a great job, keep going. That's it. It's just not that hard, like there's not that much to it. The problem is finding somebody who will dedicate themselves to saying these things over and over again. Listen, I said this recently in an episode, so I won't belabor it here, but my son asked me about, you know, the podcast, and you know how it's been going for so long, and, you know? And I told him, because this is I've been doing this, like, 11 years, it is very difficult to, like, keep something like this going this long. You just ask anybody who's trying Okay, and what I've dedicated myself to is the thing that I'm good at, that I know the podcast does that works, and I don't get up in the morning and act like, oh, no, this is boring. I don't want to do this again. Like, I do this because it works and it helps people. And I don't sit here saying to myself, like, oh, I should be doing something different, or I should be doing something bigger, or I should I don't think that. I think I found a thing that I like doing that helps people and I'm good at it, like, I'm gonna stay here and do this thing, but that's just not how things are set up. Everybody's always looking to move on or move up. And I understand. I'm not telling them they shouldn't, but because the system works that way, people like you don't have an opportunity to meet somebody that'll stay with them for three, 510, years and get them through their this piece, you know,

Lori 1:03:16
yeah, yeah, I can't say how grateful I am to the podcast myself, I might not have responded to what my endocrinologist challenged me with, with the idea of the authentic had I not heard this podcast, I don't think I would have been as brave enough to try it. I'm glad. I think I you know, hearing you say you can't be afraid of this disease. You can't be afraid to be bold with hands when you can't be afraid of this disease, you need to learn how to manage it. Then when my endocrinologist said to me, I don't know if you'll want to try this, but here's what this is and how what it does, and I said, What the hell are we

Scott Benner 1:04:02
waiting for? Yeah, I can be bold about this too, right? Yeah.

Lori 1:04:05
I looked at him straight in the eye, and I said, What the hell have we been waiting for? Yeah, yeah, exactly. Let's get it done.

Speaker 1 1:04:11
I'm 410, I'm 52 years old. I weigh 210 pounds. I think we ought to do something that's me, like, I'm at this point, like, I'm, like, just show me the next thing to try. Like, I'll just do the next thing, and if it works, great, if it doesn't, I'll move on, like I'm not going backwards. Do you know what I mean? Like, I'm just not I'm not going backwards, I'm not giving up, and I'm not acting like Lori that my life is gonna go on forever and I'm never gonna get old and I'm never gonna die, because days and weeks and months passed by very quickly. Yes, they do. Yeah, while I'm out there telling myself it's gonna be okay, this is gonna work out, I'll figure it out. Well, I wasn't figuring it out, and trust me, you weren't either.

Lori 1:04:50
No, I wasn't, and I know that. Yeah, I'm the first one to say I know I was, and that's why I when I found this podcast, and then I found the editor. Chronologists that we have. I think those two pieces were, were two of the best things that's ever happened

Speaker 1 1:05:05
to me. I'm super excited for you, and I'm grateful that you came on here and shared your story and, um, touch that you the of the words you had for me just now. The whole thing is just awesome. I'm so I'm so happy for you. Congratulations. All right. Lori, hold on. One second for me. Okay, give me one second here. Okay, I got it. The dog is biting. What are you You gonna bite at me? Now, hold on, you were so good the whole time. Arden's like, you know, I'm gonna get a puppy. Am i Great? I'll be, I'll be taking care of it. No, no, I'll take care of it. Kind of, what kind of tea? He's a French Bulldog. Oh, and he's very cute. He's colored like, like a doberman. He's got, like, Doberman colors and markings kind of but he's a friend. She's very lovely. Oh, I bet he's a good boy, aren't you? Yeah, we're

Lori 1:05:48
dog lovers too. We have our little 12 pound ball of fur. He's a mutt. He's he's got Yorkie, dachshund and Chihuahua all mixed into one. We got him when he was like eight or nine, and once we took care of getting him six so that he wouldn't be as predisposed to cancer as he's now 16 years old. Oh, wow, they tell us,

