#1507 Who Is Randy?
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Phoebe and Randy’s meet‑cute at the gas station morphed into a mid‑40s tag‑team battle with blood sugars: hers since age 12, his brand‑new after pancreatic cancer left him with type 3C diabetes.
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Speaker 1 0:00
Hello, friends and welcome back to another episode of The Juicebox Podcast.
Unknown Speaker 0:14
Hello, my name is Phoebe. Hi,
Unknown Speaker 0:17
I'm Randy.
Speaker 1 0:19
Please don't forget that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan or becoming bold with insulin. Don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com All you have to do is use the offer code Juicebox at checkout. That's Juicebox at checkout to save 40% at cozy earth.com. AG, one is offering my listeners a free $76 gift. When you sign up, you'll get a welcome kit, a bottle of d3, k2, and five free travel packs in your first box. So make sure you check out drink ag one.com/juicebox to get this offer, when I created the defining diabetes series, I pictured a dictionary in my mind to help you understand key terms that shape type one diabetes management. Along with Jenny Smith, who, of course, is an experienced diabetes educator, we break down concepts like basal, time and range, insulin on board and much more. This series must have 70 short episodes in it. We have to take the jargon out of the jargon so that you can focus on what really matters, living confidently and staying healthy. You can't do these things if you don't know what they mean. Go get your diabetes defined Juicebox podcast.com go up in the menu and click on series. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the contour next gen blood glucose meter. Learn more and get started today at contour next.com/juice box. The episode you're listening to is sponsored by us. Med, us. Med.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, you can get your diabetes testing supplies the same way we do from us. Med, this episode of the juice box podcast is sponsored by the twist A I D system powered by tide pool that features the twist loop algorithm, which you can target to a glucose level as low as 87 Learn more at twist.com/juice. Box, that's twist with two eyes.com/juice. Box, get precision insulin delivery with a target range that you choose at twist.com/juice box. That's t, w, i, i s t.com/juice.
Phoebe 2:48
Box. Hello. My name is Phoebe.
Unknown Speaker 2:51
I am Randy.
Speaker 1 2:53
Are you guys married? Did you meet each other at the Piggly Wiggly and you just decided to be on a podcast together? What's going
Phoebe 2:58
on? A little bit of both. But we are, in fact, married, but we did meet at the local gas
Speaker 1 3:03
station. Wait, seriously, sort of, yes,
Phoebe 3:07
I was working at the local gas station, and one day he decided to bring in a bunch of bottle returns in the state we're in. That's a thing. And I was forced to count how many bottles he was returning, and that was the first real memory I have of interacting with him.
Speaker 1 3:22
Wait, is that Vermont? No, we're in Michigan, Michigan. I was so close. I was going off an episode of The West Wing where somebody was running for president had to go somewhere to the recycling thing to meet people. Was that New Hampshire? I don't remember. Now, let's not get down that road. So we don't usually do multiple people. So there's got to be a good reason, right? So Phoebe, what's your deal?
Phoebe 3:43
So there is a very intentional reason why Randy and I are both here. I have been a type one diabetic since I was 12. I'm significantly older than that now, and I believe that Randy and I were put together on purpose because two years ago, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and is now also a type one diabetic.
Speaker 1 4:02
Randy, her pancreas was so strong it came and got yours. It did. It did. My God, how long have you guys been together?
Phoebe 4:10
We have been together since I was 17. We are coming up on our 20th wedding anniversary. Very soon. Phoebe,
Speaker 1 4:18
are you trying to act like you're old when you're 37 is that? What was going on a second ago? I know
Phoebe 4:23
we we are significantly older than that. I'm in my fort. We are both in our 40s.
Speaker 1 4:28
Oh, that is significantly older. Brandy. Are you much older? Same age? Well, we'll be the same age. I just turned 45 yesterday. Oh, happy birthday. Oh, thank you. Yeah, it must be a little more special after getting through what you got through, I would imagine, yeah,
Randy 4:45
yeah. I didn't think I'd be here, but I'm still here, kicking it and doing well, awesome.
Speaker 1 4:49
Okay, so we'll start with, where are we going to start? Let's think about this. I didn't know this was happening, so I have to reconfigure my thought process. I'm going to start with. Of Randy, and I'm gonna ask what it was like initially dating someone with type one. And how did she tell you about it? Well,
Randy 5:08
she hid it from me for the first, I'd say, five, six months. Wow. I had no idea she was diabetic. And then my real first memory of finding out that she was diabetic, she ended up hospitalized because of her thyroid, throwing everything out of whack as well.
Scott Benner 5:28
Hold on for you. What was the thought back then?
Phoebe 5:32
Well, you know, I was diagnosed in the early 90s, and so I was on multiple daily injections and hormones. Make that really interesting as well. And so the my day to day was not anything remotely what it's like today, as a lot of your other people that have been on your podcast have mentioned, you know, blood sugars took a minute or better to result, and you had to have this clear light underneath the blood sample in order for it to result. It was very laborious and no fun at all. And
Speaker 1 6:05
was I not clear? Are you dodging my question? No, I'm trying to answer. Like, what happens when you say to yourself, like, I'm gonna start dating this guy. I'm assuming, in the beginning, you don't know if he's a no nick or whatever, so you're like, I don't need to tell him my all my business. Yeah, at some point he paused at you, and you don't recoil, and now you're going out again. And it happens again and again and again. Do you get to a point where you're like, Oh snap, I've held this back so long, I don't know how to say it.
Phoebe 6:31
Well, I think that was a lot of it. And actually, one of the things that I was thinking about before this podcast, and some of the dynamics I see in in the online and the Facebook groups, and then even some of the conversations that you have with other people. It dawned on me yesterday, actually, especially when I was first diagnosed, a lot of people had a lot of very passionate opinions about things that I should be doing. Some of them were honest and genuine and maybe had good thought behind them, but others were very, very wrong. And so at some point, I just decided, you know, I'll take everybody's opinion with a grain of salt, and it wasn't anything I really advertised. Actually, was definitely not anything I advertised to people that were around me, unless they really had to know. But I didn't have a lot of lows. I didn't have any major symptoms that displayed themselves. I just did never think it was important to tell him, at least that in the beginning. Is
Speaker 1 7:25
it crazy to think that you told him when you realized you were in love? It definitely
Phoebe 7:29
came before that. When I was 18, I had Graves disease, and I underwent ablation of my thyroid with radioactive iodine, and in the 90s, there were, were no medical records, and doctors didn't do a good job of consulting with one another. And so I went from having a very, very overactive thyroid having a very under active thyroid, and when I had the ablation, I didn't even have a follow up appointment scheduled with anybody. You'll be alright, see you. Yeah, that was that was basically it. And honestly, I remember the moment when I was holding the two capsules in my hand in the radiation department, and I said, What are the chances this will work too well? And they said all 100% I said, well, then what do I do? And the technician said, well, you'll just take a pill every day. And I didn't even give it another thought. I was following the advice of what I thought were knowledgeable practitioners at the time. And so then, of course, shortly thereafter, my thyroid was not active at all, and then that caused, you know, hypoglycemic events and hyperglycemic events and all sorts of things. So that was, that was the hospitalization that Randy was talking about
Speaker 1 8:48
all that finally. Okay, so you So fair enough. You didn't tell him on purpose at that point,
Phoebe 8:53
correct? I didn't tell anybody other than people that were very, very close to my right, you know, circle. So
Speaker 1 9:00
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Randy 12:47
I understood growing up, I've had multiple traumas and stuff like that. I was struck by a car, I was burned, so I had scars and stuff like that. I understood that some people didn't want to disclose some of that stuff and wanted to keep that stuff private. So I was okay with it.
