#1506 Sausalito Surprise
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.
Michelle, now 62 and three decades into her type 1 journey, gets candid about balancing blood sugars, kids, and the fallout of a tough divorce while still finding her footing.
+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
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
Here we are back together again, friends for another episode of The Juicebox Podcast.
Michelle 0:15
Hi Scott. My name is Michelle. I'm excited to be on your podcast, so thank you for having me nothing
Speaker 1 0:21
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 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 juice box at checkout. That's Juicebox at checkout to save 40% at cozy earth.com my diabetes Pro Tip series is about cutting through the clutter of diabetes management to give you the straightforward, practical insights that truly make a difference, this series is all about mastering the fundamentals, whether it's the basics of insulin dosing adjustments or everyday management strategies that will empower you to take control. I'm joined by Jenny Smith, who is a diabetes educator with over 35 years of personal experience, and we break down complex concepts into simple, actionable tips. The Diabetes Pro Tip series runs between Episode 1001 1025 in your podcast player, where you can listen to it at Juicebox podcast.com by going up into the menu. The episode You about to listen to was sponsored by touched by type one. Go check them out right now on Facebook, Instagram, and of course, at touched by type one.org check out that Programs tab when you get to the website to see all the great things that they're doing for people living with type one diabetes touched by type one.org I'm having an on body vibe alert. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by ever since 365 the only one year wear CGM that's one insertion and one CGM a year, one CGM one year, not every 10 or 14 days ever since cgm.com/juice box. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes and their mini med 780 G system designed to help ease the burden of diabetes management, imagine fewer worries about mis Bolus is or miscalculated carbs thanks to meal detection technology and automatic correction doses. Learn more and get started today at Medtronic diabetes.com/juicebox
Michelle 2:56
Hi Scott. My name is Michelle, and I live in San Diego, and I'm excited to be on your podcast. So thank you for having me. It's
Speaker 1 3:04
my pleasure. It just occurred to me, I don't think people address me usually when they introduce themselves. I think you might be the first person who said, Hey, Scott, I'm Michelle. Is that possible? Lee, I don't know. I can't that can't be true. I don't know. Yeah, I want to start off Michelle by telling you a funny story. Okay, yesterday I recorded with Melissa. When I set Melissa's recording up, I was looking at the wrong day on the calendar and set it up as Michelle. So she and I have that kind of preamble conversation that you and I just had about the things you can do and not do and all that stuff. I am calling her Michelle through the entire thing. So at the very end of this little preamble, I realized her name's Melissa. Oh my god. So I say to her, I'm like, why did you not correct me? Correct me, you know? And she said, you'd be surprised how often people call me Michelle. Really, I was like, I didn't realize that was the thing she told me a little bit about that we moved forward. But then I say to her, Look, the file still says Michelle on it. It has your name on it, and I'm looking at it on the screen, I said, so there's no doubt we're gonna get lost in the conversation. I'm gonna go to address you by your name and look up and see Michelle staring me in the face, and I'm gonna say Michelle instead of Melissa. And it only happened one time, you know. So anyway, so we're going on. We're having having this whole conversation. We're doing great. It occurs to me for a minute that she's part of the Facebook group, and I want to bump over and just see who she is, right? Like, get a visual on her. And when I look the very last thing that she's posted in the Facebook group, the first comment that I see on her post is you, oh. And so I was like, so that freaked me out, and then I told her, and she wasn't freaked out by like, come on. I'm like, this is the bizarre coincidence. I'm like, Yeah, for sure, the two of you are date, you know, back to back on the calendar, yeah, like, which is, you know, already random, and I have had this whole confusion about your name. Which is bizarre. And then I go online to see who you are, and when I'm looking at you, the very first name I see under you is hers. Totally bizarre, like she wasn't flipped out by it, and then that threw me off. My bad anyway, yeah,
Michelle 5:11
well, I honestly believe there's no such thing as a coincidence, so I don't know any Melissa and I are meant to be friends. One day,
Speaker 1 5:17
I'll tell you right now, my only goal today is not to call you Melissa. So anyway, I got it. Tell me a little bit about yourself. Do you have type one? Are you the parent of someone type one?
Michelle 5:28
I have type one. And I did the math last night because I never really know. I kind of know I'm like, 30 ish years. But I kind of even wrote out my story because I was like, I gotta remember this part or that part or whatever. Just to prompt me, I have type one, and I've had it for, I think, 31 years.
Scott Benner 5:45
Wow. How
Michelle 5:46
old are you? Oh, my God. I just had a birthday last week, and I'm 62 no kidding to me, is like, totally old.
Speaker 1 5:53
Happy birthday. Oh, listen, I'm 53 and I'm freaking out. So no,
Michelle 5:56
you are always freaking out about your age. I have to say on everything, you're always like, I'm so old. You are
Speaker 1 6:01
baby. Yeah, okay. I put my T shirt on this morning. I looked in the mirror and I thought, Oh no, I have to do something. My shoulders look old. Do you know what that means? Do you know what I mean by old person shoulders? Yeah,
Michelle 6:15
I do. Yeah. I can't have that. Oh, my God, that's not true. I already told
Speaker 1 6:19
my wife I'm not against steroids or something,
Unknown Speaker 6:25
just get those shoulders pumping. I'm like,
Speaker 1 6:26
Am I like, a testosterone candidate? And she goes, your testosterone is fine. I'm like, but am I a candidate? I feel like you're not answering the question. So apparently I'm not. But anyway, yeah, so 62 years old, diagnosed 31 years ago. So you were in your early 30s when you were diagnosed. So
Michelle 6:43
wait, I always have to do the math. I was 28 when I got married in 1991 and it was like a year and a half later. So I think I was 29 and a half, wow, right? As soon as you got married to a year and a half later, yep. And I know what you're gonna say. Did he ever think, like, I should run because
Speaker 1 7:00
you say that, yeah, like, Oh, damn, I picked the wrong one, anything like that. You know, I'm
Unknown Speaker 7:04
sure he said it to himself at some point, because we're
Scott Benner 7:08
divorced. Now, you should ask him, do you still talk to him rarely?
Michelle 7:11
Oh, that's so rarely and barely. How long have you been divorced? Oh, my God, I think since 2016 it was official. Okay, I was married for 25 years. Married
Speaker 1 7:20
for 25 years, 25 flipping years divorced for almost a decade. Yep, you think about him often, hell to the effing No, no. It's interesting. Do you remember a time in your life where you were concerned for him, concerned in what way, anyway, like, you know, oh, he looks sad. He looks happy, looks I'm good for him. He's doing well. Or, geez, he seems moments where you're just like, I want the best for this person. Do you remember any of that? Any
Michelle 7:42
of that? I mean, I remember when I was married to him. Yes, I obviously felt that way all the time, but since We've parted ways, I It's odd, but I don't have a lot of feelings for him. I've actually thought about it quite a bit. How kind of interestingly odd that is, yeah, that I don't have many feelings connected to him anymore. That's
Speaker 1 8:03
what I was wondering. That's all, yeah, okay, I'm not asking for a specific if you're wanting to give specifics, Michelle, we will absolutely accept them. But without specifics, what was the level of reason for getting divorced? I fell out of love. He stole some money. He was hanging around with hookers, like, where are we at? Yeah, yeah. Today's episode is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes, who is making life with diabetes easier with the mini med 780 G system. The mini med 780 G automated insulin delivery system anticipates, adjusts and corrects every five minutes. Real world results show people achieving up to 80% time and range with recommended settings, without increasing lows. But of course, Individual results may vary. The 780 G works around the clock, so you can focus on what matters. Have you heard about Medtronic extended infusion set? It's the first and only infusion set labeled for up to a seven day wear, this feature is repeatedly asked for, and Medtronic has delivered. 97% of people using the 780 G reported that they could manage their diabetes without major disruptions of sleep. They felt more free to eat what they wanted, and they felt less stress with fewer alarms and alerts you can't beat that learn more about how you can spend less time and effort managing your diabetes by visiting Medtronic diabetes.com/juice box. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by ever since 365 and just as the name says, it lasts for a full year, imagine for a second a CGM with just one sensor placement and one warm up period every year. Imagine a sensor that has exceptional accuracy over that year and is actually the most accurate CGM in the low range that you can get. What if I told you that this sensor had no risk of falling off or being knocked off? That may seem too good to be. True, but I'm not even done telling you about it, yet. The Eversense 365 has essentially no compression lows. It features incredibly gentle adhesive for its transmitter. You can take the transmitter off when you don't want to wear your CGM and put it right back on without having to waste the sensor or go through another warm up period. The app works with iOS and Android, even Apple Watch you can manage your diabetes instead of your CGM with the ever since 365 learn more and get started today at ever since cgm.com/juicebox, one year, one CGM.
Michelle 10:35
I never wanted to be divorced. I was, you know, I am a divorced child of, you know, parents from when the age I was really young, and then my mom was remarried, and then she got divorced from him, so like that was the last thing on my mind. I don't think anybody gets goes into marriage thinking, oh, one day we're going to get divorced. So I really thought I was going to beat the odds. And I kind of picked this man thinking he his parents were still married, up until a few months ago, when the father passed away. So I kind of really thought the odds were good and going in our direction correctly. And we had three kids, and all while I was type one, and I think he started becoming very disinterested in the family situation, like he would sit and watch TV and eat his chocolate chips and stuff like that. And we'd be all sitting at the dinner table eating dinner, and he would be very non interested in anything we had to talk about or do or anything. He was very much a solo person. When my kids were in a lot of athletic sports, and three girls completely different sports, so I was pretty much all over the place, you know, field hockey and La Crosse with this one Swimming and Water Polo with that one horse riding with another one. He was, you know, do I have to go to the game today? I mean, parents would ask me, where's David? And I would just say, um, he's playing racquetball or something. Probably, do
Speaker 1 11:52
you think it was one of those things where he's, like, I couldn't have just got one boy to play football or baseball or something. Oh, my
Michelle 11:56
God, hell to effing No. He never was interested in sports. The only thing he was ever interested in was Formula One. Formula One
Speaker 1 12:03
racing. Oh, well, how the kids gonna do that at a young age? That's yeah, they could remember,
Michelle 12:07
actually practice, like in our he went to, like, Skip Barber Racing School and did all this crazy stuff. He would, like, put the kids in the car and me and drive like a freaking maniac. And it was scary. Like, it was actually scary. A lot of the time,
Speaker 1 12:21
he's not doing the thing that he wants to do, right? So he's working, I'm assuming, working every day, throwing his money in a pile. And then he gets home and he's like, none of the things I enjoy are my leisure time. So now this begs the question, you let him out of that you're like, all right, you don't want to do this. Don't do it. Did he go do those things? Is he driving a Formula One car for fun or anything like that.
