#1541 Paisley Park

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A 5-year-old with T1D and her life-saving, tail-wagging hero—meet Tracker, Paisley's diabetes alert dog.

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

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends and welcome back to another episode of The Juicebox Podcast.

Shelby 0:15
I am Shelby Landreth. I am the mom to a five year old type one diabetes little girl named Paisley, and we are just riding this diabetes roller coaster one day at a time. If

Scott Benner 0:28
this is your first time listening to the Juicebox Podcast and you'd like to hear more, download Apple podcasts or Spotify, really, any audio app at all, look for the Juicebox Podcast and follow or subscribe, we put out new content every day that you'll enjoy. Want to learn more about your diabetes management. Go to Juicebox podcast.com. Up in the menu and look for bold beginnings, the diabetes Pro Tip series and much more. This podcast is full of collections and series of information that will help you to live better with insulin, nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan. The episode you're 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 Today's episode is sponsored by the tandem mobi system with control iq plus Technology, if you are looking for the only system with auto Bolus, multiple wear options and full control from your personal iPhone, you're looking for tandems, newest pump and algorithm, use my link to support the podcast, tandem diabetes.com/juicebox, check it out. I'm having an on body vibe alert. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by ever since 365 the only one year where CGM, that's one insertion and one CGM a year, one CGM one year, not every 10 or 14 days ever since cgm.com/juicebox

Shelby 2:20
I am Shelby Landreth. I am the mom to a five year old type one diabetes little girl named Paisley, and we are just riding this diabetes roller coaster one day at a time. Paisley, yes,

Scott Benner 2:33
oh, is that a there's no way that this is a prince reference, right?

Shelby 2:38
No, no. I fell in love with the name Paisley years and years ago, and whenever we were coming up with names for my daughter, my husband's middle name is Lee, and so it just kind of fit the whole family name type thing, Paisley.

Scott Benner 2:52
Oh, I like that. That's awesome. She was how old when she was diagnosed? She

Shelby 2:56
was three. Just turned three. It's just been a couple of years. Yeah, yeah, just a couple years in, it feels like it's been a lifetime. Though, any other kids? Yes, we have two other children. We have a one year old, her name is Everly, and then we have a 12 year old little boy whose name is Easton.

Scott Benner 3:15
Is this your second marriage? No, no, you just have a 12 year old and a five year old. Well,

Shelby 3:19
my 12 year old is my step son, okay? He is from a previous relationship of

Scott Benner 3:24
my husband. Got you that makes more sense, because I was like, yeah. I've said this to people before, but it nobody has a 12 as a 12 year old and is like, you know, five years later, like, you know, we should do,

Shelby 3:36
right, right? Well, he was, he was one of those children that was had at a very young age, yeah, so there was an obvious age gap there. Okay,

Scott Benner 3:43
you're a stepmom, damn. Or how long have you been with him his whole life? For how long since he was three? Wow. Okay, you probably don't think of yourself even as a stepmo. Then I would imagine most of the time

Shelby 3:55
it's all a team effort, right? It takes a village. I just

Scott Benner 3:58
heard Shelby say, sometimes it gets to the point where I go, Hey, I don't know if you remember or not, but yeah, why don't you get this one? Right?

Shelby 4:06
It's a juggling battle between all of us, especially at that age where they just start to get a little rebellious, that they start to really try to push their limits. It's just like, Who wants to take this

Scott Benner 4:19
one? Oh yeah. The male hormones are coming now you're gonna, oh yeah, this battle runs to like 20 Middle School. All of it, it's gonna be fun. Okay, so you have two little girls. Does your husband his family line, or you and your family line have other autoimmune issues? I

Shelby 4:35
have a grandmother who has an autoimmune disease. She has rheumatoid arthritis. But as far as diabetes go, there is no family history on either side. We have some non blood relatives on my mother's side that have a family line of type one, but they're not blood relatives.

Scott Benner 4:52
So your grandmother with the RA is the one who has something autoimmune, yeah. Okay, so then I get. You weren't looking for type one. So how did it present itself?

Shelby 5:02
It was the biggest whirlwind, not anything that we ever expected. Kind of hit itself. Honestly, I have a lot of medical background, and so I should have known the things to look for in hindsight. But you know that Mom Brain, medical brain, they don't work hand in hand. She had actually had an incident. We had just started gymnastics classes, and I was getting her ready for class, and she's like, I gotta go the bathroom. And I was like, Okay, we'll go to the bathroom. And she slipped and fell, and I didn't see her, you know, hit her head or anything like that. She kind of complained with her hip hurting and her arm. She ended up calming down like any three year old would. And we went off to class that day, and we came home, and about 10 o'clock that night, she started throwing up, and light sensitivity seemed like a concussion. So that was probably the first time I ever saw diabetes symptoms. But didn't know yet that it was diabetes. I took her to the ER and they're like, yeah, she's got a concussion. Here's a list of concussion symptoms to watch out for over the next few weeks. If you see these, don't really be alarmed. Scott, I don't know if you believe it or not, but 90% of those things on that list were type one diabetes signs and symptoms. So for two weeks, we were going, okay, she's got a concussion. That's why she's peeing out of pull ups left and right, and I'm having to change them two or three times in the middle of the night. That's why she's drinking so much. That's why she's confused enough to I remember vividly one day we were sitting on the couch, and she went to take a sip of her drink, and instead of putting it to her mouth, she literally just dumped it over her head. Oh my gosh. And I'm like, What are you doing? And she's like, I don't know. I don't know what I was doing. And I'm like, that's scary. Just

Scott Benner 6:41
super, super drawn to the idea of, like, I'm dehydrated, yeah, yeah.

Shelby 6:47
And I didn't really notice the whole losing weight or anything like that at the time, but like, two weeks later, she seemed like she was kind of starting to get over the whole concussion thing. And we had a family trip planned to Atlanta. We're big Braves fans, so we were going to watch a Braves game. We went out there for the day. She was like any other normal three year old. She was a little more tired, but I mean, what three year old that's thrown into an MLB ball game for the entire day is not going to take an extra nap? Okay? Totally fine. And then that night, we had gotten in really, really late. So of course, everybody's tired, and we got up the next morning to come home, and she didn't want to wake up. Okay? Like, I'm like, hey, you've got to get up. We've got to get dressed. And I'm setting her on the toilet, and she is falling asleep on the toilet, and she just starts saying things that don't really make any sense, like, just three words out of the air. And I'm like, What is going on? You know? This, this makes no sense. You're usually, like, the most verbal, well put together kid. And then I noticed she's super pale, and she just wanted to lay on the couch and basically not move. Like she looked like a sheet of paper that white. And I was just like, something's not right. So we thought, Well, maybe if we get some food in her, like, Let's go sit down, have some breakfast before we leave, maybe once we get her to eat and drink a little something, she'll perk up. Maybe she's just really worn out from the day before. And when I say, my kid loves to eat, Scott, this kid never missed a meal. Okay? This kid laid in the booth at the breakfast place that we went and did not move. She would not drink anything. She would not eat anything. She just laid there, and that's when I was like, I'm calling the pediatrician, because something's not right. And in my head, she had just fallen and gotten this concussion. So my mom brain starts saying, like, hey, what if? What if there was, like, some kind of, like, brain injury, or small brain bleed or something that got missed? This

Scott Benner 8:36
is what I'm wondering. Like, where did your mind go when she's out of it? She's babbling that kind of stuff. I thought she

Shelby 8:41
had some kind of, like, brain bleed or something that they missed, and it just took this long to, like, build up and cause a big problem. Interesting. You know, I call her pediatrician, and she's like, No, she definitely needs to go be seen as soon as possible. And I'm like, Well, we're five hours away from home. Like, do I take her here, or do I try to make it home? And they're like, you could try to make it home. And she she might be okay, but if you see any other symptoms, she needs to go the nearest er, we're like, okay, so we immediately load up to head home. And Scott, we didn't make it 10 minutes. We didn't make it 10 minutes down the road, and she started, it looked like the life was leaving her. She started throwing up in the backseat, couldn't hold her head up, and we took her straight to the ER and and I had smelled the ketones that morning when I took her to the bathroom, and I kept telling myself, my medical brain knows that smell, but I can't place it. I could not place it for anything. And we walked into the emergency room, and they saw her, and immediately took her straight to the back, like there was no sitting in the waiting room, no getting medical information, just straight to the back. And they asked, you know, had you been seeing? You know, more wet, you know more pain than usual. Have you been seeing, you know, headaches and all this? And I'm like, Well, yeah, she's had a contour. Contourion for two weeks. Of course, I've been seeing that that's all on my concussion list, and then they put her on a scale, and that's what really clicked for me. They put her on a scale, and they said she's 22 pounds.