Speaker 1 13:05
It's because, you know what it's like not to want to share everything with everybody, right? Okay, oh, that's really something. I appreciate you sharing that with me. So, Phoebe, let's go back a little bit. You're diagnosed a long time ago. Regular, mph,
Phoebe 13:20
yes. I started I was diagnosed, actually, because I wanted to be on the track team and I had to go get a sports physical, and I was still in glucose into my urine, so they discovered it in the urine sample. Prior to that, I had been pretty symptomatic for, I don't know, probably a couple weeks, getting up in the middle of the night and drinking an entire gallon of orange juice because I was so thirsty, which, of course, as I know now, that was the opposite thing that I should have been doing, but that was my brain was telling me that I should do. So I lost a lot of weight, and once we got the diagnosis, I had to go to the hospital from the doctor's office and do a glucose tolerance test. I don't know why that is important in hindsight, but they that was what they did. And when I failed the glucose tolerance test, They admitted me to the local community hospital for all of the education and how to do injections and such and hydration. And I was not in DK, but I was pretty close. I'm pretty sure,
Speaker 1 14:20
you know, you just made me realize we are old. We are I don't think anyone who's you know under a certain age would believe that in middle school, because I wanted to play baseball for my school, that I had to go to the nurse's office and stand in a line with 50 or 60 or 70 other boys who wanted to play baseball or do other things and track whatever in the spring, and we, one after another, went behind a curtain when a strange man fondled our balls and told us to cough.
Phoebe 14:47
That is exactly how it was. I have vivid memories of that. Yeah, of course,
Speaker 1 14:51
you do as you were saying. And I thought I bet young people are like shit to get a physical, like, like, they send me to my doctor to get signed off on it, but your doctor. Just goes, Ah, you've been here recently and they sign it, yeah, I was molested. Like, so, yeah, he didn't say anything kind to me or anything. It was just, like, no. It was, turn your head and cough, Randy. You ever get this? Yeah,
Unknown Speaker 15:11
I didn't even get dinner out of it.
Speaker 1 15:16
I know, right? Like, you expect a cheeseburger at least, or something, a tote sucker, something that's we call those lollipops here Randy. But okay,
Unknown Speaker 15:29
some Michigan thing. No, I just
Speaker 1 15:31
in the context. I thought we should redirect, right? Okay, so Phoebe, so you start that way. You have other issues I don't know about yet. So I
Phoebe 15:40
am now hypothyroid. I do have some slightly strange diabetic side effects. So I have necrobiosis diabetes, Filipino,
Speaker 1 15:51
if you've heard of that, I mean, just today I did go ahead. So
Phoebe 15:55
basically it starts in kind of a small area. Mine started on my right shin, and degradation or deterioration of the fat layer under your skin. And it's not generally painful or anything, but it does. It's prone to ulcers and injury pretty easily, and then through time, it spreads. So I have it on both of my shins. Now. It's it's ugly, but other than that, it's not really anything. So
Speaker 1 16:20
I don't want to burst your bubble. But as you were explaining it to me, I thought, oh, somebody else has told me about this. So is that localized, or does it spread? Yes,
Phoebe 16:28
it does spread over time. You know, I don't really understand the exact pathology behind it, but it has gotten bigger, but it's been, you know, I've been diabetic for 30 plus years now, so it's slowly progresses,
Speaker 1 16:41
and it's just in that spot, correct. Gotcha, okay? Oh, and I'm sorry, what's it called? Um, there's
Phoebe 16:48
a abbreviation that I always mess up. But necrobiosis diabetes, O, M, B, I'm going to assume the internet
Speaker 1 16:56
can figure out the rest of it. Necrobiosis
Phoebe 16:59
lapedica. Lapedica, yep, diabetic. Corum is another term for it. And LD,
Speaker 1 17:05
oh, also Lucky you. Phoebe, a rare skin condition. How about in your family? Phoebe? Is there other autoimmune stuff? Yep,
Phoebe 17:13
so my half sister is also type one. My biological mother was diagnosed late in her life as a type one as well, and went through the trying to give her metform And then those sorts of things, she was actually crashed or motorcycle in the median of an expressway, and when they picked up, she had really high blood sugar. So that was how she got diagnosed. And my biological fathers type two. Wait,
Speaker 1 17:39
so your mom is the parent you share with your half sister.
Unknown Speaker 17:43
No, actually
Speaker 1 17:44
really, hold on a second. Hold on a second you And holy crap. So your biological father, who has type two diabetes, has at least two daughters that we know of with two different women. They both have type one, and the woman he made pregnant to make you got type one later in life. Yes. Oh, Randy. I was kidding earlier, but she definitely up your pancreas.
Phoebe 18:09
There might be a correlation there, for sure. I think you're onto something, Scott, you guys are
Speaker 1 18:14
like little pancreas vampires or something like that, only you're not near me now, right. Do you know any other people Phoebe who have type one diabetes or problems with their parents?
Phoebe 18:28
Well, so funny. I was thinking in history, because I knew questions like this were going to come up when I was in middle school, the time when I was diagnosed, there were at least three other people that I know of, four other people that I just thought of another one, that were all diagnosed at the same time. Have
Scott Benner 18:43
you ever touched them? Perhaps your patient?
Unknown Speaker 18:50
Yeah, you might be onto something.
Speaker 1 18:52
I want to be clear, because there are at least 10 crazy people listening right now. They're like, I heard this podcast today, and this lady, everyone she touches gets type one diabetes. So that is not, I'm just making that up. I'm just, I'm being facetious, but, but no, that's I mean, what a coincidence. It
Unknown Speaker 19:09
really was, like, amazing coincidence. Yeah,
Speaker 1 19:12
no kidding. My gosh, how's your pets? Pets are all fine, yeah, it doesn't transfer from humans to pets. Then, okay, well, that's good. Not yet. One day your dog will look up at you when you got me. Take me to the would you remember? What age did you start using, like a fast acting and a basal insulin?
Phoebe 19:34
So I started right off with a short and a long term insulin. I don't remember what brands they were, multiple daily injections right from the
Speaker 1 19:42
get go. Oh, you did not do regular mph then no. Oh, okay, I'm sorry. So you started right away with probably, like Lantis and Humalog, or
Phoebe 19:51
whatever was before Lantis, that one, actually, I remember when I started on that. So whatever the predecessor to Lantis was, like,
Speaker 1 19:59
you have a. Lot of different health issues going on, so like, Were your parents helpful with that, or was that all left on you to manage? Oh, as
Phoebe 20:05
Randy already kind of pointed out, and I, as I've been described by some of my friends, as fiercely independent. My parents were supportive, but I started right from day one as managing it myself. You know,
Speaker 1 20:18
30 years ago, they would have called you a pain in the ass, and today it's fiercely independent. Into battle. I think it's good, by the way. I'm glad that we've we've all grown, but I could just tell you that in 1975 my father and his friends would have been like, Oh, she's a pain in the ass, yeah, which not fair for people are listening, and I'm not saying it's a good thing, and, oh, my god, we're just having fun. You took it from them. You were like, I'll do this on my own. Yeah, yeah. All right. And did that work out well for you?
Phoebe 20:44
It did work out very well. Of course, being human and the processes of life, it didn't always work out fantastic. But as of today, I'm I don't even remember the last time I was hospitalized related to my diabetes. I still have all of my toes in my eyes, and both of which were threatened that I would lose them at some point in my life when I was first diagnosed. So I'm very happy about that.