Michelle 12:42
Well, first of all, you made of a lot of assumptions that are inaccurate. So okay, he never was the kind of man who, like, went to work and then came home, like, literally, most of our marriage. He either had a job or he didn't have a job. And it was pretty much 5050, like, I don't know how many times he came home with a box in his hands, going, I got fired today. Legit, my communication back to him would be like, Okay, it's not meant to be. Something better is out there for you. We're going to get through this. But it happened more times than I can even count on two hands. That sucks. That wasn't it. It was a very difficult situation. He just wasn't the kind of person, you know. And actually, when we even met, and we were both dating, and, you know, living in New York City. At the time, in Manhattan, I was working for a huge pharmaceutical company, I'll just say, Pfizer, and I was in sales at the time, and I won this trip to, like, sausalita, blah, blah, blah, Northern California, and he had gotten fired from his job there. And at the time we were I was 28 that's 27 say, and he was just a year older than me, and he's like, Well, I'm going to rent a car and drive down the coast. I said, Cool, I'm going to go back to New York and go to work. I mean, he drove down the coast, landed in Del Mar, the cutest little town ever, you know, in San Diego County, and called me from a pay phone, because back in the day, that's what we did. And just said, I found the cutest little town in the world. This is where I want to live. And I just was like, okay, so that was the start of it kind of and then I ended up moving across the country, like changing my life, because that's what he wanted to do. We got married, yada yada. But basically that was already job one, and it just continued throughout our marriage. Wow, that suck. But no, he actually, after we our divorce was final, and everything else, he moved to Thailand, okay, yeah. And he, you know, kind of went off the grid a little bit, and did that for almost two years. And mind you, we have a daughter that is just 18. So, you know, she was 16 at the time, or 15, and he took off and went to Thailand and moved so he just does whatever he wants to do. And that's all about him.
Speaker 1 14:55
Well, yeah, it sucks. I mean, a lot of that, that's what I was saying when you. And he moved away. In my head, I was like, Wait, I don't think the kids are that old. No, yeah. Like, wow. So he just did. He just looked at him. He was like, girls, listen, I'm leaving, and I'll see you. And that was it,
Michelle 15:10
yeah. Well, actually, my youngest daughter was even living with him at the time. I mean, we live walking distance from one another, like she could right, like a 10th of a mile away from one another, and she would come over to my house, go to his house, but she liked his house for a while, because Absolutely, and I mean zero with a big fat Z, no rules, right? You can come in and stay, and you can have your friend sleep over, and you don't have to go to school if you don't want to, and if you feel like drinking vodka in the morning for middle school, Hey, have at it. Wow. So Michelle,
Speaker 1 15:39
you seem like such a normal person I am. How did this happen? I don't know. Be honest, when he said, I'm driving south, you go head back. I've hooked my wagon to your work trip that you've won, and now it's time for you to go back and make more money. I'm gonna hang out for a little longer. You know, you shouldn't have answered the phone when he called you, right? Like, looking back, you're like, oh, he was breaking up with me. I didn't realize it. No, probably, yeah. I mean,
Unknown Speaker 16:08
oh my god, I never really sorry. I don't want
Speaker 1 16:10
to put me out. But, like, you should have been like, what is this your where? Oh, I hope goodbye.
Michelle 16:14
Like, like, my god, I think you're probably right. That was the number one sign. But instead, I was like, all Googled at the time? Well, I will also say, okay, so I was living in New York City right out of college in Michigan. I went to my first job in New York City. Didn't know a single soul like boom. Ended in New York. I'm there for a few good years. And I was there for a total of six years. But I and I dated quite a bit. The man pool there, you know, it is small. Let's just put it that so was being married a goal? No, no, oh, my god, no. It was never a goal, just because probably being a child. But I really, and I mean, my biological clock was bam, bam, bam, ticking away. I see, yeah, I wanted to be a mom more than anything on the planet. And I really did want to find a good man to do this with. So I found this, like, Jewish man
Speaker 1 17:04
that I thought I've heard stories these Jewish guys are good guys. I'll be all right, yes, yeah. I'm like,
Michelle 17:09
Okay, I'm gonna do this one because the other one that I really, really, really wanted to marry, I thought drank too much, and this one didn't. So I was like, You know what? I'm gonna go with this one. If I'm a betting person this one's going to be having more staying power for me, and that was all wrong. It's crazy. I mean, I'm in touch with his mom, and we connect all the time, and she always says, I'm so sorry. I can't even believe this. I don't know who he is, and I really apologize, like I I can't even believe you had to put up with him. That
Speaker 1 17:36
sucks. All right, so yeah, well, it was nice to see to do. I appreciate that. I just think it's interesting, like all that stuff that nobody talks about ever, nobody ever
Michelle 17:44
talks about. Well, he actually moved back to San Diego, um, just recently, in the last few months, because his dad was 90, and he was going back for his dad's 90th birthday party. And his dad passed away two weeks before the birthday, but he had already had a trip planned, so he came, and then he found a job, and now he's he's telling his kids, because I kind of hear it through them. You know, he's going to stay for another couple years and work his butt off now and then go back to Thailand and retire,
Speaker 1 18:08
but only enough time to get some money so I can get away from you again. Yeah. I mean, I don't bother him, so I don't know what the hell, but that's really something. Well, I mean, all right, diabetes, so you get diabetes. You're so you're freshly married, you get diabetes. Have you haven't had a kid yet, because you said you had all three kids while you had type one. And what's the management like back then? That's regular. Mph, yeah. NPH, and R, R, okay, and you're doing that insulin for how long you remember?
Michelle 18:36
I actually don't, but I do want to tell you a little bit about my diagnosis story. Can I tell you that? I'd love to hear about that. Oh, okay, so I was a pharmaceutical rep in San Diego, working for Pfizer. Still, I actually, you know, I quit my job in New York City, and they were like, don't quit. Don't quit. I said, Well, I'm moving to San Diego. And they said, Well, we're going to be opening up a new division of the company. As soon as we open it, we're going to bring you back in. So in the meantime, it was like six months, but I went to work for a different pharmaceutical company in between for a few months, and then when Pfizer called me, I went back to Pfizer. I'm working, and the first step is I went to Bali. My ex husband and I went to Bali for our first year anniversary, and we're there, and I'm having the time in my life, because I'm a very like, spiritually oriented person. He was not, and still is not, but I am. I'm kind of introducing him to my world. And, you know, it was fantabulous. We're in Bali, and by the last day of our like, 14 day trip, I am sick as a dog. This is where I think it starts. So I get on a plane, and literally, I have to lay across the floor in the back of the plane, because I am just not well at all. We get back to San Diego, and I went to the doctor, and it was like a series of tests, just non stop. And one of the things they said was, oh, I, you know, I had a hard time breathing. I had shortness of breath. It was like a lot of different things. I had anxiety, like it was a cluster of i. Oh no, all these symptoms that I'd never had before. And the doctor finally said to me, you know, they put me on an inhaler for asthma, which I'd never had in my life. And by now, I'm 29 and you know, she said to me, Did you buy any bedding or anything while you were in poly? And I said, Yeah, I had custom made a, you know, a blanket and two pillow shams for our bed. And she's like, get rid of it. I think it's that I got rid of that didn't help the situation. That's a shame. Yeah, yeah. I know all
Speaker 1 20:28
that thinking. I was like, Oh, you threw away the custom bedding. It was an entire pill
Michelle 20:33
suitcase full of stuff that I had to throw away. And I was like, you know, completely depressed about it. But I'm not gonna belabor the point. But it went from one symptom to another, and basically they were like, well, you're really anxious too. We think you have generalized anxiety disorder. So they started giving me Ativan to take and mind you, and I don't understand, but now I'm going to get to the point where I was working at Pfizer, and I'm calling on a physician as a client, talking about my medications. And he goes, Hey, you look like you've been losing weight lately. Have you been trying? And I said, No. And he goes, No, I think you have been losing weight. He goes, Put out your hand. I put out my hand. He puts a Phoenix tissue over it, and it's like shaking. And he goes, I think you have hyperthyroidism, okay? And he goes, I think you need to go get a blood test. And I go, Well, I'm getting tons of blood tests because something's obviously wrong with me. And he goes, Well, this is what I think it is. Tell them to look more closely at that. So I do. And they go, Oh, my God, you have Graves disease. Okay. And so I go, okay. And meanwhile, my eyes were starting to bug out of my face, like Barbara Bush eyes, yeah. And they were really dry. Like, they wouldn't shut at night, and I'd wake up and they'd be so dry. And I was like, This is so uncomfortable. And I was losing weight, but I just thought, because I was a runner, I'm like, Oh, I'm running all the time. You know, I live in San Diego. The weather is always nice. There's no excuse not to get out there. Like, blah, blah, blah. They diagnosed me with that, and then they say, you know, you're going to undergo radioactive iodine therapy. We're gonna stick you on Synthroid, and you're gonna be good to go. And by the way, I will point out my mother's mother, so my maternal grandmother did have a goiter at one point, so there's a connection with that. So I had the radioactive iodine therapy. I think I'm good to go. And I didn't let you know yet that I've been trying to have a baby, and it's not working. Everything I tried, you know, intrauterine inseminations, nothing was really working. Meanwhile, I got pregnant five times five pregnancies before my first child. Oh, gosh. And all of them did not make it. They were varying degrees of very early on, but I was, you know, oh, you're pregnant. And then, no, you're not. And I even went to go see a reproductive endocrinologist, capitalizing on the word endocrinologist, who, you know, I think, would know something about type one or anything in between. And he just would say to me, oh my God, you're in such good shape. You're always just so thin, and, you know, you look great and blah, blah, blah. This is before my type one diagnosis. I just kept having miscarriages, and he was helping me have a baby, basically, back then. Yeah, so this is in 1994 ish. I kept losing weight after the Graves disease diagnosis and I and the radioactive iodine therapy. So this is in back up to 93 in the fall. And then my brother, who's just a year and a half older than me, so he was, like, 31 at the time, was killed. He was murdered. Oh, my God,