Scott Benner 10:10
And how much? How much do you feel like she well, how much did she lose? She

Shelby 10:14
lost a 10th of her body weight. Yeah, for such a small

Scott Benner 10:17
person, that's a lot in two weeks.

Shelby 10:19
Yeah, two weeks before, when we were at the ER, they said she was 33 pounds, yeah,

Scott Benner 10:23
yeah. Jeez, that's crazy. Also, like, you know, kids gain weight, they just don't really lose weight at that age, yeah, normally,

Shelby 10:29
yeah. And not that fast. I said, your scales wrong. And they're like, No, it's not. And I'm like, No. Two weeks ago, she was 33 pounds, and they're like, oh no. And so I guess to them, they were already putting together the pieces, and they put us in a room. And I will never forget, within just a couple minutes, a doctor walks in, looks at my kid, who's just lifeless on the bed, and says, Can I smell your breath? And he leans down and smells her breath. And at that moment, I my medical brain finally kind of kicked in and overrode My Mom Brain. And I knew what he was doing. My heart just kind of sank, yeah, and because I knew at that point my all my pieces started to connect, I finally remembered that smell, and I knew what he was doing. And he looked he smelled her breath, and he looked at us, and he said, Your daughter is a type one diabetic, and she's in DKA like that. Yeah, he knew nothing of any of this. He didn't even hardly know what diabetes was at the time. And he looked at me and just gave me this puzzled look. And I looked at the doctor, and I said, Okay. I said, I'm not in denial. I said, I can accept that, because I know what she I it all clicks for me now, but I still want you to check her head make sure there's nothing going on, because that's that's what first came to my mind. And I know she had this concussion, which, in hindsight, was the fall. Probably all came from a low blood

Scott Benner 11:44
sugar. Did she just got woozy somehow and fell? Yeah,

Shelby 11:49
yeah. I think she may, you know, she may have had a blood sugar, low blood sugar, and stood up too fast and ended up falling. And nobody knew at the time. You know, we just thought she slipped on the floor.

Scott Benner 11:58
What's the time frame between? It's two weeks from the fall to the diagnosis, two weeks, yeah, two weeks prior to the fall. With hindsight, was there anything going on that you now see that? Oh, I do remember these other things. Or was the fall the first 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 a 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. This episode is sponsored by tandem Diabetes Care, and today I'm going to tell you about tandems, newest pump and algorithm, the tandem mobi system with control iq plus technology features auto Bolus which can cover missed meal boluses and help prevent hyperglycemia. It has a dedicated sleep activity setting and is controlled from your personal iPhone. Tandem will help you to check your benefits today through my link, tandem diabetes.com/juicebox, this is going to help you to get started with tandem, smallest pump yet that's powered by its best algorithm ever control iq plus technology helps to keep blood sugars in range by predicting glucose levels 30 minutes ahead, and it adjusts insulin accordingly. You can wear the tandem Moby in a number of ways. Wear it on body with a patch like adhesive sleeve that is sold separately. Clip it discreetly to your clothing or slip it into your pocket head. Now to my link, tandem diabetes.com/juicebox, to check out your benefits and get started today. I

Shelby 14:25
mean, I remember the the typical, like, all the constant having to pee, but, I mean, at three years old, they they always have to pee all the time. It's hard to tell Yeah, you know, like it didn't, it seems super over, overly much, but in hindsight, I mean, it probably was, you know, I mean, think about it, the last time I had a three year old was, you know, like, six years before, yeah, right, right. And I was the last time I had a three year old around. So I just thought, Well, man, she's just three years old and has a tiny bladder. Kid pees

Scott Benner 14:54
a lot. I actually have a puppy here that seems to have a tiny butter.

Shelby 14:58
I mean, she's drinking, she. Eating. She's growing. She's fine. And she was a very active kid. So it's not like she was just laying around the house sluggish. I mean, she was out running around, playing, not eating, nothing. Yeah, so nothing really struck me odd, until, until it all started to kind of set in, and she ended up in DK, and that's when everything started to click, and they checked her blood sugar, and it was like over 650 and at the time her a 1c was 11.7 and we got admitted into a hospital five hours from home with our little bitty girl.

Scott Benner 15:32
Did you have the baby at that point? Or were you pregnant? No,

Shelby 15:36
I did not have her yet. That was actually like, that was in October. That was I could have been pregnant and didn't know it okay, because I found out that I was pregnant Thanksgiving Day. She was diagnosed, October 2, so I was either it was either right before I got pregnant, or I could have possibly been pregnant and not known it yet.

Scott Benner 15:55
So what was that like? Just that shortly removed from the diagnosis, finding out you were pregnant, terrifying, I would imagine,

Shelby 16:03
absolutely terrifying. Prior to diagnosis, we were, you know, all on board. We were like, hey, you know, I think we're ready to have another one. And, you know, be able to give her somebody to play with and grow up with and all that kind of stuff. We knew we wanted more kids. And then just the time frame. So actually, what also got thrown on top of it was, I was scheduled to have an unknown mass cut out of my back. Oh, my God, around the same time. Yes, jeez, it was, yeah, I they, we had found a mask back in July. Didn't really know what it was. They didn't think it was anything, but you never know. And we were going on this trip to Atlanta, and we're supposed to come back and like, within that next week, I was supposed to have surgery to have the mass removed and find out, you know, what we were dealing with. What did that end up being? It ended up being the day after we got out of the hospital, we literally left Atlanta, drove home, slept a few hours, and I had surgery the following

Scott Benner 16:57
morning, and when they removed it, what did they find? Um, they found

Shelby 17:01
out it was some really rare like fibroma or something. It was nothing to be worried about. It was not cancerous or anything like that. It was just some kind of super weird, something that a doctor had never seen. How big was it? I don't know. I mean, it was like I had a knot, probably the size of, like, a quarter, okay, right in my back. It was causing some pain, but So thankfully, it ended up being nothing. But you have to remember, like we got trapped in Atlanta. We live in North Alabama, so we got trapped in Atlanta for three days. We were there three or four days trying to learn everything. Diabetes got thrown into this whole diagnosis. Our kid was just in DKA. We thought we were going to lose her, and we're trying to take in all this information. Have this tiny human that now we have to give shots to, and we have to give the right amount and not mess it up. And we come home, and the next morning, you know, I'm I'm going to find out what my fate is, yeah, and I had to tell my husband. I was like, I'm not going like, I'm not leaving her for any amount of time. He's like, I've got her. She'll be okay. It's just a couple of hours. It's an outpatient thing. You'll be home. I remember they took me back for surgery, and they put me in this room, and I just like, that's I had been strong for so long while we were in the hospital, taking it all in. But that's when I broke by yourself, in that room by myself. It was quiet, and I just that's when I started to process and kind of like grieve the whole situation. And they were like, are you so upset about your surgery? Are you that nervous? Do you want us to give you something? And I'm like, no, like, it has nothing. Yeah, I'm not

Scott Benner 18:31
nervous about the surgery, but I would take the something. What is the something you have? Actually,

Shelby 18:35
I told them no, like, no. I was like, I don't want anything. Like, I need to feel this, and I need to grieve this, and I need to have my moment. Because if I don't have my moment now, while I'm alone, when I leave here, I don't need these feelings to hit me on top of everything else, yeah, like, because I I have this tiny human that I have to be strong for.

