#1967 Healthy Little Girls Don't Sleep All Day
Healthy Little Girls Don't Sleep All Day
Gina was diagnosed at seven with a blood sugar of 2,000. Fifty years later she chairs a university social work department and brings Scott an idea: the story you tell about your diabetes can change.
Jump to a moment
- Her grandmother noticed what everyone else had normalized. Gina was seven, staying with her grandmother, who first tried to fatten up a thin granddaughter with pancakes, malteds and ice cream — and then heard her sleep all night and nap all day. Gina can still hear the line: healthy little girls don't sleep all night and sleep all day. Her mother had taken her for a clear checkup six months earlier.
- A blood sugar of 2,000. She was flown home and admitted, and remembers a doctor telling her parents in front of her that he didn't know how she wasn't already in a coma. She practiced injections on an orange, used regular and NPH for over a decade, and tested her urine until home meters arrived around age twelve.
- She was given responsibility on day one, with no bargaining. Her parents handed her diabetes tasks from the moment she got home. There was no carb counting and no CGM. Later, as an early pump user, she describes effectively teaching her own doctor how to manage a pump patient — and a gynecologist dismissing cycle-related swings she was reporting.
- Social work gives her a different lens. Gina chairs a university social work department and spent years running services at a New York City shelter for adults with medical and mobility issues. Her framing: education is only one piece. People have to move through grief — denial included — to reach acceptance, and someone who is stuck in denial isn't going to manage their diabetes no matter what they're told.
- Narrative reframing, and externalizing the problem. Her closing idea is that we all tell ourselves stories about who we are, and that separating the problem from the person — a failed site is a failed site, not a verdict on you — changes how a bad day lands. She also asks Scott, directly and kindly, to use more inclusive language on the show; her second spouse is a man, and she describes how assumed straightness can leave some listeners wondering whether the podcast is meant for them.
- Mental wellness series with Erika Forsyth — For more on the emotional side Gina describes — grief, acceptance and diabetes distress.
- Diabetes Pro Tip series — Episodes 1000-1025 — settings, insulin timing, and food impact.
- Listener survey — The survey Scott describes in this episode; results at juiceboxpodcast.com/surveyresults.
- Touched By Type 1 — Sponsor of this episode — programs, events and the annual conference.
Every word of the conversation
Cold open & sponsors0:02
Hello, friends. Welcome back to the juice box podcast. Nothing you hear on the juice box podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise. Always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan or becoming bold with insulin. Alright.
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Now for all of you podcast addicts out there, here's a conversation that goes, I think, almost two hours, hour and forty five minutes maybe. I hope you enjoy it. Today's episode is sponsored by Tandem Diabetes Care, the Eversense three sixty five, and touched by type one. There are links in the show notes and at juiceboxpodcast.com to all the sponsors. When you use those links, you are supporting the Juice Box podcast and helping to keep it free.
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Seven years old, in the 1970s2:28
Hi. My name is Gina, and I was diagnosed with type one diabetes in 1978.
78? Yes. When young Scott was just seven years old. How old were you?
Nine.
Nine. Look at you. 57?
Yes.
Ah, 55.
Doing that quick math?
No. No. Don't worry. I'm showing off showing off what I learned in summer school, my sixth grade summer. They kicked me out of kicked me out of is the wrong word.
I removed myself from algebra too late in the year due to the fact that my brain doesn't understand math. And I then had to go to summer school where I learned that it was just going to be super simple mathematics over and over and over again. If I wanted to get through it, I needed to be able to whip out my times tables and my gazentas real quick. And I'd never put any effort into it my entire life, Gina. I don't know if you were a good student.
I certainly was not. And I went home. I was staying with my grandmother because the school was closer to my grandmother's house. That's a detail nobody needed. But I went back to my grandmother's house, and I sat down at the dining room table.
And she's like, what are you doing? I'm like, I need paper. I have to teach myself the the one times two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine times times tables, which I didn't know by heart. And then I just crammed them onto my head that night, and that was it. So anyway Amazing.
Yeah. Well, is it?
And you still have it.
Is it not amazing that in the first seven years of school, I hadn't done that already? I think that might be the amazing part. So you're diagnosed at, well, at a young age, at a long time ago. Would you tell me a little bit about the cares that you gave yourself, that your family gave you in the first, I guess, maybe decade?
Grandma's pancakes and malteds4:19
Sure. So actually, if you want a little bit of my origin story, I was visiting my grandparents in Florida, and when I arrived my grandmother noticed that I was very, very thin, and I recall knowing where all the water fountains were back before we had bottled water. And she said I'm going to fatten you up, and was just feeding me pancakes and malteds and ice cream and, you know, all of these things, and then obviously that wasn't working. And one day she went out to the to get her hair done, and I was a good kid, so she said, why don't you stay in the house because I didn't want to go with her. Stay in the house, don't answer the door, don't answer the phone, and I'll be back.
And I took a nap, and I came when she came home, I was still asleep, and I can still hear her voice in my head saying, healthy little girls don't sleep all night and sleep all day, something is wrong. And she took me to a doctor, and the doctor did blood tests and determined that I likely had type one diabetes, and they made arrangements to fly me back to Brooklyn where I was where I grew up for my parents to have me admitted to the hospital. So I got on an emergency flight, flew back home, they took me to the hospital. I remember the doctor greeting me in the elevator and sniffing my breath and saying, yes, fruity breath, and, immediately admitting me to the, pediatric ICU. And my blood sugar are you sitting down?
A blood sugar of 2,0006:14
Well, I am. Was?
Eight 2,000.
Holy god in heaven. What are you sitting?
My my blood sugar was 2,000. Really? I remember the doctor saying to my parents in front of me, and maybe also to me, but, you know, I don't know how she is in in a coma or dead already.
Awesome. Yeah. How long do you think this had been going on before Angela Lansbury in Florida figured this out? And by the way, how long how long did it take grandma to figure it out? Days?
Yeah. Why don't we just hire people like her and put them in the in the doctor's offices? She she's like, you're skinny. You ate something. You slept.
You're sick. Yeah. Right? Yeah. That's great.
I mean, you know what? I mean, she obviously was experienced with her own children and grandchildren. And when you don't see someone every day, you can see a problem that people every day don't notice because some things just become normal. Right? They're normalized for you.
Yeah. No. Of course.
Yeah. So and, you know, my parents you know, my dad would say, well I left all the healthcare stuff up to your mother, like they had different very gender related roles, you know, especially in the 1970s the way that they approached parenting.
And
so my mother had taken me to the doctor like six months before and I had a clear check up, so as far as she knew everything was fine. But they did remember that I had gotten sick at one point, which might have been the triggering illness since it is autoimmune.
Are there autoimmune in the family? Mhmm. Celiac? Not
no. No? That's the amazing thing.
No. Come on. No no thyroid, no celiac, no type one, no vitiligo, no people have a lot of allergies. Is there anything at all?
Yes. My father had a lot of allergies, which I have inherited. And my maternal grandfather said that he recalled a family member might have had type one diabetes.
Okay.
But he was born in nineteen o seven, and you know, he's long since passed, so his, his family members would have not likely had access to insulin.
Because of the time. Because the time. Yeah.
Because of the time frame. Right? If they had type one diabetes, they would not have been long lasting. The memory wouldn't be strong enough of watching someone navigating with it, taking care of themselves, etcetera. Okay.
It was it was
a fuzzy memory for him, so it's possible.
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So I'm an anomaly in my family.
Congratulations on being different. How long did they take I mean, how long are you in the hospital coming in with such a an advanced situation? I
A long hospital stay, and an orange11:12
was in the hospital over the Christmas break holidays from school because I remember Christmas and New Year's passing. I remember getting gifts, and I remember my schoolmates calling me and, you know, then needing to go back to school, and school had already started. So I was because I was in the ICU, and then I was in a regular room
You know what we should
where I had my education.
Mhmm. What we should tell people, Gina, because we are, let's just say, older than on than many who might be listening. They probably don't realize that Christmas vacation used to be awesome. Like, two weeks, three weeks sometimes depending on where you wasn't like, you know, you leave on Friday, you come back, you know, after the first or something like that. It was like it was a legit vacation.
I remember. I remember. So you were in there a long my point is is they're probably like, oh, like a week. You were in there a long time. No.
Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. No. I I was in there a long time. This was at a point in healthcare history where insurance didn't pay by the diagnosis, they paid for every day that you were there, and hospitals kept you in longer.
And this was one of the things that I wanted to mention to you is that I remember watching a video, which I've since Googled to learn a little bit of the history, but I remember watching a video with a cartoon character named Eddie, and Eddie stood for exercise, diet, and insulin, and that was how they introduced children to diabetes and their parents to this this this balance of how much you exert, what you eat, and how much insulin you take. And it was formative for me.
How about that? Yeah. Good one.