Speaker 1 23:25
how, yes, wait, I can't believe you didn't get that diagnosis from the doctor. And say, this is wonderful. Who's going to apologize for putting me on Ativan, and which one of you is flying back to Bali to buy me a goddamn pillow Sham? Like, like, seriously, but how does your brother get murdered? Oh,
Michelle 23:42
my god, yeah, so my brother, who I was really, really close to growing up, because it was just really the two of us. My mom would go off to work every single day. My mom and dad were divorced when I was, like, one or two. We were super close, but he, you know, kind of got into drugs. And by kind of, I mean he got into drugs so and I was always the kind of person, like legit people would offer me drugs, and even, like in college, and be sitting around in bongs, and I'd be like, Nah, no, not for me. No, no, no, thanks. But my brother was like, Yeah, bring it on. He was a very hard worker. He worked every single day. He was just such a hard worker. And he had this girlfriend who he was engaged to for a number of years, and we could not stand her. She had a couple of brothers, I think, three, that were just bad dudes, and all in the drug business. And my brother broke up with her and broke off the engagement and moved out of the house that they had bought together into an apartment and started going to NA, which is Narcotics Anonymous, and started trying to pull his life together. The next thing we hear, it's December 4, 1993 and he's dead. And I was in California. I'm living in California at this point, my mom calls me and says, Marvin's dead. And I said, What? How could this be? And she said, yeah, he was killed with one shot gun, shot wound to his heart in Detroit. And I was like, Oh, my God, this is, you know, obviously, the worst thing on the planet. So it was horrible. The girlfriend, literally, the next day, we pulled up to the house that they had together to get some of Marvin's things. And like, talk to her and, you know, talk about the service and this and that she had just come from getting a manicure, and she was carrying this typewriter, because back in the day, that's what we used. And she was already filling out paperwork on the different insurance policies she had out on him. One of them had taken place. They had a 30 day, then it all of a sudden, it was kicked in, and it was like 31 days that he was murdered. So we had found out she took out an insurance policy on that she had, you know, part of the house. They both worked for Chrysler, and she was in the HR department, and he didn't take her off his beneficiary status to put to my mom yet, which he had said he was going to do, since he had broken up with her, but it didn't happen yet. So she got some money. There was some kind of a monetary situation going on, and I presented all of it to Detroit homicide Sergeant Reginald Harvell at the time, and he just said, you know, sorry, we don't have time to investigate. There were seven murders last night in Detroit or whatever. We don't have time for this. Blah, blah, blah. They went to, you know, do their due diligence, I guess, and interview people, but all of them were at the service the day that they did their interviewing, so nobody could answer questions, and they moved on. That was the end of that. Like I even contacted the Department of Justice. The sergeant called me and said, We have never had anybody from the Department of Justice contact us. And I said, Well, you don't know me, and I think you guys did a, you know, a terrible job at this, and you need to, you know, make amends and figure this out and open it back up. And they never did. Wow. Listen, you're
Speaker 1 26:51
not making any of this up, right? You ever stop and look back and go, whoa. It's been a ride.
Michelle 26:59
Oh my god, hell yes. All the time. I'm like, I am a freaking ass.
Speaker 1 27:04
I actually, I'm gonna diverge for a second, like, I somehow tripped on a YouTube video recently where, like, it's a voiceover, and there's this animation, right? And the animation is this person telling a story, and the story is clearly contrived and made up, right? And it's got just millions and millions and 10s and 20 million views. And I'm like, who's listening to this? Like, because every time the story changes, it's the most like, ham fisted out of a TV show change. Like, it's clear somebody's just making this up to keep you in the video longer, right? Like, it's exactly, it's clearly, what's going on as you're talking. I'm like, oh my god, this is very much like that video, like, and I think, I think sometimes people's lives are so much crazier than we would imagine they could be, yeah, like, that's essentially,
Michelle 27:52
I think if you actually know me, you would never believe any of this,
Speaker 1 27:55
right? No, no, I get that. It really is fascinating. It's why I love talking to people, because they'll tell you things. You're like, Oh, my God, that's insane. Yeah. Like, okay, so, well, first of all, I'm sorry. I know it's been a long time, but I'm sorry that happened, and the person that murdered him never brought to any kind of justice.
Michelle 28:10
Zero, okay, well, we're pretty convinced it was one of her brothers. Yeah.
Speaker 1 28:15
I mean, I wouldn't want to say that on a podcast and get yourself in trouble, but like, you know, oh, I don't care, Michelle, listen, I have to be honest, if you get, uh, sued over this, it'll be great for my podcast. I want you to know that. So it's all right. It's all right with me. I'll let you know. Yeah, because then all the stories, it'll be like she was on the Juicebox Podcast talking about her diabetes. Then suddenly, but wow, that's terrible. Okay, so, but that happens, and then where does your life pivot off from
Michelle 28:39
there? So then I'm not diagnosed yet, and it's December of 93 and I remember going to my brother's service and wearing this black suit. And the jacket was really special. I had bought it in New York City, so it was, like, really different, but it was huge on me. And I was even like, oh my god, it's so big. Like, what? I guess I'm I am really losing more weight. So I go back to the doctor at this time. It's January, and it's right around my birthday, and I'm 30, no, 29 I can't keep it straight. 29 or 30, whatever the hell I am, I weigh 106 pounds and I'm five foot 10. I know that when I got married a year and a half early, I was 132 pounds and five foot 10, so I definitely lost a lot of weight. And I went to one of the endocrinologists that I called on to just say, hey, is something up with me? And he goes, You know, we should probably check you for diabetes. This wasn't my actual physician. This was just a doctor that I called on because I was selling, at the time, an oral hypoglycemic agent for type two diabetes. And so I mentioned it to him, and he's just like, Yeah, let's check your, you know, your glucose. And it was like, 475 or something, okay. And so they're like, Yeah, we think you have diabetes. We're not sure if it's type one or type two, I think because of my age back then. And so they put me on like an oral hypoglycemic agent for a week, and nothing happened. I still was high. I was finger pricking. And then they're like. No, we need to put you on insulin. But they didn't give me any education. They're just like, here's the bottle. Here are the syringes Have at it. And I remember my first low I was shaking so hard, and I didn't know enough, this is crazy, but I was injecting myself with insulin when I started shaking and I ate sunflower seeds because I thought that's what I was supposed to do. I mean, I had zero education, they're not going to help, yeah. So I was like, what? So anyway, I figured it all out, like I got some diabetes education, I you know, yada yada. But it was a long road after that. And then the doctors were like, Oh, this is probably why you're not keeping the babies you have diabetes, you know, blah, blah, blah. This is why you keep having MIS, mis, mis carriages. Now that you're going to be under control, we're going to, you know, I think everything's going to work out, but it still really didn't work out. I had a couple more miscarriages after, like, maybe the diagnosis. So I had three before, probably, and two after. And then I did an in vitro fertilization, frozen embryo transfer, and it worked. And that's my first daughter, who was born in 1995 and she is now 29 awesome. And then I had three more miscarriages, and then I had my daughter Nicole, born in 1998 and at that point, I was like, Okay, we're good. We're not going to have any more babies, this the thing. And the doctors were like, you don't worry. You had so many problems getting pregnant, you're not going to be able to keep a baby on your own. Like, I needed progesterone suppositories. I needed tons of medication to eat keep the baby in there. They're like, don't worry, you're never going to get pregnant on your own. And bingo, seven years after, like 1998 I got pregnant again, and I was 42 at the flipping time. Oh, my
Speaker 1 31:38
God, Hey, real quick. Where does a progesterone suppository. Go, which front of the back, front. Okay. Thank you. Keep
Michelle 31:44
going, Yeah. And, and I would like, stand in my head, you know, like, put it in, stand in my head for, like, go about my business, let it melt. Yeah, yeah. And then, so my third daughter, the shock and awe, was born in 22,006
Speaker 1 32:01
jeez. And I was 43 in the easy pregnancy,
Michelle 32:04
yeah, the first two pregnancies, I hardly, I mean, they were like six pounds and seven pounds, very normal pregnancies, I would say. But they took them. Oh, the first delivery was a nightmare, but, you know, she's here, so that's all good, but it was like a disaster. So the second one, they did C section, and I did get pre eclampsia at the end. Yeah, my blood pressure rose up pretty high. So they took the babies a little bit early, like two weeks that was it. And the same thing for the third one, they just scheduled a C and took her two weeks early, and all good to go, Yeah, but she was heavier. She was like, eight pounds, 15 ounces. I've seen
Speaker 1 32:40
two uneventful vaginal births, and they were still disasters. I don't know. You know, it's a lot. There's a lot going on, you know what? I mean, yeah, so is there a possibility that you didn't have any time to notice that you and your husband weren't good for each other because you were so busy trying to make kids? So this
Michelle 32:56
is what I would say. I didn't want an only child. I really wanted to and he wasn't that it wasn't as noticeable back then, that he was so distant from us, you know, he wasn't like the, I don't know how to say it. He just, it wasn't all that noticeable. And we were like, buying houses, selling houses in San Diego, making a boatload of freaking money selling it, you know, to make more money, to buy another house, to do this whole thing. So we had this, like, great, wonderful, big, beautiful house on a canyon with a huge pool and blah, blah, blah, we were kind of doing all that while all this was going on. I see I'll say
