#1594 Molly's Game
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Allison’s 8-year-old daughter, Molly, was diagnosed with T1D last February and is one of only three documented adolescent acute esophageal necrosis cases.
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Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends and welcome back to another episode of The Juicebox podcast.
Allison 0:14
My name is Allison, and I am the mother of a type one diabetic named Molly. She was diagnosed February 15, 2024 so we're a little over a year into this fantastic journey. If
Scott Benner 0:31
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 or becoming bold with insulin. The episode, you're about to listen to is sponsored by tandem Moby, the impressively small insulin pump. Tandem Moby features tandems newest algorithm control, iq plus technology. It's designed for greater discretion, more freedom and improved time and range. Learn more and get started today at tandem diabetes.com/juicebox you Juicebox. Today's podcast is sponsored by us med. Us med.com/juicebox you can get your diabetes supplies from the same place that we do. And I'm talking about Dexcom, libre, Omnipod, tandem, and so much more. Us med.com/juicebox or call 888-721-1514,
Allison 2:06
my name is Allison, and I am the mother of a type one diabetic named Molly. She was diagnosed February 15, 2024, so we're a little over a year into this fantastic journey.
Scott Benner 2:21
Wow. You are almost a year and a half figure you're getting right there. How old did you say she was when she was diagnosed? She
Allison 2:27
was eight when she was diagnosed. Oh, you didn't say but okay, all right, yeah, no, she was
Scott Benner 2:32
eight, eight. Now, nine, probably almost 10 coming in there. You have other kids.
Allison 2:36
I do. I have a 23 year old and a 17 year old daughter.
Scott Benner 2:39
Wait, what happened is the second
Allison 2:43
marriage, third. Come on, Third time's the charm. Did you go
Scott Benner 2:45
to a wedding and get drunk? What happened?
Allison 2:48
No, I was young and dumb with the first one. Like 19, young and dumb. Oh, yeah, yeah. So that one obviously didn't last too long. And then I married my middle child's father, and he went to war. He was in Iraq for a while, and it just we tried when he came back, but he never quite came back the same. So we decided to go separate ways. Oh my gosh. And then I met my daughter, the youngest one, Molly, my diabetes dad, 13 years ago. We've been together since. So I think I got it right this
Scott Benner 3:19
time. Allison, you have a whole little like story going on here. I
Allison 3:23
am, I am, I like to say that I'm the classy version of Jerry Springer.
Scott Benner 3:26
There's three different, like private lines, exactly. Oh, wait, I wasn't gonna say it that way, but I'm so glad you did. You do have three different baby daddies?
Allison 3:36
I do. I do. But like I said, it's a classy version of Jerry Springer, I swear. But
Scott Benner 3:40
it's almost like three parts of a larger story, though. Like young you like, did young you think? Like, this is it? I'm building a family. Like, it's happening. Where did young you go? Oh, I can't believe this happened. We've made a huge mistake. Which? Which
Allison 3:53
happened? It was, what was one of those? Like, I so my I was young, he was a little older, and my parents were totally opposed to it, obviously they I'm a slow learner. Parents know best sometimes. And it was I found out I was pregnant and I had been kicked out of the house. So it was one of those young, I don't know, I was like, Well, I guess it's the next logical step. It wasn't. So it didn't
Scott Benner 4:16
last very long you get booted for being pregnant or prior to it, prior to Oh, like, yeah, gosh, we should stop talking about your kid right now to find out what you were doing. That's hilarious, although, you know what? You think it's a big thing, but it's not always how it goes. You know what? I mean? Like, I've shared that my wife was kicked out of her house right when we were dating. Yeah, right. Like, and if you look back on it now you're like that for that, it almost feels like it's a culmination of, like, somebody who just is like, I don't know what else to do. And they think this is gonna, like, shock you into it.
Allison 4:50
I think that's what it was that it was gonna because they didn't like us dating, which they were right. He was not a good person. Is not a good person, very bad person. And so they were right. And I think they thought. You know, if we kick her out, she's going to come to her senses, and I'm, unfortunately, extremely stubborn, so that actually just made it kind of worse. Yeah, so
Scott Benner 5:09
for my wife's, where her parents went wrong is that I had been, like, raising my family since I was, like, 13, so I knew how to handle problems and make sure everybody was okay and stuff like that by the time I was older. So they thought, like, kick her out. She won't know what to do, and she'll come back. She they didn't realize I knew what to do. They underestimated you. They misunderestimated me, is what they did, yeah, and yeah, you know what? Fair enough I could see myself back then they were right to guess the way they guessed they pre I take their point. The other two kids, any autoimmune stuff? No. So far, no. How about on your side of the family or you?
Allison 5:50
Yes. So I have fibromyalgia, my sister has some thyroid issues, and my mom has lupus. Oh, that's a mix, yeah, yeah. It's a really cool, little eclectic mix of stuff. And then we did find out probably six months or so after Molly was diagnosed, that on my husband's side of the family, there's like a second cousin or somebody that is type one, but even on his side, there's not a ton of autoimmune
Scott Benner 6:17
but enough, yeah. So tell me a little bit about the lead up and what you noticed and how it got you to a doctor or a hospital, wherever you went.