Scott Benner 18:55
Yeah, yeah. Were you asleep for the surgery, or was it like a local anesthetic and they cut it out? No, no, I was, I was put under, you were under, okay, see, I'm just trying to imagine, I put myself back in, in the time of Arden's diagnosis. If you would have, like, asked me if I wanted to move our sofa to a different wall, I would have been like, that is too much to think about right now. And, you know, like, just to get this, you know, the mass removed, and then probably about the time that you're like, Oh, this is healed, somebody's like, You're pregnant. Like, awesome, yeah. It's

Shelby 19:23
like, okay, so now I have a kid that I'm still trying to learn how to keep alive, and now I'm going to go through pregnancy and they, you know, heat of the summer, still learning how to live this life. And now we're going to bring another one in. Yeah, no, I bet you that felt like a lot crazy, well, and it got even crazier, Scott, well, before

Scott Benner 19:40
you tell me that it got crazier, how are you managing the diabetes at that point? Is it MDI? Do you have a CGM Is it a pump like, what are you doing

Shelby 19:46
there? MDI until Christmas. Okay, so she was diagnosed in October. We were MDI until just before Christmas, we got on the Omnipod five.

Scott Benner 19:57
Okay, all right, so pretty quickly do a nice algorithm. That helps you, and you've got a CGM, that's great. What do you mean? It gets crazier after that. Did the dog, like, start talking? What happened?

Shelby 20:07
So for almost, almost, you're pretty close.

Scott Benner 20:09
Listen, if I'm pretty close, actually,

Shelby 20:12
like, when you talk about CGM, I wouldn't I refuse to leave the hospital without a prescription for a CGM. Good. They didn't want to give me one because they're like, We don't want to stress you out and you to freak out need to freak out over high blood sugars. Like, that's going to be normal. And I'm like, No, I'm not leaving

Scott Benner 20:26
without one. Wait, how did you know that? How did you know to say that?

Shelby 20:29
Like I said, I have some some distant relatives that are not blood relatives, that are type one. And so she was my first call after I kind of had a minute to process and get her settled in the hospital. I was like, Hey, your son, you know, you have type one diabetes. Your son has type one diabetes. And he was diagnosed. Little like, what am I supposed to do? Like, I'm alone in this whole new world, and I don't know what to do. And she was like, first off, you need to calm down,

Scott Benner 20:54
Shelby. How come ladies are allowed to tell each other to calm down, but when I tell a lady to calm down, it all goes wrong. How's that possible?

Shelby 21:00
Well, because this was one of those people that knew what I was going through, and she did this whenever there, when her son was diagnosed, like there were no CGM, there were no pumps, like she did this the old school way. I'm

Scott Benner 21:14
just going to tell you that when I tell my wife to calm down, I know what's going on too, and it doesn't

Shelby 21:19
seem to matter. So yeah, she's like, you gotta calm down and, you know, it's going to be okay. Like this. This is not like, yes, this was really, really bad, and it's a blessing that it got caught when it did, but it's uphill from here. You know, there's a lot to learn, but you know, I'm here for you, we're going to get through it. And you know, she's like, You need to ask for a Dexcom, you know, before you leave, so that you can know what her blood sugars are, because she's so little and can't really tell you, you know, how she feels and what's going on. And they were like, well, you're not going to find a pharmacy that has one. I said, Well, I got a five hour ride home. I'll find one between here and there. I'll find one somewhere. Yeah, and I did, and I did. I found one before I made it home. What were

Scott Benner 22:01
you calling ahead? As you were driving, I was calling ahead,

Shelby 22:04
and I thankfully one one in our hometown already had one. And so like I was already getting all the prescriptions sent to the pharmacy, everything ready, so that as soon as we got into town, we could pick everything up, nice, which was also a reality check whenever I leave a three day hospital stay, and then come home to pick up my newly diagnosed daughter's prescriptions, and they tell me it's over $1,000 to keep my kid alive.

Scott Benner 22:28
Listen, if you bought food at a at a Braves game, you you must have some money.

Shelby 22:33
So, yeah, it was definitely a like, whoa, hold on, what's going

Scott Benner 22:37
on? I mean, listen, I made fun, but it's a pretty goddamn big shock when you start seeing the bills, and you know what I mean, it's like, Whoa. What's happening? How come? And I love the first the first January you're out of pocket resets, and you're paying, like, cash for everything, and it's all in the first month. And then people are like, Oh, how long does it take you to meet your deductible? I'm like, like, a week and a half. Like, how long does it take to take you?

Shelby 22:59
That's the first question you ask if you ever have to change insurances, what's that deductible? Because that's what I'm gonna hit that what's

Scott Benner 23:06
my out of pocket? Because basically that's how much money I need in January. That's how I always think about it. Because, you know, you order, you order pumps, or CGM or so other supplies, and it's all just like, you're like, okay, here. And then, it's terrible. Go ahead, I'm sorry, but

Shelby 23:23
yeah, so you asked how it got crazier? Yeah, so we got through diagnosis. We got through that Christmas and coming up on summer, you know, we had heard about diabetic alert dogs. PAISLEY had been watching it. You know, what do we do whenever we have this new diagnosis in today's world where social media is so accessible, you go there to learn, you're like, hey, I don't know what to do, so let me go to social media and see what all these other people are doing. Or how do I fix this, that and the other and Juicebox was amazing for us back then, that literally got us through so much. But Tiktok became a big thing for us too, and Paisley started finding this community very quickly, and diagnosis of other kids on Tiktok because she just didn't have kids here. So it started off with her like, Hey, I see them giving their own injections, and I see them putting on pump sites. And it became an outlet for her to make videos and post them so that other people could see her doing it. Yeah, but it became a bargaining tool of like, Hey, I will put on this device if you'll record it and put it on Tiktok for me, okay? And literally, two weeks after diagnosis, she was three years old, giving her own insulin injections because she was like, I can do this. I see all these other people I can do this. So Tiktok kind of became a thing that we were going to to learn. And she found about about service dogs. And she's like, Mom, I really want a service dog. And I'm like, I know you would love, I would love for you to have a service dog, because blood sugars of 30 while you're upstairs, bouncing around and have no idea, you know. And if Dexcom is wrong, those are scary. It'd be nice to have a dog around to let me know. That kind of thing you. But I mean the cost, they're just so expensive. And where do you even start? You know, I think that's everybody's thing. It's just, where do you even start that journey? And my husband, we run a plumbing company, I

Scott Benner 25:10
want to agree with you. You've taken a big risk, because, you know, there's companies that probably do a great job, there's companies that probably do a terrible job with, you know, training service dogs. There's probably companies that aren't certified that are out there trying to take people's money. I've seen wildly different versions of the cost of these animals, yep, you know. And I've had people on that have trained their own dog, and I'm like, Well, you know, so you took the dog you had in your house and trained them. And I'm sure every dog is not right for it, and the training is not easy, but it's a weird thing to think, like somebody might ask you for $15,000 for something that, like another person was like, oh, yeah, I did that myself. Like, it's, it's a very wide, I guess, list of possibilities. And how do you know where to jump in? And, I mean, what if you don't have that money? And and you decide, like, this is a thing we really, really need. So anyway, I'm sorry you were starting to say you have a plumbing company.

Shelby 26:04
Yeah. So this is, that's exactly kind of where I was at. Was like, I mean, this would be amazing for you and for our family, and, you know, I definitely think it's something worth setting up, maybe a five year plan for, because obviously that cost is just not something that anybody can just really say, Here you go, and there's a lot of research, and a lot of people have wait lists, and, like you said, trying to find the right company that's going to get you exactly what you want for your money. And, you know, finding a company that's going to give you a dog that's going to work. I mean, there's a lot of stories out there of, you know, service dog dropouts. You know, they didn't make it

Scott Benner 26:39
really like you like you bought a service dog, and your blood sugar gets on it looks at you and goes, I'm not involved in this. God.