Speaker 1 33:30
something that will probably get me in trouble with somebody listening, but I don't understand people who don't work, like that thing that throws me off. I don't get, like, not having a job and not looking for a job, at the very least, you know what I mean? Like, I don't, I'm not saying that's even what he's doing or not doing, but I know people who do that and I don't understand it, yeah, or they have a job that just, it's terrible and getting laid off all the time, or it doesn't make any money. You don't forget, like, and they don't look for another one. Like, I'm not saying you'll even find one, but like, I don't understand the not looking part,
Michelle 34:00
yeah, yeah. Well, I think he would look, I don't know, he has a different personality. I think he's definitely on the spectrum. He would be a loan officer, and then he would be a this, and then he would be that, by the way, he went to NYU, like, he's not stupid undergrad. And then while we were married and I was working, I said, you know, you're gonna get your MBA, kind of like, we need to, like, prop you up and everything. And so he went to San Diego State EMBA program, which is on the weekends. He got his MBA. So this is not a stupid man. He
Speaker 1 34:28
just can't keep the job. Once he has he gets, yeah, exactly. He
Michelle 34:32
can't keep it. And I don't know, obviously I'm not inside, but he even started a couple of companies. You know, he would always be like, this is we're going to make $20 million off this company. And so there were a couple of years where he didn't collect a paycheck at all, and I just worked. And by then, I'm working for Eli Lilly in pharma, selling oncology, bringing home the big paycheck, and he was not collecting. And then he, at the end of the two years, he got fired from his own company. He had like, 49% ownership, and the other guy, he won, him, boom, gone. So
Speaker 1 34:59
now. Money for two years putting his ass into this company, telling you, don't worry, honey, it's coming. Yes, go pay for everything. You're paying for everything. And at the end, he comes back, goes, oh, that didn't work out. I got fired. Yeah,
Michelle 35:09
exactly. Awesome. Yeah. It was fun stuff. And then I will say so I inherited from a great aunt who almost lived to be 100 she was 99 and a half. She was also this wonderful aunt that gave us the money for our frozen embryo transfer and everything that we did trying to get pregnant because she could never have children. Okay? And I had this remarkable relationship with her. My first daughter's middle name is Iva, after her, but anyway, she passed away at 99 and a half, and I was one of the, you know, recipients and beneficiaries. So I received a good chunk of money. And so I said to my husband at the time, and his mother actually said to me, Michelle, if you keep working and making all this money, he will never realize his potential. And she had all this like he is going to be so amazing, you know, wait,
Speaker 1 35:56
you're holding him back by being successful 100% Oh, geez. All right,
Michelle 36:01
so she said to me, you need to quit your job. And literally, I was always like, kind of thinking, like, I don't want to work full time. I want to work part time. Like, Dada. Dada, I actually went part time in oncology, and that was the first time they'd ever let anybody work part time in sales. I was kind of taking a step back, you know, I really wanted to be with my kids. I wanted to be a mom. That's what I wanted to be. So here I am working my butt off, and I finally say, you know, I got this big woman check I am going to quit my job. And I tell him I'm quitting my job, and he's like, oh. And I'm like, Yeah, you're going to have to pony up and figure this out. Now you have your MBA. I can connect you to pretty much anyone you want to be connected with, through all the kids sports and all the people I talked to, and blah blah blah, but the gravy train is over, yeah, yeah. And by then we're in the house that he really wanted to be in, and we had made a lot of money off of our sale of a couple other houses that we had that we were brand new and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So by the time we sold them and put all these upgrades into them, we made a ton of money, to be honest, because it's San Diego, and it's a good area. It's like the best school district in like our whole area. So anyway, I quit, and I stay home with the two kids, and, you know, I'm being a mom, and he's kind of out there in the world trying to make it happen. And he did, like he for, you know, a good chunk of time. He got a couple good jobs, mostly through my connections, and he was bringing in the money, you know. And then I just started realizing more and more though, like I my third child I definitely would not have had by then, I was already thinking I didn't want to be in the marriage, but she came along, and so there she is. My
Speaker 1 37:30
goodness, that's crazy. All right. So the rest of it is this, what about your diabetes? What did you do? How did it work out? What was the progression? Where are you now? How How did you figure out what you were able to figure out? Honestly,
Michelle 37:43
the Juicebox Podcast helped me a ton. I remember I even sent you an email one time. I was like, heading out to dinner, but I was like, I have to send him an email and tell him, like, blah, blah, blah, how much he's impacted my diabetes with just all the podcasts. And I listen to your podcasts like almost every single day while I'm walking my dogs in the morning. So it's like a treat for me. I don't just listen to it around the house or anything. It's like I'm walking the dogs. I listen to your podcast. You know, just a lot of things have helped me. Insulin now is for later, these little things that I have in my head, like every day, yeah, I mean, but it took all these years, but I have been listening now for several years, and I always love when you say, you know you're older. How did you hear about my podcast? I'm like, on tick tock. I follow you on LinkedIn. I follow you on X, I follow you. I'm like, I want all these social medias that you're on and I follow you. But I learned so much from, like, the whole tug and war thing, everything, I think I brought my a 1c down so tremendously with your tips.
Speaker 1 38:42
No kidding, that's awesome. First of all, I appreciate you telling me that. But secondly, as a person who sits here most of the days trying to figure out ways to get information like that out to people, it's it's good to know that it's working, I'll take a little bit of a left turn for a second. Yeah, I'm forever trying to figure out how to reach more people. And I've been lately thinking a lot about all the people I see in more professional spaces, more professional than making a podcast. I mean, who are out there blowing their own horn and congratulating each other for all the things they're doing for people with diabetes. And then the next thing they tell you is that people say one Cs are an average of this, and we don't know how to like they're not coming down, and we can't, you know, teach people how to use their insulin and blah, blah. So they congratulate themselves over and over again for all the good work they're doing. But then point out that the good work needs to keep happening, because people aren't having the outcomes that they need to be having for good health. And I just look at that and think, how are you congratulating yourself? Like, what is it you're congratulating yourself for? Exactly? Is it for trying? Because in a lot of situations, there's no success at the end for the people like you, tell me you're helping them, but then the people are still not helped. And you look back at this podcast, you're like, Well, this is what helps people like you. Simple ideas, easily communicated that you can recall when you need make application to your life, watch things actually get better, then get to a place of stasis where you're not constantly fighting and you're having outcomes that you would you know, that you would call successful. I've sometimes correlated that with downloads and I have had it in my head for just years, like more downloads, more devices, more people listening. You know, that's going to be the measure of success and and very recently, I thought it's maybe possible. I've just made a type one diabetes podcast as big as a type one diabetes podcast can be. And the reason it's staying so successful and stable is because there are new people coming in all the time. But the fact of the matter is, is that you're not likely to hold on to a 10 year listener on a podcast about type one. Don't get me wrong. Some people are like have been listening since the beginning, but isn't that the measure of success that somebody comes, finds it and then leaves, and that's tough, because those my metrics are telling me make bigger numbers, and their metrics are, if I can walk away from this and be healthy and happy and not think about this again, then I won, right? And if that's what I want for them, then I have to adjust my idea of my own success.
Michelle 41:20
Yeah, yeah. I think reframing in this situation is important. Yeah. I
Speaker 1 41:23
just found myself really coming to grips with it, no lie over the last couple of days. Oh,
Michelle 41:28
wow, yeah, yeah. I hear you kind of say, oh, downloads. And literally, I don't, I don't usually download. But when you're like, we're this many downloads away from blah, blah, blah, I download the heck out of everything. Streaming
Speaker 1 41:39
and downloading is all the same. Obviously, if you're like, Oh, I'd like to help with 10, you can't listen to 10 in a row. Yeah, yeah. And I genuinely appreciate that. Don't get me wrong, I really appreciate it. But, like, bigger picture, look at you. You're 62 right? You've had diabetes for 30 years. You've lived through, I mean, a significant amount in your life, yeah. And when I asked you about your diabetes. I thought you were gonna tell me that, that you were listening for community like, but you're not like. You listen for management. Well,
Michelle 42:07
I listen for management, but I also listen because you entertain me. Like, I mean, you can talk about, I don't know, like a puddle and the freaking sidewalk, and the way you talk about it is like, so entertaining to me. I appreciate that I listen like I people even said, what about this podcast? What I'm like, why I can listen to Scott? He entertains me about anything like, honestly, just there was even a time when I was on an airplane and I was having a lot of anxiety with the takeoff and the landing and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, What can calm me down? And I put your podcast in my ear and started listening to your voice, and you call me right now. See,
Speaker 1 42:42
can I tell you I'm gonna sound like a baby, but that would make me cry if I thought about it much longer. I'm in a 12 by 12 room, Michelle, making this thing, and I don't get out of here very often, because I'm making it all the time. Yeah, it's really touching to hear that like, because I don't see myself the way you just described me.