And I learned how to inject syringes. First, I practice on an orange.
Mhmm.
And then I practice on one of my dolls.
Think of it
in a a
more human vibe. And Yeah. You were shooting I mean, it's the seventies. Was it I mean, were you pig in
A decade of regular and NPH13:32
Regular in NPH.
Were regular in NPH.
Okay. I was regular in NPH, and I was home urine testing because glucometers weren't introduced in my life and in the market until I was about 12. Yeah.
So how long are you regular in NPH for?
I was actually regular in NPH for over a decade. I wanna say, well, actually into adulthood
So through college?
Before I was introduced to Lantus.
Yeah. Through college? Yes. Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. And and had it become the norm, but you didn't switch, or was is the timing that it you switched over when it became more readily available?
So I'm not really sure what you know, I had when I was an undergrad, I had, you know, a primary care physician, I had a couple of different endocrinologists, and my a one c was like 7.1, and I didn't ever wind up hospitalized with ketoacidosis, and I had a few scary lows, but I used to try to run high at night if I went out with my friends because I would go out dancing and, you know, have some drinks and, you know, I would go clubbing. So there was a lot of dancing involved and other things. And and so running a little high and testing once in a while probably kept me alive, and so they were happy with the 7.1 because, you know, I was pretty active in my twenties, but never athletic. And then I started having some problems. When I visited an endocrinologist, I was having issues with essentially my complaint for years was feeding the insulin, basically.
Cycles nobody would take seriously15:31
If I went low, I would just consume everything in the kitchen, and I started putting on weight. And then also, I was having struggles because of my menstrual cycles where what looked like what could be predictable became very unpredictable at a certain point, and the doctor was not very compassionate about it.
No. It's And
this is actually
They still aren't, Gina. Is that why is that one of the reasons you wanted to come on the podcast? Just talk about that.
I wanted I wanted to talk about that, and I wanted to talk about something called narrative reframing with you.
Okay.
Because I've been thinking about this.
Before we jump into narrative reframing, dancing and other things. Other things were drinking or other things were weed? It was the seventies and eighties. Right? Which was the other things?
Actually, I was young adult in the nineties. Oh, the nineties?
And Sorry. Cocaine. Yes. I apologize.
No. No. Never used cocaine.
Oh, okay.
I know. But, yeah, I just I you know, you you go out and you party.
I mean, I can see your nose ring. We're talking face to face. I see you. I see you're 57, still your hair is long and flowing, a little curl in it. I see you jumping around.
I know what's going on over there with you.
Thank you.
You're feeling it. Yeah. Yeah. I get you. Okay.
Well, tell me about this reframing thing. What do you I I guess maybe for a half a second first. Tell people what you do for a living, what your background is.
Social work, and a homeless shelter17:01
Okay. So, I am a social worker by profession, and I am the chair of the social work department at my university
Mhmm.
The University of Saint Joseph, in Connecticut.
Connecticut? I hate driving in Connecticut, but keep talking.
You don't have to drive. That's the power of Zoom. I spent many years I'm born and raised in New York City, and I I spent my whole adult life in New York City, at least, until I moved to Connecticut. I did live in New Jersey for a little while, but doesn't matter. And I worked for many years as the social services director and then the program director of a homeless shelter for adults with medical and mobility issues, and we had many, many clients with type one and type two diabetes, many of whom were diagnosed while they were living at our facility and had a really difficult time adjusting, accepting, wrapping their brain around, making changes at a time when they really didn't have agency over a part of their life.
Oh, wow. Yeah. I guess it really does double down on the difficulty. No kidding. Yeah.
Yeah. How long do people generally stay in the shelters before they're able to move to some sort of more permanent situation?
So I'm not really sure what the landscape looks like in New York City now, but during the time frame that I was there, the idea was to get you from a triage into a shelter bed where you would remain until you got housed. And for some folks, it was a very quick turnaround. For others, there, you know, there were things that had to get done before someone could get housed. Right? So lots of times, people would have their identification stolen or they lost all of their belongings or they didn't have a reliable source of income because you would have people who say were working, but they didn't have savings.
And, you know, there were people who were working poor who had a catastrophic situation. They blew through their savings, they couldn't work, and they wind up in shelter. Right? That was the most common story that we had, and so we had to help them get some sort of benefits or find a job that they could do. I had one client who had diabetes and she was a bus driver, and she didn't have, good control of her diabetes and she her vision got too blurry to legally be able to drive.
Grief, denial, and acceptance19:47
Oh my gosh. So there's just Yeah. Just kind of trauma and tragedy stacked on top of one another, and then someone says to you, oh, by the way, now you have diabetes on top of all this. Yeah. Mhmm.
Yeah. It's gotta be almost impossible. How do you help people through that, or is there not an answer?
I mean, there are a lot of answers to that. What I can tell you is psychoeducation is only one thing, and you do a lot of psychoeducation, by the way, as well as general informational education. But there has to be a grief period for some people Mhmm. And you have to work through part of working through grief is denial to get to a point of acceptance. So there's the stages of grief.
Right? So there's denial, bargaining, sadness, anger, and acceptance. And for a lot of folks, that is a path that they take a very long time to go through. And if you can't work through that and you're in denial and not working on managing your diabetes, then you can have the complications. Right?
So that's something that not everyone goes through the exact same way or, you know, some folks are like, k. I have my week. I'm ready to go. Other people really struggle, and I think you see this in in the in the forum.
Yeah. For sure. No. I it's it's kind of fascinating how it strikes different people and the path that sets them on, how long it takes some to get through it, and how some just can never feel. It feels like, I don't know, what it feels like from the outside, but it feels like something's got a hold of them and they just can't knock it off.
You know what I mean? They can't get free of it. It's, it's interesting, really.
And it is interesting. And you're a parent of a child with diabetes, and there are a lot of parents, and I see it's fascinating as an adult to see the parental knowing as a child how I experienced it. And that was something I kinda wanted to talk about a little bit with you. Yeah, I
Responsible from the first day home21:53
hope so.
As a child I was empowered. I was empowered through Eddie and by learning how to take the insulin myself, and my parents gave me diabetes related tasks, although they were largely, know, obviously
Accomplished. Responsible. Yeah. Yeah.
Right. So I had a dose of regular NPH, and it was my job to fill the syringe, and actually what we used to do is we used to pre fill syringes for a couple of days because I always took the same amount twice a day. And so I I was responsible for that from the moment I got home. There was no conversation. There was no bargaining.
It was, you know, this is gonna be your role. We're gonna, you know, also learn, you know, the the the ADA diet at the time, and they gave me, like, menus. And there was no carb counting. You didn't know how to do those things, but my mother had to learn how to make a diet that worked. And there were no CGMs, which is something else I wanted to talk with you about.
Yeah. Sure.
Is I had to learn how to read my own body. Right? I woke up one morning. I remember clear as day. And in fact, my my father recently passed away.
Oh. But before he passed, I had a series of conversations with him, and I shared with him a memory of the first time after coming home that I had low blood sugar, and he remembered it basically the same way I did, which is that I was in the bathroom brushing my teeth, and I went I was trying to put the toothpaste on the toothbrush, and the toothbrush kept turning. I was like, why won't it stay still? I I, you know, I can't get so I started crying, and I ran into their bedroom. Like, the toothbrush won't stand still, and I didn't understand that it was my my own body
Yeah.
Not able to hold it, and they immediately recognized that as a sign of low blood sugar and treated me with some orange juice at the time.
I'm gonna use that anytime something doesn't work for me anymore. I'm be I say the computer won't do what I want.
It frequently doesn't.
I just think it's a great way to make yourself feel better. It sounds like that's I there's something wrong with this toothbrush.
Yeah. Yeah. Of course. Awesome. That's really awesome.
So I was listening to some of your interview episodes Mhmm. To sort of prepare for today, and there was a mother who had a child who refuses to wear a CGM. And in that episode you said I wish I understood what the kid was going through, and none of us can because everybody's an individual. I can tell you for myself though, I kind of cheered that kid because I said that kid is learning how to have hypoglycemic awareness and hyperglycemic awareness because she's not relying on a machine to tell her she is living in her body and learning the at least that's what I think, is learning the rhythms and the signs and the symptoms within her own body. And that has saved my life more than a CGM.
Even if
Not knocking.
No. No.
Because there are some people who really have really bad hypoglycemic unawareness where that is the only thing that's gonna save their life. Right? And I think that's probably true for people who are diagnosed late in life. But this is just a hunch of mine that if you are a kid or a young adult where you don't have any kind of nerve damage and you don't have you know, presuming you are otherwise healthy, learning how to feel and live in your body, and learning those signals and trusting those signals and watching how they change over time is is vitally important. And when you don't have a CGM, you don't have a CGM to rely on.
You're not using your brain.
Yeah. No. I mean, it's it's interesting because it's obviously, it's a multifaceted idea. And Mhmm. I take your direct point and I can't I I I agree with it.