Shelby 26:45
I actually have a very good friend of mine who started her service dog journey, ended up with a dog who was a washout. He he did not perform up to par, and she ended up doing the journey all over again. And now she has, she did it with another company, and now has an amazing service dog, but she

Scott Benner 27:03
doesn't have that money from the first time. Yeah,

Shelby 27:07
no, does not have that money. Still has the pet. He is now like a house pet, and he loves his life as a house pet, but, yeah, I mean, it happens.

Scott Benner 27:17
I guess got to be frustrated. I listen. I love my dog, but if you told me my dog was absolutely 100% going to percent gonna do a thing and then I got it, I'd look at it every day and go, like, yeah, he don't do that thing. They said it was gonna be hard to swallow. I'm walking around here with a $300 dog that I paid $15,000 for.

Shelby 27:35
Yeah, yeah. I still, I mean, she has some incredible stories to tell, but so that was kind of my thing. Was like, let's put it on a five year plan. Okay, you know what happens when you do things like that? Scott,

Scott Benner 27:46
I mean, listen, I'm very segmented person. If I had a five year plan, it would take me five years to do it. But what happened to you? I'm guessing that you use that energy of I'll find the CGM on the way home and move things up a little

Shelby 27:58
bit. It It wasn't me, it wasn't me. It was a it was it was one of these things that was known to be very needed and very helpful for us. And I, when I say this, I mean it's so quite literally, that doors just started opening for us. It was like, Hey, here's your thing for today. Here's the door open, walk through it and see what happens next. And it was just like, God just started opening one door after the next. And the process set up

Scott Benner 28:29
so fast. Opportunities started popping up, things that you were like, if I do this, it'll get us there quicker.

Shelby 28:34
Well, so my why was going to say we own a plumbing company, and my husband, ironically, just went out on a job to fix somebody's kitchen sink. And they were so thankful to have him come out and fix that sink. And she tells me, to this day, and he got out there and got to talking to him, and they had a truck in the driveway that said dog training elite. And they were telling him, you know, yeah, we train dogs, this, that and the other. And he's like, Oh, that's cool. And then they mentioned that they had a service dog themselves. And he's like, Oh, that's awesome. You know, my daughter's a type one diabetic, and we've really thought about getting a service dog. And they're like, well, guess what? You're in luck. We train service dog. He's like, you do? Can you train like a diabetic alert dog? And they're like, yeah, absolutely. And there became our new best friends. So they're like, yeah, let's get you the number to our you know, if you you can bring your own dog, if you have one. And we're like, yeah, the dog we have is not, nowhere near equipped.

Scott Benner 29:22
Not happening. The one we have doesn't seem interested. But thank you.

Shelby 29:26
Not even no he was. He was a mess, to say the least, the

Scott Benner 29:32
pet you had previously, yeah,

Shelby 29:33
he was, he was one of those that would probably run out the door and you were worried what was going to happen next. You know, he would never like physically hurt someone, but he would definitely make them think so. So public access would have been no option.

Scott Benner 29:46
I don't know if my blood sugar is low or if this dog wants to rip my arm off. I can't seem to tell Right, right. Okay, so not a good option. That dog

Shelby 29:53
not a good option. So they're like, we can put you in touch with a breeder that we know that we've used several times and so. I called her, and she's like, Yeah, but we just had a litter not too long ago, and we're gonna skip this litter that we would normally have. So it'll probably be, like, a year, year and a half before we have another litter. And I'm like, Okay, well, you know, that's not terrible. You know, that gives us some time to, like, figure out financially, what we're going to do, fundraising, that kind of thing. And you know, you still got some time after you get the actual puppy, before things start really ramping up. And so I'm like, All right, well, let's, let's plan on that. Well, I get a call in about six weeks. Hey, so remember that litter we weren't going to have? Well, she accidentally got pregnant, so now we're going to have a litter now, and we're not going to have the litter in a year. We're going to have to skip so either you get your puppy now or it's going to be, like, a lot longer before you get a puppy. And so we were faced with this, like, do we go ahead at the time I'm six months pregnant, we're talking about bringing home a puppy while I have a type one, and I will have a, like, one

Scott Benner 31:03
two month old, yeah? No, puppies are a lot of work too, yeah?

Shelby 31:07
Well, not just a puppy, but a service dog, Puppy, okay, we went a very with us, having a local trainer. It's a very non traditional route, because this was not going to be send the puppy off to be trained, and it magically comes back working. This was going to be, you know, they come in. It was a lot cheaper, but they would be coming in, like once a week, working with us, seeing the progress, kind of telling us what steps next. And then I'm doing all of the training work outside of that, during the week with the puppy. So essentially, I'm doing 80% of the work on top of my newborn and my type one. I thought when

Scott Benner 31:40
you said, they said, the dog got pregnant by mistake, you were going to say, Yeah, me too, but yeah.

Shelby 31:48
So I was like, I don't know about this. I was like, and not to mention, we haven't even started fundraising. Like, where are we going to come up with this cost?

Scott Benner 31:54
How much was the what was the number? It was about 15,000 Wow. I was guessing I was on. Yeah, you

Shelby 32:01
were spot on. Now, I mean, a lot of the dogs that kind of come back already trained for a thing. I mean, you're looking at a little bit more, but with us doing a lot of the work with them, we loved that. Because, for one the dog trip to the dog tracker is his name, he was bonding with Paisley from the day he came home, and like they were working that bond and that teamwork from day one. And I love that aspect, because it's just hard for me to comprehend, like getting a dog that's, you know, one two years old, and then bringing it into your household with this immense job and responsibility, without having that long term bond. I

Scott Benner 32:36
want to ask a question. So like, Yeah, I've been Where you've been like, I've been, like, with a newly diagnosed young person. I know how scary it is, like, I'm with you all the way. Yeah, if you would have told me that I had to pay $15,000 for anything, I wouldn't have been able to come up with it, and I would have balked at the number, especially if you are not a person who's like, oh, sure, I'll just take that out of the $15,000 box I have over here. Like, so if you don't have that box of money, what is it that drives you to believe that that, like, I mean, that's got to be $15,000 I would imagine, is a pretty large percentage of your yearly income. So like, What makes you think like, this has to happen? Is it fear? Are you just afraid the fact so many

Shelby 33:16
doors had already opened for us was just like, we're gonna we're gonna make this happen like this, many doors has opened. It's obviously part of, you know, God's plan for us to to get started on this. So let's just see where it goes. The trainers kind of knew that the timeline had gotten sped up, and they're like, Hey, we can work with you payment wise, like, versus paying everything in full. You know, as we go through training, we can work with you on the payment scale, and that made us feel a little more comfortable. But we just hit the ground running fundraising. I mean, I was calling businesses trying to get businesses to sponsor. What's

Scott Benner 33:49
the onus for them? Like, when you call a business up and you're like, hey, my kid wants a dog that can tell her when she's getting her blood sugar low, why don't you throw $500 into that? For me, what did they get out of that? So

Shelby 34:01
a lot of businesses, depending on, you know, kind of how their businesses are set up and whatnot, they can get us a tax write off for charity donations like that. We actually also partnered with a non profit that's local to us, okay? That does some fundraising and stuff for diabetic alert dogs too. So essentially, when businesses wanted to donate even small, small or large sums, if they they kind of did it through them, then they were, they were given a piece of paper that said, Here's your tax write off for the year, where you can claim this as a tax deduction. You know, charity. So then they're not

Scott Benner 34:34
donating it. Actually the money to you. They're donating to the charity. The charity is buying you the dog.

