#1635 This Just In
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Andrea, 59, newly diagnosed with LADA, shares her late-onset journey, family ties to autoimmunity, and finding community after isolation.
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Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends and welcome back to another episode of The Juicebox podcast.
Andrea 0:12
Hi Scott. My name is Andrea, and I am 59 years old, and I was diagnosed with LADA. I call it just auto immune diabetes, but usually for people who don't know about diabetes, I say type one.
Scott Benner 0:30
I am here to tell you about juice cruise, 2026 we will be departing from Miami on June 21 2026 for a seven night trip, going to the Caribbean, that's right, we're going to leave Miami and then stop at Coco k in the Bahamas. After that, it's on to St Kitts, St Thomas and a beautiful cruise through the Virgin Islands. The first juice Cruise was awesome. The second one's going to be bigger, better and bolder. This is your opportunity to relax while making lifelong friends who have type one diabetes, expand your community and your knowledge on juice cruise 2026 learn more right now at Juicebox podcast.com/juice. Cruise. At that link, you'll also find photographs from the first cruise. Nothing you hear on the Juicebox podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan. This episode of The Juicebox podcast is sponsored by the contour next gen blood glucose meter. Learn more and get started today at contour next.com/juicebox com slash Juicebox. This episode of The Juicebox podcast is sponsored by the twist a ID system powered by tide pool that features the twist loop algorithm, which you can target to a glucose level as low as 87 Learn more at twist.com/juicebox that's twist with two eyes.com/juicebox. Get precision insulin delivery with a target range that you choose at twist.com/juicebox. That's t, w, i, i s, t.com/juicebox. This episode of The Juicebox podcast is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes and their mini med 780 G system designed to help ease the burden of diabetes management, imagine fewer worries about Miss boluses or miscalculated carbs thanks to meal detection technology and automatic correction doses. Learn more and get started today at Medtronic diabetes.com/juicebox
Andrea 2:41
Hi, Scott. My name is Andrea, and I am 59 years old, and I was diagnosed with LADA. I call it just auto immune diabetes, but usually for people who don't know about diabetes, I say type one, three years ago, three years ago and change. So this is all new to me.
Scott Benner 3:05
Yeah, you're 56 when you're diagnosed 59 now,
Andrea 3:08
yes, correct. I got it pretty much right before my 56th birthday. Happy birthday to me, happens more than
Scott Benner 3:15
you think. Question is, Do you have children? Yes or no?
Andrea 3:22
Yes, I've got two grown children, okay, and lovely,
Scott Benner 3:26
a mom, a dad, aunts, uncles, extended family. Do any of these people have type one diabetes? Nobody.
Andrea 3:34
In fact, I have never, since diagnosis, I have yet to meet a person who has type one out in the wild. I met people on, you know, Facebook groups and and stuff like that, but I have not yet met another human being with this even though I live in a very populous city, I worked with a woman a long, long time ago who has type one, or had type one, that was all new to me then, and and I still haven't met anybody else, yeah,
Scott Benner 3:59
but since you're diagnosed, you haven't met anybody, right? Yeah, right? Of that large group of people, your children, your extended family. Does anyone have celiac hypothyroidism? Do they have, I don't know, Crohn's disease? Do they have anything that relates to inflammation at all? Yes.
Andrea 4:20
And, well, it's funny, like looking at the tree, you know, the family tree, Nobody that I know. I mean, my dad had type two diabetes. He danced around type two for a long time. Nobody I know had that had anything like that. But one of my daughters has Crohn's, and the other one. It turns out that when I found out that I had type one, I also found out that I have antibodies against the thyroid, so Hashimotos and my my other daughter has that as well, even though we're both asymptomatic with that.
Scott Benner 4:58
Okay, so you have. Have the antibodies, but you don't have symptoms. You're not, let's see, right? You don't have trouble getting rested. You don't feel tired, your hair doesn't fall out. You know, a problem with your fingernails. Periods aren't none of that happens to you. No. So they, at least not that I've noticed, yeah, yeah. So they only checked because you got Lada type one.
Andrea 5:21
Yeah, yeah. I'm guessing. I can't remember them having checked before. Yeah, it never came up as anything abnormal before. What made them check your kids, my daughter, the oldest one, she there's like this whole push to try to find people you know, before they develop any symptoms of diabetes, you know, to see if it can be, you know, sort of stopped. And so, yeah, there's sort of a push to test your children and other family members to see if anybody has auto antibodies to, I guess, beta cells and all the other stuff. Gad 65 but also, because I had Hashimotos, they tested her for that too. And turns out she had that too.
Scott Benner 5:58
She's also asymptomatic. Doesn't have any sense. Yeah, she is. Did you get found by like, trial net, or screen it, like you mean it, or one of those things for
Andrea 6:09
trial net, that's the one I found. But, but I told my daughter, just go to the when next time you get a check up, go to the doctor and tell them that I was diagnosed and to please check you. Yeah. So she did what
Scott Benner 6:21
else, like any other autoimmune stuff that you've seen throughout your life, vitiligo, anything at
Andrea 6:26
all? Yes, I was just about to say vitiligo. My daughter, who has the Hashimotos, also has a little bit of vitiligo, you know, just a little bit, just a touch. And my sister has that also, you know, both my mom and my sister had thyroid issues. I don't know if it was ever the Hashimotos. My sister had thyroid cancer, and my mom had to take thyroid medicine, medicine for hypothyroidism at some point later in life. But I don't know if it was Hashimotos or not.
Scott Benner 6:53
Well, I'm gonna guess that maybe it is interesting. Okay, now we have a little bit of a background. Now you're, I mean, more than chugging along 56 years old. Had you had any major health issues through your life?
Andrea 7:04
No, no. And, you know, it's funny, because I always considered myself pretty healthy. And, you know, you sort of pat yourself on the back, and you're like, Hey, look at me. I must be doing something, right. I've never, you know, never had any kind of health issues. But a friend of mine called it the sniper alley of the 50s. And I don't know how old you are, you know, in the 50s, like all sorts of weird things started happening to random people, like a sniper alley. You don't know who's going to be hit. People get MS, people get cancer. And this sort of, you know, came to me, and I was just like, wow, you know. And so going from patting myself on the back for, you know, doing such a great job at keeping myself in good health. I was like, wow, what did I do wrong? Oh, and then I thought, well, you know, it wasn't anything I did wrong. I don't think,
Scott Benner 7:49
yeah, you know, it's like everything else. Like, if you're going to take the compliment, you have to take the blame. Is that how they think people think about it? Right? Exactly. So you're busy being like, I'm healthy because I'm doing something, all you had to do was give that away. Just say, Look, I'm lucky that I've been healthy this long and now you're not well.
Andrea 8:05
That's right, yeah, that's, that's exactly what it made me think. I was just like, hey, roll of the dice, you know, genetics or something that you catch, or, you know, just whatever you know. I mean, sure, there's some things that we can do to control our health, but, but there's a lot that we can't.
Scott Benner 8:21
Yeah, I'm, you asked me how old I was? I'm 54 and in your 40s, a couple of people you went to high school with die, and it's usually a heart attack, right? And then in your in your 50s, a couple more get it and and it's, it's more like what you're talking about, like a cancer or something really like feels very random happens to them, and it does feel like, it feels like you're those metal ducks at the at the fair, and you're just rolling along. You're like, Oh, I'm good, I'm good. And all of a sudden you're plink, and then you're gone, yeah? And you do imagine all the other ducks looking over, going, Oh, it wasn't me. Awesome. Yeah. It's funny. I used to tell my wife when we were I've been married a long time as we were married in the first five years, the first 10 years, for 15, the first 20 when people would get divorced, I'd always say to my wife, I'm like, you know, the more people that get divorced, the better chance we have not to be and she goes, how do you figure that? I said, we all can't get divorced.