And then I start to think about all the people who don't have a CGM, who have a one c's in the nines or tens, and I think
Mhmm.
Is there not a trade off in there that I'd be willing to make? So I don't I don't maybe I don't understand how my body works as well, but my a one c is two points. Like, I just wish there was a way to, like, to a la carte all the experiences that I hear people talk about going back all the years. You've you've had diabetes. I mean, I didn't do the math, but '88, '98, 2008, '18, you're almost up to fifty years.
Right? Mhmm. Yeah. You're getting there. So Yeah.
And and so you you have a wealth of experiences layered over top of generations of different, like, management concepts. And, you know, I bet they're from what my interviews that I do with people who've had type one diabetes for a longer time, I always take their point that they've had an experience that they found valuable. They wish people who have more modern, you know, I don't know, ideas or or technologies Mhmm. Could experience. And at the same time, I have also spoken to people who after you talk to them for a while ago, yeah.
I guess though had I not had to go through that, that would have been okay too. I wonder how to blend all that. I you know, think through the conversations is how and people will blend it on their own in their own lives. But dig in a little more.
I can tell you sorry.
No. Just dig in a little more to it, please.
Well, I can tell you that I used to test more than 10 times a day.
Yeah.
I would finger stick first thing in the morning. I would finger stick before every meal, two hours after every meal before I went to bed, and I would also test if I felt off, anytime I felt off. Yeah. And that helped me find patterns before we had CGMs.
Oh, yeah.
And the folks who have an a one c of nine or 10, I I a 100% agree with you. A CGM will probably do wonders to tracking those blood sugars. Will it help them to learn how to identify and fix patterns? And that is the other piece of it.
Yeah. And I oh, I But aren't are there not two different people? Are there the people who would have that experience, identify those patterns, make changes, and the people who have that experience and never change and still have a again, incredibly high a one c. Do know what I mean?
And, yes, the answer is yes. Right? And so and that's where self efficacy comes in, and that's where relationship with doctors come in, and that's where denial comes in, and, you know, all the things. You're either ready to work on it or you're not ready to work on it, and there's also the ability to work on it. Some folks have really struggled with things like high levels of detail.
Right? So some people are not detail oriented. Some people are maybe neuro spicy and find all of that information overwhelming, and they really need somebody else to hand hold and hand them something simple. Right? That's legitimate.
And for the folks who have that type of struggle or for the folks who, you know, are are overwhelmed and just can't put their priority there, they need the help. And that's where things like CGMs and pumps that have simpler to manage algorithms, like the Omnipod, I think, for example, or I think the islet, but I've never used an islet. You're not gonna you're not aiming for perfection. Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good in that case. Right?
Anything to lower your a one c and relying on the judgment of a doctor who you trust, those are those folks. Right? You just And then when they're ready to deal with some of those details, then they can start. Apply. You have folks like you and I.
Well, that was just gonna say everything. You just described the spectrum. Where do you fall on the spectrum?
No. I'm total type a personality. I have a PhD, and I am both, qualitative and quantitatively driven. And so I I look at my subjective experience, and I also look at numbers and patterns.
Okay. Wow. So yeah. So because that's also that also I don't know. That's part of why your advice or idea of what people should go through is what it is because it worked for you.
That's the other thing. Right? So I just I I I think it's a great point. I just I want people to hear it and realize that they're gonna fall in any number of categories. I've I spent a little bit of time at ADCS talking to some people, from Beta Bionics, and I advocated right to them.
I was like, you should go to GP's offices, find people with type one diabetes who are have double digit a one c's who are never gonna figure this out and start slapping these things on them, you know, as fast as you can, and it's gonna give them a much better outcome. And then someone said, do you think your daughter would ever use it? I was like, no. We don't think about it the same way. It's like, that's not our need, really.
Not to say that the pump isn't a good idea. It's just not our need. Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. Let's what what were you when you started off, you you said something about reframing, but then you jumped over to this. I wanna make sure we don't lose that.
Oh, sorry. Yeah. I've kind been talking over you. There were questions that you wanted to, ask me to kind of steer the story, which you're very good at, by the way.
Why do you what why do you think I'm may I take a half a second? Why am I good at this?
Because you know how to ask open ended questions. You're an active listener, and you're engaged with the people who come on to speak with you.
Is it that easy? I just don't know what I'm talking about, so I ask question. I like that you say here, I'll reframe you. You ask open ended questions. I don't understand anything, and then and I'm generally curious.
Uh-huh. I can't fill I can't fill in with my own statement until I can. Listening, that only makes sense. We went to all this trouble to set up this recording. It would be bizarre if I was in the middle of it like, uh-huh.
Uh-huh. And what was the other what was the other part? Active listening.
Genuinely curious, open ended questions.
I I I desperately wanna understand why all you nude knicks do what you do, and me too. I I'm fascinated by people. When they when they see something and then I and I see their next reaction, I always think, like, why was that what you thought to do? Not not even, like Mhmm. Not even pejoratively.
I just I'm just interested. I'm like, why what what got you to that? I I don't know why people aren't more interested in that stuff. Anyway and then you do it enough times and turns out we're all not that different. So you can you Yeah.
Yeah. And then you can then you generalize. You seem like a soothsayer when you do that. Sometimes sometimes I'll guess things about people. I'm like, how did you do that?
I was like, I mean, I've heard your story 9,000 times. And I'm hoping that other people will realize that and then say, oh, maybe I'm not, you know, some anomalous thing. Maybe there are ways to look at other people's stories and think, oh, that this happened. This happened. This happened.
The answer was in this direction. I should look in that direction. Anyway
Yeah. Absolutely.
Erica says I could have been a therapist.
Well, you are, all the things that you do in your podcast and some of the things that I just mentioned now are the basic engagement and early skills that we teach social work students.
Oh, cool. I have
one. Coming with them naturally.
I have a kindergarten understanding of therapy. That's awesome.
Accept the compliment.
Oh, I'm taking the compliment. But I'm also, at the end of this episode, gonna read the review into it where the person's like, Scott seems to think he's a therapist now. I don't think I'm a I don't think I'm a by the way, to that person, I don't think I'm a therapist. I just think isn't this all interesting? You know what I mean?
No. Anyway
There's a saying that hurt people hurt people.
Okay. You think that's what that person did with that review?
I think people who I think people who are in pain will often lash out at others.
No. I think
so too.
I I I really do. Actually, I recently I don't know what happened. I got I don't get bored very often. I got bored a couple weeks ago, and I started using I started using bad reviews of the podcast to write songs and then let AI perform them. And then I would listen to them and bop along with them.
A couple of them are are really catchy. And I did that. I thought they were amusing, and I put them out on social media. I actually put them into the podcast too. And then I got a note back from who I'm assuming is one of the people who wrote one of those reviews, who then gave me a direct personal review of me listening to it to tell me how pompous I was.
And I was like, you're just so full of yourself. Was like, I just thought it was funny, but okay. Anyway, I might have got that part. I and and in complete candor, when I listen. I read what people say about me.
I I I don't if you think it's, like, fundamentally changing who I am, you're wrong. But, like, I do hear it, and I think, oh, that person's got a good point or that there's validity to that. I'll I'll look into that a little bit. I just thanked somebody the other day. I'll tell you.
His name's Chris. He he works at Tidepool. And when I very first started making this podcast, like, twelve years ago, he gave me some feedback that was like, hey. Be careful when you're talking. Sometimes you frame your questions as if you have diabetes.
And I was like, oh, I don't think I do that. And then I listened to what he was saying, and it what I do is sometimes when I'm what do they call I don't I do things. I don't actually know what it's called. I do that like, you ask a question. I ask another reframing question.
I kinda go back and forth with it to so I can unfold it for you all. I shouldn't tell you how this all works, but I unfolded for all of you guys so you can see it. And often, I'll put myself in your position in the questioning. I'll say, so if I wanted to impact a high blood sugar, what would I do? And he said, that can seem like you're, like, maybe acting like you have diabetes, and it stuck with me for twelve years.
Mhmm. Like, I'm careful about that. I know I do it, but I do it in all line like, not just around diabetes. But I am super careful about it, and I'm cognitive of it. And there are plenty of people who've said many things about me, and I go, well, you know what?
That's not completely untrue. And, you know
So I I think there's a difference, though, between constructive feedback and just being mean. Yeah. Right? And sometimes it's hard to gauge tone over comments. That's one of the limitations of online interaction is that you don't get the tone, and sometimes people will have the potential to sound more harsh when there is a message in there that they're genuinely trying to offer, you know, constructive critique.
I And it's, you know, to your credit that you're able to, you know, we wade through that and take in the constructive criticism.
I'm blessed with just enough narcissism not to actually care that you don't like me. So I can but but I do care about the the can I ask what might sound like an out of left field question? It's only been I I would honestly say three or four times in twelve years. But sometimes and I'm wondering why this is. If I'm playful around sexuality with men, no one cares.