Shelby 34:39
They were handing the money to the trainer. Yeah, right. They were giving the money over to them. But we started making t shirt. I learned. I ordered, I made my own t shirt design, and then ordered the prints online and bought, like, $100 heat press on Amazon. And we started selling T shirts, really. And I sold, I don't know how many T shirts I made during that time. And I didn't think it would really go anywhere, but it did. I mean, the word just kind of got passed around, and it just little by little, things started to add up. We had someone locally that had reached out to me who got a lot of, like, football memorabilia stuff that they they were part of, like, a big Facebook page that auctions that kind of stuff off, and they gave me a ton of items, and we're like, here you can do whatever you want with them. Just use the money to help pay for her

Scott Benner 35:26
dog. Oh, wow. Turned into a community effort, really. So

Shelby 35:30
this is where it turns into community. I knew of someone who was also in my state on tick tock. Their name was rags Party of Five. They I had messaged him and was like, Hey, y'all do a lot of Alabama stuff. Is there any way maybe you could help me kind of auction this stuff off? And let me tell you, those are two of the most amazing human beings I have ever met. He's like, I'm going to do one better. I'm going to help you auction this stuff off. But like, we want to do more. So they started setting up all kinds of things, and they helped. They used their platform on Tiktok and raised, like, over, I don't even know how much money it was off the top of my head anymore, but it was like, over $5,000 Wow, that. Then it was just people on Tiktok that would see their little fundraisers, like Super Bowl boards and stuff, and they're like, hey, you know, I'll buy a spot on the board, or I don't want a spot on the board, I just want to help. Here's a donation. And all these people we didn't even know all over Tiktok just started to donate to our cause. And next thing we know, you know, we started fundraising in October, and by February, this dog was fully funded. It

Scott Benner 36:36
was paid for. Let me ask you a difficult question to answer. Maybe now you've had the dog for how long

Shelby 36:41
we have had him, a year and a half,

Scott Benner 36:45
okay, and you've had a CGM the entire time, yes, did you need the dog? Yes? Why? What happens? Tracker

Shelby 36:52
has made so many life saving alerts. I can't even begin to tell you one of the MO The biggest ones was a few, a few months ago, we were out at a baton class, and her blood sugar looked like it was trending up and kind of right on that borderline up high and right where her pump would be giving automated insulin. And I and he came to alert me, and I asked him, so not all service dogs are trained, so let me be very clear, Tracker is kind of from what I can have learned, one of the few most dogs are just trained to give you an alert, like they call it. You say, hey, there's a problem with blood sugar, and then it's kind of on you to check and see if they're telling you, you know, what way it might be trending. But we actually train tracker to tell us, not only that, there's a problem, but whether her blood sugar is going high or if it's going low. Okay? He can actually differentiate the two. And so while her CGM was saying she was going high, which is normal for that activity, he came to me and said, No, her blood sugar is low, but the like the activity and the CGM, they kind of match up to normal. I'll check on her. So she finished up. A few minutes later, I checked on her. Well, her pump was dumping insulin into her because they thought that she was high, and her blood sugar was actually, you know, in the 6070, range, okay, and had it not been for him, I wouldn't have thought anything of it, because that was normal for our

Scott Benner 38:14
situation. What was the when you said, Hi, what do you mean high?

Shelby 38:17
His range is to alert anywhere from anywhere below 80, and anything above 180 she was kind of on that, like 190 range on the CGM,

Scott Benner 38:25
yeah, I wasn't asking about that. Where the dog alert I was? I was talking about what do you think of as a high blood sugar? Because you just said high. So you so her blood sugar was around on the CGM, like 190 or so. Yeah,

Shelby 38:35
190 200 the alert would be given that insulin, yeah,

Scott Benner 38:39
he alerts low, and then you check a blood sugar, and what do you get, like a 60 or something like that? Yeah,

Shelby 38:44
I got like a low 7060, blood sugar, and she had like over a unit on board at the time. How

Scott Benner 38:51
did she feel? Did she is that a thing like, do you think she would have told you she felt low?

Shelby 38:55
Hey, so that's a big thing that we love about having tracker, is she does not feel her highs and lows. Okay? She has to be very high for a very long time, and she will notice that she goes to the bathroom frequently. But she doesn't feel like all the effects that some other people, I've heard feel from a high and from a low. She won't feel a low until it's like low 50s,

Scott Benner 39:18
okay? Then she's dizzy. Yeah, she'll

Shelby 39:20
say she's dizzy or she just doesn't feel good. But for her, not being able to feel that and track her beats technology by 3045, minutes. He's ahead of the curve. Way ahead. Yeah, that's pretty awesome. Way ahead. So, like, he will come to me, like, this morning he came to me and said, Hey, her blood sugar is going low, and I looked at her CGM, and it said 112 with, like, the diagonal arrow down. And I was like. I was like, yeah, we'll watch it, because that's what we tell him. If it's not at that threshold that he alerts to, we'll say, Hey, we're going to watch it, and we'll kind of set a timer and come back in and check in with him, because we want to make sure it hits that. Threshold. So we're not, like, rewarding does the dog have a snooze button? He does not. He will come back and tell you again. Oh, because

Scott Benner 40:06
what do you mean? Like, I tell him we're gonna watch it. Yeah. So if he alerts

Shelby 40:09
and, like, her blood sugar, if we finger stick her and it hasn't hit the threshold of 80 on the low end, then we don't want to reward him for, like, a blood sugar that's higher than his threshold. So we'll say, Hey, this is an early alert. You're letting me know early because you smell it coming. We're going to wait till it hits that number before we reward it, because otherwise, in a dog's mind, hey, I got that treat early, and I really was kind of smelling this smell too. So let me start alerting earlier and earlier, and it becomes less about the number and on the treats and more about the treat and the reinforcement as early as you can get it. So we really try to wait till he hits that threshold. We'll say, hey, we'll watch it. And then if it gets to that threshold before 15 minutes, he's already back at you, saying, hey, check again. Like 10 minutes can go by and he hit that threshold, and he's like, Hey, letting you know you should recheck now. Or if he gets really aggravated because he's like, Hey, I'm being persistent, he will bring you the bag with the glucometer and basically throw it at you and say, Hey, check it now, listen,

Scott Benner 41:12
I really want this treat, and I think I'm right about this, so let's get going. Yeah, and he's

Shelby 41:16
not wrong. Yeah, he's not wrong. That's awesome. He is a huge asset. And while it was so much work, and still is work, that's what I tell anybody that says, like, Hey, I've thought about a service dog. I say you need to be ready for the work, because it doesn't stop just because they're trained and they come home and they just work, yeah? Like, it is an everyday task, constant training, really forever. You know, you're always working on different skills. Tracker can actually take juice boxes to Paisley. So if she gets low and if, like, they, you know, if she was older and she I wasn't around, and she's out on her own, he could go get the juice box and bring it

Scott Benner 41:50
to her. Tell me, is she in school yet she is kindergarten

Shelby 41:53
age, and she should be in kindergarten, but we home this year. Specifically, our choice was based off of, you know, sickness. PAISLEY is not a type one that handles sickness very well, so we wanted to keep her home for that, and we wanted to give her and track her more time to work together all the time. So fun fact you don't know about me is, prior to Paisley's diagnosis, I actually ran my own online education business where I homeschool children kindergarten through second grade, all over the world, over, like, online, yeah, online. I taught kids all over the world, yeah.

Scott Benner 42:29
So I, that's what I was wondering, like, because at some point, that's the next step in this question for me, which is, like, I mean, what's the trade off? Is she going to be in school with a service dog sitting next to her. Yeah? Yeah.