Andrea 9:20
That's right, somebody has to be in the 50% that stays married.
Scott Benner 9:24
Yeah? Well, I'm not saying we're doing anything right. They're doing anything wrong. I'm just saying math. You know what? I mean? Like, like, you know when you do you enjoy baseball? Do you watch baseball?
Andrea 9:32
No, whole lot. Okay, but we can talk baseball if
Scott Benner 9:36
you want. No, no. I'm just saying 160 some games a year. You're gonna lose some of them, yeah, yeah. And you can be on a run like nobody's ever seen and then, you know, show up on a random Thursday evening and play some terrible team, and they hand you your and you say, like, and everybody wants to go, like, oh, they didn't play as well as they could tonight. I always say the same thing, like, now the numbers caught up with them. You weren't going to win them all. Right? So, right, yeah. Last guy.
Andrea 10:00
Do you remember when sky lab was falling from the sky and it was going to break up? It was like some satellite that was, you know, like, I don't know. We must it must have been in the 70s, maybe the 80s, and sky lab was going to fall, and nobody knew where it was going to go into the atmosphere. And some people started wearing hats, because, you know, the chances of sky lab hitting you are pretty small at but the chances of them hitting you, if you're wearing a hat, are even smaller. I don't know, a little faulty logic. No, you
Scott Benner 10:27
and I have a lot in common. I used to tell people all the time, did you know that frozen urine falls out of airplanes? Have you ever been hit with frozen urine? Never in your life. You never will be ice Yeah, exactly like so you know, I'm with you. I, as I get older, I my kids, what's the last thing they came to me, where I was like, Are these kids stupid? Like, you know, I mean, it was the, it was the drones over New Jersey thing, where my where my son, like, seriously, asked me, like, Should we be leaving? And I was like, Listen, man, Everything's fine. Everything's always gonna be fine. I said, when it's not fine, you'll know. And trust me, when it's not fine, you won't be able to prepare for it. So just, yeah, enjoy your life until the frozen pea falls on your head, and then, then we'll start worrying about how to handle it.
Andrea 11:13
Yeah, you're like, I don't know if that's comforting or not. It's like, enjoy your life like an ostrich with your head in the sand, because something's coming for you well, you know, but you know, it's true. You can't walk around worried about everything all
Scott Benner 11:25
the time. That's the way I think about it, like it's not that, it's not that I don't think it's like that might be real or that it might not be worth you know, if I was in charge looking into it, but I'm not in charge, and no one's listening to me, and most of the time this stuff works out fine. So I'm just going to pay attention to the things that I actually have control over, and the rest of it I'm going to pretend doesn't exist, because most of the time the pee doesn't fall on me. So I'm good, but so my point is, is that if you, if you go along that way, then you're allowed to say, hey, you know what? Life's random. And I've been randomly healthy for 56 years. What a great thing. Knock on wood. And now I have diabetes. It's not because I did something wrong. It's just because sometimes you can't, you can't beat the Marlins for some reason. It's just they're a bad baseball team, but they show up and they kick your ass, you know? And it's just it was, it was your day, I guess.
Andrea 12:14
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I'm really grateful that, that I got this as late as I did. You know, it's like, yeah, it sucks to have this, but, but I just look at, you know, like young kids who get this, infants who get this, who don't get to spend 56 years enjoying really good health and and not worrying about being their own pancreas. Or, God forbid, you know, like you're a parent, like, like you are with a with a child, where you have to be their pancreas for them, and then until they can figure out how to be their own pancreas and, and then I think about the people who've had this for like, 57 years, or, you know, 60 and when the technology was just insane, like you had these needles that were like, huge, and you, you, you had To wait two hours to get your, you know, you have to pee on a stick to get the result on what your blood sugar was doing, you know, two hours ago and and then you have to give yourself insulin two hours figuring out what you might want to eat and whether or not you were going to eat it or get it in time. It's just like, Wow. This is, you know, this sucks, but it could be. It could suck a whole lot worse. Like, I guess
Scott Benner 13:24
that is more than a valid perspective that I agree with and and I would also tell you that the people who are on the flip side of that coin, like you said, Well, what about the poor kids that? Like, you know, my daughter was two when she got it, like, yeah, there are things that my daughter will experience and have the opportunity to understand in life that you won't get because you were super healthy for 56 years. Six years, 50, you know, whatever, and like, so everybody there's, I don't want to say there's like, a high side to diabetes, but there, there are things that you can get from it that are positive. You just have to be on the lookout for them. And it's not like, Oh, poor them. It's you just being like, I gotta look up here and see the the good stuff that's come to me and and something was gonna have I always think something's gonna happen eventually. I think if you think you're gonna, like, live till you're 98 years old and, like, you know, randomly, like, drop dead because you choked on your bubble gum, but everything else went perfectly for 90 I don't think that's gonna work that way for I mean, maybe it will for a couple people. They end up on the cheesy local news, but it's not how everybody else's life goes, you
Andrea 14:25
know, right? And then you have to play the hand you're dealt. You have no choice, right? You have no choice. You got to do
Scott Benner 14:31
it. So let's find out about the hand you were dealt. I first of all, how did you figure out that you were not feeling well? What came first? Today's episode is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes, who is making life with diabetes easier with the mini med 780 G system. The mini med 780 G automated insulin delivery system anticipates, adjusts and corrects every five minutes. Real world results show people achieving up to an 80% time and range. With recommended settings without increasing lows. But of course, Individual results may vary. The 780 G works around the clock, so you can focus on what matters. Have you heard about Medtronic extended infusion set? It's the first and only infusion set labeled for up to a seven day wear. This feature is repeatedly asked for, and Medtronic has delivered 97% of people using the 780 G reported that they could manage their diabetes without major disruptions of sleep. They felt more free to eat what they wanted, and they felt less stress with fewer alarms and alerts you can't beat that learn more about how you can spend less time and effort managing your diabetes by visiting Medtronic diabetes.com/juicebox the brand new twist insulin pump offers peace of mind with unmatched personalization and allows you to target a glucose level as low as 87 there are more reasons why you might be interested in checking out twist, but Just in case that one got you twist.com/juicebox that's twist with two eyes.com/juicebox. You can target glucose levels between 87 and 180 it's completely up to you. In addition to precision insulin delivery that's made possible by twist design, twist also offers you the ability to edit your carb entries even after you've bolused. This gives the twist loop algorithm the best information to make its decisions with, and the twist loop algorithm lives on the pump, so you don't have to stay next to your phone for it to do its job. Twist is now available in select areas, so if you'd like to learn more or get on the wait list, go to twist.com/juicebox. That's twist with two eyes.com/juicebox. Get on the twist wait list and be notified as soon as it's available in your area. Links in the show notes, links at Juicebox podcast.com.