Michelle 43:01
I'm such a super fan. Honestly, thank you. That's wonderful. Thank you so much. I really am. It's just like you have a gift. You have such a gift, and I love what you're doing with it. And I even love like, where you came from. I mean, you're like, missed 50 days is high school because you were working in the, you know, factory, and, like, all the stuff that I know about you based on different conversations that you've had with people and where you've come to like, I am in amazement of what you've been able to do. And you know, you're talking to these physicians who are bringing information to us that's just been amazing. But you talk on the same level that they do. I mean, I've been in pharma, so I know, like, you are on the same level as they are, and what you've been able to bring yourself up to and make it understandable and break it down is like, truly a gift. Thank you. I've
Speaker 1 43:55
always just thought that it's, it's the blend that ends up being, how it worked out, right? Like, I try not to say this, because I think it's, I mean, I don't want to talk about it, but, like, they gave me my first IQ test when I was in kindergarten, yeah, I remember hearing about it. Somebody, like, whipped me out of a classroom and said to me, like, hey, we want to give you this test. It's going to measure how smart you are and blah, blah. But I grew up in a really, in a poor family, yeah, of like, blue collar people who did not have big expectations for themselves or for me or anything like that. And they certainly weren't looking at education like a like a golden, you know, bullet. Nobody was thinking that. So I speak the way I speak, because I grew up around people who were hard working, people who didn't have time for bull, like, you know what I mean? Like they weren't going to nice things up, or there just was no time for that. You know, at their core, reasonably good people too. You know, my dad cheated on my mom and they got divorced and, you know, people yelled, but people loved each other and like, there was, it was, it's everybody's life, but we just did it on no money and no polish. Nobody had been polishing us up. I've mentioned a million times over as I grew up, when people would, you. Discuss problems or situations, I always think, like, why are they thinking about it so wrong? Like, why is this question being asked? And those three people are coming to one conclusion, and my conclusion so much different than theirs. I don't know, like, I just think my brain works one way, but I communicate another way. Yeah. And then Arden gets type one, and I realized no one's gonna help us, yeah? So I'm like, well, I'll have to figure out how to help myself. But I don't have any education. I don't have any formal understanding about how to problem solve like nothing. So I figured out with, you know, the tools I probably learned growing up. And it turns out that once I understood them and I could speak about them thoughtfully, they're very transferable to everybody, because they're not shiny and they're not over educated, and they don't require you to know big words and you you know, and everybody can understand them. So, I mean, that's it. Like you can make an argument, Michelle easily, that, like, I'm not really saying anything. It's all that difficult. And I would probably make that argument too, that, like, the stuff I talk about about diabetes is not like some it's some crazy, well kept secret that only you know, the Illuminati understand about type one like, and some people will will ding me for that. They'll go, he's just talking about bolusing and timing and stuff like that. I'm like, but those are the things nobody talks about, and that's why so many people have problems. Yeah. And so again, going back to the beginning. So for all those people who are out there in the professional world, patting each other on the back, breaking their arms, patting each other on the back, right, and then nobody has a good outcome. And then someone like me comes along and like, here, just try this and it works for them. Yeah, simple, yeah. Stop congratulating yourself for being so smart and not actually helping anybody, right, right? I'm an idiot, but I know how to Bolus and time insulin, yeah, and I know how to talk about it, so that's pretty much it. I don't know. I appreciate it. No,
Michelle 46:50
I love it. I'm wearing a T slim control IQ and a Dexcom g7 which I just got. So when I got the g7 around Christmas time, I also got the Apple Watch that has my blood sugar on it. And then I just recently got the sugar pixel. I'm all squared away with everything, so I just want to throw that in there for people who want to know, Oh, awesome.
Speaker 1 47:08
That how you're managing, yeah? What's that? How you're managing, what it is you're doing,
Michelle 47:12
yeah, yeah, yeah, what I'm doing, you know, I think I'm a, like, a 6.1 and do I want to be in the fives? Yeah? But legit, my doctor was like, when I when I first came to him, I have Kaiser, he's my Endo. And he was like, What? No, you must be getting low all the time, like the typical stories that you hear all the time. But I just am like, No, this is where I am, and this is where I'm going to stay, and blah, blah, blah. But I do want to tell you about my ozempic stuff. Oh, please go ahead. Okay, it was a couple years ago, and I had been gaining weight steadily, and I got up to from when I had diagnosed at 106 up to 183 obviously, 30 years later, and three kids and blah, blah, blah. But I was extremely uncomfortable, and I said to my regular physician at Kaiser, you know, I really need to lose weight. I think this is, you know, my diabetes is a contributing factor, you know, yada yada, I really want to be on one of the glps. And she was like, Okay, well, first you have to go one full year of trying other medications first. And so, like, one of the first ones she put me on was, like a fen part of the fen Phen,
Speaker 1 48:17
oh, but that thing that gave everybody all the heart this troubles Fen, Fen,
Michelle 48:21
yes, yeah, but it was the fen, the good part that didn't kill people as much, or something, of the fen, Fen, it was the fen, not the fen, yeah. So yeah, I took it. I shook like, like, was going crazy, and then it was like, five days of hell. I stopped taking it. I didn't tell her, I stopped taking it, but I got through that, you know, and then I said, This one didn't work. What's the next one? Then she prescribed it, then I went and bought it, then I brought it home and said, not taking it, gonna use it for the 30 days. Tell her what's next. We did this for a year. Like, kind of a game, like, I'm just gonna say I took it, and I'm not gonna go on this crap, and I'm just gonna try my hardest. I do a lot of yoga. I walk my dogs a lot. I live in San Diego, zero excuses to do anything, and I do exercise a lot, so, but I wasn't losing the weight at all. And so finally, after a year of all these trials, quote, unquote, put me on ozempic. I'm just on point five. It's been almost a year, and I've lost like, 13 pounds or 12 pounds, awesome. And she won't let me go any further, like, she's like, Nope, you lost enough. And actually, on my prescription, it says it's because of GERD. That's
Speaker 1 49:30
why they got you the Zam pick for the reflux. Yeah, has your reflux cleared up after the weight loss? No? Oh,
Michelle 49:35
it's still there every single day. And if I forget to take my medication on time in the morning, literally, by like, noon or one o'clock, I can feel the burning, so I know I need a higher dose, but she won't prescribe it.
Speaker 1 49:46
Let me make a suggestion, perhaps, yeah, why don't you tell her that you want to switch to Manjaro? Because you've heard that Manjaro helps more with reflux, does it? Or? No? Oh, it does well for some people. And. Right? It also has a GI P in it, which might help with more weight loss. So it's possible that you'll get a little more weight loss with it. Also, I get why she doesn't want to move you up. Like, how much do you are you? Do you have any weight to lose? Now,
Michelle 50:11
I weighed myself this morning, just for you, 160, 9.9 now I've shrunk so I'm like, five, eight and a half. I think I have weight to lose. And by the way, when she was on a vacation, there was another doctor standing in for her, and I talked her into the higher dose. So I went on for one month prescription. She wrote 1.0 I got down to 161 oh, well, and then we'll just go. The governor came back and said, No, no, no, she should never have done that. Go to the other doctor. Just make an appointment. Go to her, she's, she's full. Um,
Speaker 1 50:44
I would, I would, I want to. I'd be banging on doors. It sounds like your doctor just doesn't understand the vibe. So, like,
Michelle 50:52
I know, yeah, why don't you look for another doctor? I know it's in the Kaiser system. It's such a tough system, to be honest.
Speaker 1 50:59
Other ideas include, but are not limited to, let's think, I don't know, look for another doctor. Seems like any like the first step, try to get on the other schedule. Yeah. Is this doctor not open to conversation? Why don't you just say, like, look, what do you care? Like, it's working for me. This is what I want to do. Just let me have it. She told
Michelle 51:16
me that she felt pressured by me. Oh, god. What are you
Scott Benner 51:21
still? You're instill in
Unknown Speaker 51:21
San Diego your issue, not mine. Like, what you're in
Speaker 1 51:24
San Diego still? Are you? Yes, yeah. She can't take it. The you asking for a bigger job,
Michelle 51:30
I guess not. She's like, you really have been pressuring me. I'm like, Well, I think I have legitimate reasons to be asking for what I'm asking for. These are not right. You know, how's it
Speaker 1 51:39
helped you with your insulin sensitivity, has your Okay, yeah, so I will
Michelle 51:42
say this, which is, I think, important. So thank you for asking me. When I first started on it, I really had to lower all my profiles and everything by almost half. Yeah, I was getting hypoglycemic all the time. So my daily insulin went from like 40 units down to like 20, and so much better, like, unbelievably better now that I've, like, gained the weight from 161 just for that one month, up to 170 let's say it's been a rocky road because I can't adjust as appropriately, like, for some reason it's not really dialing in as well. Yeah.
Speaker 1 52:14
Well, that's your reasoning. Then, with a doctor, like, I'll use this much less insulin if you if you let me have another, you know, what is it? Another? I don't know. Point five of ozempic. Yeah, point five a week, then I'll use this much less insulin every day, this much less insulin a week, this much less insulin a month. I mean, what are we talking about here? You know, Arden. The other day, I looked at Arden stuff and looked at it in a while. She's not even using a full dose of Manjaro like so the lowest dose of Manjaro would be 2.5 and we milk it into a vial and take out some. And so last week, we were giving her basically the equivalent of, like, 20 insulin units worth of Manjaro. Okay, and I know that sounds weird, but like I don't have another way to measure it. So that day, anyway, that I looked at on her insulin usage, she ate 125 carbs in a 24 hour period and used 16 units of total insulin basal and Bolus together. Wow. Her insulin sensitivity is up to like one moves or like 110 at this point. Carb ratio back in the day could have been anything from like one to four, like, that was about it. One unit covers four carbs. Now, I think it's one unit covers nine carbs. And her basal, her basal during the day, is down to, like, point seven, five from one point 1.2
Unknown Speaker 53:34
Wow, yeah, she's had a huge Yeah,
Speaker 1 53:36
she's not too thin. She's can, like, she can still eat. Like, we was a bit of an experiment there for a while. For a while, it was like, you know, just give her the whole pen, and then she couldn't eat, and she lost too much weight. And we're like, All right, well, that's not okay. So, you know, how do you figure this out? Do you spread it out more? Well, you can't, because the half life, excuse me, the medication, I think I take it. I really think it's only really, really effective. Verse four or so days for hunger and stuff like that. Me too, right? And then I said, the doctor's like, Well, why don't we spread it out? We'll shoot it like, every 10 days. I'm like, I don't know, because, like, for the of the 10 days, her blood sugar is going to be all over the place, because we're count, we're counting on the drug to help with, you know, everything else. And so then somebody who listens to the podcast told me I was in a micro dose that, like, this person's, like, on my own, I'm gonna give myself a little bit of it every day. And I thought, I don't know if that's right or not, like, for you know, I have no idea, but I'm like, How do you do that? And then she's the one that told me about putting it into the vial and then taking it out again with a syringe. And I was like, oh, then I could give her less once a week. Yeah, you know?