Allison 6:26
So we noticed absolutely nothing. Actually, it was crazy. And the doctor her, who I just talked to him yesterday, who at UVA, which is where she was flown to, was like, you had to have seen signs. And I was like, No, Dr devour, there were no signs. And Molly's a unique one, and she's very bougie on certain things. And so like at school, they would bring their water bottles, and she refused to refill her water bottle with school water, and she would only take home water. So I would know every day if she drank all her water, didn't drink her water, so there wasn't excessive thirst. She wasn't crazy like that. There was no huge drop in weight. She was always been kind of a moody kid that wasn't anything that was out of the norm. There was absolutely zero sign for anything. And it was Super Bowl weekend and that during that week, of course, it was a whole plethora of gross things going around school. So you had, like, covid, pink eye, strep, flu, everything. And I got up one morning I noticed your eyes were red. I was like, great, you've got pink eye. Fantastic. Took her that afternoon to the CVS just the Minute Clinic. So I'm like, I don't need to take her anywhere big. It's just pink eye. They asked me. They're like, Oh, well, you know, does she have strep? I'm like, Well, you're the I don't know. Like, she doesn't have signs of it. They went ahead and did a strep test too, and that came back positive. And she had no fever, no rash. Wasn't complaining, nothing. It was literally just the Pink Guy. So had they not run that test, I wouldn't have known strep. So that was on a Thursday. I kept her home Friday, Saturday. Brought up normal day, her dad was out of town with some friends. We went to lunch. She got her hair done, came home, she fell asleep on the couch
Unknown Speaker 8:09
and woke up with a fever. By the
Allison 8:13
time we went back to bed, like went to bed, it was gone. Go fever, no anything, and she woke up kind of lethargic Sunday, and was only eating applesauce and just not feeling too well. And then by Sunday night, she was definitely down for the count, and we got her up to go to bed, and she threw up just once randomly. I'm like, oh, okay, let's see how she does tomorrow, because she was on antibiotics. So I thought maybe they just hadn't kicked in because she hadn't really been, you know, she had just kind of started taking him, and then on Tuesday, she still wasn't getting better. She had thrown up again. She looked really bad. So I made an appointment at the doctor's office and her pediatricians office, and we brought her in, and they asked if we knew if she had been exposed to covid or anything else. And I was like, no, she I don't think she has. So they tested her for covid and the flu, and covid was negative, but she came back with flu type B and an ear infection. So at this point we have double pink eye
Speaker 1 9:13
strep, blue be an ear infection. Jeez. Yeah, right. And
Allison 9:19
so they ended up giving her one of the shots antibiotics to try and just like, get things going, because she wasn't eating, and she had thrown up a couple times. So this was on Tuesday. Get her home. She's still kind of out of it, not really eating. Wednesday morning, she wakes up, and she had been on and off all day or throughout the night, kind of waking up she was, she gets something to drink, throw up a little bit, but nothing crazy. And I thought that was gonna like to stay hydrated. Thank God, you know when they're throwing up. So she started, started ramping up through the day. On Wednesday, she was throwing up more. And where I ended up yanking her from this pediatrician and finding a new one, the nurse practitioners, nurse. Called in the morning to check in and ask if Molly was doing any better. And I was like, no, actually, I think she's getting worse. And she's like, Okay, let me talk to I think was, her name was Jessica, and see what she'd like to do. I'll call you back. I'm like, okay, great. So I have been up most of the night, so we ended up falling asleep, and I woke up about three, 330 and I hadn't heard back from the doctor's office, so I call, I get a different nurse on, and apparently the nurse who had called me decided to leave for the day, instead of calling me back to let me know that the doctor or the nurse practitioner had wanted us to take Molly to get a chest X ray and some additional blood work to see what was going on, because she was having the labor breathing and everything else. Well, at that point, I there was no way I could make it to the imaging center, to the dog the office, where they wanted us to go to get this done. And I was like, Okay, well, I'm not gonna be able to make it. They made her an appointment for first thing Thursday morning. And it was like, would have been an eight o'clock appointment, I believe. So Wednesday night is when all hell broke loose, and she was just vomiting non stop. She was hallucinating. It was just she went downhill so fast, and she couldn't stand. She could barely keep her eyes open, listening to her breathe. It was just it was so labored. And where we live in Virginia, I'm not a fan of a couple of the hospitals around us, so we decided on the way to the one hospital is her pediatricians office, and we had the appointment already, so we're like, I guess maybe let's stop in here and see if not, if they're not going to help, we'll go to the hospital. It's on the way. And immediately we get to the doctor's office, get her in there. They take one look at her, and they're like, there's nothing more we can do. You need to get her to the hospital. Now. I was like, okay, so they wheel her out. We get to the hospital, get her loaded up on one of the little wheelchairs, Wheeler into the, you know, the emergency room, and the lady behind the counter is talking to me, and she's just looking at Molly, and she takes our information. I hear her get on the phone, and she calls the doctors and somebody in the back in the ER, and they come rushing out, and next thing we know, 45 minutes later, she was on a helicopter life like, to UVA Hospital in Charlottesville, and that was just, it was a whirlwind. I was like, What type one diabetic? Like? What does this mean? I have no idea. I've heard of it. I knew people that had it, but I had no idea, like, what
Scott Benner 12:23
it would mean for us. Yeah, wow. So she's in DK that whole time. You think,
Allison 12:30
yeah, yeah. It hits so fast. I think as soon as she threw up on Sunday night, was when it was happening. She really wasn't it,
Scott Benner 12:37
yeah, yeah. And it went, how long from Sunday night till Thursday, Thursday, I was gonna say Wednesday, just because it was a big story. Yeah, oh gosh, so was she like, did she stay conscious? Did she end up in a coma? Like, what happened after that? Let's talk about the tandem Moby insulin pump from today's sponsor, tandem diabetes care, their newest algorithm control iq plus technology and the new tandem Moby pump offer you unique opportunities to have better control. It's the only system with auto Bolus that helps with missed meals and preventing hyperglycemia, the only system with a dedicated sleep setting, and the only system with off or on body wear options. Tandem Moby gives you more discretion, freedom and options for how to manage your diabetes. This is their best algorithm ever, and they'd like you to check it out at tandem diabetes.com/juicebox when you get to my link, you're going to see integrations with Dexcom sensors and a ton of other information that's going to help you learn about tandems, tiny pump that's big on control tandem diabetes.com/juicebox. The tandem mobi system is available for people ages two and up who want an automated delivery system to help them sleep better, wake up in range and address high blood sugars with auto Bolus. I used to hate ordering my daughter's diabetes supplies. I never had a good experience, and it was frustrating. But it hasn't been that way for a while, actually, for about three years now, because that's how long we've been using us Med, US med.com/juicebox, or call 888-721-1514, us. Med is the number one distributor for FreeStyle Libre systems nationwide. They are the number one specialty distributor for Omnipod, the number one fastest growing tandem distributor nationwide, the number one rated distributor in Dexcom customer satisfaction surveys, they have served over 1 million people with diabetes since 1996 and they always provide 90 days worth of supplies and fast and free shipping us. Med carries everything from insulin pumps and diabetes testing supplies to the latest CGM like the. Libre three and Dexcom g7 they accept Medicare nationwide, and over 800 private insurers find out why us med has an A plus rating with a better business bureau at usmed.com/juicebox, or just call them at 888-721-1514, get started right now, and you'll be getting your supplies the same way we do.