If I'm playful about it with women, sometimes they'll respond to me as if I've been something that I know I wasn't doing and that the person I was doing it with doesn't feel that way. I and I was wondering, like, do you think that just comes from a per I've always just assumed this comes from a personal experience they've had that hit too close to home or something like that. I'm gonna give you an exact example. Okay? Yeah.
I interview a woman in her mid to late twenties. She and I have a what I consider to have a lovely time making the podcast. So much so that when she responds back after the recording, she sends a long, just effusive letter about what a good time she had. Not not something I prompted from her she sent to me.
Mhmm.
Two, I don't know, months after the episode comes out, I get a review back about can't you see how uncomfortable you made her? And I thought that hit me harshly. I was like, I made her uncomfortable. And here's what I did. She was telling a story about her father working a lot when she was growing up.
And I characterized it as your dad came home from work, slapped your mom on the ass, ate something, went back out to another job. Like, that was kinda like how I characterize him coming in and out of the house really quickly. She laughed and said, actually, that's about exactly right. And went on and went on to have a good time. That person pointed to that and said you were you were clearly making her uncomfortable, But that she wasn't uncomfortable.
And I know that because I'm a good conversationalist, and I know that because I spoke with her afterwards and people don't know. But when I shut the microphone off, I say if anything made you uncomfortable, please tell me now. We'd be happy to take it out, delete the whole thing. You just let me know. I want you to be okay.
And then she sent a letter thanking me for the conversation. These were all, to me, seemed like reasons to think she hadn't been uncomfortable. I that sticks with me forever. Like, what like, do you know what I mean?
That's projection. Yeah. The person listening had significant discomfort with that conversation or that you know? The when I when I hear that, my reaction is, you know, a man who comes in the house, has food, slaps his ass on the wife has slaps
wife is The way you said it was way dirtier, Gina, just so you know, but go ahead.
At least, Sounds very sexist. And if you grew up or you you've had experiences of abuse, particularly sexual abuse, or just in an environment where, you know, there was nonconsensual touch of a variety of, you know, ways, sexual and nonsexual, you're gonna be triggered by that.
Yeah.
Right? And so the person who so that probably was was triggered by that, whereas the person you were speaking with wasn't.
Yeah. And I'm and I'm not projected. And I also grew up I'm older. See, you're older. It didn't strike you the same way.
Also, when I think of my parents being happy, that's a you know, I that's one of the happy scenes I see in my head. Like so I can only draw from what I've, like, experienced to begin with too. Also, I'm just gonna say, I enjoy tapping my wife on the butt. And so and she does to me as well, by the way. Although, I have no butt, so you end up hitting me in the spine or the upper thigh.
I saw a video of myself walking away the other day, and I was like, never from that angle again. Where's my ass, Gina? It's just not there.
Struggle is real, Scott. Struggle is real.
Anyway, I
And I'm not offended officially.
Thank you. So it's interesting because I mean, that's a more of a a bombastic example, but there's other small examples throughout the podcast where it's the same thing. And I it took you it took me a while to realize because it seems it took me a a a while to realize it's them, not me in those situations. But that also seems like an incredibly out of touch leap to make. So as what I think of is myself as a thinking person, like, I really tried to live through all the possibilities so that I wouldn't leap to a conclusion that was incorrect because I wanted to hear them and and be cognizant of what they were saying.
And I still am, by the way. Mhmm. But in the end, I came down on the side of I don't think most people cared about that. No. Probably not.
Yeah.
I will say that there are there are some pretty strong generational differences that can be observed in the ways in which we navigate social relationships, the way we speak with one another, what we think is acceptable versus an older or younger generation. And this is, of course, broadly sweeping, but I'd like to give an example of you know, when we were children, we would have older relatives. I don't if you experienced this, I experienced this. We would have older relatives come up, oh, Gina, so good to see you, scoop you up, give so and so a kiss, you know, smothering you in kisses or hugs or whatever, whether you wanted to hug and kiss that relative or not.
Right?
Parents today, my I have friends in their forties and a couple in their thirties who have kids who see that as nonconsensual touch, and will allow their kid to decide, do you want to hug and kiss so and so? Whereas we were told, go give auntie so and so a kiss. Right?
Yeah.
And so it's it's it's a it's a different lens, and and that's going to be true, you know, obviously across different cultures even within The United States. People have different meaning to interactions, and some people are gonna read meaning into interactions in a different way than you intended.
It's interesting how it shifts to my son's 26 now, But I know there was a moment when he was five, six years old where my wife's grandmother, they were get everybody was going in the pool and she had his bathing suit and she just pulled his shorts down, like, out on the patio to put the suit on him and he has never forgotten that. But it's but but I think about growing up and we used to do that all the time. Like like, we'd, like, maybe run behind a door or something like that, you didn't go in the house and go into a bathroom to get changed. Like, you ran into the garage or behind a wall or something like that. Like so you know what I mean?
Like Mhmm. You know what I'm saying? And so but but my son's not like a different human being than I than people were thirty years prior. He just lived through a different world until he got to That's right. Till he got to that experience.
Yeah. That's what frames you is your your outside impacts. I don't know how we
social environment.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm sorry. I don't know how we got here.
But Nope. What I heard was you thought I was great. So let's keep moving. And tell me more about everything you wanna talk about. I'm I've so far, you have not said one word I haven't been incredibly interested in.
Oh, thank you. I you know, I sent you an email with tons of things, and now I'm even trying to remember. You were asking about my journey.
Mhmm.
And I guess in broad sweeping terms. This is how I managed my diabetes with multiple daily injections, testing 10 or more times a day, and until a doctor, an endocrinologist switched me to Lantus, at which point I I started having more lows and learning how to drop, you know, what was, you know, the regular insulin and then switching to Humalog when Humalog first became available, and learning the whole curve of of of, you know, the the onset duration and leaving your body without a pump, and really complaining about things like feeding the insulin, putting on weight because I was feeding the insulin, I didn't make that connection until someone pointed it out to me. Even when I met with a nutritionist, like, that did not come up in conversation. You're putting on weight because you're feeding the insulin.
It's interesting because when you think of the food as medicine or lifesaving, you stop clocking it in your head as calories. Also, the time we grew up in, proven by your grandmother's response, I'm gonna fatten you up and then giving you pancakes and things like that, nobody understood nutrition at all. Like, if you saw if you saw an underweight child right now, they'd say, well, we need to get him more protein and more this and more good this. And now it's was just like back then, like, what does what makes people bigger? Eat that.
You you know? Pretty interesting. Yeah. Anyway yeah.
Yeah. Sorry. Anyway no. No. It's fine.
It's fine. It's there was a lot of leaving it up to the doctor to understand and make the changes, and me not having as much agency and coming with complaints that were not getting honored or respected. I had a male endocrinologist who did not fully appreciate the difficulties I was having in relation to my menstrual cycle, who actually compared me to one of his male patients as the ideal patient, if you can imagine.
Teaching her doctor to use a pump47:34
So you're saying you're saying you're having problems and he's saying, no. You're doing terrific?
No. No. He's saying you're the problem. Oh. I have he was saying you're the problem.
I'm not the problem. I work with lots of patients. Look, I have this male patient who is you know, does everything I tell him to do and he never has any of these fluctuations. And I said to him, I'm losing sleep every night from low blood sugar during certain times of the month,
and what are we going to do about it? The answer is you just must not be doing something because That's right. Because Bill is okay. Exactly. That's it.
Exactly. Oh, wow. That's interesting.
And this doctor so I was seeing I had an an exam with my gynecologist, like, an annual exam with the gynecologist, and I was talking to him about my cycles, and he looked at me and said, have you ever considered going on a pump?
Okay.
Can you imagine that? The gynecologist
You got it suggested your your gyno? I I'm I'm I don't wanna get stuck on it. I'm having trouble wrapping my head around somebody who made it through medical school being told that you're having a a situation, seeing that your body functions a lot differently than the other person and then pointing to another person over there and going, no. You don't understand. You're doing it wrong.
I mean Mhmm. Way to not take responsibility. Way not to see the big picture. Way not to understand what you're doing. And then how does the how does the gyno end up knowing?
Is it one of those dumb things where they just have a friend with diabetes or something like that, or did you ever find out?
Yeah. He had a couple of patients
That was it.
Who went on on the pump, and he was like, you know, this is something new. This is around two year 2000 Mhmm. Actually, that that he recommended it. And so I went back to my doctor, and I was the very first pump patient he had. So we learned together.
Because at that time, I was there were so many other things going on in my life, it didn't occur to me to also look for another endocrinologist.
Well, you may you may have ended up helping a lot of people by going
I think I did. Yeah. I think I did. And this also relates to some of the things that you talk about in your podcast. So, so bear with me.
