#1645 All in the Family
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Three generations, one diagnosis. Mike, his daughter, and his son each face type 1 diabetes at different ages—sharing lessons on family, resilience, technology, and perspective gained through lived experience.
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DISCLAIMER: This text is the output of AI based transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors and should not be treated as an authoritative record. Nothing that you read here constitutes advice medical or otherwise. Always consult with a healthcare professional before making changes to a healthcare plan.
Scott Benner 0:00
Friends, we're all back together for the next episode of The Juicebox podcast. Welcome.
Mike 0:14
My name is Mike, and I am a type one diabetic. When I was diagnosed, I was 54 I am now 56 kind of unfortunately, I have a lot of experience with type one diabetes.
Scott Benner 0:31
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Mike 2:07
My name is Mike. I live in Utah, and I am a type one diabetic, newly diagnosed at the ripe age of when I was diagnosed, I was 54 I am now 56 kind of, unfortunately, I have a lot of experience with type one diabetes.
Scott Benner 2:26
Yeah, look at how you teased it out. Mike, that's, that's a bit of a storyteller in you there. That's excellent,
Mike 2:31
yeah, yeah, absolutely, unfortunately. It's, I don't know if you could say it's a horror story or a great story when it comes to diabetes. Unfortunately, baptism by fire, and I certainly thought I escaped it at my age, so I was a little shocked and devastated at the same time. Yeah, yeah. And here we are today.
Scott Benner 2:51
That's how I envision this, actually. So let's do this. Are there any other autoimmune issues in your family?
Mike 2:58
You know there is not. I have a daughter who was diagnosed pretty much same age as Arden, and at the time, I talked to my mom, and she said that they had an aunt that died prematurely, and they think it was type one, but other than that, it was just type two diabetes. So when my daughter, and then later my son, as we'll get into that, were diagnosed, they always wanted to know who to blame, and last spring, they decided to blame me.
Scott Benner 3:24
So when I said, Is there any other autoimmune in your family, you meant no other than my two children who have type one diabetes,
Mike 3:31
other than my two children who have type one diabetes, absolutely. Yeah. So I guess in a way, I was the beginning.
Unknown Speaker 3:37
Well, how many kids do you have in total?
Mike 3:41
Okay, so this will shock you a little bit, but I have seven. My wife has two. I had four, and then we adopted a girl out of the foster care when she was 13 years old. She's now 20.
Scott Benner 3:53
That's interesting that you didn't get to that math the way I expected you to, because I know you live in Utah
Mike 3:59
and I am not LDS and I have a bunch of kids.
Unknown Speaker 4:02
Yeah, when you said I have seven, I was
Scott Benner 4:04
like, why would you think? This is shocking to me, but Oh, so you came about them. You've been collecting them in a couple of different ways.
Mike 4:10
Yeah, exactly, yeah, adding on. But I don't think we're going to add any more. I think, I think, well, we're good at seven,
Unknown Speaker 4:16
yeah. So you have, I
Scott Benner 4:18
almost said, sired. What are we making puppies over here. Yeah. Why? Why did that pop into my head? You're the father of four children, natural children. I am the father of four natural children. Correct? Your wife showed up with two. My wife showed up with two. Yeah. And you stole one from the mall.
Mike 4:35
We stole one from the foster care program, yeah? And it was actually that's a whole podcast in itself, but a rewarding experience, and I could go on the road talking about how successful that is
Scott Benner 4:44
no kidding. Okay, so of your four kids that you had, I'm assuming in a previous marriage, what are their ages?
Mike 4:51
So my oldest son, who passed away in 2011 would have been 30. Five today. I have a daughter who is, will be 34 this winter, this December. She's my type one diabetic. My son, who is he lives in Portland. His name's Zach. He is 30, and he was diagnosed with type one diabetes four years ago, and then I have a younger daughter who's the only one that's not diabetic. She's 26
Unknown Speaker 5:25
like, I'm sorry to ask you, but how did your oldest son pass?
Mike 5:29
He went to a rough breakup and unfortunately, took his own life.
Unknown Speaker 5:32
Oh my gosh, at what age? Yeah,
Mike 5:35
he was 21 just barely turned 21 Oh, so it's been a while.
Scott Benner 5:40
Yeah, no, but still, did he have other I don't know how to ask you, this. Is that a thing you saw coming?
Mike 5:47
No, no. In fact, Scott, you know, whenever somebody happens, maybe even when Arden is diagnosed with type one diabetes, you think this doesn't happen to me, right? Like you're this happens to other people, not not me. So it was a shock. It was a huge shock. Of not something I was expecting by any means, but it, you know, it definitely was shocking.
Unknown Speaker 6:09
Well, I'm so sorry. So your daughter's diagnosed at two. Did you say
Mike 6:14
she was four years old when she was diagnosed? So back in 1995
Scott Benner 6:18
95 okay, so yeah, Arden was diagnosed when she was two, yeah, and in 90 Oh, my God, 2006 Yes, 2006 was a lot of math there. So, okay, so your daughter had had diabetes for 10 years by the time my kid was diagnosed, yeah, yeah. Definitely got a head start on you. Okay, so 1996 she's four years old. Do you remember that process? Do you remember how it presented?
Mike 6:47
You know, just like probably any parent yourself included, when you look back, you're like, how did we not catch it? But at the time, she never wet the bed. She was amazing. And then all of a sudden, she started wetting the bed. And we didn't think anything of it, because I had never even really heard of type one diabetes at the time. The internet is not what it is today. And so she started wetting the bed. And then we would start leaving the house, and we tell her, go to the bathroom. And I swear, we get like, two miles away, and she's, I have to go to the bathroom. And I remember saying, There's no way you have to go to the bathroom. You just went, but we would stop. Didn't really notice her drinking anything. She was only four, so didn't really notice if she was losing weight. And then she got sick, and she just didn't get any better. And my ex wife said, I'm going to take her to the doctor, and she did, and they did a urine test, and it came back, like, you need to take her the ER, right now, okay, and my wife called me, and she said, you know, you have to take her in. She has sugar in her urine. I'm like, Well, what does that mean? And she's, I don't know. And of course, you know, as soon as they get her the ER, they check her into ICU, and then we we find out about type one diabetes. Wow, you
Scott Benner 8:05
said she sick and she didn't get better. Like, would you describe her as, just, like, under the weather, or flu, like, symptoms or and how long did it last?
Mike 8:14
Yeah, just like the flu. That's really what we thought. She just had the flu. She just wasn't getting better. We hadn't put together any type of, you know, urination issues with bed wetting or even leaving the house. We hadn't put that together. But she, yeah, she had the flu and running a fever, and she just wasn't getting any better. And that's, that's when my ex wife
Scott Benner 8:34
decided to take like that. Do you know how long that process was? Was it days weeks where you thought she was sick?