Allison 15:26
She was borderline coma. She was in and out of consciousness. My husband ended up flying with her on the helicopter, because I was like, I need to go home. Because, you know, we had the dog, we had other stuff. I knew we were going to be staying at the hospital. I could just tell that it was going to be a bit of a stay. So our house was on the way to UVA anyway, so I stopped, got the dog situation situated. Thank God, my dad lives with us, so I already had someone here to take care of the, you know, the younger my older daughter and the dog. And so they got to UVA, and my husband said it was just, it was surreal, because they, you know, they're unloading her from the helicopter, and it's just a hallway of doctors as they're rushing her to the pick you and they got her situated. I got there, yeah, maybe an hour and a half or two hours later, and it was just so hard seeing her laying in the hospital bed, and she had been throwing up so much, they wanted to get her on the IVs get everything figured out. So we were there for four days. We got it. I mean, the staff there was amazing, and we're still really close with our diabetes educator that came in to teach us everything at the hospital. We talked to her all the time. So she's like our little angel, and the staff was amazing. I remember, we did get to witness an honor walk, which was really heartbreaking. And I looked at her, I was like, I need to get out of here. You need to get us out of here. I can't do this. But the first night in the hospital was when, that's when things kind of took the surprise. Like it said she'd been throwing up
Scott Benner 16:54
a lot. Yeah, I'm wondering on that first night, what's the feedback initially, like, what are your expectations for what's happening and what the outcomes might
Allison 17:03
be at the hospital, or the first night, like at home, when she threw up, I went about
Scott Benner 17:06
the first night at the hospital. Like, once you're talking to doctors, are they saying to you, oh, don't worry about it. Are they like, hey, we'll let you know how this is going.
Allison 17:14
They came in, they were pretty positive about everything. They're like, look, you know, you got her in just in time. They did tell us, you know, had we waited, she would not have made it. She was one of their sickest diabetics they had seen in a long, long time. So they were actually surprised at how well she was doing, which bode well in her, for her, that she was not, you know, doing worse than they would have expected. But the first night I was I stayed in the room, obviously with her. And I remember she every time she made the noise like she was going to throw up again, I was like, I would shoot up, because I had just gotten used to her throwing up. And then middle of the night, it was probably 2am the night nurse was coming in to do her check, and Molly starts kind of coughing, and you could hear what I thought was going to be her vomiting again. So I jump up and she does vomit. And it is the most disgusting stuff that came up. I mean, it was like, black tar, like, stained her lips blue, like a bluish purple. It was everywhere. And I was like, Oh my God. I freaked out. I looked at the nurse. I was like, What the heck is this? What is happening? Like, complete panic. So we're cleaning her up, and she stays pretty calm. But of course, it's two o'clock in the morning. There is no real like her pediatric diabetes doctor that we have been working with, or had, you know, taken her case, wasn't there? So she's like, well, you know, it could be she'd been throwing up a lot. It could just be someone, you know, the irritation and and some blood or something from the irritation. I was like, that's just gross. I don't know about that. And you get it cleaned up. Next day, I let her doctor know about what happened, and he had the same answer. You know, it was probably just old blood, dry blood from, you know, the vomiting. Because she was vomiting so much. I'm like, Okay, so a few days go by and she's getting better and better, and this is Saturday time frame. She's finally awake, and they want to try and get her to eat something. So we order pancakes, some other stuff, the real healthy stuff that we should have in the hospital for starting but like our sugar free syrup, and she was trying to eat, and she was just screaming in pain. And she's like, it doesn't I can't eat. I can't eat. It hurts, it burns. She's screaming. She's rubbing her chest, and everybody's kind of looking at each other, like, what is going on? So they get her in an antacid, type of suppressant to see if maybe it's an acids that are just kind of bubbling up, and she sensitive from it. Still doesn't really eat. She finally gets a few bites down, and it's just absolutely painful for her. She didn't want anything but
Scott Benner 19:49
water. Well, that's a problem, because she only drinks the water from home, right? It was, I know this is a serious story, so I didn't stop on it, but I love. Your kids, like, I only drink the water from my house. She's still that way, fancy that way. Yeah. Okay, go ahead, yeah.
Allison 20:08
We had to go home and get it, bring it to her so she she still wouldn't, like, she wouldn't eat it. She was trying to, and she kept telling everybody, she's like, No, I can't. It hurts, too bad. It burns, and she's just sobbing. And it was all that was almost worse to watch than when she was in DKA, okay, because she's awake and she's telling you, and you can tell she's in just pain, and she's got a pretty, pretty high pain tolerance, like, something is off, man. But go the next day, still not eating too much. She would only eat like a jello or a yogurt, something soft because it didn't upset her throat. We get discharged on Sunday. At this point, it's what, like, 17th, 18th, I think of February, and never got better. She was home for two weeks almost. She started school back up. We were home like one week to kind of recover, but we still couldn't get her to eat. Was the big problem, and everything was painful for her to eat. So I'm like, how am I going to send her to school? Like, what is she going to eat? So we actually had to go through and try and figure out. Try and figure out stuff that she could eat so that she'd be able to go to school. And she lived off of only Panera store bought potato soup. Okay? Again, just like home water, scrambled eggs, she would do apple sauce. And she liked her milk, but her milk had to be room temperature, so we'd have to, like, microwave it, otherwise it would hurt. Oh my gosh, yeah. So my husband like, there's something wrong. And we kept telling her, doctors were like, there's something wrong. So they were like, well, you know, it could be this, it could be that slut or heal. It's been, really, you know, lot of trauma with everything. So
Scott Benner 21:38
look, they didn't look No. Okay,
Allison 21:42
no. So we started calling pediatric gastroenterologist around the area to see if somebody, by chance, had an opening. Because we're like, there's something gastro going on, like, there's something else happening. It's not that we knew it. Yeah, no one had appointments, and we're trying to explain to them. We're like, no, she's a newly diagnosed type one diabetic. We can't get her to eat. It's too painful. There's something going on. We kept raising the alarm. So about a month after diagnosis, she has our first follow up endo appointment, and Abby, who was the nurse practitioner that she had she'd been seeing until recently, was like, okay, you know, why don't we get you an urge, you know, an urgent referral for GI and I was like, thank you. Finally, someone's listening. So they get us in the following week, and her doctor that she first saw that day was kind of given the same thing. Well, it could be this. It could be that, you know, apparently, when there's a significant amount of vomiting or certain stuff. Sometimes your your body almost forgets how to swallow and eat, apparently. So they use a speech therapist to help with the swallowing so that that maybe that could be it. Like, I don't think that's it. So he's like, Well, we're going to go ahead and do a swallow study. I was like, All right, cool. When do we do that? Made the appointment for the follow up to do the swallow study. So this is the following week, we go in and they did the swallow study. Go home, I don't hear anything. They called a few days later to let us know that she was going to need to have a procedure done. They needed her to come back in. They'd schedule everything. This is another, like, whirlwind of stuff. I was like, What are you talking about? And they said she's got acute esophageal necrosis. We've never seen this in a child. And I was like, What?