Shelby 42:42
That's, that's the goal. But the key is, she has to be old enough to be fully responsible as a handler for him. And you have to think, I mean, you're only five, six years old, it's gonna be a while. It's gonna take a little while,

Scott Benner 42:56
yeah? So, like, I'm playing devil's advocate here. But like, is there a worry that, you know that's going to make her so different that it's it's going to draw attention she doesn't want, actually,

Shelby 43:06
she she's very attached to tracker. I could see where some kids, maybe that's how they feel. But for her, he's her security blanket, like he knows if she starts feeling bad, he's there. He's she knows that he's always going to tell her. So this is kind of where it brings in some independence. I know I put that in my little list of things to talk about. Is since we've had tracker, and since we have, like, switched insulin pump systems, and Paisley has been at home with me homeschooling. Our big homeschool thing was more of just like we can do the work, but when she goes to school, I not only want her, it's not about just taking the dog, because lots of kids have service dogs that go to school and they don't take their dog. So it's not just about the dog being there to watch and help. But I may be in different spot, but I don't trust a school 100% to be able to do the job that I do. That takes 24 hours a day, seven days a week. Yeah, when they have 600 kids, and that might just be me being a mom with anxiety, but Well, I

Scott Benner 44:08
don't disagree with you that you're going to do a better job than somebody else is going to. I just wonder, like, at what point in life will it be unreasonable to do this, and do you set her up? Listen, I don't know if this is right or not. I'm just talking right. But like, do you see you set her up to feel like, without this animal, I'm screwed. Most people who have type one diabetes don't have a service dog. I'll have one. Yeah, yeah, so and they're fine. So that's like, you know what I mean? I

Shelby 44:34
love that question, Scott. I love it. I do. So actually, with her being at home this year, our goal was just to work on them, but also to make her more comfortable with her diabetes. I noticed when she got diagnosed, she got she became very clean, like, I can't leave my mom because I'm diabetic. What if something happened? Like she wouldn't even go to a neighbor's house to go play with a friend unless I went with her. Where did she get that idea from? She. Always been a clingy child, even before diabetes, and I think it just made it worse, knowing, like, hey, bad things can happen just because, like, she knows, hey, you have to treat this low blood sugar or, Hey, you know, I don't know it was just one of the things that she had, but now that she's been home this year, I have seen the biggest spark I think I've ever seen. This child generally loves to learn about diabetes.

Scott Benner 45:24
So you feel like she's got a comfort level from the dog that's helping her embrace things, yeah, so

Shelby 45:30
having the dog around, you know, to kind of let her know things, I think that has been huge. But I think being at home and being able to be involved in her diabetes care, you know, and I think I know this is a huge kind of seesaw, okay, well,

Scott Benner 45:44
no, she's getting older, it makes sense.

Shelby 45:47
But she's getting older, but she's high, she's five, yeah, you know, like your eight, nine year old, you know, you're kind of used to the Hey, you might take on a little responsibility, but at five years old, that's a lot to ask. I mean, you're still learning how to write your name and count? Well,

Scott Benner 46:01
let me say this. I mean, I saw that with Arden, so I think maybe it's the diabetes. It Fast forward to a little bit, because Arden was two when she was diagnosed, like, just two, and by the time she was five, you know, you would have thought she was 10, by the way, she was handling things. Think that might be common, like, I think it's awesome that she's there, but I don't think

Shelby 46:19
that it's not as common as it's what, like, a lot of the people I've connected to are like, I couldn't imagine my five year old doing that. I wish they would. And I'm like, is it really that rare? I

Scott Benner 46:30
just think it's the way you talk about things. So like, wherever you get the confidence from, like, whether it's from the confidence that the tracker is there, right, or if it's me saying things like, you're fine, it'll be fine. This is just what we do, like treating it very like, matter of factly, so that it's not like, Oh no, I have diabetes. I'm going to get like, like, Oh, it's okay. You got low. We'll take care of it, like, that kind of stuff,

Shelby 46:51
you know, we'll fix it. What do you think you need? So a lot of our conversations ended up, you know, we kind of hit that brick wall that I'm sure everybody hits, where it's like, life's not fair. Diabetes sucks. I want this peanut butter jelly sandwich, and I want it now, and I don't want to wait 15 minutes, because who else in the world has to wait 15 minutes, you know? And it kind of becomes like this head butted situation, and we, we decided to handle that by, like, including her in it, like, hey, every now and then, let's let you make your own choice, you know. Here is why I say this might not be the best decision as a meal right now. Like, if you want this, then we should Pre Bolus and wait, because if you don't wait, this might happen, and you know, it may make you feel this way, or it might influence your decisions on what kind of snacks you might can have later. You know, you might have to choose free snacks later versus choosing another. You know, carb heavy snack. And so we started kind of proposing things like that to her, and she started to learn more, like, Hey, Mom and Dad aren't just being mean, like, there's actually a science to this and a reason to this. And now she she does everything like she she gives her own insulin, she counts her own carbs. Obviously, I oversee these things, but she does them on her own, independently. That's awesome. She'll get her own snack, count her own carbs, give her own insulin. You know, she has got gained the independence that where she used to not go outside without me. She comes in the door and says, Hey, Mom, I'm going down the street, you know the drill. Give me my phone, my glucometer and a low snack, and I'm going three houses down. I'll call you if I need you. That's great. That's awesome. It's been hard as a parent to try to let go to some of that like I thought I was going to straight up have a heart attack the first night she came in to me, and we've been working for six months on, you know, hey, this is how you enter, you know, carbs into your pump. You know, we count them. Here's where we read for them. Here's how we count. She's been doing this masterfully for months. And then one night she comes in and she says, Hey, Mom, can you open this? And I said, What is it? And she's like, a yogurt smoothie. And I was like, Yeah, but you, you know, you're like, 150 you probably need some insulin for that. She goes, Oh, that's okay, Mom, I already gave myself insulin. It's awesome. And I about paint. I was like, I'm going to paint. I'm like, You gave yourself insulin? And she's like, Yeah, it's like, well, how many carbs was it? Because, like, I know, but I'm gonna see if you know. She's like, it's five carbs. I read the label. I put five carbs in my pump, and I gave myself insulin. I literally just need you to open it. And I'm like, Uh oh, okay, that's terrific. Can I double check behind you? Like, and she did. She did everything flawlessly. And she's like, here,

Scott Benner 49:23
did you double check it in front of her?

Shelby 49:26
Yeah, yeah, I double check. I'm like, Hey, can I double check? Usually, in our house, like, during the day, if I'm like, close by, she'll be like, Hey, Mom, can I have these goldfish? And I'm like, Yeah, sure. How many carbs is it? And I know because, I mean, we eat this stuff all the time. And she'll tell me, and I'll say, okay, yeah, go ahead. And she'll put the numbers in, and she'll generally show it to me and be like, Hey, am I good? Like, can I go ahead, right? Or I'll say, go ahead and do it. And then I'll walk over when I finish, you know, whatever I'm doing, and double check just to be sure, because the Moby does have, we have swapped Moby, and it does have, you know that that Max Bolus limit that the pumps have, you know, she can. Get more than this much at one time. So worst case scenario, if I were to double check it, then we might just need a couple extra carbs. Well,

Scott Benner 50:07
let me just say this, for people listening, whether you want an Omnipod five or a tandem Moby, there are links in the show notes to the podcast player where you can get that from. So there we go. Let me just slip that in

Shelby 50:16
here. Oh yes, we love our Moby. We swapped Moby in September, and it has been game changer for us.

Scott Benner 50:22
I'm glad whenever, whenever anybody finds a thing that works for them, I think it's awesome. And yep,

Shelby 50:27
that's what I say you I we went to friends for life last year in Orlando, that big diabetes conference, and that was the biggest thing that I heard them say, it's find the pump that works for you. And that's kind of what gave us the confidence to try the switch from Omnipod to Moby, and you know, it was great for us. And I tell people all the time, I'm like, find what works for you. If you're on a pump, and you hear all these other people say, Well, this pumps great if your pumps working for you and you like it, like, don't feel like you just have to switch, because everybody else is switching. Like, it's all about finding what works best for you and your body. Yep,

Scott Benner 51:00
I agree. Yeah. Whatever it is, it's awesome. Arden's been wearing an Omnipod since she was four, maybe. And I had a conversation with somebody last night, and I said, Yeah, I don't think Arden would wear that one. We talked about why, and that person was from a company that, you know, makes the pump. And they're like, No, I understand that. Yeah. I just, I really think it's about what's best and, and what's best is a lot of different. There's a lot of different boxes to check. It's not just about one thing, or it's a lot maybe pieces, yeah, for sure. Well, okay, so I understand the process and, and how you got the dog and what happened, and that you're happy with it, and everything like that. Can I ask about, like, long term. Like, dogs don't live forever. So like, like, how do you plan for that? Like, do you think there'll be a world where I'm not trying to age your dog? I don't know how what your dog is, but 1012, whatever, years from now, she's, you know, how old will she be? Seven to 1017, like, 18, something like that. Like, she'll be older. Yeah, she probably about college age. Right around college age, what if she says, That's cool, I need another dog, and now the dogs are 20,000 or she says, I don't want a dog. Like, how are you going to handle either of those situations?