Speaker 1 21:07
Yeah, and so, well, they set the bar very low for you that, like, if
Phoebe 21:11
you could, there was not really a bar, it was just a low, flat shelf called the floor, I think,
Speaker 1 21:16
no kidding. And that was diagnosis that you got that pressure, not throughout your life, okay? Yeah. And
Phoebe 21:22
actually, my very first endocrinologist did not enjoy pediatric or young people diabetics, and he was not a nice person at all, and I dreaded going to see him, and he was always shock and awe and intimidation were his main tactics. So didn't have a great start in the endo
Speaker 1 21:41
world. Did it work on you? Or did it have a reverse effect on you? It definitely
Phoebe 21:45
had the reverse effect on me. In it and I got tried to get rid of him as quick as possible, but he was the only endo in our area that was accepting people so especially of my age, so I had to put up with him for a couple years. Okay,
Speaker 1 21:58
I'm sorry, it sucks. Yeah. Do you make it to a pump adventure? Are you MDI now? Nope. So
Phoebe 22:04
I'm Omnipod and g6 running in auto mode. And actually, as a result of, I don't want to give you too much credit, but credit where credit's due. After starting to listen to the podcast, my a one C's in normal range for the first time in my life. So, oh,
Speaker 1 22:19
good for you. I also love the way you preface that, like, like, Listen, I don't want to give you all the credit, joking aside again, you should not like, I really see myself as a person who just like, I'm like, here's tools. This is how they work. Like, you got to go do something with them. I didn't do Yeah, I tell anybody who comes to me privately and says things like, Oh, my God, you saved me, or you did this. I'm like, No, you did it. You know what? I mean, like, You did all the hard work. It's not easy,
Phoebe 22:47
well. And you know, I think that the best part about the podcast for me is the fact that my whole life, I've had people coming to me from a position of authority and saying, This is what you must do, or you shall do to take care of your diabetes. And the podcast and your community has really given it from a peer to peer or a knowledge standpoint, and I think that's really what reaches your audience the most. At least it does for me. You know, having somebody, having a peer that says, you know, hey, this really sucks, is pretty powerful. Yeah,
Speaker 1 23:20
I agree. I really do. I think people learn in different ways, and they're engaged in different ways as well. And like, I can see there's times when I'll put up, like, there's an episode that went up this week with, I've been talking about a lot this week, but I had a pretty big impact on me. So with Ryan, who had neuropathy, or, excuse me, uh, retinopathy. And, you know, literally lost his sight, and then had to have surgeries to get it back. And and now has not had that problem since he found the podcast and started listening to it. And there's this, you know, kind of thing that goes on in the background where people will reach out to me and say, hey, you know, like, you, I think you saved that guy's vision. And and, like, that's heady for me. So, like, I've got to, like, absorb that and, you know, sort it out. Because I'm, I don't, like, I'm not walking around, you know, in a cloak with my hands over my head going, everyone, it's me. I'm Scott. I've saved, like, you know, like, I don't, I have no feelings like that. But it's still, when it's put in your face, you think, like, is that really what happened? You know, is it fair for me to absorb it that way? Like, I go through all, like, a lot on this end. And then there are people who, like, just want management talk, right? Like, some people love that conversation with Ryan, and they get a ton out of it. And there are some people that hear that and go, Wow, tell me how to Bolus. Like, then those people want, like, pro tips and like that kind of stuff. And it's interesting, like, there was this moment where I thought that the podcast was just popular, and then I had to really look at it and recognize that there's portions of it that are popular with some people and portions of it that are popular with different people, and that. Some people listen to the podcast constantly and won't go into the Facebook group, into the private group. They won't go there. They don't care. They won't go and I'm like, oh, you should there's so much there. And then there's people who won't leave the private group and listen to the podcast. It's just fascinating how everybody's like, wants the information but needs it differently. So I'm glad it found you. How did it find you? Really
Phoebe 25:23
by happenstance, I do a lot of listening to podcasts, and one day I just came upon it and started listening to it. And when we were going through all the Randy stuff and I was in the hospital, it was a lot easier to listen to stuff than it was to watch stuff on TV or whatnot. So spent a lot of time listening to it.
Speaker 1 25:42
Awesome by accident. Roy, I appreciate that you that you found it, and I'm glad it helped you. Randy, what were your first inclinations that something was wrong? Oh, I'm
Randy 25:51
a paramedic by trade, so I was on the ambulance and between Mount Pleasant and Midland, say it's only 30 minutes, I couldn't go that whole trip without having to use the bathroom. And I'm like, well, that's just weird. No matter how much I drink, you know, I'm like, Man, I'm still thirsty. I'm still thirsty. All them years of being in medicine and being around Phoebe and, you know, never put it in my head, or maybe I was just in denial. I finally took my blood sugar, and then I told my boss, I'm like, Hey, I gotta leave. I gotta go to the doctor. And then that's when they told me that I was a type two diabetic. About 14 months later, I was on the ambulance again and had severe abdominal pain and almost like chest pain. It was like very diffuse across the bottom of the diaphragm, like a tight, constricting band. And when I got to the hospital, we did a 12 lead EKG to check out my heart make sure I wasn't having heart attack. We did some enzyme test and blood work, and found that I was in having a pancreatitis. And then to the end of 2022 I started having abdominal pain all the time, chronic diarrhea, fatigue, all sorts of weird symptoms. And then I just figured that this was the new norm. We've done lab work, colonoscopies, you know, anything you can imagine, and we couldn't find it. And then my doctor and Phoebe were like, maybe it's actually time we started doing some imaging and looking inside and seeing what's going on. And then they found, I want to say, the first time term that they used was a lesion on the pancreas. So we were told that we needed to follow pancreatic lesion protocol. So we ended up going down to the U of M and didn't endoscopy er CP, which is where they put a tube down your throat and Bailey, basically ultrasound from the inside, and they placed a stent because on the inside of my pancreas, all the ducks were pretty much clogged with IPM, and which, if for the lay person, is fish eggs or tapioca pudding, inside of all the ducks that were blocking all of the digestive enzymes, they said that I was pre cancerous, and said that this always turns into cancer if we don't do anything. So Doctor Cho, who's one of the best in the state of Michigan, he was the top guy at U of M to conduct the surgery, and by the time he finished, I want to say I was in surgery for nine and a half 10 hours. We started out as a Whipple procedure, and he said he was just going to take enough of the pancreas, but he couldn't find any clear margin so it can became a complete pancrea. And the result of that, I lost my spleen because there was no place to attach. That also got rid of the gallbladder because there was no place for that to go. So it's like the pyloric saving Whipple, but with the complete pancrea splenectomy, COVID systectomy, we're all done at the same time.
Speaker 1 29:10
What are the impacts Randy of losing your spleen? Well, I have to be very, very
Randy 29:14
cautious around anybody who's sick and being on the ambulance, anybody with a respiratory disease or anything like that. My other crewmates and co workers kind of shield me from some of that. So if we walk in and somebody's got a known thing like COVID or norovirus or RSV or anything like that, they'll have me sit outside and wait and tell they get out so we're not in a temp find area, but I wear a mask on all of my patient interactions, you know, to help protect myself as well. But it's been interesting.
Speaker 1 29:47
What's the spleen do? I'm blanking on what it does,
Phoebe 29:50
basically the graveyard for your immune system, so all your old red blood cells and such go and get reabsorbed in your spleen. Yeah.