Scott Benner 23:27
What is that? Well, doesn't necrosis mean like dead tissue? Yep. What did
Allison 23:32
she throw up that? That's exactly what she threw up that first night when she was in there was the dead tissue from her esophagus. Oh, my God. So that's why everything was burning, that's why she couldn't eat. Was that it was literally just dead, necrotic tissue that had been in there her stomach acids had turned so caustic that it was almost like battery acid from the dka. Yeah, it was directly correlated to the dka. It wasn't just regular vomiting, it wasn't anything. It was tied to the dka. They had seen cases of it, and they have case studies of it for older people having this happen in association with DKA, but no one younger, and so it never was something they thought of, because it doesn't happen, right? They told us the damage, the amount of damage, was about almost three inches from the base of her stomach up her esophagus. And it was so it was a three inch section, and the normal diameter of your esophagus is between 14 to 16 millimeters. Hers was six.
Unknown Speaker 24:38
Oh, from Yeah,
Scott Benner 24:40
yeah, it was, I don't understand what I mean. I know we're gonna get to it, but I don't understand what you do for that.
Allison 24:45
Well, that's what I was. They didn't know. They had to research to try and figure out, like, best ways to do it. Because the other thing that's interesting, if you read into this, is that condition, if not caught and treated immediately, is fatal. Yeah, I would imagine so the fact that. This kid has gone for that long, because by the time we get in for our first procedure, it's been a month
Unknown Speaker 25:05
and a half, oh my gosh, yeah, it
Allison 25:10
had started to heal up. And when it did, there was so much scar tissue from it that that's why the opening was how it was that
Scott Benner 25:18
pain probably when she was eating too, yeah,
Allison 25:21
and so food was constantly getting stuck. She'd try and eat, and even, you know, she'd have her milk, or she'd have her soup, or she'd and it would get stuck and she'd end up having to throw it up, which then is aggravating things even more, because then you have the vomiting coming back up to the already destroyed tissue, right, right? I asked him. I was like, Well, what do we do? And he's like, we're gonna do some research, look into this, see what our next steps are. We'll give you a call back, but we're gonna have to really get in there and scope and kind of see what the damage looks like. So we did know that we were gonna have to go in and they were gonna have to do the scope for it, but as for treatment, we weren't 100% sure. So they did some research. They did find two other cases in adolescents and kids, and one was, I believe, a 16 year old and one was a 14 year old boy. So she's only the third documented case that they have been able to find, and they end up doing a case study on her. But they decided they wanted to get in there in scope, see how everything looked, and then go from there and maybe do a dilation and see if it holds. So we go in, you know, they have to put her under, do everything that way. And they got in there, and that's when they were they were able to tell that it was the size and the amount of damage, the extent of the damage which went all the way through her actual esophagus to the outer layers, is how significant it was. They we went through about five rounds of this for dilations to see if it would hold. The first three did not hold very well. That would they would ended up the last couple dilations that we did, they did some injections of a steroid and a couple other medications to try and get the scar tissue to break down, yes, so that her dilations would hold so she could eat.
Unknown Speaker 27:02
Okay,
Scott Benner 27:04
my God, how long is that process, from when you finally got her seen, till maybe she can eat?
Allison 27:10
She was finally, it was so it was April. Was the time frame when we went in and had the first procedure, and by June, she was able to start eating more normal foods, but she will, yeah, she lived off soup,
Scott Benner 27:24
applesauce and warm milk, yeah, yeah. God, did she lose a lot of weight during that time?
Allison 27:31
Yeah, it took a little while for her to put some, put some weight on. Okay, so, but it was, everything was soft. It had to be a complete soft diet.
Scott Benner 27:38
And this is only like, less than maybe, like 1516, months ago, this is
Allison 27:43
happening. Yeah, yeah. Next week we have a her follow up with her gi to schedule another dilation,
Scott Benner 27:49
just to see if it's holding and doing better. Well,
Allison 27:53
she's starting to get food stuck again. So we kind of just have to go by symptoms there's because there's obviously nobody can tell. So if she she knows, she can tell you when something gets stuck, or what's getting caught up and when, which I can't imagine, like, how that would feel, the panic I would have, getting food stuck. But she'll come up to me and she's like, Hey, my chicken nugget got stuck. I was like, did you get it down? She's like, Yeah, I just concentrated a little bit and had some water and it came down. I'm like, note to self.
Scott Benner 28:20
How do they talk about this? They talk about it like, as she grows, maybe that'll grow with her, or is this a problem she's gonna fight with forever? Is there a surgical intervention, like, what are your options? Probably
Allison 28:32
a problem she's gonna have forever. So this is something that's gonna just have to be continuous monitoring and care. So they said, anytime she starts to feel like something's getting stuck again, and it happens once a week or something like that, to let them know she'll have to come in. So it's just a routine at this point is we'll just have to schedule the procedure, come in, get the dilation, get the steroid injections, then go about until it happens
Scott Benner 28:57
again. Explain the dilation to me that procedure. So
Allison 29:01
they go in, and it's like a balloon. So they'll, they'll go in through her, down her esophagus, to the portion, the damaged portion, and they slowly inflate this balloon to stretch the esophagus back open to the normal size. So when we first did it, since it was six, six millimeters. They had to go very slowly, which is also why we took there was a few procedures so she could really eat, because obviously, doing it too fast, you can rip the esophagus, and then you have a major problem. So, and with the tissue being so damaged, they had to take it just step by step, slow, yeah, to get it to open. So but now that it's it's open, we at least know what to watch for. We can schedule procedures. Just reach out it's they're pretty good about it. We'll just let them know they trust Molly. They they know that she knows when things are getting stuck, and she's pretty vocal about
Scott Benner 29:56
it. So what's this like, the psychological side of this? Have you? Not even had time to dig into that yet. Like, is she having trouble with food? Like, is she like, you know, building a, what you might call an unhealthy relationship with eating. Like, Is she sad? Is there? Like, I mean, how are you
Unknown Speaker 30:12
there?