Andrea 16:53
Oh, so I just come back from visiting one of my kids. It was like in the middle of covid, and one of my kids went abroad because she thought her university would go on lockdown. And she started college, you know, in 2020 when it was on lockdown. And so she was and it was a horrible experience. And so she thought her school was going to go back on lockdown in like 2022 and she decided to nanny for three year old twin boys in Switzerland, it's like best birth control ever. And so I went to visit her, and I, when I came back, I just started feeling all these like I had a yeast infection, a yeast infection that would not go away, and that had never happened to me before. I went to my OB GYN three times, my eyes started popping in and out of focus at weird, you know, random times, like suddenly I could see and then suddenly I couldn't I was exhausted. I was losing weight, but I was eating like a horse, and when I started waking up in the middle of the night dying of thirst, just felt like my mouth was completely, like desiccated, like it wasn't even thirst. It was just like cellular, you know, like I had, like, no moisture in my mouth. When I started doing that, I was like, oh, man, this is probably diabetes, and you knew that quickly. Or somebody had to tell you, I knew that, because I am actually a health journalist. And so I write about that. I write about, you know, wellness stuff, you know, I don't write about, in depth about diabetes. But, you know, I've been a health No, you don't know. I've been a health journalist for about 30 years. And so I knew, you know, this is, like, one of the basic things. But I just, you know, never thought it would be type one, right? Because it was covid. I, you know, it was like 1920, 22 and I hadn't been, I hadn't gone to get a checkup in a, you know, since 2019 let's just say, you know, up until that point, I hadn't had any problem with, you know, my fasting blood sugar levels or anything. And I had no idea what my a 1c was, because, you know, my my fasting blood glucose was fine, so nobody ever had to measure it. But I made an appointment with my primary care doc, you know, I told him, I just felt horrible. And I also noticed I had like a ring around my neck of like a darker skin, and I was like, Oh, I know what that is. I even woke up one time in the middle of the night, and I smelled something crazy and fruity in my room, and I turned on the light to see what it was, and it was nothing there. And so I turned off the light and fell back asleep. And then later on, in retrospect, I think, Oh, my God, that must have been, you know, yeah, like that fruity breath thing, you know, precursor to DKA or something. So anyway, I went, made an appointment to see my primary care, and he texted me the next day that, oh yeah, my a, 1c, was 11.3 and my fasting blood sugar was, you know, close to 400 and that's why it felt like like crap.
Scott Benner 19:55
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Andrea 21:07
I was going to New Orleans to visit my my my daughter at her college, and I was bringing my nephew with me. And so he, he just yeah, he assumed I had type two, and he put me on Metformin. So I picked up my little prescription before the trip my brother in law and I remember actually asking my doctor, I'm like, shouldn't I get, like, a little kit to measure my my blood sugar, to see and he's like, no, no, don't worry about that. But my brother in law, who has type two, said to me, Here, take this extra kit I have. You know, I have many of them. And so I took it and I started measuring my blood sugar while I was on that trip. And you know, if you know anything about New Orleans, you know, the food is really, really good. And even though I was trying to eat, you know, sort of what I thought was healthy, because I really didn't know how to control this. I mean, I wasn't eating dessert, but I had no idea about carbs and stuff. And I was measuring my blood sugar, and it was all over the place. And so I'd send him a message on my chart, saying, okay, my blood sugar was this when I woke up, and this during the day, and he's like, okay, double your Metformin, you know, still wasn't moving the needle. And then the next day he'd say, okay, take one in the morning, and, you know, one at night, and then double that, and it was just not moving the needle. So I sort of live in two different cities for reasons that are just complicated and whatnot. But I got back to the other city where he is not and I started calling around endocrinology practices, and I'm like, I need to get in to see somebody, because this is, this is crazy. And people are like, yeah, we can see you in three months. And I'm like, I'm going to be in the ER, in three months. We need to, need to do this before, you know, yeah, and so finally, somebody got me in on a zoom call, and a nice doctor, and I chatted with her, and she had me come in the next day and taught me how to use insulin and did a bunch of tests, and then was like, Yeah, you have type one. You have auto antibodies. So you
Scott Benner 22:59
live in two cities for reasons that are difficult to explain. Are they that you're a spy or nothing cool like that?
Andrea 23:06
If I tell you, I have to kill you? I was hoping it
Scott Benner 23:09
was something fun, but it doesn't sound like it. It
Andrea 23:12
is fun. One of the cities is New York, and I love New York, and I love to you know, New York is so much fun. And the other one is Atlanta, and Atlanta is sort of like the antidote to New York. It's a lot of fun, but it also has much more sunshine, and so I need a little bit of both. So, yeah, do you follow the weather? Do I follow the weather? Yeah, you know
Scott Benner 23:30
that, are you up here in the summer and down there in the winter? No,
Andrea 23:33
no, no. I mean, I just thought, I thought you meant, do I follow it on, you know, like, my app? No, no, that'd be crazy. Yeah. I just basically commute every couple of weeks. You know, I go back and
Scott Benner 23:42
forth to get a different look nice. That's awesome. I would love to do something like that. It is nice. I want to dig in first. I'm going to get back to your to your story. But I want to hear about like, how are you a health journalist for 30 years, and how has that changed in the last five or six years?
Andrea 23:58
Oh, well, that's such a big, broad question. I think media in general has changed a lot. You know, like, magazines have died. We have more than, you know, three networks. We have the internet. All these things happened. You know, while I was a journalist. I mean, when I started, we almost didn't even have computers or the internet, which is crazy. I mean, like, how can you be a journalist without that? But I feel like the things that have changed more recently, you know, it's like, everybody can put up a blog, everybody can, you know, be an expert now, which is, which is great, but it's also not great, because then we have people who, you know, sort of spread misinformation and and, or build themselves a certain way. So like, sort of the guard rails in that respect flew off, yeah, taken to the other extreme, it's like, well, it's a good thing. We don't have to have license, a license, to be a journalist, and we can just, you know, do our jobs without that, because then somebody could take that license away and if they don't like what you're saying, right?
Scott Benner 24:57
Or they could own the only way you could get your information. Out the world and just keep
Andrea 25:01
you absolutely so, you know, there's, there's a balance. But I think right now, we're in a place of a lot of Miss and disinformation. And, you know, as, I guess as a journalist, you feel like a sort of responsibility to get it right. You know, you got to get it fast, but you also have to get it right and and now there's even a distrust on what getting it right means, like the studies that I used to read and rely on, a lot of people now go, you know, that that's fake science, and that's full and that was, you know, blah, blah, blah, and, well, I still happen to believe in all of that stuff, you know. And I believe in the FDA, I believe in the CDC, I believe in the HHS when they're not politically weaponized, right? You know, when they're not weaponized. So that's my little soapbox, right? I should stop now.
Scott Benner 25:47
No, but how do you make a living after the democratization is over? Like after? It's not just like I have to work for a newspaper to get my thoughts out. Then it's, well, maybe I could work for a newspaper, or I could work for a magazine. Now, it's not even that, you know, it's not even like there's a radio station. It's going to let you sit down and give like your and give, like, your health note for five minutes or something that, like, how do you still do that for a living at this point? Like, I mean, I'm not looking for your your financials, but like, how do you, like, who pay who pays you for that? How do you make that work?
Andrea 26:14
Part of it is, throughout my career, I've gone back and forth into one company that which I love, and it's been great. And other times, I've worked at other companies. I even worked at a nonprofit for a while, on their magazine that, you know, you'd find in a doctor's waiting room. I've also freelanced, and you know, that's the rate. We used to get paid $1 a word, and now, you know, it's like, you don't get paid that. But I think people who want to do this and who succeed at the new way of doing it. It's a lot of social media, and they get sponsors and stuff like that. You spend a lot of time having to promote yourself, which is, I imagine, is exhausting. I have had the good fortune of working for a large media company that kept me with health insurance
Scott Benner 26:57
too. Yeah, yeah. The promoting yourself part is exhausting is not the right word. Even it's, it's, yeah, it's so frustrating, like that you spend so much time doing something where you're like, well, I could be working right now. Like, I could actually be thinking of something, writing something, recording something, having an idea, right? You know, instead I'm sitting here trying to think about, like, how do I what time of day do I post this so that enough people see it, so that enough people click on this, so that somebody will still buy an ad, so that I can actually go make the thing that I think is helping people. It's, it is really frustrating, honestly.