Speaker 1 30:01
So then what happens? Nothing. Instead of that happening, like, do you take medication? Like, do you like, how does it, how do you replace its function? Or, can you not? You can't. Okay,
Randy 30:13
yeah, it's just caution. So, like, my white blood cell count is going to be continuously elevated because of it. And then, what about the gallbladder? The gallbladder is just one of those things that it's kind of like the appendix. It can be there it cannot. So, like, I have trouble with greasy or spicy foods now,
Phoebe 30:35
okay, yeah, AIDS and digestion of food, yeah. So
Speaker 1 30:38
spleen, filtering blood, storing blood, fighting infection, supporting the lymphatic system. Gallbladder stores bile, releases bile, aids digestion. Oh, geez. And we know what the pancreas does. If I just asked you, how has your life changed without those three organs? Like, what's the thing that jumps to your mind first? Well, I've
Randy 30:57
never been a great patient to begin with, being in the healthcare field, remembering to take my meds. I have to take what's called pancreas after each meal to help with digestion. Remembering to take those in a timely manner mid meal. I usually have to take three of these, like giant horse pills to help with that you get any depression from it, not really more anxiety from when I was going through chemo than anything.
Speaker 1 31:27
Yeah, yeah, I would imagine, yeah. I want to ask you about that, but I gotta tell you, Randy, before we get to your chemo, and how horrible it is. I want to just say that the most shocking thing about your story so far is that you were at work on an ambulance. Thought you had to leave because you were sick, and they didn't offer you a ride. That's their whole job. No, they gave me a ride. Okay? I was like. I was like, did they really make him drive to the hospital? Like, because that's their whole thing. No,
Randy 31:51
no. Every, every time that I've needed to go to the hospital, one of my bosses have always jumped on the truck and been a part of it, and give the other paramedics that work with me a hard time because I'm a very hard IV start. You know, I'm just
Speaker 1 32:05
saying it wouldn't be really if they wouldn't take you to the hospital, as long as I was like, that's really terrible. They had
Randy 32:11
me drive the ambulance to the hospital for them, they're like, we'll go with you drive.
Speaker 1 32:15
It's like an Uber that you drive. That's awesome, sponsored by Medicare. When they come to the conclusion, like, this, is it, you have to have this procedure. Did they call you pre cancerous? Why do you end up with chemo afterwards, they
Randy 32:30
called me pre cancerous, and then when they went in two months later, when we finally did the surgery, I ended up being in stage two with both extra can and endocrine cancers. So I also got both types of cancers. Initially. They usually do just like the adenocarcinoma, Sonoma or den of carcinoma, but I also had the extracurric carcinoma. On top of it, one out of every four patients is likely to make it through five years without the chemo, but 75% die without having it. So like, Well, I've been patient zero throughout this whole thing. You know, anything that could go wrong or had a complication, I ended up being that patient. Okay? So I'm like, let's just do it. How long did chemo last? It was scheduled for six months, I had a reaction to my first treatment plan, which was full fair knocks. They cut for short. They call it 5f, U. They call that the no joke chemo, because it's so hard on the system I would go in for, it's usually scheduled for six hours in the chair and then 46 hours on a home pump. I would have staff that came in at the same time as me, and that would leave before me from my first two treatments, because it was so hard on my system.
Scott Benner 33:50
Hey, did you get the bone pain? I
Randy 33:52
had bone pain. I ended up looking like an alopecia patient at one point. I think it was my third treatment of the gabapentin, or not gabapentin, I'm sorry, the other treatment that I had, I lost all my hair. I had no eyebrows, no eyelashes, nothing. I had a pretty good beard going at the time too. So that come out and you get the restless legs, yeah, yeah. Got Russell flag that go away a little bit every now and then I'll get, like, a kick in the middle of the night while I'm trying to sleep. It'll startle me awake, but tremors in my hands. I still got some of those that are pretty residual. I had the beginnings of neuropathy, but treating that with B 12, and that's been pretty tolerable.
Speaker 1 34:36
Okay, and so what's your long term prognosis?
Randy 34:40
I just live every day, one day, one day at a time when I was going through chemo, they said that they put me in touch with a case manager said, we've got yelled, set up, you'll go on permanent disability afterwards. And I'm like, why? Like, if I can still stand up, I'm gonna go to work. They're like, nobody goes back to work. After having pancreatic cancer, I'm like, Well, I'm different,
Scott Benner 35:02
and you've done that. Yep,
Randy 35:05
yep, the place that I work at now has been phenomenal. They sent me to school to learn how to be a dispatcher. When my short term disability ran out, they brought me back into the dispatch center, which is only two people. I would sit in a room locked in there with that other person, and I'd wear a mask, and they'd wear a mask. And, you know, while I was on chemo and nobody could walk in or out, we had our own little kitchenette and bathroom and everything, so I didn't have to go wandering through the halls or anything like that. That's
Speaker 1 35:35
nice of them. Yeah, Phoebe, what's it like when, when your your spouse
Phoebe 35:39
gets sick like that. Zero out of 10, wouldn't that recommend? Are you
Speaker 1 35:43
having your own personal struggle with it, while also having one? That's the two of you.
Phoebe 35:48
Well, for sure, I also am a paramedic. One of the reasons I wanted to come on the podcast is because it's so important for everyone to be or have a good patient advocate and really speak up when you don't understand the thing, or even sometimes when what they're saying doesn't sound right. And when he was in the hospital, he was hospitalized after his major surgery for 18 days at the big university hospital here in the state, and I felt like I couldn't ever turn my back, because we had some amazing staff members, but we also had a few be member, be team staff members, and there were a couple of times where I had to step in and be like, you are absolutely not doing that. I just feel like I've had to, you know, always speak up and be his advocate. But it's not been easy. It's been pretty tough. Yeah,
Speaker 1 36:44
have you guys talked about death? Have you had that conversation? Well,
Phoebe 36:49
I would say death is a joke in our house most of the time. Career side effect is it's something we've dealt with for a lot of years with other people, but having a realistic expectation of what it's going to be like at the end. I think is good, but, yeah, we've definitely had some long conversations about the end Randy. Do
Speaker 1 37:08
you go you have, like, meaningful conversations with family and friends beyond Phoebe, like, do you do the rounds? Or are you so busy trying to get better that you don't have time for that?
Randy 37:19
I talk to everybody. I feel that everybody that wants to talk to me has made it a point to call me every day or text me. You know, some of my family members are going through their own struggles right now with like, my brother in law's got cancer right now. So we we keep in touch and discuss things like that. I think everybody knows my side of it. As far as you know, I'm good with whatever happens. You know, I know where I'm going. Phoebe knows that she can just light the pine box on fire and just let it sizzle in the backyard if needed.