Mike 8:40
I would say she was probably sick for about a week. And, you know, four year old being in daycare and around other kids, that was an abnormal. Kids are kind of petri dishes for disease, you know, sickness anyway, right? We really hadn't thought about it. It just lingered and lingered, and it wasn't getting better. She wasn't in full DKA by any means. So we were, we were very fortunate. Early on, it wasn't a Yeah, a quick trip to the ICU, even though it was, but in a roundabout way.
Scott Benner 9:07
So Mike, who takes care of the diabetes for the four year old, is it? Is it a shared experience between you and your ex, or is it one of the other and what did that look like back then? What kind of insulin? What were you doing for management?
Mike 9:20
So we were doing MDI at that time. There was no really pumps. They were around, but they weren't really readily it wasn't something certainly we were going to put on a four year old back then. I think they were about the size of a car battery. They were big. There was certainly no CGM. So, you know, we went through some education classes at the hospital, and of course, we went through a counseling class that it wasn't any of our fault, and we were sent home with, you know, vials and syringes, and that's what we gave her at that time. I don't even believe pens were available. And as I looked through that, you know, my wife worked in you. In the evenings and at night, and I worked during the day. So it was a shared 5050, and we're trying to, really just trying to figure it out, when I look at today's technology, you know, with CGM and pumps, and then I think back in 1995 I was sent home with a four year old and syringes and vials. How did I keep her alive? Like there was so much of a picture we didn't understand. And back then, you know, you hear this term, and I've even heard it on your podcast, they defined her as a brittle diabetic, meaning hard to control. It was just we didn't know the whole picture of what was going on. That's why she was hard to control.
Scott Benner 10:37
Yeah, no kidding. You said you don't know how you kept her alive, but how do you think you did it? What was it? Did you eventually find a rhythm, something that was agreeable, or, I don't, you know what I
Mike 10:47
mean, I think more, it's, you know, now that I'm on insulin, it's more I look back at how, at the time, I didn't realize how dangerous insulin was, okay, and you were always walking in a way, with a, you know, especially a type one diabetic at that age, you're kind of walking a tight line. But I think because of my young age, the internet wasn't what it is, so we really couldn't research it. We were just counting carbs, giving her the right amount of insulin, doing Lantus at night, and then, of course, trying to finger pricker, you know, as much as you can to get a good picture before meals, after meals, and kind of understand it, but you certainly didn't get that every five minute blood sugar to really obtain a full picture.
Unknown Speaker 11:30
Mike, are you old enough to
Scott Benner 11:32
appreciate that? 30 years ago, you couldn't really research something like that how different the world is. Like I imagine people younger than us are never really gonna understand that you just like somebody said something to and you went, Okay, well, the doctor said it, that's it. I will do this for the rest of our lives. Now, there's nowhere to check. Maybe you'd bump into somebody eventually who'd say something to you. You know, counterintuitive to what you'd heard the first time, but there was nowhere to go to find out. You know, it's crazy how much the access to information has changed in such a short I think of it as a short amount of time, but I'm assuming people think of 30 years as a long time, but it seems fast to me.
Mike 12:08
You know, it's funny you say that because, yeah, we were so isolated. I have a lot of medical professions, professionals in my family, and I look back at, like, just 100 years ago, you know, like when you look at the whole lifespan of humans existent, the leaps and bounds that we have made in the last 100 years, and then really, like you said, with technology information 30 years ago, that that just wasn't available, is such a short amount of time that now we have that. But I also question like, would it have been scary to have all that information back then, it certainly would have
Scott Benner 12:43
helped. It's possible that the knowledge, without the technology, might have been frightening, because you did say, like, you didn't know even that the insulin could be dangerous. So you were just doing you were just doing what they said. You weren't even thinking twice about, like, what might be happening afterwards,
Mike 12:58
right? Yeah, absolutely. And sadly, you know now, like, if you go low in the middle of the night, you get alarms, which are really annoying, because I get a ton of them. But back then, the only way we knew that she was going low is we would hear her cry. And at that point, you know, I don't, I think we were sleeping very lightly, just so we could always hear her. And it's just scary to think what was going on. And then, I think, even, like, what was going on 30 years before she was even diagnosed? How much scarier was that? Because at least we had test strips, and we had more than one a day.
Unknown Speaker 13:30
Do you recall what her a one, Cs were like back then? You know, she was
Mike 13:34
always, actually, for the most part, pretty good. She was in sixes. Never really got down in the fives, maybe, low sevens.
Unknown Speaker 13:42
They must have been thrilled with that back then. Yeah, they were. They were
Mike 13:45
really happy. You know, we were really good at always taking her the endocrinologist every time she had an appointment. We never really skipped any corners on it. We wanted to make sure she got the best care.
Scott Benner 13:57
Have you ever talked to her about what it was like to grow up with diabetes? Does she have remembrances or struggles or celebrations that she shared with you?
Unknown Speaker 14:08
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Scott Benner 14:11
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Mike 16:20
No, she doesn't, you know, she doesn't really know life without type one diabetes. So for her, it's very interesting. She just doesn't remember anything. You know, she was really great through the whole thing, especially as I look back now that I'm a type one but the only time she ever cried was the day we brought her home from the hospital and pricked her finger and gave her the first shot. Because, of course, she thought, I'm out of the hospital. I don't have to do this. And now she does. She never really cried. Now I look back and, you know, now that I'm type one, I look back and I think I wish I had understood a little bit more. But of course, I was trying to keep her, you know, her a 1c low, make sure her blood sugar wasn't spiking. So it was harder for me to understand, especially as she got into the teenage years of having a cheat day or a day I just don't want to be diabetic. I didn't understand those then,
Scott Benner 17:13
yeah, well, I mean, I think this is where, honestly, where your story is going to get the most interesting is, is when you're diagnosed, and you have the ability to look back over all this time with her, and then, of course, with your son as well. Yeah. How long does she have type one before your son's diagnosed? And was he diagnosed as an adult out of the house or with you still?
Mike 17:34
Yeah. So my son was in the Navy. He was stationed in San Diego, went in when he was, oh gosh, just 2021, years old. And he got out. He was out in August of 2021, he moved to Portland, bought a house. He was driving down to San Diego to see his wife's family, and all of a sudden he looked at his wife, said, I just don't feel good. He knew something was wrong. So this was December, Christmas of 2021, and he stopped at Walmart and bought a cheap checker and checked, and it said, hi to him. Want to know how he was doing that day, too. And he immediately looked his wife said, we have to go to the ICU. We have to get to the ER really quick. He went to the ER. And I remember when he called me and he said, Dad, I'm I'm in the hospital. I said, well, for what he said, type one diabetic. I just was complete shock,
Speaker 1 18:30
yeah, why, Mike? Because, because it just felt like it had happened once, it couldn't happen again.