Michelle 54:40
Oh, my god, yeah, that's something I could think about, to be honest. Because I definitely know that notice after four or five days, it's like, I take mine every Friday, but by Wednesday, my blood sugars are getting high. I am getting an appetite, yeah, that's kind of voracious. And I'm getting uncomfortable, like, just, I don't like it at all.
Speaker 1 54:59
Well, my bathroom habits are way better in the first five days of the injection than they are in the last two days of the injection. I don't even know why that is like just, you know,
Michelle 55:08
yeah, I will definitely say I am so constipated on ozempic. Oh,
Speaker 1 55:13
magnesium oxide. Do 800 a day. Oxide has to be oxide. You can start with 400 if you want. But I would pre, you know, you certainly could. But if you're looking for a bang for your buck situation, I would do two like 800 milligrams a day till you make the poopy. Then maybe you can go back to 400 and see. And then also, I just put out that episode with Dr Hamdy. If you haven't listened to it, definitely haven't listened to it yet, but it's done, ready for me. He's gonna tell you how very important muscle training, I know I read,
Michelle 55:43
I read the synopsis, yeah, and protein is going to be for you. Oh, yeah, no. I've lost so much of my muscle tone I can tell, like, doing yoga, you know, I'm just like, Oh my God, my he said something
Speaker 1 55:54
that, I mean, I've heard people say versions of it, but he said you shouldn't, in my opinion. He said you shouldn't be on a GLP if you're not doing weight training. Yeah,
Michelle 56:04
I believe it. I mean, I really do well, yoga is my weight training. But I know even my daughter, who weight trains all the time, is just like, Mom, no, you have to be going to the gym and doing weight but I work full time, yeah, and I have my 18 year old living with me, and 20 million dogs, and I'm just like, oh my god, how am I gonna make it to the gym, like,
Speaker 1 56:21
body weight squats, little like dumbbells, like, just keep your muscle tone up and trying to grow. Like, you don't have to try to get jacked up, obviously, or anything like that.
Michelle 56:29
But, you know, yeah, yeah, no, it's important. I know, yeah, I'm believe me. I read that synopsis about that one coming up, and I was like, but now that it's out, I'll have to listen to
Speaker 1 56:38
it. He's also going to talk about in there that he thinks that in the short not in the long term, but in the short term, injectable glps are going to be overtaken by oral medications that are glps that are also maybe mixed with other items that are going to help lose weight without losing the muscle. Oh, wow. There should be a lot of shifting in this space, you know, in the short term.
Unknown Speaker 57:01
Yeah, that's awesome. It's such a it's such a game changer, honestly.
Speaker 1 57:04
Oh, it's, it's insane how it's helping. But we're on the, I mean, if you're doing this right now, you're on the tip of the spear, you know what? I mean. So like, you're going to run into problems, and you're going to have things that you're like, Oh, I wish that wouldn't have happened. You know, you're out ahead and me for me, like me, personally, time's not on my side. Like, I don't want to wait five more years and be 58 and, like, then the pill comes out, and I'm like, Oh, finally. Like, I gotta get moving. I like, Tech Talk. You know what I mean? Like, I'm only gonna be here for so long, Michelle. I'm gonna talk about this, like, in more length, probably in my next, like, weight loss diary. But I had to go out the other night. It's freezing cold here,
Michelle 57:41
by the way. Like, I was just in Michigan for nine days. I know it's freezing cold. I
Speaker 1 57:45
just had to run to the store. And I was like, my god, like, what if I just didn't, you know? So I went to my heavier coat. I have this, like a Carn heart, like, winter jacket, right? That I that I bought to go to, I bought it to take my son to the Obama inauguration. Oh, my god, yeah. First one, I have a great picture of he and I, like, in front of the Capitol, like, you know what? I mean? Like, amazing, yeah, for the inauguration anyway, not not the point. I mean, that's how long ago it was, is my point? Yeah? So I'm like, I don't wear it that frequently, but I have worn it in the last year a couple of times, shovel and snow stuff like that. And I'm like, I'm gonna get out that jacket. I pull the jacket out, and I put it on, and I look like a little kid in his father's coat. Oh my god. I'm sure I turned and looked in a mirror, and I was like, Oh my God. Like, I still am running into these moments where I'm like, I didn't know how fat I was. Like, I really, how did I not know? I just it's the overwhelming feeling, like, How did I not know how the situation I was in? Yeah, I took the coat and I could take the right side of the coat and put it under my left armpit, and the left side of the coat put it under my right armpit. That's bonkers. I wore to the store so I could feel how ridiculous it felt on me. It felt like a hoop dress. Is what it felt like a really heavy, warm hoop dress. Yeah, no,
Michelle 59:00
you've lost. I mean, what? I mean, what? I just listened to your last that ended in january 2025, so just recently, I think you lost total of 70 pounds. Is that right?
Speaker 1 59:08
So, no, no, like, no, 57 I think you probably have a number switch in your head. But, like, even that, like, going back to the the download problem, like the jacket reset me, because I was like, oh God. Like, I'm in this fight weekly. That's like, between 179 175 pounds. And in my head, like, I feel like, oh God. Like, today I'm 178 like, Oh, I got down to 174 I was like, 174 I was like, Oh, I'm almost there. Like, I literally was like, not the number, but my body fat at 174 I was like, I have five more pounds and I'm done. Like, I don't have any more fat loose. It's gonna be awesome, you know. And then, like, you know, you have something salty or something whatever, and your body reabsorbs, or you eat on the wrong day of the seven days, which does happen with the for me with the Z bound. Like, in the first four days, I could eat a brick and I wouldn't gain weight. And then it'll. Last three days, if I have something that's, you know, not quite good for my maybe, if it's just something salty, for example, I'll put weight back on. You eat that salty thing on day two. And it doesn't happen. I don't listen. I don't know why. It's just how it's working for me anyway, I feel like I'm having this battle that I'm losing all the time. Three pounds this way, four pounds that way, blah, blah, blah. And the jacket made me go, oh God, dummy. 178 175 174 who cares? Who
Michelle 1:00:26
cares? Yeah, right, you you won anyway. Because, like, dada, you know, just
Speaker 1 1:00:31
really got me. I was like, I've been so far in this micro fight for so long. I forgot to macro this one thing. I forgot to step back and go, Oh, you've lost 57 pounds, you know. So
Unknown Speaker 1:00:44
it's remarkable. I mean, your face looks totally different on
Speaker 1 1:00:47
all the it's insane, you know, genuinely insane. Yeah, I just like, I look at myself and I'm like, I don't even see that as me. Yeah, it's really anything, all that look stuff apart. It's been wonderful. Health wise, yeah, pain wise, you know, like, my time, because you're not so like, like, you're not thinking about, like, what's gonna what am I gonna eat? What am I gonna do? Like, you know what I mean? Like, even socially, we do different things socially now, because socially used to mean like, go to a restaurant, and now, you know, now it doesn't mean that as much, and it's been a benefit in a significant way, in a multitude of like, variables have been impacted. Yeah, it's really been awesome. I know Kelly's on one too, right? I can't even believe, like, that's her at this point. Yeah, wow. I don't talk about her weight loss, but, yeah, that would be hers to talk about, if she wanted to. But she's doing great on it. She's doing so well. Oh, and it's helping her with other things too. Like, for instance, her perimenopause has been really impacted by the GLP. It has been easier because of that. Wow. We also really think it helped her with a lot of her long COVID symptoms because of like, like, kind of more anti inflammatory properties, maybe. But all we know is, like she got into this spot once where her regular doctor was like, can you just go, go off that GLP for a week? And she did it. And she's like, What a huge mistake. Just what a terrible week of like sweating again and like pain and my, you know, like muscles and like all that stuff. And she's like, I just shot it back in again, and I did just that stopped happening. Yeah?
Michelle 1:02:22
So no, when I went to Michigan recently, just in January, just, you know, I just got home for nine days to, like, take care of my mom, I forgot my ozempic. And actually, I was flying out on a Friday, and that was the day to give myself a shot. And I was like, oh shit. And then I didn't have it for the next Friday, but I was coming home on Sunday, so I had a week without it. It wasn't fun. I mean, I wasn't having those kind of side effects because, thank God, I'm past all that. I was just uncomfortable. I was hungry. I was thinking about food. My blood sugar was all over the place. I was like, this is such a challenge.