Shelby 52:11
That's a really good question. I definitely think it's something that you have to kind of consider when you bring in this lifelong best friend to the situation, is they're not going to live forever. So one thing that I loved about our program is obviously, like we learned with him, we were doing so much of the hands on training with him. Honestly, if we needed to do it all over again, I could probably retrain a dog myself. Gotcha, if we knew that it was her desire, because service dogs are a lot of responsibility. They take a lot of time. And I mean, you got to think about it. You're taking a dog everywhere you go. So if she was at a point in her life where she felt like, Hey, maybe I want one to be at home, but maybe not go everywhere, or maybe I don't want one, it would really be her decision. At that point. She's old enough that she knows how much she relies on it that if she wanted another one,

Scott Benner 52:58
you say that. Now when she says, Mom, I'm gonna go from Alabama to San Diego to go to college, you're gonna be like, I'm gonna be duct taping a dog to your face, by the way, like, you know. So yeah, it's gonna be interesting, trust me, it's a wild ride. Definitely will be

Shelby 53:13
interesting. But if we knew that she was gonna need it, or she was in a situation where she wanted one other one, I think we would just retrain. I think we would, when we got to the point to retire him, we would start retraining another one. That way it would be ready to go when needed. But if she decided she didn't want one, then that's obviously not something we would force, force on her, or anything like that. Because, I mean, she'd be into her young adulthood. I mean, that that would be her responsibility to take care of day in and day out. I'm

Scott Benner 53:41
gonna try to stay alive for 12 more years so I can hear what happens when that happens. I want Shelby back on the podcast

Shelby 53:47
very I don't know if you will, if you've ever seen our tick tocks, but if you ever watch them, you will see she's a very opinionated little little girl,

Scott Benner 53:56
just telling you, I want Shelby back on episode 7000 where she's like the kid told me she didn't want a dog, and I cried, and then she said No, still. Or she said she wanted it I couldn't afford, like, I can't wait to see

Shelby 54:07
what happened. Or, by the way, the dog, okay, Mom, I'm divorcing the dog. Or maybe the

Scott Benner 54:11
algorithms get so good, or maybe there's a dual chamber pump that has glucagon in it by then. Or, who knows, you know what I mean, yeah. But Liz, I love that you found something.

Shelby 54:19
How far Tech has come in, the last you know, 1520 years. There's no telling. There could be a cure by then. For all we know, you know

Scott Benner 54:26
to talk about technology is 15 years out. It's not even that far out. Like, look how far it's come in five years. Seriously, you know. And now they're all in this arms race with their algorithms. So you got to think that each company has an algorithm that has its strong points and its weak points, and they're all going to try to make them better and better and better, to compete with each other because they don't. I mean, stop and think about the process of selling something to somebody the amount of effort and time it goes into creating a customer, even right like a patient who says, I want to try. Your thing, you want to keep them once you have them, so the way you keep them is by giving them the outcomes that they're looking for. And so I think that any company who is making an algorithm right now that delivers insulin whose, you know, main focus isn't on making it better, I think they'd be making a mistake. From what I can tell, they're all trying to make them better. So there's a lot of effort going into that. I think that's just good for us. It's good for people. Yeah, I think so too. Yeah. I like them battling with each other a little bit. It's good, you know? It keeps everybody honest. Keeps everybody on their toes. It keeps you from sitting back and going, Oh, we have the only thing they got to buy it. We don't have to innovate, you know what? I mean, that kind of thing. So it's good. It's good times. It keeps

Shelby 55:40
improvements too. I mean, look at the Dexcom new direct watch. I mean, for us, that's a huge, huge feature, because, you know, Paisley trying to have a five year old carrier on a phone all the time and keep it within 20 feet and not set it down and walk away, especially if she's like, leaving the house,

Scott Benner 55:58
it's hard. Yeah, no, I know she's responsible

Shelby 56:01
enough to wear a watch. And you know, when it goes off, say, Oh, my blood sugar is low. Let me eat something, or let me call mom. Or hey, my blood sugar's high. That's what she did the other day. She had her phone in her bag, saw it go high on her watch. And get this, she called me and said, Hey, Mom, my blood sugar just went high. Do I need to give a correction and I said, Yes. And she was five houses down at the neighbor's house, she FaceTimed me, shared her screen with me so that I could double check what she was doing, and gave her own correction Bolus from down the street. Yeah,

Scott Benner 56:34
no, I'm five years old. I mean, listen, my kid knew how to use a cell phone before most people had cell phones, and it's helped her in a lot of ways. I mean, I also think that, you know, I'd love it if they weren't around technology as much. But if you made me pick, I choose. I choose this. I think it's fantastic. Yeah,

Shelby 56:50
same house, five houses down that the dog went when it snowed and let me know her blood sugar was low from five houses away.

Scott Benner 56:56
Jeez, I don't understand how you're a Braves fan if you live in Alabama, my husband's

Shelby 57:01
always been a brave son. I was never a huge baseball fan until I met my husband. And we have a we have a minor league, minor league team locally that we do go to all the time. Yeah,

Scott Benner 57:12
I have to say, I'm going to say this very begrudgingly, as a lifelong Philadelphia Phillies fan, but the Braves put on, oh no, hold on. Let me tell you, the Braves put on a hell of a show at that stadium. They do. I've been to a game there, and it's fun. So it's amazing.

Shelby 57:28
Yeah, I hate to say that we went to a couple of playoff games one year the World Series year, we went to a couple of playoff games, and my husband was dying to go to a World Series game like he he was almost ready to spend big money that we didn't have at the time to try to go to a World Series game.

Scott Benner 57:47
And did he go? No, he didn't.

Shelby 57:51
I know, because it became a if you go, I need to go. And then if we're going to go, shouldn't we take our kids too? Because it could be like a once in a lifetime experience, and then the dollar signs just kept adding up. And yeah, it was the thing we decided not not to do.

Scott Benner 58:07
So one day, I went online, and I was like, Hey, I'm trying to find inexpensive World Series tickets to take my son to the World Series, right? And I figured, like, I know people online. Like, I must know somebody that works for one of these teams. Like, let me finally use this podcast for something valuable for myself. I found people like, hey, my boyfriend's neighbor owns a piece of the I forget what it was like, like, seriously, like, the piece of the other team, let me see. Like, hey. People were like, all over the place trying to figure out, didn't and then everybody was so nice and tried, it just didn't pan out. So I went back to the thread, and I said, Listen, I want to thank everybody. Let's stop looking now. It's not going to work out. You know, the game's like, in two days and but I appreciate all you guys. Is really cool. And some person said, Well, no, I'm going to donate. Like, I don't know what they said. I'm like, I'm gonna throw $20 in so you can buy this ticket for your kid. And I was like, listen, like, first of all, don't do that. I was like, Please, don't do that. I tried so hard for it not to happen. And then I woke up the next day to, like, a couple of $1,000 and people were like, now, go to the World Series. They were like, Thank you for the podcast. Go to the World Series. Like a lot of people threw in, like, a couple of

Shelby 59:15
survey. Y'all listen the podcast. Y'all get all of us diabetics through so

Scott Benner 59:19
much. Shelby, I get paid by I'm okay, like, you know what I mean? Like, it

Shelby 59:23
doesn't matter if you get paid. Like, I mean, let's be honest. I mean, it

Scott Benner 59:27
was an amount of money I was uncomfortable with, like, accepting from people, but like, you know, now they gave it to me. I'm like, I can't give it back. I have to use it. This got out of hand quickly. I was just looking for an in like, You mean, like, I was just looking for a guy that knew a guy. You weren't

Shelby 59:41
looking for the money to get there. You were just looking for the tickets. I just