Speaker 1 37:54
But she's gonna push you out in the Lake Michigan, but we're doing a Viking thing. It's gonna be awesome. There you go. If you're listening closely, my whole vibe has shifted because, like, you know, I'm sitting here thinking, like, everything I know about cancer is through my mom, you know, like, and I stopped myself from asking you to describe that bone pain to me, because I wanted to know what she was going through. And I thought, that'll just derail this. If I, if I ask you that question, everything else that happens to us happens slowly. If you're lucky, right? You die slowly you get old, slowly you get fat, slowly you get like, everything happens slowly. Cancer is like, wow, something's living inside of my body and it's eating me, and we're gonna try to kill it, but everything we know how to kill it with doesn't really kill it as good as it needs to be dead. It's an infestation. You know,
Randy 38:44
it would always make me chuckle. It was one of the few things that I joked about going through chemo, because I was trying to be sensitive to everybody else that was going through it in the room that we were in. Because, you know, not everybody has the same sense of humor that I do, but they would gown up, double glove, face shield, face mask, everything, and then I would be sitting there in a T shirt with a med port, and they would be injecting poison straight into my veins. And I'm like, This doesn't seem right. Yeah. Thank
Speaker 1 39:15
you. Appreciate this. Yeah, Randy, like, when that's your best option, right? You know what I mean? Like, that's, that's the crazy, that's the crazy stuff. Like, you know, you're like, somebody's holding you hostage, and the only way I can shoot them is to shoot you too. And, you know, and then hopefully you'll make it through it. And, I mean, that's a position to be put in, you know, it's just uncommon in most other walks of life, yeah, and it's just on you, like, you're just, you're working one day, and you're like, I have a pain. And then somebody says you have type two diabetes. They probably gave you Metformin. You know what I mean? You're probably like, oh, I guess I'll have to stop eating pizza now. And then, you know, a number of months later, this is where you're at very quickly. Are your parents alive? Randy? They
Randy 39:55
are not both. My parents are deceased. My dad was a type. Diabetic. My mom's mother was a type one diabetic, really. So, yeah, I had it going against me, too. Your mom's
Speaker 1 40:09
mother was a, yeah, you guys don't have kids, but that's probably a good thing.
Randy 40:15
Yeah, we decided very early on that if we were going to have kids, we would adopt.
Speaker 1 40:19
Oh, yeah, no, I think it would have came out of Phoebe with an insulin pump in its hand. It would have hand. It would have been like, Yeah, I'm here. I'm so sorry to talk about like this. But does this change how you plan your life? Is it like you open your eyes in the morning and be like, Huh? All right, I guess we'll do it again. Do you plan out far like you have a vacation plan two years from now, or anything like that?
Randy 40:39
We got a vacation planned in August. Honestly, everybody at work, I tried to be super positive. I was pretty negative after being in Paramedicine for as long as I had been prior to cancer, my joke was always, you know, I started in EMS when the Dead Sea was just sick, and now I go in and I'm excited to go to work, and everybody's like, Oh man, I can't believe we're at work again. And I'm like, Dude, I get to come to work. This is awesome.
Speaker 1 41:06
Everything feels like I can't believe I'm gonna say this fee, because you listen, you know I'm gonna I feel like I feel like a douche bag, and the words are still in the back of my throat. But everything feels like a gift at this point, right?
Randy 41:17
Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I try to be sympathetic to Phoebe and the fact that she was the rock star through all this, I just had to not die. She had to go and make sure that I didn't die, you know, even when I go to the ER now for something, she feels like she has to be there to make sure that they don't kill me by accident, you know, just
Speaker 1 41:36
Yeah, Phoebe. So we have this in common, like everything that went wrong for my mom I thought was because I didn't make the right decision.
Phoebe 41:44
Yeah, I don't necessarily feel that, but just keeping an eye, because I come from a medical education background, and I've worked with a lot of different clinicians over the years, I just feel like everybody makes mistakes, and nobody's perfect, and I don't have the bandwidth to allow the mistake to happen to him.
Speaker 1 42:03
Yeah, yeah. I mean, from the beginning, from when she was first sick, to, like, when we figured out what it was, then the steps you take afterwards, like, everything, like, gets it's always hindsight, like, right? Like, right? Like, there's something about that fight or flight that makes you see things as more, I don't know, doable than they might actually be. Like, I remember the first time I was with my mom in in the hospital, and I'm like, there's something seriously wrong with her. But they were like, oh, it's like, it's a, it's this, it's that, it's like, you know, it's all these things like, and you look back now and you think, like, well, she was this old. She was this was her situation. Like, nobody thought cancer. Then, like, we could just check, you know what I mean? And then, like, there was this time I took her to the emergency room, and we realized, you know, much later, that they imaged her without draining her bladder. First, they just couldn't see the cancer because they were because the bladder was so full, and then there were three weeks before we figured out to get back again. And like, you know, there's that party that's like, Did those three weeks cost her three years? Like, like, I don't know, you know, and maybe not like, I have no idea, but like, I don't know. It just comes back. It feels like once somebody's older and not even older, because Randy is a good example, right, man, like there's so much happening to you. You need someone helping you, right? Yeah, I'm assuming you feel like somebody put a pot over your head, hit you with a bat, took off the pot and went, do you want chemo? Right? How are you supposed to answer that, right? Well,
Randy 43:33
the other thing was going through the surgery and the amount of medications that I was on. What was it? Phoebe, at one point, I had like, 750 milligrams of morphine or something like that, in
Phoebe 43:47
a in a 20. No, it was not that much. It was 24 I don't remember the exact number, but yeah, I don't remember. In fairness
Scott Benner 43:54
to Randy, he was high, he wouldn't be able
Unknown Speaker 43:57
to remember. Yeah, he doesn't remember
Randy 43:58
any of it. Yeah, there were three days from the time that I went in to when I come out that I can't recall.
Speaker 1 44:05
Yeah, awesome, by the way, you finally get to try morphine in your life and you have cancer. I mean, it just what a bummer.
Randy 44:12
Yeah, my boss, who came down and took over for Phoebe to keep an eye on things so that she could get a break and go get a shower and stuff like that. She's like, you know, you never think that you ended up having to give one of your co workers a sponge bath. But here we are, and I'm like, what? Wait, that really happened. She's like, No, I'm just messing with you. I'm like, great mess with the guy that's high.
Speaker 1 44:32
Everyone you know, sponge you down while you were asleep. Awesome. She's Phoebe had
Unknown Speaker 44:38
a conga had a conga line. Yeah, Phoebe,
Speaker 1 44:40
maybe you are a little bit of pain in the ass. That was something there. It's awesome. I feel like I'm out of my depth even talking to you. Like, what should I be asking you guys about? You know what I mean? Like, what do you want to share with people?
Phoebe 44:53
Well, when I was listening to the podcast, actually, you had a call out for people that work in meta. Full education, which is when I originally sent the email to you. And I know that was a long time ago, but you are just so busy and hard to get a hold of. So
Speaker 1 45:08
on purpose makes me feel, uh, makes me feel important. No, no, you know, I just told somebody this the other day. Phoebe, I won't take you down this road too far, but the way I have it set up is if you have to sign up for something, and six months later do it, knowing that it'll take a further six months after that for anybody to hear it. Then when I turn this microphone on and you're here, you really want to do this, yeah, and that's how I make sure to get people who are really going to add something to the podcast. Because if it was just, like, if I just jumped on Instagram and I was like, Hey, who's not busy right now and wants to make a podcast 25 no nicks, would be like, I'll do it like, you know, and I believe I use nudnik Twice in an episode, but especially for you guys in Michigan, because, you know, like, three Jewish people, I think that must be crazier for you. You know what I mean? Like, I think making the process difficult makes the outcome better, yeah, for sure, yeah. So anyway, go ahead. I'm sorry.