Andrea 27:32
Yeah, I'm sure, you know, it's like I was reading some posts that you put up about, you know, the cruise ship that you took. And I think right before you went on on this cruise, you know, people had said, and I didn't see the original post, but some nasty stuff, and it's like, you also have to spend time answering that, and you you better have all your ducks in a row if you're going to go in and be like, you know, no, because of A, B, C and D, and you've got to defend yourself. And that takes a lot of energy, too. A lot of energy.
Scott Benner 27:58
It's absolutely exhausting, because that your example. There is I'm I'm quite literally sitting at a gate waiting to get on a plane, to fly across the country, to climb up on a to go to a hotel, to spend the night there, to get into a car, to drive to a thing, to get on a cruise ship, to meet these 100 listeners and spend the spend the week with them, which is going to be awesome. And as I'm sitting there, someone not me, by the way, someone put something in my face and says, Hey, look, there's this person saying this thing about you. And I went and looked, and it was demoralizing, because I like that person a lot. Oh, I'm sorry. I can't even speak for them. I wouldn't know if they misunderstood something, or if it just has become advantageous to choose me as a foil, because that works well, because I have some popularity. Like, I don't know the where in the spectrum of of that that could have fallen, but I'm sitting there and I'm just like, oh, this is such a shame. Like, this person either believes this happened and it's such a shame because it's not what happened, and if I tried to explain it to them, they think I was lying to them. So, like, I can't, like, There's no way around it. You can't answer them directly, because now that's what they want. They're dying for you to come say something so that they can look like they're part of this narrative somehow and maybe prop themselves up. And in the end, it was just like, it was just sad. And I just, I sat there and I just felt sad for two minutes. And I was like, All right, fine. Now I can't not do something about this, because now somebody knows, and they're gonna move it around, and now I have to be on the record about it and like, it's just like, and then this is stupid. If on my deathbed I remember that five minutes, I'm gonna think what a total and complete waste of my time that was. And yet, here you are doing it, because in the moment, it's somewhat important because of the way this whole system is set up. Yeah, you gotta nip it in the bud. Yeah. I'm also not saying that it was perfect when, like, you had to work for the New York Times to get your opinion out. Like, I don't think that's I'm not saying that either, but I'll tell you the you know, it's funny, when I asked you about it, you went right to the idea of, like, well, who are we holding to account? Don't if nobody's needs to be accountable to anything, and they can just say whatever they want. That's not my first like Big Bad Wolf in that situation. The thing that frightens me the most is that I agree with what you're saying, that it's great to get other people's voices out there, but there's a tipping point where, if you over saturate it, you literally you kill the thing. You can't kill the cow that's giving you the milk kind of thing. There's an amount of people that will do a good job, and they'll put out good stuff for people, whether it's through a magazine or newspaper or, you know, a podcast or, you know, a blog. But if suddenly there's 10,000 people doing that, if suddenly, let's pick some abstract idea, if 20 really knowledgeable people are making videos about how to take care of your pets, and they start making a little money out of it, then what you're going to be sure of is there's going to be 10,000 people doing it two years from now. Oh yeah, sure. Then the information gets diluted. But what happens? I think the bigger problem, I think, is that the consuming audience sees so many options that they shut down and just stop completely, and then you lose the first 10 people who were really putting good information into the world, because they can't monetize it anymore, so therefore they can't spend time doing it. And now we all lose that's how I see it as being the problem,
Andrea 31:23
yeah, and it's overwhelming. If you know you're out there, we're all consumers of news, health news, let's say in particular, Tiktok, every day, has something about not every day, every second, many, many times a second, you know, like, what supplements to take, what to do, blah, blah, blah, this, that and the other. You cortisol, belly, blah, blah, and, and it drowns out everything. There's so much. Where do you even begin? Where do you even begin? Everything is wrong with you. Nothing is wrong with you. You take things because people say you should, and then you might be creating problems. It just and then the people who are doing good work do get drowned out. People are like, Oh, she works for, you know, big television station, well, must be false. Now they're spreading bad information. Well, no, these, these people do have, you know, they have standards and stuff like that. Yeah, I
Scott Benner 32:12
watched it happen very simply in diabetes blogging, 1015, years ago. Oh, really, really wonderful, like, focused, thoughtful, good writers who had a perspective, and they were sharing. And those 10 or 20 people turned into 100 or 200 people turned into 2000 4000 people. And then one day, I think everybody was just like, there's too much to read. I can't read all this. I'm just not gonna read any of them. And then that was it. People just stopped reading those blogs. Yeah, you know, you used to have a website. I won't say the name of it, but there used to be a website. It was for profit that had actual journalists who had type one diabetes writing stories about type one diabetes. And that doesn't exist anymore, because they couldn't make money in it. In when the paradigm shifted and 5000 people wouldn't have started up their type one diabetes blog, that thing would still exist. And so, you know, I can hear both sides of the argument, like, well, I should get a chance too, if they can be successful at it. Why? Why does that mean I can't be I'm American, I'm a capitalist. I agree with you. I'm just telling you that the end result is, when you flood a market, you kill it eventually.
Andrea 33:20
Yeah, chaos. People just are paralyzed by too much, too much information, you know, myself included, I'm like, Ah,
Scott Benner 33:27
of course. And the bad and the good both fall in the garbage together, and no one steps up to do it again, because, well, that's not how the system works anymore,
Andrea 33:36
well. And you see that with all the newspapers closing down all over the country. You know, it's like everybody gets frustrated when they hit a pay wall. If you're on, if you're online and you want to read something, let's say the New York Times. You know, you're just like, it's behind a paywall. How dare they? Well, they have journalists that they have to pay somewhere. They have cameramen. They have, you know, a whole infrastructure that that, but, but it's hard to monetize it. Like you said, how do you monetize it? And, you know, how do you separate yourself from others and and make it so that people want to spend $5 on your thing, your newspaper, on Sunday and whatever?
Scott Benner 34:13
So that's also a thing that I agree with, by the way, like, and I agree that it's a problem, and I agree with people not wanting to do it. I know that people don't want to pay for things like, I understand that, especially in a world where it feels like the answer exists for free somewhere, even though it's a little harder to maybe trust. But I had a company come to me a couple of years it's been maybe more than a couple of years ago now, and they were like, listen, we should just take your podcast. Here's what we want to do. We'll put it on a server, and you'll charge people for every episode, but it'll just be a very tiny little bit of money, and they'll pay. And how many downloads Do you have? And I forget at the time how many I had, but I'll tell you right now that I'm about to celebrate 20 million.
Andrea 34:55
Wow. Congrats. Thank you.
Scott Benner 34:56
It's very exciting, actually. Yeah. That's wonderful. Really proud of myself, but at the same time, imagine that company came to me today and said, Scott, listen, you have 20 million downloads. What if you just would have charged 50 cents for each of them? You'd have $10 million and that's the pitch they came to me with. And I responded back, and I said, No, I wouldn't, because no, nobody would pay 50 cents for an episode. And they said, Your episodes are worth more than 50 cents and easily. And I said, I agree with you. That's not the point. They won't pay for it. And then they pivoted, and they said, but some people would. And I said, Yeah, but then what about everybody else? Like, if I'm putting out content that I think is going to help people, how can I, in good conscience say, like, Listen, if this intersects 10,000 people today, I think it's going to be value. Going to be valuable to most of them, but I'm going to just have it intersect 1000 of them, but I'm going to make 500 bucks. Yeah, I exchanged $500 for 9000 people, not getting the content that day, just that day. And then don't, don't forget about back catalog and every other day. And like, we're really talking about hundreds of 1000s of downloads, like every rolling, like few weeks.