I, so we we went on the pump. It was it was an anonymous ping. Mhmm. It was an anonymous ping. And we met with the pump you know, the the representative or whoever does the training, and we learned together.
We learned together. I learned how to use the pump. He learned how to be a doctor that worked with a pump patient through me.
That's kinda awesome.
And a fascinating thing happened. Oh, actually, our relationship improved because he was able to see in real time the struggles that I was having Sure. And try to understand patterns. As we were both trying to understand patterns, I gained a sense of agency. And also, a not great thing happened.
He decided he was one of these doctors who decided that not every patient should be on a pump and that he was gonna have a gatekeeping function as part of his practice to determine who's appropriate and who's not appropriate for a pump.
He didn't say to himself, I've made some poor decisions in the past. Maybe I'm not the best arbiter of this one.
No. He did not.
That's not a thing that usually happens. I So I may I just say for a half a second, I I really dislike that. I I dislike the idea that there are people out there who guess I heard people talking about this weekend. I was at ADCS this weekend. I heard somebody saying this made me upset.
There are not people who can't. There are not people who don't want to. There are not people who don't have the ability. Everyone this is not it's not that difficult. They could figure it out.
Don't don't hit me with, well, what if they forget? You know what I mean? Hopefully, least they'll shoot their basal. Like, all that stuff is just some old excuse from another time. It's a insulin delivery system that once they get on it, they'll experience better outcomes.
Their brain fog could could lift. Their fear could lift. Their lows and highs could go away. They could be functionally a different person in a year. I'm gonna use a completely different example.
Someone saw a photo of me from yesterday and said, oh my god, Scott. I saw you last year at this time. Look how much different you look now. Do you know I weigh the exact same amount? I haven't changed at all.
My body seems to be reshaping and reforming. I'm gonna guess because the GLP is replacing some sort of a metabolic dysfunction I have. Right? And the longer I live on the GLP, the healthier I look and the better I feel. But if you go to most people and say, went on a GLP and here's all the things that improved for me, they'll go, well, yeah.
Well, you lost weight. Mhmm. That But
they simplify it and water it down.
Yeah. Right away. And but yet, I think it's important that I weighed a hundred and seventy six pounds in the picture yesterday and a hundred and sixty seven sixty six pounds in the picture from a year ago. And a year ago, I do not look as bright and healthy. My skin doesn't seem as taunt.
Like, everything about me looks better today. I don't know that a year from now, I'm not gonna seem even different again because I've been living under a burden for so long. I bring this up because if you have somebody with a high blood sugar, not for a day, but for a year, but for a decade, they're going to be burdened in ways you're not measuring anymore. And one of those ways might be their ability to figure out how to use a pump. So get them on it, get them down, get them stable, get going.
I can't be the only one to make sense all the time, Gina. It's upsetting, and I don't I'm only one person. You go ahead and make sense too.
Okay. Thanks. So I'm gonna respond to that with there is there are so many benefits to having a pump and having a CGM. There is one downside, which is that I and I see this over and over again on many diabetes forums that I follow, is that people only know how to manage their diabetes with their pump. They don't have a backup, they don't know how to manage the backup should something go wrong with the pump.
Yeah. And that needs to be part of the training process. Right? People who are neurally diagnosed are overwhelmed Mhmm. And and they're trying to get a handle on things, or people who've been in denial and now they've lost a foot and now they've decided I need to get my act together before I lose anything else, right, are overwhelmed.
You've got both ends of that time spectrum, and the pump may be the thing that stabilizes them. Right?
So how
It has to be integral to any practice that once you've stabilized a person and they really understand how to use a pump, that they understand their diabetes management, that they also understand how to go to long acting and short acting insulin as a backup if their pump fails them, and to have it as a practice when you travel.
So I completely agree with you. In the real world, how do you make something like that happen? In a world where most people will walk into their endocrinologist and say, hey. I think fat is impacting my blood sugar. They might hear back, no.
Fat has nothing to do with it. It's just carbs. Or a doctor would say, don't understand. Bill's okay. Why is Becky not okay?
That that seems like the same thing. When when we're dealing with a level of I don't know, I don't know, I don't even wanna call it anything. When we're dealing with that level of of input coming back from physicians sometimes or, you know, I've been getting more kinda wrapped up in the idea lately that every time you ask a doctor how come you can't help somebody, they say, well, I just don't have enough time. And it just feels like it's become like a convenient excuse for why patients don't do well. It's not on me.
It's the insurance. I only have fifteen minutes with them. Blah blah blah. Like, so hands up. I'm out of this thing.
So if that's the world, we can't even get them we can't even get people who are not inclined already to go home and work it out for themselves into a good place. So you have to get those other people into a good place through the system that's set up, which doesn't happen. And then once we get them to a good place, have the wherewithal and the energy and the drive to then tell them, hey. Let me show you a backup way to do this. I don't wanna curse, Gina, but how's that gonna happen?
You know what I mean?
I think this is where you have to reach people's own self interest.
Okay.
Because what happens is is people, I see this all the time, on the forums. Hey. I'm away, and, my my pump failed. Does anybody have backup supplies? Yeah.
And in some cases, great. You can rally. You can get those backup supplies. Or I forgot my supplies, but I forgot this piece of the supply or whatever the case may be. Right?
Or the pump just failed, and then the person is in panic mode and they don't know how to handle it. That's the conversation you can utilize the next time, or that this is what don't rely on your doctor. Right? This is where you have to, as an individual with diabetes, where I, as an individual with diabetes, always want to make sure that I am set. Right?
This is a self preserving measure.
Yeah. I don't know. So I I listen. The the pathway from your lips to their ears and acceptance, I mean, that's it that's I don't forget this thing that you're talking about. We could probably put a 100 things on this list of things I don't know how to get accomplished.
Do you know what I mean? Like, for for
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I'm too busy.
There's too many things.
I'm overwhelmed.
Right? People prioritize what they find important.
Yeah. Oh, listen. Arden just left for work. I said, you can take your bag with you with your supplies? She goes, no.
It'll be okay. And I said, what if it's not? And she goes, I'll come home. It it Well, that's
a legitimate answer if she's only, like, fifteen minutes away.
It is, except she's at work. So Okay. Yeah. If if that that her work doesn't want her to leave if her pump should fail. And I and listen.
What I said was cool. That's it. Mean, she's 22. She can do whatever she wants. Right?
And so but when my wife and I talked about it, I said, it'll happen to her one day, and then she'll decide if the juice is worth the squeeze or if she should, you know, bring the bag or not bring the bag. But but she to your point earlier, I forget what you said, but I feel like it tied into something you said early. Until it happens to her, she's not gonna be able to, like, quantify it. And she and right now, she's sticking up for the way she feels, and I I didn't argue with her. I was, right on.
I was in charge. I'd put it in her car, and I'd say, what's it hurt to have it with you? You you know what mean? It's like, it's just a it's a little tiny bag. Absolutely.
What's it hurt to have it with you? But Yeah. Maybe that's not how it's gonna go for her. I don't know.
And it might not. But you're Yeah. But she's an adult, and you recognize that she's an adult.
Million percent.
And now she's on her journey, and a lot of people have a hard time with that.
Oh, they ought to make a podcast and talk to 2,000 people with diabetes because the one thing I can tell you for sure is everybody's gonna do what everybody's gonna do. Mhmm. That's it. You're not forcing anyone into your vision of anything ever. Diabetes
No.
Dating, politics, whether or not that Netflix series is good. I love the Gina. I tell my wife about it, my wife, because it makes me nervous. They're always yelling. And I was like, I love that about it.
Go the bear, the TV show. You don't know the bear?
I don't know.
My god. Gina, what are you doing with your life? Putting out there helping people, going for walks?
No. I've been I've been I've been obsessing over heated rivalry.
What is that? What is that?
Heated rivalry?
I don't know that one. I just lived
through a Oh my god.
I just lived through a summer where that godforsaken Love Island was on my television every time I walked through that one. I I don't I don't
watch reality show. It's, it's a hockey romance.
Oh, oh, the the gay hockey show. Yeah. I know it. Yeah. I mean, I didn't I haven't watched it, but I know it.
That's alright.
I I love I love that you're you're deep into it. Nope. No pun, Gina. And thank you. I appreciate the laugh.
Go on.
Exactly. He's so rude to her. Did you hear he said that thing? Listen. I don't know.
I wanna let you all in on a little secret. Oh. Go ahead. Go ahead.
No. I'm sorry. Keep interrupting you. I I
Go ahead.
The endocrinologist who I eventually left, one of the reasons he told me that he didn't think that he was gonna put all his patients on a pump that they don't all they didn't recommend they all be on a pump is because some of them already don't take care of themselves, And if the pump fails, they won't know what to do.
They're dying already. You don't think trying something's a good idea? That really does fascinating me. That fascinates the hell out of me. His answer was, listen.