Phoebe 45:59
Oh no, you're fine. So through the course of my life, I've had a lot of different jobs, and for a while, Randy actually the beginning of all Randy symptoms with his diagnosis of his pancreatic cancer, we're working at the same organization, but I was teaching new first responders and new em teas their craft, and I thought it was important to come on and kind of give that perspective from the caregivers side of things, so to speak. And I know you've had some other people on as well, but then also just to say how important it is to really speak up. And I know other people that have been on have talked a lot about just doing what the doctor said, and we talked before we even started today, about, you know, just doing what is told of you, but that's not always the best track. And certainly for Randy story, it's was absolutely the wrong thing to do, because the thing he didn't really tell you about is how much heartache and struggle in advocating for ourselves had to happen between his pan great Titus, which we still don't know why, although it's probably the pancreatic cancer, why he had that, you know, now three years ago or four years ago, they just said, oh geez, that we don't know why it happens. And then he started having all these symptoms, and like he had mentioned, you know, he just accepted it as a norm, and here I am at home banging my forehead against the wall saying, This can't be normal when you're spending, you know, three quarters of your day in the bathroom with abdominal pain, and then trying to talk to his care providers and his doctors and saying, Hey, we got to do something. And we had one GI doctor that he was seeing that started him on this. I don't even know what it was, but it was a suspension that he mixed up that was supposed to help with his diarrhea. He did it for a while, very religiously, and he went back and he was still having all the symptoms. And the doctors like, Well, gee, I don't know, just keep doing what you're doing. And it was so long and so laborious and so painful and emotional for us that it was tragic. And I just kept saying, This can't be it. This can't be this can't be the answer. Just keep doing what you're doing is not working. Nothing's changed. And so then, when we finally got the imaging results back with the pancreatic protocol recommendation, everything just kind of like we had taken forever to go, click, click, click, up the roller coaster Hill, and we were finally at the top of it, and then before we knew it, we were having surgery and had a diagnosis of cancer. And to your point, Scott, you know you go along every day, and all of a sudden, in the blink of an eye, it just switches,
Speaker 1 48:44
oh, that's like getting hit by a car, which also Randy knows about, like, yeah, yeah. It's terrible, like that. You have this experience in so many different ways, but of you know, like you're just moving along, doing your thing, and then all of a sudden, everything just changes,
Phoebe 49:01
yeah, blink of an eye changed. No kidding. Hey,
Speaker 1 49:04
this is gonna seem like a left turn, but you guys listen to the podcast your mom's house. No no. So I don't either like, I've heard it enough times. It's a comedian Tom Segar and his wife, who's also a comedian, Christina. Oh yeah, I've listened to him. Okay, so there's the opening of, I don't know anything about this. People who listen are probably like, I think it's probably a running joke in the podcast. But there's this, like, voice clip of somebody yelling, who is Randy? And I swear to God, for the last 51 minutes, I've got to fight that out of my head. While we're talking Randy's telling me about his gallbladder and his pancreas, and they're taking stuff out, tapioca pudding, eggs from fish. I don't know about like, just sounding like, goop in his pancreas. In the back of my head, there's this, there's this voice going, who is Randy? Is killing me. Like, not the same way cancer is trying to kill you, Randy. But you know what I mean? Like, you know. Right, right, right, right, right. Oh, my God. Anyway, cancer is a scourge. It's terrible. It is. Yeah, I can't tell you my beloved Philadelphia Eagles are going to the Super Bowl next week, as everyone knows, and I'm sure you're all happy for me. Thank you. And my brothers and I, we, none of us live in the same state. We have a group text that we use during the Eagles games. We've been very religious about it this year, texting back and forth with each other during the games, like, complaining about plays and like, why is he not under center? And, like, why you like, you know, stuff that, oh, stuff that, when it's happening, Arden goes, I can't believe you care about any of this, or think about any of this. And I'm like, my brother's making a good point. Like, I was like, but anyway, we get to the end of the game, the Eagles win. They're gonna go to the Super Bowl. And my middle brother, Brian, who my mom lived with at the end of her life for a bit, he's like, Oh, I'm sitting here like a bitch crying, because I the last time the Eagles, like this happened for the Eagles, like, mom was here and like, and I sat with her, and I watched the game. And then it brings the cancer thing up again, like, in everybody and that, we don't talk about it, but you know, everyone, like, just goes back through it all. Yeah, and if you're lucky enough, like, man Randy, I, you know, obviously I, if people listen like, I'm not religious, or I'd play for you, but like, I'll hold a good thought for you. If this all works out for you, you end up with a different perspective than other people have, which will be incredibly valuable for the rest of your life and for the people around you. But if it doesn't go your way, then it's all for freaking nothing, and it sucks, and then it's just you going through this shit, and there's nothing that anybody can say that'll it is just gonna be what it is, and you're gonna deal with it as best you can. Is that how it feels at times,
Randy 51:41
I guess. You know, I've got a pretty good perspective on things, you know, I'm 45 years old, you know, I've, I've outlived many things that have tried to kill me. To be that douche bag that you are every day is a gift, you know.
Speaker 1 51:57
So you already have, you have that perspective now, like now, I just, I'm saying, like me talking to you being, you know, I don't know, like, somewhat like Pollyanna about it, like I'd like you to live with that gift for decades. Oh, yeah, you know what I mean, and not just for you and just but because, like, what that knowledge will bring to you and how you'll be able to spread that to other people. And it's a, it's a very hard fought perspective. You deserve to be able to share it. I guess
Randy 52:23
I've actually had a couple of cancer patients that I transported, and I've got a new perspective. As far as like you were mentioning with your mom, and the bone pain, I can't even describe it to you, and how much it hurts babies heard me complain about it. I don't know. It's like everything is a giant ache. And it's like trying to explode is kind of the only way I can even fathom talking about it, is explaining to them what they're going to feel with some of the you know, if they're on either of the cancer regimens that I or the, sorry, the chemo regimens that I were on, you know, what they can expect, you know, and the importance of, you know, washing your hands. Don't let anybody touch your blood, because it's, it's basically like AIDS, I tell everybody, just think of it like you have AIDS. Don't let anybody touch your toothbrush, you know, keep your toothbrush in a different spot. Wash the toilet. Clorox wipes on the toilet seat and everything that flush toys. You talked
Speaker 1 53:25
earlier about anxiety that came with all this, like, has that gone away for you? Do you still have it?
Randy 53:30
I have it when I walk into that building. Now I have a new thing that we call scanxiety, because of all the MRIs and I've got to go get another pet scan and CTS and stuff like that, because you're always waiting for that other foot to drop when it comes to finding out, you know, if it's truly gone or not.