Andrea 36:06
Well, how do you feed your family then, Scott, I mean, seriously, you know, because you're saying that's true, you want to help people and and, and certainly, we are all worthy of being helped. And, you know, I probably would have been one who be like, No, not going to pay for this. You know,
Scott Benner 36:25
I want, I would be too. You
Andrea 36:27
spend a lot of time doing this. How do you feed them
Scott Benner 36:31
all my time? And Right, exactly. And then the other side of the is that, then I go, Okay, well, I figured it out, like I've made it so popular that it can support advertisers. Advertisers will pay to put ads on it. That's how I feed my family. That's how you don't have to pay for it. And most people at this day, in this day and age, are okay with that. Yeah, every once in a while you get like, somebody who's like, Yo, man, like you're I'm like, Yeah, listen, you don't i You sound like you might not have bills. Like, like, you might not understand all
Andrea 36:59
this. So broadcast TV. We used to have to watch commercials, right when we had just ABC, CBS and and NBC. We'd have to sit there and watch commercials. So that's how, you know, they got us their programs for free. Now we have to buy Netflix and whatever else is out there, HBO, Max and and we have to pay for it, but, but we don't get commercials. So, you know, pick your poison
Scott Benner 37:21
exactly well that, in the end, becomes the, I believe that the model I'm using now is the most viable in the current structure, and it's the one I'm the most comfortable with. And I want to be clear. I would love to be clear to everybody. I'd love to just give it to you for free, like, I think it would be awesome if, you know, if my bills magically got paid, and I could spend my time doing this right, but that's just not reality. So yep, and you gotta feed your family. Yeah, that's all okay, so sorry about that
Andrea 37:49
detour.
Scott Benner 37:50
Here you are. You have your you, you're calling it lotta. Does that mean that it's a very slow onset and you're not using very much insulin at the moment? Or just, are you calling it lot of because of the age you were when you when you were diagnosed.
Andrea 38:04
Well, I'm calling it lot of because, I guess technically it is lot of but I when I explain it to people, I call it type one diabetes, because most people don't even know what lot of is. I do use very little insulin. I'm still like, honeymooning, I touch wood, I consider it, but it was not slow onset. I mean, I just got really sick in a month. But the hard thing to know it really is how slow of an onset was it really? I got sick and all these crazy things started happening to me. You know, in the month of February and March of 2020, and suddenly my a 1c was 11.3 it was not like a slow rise. But I also hadn't been to a doc in like, three years. I try to think back, and I'm like, Did I have symptoms before? When? When did the symptoms start? What were the symptoms and and it's really hard to pinpoint, you know?
Scott Benner 38:53
Yeah, no, I know. So it's possible that any amount of time, over maybe 36 months, even you could have been slowly moving towards this, and then right all the sudden, in the last 60 days, it hit you really hard, right?
Andrea 39:06
I hit a tipping point, and boom, like whatever beta cells I had could not do the job, because I feel like there were some symptoms. I covid came. I lost one job because the magazine I worked for shut down, and I stepped into another position that was, instead of being every two month publication which I had been working on, I was working on something where things were happening every two minutes. So it was like, literally, fire hose in my face, and I was under a lot of stress, and I and we were all quarantining, and I was up in New York, and I'm, like, running around in my apartment trying to get the yayas out. And then I'm like, Was that just me having really crazy high blood sugar, or was that stress? Or what was that? And I don't know. I don't know. It's hard to
Scott Benner 39:54
was there any like, illness, like, prior to those 60 days? Like, did you get covid? Were you sick of. Or wise or just stressful.
Andrea 40:01
No, that's the crazy thing. So when I went to Europe to visit my daughter, we were still testing. I had to test before, before I could fly there, and when I got back, and we both got sick for one day, sort of in the middle of it, that could have been covid, I didn't test until, like, a few days later, when I had to get on the plane. And we were only sick for literally half a morning, and we had, like, the primary symptom of whatever wave maybe it was, I can't remember if it was the Omega or the alpha, the beta wave, or whatever.
Scott Benner 40:33
Which transformer, uh, bad guy it was, yeah,
Andrea 40:36
right, which transformer it was. But we both had a sore throat, and then it went away. That could have been it, I don't know, or it could have been like, I don't know. The thing, the point is, you know, I sort of tried to make myself a little crazy, really, trying to figure this out and and then being like, I am not going to have answers to this good. I am just, you know, yeah, I hate
Scott Benner 40:56
for people that rabbit hole where, like, why did this happen? I'm like, oh gosh. Like, so you're maybe the 20th person this week I've seen torture the cells over this and it's going to end with acceptance, and you not really knowing.
Andrea 41:06
So yeah. And the other rabbit hole is, can it be reversed? Is there anything you can do to save like, the other thing that I and I'm still a little bit on, is, can I I still have some beta cells that are functioning? Because, like I said, I don't have to take too much insulin. I take, you know, the basal insulin, and then i i Take just a bit of fast acting, yeah, but I also donate a whole lot of carbs. I keep on thinking, I've got to save these beta cells. What can I do to preserve these beta cells and and, you know, people are doing trials and stuff, but I have pretty much aged out of that. They're doing trials on, you know, kids and not older people.
Scott Benner 41:46
It's a tough moment when you realize you're not the you're not the group that they're like, oh, you know, we should spend a lot of time trying to elongate 56 year olds lives like, oh, it's not right, yeah, right, yeah. I take your point too about that. The Panic of, like, what could I be doing to just make this be easier for longer. Yeah, it's tough
Andrea 42:05
waiting for the other shoe to drop. I'm going to wake up one day, and I feel this is one of the big differences between people who you know are diagnosed, like your daughter was really young and in childhood, versus and I could be completely wrong, but from what I see on Facebook groups and and listening to podcasts and stuff like yours is that, you know, it's a much Wilder ride if you get it really young and you're pretty much, you know, no beta cells are left to produce any kind of insulin and and so I feel like it's a bit easier for for me, and if I just sort of take care of myself and not abuse the beta cells that I have and support them with exogenous insulin and and making sure I don't, you know, eat a plate of fries and birthday cake, you know, maybe I can extend this a while longer. But I also wonder, when's the other shoe going to drop? Is it going to drop, you know, right?
Scott Benner 43:01
And what if that was your last piece of birthday cake, too? I know, I know you ever listen to a song and think, Oh, I wonder when the last time is I'll ever hear that song?
Andrea 43:11
I never do. But thanks for the new fear unlocked. Sure, no problem happens
Scott Benner 43:15
to me all the time. Like it'll pop on. I'll be like, Well, I haven't heard that song in four or five years. And then I think I wonder if I'll hear it again. And then I think, ever, like, I wonder if I'll ever hear it again. Like, was that the last time I just heard Sam Cook saying that and or something to that effect. It's very upsetting.
Andrea 43:33
It is, it is I do something similar. I'm like, I wonder if this is the last time I'm going to, you know, see this person again. You know, like, every day I think about like, people walk out in the world and they don't think today I'm going to get in a car accident and maybe I'll die. You know, nobody thinks that when they step out the door today I'm going to go into d k and, you know, people don't think that and and so, but sometimes you kind of do. You're like, oh, is this the day that I'm going to step off the curb and be hit by a bus? But then you can't think like that has
Scott Benner 44:01
your diagnosis made you a little more pondering of things like that than you were previously?