Allison 30:14
Was for her, there was at first. Absolutely, was at first. And especially, you know, she went back to when she went back to school and she couldn't eat lunch with the other kids, because if she started choking, they needed to get the piece out, or she's gonna fixate on her food. So she couldn't go eat in the cafeteria like a normal kid. She had to eat next door at the nurses, you know, next door to the nurse's office. So she got to, at least, you know, they made it fun for her. She got to pick a friend, and every day, one of her friends could come and sit and have lunch with her, but it was the same food. Every day. It was the Panera soup. Yeah, she didn't have any any stuff, so it was hard for her, and she was very fearful of eating for a while. I would think, yeah, and she would get embarrassed, because when it would get stuck, she'd have to get up and run out of the room and try and get it up get the nurse. So it was always this thing. So it was definitely, at first, very hard for her very kind of traumatizing, to say the least. So she was afraid for a while to eat certain things. And so we finally, I think, like I said, after the third the third round of dilation, she started eating some different stuff. And you know, Dr Middleton, who has been absolutely amazing, was like, you know, you can try some of this stuff now, and you can try this stuff, kiddo. Let's do these things. Let's see how we're doing. And so it really encouraged her to start trying some more stuff. And so by this past school year, she was very excited. She got to eat lunch in the cafeteria with all of her friends. So she was back to that, and she seems to have really rebounded. Okay, she hasn't really had any lasting issues with it since
Scott Benner 31:53
then, since then, during that time, how did it impact? Like, bolusing? Like, were you worried, like, she might eat something and then throw it back up and now we have insulin in there? Was that, like, a concern too?
Allison 32:06
Yeah, that was, that was definitely tricky to say the least. I mean, you have, you had the honeymooning with that at the beginning, and then when she had her first procedure done, kicked her out of honeymooning because it was just a little bit more trauma, like, obviously. So she went through that, and then we, we would dose, and sometimes she would throw the stuff up, and I'd have to, literally, like, not to be gross, but I'd tell her, please don't flush. Let me see how much came back up, so I can try and guesstimate what we're gonna have to make up for,
Scott Benner 32:35
for the insulin. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. Right? Jesus, yeah. And now you today, you would call her healed. You would call her functioning, like, how do you tell me again? How you think of it? Now
Allison 32:52
they call it just maintenance, like she's there, but it's going to be something that's maintenance throughout her life.
Scott Benner 32:57
Okay, most days, okay, yeah, most days are good.
Allison 33:01
Most days are fine. We just keep kind of a journal of times that things have gotten stuck. What it was that she ate, just to kind of keep it up for the doctor. So when we see him, or if it's gotten pretty regular, we let them know how things are. So if we need to, so it's just going to be it's going to be something just like diabetes she will have to deal with for the rest of her life. It's just always going to be there. It's not going to go away.
Scott Benner 33:22
So this whole thing that she lives with now is caused by the dka. And going back to the beginning of your story, because I wasn't 100% sure where your story was going right away. Where'd you get let down on not seeing the DK again? Like, who? Who missed it? It was the pediatrician. Yes, after a number of different visits, yes, I
Allison 33:42
ripped the doctor's office, a good one. And when I called, yeah, when I called, they were like, Yeah, we remember her, and I just let into him. And I even thought, you know, I'm not like, Sue happy, I don't want to do that, but I even thought I'm like, this, like a lawsuit, something like, You can't do this. You're doctors. We trust you. And to completely miss this multiple times. And then the nurse, especially, I told him I was like, if you haven't fired her yet, you better, because that's ridiculous. Because if she had called and just just a simple call back,
Unknown Speaker 34:10
we could have been at the imaging center
Allison 34:14
18, yeah, 18 hours ahead of this, knowing we already been at the
Scott Benner 34:18
hospital, maybe she was trying to get to the gym. I mean, you know, think she just, like, she just left and forgot to call you and didn't tell anybody,
Allison 34:27
maybe, yeah, but it's one of those, like, that's your job.
Scott Benner 34:31
You know. No, no, I'm not saying like it was, I'm not excusing it. I'm saying like it was probably something as simple as, like, a ball got dropped, or she's like, I will do it tomorrow. Like, one of those things. And, yeah, yeah. And it ended up having all this impact on your daughter's life and your life and everybody else's
Allison 34:47
exactly because we would have been at the same hospital, actually, where we took her, that's where the imaging and the other stuff was. And at that point, I suspect they probably would have told us, like, you need to get her seat and go ahead and take her next door and. I feel stupid at times looking at how sick she was that I didn't think of that. But then you I always go back to like, you see so many people go to the ER because they stubbed their toe, and I didn't want to be one of those people that, plus we'd already been in Doctor quite a few times, and they weren't concerned. To my great, I'm going to take her. Like, is it in
Scott Benner 35:16
my head? Yeah, that's it, right? Like, once you have a concern, you show it to a physician. The physicians like, oh, it's not that scary or bad or whatever it is. You think in your head, you kind of let go of that part, and you're like, Oh, this is going to pass, or it's going to get better or something like that, yeah. So when it gets more dire, you're already kind of, your notion is pre conceived, already that this is okay. This is what they expect to happen. Yeah, yeah. That sucks,
Allison 35:42
exactly, exactly. And then the other part of that is because Wednesday night was the how. That's when the violent vomiting really started. That's when it ramped up to it was just almost non stop. It felt like and I think that is really also when the most damage was done to her esophagus and what caused the aen to
Scott Benner 36:04
you, that's when it feels like nothing's all going on. Right, right, right. My gosh. How does she manage her diabetes today? Does she have a pump? Is she MDI? What does she do? Yep,
Allison 36:13
she's pumped. She's g7 and the Moby. She loves it. She's named her ocean. That's her girl. It's her best friend. The
Scott Benner 36:19
pump is called ocean, named ocean, yeah, oh, that's nice. That's
Allison 36:24
hers. And she actually, she's very excited about this. Dr de Bauer called yesterday from UVA, and they're working on, I don't have it up in front of me, but they're working on a new AI technology with tandem, and they just got approved to do studies for kids six to 13. So they asked her if she wanted to participate in the trials for this new technology for tandem. Really. She's very excited. Yeah, yeah. It's pretty cool. I'm excited to learn about it. He called me yesterday, and I was
Scott Benner 36:52
like, what? Oh, you just found out about this? Yeah, just found out yesterday. So we're super excited. Yeah, see when I spend the last year and a half telling people like, I bet you there's going to be AI technology and pumps one day. And people like, I don't think so. And now you're telling me, maybe there will be. So, yeah, yeah,
Allison 37:07
we start the case study, or the case study, we start the the trials and everything the end of this
Scott Benner 37:12
month. Okay, are they tracking her for the other issue with the esophagus too? Is that, like a thing that's so rare that they're going to keep up with her?
Unknown Speaker 37:20
Yeah? Yeah.
Allison 37:22
They did a huge case study and did presentation and submitted everything with her gastroenterologist and all that stuff. But some, they had some big convention a few months ago and submitted everything. So they had asked if she was was interested in being a case study. And of course, Molly thought it was great. She's like, I can be famous. I'm like, well, they don't use your name.
Unknown Speaker 37:41
Kid. She's like, but still, I
Allison 37:42
was like, okay, so yeah, they did a case study, and she's now in the books as the third documented case of this and a kid.