Speaker 1 53:51
Like a significantly worse version of getting your teeth cleaned? Yeah, I love getting
Randy 53:55
my teeth cleaned because I couldn't have it done while I was on chemo. Oh, I meant for people who are like, I'm
Speaker 1 53:59
definitely going to have a cafe. I'm going to get my teeth cleaned. To get my teeth cleaned out. I want to get my teeth cleaned because I'm gonna find out I have a cavity, like that whole family, yeah. PB, you know something you said earlier has been stuck with me the whole time, like it's been the only thing that's fought out the who is Randy in my head, when you said peer to peer, talking about people understanding your situation and how valuable it is. And then Randy basically just said the same thing, like, you know, like, I understand what that bone pain is like if somebody gets in that ambulance now, and I know they're going through chemo, I know they have that pain, and I know what it feels like, and I can be more, you know, a better servant to them in that situation through understanding. And then I just was mirroring it back in my head to the diabetes thing, because I stood in the shower this morning like repeating this thought in my head that I keep looking at all the conversations we have with people, and I keep doing this thing privately that I haven't figured out what to do with it yet, but like later, I'll take our conversation and I will feed it into like a. Into an AI model, and I'll ask it to pull out everything that Phoebe said that's valuable for people living with diabetes, everything that Randy said that'll be valuable for people who've had cancer, anything that I said that might have been helpful. What did Phoebe say the podcast did for her? And I get all this great feedback, and I'm looking at it, and I know there's a way to aggregate it and redeliver it to people to help them, but I can't keep it all in my head at the same time to figure out what that is. I'm standing in the shower and I'm like, I can't keep it all in my head. Like, why can't I wrap my head fully around what this is and how to red, disseminate it to people? And like, I'm like, I'm gonna figure it out. Because I want to leave a thing that people can go to and listen to or talk to, you know, ask questions of in the future, because I can see a world where, if you look at everything that happened to you Randy and everything that Phoebe had to stand in the background trying to figure out what's going on. And like, did that doctor just say something valuable or something stupid? Should I say yes to that or no to that? Like, if you had a prompt to go to, and you could go to that prompt and say, the doctor said this. Like, here's Randy's situation and here's everything it needs to know today, the doctor said this. What should I be agreeing with? What should I be leery of? Where do I have more questions? What are the pros and the cons of this? If you could have done that along the way, imagine how valuable that would have been. And now imagine if you had that for diabetes. I think there's a way to do that. I think there's a way to put a prompt on someone's phone or their computer where they can go to it and say, Hey, today I ate this. I did that. This happened. Here was the outcome. What should I have done differently? Yeah, and I think that those answers to those questions are in the conversations that we've all been having for the last decade.
Unknown Speaker 56:55
Yeah, I think you're onto it. I
Speaker 1 56:56
do too, but like, I'm not smart enough baby to, like, pull the whole thing together. It's just very frustrating because I feel like I'm standing in front of a puzzle and all the pieces are in front of me, and I can't figure out where to put them. And anyway, that's what I thought about in the shower today. Hopefully I remember to wash my hair. I think I did.
Randy 57:15
It's a puzzle which is a picture of grass, and you got to put all the pieces together.
Speaker 1 57:18
It's exactly how it feels. I know all of the pieces are here. I don't know how they go together, and I don't know how to redistribute them back to you as a picture. Like, that's the thing I'm trying. I'm gonna figure it out. It's and unless I, you know, wake up and I have, like, would you say, like, uh, pressure in my abdomen or whatever, unless something happens, I get hit by a car, you know? And then then you guys are all you're on your I did my best. It didn't work out. What do you want from me? I think I'm super close to it, like the idea. So anyway, the
Randy 57:55
very first podcast that I listened to you, Phoebe sent me, and that was a woman, I believe she was in Canada, and she was the first one that told us about type three diabetes, because she didn't have a pancreas either from the pancreatic cancer, yeah, and that's technically what I have, but it's just easier telling people that it's type one, because nobody knows about type 3c you
Speaker 1 58:19
know, other people have With 3c have said the same thing to me, like, like, it's just easier if I tell them I have type one diabetes, yeah. But they're also like, they seem worried that people who have type one through auto immune pathways will be insulted by that if they find out that that's not how it happened. I think that's a lot of like, you know, like, it's nice, but that just feels like people are too impacted by the Internet, if you know what I mean, oh yeah, no one's judging you. Just live your life. What have I not asked you that I should have both of you, please.
Phoebe 58:51
I think we covered everything that I wanted to talk about. I appreciate your time, and I hope somebody gets something out of this besides suckers and peeing in a cup. Well,
Speaker 1 59:03
Randy, anything that I've missed with you? I don't think so. Scott, I got a couple of questions for you. All right, Randy is Q A time. What are your questions?
Randy 59:10
How old was Arden, when, when she was diagnosed? And how old were you? Oh,
Speaker 1 59:14
that's interesting. I don't know how old I was. She was two. She had just turned two. She was probably sick on her second birthday, and we didn't know. It probably took us a couple more weeks after that to figure it out her birthday is in July, like we figured out at the very I know people are, some people really know the dates and the times, but like I end of August, I think we figured it out her birthday was, is July, 22 and but that's interesting. How old was I? I've never thought about it that way. So that was 2006 and I was born in 71 Okay, 8191 2001 2011 2000 Oh, I went past it. All right, yeah. 8191 2001 and then five more. I was 35 Five. Oh, my God, I was 35 No, that can't be right. I'm going to be 50 she's going to have diabetes for 20 years this summer, and this summer I'm going to be 54 so I guess I was 3034 Yeah, math, you know what I mean, yeah. So I was 34 and she was two. I'm a couple years older than my wife, so, okay, you were
Unknown Speaker 1:00:21
an adult when this all started going down, Randy, I'm not
Scott Benner 1:00:25
a adult today. I don't know what you're talking
Randy 1:00:29
about, but what I'm saying is you probably had a career going on at that point, and then you shifted, you know, and started doing all this research. How hard was it for you to do that?
Speaker 1 1:00:38
Randy, I was a stay at home. Dad, when that happened? Oh, really. Okay, I've been a stay at home, dad, since 2000 in January. I quit my job in January 2000 because my son was going to be born in February. Oh, okay, yeah, I haven't had to shave to be nice in front of people since for 25 years. It's awesome, by the way, none of you should have a job. Having a job sucks compared to not having a job. I just want to say that, but no, I was a really involved stay at home dad very, very involved. I used to joke all the time that I'm probably too overly shy of being able to give birth. I had this experience when my son was young. He was only, like, a year old. And I realized, like we'd made this decision, my wife was going to work, I was going to stay home. And I started realizing over that first year that she was having reactions to things that were very maternal, and my reactions weren't the same. And I thought, well, if my son's going to get robbed of those things from her, and she's being robbed of the experience. I'd be an absolute asshole if I didn't do my best to reproduce that experience for him and to share it with her. Like I just gave myself over to the process. Like, I don't know another way to say it, like, instead of being the person who was taking care of Cole, I tried to turn to the person who was raising Cole, if that makes sense, yeah. And so I did that for years, and then we decided to have Arden, and Arden popped out, and I was doing it again, like, you know, just going along. We were getting ready for a vacation. She was she had been sick recently, she had a Coxsackie virus, and then I went to visit my mom to say goodbye before vacation so she could see Arden for a couple minutes, like, on her lunch break or something like that. And afterwards, I took her out to the truck, and I changed her diaper, and her poop came out, but it was dry in these, like, I don't know, nickel size pellets, and I squeezed them, like, with, like, not with my hand, but through the diaper, and they crushed, like, uh, like, dusty. They were completely, completely dehydrated. And that got me to go back to the doctor. And he said, Oh my God. Like, she's still got Coxsackie. She shouldn't still have that. And I remember him saying, like, that doesn't never happen. You don't get Coxsackie. Get rid of it and get it back again. And then we went on vacation, and she, she was very thirsty. She had this giant drink in the car. And when we got to the vacation house, when I took her out of the car seat, I thought she had spilled the drink into her seat, because her I had to take the car seat out of the car and dump it out. It was that full. Oh, wow. And I thought she had taken this large drink and dumped it in there, but then when I dumped it out, I realized it was all like urine. And then over the next couple of days, while everybody else went to the beach, I stayed in the house with Arden, and I tried to take her out to the beach one day, and she stood in the surf and just stared. And I thought, like she looks like she's dead. Then later that night, we tried to take her out in kind of the nighttime air, she did the same thing. And probably 1112, one o'clock in the morning, everybody on this family vacation was up playing board games. I yelled across the room to my wife that I forgot to tell her that Arden's breath smelled weird to me that day. And she asked me how, and I said, I don't know it was like fruity or metallic. And then my wife's face just dropped off her skull, and she's like, she has diabetes. Then it just all kind of started from there. And then I became a stay at home dad to a kid and a kid with diabetes. Probably a year later, I started writing a blog. I just wrote the blog because I was trying to raise money for the JDRF, and I had gone so poorly that I thought, Oh, I'll use a blog to, like, get the information out. Because I was emailing people stuff. I was, like, nudging people through email and being like, you should donate to this. And here's why I learned about blogging, which was not a thing back then. I did that for a number of years. 2007 a blog was really popular for a long time. I think it was like 2013 I got a book deal to write about being a stay at home dad, and on that book tour, Katie Kirk told me I was good at talking to people. And so like a year later, when I really thought blogging was done, it was dead, as far as I could tell. Yeah, I thought, well, I'm helping people like, and this blog's gonna stop, and it's not gonna help people anymore. So I started a podcast because Katie Kirk told me I was good at talking to people. Oh, yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. Now this is its 11th year, so that's kind of the process that gets you to Phoebe going like, I found that podcast was really helpful. Yeah, which is why, when someone says it like that, you think, Oh, I wish they had all the context of how it's just here, you know what? I mean, like to do the thing, to do the thing for them. But in the end, it doesn't matter, like, as long as it helps, it helps. Oh yeah, yeah. That's it. Other questions, Randy,
Randy 1:05:35
how did you guys feel with your mom going through cancer?