Andrea 44:07
Maybe just a little bit, I find that a little bit pondering that kind of stuff will just, you know, it's a rabbit hole. It'll make you crazy. Yeah, I just can't. I've got so many other things to think about that are not philosophical questions that are, like real to really sit there, and I don't suffer from anxiety, and I think that that would be something that would give me anxiety.
Scott Benner 44:29
You know, it's so interesting, the way you just said that, like, you know, there's things I have, like real things for me to think about, not philosophical ideas. I was listening to, like a news clip recently, and I realized, like, while I was listening to it, I'm like, I find this interesting. I find the politics of this idea interesting, and I know how I feel about it. I'm interested in listening to somebody else how they think about it. And at the same time, none of this could possibly matter less for me to be listening to. I am not the position to do. Change any of this, I'm never going to be in a position to change any of this. Like, it's an interesting thought exercise, but yeah, it is an abstract idea for me. Like, and I think that we all can get caught up in that feeling of that our participation just by passively listening in on something else, like we're participating in it. And I don't know that that's true. Like, I'm sure it'll impact my vote one day on something, you know what I mean? And it is good for me to understand it big picture, but I didn't need to hear a 15 minute conversation about it, you know? I mean, like, I understood that the idea in the beginning, I knew both arguments, and I was like, here's where I fall. The rest of it is just, is me educating, and I'm making quotes around that myself on a thing that I'm never going to be asked about ever again. And is this just a waste of my time? And is there something that's functionally more important that I should be doing
Andrea 45:52
right now? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was going to ask, were you procrastinating?
Scott Benner 45:56
I was probably in the shower. I do consume a lot of stuff in my free time, like when I'm not sitting here doing the making the podcast, as much as I miss music. If I'm in the car, I'm probably listening to somebody talk about something. I have a playlist that, you know, I listen to in the shower when I'm getting dressed like I try to cram as much information into my day as I can. I tend to believe that it's helping me to think about stuff that's actually impactful to me, but sometimes I find it valuable to listen to to abstract conversations about something I don't have input on, just to hear how people are thinking about it, to see if there isn't a slice of how they're thinking that I might co opt and bring into my own thoughts on something different that I think is valuable, yeah, like the news, for example. Like my son went to my wife one time. Like, I think it was during was during covid, and he's like, Listen, do you want to be happy or stop listening to that? And he's like, nothing's going to happen different for you, but you're going to stop worrying about this thing that you don't have any agency over. And it ended up being really great advice for so How old's your son? He's 25 now. Yeah?
Andrea 47:02
So, like, I was gonna say, sometimes you listen to things that that are just useless because you enjoy it. It's like the birthday cake that, you know, it's like, like eating birthday cake.
Scott Benner 47:12
Oh, man, no, don't worry, I have plenty of stuff like that. I do. Yeah, yeah. I've re watched a couple of shows more than I should have, and I am right now. I'm right now about halfway through the second season of Mr. Robot. It's been fun. I'm not without my my the things that I'm interested in that that are, you know, entertainment for me, I just think that it just was very interesting the way you said that. You know, that's not a thing you have time to think about. So anyway, yeah, what made you want to come on the podcast?
Andrea 47:39
I don't know. I just, I feel like, feels like, and this might not be your listeners, but a lot of people don't know that. People can get you know type one later on in life, that Lada even exists. I think Lance Bass the musician who was recently diagnosed with
Scott Benner 47:55
it. Are we calling Lance Bass a musician? Now? Okay, well,
Andrea 47:59
yeah, okay, he was a singer or whatever. It's so terrible. I grew up like a little bit before him, and he's his music is nothing I've ever listened to, but that I've been watching some of his little tick tocks, and they're really funny. And I think it sort of brings awareness to this. But, you know, I think also, like, I was looking up statistics for like, the number of people or the percentage of people who are diagnosed in different ages. And I'm going to pull up a study here that was published because I'm the good journalist that I am, that it was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, and it found that 22% of people were diagnosed after the age of 40, of all the people that have type 120, 2% were diagnosed after 40. That's one in five. That's more than one in five. That's almost one in 457. Are diagnosed after 20. But the 43% are diagnosed, you know, from zero to 20 and you know, but that's a lot of people who are waking up one day and going, Oh, I did not know I can get this. This was not on my bingo card. You know, we all worry about cancer, we worry about heart disease, but this was not on my bingo card. It's was surprising to me. You know, my massage therapist said something to me. She's like, Oh, how did you survive this long without taking without treating it? And I'm like, No, I didn't have it this long.
Scott Benner 49:14
Oh, you met a person who thought, because it's type one, you've had it since you were a child,
Andrea 49:18
right? And she's like, how did you not know? How did you, you know? And I was like, No, it wasn't. I didn't always have it. I just developed it. And yes, you too can develop this, yeah, so that was kind of like the surprising, yeah. I guess that's why I wanted to come on and sort of chat about that,
Scott Benner 49:35
a terrible commercial, even you could develop diabetes,
Andrea 49:38
right, right? New fear unlocked again, kind of like that expression,
Scott Benner 49:43
no, yeah, of course. Because right, like you're, I mean, listen, you and I are about the same age, like it's you do get that unreasonable feeling like you hit a benchmark or a milestone, and you think, Oh, well, this can't happen to me anymore. Like I've been married for 20 years, I'm not getting divorced. Or I made it through my I made it through my 40s. I'm not having a heart attack like, that's when, you know, like, it's that kind of stuff that's not real. But I think we sometimes pin our our hopes on,
Andrea 50:10
yeah, well, it's good that we can, you know, change it. You know that we can by living well or exercising more, or eating right? You know, sure, all these things do help with that, sometimes you're just still gonna get
Scott Benner 50:22
it. Does everyone not learn when you turn the news on and like some long distance runner had a heart attack, and they no body fat, and they've been running every day their entire life. I just interviewed a guy a couple weeks ago. It's not out yet. Well, I guess by the time years comes out, it'll be out early 40s. Just had quadruple bypass, like quadruple, right? And he was, and he's a runner, but also has had type one diabetes most of his life. And the beginning part was harder going than the end, the part where he's at now, but when he had his like, first, like, Hey, what's going on? Moment, he really thought, like, This isn't me. I'm super healthy, you know. And so I think this stuff happens, you know, every day to somebody. I think it's important to bring up just like you're saying, Yeah, my gosh, yeah, you find the podcast or the Facebook group. How do you intersect me? Initially, the,
Andrea 51:13
I don't remember if it was Facebook group, probably first, and then that led to the podcast, okay, you know. And it's super helpful, you know, these fun tips and and your new beginning series. You know, I recommend, like, whenever I this other Facebook group that I'm on, I always recommend your podcast and the book. Think like a pancreas for anybody who is, you know, just recently diagnosed, and I remember took me like three months after getting this to finally wrap my head around, getting out of the house without thinking I was going to be stranded somewhere in New York City without access to the right food and water and everything. It just took so long to get my act together and you know, but I think that by informing and educating ourselves that can be cut short. And, you know, I sometimes read posts from people who have had this a long time, and they're only just beginning to understand either, because they didn't have parents like you who were really, really caring and hands on, and they were just sort of left, you know, adrift to figure this out on their own, and it's a hard thing to figure out on your own, and you don't need to, you know, nobody needs to figure it out on their own.