Mike 18:36
Basically, yeah, it happened once, it shouldn't happen again. He was, you know, 2627 years old. It just didn't seem right. And then I remember I teared up in the moment we got off the phone with him, I said, you know, thinking like, you know, to God or whatever, you know, I'll take this. And unfortunately, I did, but somebody else didn't live up to their end,
Scott Benner 18:58
didn't do the exchange. They just brought it up. Yeah, exactly. I thought he was crying because he went from living from living in the weather of San Diego to the weather of Portland, Oregon. Oh, yeah, that'd make me upset. Wow. So he's diagnosed as a young married person. Had he been married long? At that point, he
Mike 19:14
had only been married about a year, so it was very new, you know, obviously, you know, he knew all about diabetes, and I would say, in the hospital, he was joking with me. We were FaceTiming, and he was uplifted. He was he was like, I'm going to be fine. It was more me that was almost devastated over it than course,
Scott Benner 19:33
you think that he felt like he was going to be fine, because he grew up with a sister who had it.
Mike 19:38
Yeah, exactly, yeah. He had the confidence. And he's just a great kid. Anyways, everything's positive. He's just fun to be around. You know? He he was kind of, in a way, of a lucky one. His a 1c when he went in was 17. He had been high, but because he had just got out of the military, he was able to go back. That was something they should have caught when he. Got out of the military. So the military will actually pay for his medical supplies, full pump and everything for the rest of his life.
Scott Benner 20:07
Oh, because he was in when this started and it wasn't caught, this falls under his veterans benefits,
Mike 20:14
absolutely, yep. So he'll have 100% and you know, when my daughter had it, one of the first things I was worried about was, like, this is this is not fair in life, because this is a lifetime expense that's not fair to her.
Unknown Speaker 20:27
Yeah, yeah. The cost
Scott Benner 20:30
is, I was just having a conversation with somebody about some generic insulin that's coming, and they're talking a lot about, like, what kind of pen is it going to go into? And, you know, like, they're, you know, at a company level, they're talking about all that. And somebody remarked, you know, I think, really, you should be a little more focused on just the fact that people need affordable insulin, put it in vials and give it to them. Yeah, let's stop worrying about, like, this part of it here, like, let's just, you know, there's a lot of people who can't afford their insulin. They're rationing, they're not eating sometimes because of it, like they don't care which one of the one of the pens you choose. Like, just, like, let's get it to them. And I thought it's interesting the way you you just talked about the financial side of it, right? Like, my gosh. Like, what a relief is it that someone else is going to pay for this stuff for your son versus your daughter, who's you know? Yeah, yeah, stuck paying for her whole life. Hey, yep. Is he still married?
Mike 21:26
Yes, he's still married. Lives in Portland, and he's on a pump and his a 1c was he was down to five, five, and they're trying to kick him up a little bit. They want Him more around that 5759,
Unknown Speaker 21:40
range, okay, is he experiencing a lot of lows
Mike 21:44
more than what they would like? He's on a he's on a T slim. Yeah, he tends to hover a little bit low, but then he allows a spike his his standard deviations a little bit on the higher side. Okay?
Scott Benner 21:56
And can I ask? I've been wondering this for 10 minutes now. Do you think that one of your kids getting type one diabetes at all added to the fact that you're divorced from their mom? Now, did it add a level of difficulty to your marriage? Or do you think they're not related?
Mike 22:12
No, I don't think it is. They've been diagnosed for about six years, and you know, it really didn't cause a lot of friction that part, there was some other things that just caused. Yeah, I
Scott Benner 22:23
don't need to know what they are. I just was wondering if that was a contributing factor or not.
Mike 22:28
No, I don't think it was.
Unknown Speaker 22:30
So now, how long ago was your son diagnosed?
Scott Benner 22:34
So he was diagnosed December of 2021, and it was like Chris day before Christmas, right? So four, maybe four years ago, in that range, this is some, like, couple of decades since your daughter's been type one. So your daughter's diagnosed at a really young age. You grow up as a father through all that, he's diagnosed more recently, and then it's just a couple years later that you are as well.
Mike 23:00
Yeah, my story was actually really interesting the way it came about. I was one of the very fortunate ones that I didn't go in a DKA or ICU or anything. But yes, it was just really about three years later that we had noticed something with me. And in 2023 I had worked for a company for about seven years, and I had another company that recruited me, and I decided to make the jump. And in between, I had a couple week period where I just decided to take couple weeks off. And I thought, well, I'm going to go in and get my physical done, because I have asthma, and so I need to get my asthma medication renewed. And I went to the doctor. They did a full blood palette. So this was September of 23 and it came back a few days later. And my primary care physician, she's a marathon runner, and maybe we should say that I I'm a cyclist. I used to race bikes, and at this time, I stopped racing in 2015 but I still work out anywhere from 10 to 15 hours a week. I'm on a bike, so I'm very I'm a very active person. And so, of course, with a lot of athletes, what happens is you tend to eat whatever you want, because you work out. And so my a 1c she called me, and it came back at five, nine. She said, Mike, your your a 1c is a little high. And she said, you know, obviously you're not a type two, but it, you know, she'd even mentioned diabetes. We really just talked about, you know, I should eat, stop eating sugar, and because I worked out, you know, your normal person would go, let's say, in the evening, eat one or two Oreo cookies. And I'm probably the guy that eats 10 to 12 cookies and then maybe washes it down with a brownie. I said, that's fine. So in September, when she said, You know, I bet if you just stop eating it, maybe just had a treat here or there on the weekends, you'll be fine. So I being who I am, I completely stopped eating sugar. Went to Mexico Cancun for a week. There I had some dessert. Fruits and a few drinks. I'm not a heavy drinker, but I really cut back drinking. And I went back for my and she was fantastic. She could have left it at that and said, Don't worry about coming back. Just stop eating sugar. But she said, come back in three months, and let's test it again. I went back three months later. It was December. It was right around probably December 20, so shortly before Christmas, and got my blood work done. And I remember I was actually in the department store checking out by my wife a Christmas present, and I got an email that my blood results came back, and I started opening it checked out. And as I was walking through the parking lot to my truck, I looked at it, and I saw my a 1c had gone from five, nine to six, and the tears started coming. I knew. I was like, Wait a minute. There's no way it can be six. Something has happened. Yeah, yeah, talk to the doctor. And you know, it was like, Okay, let's just keep watching it. We're going to test again in three more months. So in that time I was working out, there was Christmas Eve, and I thought, I'm gonna go to Walmart and just buy a glucose checker. Yeah, you shouldn't get the them fairly inexpensive there. And I checked, I just finished working out, got home, opened it up, checked it, my sugar levels were 180 I was like, This is not right. I shouldn't be 180 so I started checking it periodically, went through the holidays, didn't really have much sugar or anything. And then in March of 2022, or no, I'm sorry, March of 2024 we started looking for a second home, and we were looking in southern Utah at the same time, you know, there's a lot of stress going on of buying an additional home. My son was a type one diabetic, and I talked to him, you know, almost every other day, and he said, Dad, I'm going to send you CGM. He's like, I have so many. I'll send you one so we can get a clear picture. And he sent it. I was completely shocked. All of a sudden, I was seeing three hundreds. And I was like, This isn't good. I went down to do a home inspection on her house, and I came back and my sugar levels were so elevated, it was causing me a little stress. I actually thought I was having a heart attack. And went to the doctor the next day, did another one, A, 1c, check, and I had jumped from six to six, eight.