Scott Benner 59:44
needed somebody to show me which way to like, look, you know what I mean? And so anyway, so we went to this game. Both of us were just a couple of weeks out of having kicked COVID, but we were like, we're okay. Like, it's okay, but, oh, man, by the time the game was over, I looked at but. We both looked like we used up every ounce of energy that the world had for us like to because that was maybe the most exhilarating thing I'd ever done in my life, has been in a World Series game, and they lost, and it didn't matter. It was insane. So that

Shelby 1:00:13
was the thing. My husband did not want to spend the money and then end up losing the game. He's like, if I spent that much money for World Series tickets and then we lost that game that I went to, I would be so infuriated that I would I would be, I would regret spending every bit of money. Yeah, I tried very hard not

Scott Benner 1:00:28
to think about that, because there was an amount of money we put into. It wasn't all from everybody, you know what I mean. And the truth is, if you're a baseball fan, there was something about that game. Every pitch felt like so important that you were just on an adrenaline ride for three hours. It was insane. Didn't matter if you were in the field or if they were in the field, every pitch felt like the end of the game. Like, I've been to a lot of baseball games in my life. There's a lot of pitches just like, go, oh, it's, you know, it's three, oh, this is going to be a strike, and nobody's going to swing, you know, to mean, like, like, that kind of, that kind of stuff. Nothing felt like that. Everything felt life or death. It was awesome. But, you know, anyway,

Shelby 1:01:05
that gives me chills. I do hope that we can go at some point.

Scott Benner 1:01:09
Yeah, well, listen, I was just at a regular old, you know, regular season game between the Phillies and the Braves in Atlanta. And I'm telling you that game was just, it was incredible, like the lights and the music, and it was awesome. It was really Yeah, and people were lovely. Was really great. Actually,

Shelby 1:01:26
yeah, it is great. We actually went one time. My husband had thought that he was 18 years old and was going to go out and play basketball again with some buddies, and tore his knee up really bad. Was on crutches. I was like, nine months pregnant, eight, nine months pregnant at the time in the middle of July heat, and he decided to just get tickets. He's like, You know what? If I can't go to work because I'm hurt, I might as well be sitting in Atlanta watching a baseball game. That's a guy, that's a guy, like, upper level tickets for not super expensive. And was like, we're going. And I was like, Okay, fine, we're going. So we all load up and go, and then we get there and realize, I realized the seats that he bought. And I'm like, you can't climb the stairs to get to the seat. How you gonna get up there? But, yeah, I'm like, how are you gonna get up there? So here I am. He's on crutches. I'm like, eight months pregnant, dying in the heat, and I ended up convincing someone in the like accessibility seats to like, can we please just sit here like nobody's sitting here. It's like, halfway through the game, and I desperately need to sit down, and we can't even reach the seat. We bought dummy

Scott Benner 1:02:34
over here. Thought he was going to climb to the top of the stadium.

Shelby 1:02:39
That was like, please. They did. They did end up giving us some seeds, but very cool. Yeah, it's a great experience, and our kids love it. I do usually kind of have like this anxiety, since we love going to Atlanta, but every time we go that being where we went into DKA, I get I still have a part of me that always has anxiety about going back to that particular place, really, I don't, I think I always will.

Scott Benner 1:03:04
Oh, I hope you shake it at some point. I mean, it would be nice not to feel that way. I

Shelby 1:03:08
mean, it's not like the crippling kind of like I have to obsess over everything, yeah, while we're there. I mean, I go there and every now and then Paisley, it's a big thing in Dippin Dots. And it's like, hey, we nailed that. Dipping dots while we were here. That's a win. Cool. You know, it's not always going to be the way that it was that one time I had

Scott Benner 1:03:25
some popcorn chicken from KFC the day my appendix burst and it I'm not a huge I wasn't a huge KFC person to begin with. But like, you know, a number of years later, I'm not lying to you, a number of years later, we found ourselves like, hey, we need some food. There's a KFC. I went in there, the smell hit me, and I was like, I can't be here. It scared the hell out of me. I was like, Yeah, dude, because I thought, by the way, the KFC didn't give me appendicitis, but, like, it was close enough to itself that I was like, I just made that. I drew that parallel in my head. I couldn't deal with it. All right, Shelby, this was awesome. Do you have anything else that we should have talked about that we didn't

Shelby 1:03:58
I can't think of it. I know a lot of people might probably hear this podcast and think about looking into service dogs. I think the only thing I may not have said is that dog training elite, the company that we did use to Train Tracker, is a national franchise. So if there's any listeners out there that are listening to this and starting to look into service dogs, or even, like the fundraising side. I know Dylan dogs for diabetes that we use as the nonprofit to kind of help with our fundraising. They work with people all over and dog training Elite has locations all over the United States, okay? And from me, you can probably find one in your area, yes.

Scott Benner 1:04:38
And let me offer the alternative view. Get a CGM and put a Juicebox in your pocket there. You're fine. I think there are ways to manage that. There's nothing wrong with you having a service dog, obviously. But like, yeah, it's very doable without as well. Yeah, there's a

Shelby 1:04:51
lot out there, and it could be, I mean, we would still be doing our life today without one. Yeah, absolutely, a little bit easier sometimes. Yes. Yeah, does he help out with different things? 100% Yeah. But you know it's, it's one of those tools that, you know, it's, it's worth it for some people to have, especially when they're so little and they can't kind of tell you as much. It becomes like a security for me, too, as a parent, to know, like, hey, if she can't tell me something, and I believe you know that Dexcom is off, or she's five houses down at the neighbor's house, and her Dexcom quits reading, and I haven't noticed it yet. Well, he's gonna let me know and take me down there and let me know that, hey, she's still not fine, even though she's five houses away. Yeah, it's a lifestyle choice, and it's something some people like to do, and some people, you know, it's not even on their list.

Scott Benner 1:05:36
100% believe it. And I do think lifestyle is a good way to put it, because it really, I mean, listen, Libre is not going to on your floor, and

Shelby 1:05:45
you don't have to go and feed it and water it and bathe it and train it and buy 500 million different dog treats for it to feed it. Yeah, you know, it's

Scott Benner 1:05:53
not a responsibility, like, like an animal is, yep, it's, you know, it's funny, because I think, more more than anything, that's the part that gets me, because I feel such an incredible responsibility to living things, like, down to pets, very small like, I almost, like, don't make me responsible for something else's life. Is almost how it makes me feel. I tell

Shelby 1:06:11
people I have four kids, because I said, I say I have four kids. One of them just has four legs, yeah. Also one

Scott Benner 1:06:16
of them is your husband, because he bought those baseball tickets when he was on crutches. And I mean, really, that is not, it's not a well thought out decision. All right, that's fine. I understand I'd go to a baseball game. So anyway, okay, well, Shelby, Listen, before we started recording, you said to me, I talk a lot, so run me over if you have to. So I just want to point out, because I did run you over a couple of times, that Shelby told me to do that. So before you all send me an email, you didn't let her talk. If I didn't do what I did, oh no, if I didn't do what I did, here's what would have happened. Shelby would have said, Hey, my name is Shelby Landreth, and then you never would have heard me again. So like,

Shelby 1:06:56
forewarned you, Scott. I forewarned you tells me I have to have like, a code word in certain situations, especially when it comes to talking about diabetes. And he he, like, when we go to conferences and stuff, he'll be like, hey, you know that thing that you do? You're doing it again. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:07:13
okay. Well, no, listen, you were awesome. I very much enjoyed this. I thought you did a great job of telling your story. I really appreciate it. So thank you so much. Well, thank you for having me. Oh, it's a pleasure. Hold on one second for me. Okay.

Head now to tandem diabetes.com/juicebox and check out today's sponsor tandem diabetes care. I think you're going to find exactly what you're looking for at that link, including a way to sign up and get started with the tandem mobi system. I'd like to thank the Eversense 365 for sponsoring this episode of The Juicebox Podcast, and remind you that if you want the only sensor that gets inserted once a year and not every 14 days you want the ever since CGM, ever since cgm.com/juicebox, one year one CGM. This episode was sponsored by touched by type one. I want you to go find them on Facebook, Instagram, and give them a follow, and then head to touched by type one.org where you're going to learn all about their programs and resources for people with type one diabetes.

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