Scott Benner 37:50
So tell me something. Then, do you think that your first year or so learning about diabetes, when you hear other people talking about it, is yours much different, or is it still kind of the same, kind of
Allison 38:01
the same. I mean, I think both issues were two totally separate issues. That's just how I look at it, one cause the other. But they're managed so differently, even though one can impact the other, I guess so we kind of just handle them totally different. But I remember, which is actually how I found you. I was just in a panic at the hospital, and I was one of those people like, I have to have control. I have to know what's going on. I have to have answers. I can't just sit there. And I just immediately started researching. And actually had started listening to, I was listening to one of your podcasts, when Molly That first night in the hospital when she threw up all the caustic tissue. And I was like, I gotta figure out how to do this. And I think having the answers, we're not answers. We don't have the answers, but having the support and the knowledge when it came to handling the diabetes, we always my husband, I joked that that was the easy part, figuring out the aen, going through the procedures, trying to get her to eat, not knowing if anything was going to work, if it was going to stay. That was almost worse than the diabetes,
Scott Benner 39:02
yeah? Well, I mean, it's probably felt more emergent at the very least, right? Like,
Allison 39:07
and they had no answers. Yeah, no one had answers,
Scott Benner 39:11
because it doesn't happen very often, right? The
Allison 39:14
Diabetes is like insulin check blood sugars. This is what we do, like, they're step by step. So this one, no,
Scott Benner 39:20
well, was that direction that you got about the diabetes valuable too, or did you have to couple it with podcasts and other stuff?
Allison 39:28
Definitely the podcast with everything, and just learning everything I could about it and trying to understand we left the hospital. And, of course, you know you you leave with these little goodie bags. And when I say little, that's complete sarcasm, the giant bags of just supplies and stuff. And by the time we got home from UVA to our house, which is about an hour and a half, I had like I felt like everything was forgotten. I was just so overrun and overloaded with what to do that I called our nurse. That was our education. Her nurse. I messaged her, and I was like, please call me. And she's like, what? I'm like, I'm looking, I'm like, looking at the insulin pens. I'm like, how do what am I dosing? Like, how do I do this? It was so sweet. And she laughed a little bit. She's like, I know. She's like, it's a lot. You're gonna be okay. And so she walked us through it, and getting some of the confidence to do it, and, like, it was just hard. But the best thing we got was the sugar pixel too, which I saw on your it popped up when I was on your Facebook page for the Juicebox Facebook page, and I was like, What is this thing? Genius. I love that thing. I take it everywhere.
Scott Benner 40:34
So you have a young kid with type one diabetes, just got another medical issue. Things are going pretty well for her. She has a pump. She's doing well, what's her level of care? Personal? What's her level of care split with you? Like, how do you manage day to day? So
Allison 40:53
she's slowly getting more independent on, you know, the dosing and double checking. Like, she'll try and add stuff up herself, and then she'll be like, Hey, Mom, can you double check these numbers for me? We'll do that. She's pretty good. She was asymptomatic for highs and lows for a while, and she's finally started really noticing her lows and being able to tell what it is. And she'll do her own finger poke. The other day, she came into my office, she's like, Hey, where's my my thing that pokes. And I was like, work. Try again. What? So she's like, No, my finger poke my tester. And I was like, Wow. I was like, why? She's like, I'm just feeling low. My Dexcom says it was like, 170 and I'm like, well, you're gonna need to bring that down. She's like, I just feel off. So she's really starting to get more in tune, which is more important for me than her taking over. And you know, doing her site changes, doing all this other stuff. So I do a lot of the site changes. I do the Dexcom we do because she uses the true steel too with her her movie, so she's not a fan and ready to do that one. So I definitely do those for her. It's a whole routine. But at school, she's getting better. She'll treat her lows to make sure she has her stuff. She's pretty responsible with that. So we're getting there steps.
Scott Benner 42:05
It's a whole routine. What do you mean? It's the whole routine.
Unknown Speaker 42:09
Oh my gosh, she's
Allison 42:11
chakra, like I said, she's very particular, so she has to use the numbing cream when we do the site change with the true seal. And I'm like, you understand? Like we did months where you got the same needle multiple times a day. It has to be the numbing cream and has to sit there for 10 minutes, and then she has to breathe in and out for a few it's this, like, literally steps. It is a 30 some minute process that could probably take less than five
Scott Benner 42:34
and is she anxious, nervous about the insertion? Like, what do you think it is that gets her she
Allison 42:41
doesn't like needles. She's not a fan of needles at all. And I she just gets herself hyped up sometimes about it, yeah, and she's fine with the Dexcom. But Dexcom we first started, before she was even had the pump Dexcom, she would do the same thing, and it would just be, I think it was just a fear. And now she's, she's fine with it, like she gets sad if she doesn't have a bleeder. I'm like, you can't have a bleeder with her. Have a bleeder with everyone. That's weird. Let's not she's like, No, but those read the best. I'm like, okay, Molly, because they're gonna think
Scott Benner 43:08
you're strange. Where did you start that from? The online?
Allison 43:10
Yeah, yeah. Because I said something one day. She was freaking out because it happened the first time it did. And I was like, No, malls, it's okay. She's like, thinking, we have to take it off. And I was like, No. I was like, I've heard bleeders. Or readers, let's see.
Scott Benner 43:21
Oh, that's how you talked her into it. Now, she's like, she thinks it's better that way. Now,
Allison 43:25
yeah, she's like, it's on point. So she I'm like, people
Scott Benner 43:30
listening right now, who are they're yelling at their cars. And they're like, that's not always true. I can hear them. Oh, yeah, we've
Allison 43:36
had all these problems with our g7 Well, it's technology. It fails.
Scott Benner 43:41
I don't know what to tell you. I think sometimes people are like, you know, they have an experience and they think, Well, this is true. Like, you know, I'm sure sometimes bleeders are readers. I'm not going to tell you otherwise. I'm also going to tell you that I bet you some people have sites that bleed that don't work really well, exactly, exactly. Interesting. How people get, like, attached to the thing that happened to them. I don't know if that makes sense or
Allison 44:01
not. It does. Just let it go like it's not always going to work. It's just a saying. It's Joe. You know, we've had somewhere Molly swear was going her Dex. It was one of those way off ones where I just kind of laughed at it. It's funny, but not where we just kept saying she was low, that she was like, 65 and she was like, Mom, and I was like, in the shower, so I wasn't paying attention. She's outside with her dad. It's summertime last year, and she keeps trying to treat her low instead of doing a finger poke. She was still new into it, and I come down, and I hear the the sugar pixels just blaring. I'm like, what is happening? She's like, I can't get this low to come up. I'm like, Well, did you finger
Unknown Speaker 44:35
poke? She said, No. I was like, dude,
Scott Benner 44:38
is it possible you're not really low? And is that what ended up happening
Allison 44:42
by that time she had eaten up that she was like, 400 something. I was like, you've got to be
Scott Benner 44:46
kidding me. Well, at least she was being proactive. Exactly.