Scott Benner 27:25
Mike, the sadness you felt. Was it about your own health solely? Was it about what you thought you were losing, what you're about to experience? Or do you think you started to think more about your kids? Or do you think there's a combination of things in
Mike 27:38
there? I think when I looked at it. It was one of those. So I had worked out, you know, race bikes my entire life. And you know, racing, you know, 10 to 13,000 miles a year. And remember when I looked at my primary care physician, I don't think she even wanted to tell me what my a 1c was, because when she did tell me, I had to ask her, and she got real quiet, and she said, six, eight. And the tears came. And I was, you know, I was like, I did everything in my life not to be here. And of course, she said, It's not your fault. And she's, you know, she was real nice. She said, if anything, because of your lifestyle, you probably would have been here two years ago in a lot worse shape, so you didn't do anything. And so I think it was more it was just a shock, because I had always really taken great pride in really taking care of myself, being active, being healthy. I was the guy that would go to the doctor, and my blood pressure would be so low I would be really proud of that. So to go that was a huge swing for me to go from that to all of a sudden having a life changing disease, it
Scott Benner 28:47
was more about the, I guess, that psychological aspect of like, I think, how is it possible I put this much effort into something that still didn't work out?
Mike 28:55
Yeah, absolutely. And, you know, I've heard, you know, even on your podcast, other older people saying the same thing. I thought, I thought, you know, 5455 years old, I'd escaped that. I certainly knew what it was, but I thought it escaped.
Unknown Speaker 29:10
It was there a piece
Scott Benner 29:12
of the like you said earlier, like, you know, your daughter had type one for such a long time her your son's diagnosed. Later, you think, Oh, God, that can't happen. Like, it's already happened to us. Is is this like the Oh, it can't. How is it possibly going to happen a third time? Has happened twice? Or is it more about feeling like marked? Do you start feeling, oh, this thing feels like it's out. They get like, you know what? You know, I should mention this, right? It's the 50th anniversary of jaws. Remember, in Jaws where they act, they acted like the shark had something out for the family. Like, did you feel like that?
Mike 29:39
That didn't really cross my mind too much. What did cross my mind was my youngest daughter didn't have diabetes. Of Okay, is it going to happen? Pretty much every one of your direct siblings has it now. Your dad, like, are you next?
Scott Benner 29:56
Yeah, yeah. Now you're worried for her. It's going to come for her as well.
Unknown Speaker 29:59
Absolutely. Absolutely. How old is she? He is 27 and
Scott Benner 30:03
I guess it doesn't really matter, because now at this point you have, you have someone diagnosed at four, someone diagnosed at 21 someone diagnosed at 52 like there's no even rhyme or reason to the to the age there in the family. So this is just a thing I imagine you're going to worry about for the rest of your life
Mike 30:21
for her. Oh, yeah, absolutely, yeah. And so, of course, my, you know, my diabetes stories doesn't end there. So I was diagnosed, and then in June, I think it was June of last year, my wife's half brother wound up in the ICU DKA, and then it's like, wow. Now we have another one, no blood relation, but okay, now is my wife on that and we did go get her tested to for the antibodies.
Unknown Speaker 30:50
Like, I'm sorry, your current wife or your ex wife, my current wife?
Mike 30:53
Okay, yeah, oh, geez, yeah. And we've been together for 20 years, so it's been a long
Scott Benner 30:57
time. I was just gonna say, like, if, if we found it in your ex wife's family line, then it makes sense that you know that so many of your kids have it too. Is there anxiety in your family, like with your kids or yourself? Is anybody anxious? ADHD, anything like that?
Mike 31:14
No, not at all. If anything, we're the 100% opposite. We're the family that when something bad happens, we'll lick our wounds for a week or two, and then we'll start picking out the positive. Like, even me with type one diabetes, even though my daughter had it. Like, now I really understand how the whole digestive system works, the liver and everything. And it's like, it's like, okay, now I probably understand more about the digest the digestive system diabetes more than endocrinologists. So we're kind of always that family that picks the positive out of everything. Even when my son passed away, we picked out positive things, and that's just the way we are. Lick our wounds for for a little bit, and then we pick ourselves back up.
Speaker 1 31:56
Can you tell me some of the positive you identified after his passing?
Mike 32:00
Yeah, absolutely. You know, it was devastating because me, I had never even been to a funeral, and sort of to go to my, you know, the first one to be my son. But it really brought my children together closer, even closer than they were. And that was always the positive. And it actually taught me to let things go. There was a lot of things, even, like, I would argue with my ex wife and I was like, so much of that just didn't matter. After that, it was so insignificant. It just didn't matter.
Scott Benner 32:29
Yeah, you gained a perspective of 100 year old man in five seconds, really? Yeah, absolutely. I feel like diabetes has done that for me. Oh, and I feel like I see it with other people as well, you know, just at some point, I don't know the minutia and the silly things that we all like get upset about or argue about, I just when they happen now you just feel like, God, this is just so meaningless. You know, yeah, to
Mike 32:54
get worked up over senseless things. It just that's actually what came up. It was like, this just isn't worth energy, really negative energy anymore. And I really took that approach with my ex wife. I was like, I'm just not going to argue with you. I just don't care anymore.
Scott Benner 33:09
Yeah, just, I don't know, like, the words for it, but it's and it doesn't happen consciously in your head. But you know, like, what are we going to argue about where we're going to dinner? Like, Arden's pancreas doesn't make insulin, you know, or my son's not here anymore. Like, like, this is, this is a real thing that happened. So just because it happened to us this one time doesn't mean it's not happening to other people all over the world constantly, that people aren't battling depression, or, you know, quiet battles that nobody else knows about, and that there aren't shocked families left behind, or health issues that people are are just constantly fighting with, and we're gonna sit here and like, be mad that, you know, I don't know the gutter guys didn't come on the right day, or like, you know, like, just doesn't matter. I don't know. I just think it gives you, like, a lifetime's worth of perspective in a short amount of time. And I think a lot of people are lucky enough to level up from that and maybe find some clarity that they didn't have prior.
Mike 34:04
Yeah, I'll agree 100% Yeah. I really do think, you know, the t1 just changes everything for you. And you know now that I've been diagnosed with it, it really changes everything. More than raising children with t1 was one thing, or a child, and then having an adult or, you know, an adult child, but now having it myself, it's just everything is so different in life now, well, that's
Scott Benner 34:28
what I want to check with you, because it's, I mean, listen, it's easy for me to philosophize about it, right? Like, because it's, I don't have to take the insulin Arden does, right? Like, I don't get low she does, right? I don't have to worry about the future she does like those are all her actual lived problems, not mine, but I know how I feel, and I know how I've been impacted by it. But I guess my question to you is, is the did any of that change or deepen when it became your diagnosis, or are the feelings I'm feeling for a child really the same? That I would get if I had diabetes myself.