Scott Benner 52:29
Yeah, no, I am fully behind the idea that people should have good information so that they can find a way to educate themselves that jives with how they learn and how they think, because you're only going to make better decisions when you know, when you have more facts you know, and access to people who are willing and able to share with you in a way that is hopefully, you know, not one sided like I love it when people are just like, look, this is my finding. And here's 10 other people. This is what they found in this situation. Go through that and see what makes sense to you, and start like trying to learn for yourself. I agree with you completely. Yeah, it's really important. How old is your daughter now? Oh, she just a month ago, turned 21
Andrea 53:16
Oh, happy birthday to her. So what has been the hardest thing for you? Know, Like as you let her go and let her become the person she is, you know, developing into, especially with, with type one, what's been, you know, what? What's been the most challenging thing for you?
Scott Benner 53:34
Yeah, challenging. I don't know might be the wrong way to put it, but I just think that there's this moment where there's stuff you always knew, like, right? Like, you could sit down and be academic about it. While you're raising a young kid, you're like, you know, there'll be a day when they're gonna, you know, not want you to be as involved in this, or they're gonna, you know, maybe not taken as seriously as you do, or more seriously than you do. Like, I hear people say all kinds of different things, right? There's gonna be a moment where you're to be a moment where your kid starts to see this thing through their own lens, and isn't look and is and is looking to build their own identity around it. And you know it's coming. Like it's, I mean, if you're halfway reasonable, you know that's coming. If you've, you know, ever raised a kid, stuff like this happens every three weeks about something, yeah, so not surprising, and surprising would even be the wrong word, but the part that's most difficult when it begins to happen, and it's been going on in our lives for a long time now, but when it begins to happen is how connected you are to their good outcomes, the realization of that as she's building her own understanding of all this, she's going to go through speed bumps, just like I did when I was learning about it in the beginning, and I didn't realize that it was going to make me feel like she was in a dire situation. And the irony is, of course, she's not a dire situation like you know, she goes. Off to college. When she left for college, she probably left for college like a five, nine, a one, say, Nice. And when she was a year into college, she was doing more like a six two on her own,
Andrea 55:14
6263 still very decent.
Scott Benner 55:18
Yeah, exactly my point is that that's awesome, right? And if she has trouble and she her six two goes to six seven. Like, why would we argue about that? Like, that's amazing. Like, that's a 20, you know, 1920 year old kid in college with type one diabetes, keeping a six, seven, a, 1c, and I, and I did not initially see that as like, Wow, what an amazing accomplishment. This is like, instead, I thought, instead, what I saw was her a 1c was almost a point higher than when she left. And I didn't like go at her with that. It's it felt that way to me, and it took me a little time to recognize that this was really a great thing. Not like, we didn't lose something, we're winning something, yeah, and that's been, I guess that was probably my biggest hurdle during this time, and now still, like, you know, she, she'll go back and forth sometimes where she's like, you know, I need help with this. And then there'll be a day where she decides she doesn't want help with it anymore, but nobody sent me the memo, and I'll be like, hey, you know, did you take this or do that or whatever? And she's like, I don't need your help. And I'm like, oh, okay, there's that part of it. Like, if this and does, by the way, when this stuff kind of happens with your kids, with any other thing, any of the things that you expect it to happen with, you know, boys or girls, or driving or drinking or weed or whatever. The thing is that you're expecting to have these arguments with your kids about it's not until it's about what feels like their mortal end that you realize that it takes a lot of emotional maturity and self control to continue to be the person you are and that you're trying to be, when you feel like, how do I mean this? When she was first diagnosed, it felt like diabetes was trying to kill her, and that my misunderstanding of it was going to be the tool that it used. And then we we figured the whole thing out, and it it runs like clockwork. If I'm a little involved, it runs like clockwork. And then to watch that feel like it's going away, and now it's not diabetes trying to kill her. It feels like it's her trying to kill herself. But that's obviously not what's happening, because if you step back far enough, you realize that a 20 year old kid in college with a 678, 1c, is a absolute, like, it's a celebration, yeah? And anyway, definitely that, I think right there psychologically was the part that took a lot of bobbing and weaving for me to, like, really wrap all my head around,
Andrea 57:55
yeah, yeah. Because again, it goes back to that whole thing that you've been responsible for her health this whole time. And how can, how could she let it slip? But she's not, she's taking control of it, and she's learning how to, you know, and I'm sure she it isn't one moment where you hand over, you know, one moment, it's been like years in the making, where you're letting her have more autonomy with this and then, you know, then she's out of your house. And they always need you, right? They always need you at two in the morning, no matter what, no matter what it
Scott Benner 58:25
is. It's not a rom com. It's not one lunch and shopping montage, and then everything's okay afterwards, right? You're right. It's been years of like, slow hand off, yeah, yeah. And at the same time, you know, to say that it feels like, like, if she was listening to this right now, I would tell her like she's not trying to kill herself, and it doesn't feel like that to me, right? Good, right? It feels like she's putting together her own plan for this success and that, and I think it's going incredibly well and but when something like you said, what is it like? I don't exactly know what it's like, but it feels like you're a bystander. It's something that you know the answer to, and you speak up, and everybody goes, no, no, thanks. We're going to figure this out on our own. And you say, Yeah, but the basement's flooding, and I know how to stop it right this second. And they go, no, no, we'll get it figured out. And the truth is, they are going to get it figured out and it is going to be okay and and that you have to be willing to pass that knowledge forward, because if I don't pass it on to her, then it dies with me, and then she struggles forever, right? So I got, you know, it's
Andrea 59:33
part of maturing too for her, exactly, you know, aside from studying, right? I feel like my my younger daughter, the one that has Crohn's, you know, she looked at me before she went to college. She's like, I'm going to drink anyway, because we had this whole talk with, you know, the nutritionist about food that, you know, she should, shouldn't, whatever, eat. And she's like, I'm, you know, I'm about to go to college, I'm not going to not drink. And I like, I looked at her, and I'm like, it's your party. It's your party. You. You, this is your life. This is your life. You've got to live it the way you want to. There will be consequences and or, you know, maybe not that, maybe something else, but it's, it's your party.
Scott Benner 1:00:09
Yep, you know, yep. That's it, and that, and that's the thing you have to get over. Now, listen, if it's something like, your daughter's like, Hey, listen, I'm going to have a couple of beers at a party. And I know it's not the right thing for me to do, but I'm doing it anyway. That's one thing. If it's, you know, I'm gonna take a year or two to really pull myself together about how I Pre-Bolus and how I do things, and how I handle, like, you know, the stuff about diabetes, that's also fine. I don't think a, you know, I don't think a little bit of time of her figuring that out is gonna be the end of her. As a matter of fact, I think there are plenty of people who are living through much worse outcomes for many more years than that, and those people are, you know, sometimes seeing complications, sometimes they're even not so like, Am I worried about this time? I am absolutely not. You're not wrong, right? That it's still still happening. It can be tough to sit there and say, like, Oh, it's okay. Like, I'll watch you figure it out. Like I but it is there. It is absolutely their life and that, and that is the other side of it, right? Like, if my daughter decides to go out into the world and fundamentally not take care of herself and walk around with a nine, a, 1c, I'm maybe down to, like, 18, more, 24, more months where I have any sway over that whatsoever, right? So in the end, everybody is going to go be who they're going to be, and you're not in charge of it, and that goes for diabetes or anything else. And there's just days where I just feel lucky that I'm not having these conversations around some of the truly horrific things I hear people come on on the podcast to talk about, like, what if? What if? What if this conversation wasn't like, oh, you know, my daughter is thinking of having a beer. What if it was my daughter is, you know, shoots heroin, you know, or, or, you know, runs around. And my daughter really loves Robin, banks Scott. And she said, it's her life. And I said, Okay. Means like, yeah, yeah. As bad as this can feel sometimes,
Andrea 1:02:04
right? It certainly is.