Allison 44:50
That's our tool. I was like, I'm very proud of you for taking the steps. And I was like, we forgot, we forgot one in there. Yeah,
Scott Benner 44:55
let's check just to make sure this number is real. Yeah. All right. But. You think she's doing well, though, huh?
Unknown Speaker 45:02
Yeah, she's doing really well.
Allison 45:03
She's, she's definitely come a long way. I mean, we also she is in therapy. So we did do, did start her in therapy, probably around October or so, okay, of last year, just to kind of work through some stuff. And she was, she went through a period where she was just really angry about the diabetes. And, fair enough? Yeah, exactly. Feeling different, feeling these things, just a lot of emotions that were going on. And so I went ahead and we got her in to see a therapist who's been amazing, and she's very proud of herself because she's graduated up to group therapy. So there's a small little group of the girls that do all the same age, and they're they meet and do their group therapy. So that's helped a lot. Too. Good, good. Yeah.
Scott Benner 45:42
Do you think she'll do that for, like, for a long time? Do you think she'll just, is she trying to get to something? You know what? I mean, I
Allison 45:49
you know, I don't think she's got much longer that she'll be doing it. I think she's really at a good place. It was just learning, the regulating her, just the emotions, sometimes, when she would get upset or frustrated and being honest with other people about her, like, she would get kind of shy about her devices, and would at school take off her, her go back, her go bag with her phone in, her her spy belt with her phone on, and would just leave. She didn't want to be tied down to it. So I think she's getting to a place where she's good. And she's good. And she told me, she's like, I think I'm done with therapy for a while. I'm like, Okay, well, if you need it again, it's there whatever.
Scott Benner 46:27
I mean, that's really thoughtful. Have you done therapy? Like, what made you get her to it quickly?
Allison 46:31
Her team at UVA is, again, absolutely amazing. Like, I can't say enough good things about them. And they make sure, every time we come in for the, you know, our three month check up, she meets with her dietitian, she meets with a diabetes educator. We have a social worker on the team that comes in, and so we spend time with each one of them. And the social worker had actually come in, and Molly was just kind of, I sit back, we let them kind of do their thing and talk. And she was feeling, and they were talking about some of the stuff, and she's like, Well, would you be interested in talking to someone? And so it was actually the social worker talking with Molly, and Molly just having that conversation and saying she thought that would really help if she could talk to somebody. And so the social worker
Unknown Speaker 47:16
helped get us set up with somebody very nice. That's awesome. Yeah,
Allison 47:21
yeah. They're a pretty good team there.
Scott Benner 47:23
That's awesome. It really is. But is there anything about your story that we haven't covered? I want
Allison 47:27
to make sure. No, no. My thing, like when I reached out to you, my biggest was just, I don't want another parent or another child, you know, the parent watching their kids suffer and be in so much pain, and obviously the child, you know, going through it, but just being aware, and had the doctors been aware or known, which I don't, I don't put any blame on them, because it's so rare. But because of this DKA, it's just another thing that's not known or talked about. Yeah, because it wasn't known that this is, you know, another thing to watch for. You know, if your kids complain because we kept getting brushed off, that it should, it could be this, it could be that. And come to find out, no, it definitely was not. So it's just something else
Scott Benner 48:03
difficult to swallow that. Like, somebody could have pulled out a test strip and figured this whole thing out,
Allison 48:07
yeah, yeah, be on a desk, just stick it right in there. Would have known.
Scott Benner 48:12
Yeah, no. I mean, I It's tough because I see all the sides of that argument for every one of you, which is so infrequently. Like, right? You're poor, like, such an infrequent thing to happen to somebody. Yeah, right, yeah. Can you imagine? Like, I always try to imagine the podcast of the of where the people are, like, I just went in there with a cold, and they stuck my finger, made it bleed, and stuck it on a test strip that was so unnecessary. Like, I you know what I mean, like, the how other people would feel, or how they think it's so infrequent that's not going to be that so that's not working, but at the same time, look what it would have done for her. Yeah, exactly. It's so hard to, like, keep those things all balanced in your head at the same
Allison 48:52
time, I guess. Well, that's what I haven't understood. It's, you know, I just the lack of education is frustrating, yeah, for the doctors and the understanding, and so that's when I've been very vocal about her stuff. I've always shared her story. I sat there and I pushed her diabetes educator. I had pushed or I talked to her, and she actually took the case study. I sent it over to her, even though they're all UVA, but I sent it to her, and she brought it to her boss, the supervisor, the person that oversees, I forget what fancy name he has, and she talked about it. She's like, we need to know about this. This is something, even though it's rare, we really need to be educated about. We need to know about this is, you know, important. And he completely agreed. And they've actually put it into part of their training is to discuss the acute esophageal necrosis and where it does come from, DKA. And these are the symptoms. This is what you need to watch for. This is this is what you need to be aware of, because it can happen, even if it's a rarity, just being able for one person to know, you know, Molly would have spent, wouldn't have spent a month and a half suffering, yeah, at the beginning of already having to learn and figure out diabetes.
Scott Benner 49:55
That's awesome that you got them to to put that in there. That is really great. Yeah, yeah, oh, wow. Well, I'm glad they did that, at the very least, exactly baby steps. Can I just ask you a couple of quick questions? So like, when you said you found the podcast right away and you were listening to it when she was vomiting, still, are you listening to management stuff? Are you listening to just like the most recent episode. Like, how do people dive into it?