Mike 35:03
Yeah, it's, it's interesting. You know, obviously experiencing some lows and some highs. I have a different, completely different perspective of it. Now, when you watch, you know, your your girl, go through it, it's one thing. Now I'm experiencing it, and I don't know if it's worse because of my age. I don't know if that's something that could even be quantified, but I certainly have a whole new understanding. I remember when my daughter would come home and she, you know, her blood sugar would be high, and I'd ask her what she had for lunch, and, you know, how much insulin did you take? And I remember saying, like, did you forget your diabetes, and now I have an old news perspective of that, a clearer picture and certainly understanding of
Speaker 1 35:48
it. Have you contacted her and shared that with her? You know, we have
Mike 35:52
kind of a strained relationship, a little bit, which is sad, but no, I haven't. Certainly with my son. We talk all the time, and we can definitely correlate. He's actually maintained really well. I'm a little bit better than him, I think, yeah, but he's, he's really good at it. But, you know, I had a really scary low last December, and so it's nice to talk to somebody who's gone through that to get some understanding.
Scott Benner 36:20
Yeah, well, I mean, I don't know the source of your strain with your daughter, but, I mean, I would imagine it would mean something to her to know that, you know, like, you have a different perspective now that you have it, and you know you're sorry for for any time that you may have. Like, I don't know if that's fixes things with people or not, but I'm assuming we've all done that to a kid with type one, everybody who's a caregiver at some point or another, you say that thing, right? Like that, no matter how you mean it sounds like, what did you do? You know? Like, why did, how did you make this happen? Like, what did you not do that caused this that, as much as that's not your intention in the moment, I imagine it's overwhelmingly received that way from from the type ones themselves. So I don't know, maybe, you know, maybe she don't want to hear from you. I'm not asking you, but, but I feel like that'd be a thing somebody would want to know.
Mike 37:11
I definitely think we'll get we will have that conversation. You know, as you know, with Arden, when you're they're young, like that, even teenage, you're just trying to do everything to make sure that there's no effects 30 years down the road. So you want to keep them as in line as you can so there's not other health problems. And obviously that's something you very, you know, you care for very much. You want to make sure that they're really, you know, keeping in line and just being healthy. So I didn't really understand that. But, you know, there's days now I look at my numbers and and I'm really well controlled. I'm 98 to 99% in range every day. My standard deviations about 19% so I'm very well controlled. But even then, sometimes it's just like, you know, you just don't want to care about it one day. You just, you know, I read something that said the average diabetic makes an extra 150 to 200 decisions a day. And there's a lot of truth to that, that even though I raised a type one diabetic, I didn't understand it.
Scott Benner 38:15
Yeah, no, you can't possibly and, you know, now, right? That's not a just a thing. You've heard, like, I hear people make a lot of extra decisions, and they have type one now you're making those decisions. And yeah, again, your perspective is raised. You might be an Oracle by the time you're done, Mike, if stuff keeps happening to
Mike 38:30
you, my gosh. So I started having really high blood sugars. I was leaving town. My doctor was out of town, and somebody in her office had prescribed me Metformin because he didn't know me. So he's like, okay, he's got high blood sugar. It's type two. So I took that for a little while, I did nothing, and then I took a C peptide test, and it came back that I had the antibodies. And I called my doctor, and he said, Okay, and I was leaving town again, because, unfortunately, I travel sometimes, and she called me in Lantus, and she said, You know, I don't know if this is good or bad, but she's like, you're one of my only patients I could just call in insulin and not have to give him education. Like, yeah, sadly, I have too much education and type one diabetes.
Scott Benner 39:17
Yeah. Did you find that the experience with your daughter growing up and now your conversations with your son that you really there was nothing really left for you to understand, like you were just like, oh, I have it now. I know how to do it. Is there any gaps in your knowledge at all? Well?
Mike 39:33
So when I was raising my daughter, there was no CGM weren't around. So I definitely saw a very clear picture of what happens when you eat food to get that and see it. Yeah. The other thing is, I feel like no type one diabetes are alike. Everybody's different. We all have different eating habits. We we drink differently. Just everything's different our lifestyles. So even though I knew that you know if you if you draw it on paper or. Whiteboard of what diet, type one diabetes. It's perfect, right? Okay, you bring in this many carbs, you take this much insulin, no problem. But when you're actually living it in real life, it's not that clear. It's it's just an everyday is different. I'm pretty lucky. I eat I know the same thing every day. You know, I have a yogurt in the morning from going out training. I eat the same food. So it was more learning about myself and really understanding how the CGM work. There was that little gap, even though my son was on a CGM, my daughter's on a CGM, I didn't raise anybody on a CGM, right? So that part, there was a little bit of a learning curve, when to when to do a calibration, which it's very rare. I do one. I I'm pretty lucky. I'm one of the very few on the g7 that has failed. I think I've, over the last year and a half, I've had two that have failed.
Scott Benner 40:51
Yeah, my I don't think that makes you like one of the few. I think that maybe just people on the internet are, you know, more drawn to use the internet sometimes for talking about what's not working, trying to get help, and people who are putting on, you know, I say all the time, like, Arden has incredible success with the g7 but I don't go online and be like, Oh, there's another sensor that lasted 10 hours plus the 12 hour grace period, like, or 10 days plus 12 hours. Like, I mean, that's not a thing you get to tell people online, you know, yeah. Can I ask you about biking? How long have you been riding?
Mike 41:22
So I started riding in 1995 it was funny, I just barely moved to Utah, and I had a neighbor who was gonna go do this 100 mile big bike event and not even have a bike. And I was like, okay, yeah, I'll do it. So I went to Walmart, I bought a cheap mountain bike. Probably weighed 3000 pounds. I did it. I swore I'd never ride a bike again, and then that, later that year, I ended up buying my first road bike. Rode it very, very often, but I really didn't start racing bikes until 2005 2005 I really got into racing. Endurance bike racing was my big thing. That was the first year I did there's a race that they do here. It's fairly known throughout the nation. It's called Logan, the Jackson, and it's 206 miles. You go over three mountain ranges, and you do that all in one day. Jeez, yeah. So I did that. And 2005 was my first year. I'd even know I was going to do it until a week before I signed up for it. And then I decided that bike racing was for me. Done it 10 times. Now I actually stopped racing in 2015 but you know, in the highlight of my kind of my career, I raced 62 times in one year. So yeah, I raced, raced quite a bit.
Speaker 1 42:45
And was that just a thing you picked up at some point, or were you incredibly active before that?