These people are in a major problem. Their health is declining quickly. They're gonna have all kinds of problems. You wanna try something different? Nah.
Probably won't work.
Mhmm.
What would I say what would it hurt? I I listen. I said this to somebody on an interview a few months ago and it stuck with me as a thing that I said that I found. Like, I was like, oh, that was smart. I should I'm glad I said that.
I I said I am a person who doesn't quit. If you threw me out of a plane, I'd flap my arms. And and I find it strange that's that somebody else wouldn't too. Mhmm. Like, it's not over yet.
Keep fighting. No. What are you doing? And if it's not working, then why not try something crazy? Because nothing else is working and we're about to crash into the ground.
That's it. I'd start I'd start I'd start chirping like a bird to see if one of them would come over to catch me. I'd start trying to fly. I would do the Superman thing once just to see. I'd hold my shirt out on the side to see if I can make, like, flying squirrel wings.
I would be doing something when my body exploded into the ground. And I don't get not saying here, take a pump. It's worth a shot. You're already in such a bad deal way way. Also, why not just cognitively reframe it for them?
Just lie to them. Go, you know what, man? We've been doing this all wrong. This pumps the answer. Here's all we gotta do.
You're gonna feel so much better. Well, I can't believe I thought of this before. Put it on yourself a little self deprecating. People don't self deprecate enough. I do it a lot.
It's a good it's a good tool. And you do a little bit of that, and then you go, here it is. And they can do the lion king sound effect. Give them the pump. Help them get their settings straight.
Watch them have a nice experience. There you go. I I and if it doesn't work, you were dying anyway. So I don't that make any sense to me. What a dummy.
Yeah. Was it an old person? Yeah.
He was, you know, that's that's hard for me to say. I was in my thirties.
Was he probably
close to my age now.
Scott, I thought he was almost dead. Older than me. He was 58. Oh my god. You should have seen him.
Well, listen. Now that the GOP exists, Gina, I'm gonna live forever. That's the first thing I've learned. And secondly, I'm starting to see I listen. This will sound like being an evangelist that I'm certainly not, but I'm starting to walk around going like, I I I'd spray a little of that GLP on that one right there.
I like, I could see, like, like, that would really help with this or help with that. I stand around the other day with some people. They might hear this if they hear it, it wasn't you. I was standing around with some people the other day. And these people were younger than me by a decade and I looked younger than them by a decade.
And they're talking about all their health issues and one of them is he's overweight. He's struggling with a lot of different things. Misusing a prescription drug with his doctor's advice, trying to stay in front of his problems, not the right thing to do. Guy knows it's not the right thing to do, but it's helping enough. And I said, no one offered you a GLP?
They said, yeah. No. No. They did. I said, why aren't you doing it?
He goes, I'm worried about the side effects. I said, what about the side effects of the thing you're doing already? He goes he goes, that's a good point. I never thought of that. Mhmm.
I don't know how to I don't know how to listen. People are maybe the smartest thing on the planet and the dumbest thing on the planet at the same time. I was like, why don't you try this this other thing? And the first my neighbor, I hope he hears this. Diabetes type two, doctor gives him a GLP.
Why don't you wanna take it? My wife's worried about the side effects. Now I don't know if his wife's worried about the side effects or that's what he told me. It's just all fear. I said, what about the side effects at dying?
You're not worried about that? You walk around telling me you got neuropathy in your feet. You're not worried about that? No. You're worried about maybe make poopy too much?
I was like, don't that sound better to you? Also, by the way, that regulates. It gets better after time. Like, I I've been at this, like, three and a half years now. Don't be a quitter is what I'm telling
you about. If And I'm so pleased to hear that that it's working for you. You're doing other things in addition to taking the GLP one, I assume. Yeah. And and and
also on top of
Are you exercising?
You changed your diet? This cup. I've lift this cup with this water four times. I listen. I'm gonna tell you something.
Part of a whole picture.
I Mhmm. I wanna tell you that's true, but I also am gonna be honest with you. Not all the time, and it doesn't matter.
Okay.
Yeah. I don't know what's in the magic, but it doesn't matter. So I'm literally, at this point, just going, listen. Better living through chemistry. Mhmm.
I can't wait till the next one comes out. Hey, Lily. Hurry up with that ritrutide or however you say it. I'll learn how to say it later. Yeah.
Give it to me. I'm gonna call my doctor and ask him about testosterone. Why do I gotta work out? I'll figure it out to you. I'm living forever.
I'm telling you right now.
So, Scott, I wanna I wanna give you something to think about that just occurred to me as I was listening to you.
Thank you.
Which is that we all live in our own bodies. Right? And nobody else can tell us how to live or feel in our own bodies. I can tell you there was a time where I weighed a lot more, and this is not about body shaming, and this is not about fat shaming. Some people are very comfortable in very different body sizes.
This is just who you are, and we're all individuals. Sure. I felt uncomfortable at a certain weight, and I felt like I wasn't living in my body, I wasn't navigating the world in my body, I was existing and dragging my body along. And when you live with that feeling, that becomes normal. And trying to imagine a new normal and trying to imagine that you can actually do something about it to feel better and feel different is scary and may be scarier than staying where you are.
And that's that's the cycle of change where people are just not ready. They're not even think about it or they're thinking about it, but they're just not ready to get there, and many times they simply don't believe that the things that they do can make a difference. And part of that comes down to the way that endocrinologists treat some of their some endocrinologists treat their patients Mhmm. Like a numbers game and not a person, and tell them what to do instead of engaging in partnership with them around managing your diabetes.
Well, you have
to And that's where Mhmm.
You have to listen to people. It's ironic that I cut you off to say that. You have to listen to people and then and then actually hear their problem and then have enough introspection and understanding about diabetes to not just hear their problem and reflexively say back the first thing that pops in your head, but actually be able to figure out what they need to help them and put them in that position. And that's not easy. I would also tell you that I everything you just said, I a 100% agree with.
The guy that's making this podcast, a 100% agrees with that. The guy standing in his yard with his neighbor doesn't think like this. I'm not asking a lot of open ended questions and having reflexive like that kind of thing. I'm just looking going like, man, look at me. You've known me for twenty years.
Don't I look better? Doesn't doesn't my life seem like it's going better? Aren't I telling you all the benefits from it? How could you still be scared? Like, when someone handed it to me maybe this is just how I'm wired.
When I so first of all, I went and asked for it. I Mhmm. Somebody handed it to me. I was lucky even back then. My insurance covered it.
I brought it home. It was a Thursday. I remember it was a Thursday because I started opening the box, and my wife's like, what are you doing? I'm like, I'm jamming this thing in my side. And and she was like, why don't we wait till the weekend?
And I was as I was sticking it in my stomach, I was like, why? She goes, what if it gives you I was like, don't care. I was like, I said, have you seen Mindy Kaling? Let's get going. That's exactly what I said.
Girl from the office looks fantastic. And I was like and I was like I was like, seriously, I'm like, if something bad's gonna happen and, you know, my wife is talking about going to the bathroom, like, some, like, stomach issues. I'm like, we work out of the house. It doesn't matter if it's Monday or Saturday or Thursday. Let's go.
You know what I mean? Now due respect
She wasn't ready for you.
Yeah. So I didn't I didn't push her again. I was just like, whatever. Live your own life. I'm getting out of this.
And and then, you know, she did start on Sunday like she said she was going to, which is fine. And by the way, we've both been doing it for three and a half years. I've been doing it five days longer than she's been doing. And and in the end, it didn't it didn't mean anything, but it it is a good picture of what you I hope it was a good explanation of what you just said, which is, like, for me, I was like, let's go. And she was like, well, let's go on Sunday.
And and I was like, okay. I'm like, right on. I've since learned, by the way, if anyone wants a hot tip, doing it at the end of the week is great because it's more effective in the first four, five ish days. So if you're having trouble eating a lot over the weekend, taking it later in the week will really have that kind of full effect laying over you over the weekend if you're trying to anyway. Did you do it for
The only thing I was thinking the only thing I was thinking was if you started in the same day, you could remind each other.
Well, we've since Take it. We've since like, it's funny because over three and a half years, we've since synced up, unsynced Uh-huh. Synced up, unsynnced over and over again because I'm listen. You know, I've tried a lot of things over the time. Like, there's times where I'm like, on the fifth day, it doesn't work as good.
And Arden skipped her pen this week. I'll just try a two and a half pen and see what, like, a does on on day of five. And didn't enough. So, like, I was like, okay. I'm I'm, like, learning how to do it more and more.
I honestly believe that dosing more the way insulin is dosed is gonna be eventually the beneficial the most beneficial way to use a GLP. But we're gonna have to get past I
thought about that too.
Yeah. Yeah. I was just gonna ask you. Did you lose it through going for a long walk, or did you try a GLP as well when you said you need to lose weight?