Allison 50:23
Honestly, it just depends on my mood for the day. Like, what I feel like this, I'll scroll through, like, I'll pull it up, and I'll scroll through the description of the certain ones. And it's like reading a book or picking a novel. Like, sometimes I'll get into I'm like, That one sounds good for today? Yeah. And I work from home, so I'll just put it on the background, you know, still listening, but I'm at home working, I'll put it on listen. I remember in the hospital, I had, I had posted on Facebook just as an update on my like on my page, and I had someone text me immediately, probably immediately. It was like, five minutes after, and was like, Hey, I just saw your post. I have a really good friend of mine. Her son was diagnosed, you know, six years ago, I can get you in touch with her. And it really impressed me, because it was, like, 10 o'clock at night. I'm like, it's kind of late, you know. And she's like, No, here's her number. Can I give her yours? I'm like, sure. Few minutes later, I didn't text from this mom, and she's actually the one that told me about your podcast. Told me about this other Facebook group for moms. Look at this stuff. Check out these episodes. She was the one that really was like I was in a complete fog. And it gave me at least something to feel like I could grasp on to. So that's where I started. And I believe it was the bold beginnings one, okay, and I started there, and kind of just after, afterwards, jump around, like I said to certain
Scott Benner 51:36
stuff. I just got back from the cruise
Allison 51:40
with Apple. Look like you had so much fun. It was
Scott Benner 51:42
good. It really was. But like, I'm saying, I just got back from being face to face with people telling stories like this, so you just made me emotional, just telling me how the person explained it to you. Oh, really, yeah, because now I have this, people reach out all day long. I'm not going to tell you. Like, I'm not in contact with people constantly sending messages or putting up posts or stuff like that. Like, that's lovely and it's nice, but it still feels virtual a little bit, yeah, like being with that many people who, at some point or another, over a five day period, went out of their way to stop me to say, like, this is what this meant to me, and then to hear their actual story. Like, I actually got to sit with people and really talk to them, like, talking to you today, like it would be so easy to say Allison's daughter, she was diagnosed in DKA. She got some weird, like, esophagus thing, but it seems to be mostly okay now, and she's doing good. She's got a pump named notion. It skips all the detail that you were able to go over in the last hour. Like, to really give you, like, that feeling, and even that we're still faceless to each other while we're talking about it, right? Yeah, yeah, sitting in front of a person who sits down and says, Look, this is my story, and I hear it like I just heard yours, but they're there, and you're looking them in the eye and you're talking to them, and you can feel like that. You know what it means, like you can feel them like it's different. Right to have people you've never met before come up to you and say, Hi. How are you like, I just came here to meet you, or, you know, I just came here to meet you. But then this whole thing turned into, like, way more than I thought it was going to be, and this was awesome. And then to get a hug from multiple people who you didn't know, like you'd never met five days before, and they're hugging you and telling you, I love you. That happened to me a number of times this
Allison 53:30
week. Well, the difference that you've made, and being able to share Arden story and talk about that, and I feel like really, especially as a parent, they gave me something like to hold on to, especially in that moment when it was scary and I did know what was happening, and I'm laying in the hospital room and all I'm listening to is the beeping and her struggling to breathe at times, and all the stuff like I need something else. So when, when she said that, you having that and listening and knowing I wasn't alone, even though I felt so alone in this hospital room. It really, it was kind of like that, that comfort to hold on to right at the beginning. Yeah, we go to her endo appointments and stuff. I talk about your pocket like, I tell them all about it. I'm like, You need to check it out. If you haven't, you should recommend this. I give them the sugar pixel to recommend new parents. I go out of my I'm like, I always make sure I can tell
Scott Benner 54:18
everybody appreciate that because, you know, it's the other side of it, right? Like, is that what that person did for you? Like, I have a friend. I can put you in touch with him. That person jumped on right away and was like, listen to this, do that. Like, help, you know, like, gave you all the things to, like, get going with. Like, that's beyond my control, right? Like, I can't do that. I don't know that you and your kid are going through this. I can't come find you. You're not going to just blindly find the podcast, the bold beginning series, etc, whatever you end up finding. It just made me feel really warm that there are people out there sharing stuff with each other, because, and I think it makes me feel a little, I don't know, a little more emotional today. My point. Was because I just sat with all these people and heard face to face what it's meant to them. And every person story is different some way, yep, and the thing that the information or the community or whatever they ended up taking out of it, the thing that it saves them from is different, over and over again, from person to person to
Allison 55:19
person. Yeah, everybody's story is so similar, yet so different, and what what they get from it? And I think part of it is the community too, that you've been able to build with this and having that. And sometimes you miss that when you're on a computer and looking at it through things like that. But it's really the sense of community, yeah, that comes with it. For sure. I'm just a little extra thrilled about you can be extra this week. Do it? You deserve it? Well, I'm gonna go to
Scott Benner 55:43
children with diabetes next week. I think I'm gonna have an overload. I'm probably gonna, like, Yeah, I'm probably gonna have, like, a happiness overload this month at some point. So, oh my gosh, that's so cool. That'd be fun. It was really awesome. Okay, well, I mean, I can't imagine that this was an easy story for you to retell so soon after it already happened. And I appreciate you taking the time to do it and,
Allison 56:03
well, thank you for having me on and letting me share Molly's story.
Scott Benner 56:06
Oh, I appreciate you, know. And there's one other thing you said that I don't have enough context for to really speak about it, but I'm going to tag it on at the end here. I'm wondering if people are are people seeing more illnesses where your eyes are super bloodshot in the last couple of years, because I've now seen it happen to Arden. I've seen it happen to me. Like, I don't remember this as a child,
Allison 56:28
yeah, a lot, especially the younger kids. Yeah. This year was interesting, though, this year at school, there wasn't any big, like, pink eye thing that went on. There was ones where they're like, Oh, I think it's allergies and, but like, my nieces up in New York, they went through similar it's, it's really weird. How would you say that?
Scott Benner 56:48
I'm just telling you, like that I didn't have pink eye, ardent, right? A pink eye? No, it's just like, pink you look in the mirror and you're like, oh, it looks like we have pink eye, yeah? And like, and it rocks you, and stays like that for a week before it goes away. It's really weird. I just don't know I had
Allison 57:05
about it was like December that happened, and I ended up with, it was like a sinus infection, but it was, like, my eyes almost. It was really weird, but it wasn't really a sinus I don't know. They never figured out what it was. They gave me steroids, and basically I dropped some really good luck.
Scott Benner 57:19
Yeah, I feel like there's a lot of that happening right now. I just wonder. Like, I don't know, I don't know, but I I just wonder what's going on. Because I feel like I'm seeing it more. I'm wondering, and I'm saying it out loud to see if other people see the same thing, or maybe people are like, I don't know what you're talking
Allison 57:33
about. So we'll find out. It's like, environmental, like something in the environment, and I don't know.
Scott Benner 57:37
I have no idea. I really don't. I'm not very smart in that stuff, so I couldn't tell you this is, this is not a thing I'm probably ever figure out, but it is something I've been wondering about. So okay, we'll see what people say. Yeah, we'll find out. All right. Allison, thank you very much. I appreciate it so much. It's been a pleasure. Can you hold on one second for me, sure. Thank you.
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