Mike 42:50
No, I wasn't at all, really. I got out of the Navy, moved to Utah, done a little bit of running. I blew out my knee, came down into a rut the wrong way, blew it out. And so when I got into racing riding bikes, I always enjoyed it as kid, and it was just something I picked up. I was really good at it. If you look at me now, you would think, Wow, that's a really tall skinny guy by nature. I'm not a skinny person. I'm six one. I think at one point I was up to 225 pounds right now I weigh about 160 the riding is just because
Unknown Speaker 43:28
I'm sorry, the right, did the riding take the weight off of you?
Mike 43:30
Yeah, the riding weight took it off. I had done that event 95 then I gained some weight, and then I got back into it on a mountain bike with road tires on it so there were not knobby tires. And I went into the event, and I was keeping up with all the road guys, and I was like, All right, it's time to get back into this real bike. Time to get out riding. And so I do think the bike racing helped with the type one diabetes, because as I look back now, I think I struggled with this. My honeymoon phase was relatively short, and I think that's because I rode through my honeymoon phase and kept my sugar levels down the
Scott Benner 44:05
amount of time that you knew you had type one was short, but you think that maybe there was a longer honeymoon prior to you knowing that was kind of helped by your activity.
Mike 44:14
Yeah, absolutely. So I really suffered on the bike last year is I was getting diagnosed. I was getting on insulin. They had me on Metformin. I was carrying a lot of fatigue. I go on a 30 minute bike ride, come home, take a three hour nap. I was just wrecked, and I couldn't figure it out. And then once I was I've been on a pump now for about, oh, 50 days. Okay. And so when you eat, as you know, your carbs break down in the sugar, which translates to energy. Well, if you don't have any insulin, where's your body getting the energy from? It's breaking down your muscle. And now that I'm on insulin, and I'm regulated very well, I'm starting to build up muscle again. And I look back and think, wow, I was really suffering for three, four years, because now I can go out ride my bike, and, you know, I can hit four or five. 500 watts and maintain that for a little while, and actually get home and I'm not sore, I'm not fatigued, where I was for many years. And so now I'm starting to look back and think, was this, you know, I plot covid in 2000 did that trigger it? And I've really been suffering with this longer than what I know. It's hard to figure that one out,
Scott Benner 45:20
I actually found myself wondering if your son's service maybe didn't keep him very active, and maybe, like, when he was out, maybe that's why I actually wondered, like it was, you know, not enough there for me to say out loud at the moment, but you said it's able and super 1717. Yeah, right. So, so I don't know, like, you know, the activity definitely can help during those long, slow honeymoon periods, especially with like, Lada.
Mike 45:45
Yeah, absolutely. So one thing we found out with my son was he just found this out a couple months ago. My son has neuropathy, pretty bad. He's walking with a cane, really. And, yeah, he's only 30 years old. So of course, his doctor wanted to know why, like, why is he suffering so bad with all of this? Why is he walking with a cane? Why is he having foot problems? They pulled his medical records, and they found out that five years prior to his diagnosis, they did a blood workup on him and his a 1c was 6.8 and all they put in the note was, we'll watch it. Yeah, so he had been suffering with this for a very long time. The military didn't really thoroughly do what they should have done.
Speaker 1 46:31
Do you think your son had elevated blood sugars for five years before he was diagnosed? Oh gosh,
Mike 46:38
yep, five years because it did come back. He was a six eight. And as we all know, six eight, you know, that's, that's a big trigger. But I think especially, we see this a lot, and, you know, I read this on forums. I've heard it on your podcast of everybody, they automatically think it's type two at first, and older people, you know, and so that's tend to, you know, just eat better and it'll go away. And that's not the case, probably
Unknown Speaker 47:03
what they were thinking there too. So, yeah, absolutely,
Scott Benner 47:06
you know, you're doing a great job of telling your story, but is there something that drew you to want to be on the podcast that I I'm not covering or getting to,
Mike 47:14
you know? I so I started listening to your podcast because when my brother in law was diagnosed with type one. He also had a burning injury, and so I was going to the doctor with him to really help him out. I was already diagnosed at t1 I was just doing MDI at the time. So I was going to his pump education classes with him, helped him pick out a pump. And then when they educated on the educator told me about your podcast, and so I started listening to it. Then from basically Episode One, I think I got up to about four hundreds. Now I'm kind of going backwards, so it was more just helping him. He got the Omnipod. I thought I had a really interesting story. You know that my 30 years worth of diabetes, becoming a diabetic, yeah, and if anything, it was more wanted to, you know, it was almost like through experience of now looking back at what my daughter went through 30 years ago, of do everything you can, be supportive, help out. There's going to be those days, and I can only imagine being a teenager who's lived with diabetes for, let's say, 1012, years of how frustrating that has to be on a daily basis. And it's okay to get in the weeds with them and and let them be mad about the disease. And you know, it's okay. It's not something that can just easily be managed. It's probably one of the most self managed, frustrating diseases you know, known to man.
Speaker 1 48:45
Do you think that you in the
Scott Benner 48:48
pursuit of being supportive or keeping things in the right track? Do you think there were times that your daughter wanted to commiserate or be sad and you didn't let her
Mike 48:59
probably a little well, no, I definitely, we knew it was dying. It was very, very frustrating. But I think we, you know, we definitely wanted to understand, but maybe not as much understanding, of what it was because we weren't living with it. So you can understand as much as you you think you know, but until you're actually really living it, then you really get the full picture of it.
Scott Benner 49:22
Yeah, yeah. I, in the past, have worried that this is a great format for conversation, but at the same time, like, you have to be what the word is. You have to be, like, clear, and you can't get muddled when you're talking all the time. So, like, I've worried in the past that, like, just through trying to tell a story and not being able to tell every second of it. Sharing my perspective could even feel blase at times like and I don't feel that way at all. It's just that sometimes you say something, whether it's to another person, directly or here on a podcast or anywhere, and you can't give the entire context of what you're thinking so you get. Of like, you know, the tiniest point about what's being said right now, and then I can look back later and see how the person who heard that might have really benefited from more context or been put off because it sounds like you're simplifying something when you don't really feel that way. You're just trying to be concise. Does that all make sense or not? But yeah, I'm aware of that, but at the same time, like the podcast also has to be, you know, it has to flow, and it has to be entertaining, and every thought can't get broken down for 10 minutes. And anyway, it's just, it's interesting to me that you have so much time with a with a child, with type one, then you get to re experience it the way you did with your son, and then now you have this personal experience, like you said, it's just an interesting story. It's a it's a bit of a different pathway. Can I ask you, do you have worries about your own health moving forward, like, what are your expectations for the rest of your life?
Mike 50:53
You know, I so I had a really scary low last year 34 and it was more the Lantus went direct into a cell and hit right away. So there was 12 units that just injected me, and within 20 minutes, you hit like a
Scott Benner 51:09
blood vessel with your with your slow acting insulin.