Speaker 1 1:02:55
I know I there's plenty of people who listen to this and go, you're cheating, you're blah, blah. I don't care. I genuinely don't care what you think. It's helping so many people in so many varied ways. It's just all like, it's awesome. Do you have you ever considered like you have PCOS? Is there is, have you ever figured out the reason why you couldn't have those kids so many different ways? I
Michelle 1:03:14
don't know. They said it was really I had a super thin uterine lining and my progesterone levels were low. So who knows. Like, the babies that I was had, like, the pregnancies couldn't embed, but like, one time I was four months pregnant and lost the baby, so who knows. That's
Speaker 1 1:03:28
crazy. That's terrible. I'm you've been through a lot. You have a really great perspective. How do you think that happened? Like, why am I talking to a an upbeat person instead of somebody who's like, like, because you could have told your story so much differently. My husband did this. This happened. He left us. He was he left my kids after, you know, after we got divorced, even the way you talked about your brother, it was more about from a an empowerment perspective, like I did this. I tried to push them to do that, like it wasn't like this thing happened to us, and then it was sad. Like, how come you talk the way you talk? I think
Michelle 1:03:59
it's just my personality and who I am, yeah, but I, you know, I also, like, my mom is a very strong driving force in my life. I talk to her every single day, and when she passes, which will be probably pretty relatively soon, it's going to be a huge punch in the gut for me. I think I just have a that's just my perspective, like, honestly, and I have a spiritual connection. Like, it's not a religious connection at all, but it's just more like, I mean, I am super thankful that insulin was even invented, because if it wasn't, I mean, I'd be dead at the age of 30, and Arden wouldn't have ever lived a life like this is all amazing. So I kind of keep that perspective as much as I can every day to be like, this is another gift. And like, look where I get to live pretty phenomenal. But I also do a lot of yoga. And yoga is people say, Oh, I can't do it because, you know, I'm not flexible. It has zero to do with flexibility, absolutely zero. It has to do with your breathing and focusing on the moment, and then you just do the movements. And nobody people can be bad and good and everything in between. There's just no judgment there, like it's an. Power of just no judgment. You just go there and you breathe and you come out and you feel better, and it connects me to everything the rest of the day. I mean, I don't get to do it every day because of work. I mean, there was a time just recently where I quit my other job and I had eight weeks between positions, and I did it every single day, and I was like, in heaven. It just helps to reset me every single time I go, yeah,
Speaker 1 1:05:22
no. I wish everybody could find that one way. I don't care how, like one way or the other. It would be awesome if everybody could find that feeling. Because I'm forever having these conversations and wondering in the back of my mind, how come some people have a thing happen to them and they react one way, and other people react in a completely opposite direction. I don't I wish I understood that better, because they Yeah, you know, it'd be awesome if everybody could have a slice of how you're attacking all this really,
Michelle 1:05:47
yeah, well, and believe me, I'm person with but you know, I I'm definitely not perfect, that's for sure. And that's one of the best things about it. Like, I don't ever strive for perfection in life. I gave up on that a long time ago, like, I had eating disorders as a kid, like bulimia and anorexia and everything. I was just always trying to be perfect, and, like, I gave it all up, and I was like, you know, this is so much better to be in
Speaker 1 1:06:09
this place. Good for you. Do you have any idea how you did that? Probably a lot of therapy. You did have a lot of therapy, yes, yeah, a lot of therapy.
Michelle 1:06:20
Yeah, a lot of therapy helped me through everything. I mean, I had got my Master's in marriage, family and child counseling, like Counseling Psychology too. I just think, you know, kind of learning along the way, taking little steps, baby steps, nothing has to be a big step. Just like all these little things I kind of go through on a daily basis are kind of just keep me going. But I really don't take any days for granted, because I do really think, like I was meant to die 30 years ago, and I'm still here, and it's for a reason, like, I like, even as my job that I'm doing right now, I mean, part of my focus every single day is to bring joy to people's lives. And I know that sounds corn ball, but like, I work with seniors and this and that, and I really try to make them feel good about themselves, and, you know, and it's genuine, like, I'm just like, This is awesome. We're still all still here on this planet at the same time. This is remarkable. Like, this is great, yeah, just this
Speaker 1 1:07:07
simple idea of, like, I can't believe any of this is even working. Like, we're really, genuinely lucky to be here 100% Yeah, no, I know I hear you. Like, there's how many planets just in this solar system, and we looked at all of them, and no one's living on those. And you know, the randomness that it all works is, I have the same feeling
Michelle 1:07:25
you don't brink of where we are. Like, look, even in diabetes, like, just amazing. Yeah. So, yeah, it's just amazing. Yeah, my mother's mother, I think I mentioned her earlier, who had the goiter, also had diabetes. They never really knew if she had type one or type two or anything. She was on syringes when she died at age 67 of a heart attack, which is pretty close to my age. You know, they found all these syringes which were like, glass and blah, blah, blah. And I was just like, Oh, my God, they were huge. No wonder why. Every time I visited her as a kid, I would go to her house and she would be laying in bed with like a wet cloth on her forehead and a candy bar next to her and an orange juice next to her. And I was just like, What a horrible time. She was kind of diagnosed because there was no education, there was no Juicebox Podcast. Let's be real. Yeah,
Speaker 1 1:08:07
it just the information was not great. The technology wasn't great. The medication, it is crazy, right? To look back and see, look at how she was suffering, yep, from a thing that I'm no longer suffering from. And, yeah, I mean, make two more generations. What could it be like? Could it you know what? I mean? Yeah, for sure, they haven't been back on to talk about this story, but if you've heard the episode of the mom who came on to talk about the young girl who, you know, started taking the GLP and her insulin that's heard it kept going down, down, down, down. The mom texted me yesterday to say that they're considering going to every other day basal insulin at this point, and the kids doing one unit of basal a day. Wow. So who knows for how long that's going to work for, but yeah, for this time that she's getting, like, awesome, you know what I mean? Like, just really wonderful and awesome and and who knows, like, what, what we'll learn from that? Or, you know, what could help her if, in the future, it's not going to be like, oh you Gosh, you have type one diabetes. This is terrible. Here's the GLP pill, here's the insulin, yeah, here's your CGM, here's what we're going to do. And then you go off and and eat a normal like, you know, you don't have to make any like, crazy changes to how you eat. And you're using 16 units of insulin a day as an adult, and an A, 1c in the low sixes, like, come on, yeah,
Michelle 1:09:23
you know, and less hypoglycemic events and hypers. I mean, come on, right? No,
Speaker 1 1:09:27
even, like, if none of that stuff exists, that eyelet pump, and the way that they're leaning towards that algorithm, like, it's a normal meal of smaller than normal meal, a larger than normal meal, right? What happens when they dial that in better and better? Yeah, you know, no, it's
Michelle 1:09:41
pretty remarkable, yeah, yeah, yeah. So my grandma died, like, 45 years ago. This is she's didn't get any of this,
Scott Benner 1:09:47
of course, no. And so you feel lucky for having, oh,
Michelle 1:09:49
my god, 100% I mean, yeah. And oddly enough, like, Well, none of my three kids obviously have it, or I would have mentioned it. And I have 14 first cousins zero have it. Go get. Like, I don't know anybody else in my family who got lucky enough to get just you sometimes you have doctors on who are, like, from San Diego. And I'm like, Who are they? Because I want to go see them, but I'm, you know, like, do they have clinical patients that they see?
Speaker 1 1:10:12
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if they do or they don't. I never really asked them. I just feel lucky that they're like, they're willing to come on. You know what I mean? Like, I'm a guy, you know, doctor that was just on recently, right? And I don't even get him without another person. Check this out. So eventually you'll listen to to the episode that where I'm going to give people the episode number. It's Dr Hamdy, Episode 1411, GLP, essentials. He talks a lot about muscle training, glps, future of diabetes, stuff like that. Really learned. Guy works at Joslin on staff at Harvard, like that kind of stuff. I was invited a number of years ago to go to a private event for a specific religious group of people who do their own diabetes event for themselves. And I was the speaker, and there was a second speaker, and he and I, you know, met over the two and a half day event, which had a little bit I don't know that I ever saw him again. And a few months ago, he sends me a text, and he says, I would love it if you would consider having Dr Hamdy on your podcast. I really think it would be valuable. And I said, thank you. And I reached out to the doctor. The doctor only says yes to me because he knows the person who put me in touch with him and, like, all this kind of like, stuff tumbles into place, and then he comes on and gives that amazing interview to me, a person who, like, if I would have just reached out cold and said, Hey, can you come on? He would have been like, no, go away, exactly. And I've done that, by the way. Like, trust me, there are people who have given presentations on different things online, and I thought this person would be awesome on the podcast, and I reach out cold, and I'm like, Hey, my name's Scott. I run this podcast, the biggest diabetes podcast, don't they don't care. They're like, what is? It's meaningless. But if one person says to them, you should go do this, boom, they're off. And they're doing it. Yep, you know. So even that, like, I don't know anything about this yet, because this is an email that's arrived while you and I have been speaking. And maybe this will be nothing like it could be a big nothing, but an RN. BSN sent me an email and said, Hey, I wanted to send you a recommendation for a Physician Associate I know, and gives the name. He's been using regenerative medicine to help people with type one, type two diabetes, decrease hemoglobin, a 1c reduce glucose, titrate down insulin, and in some cases, come off completely. And blah, blah, blah, like, I don't know if this is like Hocus Pocus, if it's nothing, if it's both, I have no idea, right? I'll dig through it and try to figure it out. And if it seems valuable for everybody, then I'll reach out and try to make it happen. If it doesn't, I'll ignore the email. That stuff all comes from people helping me in return. Yeah, that's the crazy thing. Like, you can say, Oh, you had all these doctors on but, like a lot of them, I found some of them, but some of them were found for me, you know. So it's just the connections you've built. Yeah, right. It's become a hub. Like the podcast became a hub somehow. So I rely on people doing that, and anyway they come on. And my point is, I don't know if they take I don't know much about them when they come on, other than they've got this set of skills and they're willing to talk about it, so
Michelle 1:13:13
yeah, but you have an amazing way of, like, getting through and figuring things out and taking people on different roads. And so we can learn. And I love learning from you, just by the questions you ask people. Thank you. Like, I apply that in my daily life. Sometimes I like, seriously, I
Speaker 1 1:13:29
swear to you, I just my entire life. I've always thought when people ask questions, they ask the wrong questions, or when they get an answer, there's an obvious follow up question, and no one seems to see it, right? Yeah, I noticed that. That's great. But what about this part? And you know, that's where you get the story.