No. Actually, I started in during the pandemic, I started walking. I was lucky enough to live in Connecticut in an area that was, you know I afforded the ability to walk, and I then I was the winter hit and I couldn't walk anymore, that's when I got a I'm just going to name drop, I got a Peloton treadmill.
Oh,
wow. And I love my treadmill, and one of the people who I fell in love with is Robin Arson, who herself is a type one diabetic.
Yeah. Yeah.
And so that became a role model for me, but she became a role model for me. And I was because I because I love charts, I started charting everything. My workouts, my caloric intake, my weight loss, I was able to gauge, you know, using my watch and things, metabolic rate, and knowing how much to lower my caloric intake and adjusting my insulin, and I switched at that point from a t:slim to an Omnipod because I found that the t:slim was not robust enough in holding back on corrections. That might be the wrong terminology to use,
but It was too I would
go into exercise mode Yeah.
It was too
it was
aggressive for you.
Yes. It was too aggressive. It was trying to correct highs that I was trying to burn off through exercise. Ah. And then I would wind up having lows, and I just couldn't I just couldn't get it.
A GLP, and 205 to 1451:12:49
And no matter how many times I fiddled with, you know, my settings, because some days I would do a run. I went from walking to running, and some days I was doing, you know, weight training or various things, and it just wasn't cutting it. And so that was when I switched to an Omnipod, and I switched to an Omnipod because Robin, our son, was on an Omnipod. I said, well, if she's using it and finds it effective, maybe I should try it too. Awesome.
And for the for a very long time, it was exactly what I needed, and I went from two zero five pounds down to, at my lowest, a hundred and forty five, I think. Wow. And I did not use any GLP ones. And then
That's awesome.
And then thank you. And then I met my current spouse.
Current wait. Your current spouse?
Yeah. My yeah. Well, I I was married before, but my Got you. First Got you. My first spouse passed away
Oh.
Of cancer
I'm sorry.
Age 52. So so I was I had a number of years where I was not interested in dating, and then I started dating again. And the exercise probably helped a lot with my overall
Yeah.
Bodily, you know, autonomy and feelings and and things. And and so we started dating. I started exercising less. We both put on that, you know, like, the freshman 15.
I like that you're like, I'm looking better. I'm ready to go out and find a guy. Here's a guy. I should have a Cheeto. No.
No. No. No. No. I will I will say I am married to a man, but you may wanna consider not automatically assuming heterosexuality with any of your guests.
I I didn't, but you said husband the first time.
Did I? Yeah. Oh, then I stand corrected.
Your husband died of cancer. Your husband passed to cancer.
Oh, my first my first spouse was, yeah, died of cancer. He died of cancer.
Oh, cool. Yeah. Yeah. Can I ask you something?
That doesn't mean my second spouse is also a man. Actually, my second spouse is a man, and we just started yeah. But go ahead.
Language that makes people feel welcome1:15:01
I I'm gonna take a side word with you for a second because I'm super interested. You're not wrong. It doesn't mean your second spouse is a man. What does it matter that I assumed it was?
Because people who are listening, who are members of the LGBTQ plus community
Right.
Want to hear themselves. And when you center heterosexuality by assuming that everyone you speak to is straight and cisgendered, then other people the people who are not feel othered and wonder, is this a welcoming podcast for me?
When you do that, are you not asking people to change who they are to make you comfortable? Because I don't have All
you're doing is all you're doing is creating the space by not making assumptions.
Have I so I've been making this podcast for twelve years. I couldn't possibly be any more live and let live than I am. And I think you listen enough to know that. Right?
Yes. So I don't think that you are.
I couldn't possibly care what anyone does almost in any scenario. Mhmm. Right? So that doesn't make this a good space. Like, how much do you need for me?
And and where does it end? Do you see what I'm saying?
Well, I yes. All all I'm suggesting
Oh, I don't I'm not disagreeing with you. I'm trying to have a conversation. I just wanna understand.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So all I'm suggesting is that when you are talking with people Mhmm.
Don't make an automatic assumption. Use the language other people use, or you can ask a clarifying question, which you're very good at, you know, if the person wants to share that. Because then the folks who are listening are gonna fill them gonna they're gonna find themselves. Okay. Every single person has a way of finding themselves in your podcast if the people you are speaking with, you're not making assumptions about what they're
off So
like life is.
I have two thoughts. Mhmm. Use the I I should use the language they
use. Mhmm.
Why don't they have to use the language I use? That's my first question. And my second question is for every person who I make feel comfortable, am I not making a different person feel uncomfortable no matter what I do?
So when you use the language the other people use about themselves, you create comfort. But you're not a therapist
Mhmm.
So you're not obligated to be, like, super conscientious about that. Right? It's just a way to generally help people feel more comfortable.
If you and I started this conversation and I thought and you said to me, hey. I, you know, I I refer to myself this way or this or something about me, then I would sit here and I would cognitively try to over overwhelm my my Mhmm. My wiring and do something that didn't come naturally. Right? Which is like I mean, a pronoun thing is a really great example of that.
Like, I would I call you whatever you want. I couldn't possibly care less. And, like right. But, like, my that's not how I'm wired. And I'm also having an off the cuff conversation, like, with a person I don't know.
So it's there's a lot going on in my head. I'm trying to balance our conversation. I wanna make sure people listening are interested. I'm trying to keep it moving, but go slow enough that people can get their story out. I'm watching the time.
Like, you know, I'm doing the technical stuff. I'm doing a lot of different things at the same time. Mhmm. So but I'll still put that effort in. When I Yes.
Yeah. When I'm not when I'm not aware of it, it's never gonna be the thing that I say. Like, just because So I didn't grow up
with it. Yeah. Putting the effort in, I think, makes a world of difference.
Yeah. No. I effort in. I appreciate that. I because it's hard to know, and and there is there is the other there's also by the way, there's people with biases in in other directions.
So you also, like
Right. There's gonna be people who listening to this podcast who are
Hear this and then go, I'm uncomfortable. I would like Gina right up until this moment. Like, that kind of feeling. Like right? And then if I and and if I just hear what you said and I and I acquiesce really quickly, those same people will go, oh, I thought Scott had a backbone.
And while other people will hear it and go, oh, thank god. He's willing to adjust. Like, you can't like, what I've learned making this podcast is that the podcast is me. If you like it, I that's wonderful. And if you don't, there's very little I can do about that.
And if I and if I try, I run the real risk of taking all the people who do like me and making them not like me too. And now I have and now I'm trying to wedge myself into your world. I don't fit there. Eventually, I'm gonna trip up and you're gonna you're gonna get rid of me. And I've gotten rid of all the other people who already like me the way I was.
It's really like, it feels from this position, it feels like a thing you can't win. And it's and it sucks because I
hear you. We're in a we're in a very divisive point in history in The United States. And I hear you, and there are people now who are listening to this. They're gonna go, oh, I don't like Gina anymore. And you know what?
That that's fine. You don't have to like me. I'm not saying what I'm saying. Like, here's here's people who are secure in themselves, they're gonna be fine.
Right. Yeah. No. No. No.
Yeah. No. Most people are I I really do think it's a it's an edge issue. Not that it's not important. I just mean that I don't think it affects as many people as the middle of us.
And and I am But
I will and and I will say there are a lot of people who are members of the LGBTQ plus community who make up a larger percentage of the American public. Only you know, I realized that there you probably have people listening across the globe. So Yeah. As I'm saying that. But in The US and Canada who are listening, who that's not an issue for them.
They're here to hear about diabetes. It's just nice when someone also feels in included because somebody else didn't make an assumption.
Yeah. Right? Listen. And that's all. I a 100% hear you.
I'm on board. I am gonna tell you that there's a way that I am. I've never once had anybody try to include me in it. So I it just pisses me off. I'd like to get a I'd like somebody to worry about me once I'm just joking.
I I I
wonder if you ever take a vacation.
I don't. No. But I my my my my wife was like, oh, this place we went to one time came up on my feed, and I was like, why are you looking at it? We're not gonna go there. And she's we're trying to go away for three days on a car trip.
We've been trying to do it for the better part of the last seven weeks. Like, leave early on a Friday, come back on Sunday night. Don't seem to be able to accomplish it. But but thank you.
Vacation, Scott.
I meant I meant podcasters. When is somebody gonna, like, worry about podcasters and how they I'm just joking. I'm in a I'm in an it's an it's an interesting you know, I was talking to somebody this weekend about this. Like, somebody asked me about, you know, we I just got done. Well, I didn't get done.
I I made a a survey public of listeners. And the survey kinda tracks your your health and your mental health outcomes after listening to the podcast. And it's incredibly positive, like like, what what's coming back from the people who, you know, decided to take the survey. And some the the question to me was, there's parents on here, there's adults on here, there's all age ranges, all different kinds of diabetes, gestational, pregnancy, and this and that, you know. What what's the big secret to talking to all of them and have them have these outcomes?