Mike 51:12
Yeah, I hit a blood vessel because I was working. I work from home. I have for, oh, I don't know, about 10 years now. So I work from home. I was staring at my computer, and, you know, the vision got really weird. I hadn't done anything different than what I do any other day. I had my yogurt, my coffee. Was staring at the computer, pretty, you know, intently. Vision started going weird. I looked out the window, looked back, and it still didn't clear up. And then, of course, then the alarms went off. I immediately finger pricked, and I was 34 and I yelled for my daughter to go get my wife, and she came in, and I thought I was in survival mode at that. What's that you thought you're going down? Oh, I was I was going down. I was sitting on the floor trying to open gummy bears. I didn't realize how bad, how hard gummy bears can be to open when your sugar levels at a 34 but it dropped me from 120 to 34 in 20 minutes. Wow. So it was I was coming down really fast. I didn't think a human person could sweat that much without working out. I remember when I finally came out of it. I was just completely soaked. So in that one, it that that was pretty hard understanding that had a great, positive experience with a dog on that experience, and so, yeah, I have incremental steps, you know, pretty well controlled we've talked about, you know how? You know, you typically 98 to 99% in range. Part of me at 56 I'm like, well, at least now I know what's probably, you know, I'm gonna die one day from some side effect of diabetes. I might be 95 or so, but, you know, it's there now that I'm on a pump I was doing MDI. So at the beginning of this year, when my a 1c was at five, five, they decided, like, Okay, we have to get you. We're just taking more Lantus than fast acting, and they wanted to switch it. They were like, you're having too many lows. It's interesting. When I'm on a bike and I'm going, you know, my heart rates, let's say 160 my blood sugars will spike. I won't drop. I'll actually go up really high. I remember one time I was mountain biking up in the mountains, and for 30 minutes I heard my Dexcom alarm go off because I was 252, 75 the whole time when I go hiking or I walk my dogs, that's when I go low and I can drop from, let's say, 120 to 80 within 20 minutes. So one of the things they wanted to do is back off the Lantus and start doing more fast acting insulin. And that actually raised my a 1c I was in Destin Florida for a wedding in May, and at the wedding at night, when I, I think I put my 12th shot in my leg, I said, That's it. It's it's time to go to a pump. Ordered my pump when I got back into Utah and started July 1, actually, of this year. Would you guess? So I don't. I got the Moby I like it. Yeah, I really like it. I love the software. I like seeing how it's works. Awesome when it gets automatic boluses, seeing how the basal rate turns off at night. Duping never bothered me. I actually didn't want to go with the Omnipod, because I, quite frankly, I just didn't want another big thing hanging off me. Because, you know, cycling, you're wearing, you know, tight spandex clothes, you know, outfit and everything. So I just didn't want another device hanging off me.
Unknown Speaker 54:35
You wear the Moby clipped onto your clothing. Yeah, yeah.
Mike 54:39
I just clip it on. I have the 23 inch tube. I tried the five inch tube that that about drove me nuts. I only did that once, so the Moby doesn't bother me at all. I sleep with it on. I think the Moby is actually really good. My daughter and my son are both on a T slim, and my brother in law, who was diagnosed last year, is on the Omnipod.
Scott Benner 55:00
Oh no, well, let me just say tandem diabetes.com/juicebox, omnipod.com/juicebox twist.com/juicebox and Medtronic diabetes.com/juicebox. You want to pump, please use one of my links. That's all I got there. Mike, thank you for letting me inject that.
Mike 55:15
Yeah, absolutely, yeah. I think the Mobi is fantastic, especially with the CGM. And if this pump died tomorrow, I'd go get another movie. Just wouldn't even be a question.
Scott Benner 55:25
It's great to hear people find stuff that jives with how they live and works the way they want it to. It's just the greatest thing. So I'm thrilled.
Mike 55:33
Yeah, I was apprehensive, though I can admit I really wanted to go with the tea slim, and I think that part of that was my age, of having a pump that didn't have a screen or anything, and I had to rely on a cell phone. That part kind of bothered me at first, and then when I just kind of saw maybe a little coaxing for my wife, of giving the Moby a try, I'm really glad I went
Scott Benner 55:57
with the Moby. Awesome, awesome. That's great. I'm very happy for you. Let's see what else we good. I mean, have we done it, as they say, or is there something we've left? I can't imagine we've left something out. Is there anybody left you're related to that could get diabetes?
Mike 56:10
Well, unfortunately, there is my daughter. I want her to go get tested. I want her to get the antibody test so we, if she has that, we can get her, you know, the proper medication to try and push that off.
Scott Benner 56:20
That's what was in my head. Did she respond well to that? When you suggested her, how does she feel about it?
Mike 56:27
He responded really well, I told her, because she told me that her primary physician said that, you know, she doesn't have a danger of being in didn't want to do it. And I said, let me know my endocrinologist will set you up with a chart, and they'll order the labs for you. She did it for my wife, and she'll do it for her too. I said, let me know. I'll even drive you over there. We'll go get it done if we can, you know, push this off as long as possible. Let's do it. She's very open to it. She lives about 70 miles away from me, and so she does want to do it. So we're going to take them to my endocrinologist and get that
Scott Benner 57:02
done. Strange for the doctor to say that that, I mean, you know, two of her three siblings have type one, and sadly, you don't know if the third one might have gotten it at some point. You, you know, you didn't have the opportunity to know that. Like, weird to think that it's not worth looking into. You know what? I mean, like, it seems obvious to me that it's a possibility, yeah,
Mike 57:22
especially when you have, you know your father, who was diagnosed in his 50s,
Unknown Speaker 57:29
yeah, yeah, legitimate.
Mike 57:31
So I really do want to get her tested. I don't know how much time we have, but I do have a great story of a dog story.
Scott Benner 57:37
I'll finish with a dog story. My God,
Mike 57:40
all right, so we have a house in southern Utah, and I would go hiking with my dogs a lot. They're both standard poodles. They'll be three years old this September, and they're brother and sister, and the sister is her name's Delilah, and I took her hiking on a Saturday, and my wife and I, we did four and a half miles, and the next day I got home from, you know, a two and a half three hour bike ride. My wife was not home, so I said, by eight, my blood sugars were about 190 and I said, All right, let's go. Let's go for a hike. And we hiked up to a top of a mesa, which is about 1000 vertical feet, about three quarters of the way up. She started looking back at me, and I was like, I'm okay. I thought maybe I broke her from the day before, and then about five minutes from the top, she just stopped and sat down, and I I pet her. I'm like, you're okay, you're all right. I'm sorry I broke you. And then we went, and then the vision started going. I went, Oh my gosh, I'm going low. Oh, she's trying to
Scott Benner 58:37
stop, yeah. So I
Mike 58:39
knew once I got to the top, I'd be okay, because my heart rate would come down and I'd be okay. So we pushed to the top, and sure enough, it went away. When I really went low last December. I didn't realize this at the time, but when I was sitting on the floor sweating, Delilah was right there, just staring at me, and I didn't put it together or anything. And then three weeks later, I was down Southern Utah again, hiking, and I started going lower, and all of a sudden, she kept looking back at me, looking back at me, and I was and then I put it together. And so whenever I drop low, if we're out hiking or walking, she will alert me. 10 to 15 minutes before that, I am dropping and I assure I'm okay, but she's naturally a diabetic alert dog. She won't wake me up or anything. But when we're out hiking the lower I go, she will actually, at some point, just sit and stop and
Scott Benner 59:32
like, gosh, isn't that awesome? That's really. Do you ever say to her, hey there? Delilah, oh yeah, all the time, I would. Does that start you singing the song, Yep, yeah,
Mike 59:46
but she's great. So we actually looked at having her professionally trained, and at the end of the day, we decided not to do it. Typically, they do that with puppies, not three year olds, but when they evaluated her, they actually really thought, okay, yep, she is an. Alert dog. We feel that we could get her, but I'm not uncontrolled enough to pay $11,000
Scott Benner 1:00:05
listen, you can't teach speed. That dog's a natural. Okay, yeah, exactly.