Michelle 1:13:47
I think that's where your real skill lies. Thank you. I
Speaker 1 1:13:51
don't know what else. My son believes that too, and tells me that I'm being held back by having the word type one diabetes in my podcast. He goes, I think you'd be a bigger podcaster if people didn't think it was about such a niche genre. Yeah, he's probably right. And I said, I don't care. I'll finish with this. I just because I just had this conversation with my son like, you know, part of the reason why I kind of pulled that thing out of my butt earlier, about people are out there saying they're helping but not really doing anything, is because that was part of a bigger conversation I had with my son this morning while we were having breakfast, and the rest of it was this. Somebody asked me recently, how do you continually help people like this? Like, how are you actually sustaining this and keeping this going and making it last for years and years and years, and it's having the same or better impact as you go, which is a real question I got asked by a medical professional. And what I told them was, is that I am willing to do the unsexy, repetitive part of this, and that's what nobody else wants to do, that everybody wants to move up and get better and make more money and get a better position. And I'll do this, and then I'm gonna do that. I found a thing I'm good at that helps people, and I do it every day, like that's the thing I've done. I've. Dedicated myself to this part of it, not to making it something else or bigger, or turning it into something or, you know, trying to get wealthy from it, or something like that. Or, well, I'll write a book, or I'll do this, or I, you know, I'm going to branch, yeah, how about this helps people every day, like somebody needs to be doing this job right here, right? So my willingness to just get up every day and do the thing like, you know what I mean? Like, I the shame of it is, is that the only thing that's popping in my head right now is it's time to make the donuts, which is seems inappropriate, but that idea of like, somebody gets up every day and does the unsexy stuff the same way as like, it happens in government too. Like the people you know in government, those people are both like the but there are real people behind the scenes making sure that the, you know, the T's are crossed and the eyes are dotted, and the things happen the way they're supposed to happen. And I sort of see my part in this like that. Yeah, if
Michelle 1:15:53
you were a drug, you're you, I would call you steady state. That's it.
Speaker 1 1:15:58
We just want to keep doing this thing, this thing works. It needs to keep happening. If I stop doing it, it stops.
Michelle 1:16:05
I know it would be so depressing. Yeah, I would just be bonkers.
Speaker 1 1:16:09
Well, I'll keep doing it for you. It stops because of some of the things that you've mentioned earlier. Like, who knows. Like, why do you like listening to me explain something? Like, who knows? Like, it's just random that it worked out that way. So, like, so keep doing that thing. I told my son at the end. I was like, it just takes me back very simply, and I know that by now, either people just don't even know who he is, or they have like, a weird connotation about him. But I grew up listening to radio, listening to talk radio. When I was a junior in high school, Howard Stern came to Philadelphia, and I started listening first with a Walkman that had an FM radio in it, which, by the way, was like, was a boon if you had an FM radio in your Walkman, your cassette player, you know. And I listened and I listened and I listened. And it was just a guy who knew, like, he knew how to keep a conversation going, and he knew what was interesting and what wasn't, and if things got boring, he'd pivot and he'd ask people questions that No, but I never heard anybody else ask a question to him, like people will point and say, like he had porn stars on, or this or that. I'm like, Yeah, you know what? I He's the first guy ever asked, I ever heard ask a porn star about their life, not about the sensational part, about why they were there, like he was talking to them, like they were just like everybody else, like she was a librarian, you know, and and then they'd give these answers, and I'd be like, my god, that's interesting, right? You know, like, like, is that how she got here? Like, is that the path of and so I found that really interesting. But he would give people this bit of information, like famous people would come in and they'd say, like, you know, well, yeah, I have this great job on this TV show, but it's been going for seven years and it's getting boring, and I'm bored, and I'm gonna leave the show, and he'd be like, No stupid show up and make that show every day, because this is gonna end one day and over and over Again, these famous people would not take that simple advice, like, stop thinking there's greener pasture somewhere and that you're meant for bigger things. You're doing this thing that people really seem to like and they enjoy it and they want it and almost need it sometimes, and like, you're gonna stop doing it because you're bored of it, or because you think there's more and over and over again. I'd watch these people just disappear. Oh my gosh. That's kind of interesting. And then what I thought was is the same thing, like, shut up, get up, go to work, do the thing you're good at, right? And that's what I do. Yeah, yeah. That's just kind of how I say it. So, yeah. So
Michelle 1:18:34
wait, let me ask you a quick question. What year was Arden born? 2004 Oh, okay, so she's like, two years older than my youngest. I was just curious. Born
Speaker 1 1:18:45
2004 diagnosed 2006 and yeah, that's it. And she's going to be 21 this summer.
Michelle 1:18:51
Oh, my gosh. Okay, yeah, my mind. She's like, 1819 I know she was switching from one school to another. Yeah, no,
Speaker 1 1:18:58
no, trust me, that's about worked out now, but yeah, you guys are a little behind on my life, like, because, because of the way I do the recordings. But yeah, you'll, don't worry, you'll catch up eventually, okay, yeah, yeah, and then the last six months of the show, you'll get to where I am, like, right before I stop, but I really don't want to. Like, I just had conversations the other day with someone about trying to make a a community outside of company controlled spaces. So like, the one thing that I'm I'm always worried about is the Facebook group is awesome, but it's controlled by Facebook, right? And so like, if Facebook just decides one day to pivot, or that I did something wrong, or that you did something wrong in my group, and therefore, or whatever I'm like, it just it goes away, and it helps people so much. So I'm trying to figure out ways to get that kind of space that's outside of control of like a Twitter or Instagram or something like that, yeah, to support about YouTube, no. Again, you say something they don't like, they'll make sure the algorithm doesn't put you through and I have no. On YouTube to begin with, because I'm not pretty enough, and I don't do the like, hey. Like, I don't do all that stuff. Like, it draws people in which I'm not going to do. I am going to sit down and maybe tell more of my story on video of, like, how I built this whole thing. Like, just so people listening know how it's gotten to this point, because it's been going on for so long now that my concern is, like, to some degree, like, I think I've just become the guy behind the curtain that makes the thing for some people, instead of, like the people who were around in the beginning, who saw us, like building it all up together, you know, right? So I'm going to try to revisit that a little bit, but, but, no, I just think that there needs to be a place where people can convene and talk that's not controlled by the whims of government or social media companies or stuff like that, especially now in general, just like, I think it's been like that the whole time. So, like, it doesn't matter to me, which I've seen Democratic and Republican administrations, and still I see weird stuff, like, both ways. So yeah, so anyway, I like talking to a company about, like, Hey, listen, you know, for me, it's too much money. I can't foot the bill for this, but you could, and it wouldn't really be that much. Like, can't just give me the money so I can make the thing for people, yeah. Oh, for real. And the truth is, is that that's how I started the podcast. 11 years ago. I just said to omnipot, I'm like, I need you to give me some money so I can afford to sit down and make a podcast. Like, you're buying ads. That's what I said. You buy ads on it, right? And and they were like, all right. And then they did it. And so that floated me for a year. And don't get me wrong, it was, it was six grand. They gave me $6,000 in 2015 for ads. And I was like, I had just come off, and was literally a, and probably still am, to some degree, a stay at home dad. So all I said to my wife, I was like, Look, $6,000 let me make the podcast basically. And she I was like, maybe one day it'll be $8,000 or maybe one day it'll be 80,000 like, who knows? Like, let's see where it grows to like, let me do this. And she was like, Cool. Like, it's helping people. Like, you know? Yeah, you know. So I got to do it a little more. And it grew and grew and grew. And so now I'm trying to use that same formula to create another thing for people, and we'll see what happens. Like, sometimes you have luck talking people into stuff, and sometimes they don't see your vision. And you know, so anyway, I'm gonna keep trying that and just trying to find new ways to help people. No,
Michelle 1:22:13
that's it. They're amazing. We're so thankful. I'm just gonna speak for all of us. We're so thankful. Thank you. It's
Speaker 1 1:22:19
very nice. There are 20 people listening right now. They're hate listening, and they think you're an idiot and I'm the monster. Oh my god,
Michelle 1:22:24
they're the crazy. We know that's okay if they're listening and they don't even like you. They're really bonkers. Hey, I
Speaker 1 1:22:30
appreciate the downloads. Keep going absolutely I'll take hate listen downloads. They're fine. They help the algorithm too. You're actually helping me be more popular. So keep it up. Keep complaining about me on Facebook and everywhere else you complain. I wish those people understood every time they complain, they're complaining to a small group of people, and those group of people already agreed with them, but everyone else who's paying attention goes, ooh, I'll go check that out. No, no no, they go check it out. Like when you when you say something crappy about me, you're driving tons of people to the podcast, and some of them will agree with you, but a lot of them don't, and they stay and makes the podcast bigger and, you know, more powerful and everything else. So keep it up. Keep hating
Michelle 1:23:14
You're doing great. Yeah, that's like, there's no such thing as bad publicity.
Speaker 1 1:23:18
If I had to pay somebody for the help that they give me. I think the people who don't like me probably deserve a little more money than the people who do like me. So I really do appreciate you guys. You're out there just doing the Lord's work. Thank you so much. I know they don't believe that, but it's absolutely true, and seriously, like I hope they I hope they feel that very deep down at how much they're helping me and how much I appreciate it anyway, Michelle, I did not call you Melissa, once pretty proud of myself. No amazing Hold on one second for me. Okay,
Speaker 1 1:23:55
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/juice, box, one year, one CGM. Thanks for tuning in today, and thanks to Medtronic diabetes for sponsoring this episode, we've been talking about Medtronic mini med 780 G system today, an automated insulin delivery system that helps make diabetes management easier day and night, whether it's their meal detection technology or the Medtronic extended infusion set, it all comes together to simplify life with Diabetes. Go find out more at my link, Medtronic diabetes.com/juicebox diabetes.com/juice. Box, touched by type one sponsored this episode of The Juicebox Podcast. Check them out at touched by type one.org. On Instagram and Facebook. Give them a follow. Go check out what they're doing. They are helping people with type one diabetes in ways you just can't imagine. You. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The Juicebox 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 podcasts 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? Hey, kids, listen up. You've made it to the end of the podcast. You must have enjoyed it. You know? What else you might enjoy? The private Facebook group for the Juicebox Podcast. I know you're thinking, uh, Facebook, Scott, please. But no. Beautiful group, wonderful people, a fantastic community, Juicebox Podcast, type one diabetes on Facebook. Of course, if you have type two, are you touched by diabetes in any way? You're absolutely welcome. It's a private group, so you'll have to answer a couple of questions before you come in, but make sure you're not a bot or an evildoer, then you're on your way. You'll be part of the family. The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording, wrong way recording.com, you.
Please support the sponsors
The Juicebox Podcast is a free show, but if you'd like to support the podcast directly, you can make a gift here. Recent donations were used to pay for podcast hosting fees. Thank you to all who have sent 5, 10 and 20 dollars!