Speaker 1 1:06:11
yeah, we just lost our first family dog at 16 this last past summer, Indy. And basal is already over 10, so he's already got a cataract. He's getting so old. My daughter wanted this crunchy, but the honest the truth was they were very expensive, and we had to wait till we could find a breeder who didn't think they were selling gold bars to us to get one. Oh

Lori 1:06:31
yeah, well, yeah, I was gonna say the purebreds. Yeah, that they're gonna be more costly than pure bread. Guess

Speaker 1 1:06:37
what? We just found a guy in the Midwest who was selling them at a reasonable price, and had a service drive them out here. So that's neat. 300 bucks, they drove him across the country. Can you believe

Lori 1:06:48
that? Wow, that's that is awesome. Lori,

Speaker 1 1:06:52
listen what I learned before I let you go. Listen. I want to be clear, when I heard that somebody was going to drive him across the country, I just thought a meth head was going to show up in a Datsun, okay with the dog, and we'd be lucky if it was alive. But instead, a sprinter van shows up, right? It's a very business like scenario. And I said to the guy, I'm like, how many dogs you deliver? And he said, Well, this van took out 25 and I was like, this van? He goes, Yeah, we have two vans. They travel once a week, and so they basically have a business set up with all the breeders in their area. And so now the breeders, because of the internet, sell all over the place. They cluster the dogs together into like routes, and they run two vans a week, 50 dogs a week, $300 a dog. I dare you to do the math. That'll make your head explode. So apparently, all of us that are trying to make money in other ways, like you just you're dumb. You should just bought a van and delivered people puppies and brought them clean and happy, because you could make about $700,000

Lori 1:07:51
a year doing that anyway. Yeah, I wouldn't have anywhere to keep that many dogs to breed like that in a small, two bedroom apartment. So, yeah,

Speaker 1 1:08:03
no, please. I don't understand it people who are breeding animals is that's a lot of work and a lot of space and a lot of time. I don't know how they do it. Oh yeah,

Lori 1:08:10
oh yeah, because of how they how much care they need.

Speaker 1 1:08:14
Oh, my god, yeah. And then, you know, then no wonder people want 1000s and 1000s of dollars for them, because, you know, they've got all this time in it. All right? Lori, I'm gonna let you go because the dog is acting a little funky, and he's upstairs where he's never been before, and I need to take him and let him outside. You want to say anything before we go, Puppy, that's it. That's it. That's all you got for the microphone.

Lori 1:08:35
I was gonna say, is it not gonna do the audio? Chuck impression thing. He just

Speaker 1 1:08:40
licked my face and the microphone. So that's as far as he got. But okay, Lori, hold on one sec. Let me. Let me hit stop here. It's nice talking to you. You were terrific and really, really open and honest, and I sincerely appreciate it. Thank you.

Lori 1:08:54
Well, you're very welcome and and I'm just, I'm honored that I got to do this. Oh,

Scott Benner 1:09:00
I am too make no mistake,

Speaker 1 1:09:07
having an easy to use, an accurate blood glucose meter is just one click away. Contour, next.com/juicebox That's right. Today's episode is sponsored by the contour next gen blood glucose meter. The episode you just enjoyed was sponsored by the twist a ID system powered by tide pool. If you want a commercially available insulin pump with twist loop that offers unmatched personalization and precision for peace of mind you want Twist, twist.com/juicebox, the conversation you just enjoyed was brought to you by us. Med, us. Med.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, get started today and get your supplies from us. Med, thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of the juice. Box podcast. If you're not already subscribed or following the podcast in your favorite audio app, like Spotify or Apple podcasts, please do that now. Seriously, just to hit follow or subscribe will really help the show. If you go a little further in Apple podcast and set it up so that it downloads all new episodes, I'll be your best friend, and if you leave a five star review, ooh, I'll probably send you a Christmas card. Would you like a Christmas card if you're looking for community around type one diabetes, check out the Juicebox Podcast. Private, Facebook group. Juice box podcast, type one diabetes. But everybody is welcome. Type one, type two, gestational loved ones. It doesn't matter to me, if you're impacted by diabetes and you're looking for support, comfort or community, check out Juicebox Podcast, type one diabetes on Facebook. The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording, wrong way recording.com,

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