Mike 1:00:11
She is a natural. And I think part of that was, even when she was a younger puppy, one of her favorite games was to play hide and go seek in the house. And so she could find me in a closet, she would sniff me out. And so she's always really been in tune, but we didn't realize that until you know a few episodes in that she can recognize low blood sugars, which is really amazing.
Unknown Speaker 1:00:33
Is that breed known for that? Or no?
Mike 1:00:35
Yeah, we actually read that. They say one of the better Diabetic Alert dogs are poodles. About that.
Scott Benner 1:00:41
My parents had a poodle when I was born, not born, well, I guess born. When they brought me home, I'm adopted, and the dog, like, went after me one time, and my mom, like, got rid of the dog and, oh, wow, yeah, I've been told that story so many times because my mom loved that dog. Apparently, that was it. Like, my that's the story I was always told. Like, my mom's like, No, I wasn't gonna let her go after you. I believe the dog's name was Gigi, if I'm if I'm not mistaken,
Mike 1:01:09
yeah, I think poodles are great. I had one then she died about a year before we got the new ones. And she was 17. She was my girl. Went everywhere with me. You know, if I was out dinner, I would tell my wife, like, we got to hurry up and go home. I got to go home and play with Lily. That was my whole thing. Was going home and playing with her, and she died at 17, and it took me a long time to get another dog. But I'm all about the poodle breeds. I think they're amazing
Unknown Speaker 1:01:36
dogs. Yeah, 17 is a nice, long life for a dog. You know, if
Mike 1:01:40
I felt I got cheated. I felt I should have had another 17 years.
Speaker 1 1:01:43
Yeah, no, I can imagine. Well, Mike, you have a really good way about you. I enjoyed this too. What do you do for a living?
Mike 1:01:51
So I am director for a company that we do. We build data centers. Okay, so the power side of data centers, so like battery backup energy type system, so if the data center goes down, we still keep it up and running. So I'm a director, I have a sales team and a project management team, and we design and build data centers around the critical infrastructure.
Scott Benner 1:02:15
Well, it's really something, is AI going to put a real drain on power, the way they're talking about it? And do you guys, are you guys working on battery backup for that? I wouldn't imagine you could even, can you even approximate that kind of power?
Mike 1:02:29
You know, it's interesting, when you look at where, what we call is a network rack, of what the power capacity used to be for a network rack, say, five years ago, to where it is today. You know, back then, let's say thrive, three to five kilowatts per rack was a lot. Well, now you're talking anywhere from 511, 100 to 500 kilowatts per rack, really. And so the strain that it puts on those batteries, of course, everything's going lithium ion battery. When the AI servers spool up, they bring in so much power that actually, sometimes the utility can't even keep up, and they actually end up hitting battery backup systems to look for that power. So there's, there's a lot of strain on it, but data centers will never go away. If anything, they're getting more and more popular. They're popping up everywhere. It's an exciting time in our world. The actual hardest thing is now is it's not so much getting power to those systems. It's actually keeping them cool. That's going to be the challenge. Is keeping all those systems cool, because if they overheat, of course, they can't function. And how do you keep that much, you know, coolness around? So there's like direct to chip. You can do immersion it just goes on. That's a whole three hour podcast right there. It's it's exciting.
Scott Benner 1:03:45
Do you think the way that we create power is gonna have to change to keep up with it? I guess I'm asking specifically. Do you think that people are gonna have to look at more nuclear options to to generate electricity?
Mike 1:03:57
That's the way the industry is looking. When you get into like meta, Microsoft, Apple, all of those, they are looking at starting to do some type of nuclear, reactor, type things, many reactors to power those because of the amount of power drop. It's interesting. Data centers used to go to certain areas. Now data centers look for where they're wherever there's available power. So that seems to be what they're looking for. So if there's a utility that has an extra, say, 400 megawatts of power, that's where the data center is going. So that's where they look,
Scott Benner 1:04:30
you're gonna see the centers popping up where the energy already exists. Yep, yeah, that's gonna be how they pick their real estate. That's interesting. And you're not really limited. I mean, our data centers limited by distance. Not anymore, right? Because of the speed of the Internet doesn't really matter.
Mike 1:04:44
Not anymore. Yeah, yeah. And that's the way it used to be, used to want to put, like, data centers and populated areas, and now, with latency, it's just not really an issue. And so now they're popping up, and what you're seeing is is a lot of, like, modular power. Or containers that we can just populate all around the country, wherever we can get data centers. And so it's a changing landscape, and it's really exciting because we talked a little bit earlier, the way technology has changed over, let's say, the last 1020, 30 years. It's almost like a year now is really only like a month. It's just going so fast, it's changing so quickly,
Scott Benner 1:05:23
yeah, maybe one day it'll just be like, Back to the Future, and we'll all have our own, our own little
Unknown Speaker 1:05:28
reactor. We almost wait and then again, Mike,
Mike 1:05:34
it's almost going to be that way, right? Like it just has to power. Is going to be the biggest thing, drivers, but it also as a consumer, it's scary too, because as my utility rate going up because of all these data centers, because they have to add capacity, you might see that too. Your electric bill going up because they got to build more infrastructure to support the data center.
Scott Benner 1:05:55
My electric bill is definitely higher than it was a year and a half ago.
Mike 1:05:59
Absolutely. I asked my wife last night, and she said, Yeah, we were about $500
Scott Benner 1:06:03
a month. Yeah, like, ouch. I see it climbing, for sure. So all right, well, that's a that's definitely a different conversation, but I appreciate you sharing that with me. Thank you. I just, you're, you're, you know, good at talking. And you said, before we got got going, that you speak a lot at work, but I didn't ask you for what, so
Mike 1:06:22
I'm on the phone all the time. And my wife, she's just, yeah, she'll tell you, I can talk to anybody all day long.
Scott Benner 1:06:29
Well, it's, I think it's a great skill to have. It's, it's propelling me through my adulthood. So thank you absolutely. Yeah, I really appreciate this man. Hold on one second for me. Thank you. You
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 you 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.
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