Speaker 1 1:05:39
Oh, wow. Initially, like I said, it felt terrible that we just didn't figure it out fast enough. And then once we figured it out, I think my first takeaway was that how much her age mattered now, like before, she was just getting older, right? And getting older was part of being older, and she issues in her 80s, and it was like, it just is what it is. But when you have to fight cancer and you're 80, it's different, you know, like all of a sudden, like, what you aren't physically is super important. At some point, nobody wanted to help her. And I remember the helpless feeling that no one was going to help her, that she was just going to go into hospice and die, yeah. And then it just hit me one day, my neighbor's kid was a surgeon now, and so I texted him, and I told him what was going on, and I asked him if he knew anybody. And he went to medical school with a girl who ended up working in oncology. So he texted a friend and and said, Hey, my parents, neighbors, mother is in this situation. You think your guy would see him see his mom for us. And she's like, Yeah, cool. So I just got a favor. I got a text favor. And took my mom to the surgeon. He did all the looking at her, and he came into a room and he said, Bev like, if we don't do anything, you're going to be dead in a few months. And if we do something, you might live longer. I don't know. She's like, I don't know. He's like, you could die during surgery. Like, I have no idea. And my mom said, If I'm going to go down, I'm going to go down swinging, she said, in the room, and we set the surgery up. My brothers came in and it was COVID, so we basically had to walk into a hospital and, like, shove my mom forward in a wheelchair. Like, hope somebody came and got her, yeah, and then we went and sat in a diner and just ate breakfast and waited to hear that my mom died during surgery, because that's what it felt like was going to happen. And then she woke up and did exceedingly well. Went through chemo. Things were going great. She completed her task. She wanted to move out to Wisconsin to live the end of my my brother lived in Wisconsin for years, and she'd been around me and my other brother for so long. She's like, you know, this is the end of my life. I want to go like, be around Brian now. So she went out there with him and like, you know, it wasn't like a full year later, but we were all out there and she was dying. It just the cancer just came back. And, you know, the only good thing I can tell you, Randy, is that it came back so fast and furiously that she didn't know she had cancer again. I'm happy my mom passed away, not knowing that her cancer came back. Yeah, so, you know, because it was just, it was a lot to hear the first time. You know, anyway, you're a bummer. Randy with your questions, what else you got? I got
Randy 1:08:31
one last question for you. Go ahead. How do you feel? How do you think Jason Kelsey is feeling about this? Oh, if he retired too soon or not, you
Speaker 1 1:08:39
know, so in my house all week, we kept saying, like, can they just sign him for a game? Like, like, you know what I mean? Like, he, like, he won't play, but like, he just put him on the roster so he can get a ring, you know? And, um, and not only that, but both our, like, our centers hurt, and so the backup got hurt. And, like, I'm sure they'll be already two weeks from now. But like, there's a legitimate like, Could you maybe, if we just needed you for five or six downs here or there? Could you be ready? I'm sure it would kill him. He probably you can't stop and start playing professional football at those positions, right? Right? I don't know. Man, his life looks pretty good to me. I can't imagine he regrets anything. But once the push comes to shove, though, and the games happen, and I don't know how you do something like that and don't miss it every time you have to look at it, you know what I mean, like, what? How would you feel if, like, the if those people told you, like, don't ride that in that rig anymore, and then an ambulance went by, you'd be like, Oh, I missed doing that, you know? Yeah. So, yeah, I don't know. Man, I do believe this. I believe he's going to root for the Eagles during the Super Bowl, as we all should. Yep, yep. You
Randy 1:09:43
think people hate the Eagles? I don't think so. No,
Speaker 1 1:09:47
you should let try be an Eagles fan. It's awesome. Yeah, it does look like it, dude. It's so much fun to be from Philadelphia and just not care about what people think and yell and scream about football for a couple hours every once in a while. You guys are in Michigan. What do you have? Like College, lions, oh, yeah, that didn't work out at all. Right, we've got the wings. What do they say out there? They say, what the injuries, right? We would have been there, but it's the injuries. Yeah, you think that's true. We'll
Randy 1:10:14
get it next year. Next year is our year. That's what we say every year,
Speaker 1 1:10:18
dude, I listen. I gotta be honest with you, when I was a kid growing up, the lions were the patsies that showed up on Thanksgiving for the Cowboys to kick the shit out of Yep. So you guys have come a long way, honestly, yeah,
Randy 1:10:29
yeah. Then, you know, we have the Green Bay rivalry that we've always had. I
Speaker 1 1:10:36
will say this. I'm not usually critical of other people's decisions, because they figure it's hard to be anybody, but having a position player throw a pass at that part of the game when it's on the line didn't make any sense to me at all. No, it just was. It's just a bridge too far, like now it's not a time for a trick play. Now's the time for getting a couple of yards and keeping going. So anyway, Phoebe's like, I don't care about any of this, right? Lions
Phoebe 1:11:03
go Lions go lions. You've been
Scott Benner 1:11:07
told to say that
Unknown Speaker 1:11:11
dedication they lose every year, but we still like them.
Speaker 1 1:11:14
Yeah, listen, it's fun. We were sitting watching the game last week, and Arden goes, I'm watching like she looked up, and she goes, I don't understand anything that's happening. And I was like, not at all. I'm like, sit here for a couple hours, like, we'll explain it to you. She goes, No, thank you. So anyway, all right, you guys are terrific. Hold on, one second for me. Okay, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1 1:11:42
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Speaker 1 1:12:44
I can't thank you enough for listening. Please make sure you're subscribed, you're following in your audio app. I'll be back tomorrow with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast. My grand rounds. Series was designed by listeners to tell doctors what they need, and it also helps you to understand what to ask for. There's a mental wellness series that addresses the emotional side of diabetes and practical ways to stay balanced. And when we talk about GLP medications, well, we'll break down what they are, how they may help you, and if they fit into your diabetes management plan. What do these three things have in common? They're all available at Juicebox, podcast.com, up in the menu. I know it can be hard to find these things in a podcast app, so we've collected them all for you at Juicebox podcast.com, the episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording, wrongway recording.com. You.
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