Scott Benner 1:02:08
There you go. Raise a glass to that. That's awesome. Well, have I let you down? How is this going? How do you feel about it?
Andrea 1:02:16
I feel fine. I feel good. You've, you've put me at ease. I feel really good. It's been a really nice conversation. Scott, I really appreciate the you know, how, how flowy this has felt.
Scott Benner 1:02:28
Oh, awesome. I will say that you were like, let us tell people that before we were recording you said you were pretty nervous. But did that go away?
Andrea 1:02:35
Yeah, yeah, pretty much. I didn't, and I didn't even curse a lot. I don't think, yeah, no, was I okay? Did I say good things?
Scott Benner 1:02:43
You were awesome. I think you did curse once, but it was mild. Well, at the beginning you said, I have a good potty mouth, like I'll try not to use it.
Andrea 1:02:53
Yeah, yeah. I forget you forget. I forget that. People don't, yeah, the people, some people really get offended at the cursing and stuff, you know, yeah,
Scott Benner 1:03:01
oh no, I know. I've gotten plenty of I have this one email. I have a folder of people who, like, you know, complain to me. It's because I keep it for fun. And I still have a folder that's marked like, if I die, suspiciously, one of these people did it, but, but in my just like, for fun folder, there's this very passionate email from this person who tells me all the ways that the podcast has helped them, like their for their health to be better, and their mental health and their life. I mean, it's really, it's a lovely, lovely email that goes on for a couple of paragraphs and then in the last few sentences, says, But you said, God damn, so I can't listen anymore. I was like,
Andrea 1:03:38
Oh my gosh, I'm sorry. Whoops.
Scott Benner 1:03:43
I felt like responding back and going. I said way worse things than that. I was like, What do you like? There's tons of cursing in this thing, but that's the one that got to That's what God. I took the Lord's name in vain and they were out. And I was like, okay, yeah. So I was like, okay, yeah. So I, I tend to take the perspective of, I know what the podcast is doing. I know how many people it's doing it for. Everyone can possibly like me. I understand that. I'm not trying to make I'm not trying to make everybody happy. Like and I think if I did what you'd have as a podcast that nobody would enjoy, that
Andrea 1:04:13
wouldn't be popular at all. So and you'd be crazy trying to make everybody happy. I mean,
Scott Benner 1:04:18
how would I even begin to like, put a list together of everybody's desires and needs, you know? So, yeah, definitely, it would make conversation literally impossible. You'd just be standing there measuring every word as it came
Andrea 1:04:32
out, right, no, and it wouldn't. Nothing would flow. It'd be terrible. Yeah, yeah, you'd get, you'd get
Scott Benner 1:04:36
more unhelpful content, like exists all over the place. Now I'm not trying to not trying to be part of that.
Andrea 1:04:41
So, speaking of a fun content, there's a Facebook group called diabetes, but it doesn't have, it's like, got an asterisk in there somewhere, and it's all these memes, you know, fun diabetes memes. I get
Scott Benner 1:04:54
a fair amount of traffic from that. People must go in there and talk about Juicebox in there, because I get all. Lot of good traffic from there. So, oh, good, yeah. No, I'm glad you like that one. I have some pretty simple rules about how I create content. One of them is, I might be members and stuff before I made the podcast, but I haven't seen them in a long time. But I'm not a member of another private group. I don't look at other people's content. I don't listen to other people's YouTubes or anything. I try very hard to just assess my own situation and the situations of the people who are listening and, you know, make the podcast from here. I don't want to, I don't ever want to feel like I'm ripping somebody off or being led one way or the other by, you know, either I don't know, like positive or negative stuff that's coming from people. So, yeah, well, you guys that are talking well about the podcast out there, thank you very much. I'm talking about, like, some great places where people are really positive about it, so I appreciate it. Yeah, thank
Andrea 1:05:51
you. Oh, good. Yeah, no, thank you. Thank you for your dedication to this endeavor of educating us. It's my pleasure. It's so helpful. I mean, really, you're very, incredibly
Scott Benner 1:06:03
helpful. You're very, very kind. And I do, I do appreciate it. And like I said, it really is a, I don't know, like, I want to say joy. Like, it really is lovely to be able to get up every day and to be able to put some effort and thought into, like, I wonder what would help you, or somebody like you, or a person that said to me today her name was Ruth, she said, I wish I would have found this like 34 I wish this would have been available 34 years ago. And what I said was, I really appreciate that. I'm glad you found it now, and I'm going to do everything I can to make sure it's here for the next Ruth that comes along. So that's yeah, that's kind of how I try to think about it.
Andrea 1:06:41
But thank you. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, like, I guess you're a caretaker at heart, first, you know, with your daughter, and then the rest of the community extending out. So that's very,
Speaker 1 1:06:51
very nice. I feel like that might be the case. There
Scott Benner 1:06:55
are some days when I walk around, I'm like, I've listed things I should be doing for myself that I'm not doing. I'm getting better and better at blending it all together, so fingers crossed that I'll get it figured out before I'm done. Yeah, well, thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking the time.
Andrea 1:07:10
Thank you so much.
Scott Benner 1:07:21
Thanks for tuning in today, and thanks to Medtronic diabetes for sponsoring this episode. We've been talking about Medtronic mini med 780 G system today, an automated insulin delivery system that helps make diabetes management easier day and night, whether it's their meal detection technology or the Medtronic extended infusion set, it all comes together to simplify life with diabetes. Go find out more at my link, Medtronic diabetes.com/juicebox,
I'd like to thank the blood glucose meter that my daughter carries. The contour next gen blood glucose meter. Learn more and get started today at contour, next.com/juicebox and don't forget, you may be paying more through your insurance right now for the meter you have then you would pay for the contour next gen in cash. There are links in the show notes of the audio app you're listening in right now, and links at Juicebox podcast.com to contour and all of the sponsors. The episode you just enjoyed was sponsored by the twist a ID system powered by tide pool. If you want a commercially available insulin pump with twist loop that offers unmatched personalization and precision for peace of mind. You want twist, twist.com/juicebox, you Juicebox. I can't thank you enough for listening. Please make sure you're subscribed or following in your audio app. I'll be back tomorrow with another episode of The Juicebox podcast.
If you're looking for community around type one diabetes, check out the Juicebox podcast. Private Facebook group Juicebox podcast, type one diabetes. But everybody is welcome. Type one type two, gestational loved ones. It doesn't matter to me, if you're impacted by diabetes and you're looking for support, comfort or community, check out Juicebox podcast type one diabetes on Facebook. If your loved one is newly diagnosed with type one diabetes and you're seeking a clear, practical perspective, check out the bold beginning series on the Juicebox podcast. It's hosted by myself and Jenny Smith, an experienced diabetes educator with over 35 years of personal insight into type one, our series cuts through the medical jargon and delivers straightforward answers to your most pressing questions, you'll gain insight from real patients and caregivers and find practical advice to help you confidently navigate life with type one. You can start your journey informed and empowered with the juice. Box podcast, the bold beginning series and all of the collections in the Juicebox podcast are available in your audio app and at Juicebox podcast.com in the menu, the episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording, wrong wayrecording.com you.
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