And I was like, I don't know. It's whatever I do seems to work. I don't even know how to parse it. I don't even think it would be worth my time to try to figure it out. Like, the collection of my experiences, my direction, this thing I do, the way it occurs to me to do it leads people fifty fifty, by the way, adults and caregivers to report back that after listening to the podcast, a one c comes down a median 1.2 points.
Time and range goes up into the 80%. Time low goes down. Health and happiness scores go up, like, the whole thing. And and and when they complain about the podcast
Mhmm.
I asked them what doesn't work for you. And the the the overall problem is that people can, the early going, feel Mhmm. Like other people are doing better than them, which in the seventies would have been called Uh-huh. You know, trying to get to a place you're not at yet. And so I don't even worry about that because if that's the worst thing that's only some people are saying, I say to them, keep flapping your arms.
I bet you won't feel that way at some point. And Yeah. And anyway, like, it's it it anyway, so it's an odd thing to have the a skill that you can't quantify. But, like, I can't tell you why it works. I can only tell you that it seems to.
And then when somebody says you should do this or you should do that or don't talk so much or you're so obnoxious or all the I I all that stuff. It's fine. All all that stuff comes back. Like, you're like, I don't maybe I don't care what you think, and then it's hard not to apply that on top of everything else. Because if I cared, I couldn't do it.
Does that make sense? Yeah. Yeah. It's a
No. Yeah. No. There's there's an emotional boundary that you have to
It's an incredibly
to take in it.
Weird job. Like and for and you think, oh, this stuff's all over the place. It's not. There's probably only there's probably roughly six 18% of 400,000. So whatever that number is, people who are making a podcast that's even listened to by more than a 130 people an episode.
So I I have a really weird job that not a lot of people have. You know? Anyway Yeah.
And you do an amazing job with it.
I wasn't fishy, but you're very nice. Okay. More diabetes. More diabetes stuff.
Okay. Yes. Let's get back. So, first of all, with the with the GLP one, so I went to putting some weight back, and then I had a couple of injuries, like sports related injuries that I've never had in my life.
That's what you get for getting active.
Yeah. I know. I worked for a nonprofit in my early thirties. We did an event called a fun run, and I told my boss that I wasn't gonna go because the word fun run was an oxymoron. And now here I am.
Here I am now trading for a 5 k. But I had some injuries. I wind up also not being so strict because now I was dating with someone, living with them, marrying them, and your habits are always going to change when you're incorporating somebody else in your life.
Yeah.
And then I reached a point where I said, you know, I need to kind of steer some of this back and I don't have some of the same bandwidth that I had a few years ago, and a doctor gave me a sample of Ozempic which I used at a very low dose and it made me very, very sick for weeks. Then the endocrinologist another endocrinologist in the practice I switched because this one a number of reasons, but none of them bad reasons, right, said why don't you try Zepbound instead? My body just went, yes, that's the ticket.
Yeah. No kidding.
My a one not my a one c, my total daily insulin went down so much that my basal rates are so low at some point that I worry that if I go up in a dosage, I will have a euglycemic ketoacidosis.
Yeah. Yeah.
Hey. So I have to watch it very carefully.
What percentage do you think it went down, your total daily insulin? Where did it start? Where did it where is it now?
You know what? I haven't actually looked at that number.
That's
okay. But I know I know that it has Yeah. Over the last few months.
I think the I think it sometimes impacts Arden up to 30 or almost 40% on her insulin needs. Yeah. Yeah. I see it.
It's prob it's probably between 2035%, I would Amazing.
But I was not taking a lot of
insulin before, which is why it's worrying that I your point.
Yeah. Yeah. Also, fewer lows, fewer highs.
Mhmm.
Is that I also switched to the twist pump. Oh, so your Mhmm. Your your loop your twist with loop. How do they call it? I should prob I should probably know.
I think they I think they pay me little Yeah. You're you're you're loopy, Mitzo. And that's been good for you?
Yeah. It has been good for me. I when I was on the Omnipod, it was very good for the workouts, but I had some issues with stubborn highs that I just couldn't ever figure out how to manipulate Mhmm. Because you don't have control over the the basal rate. Yeah.
And it looks at total daily. You do you do have a little bit of ability to control that in ways that I get yelled for on the on the websites when I try to offer suggestions, I've stopped giving suggestions. But ultimately, I I would have, you know, morning highs that I just couldn't overcome.
What were you doing? And What what would you have told somebody online to do?
So one of the things that my endocrinologist and I, like, basically discovered was that when when you change your basal rate in Omnipod, such that if you're going out of the algorithm and just using it like a dumb pump, right, you have a basal rate. When you go back in, it looks at your total daily insulin, but it bases it off of the background of your primary basal rate.
Can I guess?
And so
Let me guess the thing you might have done because this is a thing I've heard recently. End of the pod where time comes up, You take it off before you disconnect it. You make a big bolus to jam up your total daily insulin number and then put on the next one. Have you done that?
No. I didn't I didn't do that.
Also, not a doctor. Not advice. You shouldn't do that. Go ahead.
No. Yeah. No. No. No.
No. I wouldn't do that. Yeah. Yeah. No.
But I had, I would change my basal rate, and then I would have it relearn me.
Oh, you just reset it?
Mhmm.
Yeah. I mean, resetting Omnipod five is is, I think, a thing a lot of people do. So Mhmm. Yeah. Because when your needs go up, if it's not if it's not jumping with you as quickly as you need it to, then just give it new numbers and have it start over at the new total daily insulin.
That's that's exactly what I did. Yeah. Yeah. That just makes sense.
When I got sick, when I had COVID, when I had the flu, when I had other things going on Yeah. I just had a different basal rate setting. That's awesome. Yeah.
And you just kinda zapped it
and started a little frustrating. Yeah.
No. But it was
still frustrating. Yeah. So when the doctor suggested I switch to the twist, I was, I was very eager because for many years I heard about Tidepool and people doing the DIY looping, and I was never gonna do that myself because I did not have a comfort level of using a system that was not FDA approved.
And, you
know, it's your mileage may vary. Other people are, you know, the pioneers out there doing it, and, you know, go you. I was not I'm waiting. Gonna be one of those people.
Yeah. Gina's like, I've heard of we're not waiting. I I'm waiting a little bit. Well, let me just Exactly. Let me just say a quick couple of quick things here.
Visit .twist.com/juicebox. Omnipod.com/juicebox, and, hey, why not, tandemdiabetes.com/juicebox. If you'd like to try any of the insulin pumps that Gina's mentioned today. There we go. I should start doing that more.
Yeah. I don't know why I'm
not You should start doing that more. And I will say that the t slim, the Omnipod, and the Twist are all excellent pumps.
Yeah.
And they were excellent pumps for me at the time I was using them and then, for the needs that I had at that point in my life. And the needs in my life have changed over time.
Yeah. No. I listened
someone who was not working out. So I you know, to someone who started working out, to someone whose lifestyle has just changed in many ways over the years.
Choice is key. Also, if all those pumps sound terrible to you and you wanna try Medtronic pump, there's a link in the shows there as well. Where are you at, Beta Bionics? I mean, come on.
I go in there. Not like the Medtronic.
So What about the new have you seen the new Flex? You did you do this I haven't. No? Oh, it's pretty cool. The Flex is cool and the and their automated systems is pretty rock solid too.
Like, I think there's four, like, rock solid options now and then options for people who are doing something slightly different. And by the way, now Afrezza has that indication for younger people. I think you might start seeing, people using Afrezza to bring down stubborn highs even when they're using pumps and other other management stuff. So kinda as a as an an additive. It's it could be an interesting time coming up here in the next year or so.
Also, Omnipod six will come out at some point in the nearer future. So be interesting to see what everybody else does to respond as the the pump wars continue.
Yeah. We live in amazing time Yeah. When we have these choices and new technology and different ways of relating to diabetes. And in 1978, I had regular and, NPH, and they were animal based insulin, so now I can't give blood. And I was testing my urine.
Testing your urine and can't give blood anymore to where you are now. And my last question for you is how is your health overall? Because I find when I talk to people who've grown up regular in Miles per hour, they seem to fall into two pretty broad buckets. And those buckets are, I got enough insulin and I'm okay, or I didn't quite get enough insulin and I'm having problems.
My, overall health, knock on wood, is excellent.
Yeah.
I have some, nonproliferative
Retinopathy? Retinopathy. Thank you. I pay that.
And and, it's it's stable. Ever since it appeared, it hasn't changed at all, and it doesn't affect me at all.
And then It hasn't changed.
Other than that
I'm sorry. Other go ahead. Other than that.
Right. Like, once I was diagnosed with it, it hasn't changed.
Okay.
Doesn't affect me at all. I had cataracts, but I got cataracts when I was, like, 12. Oh. So I had cataract surgery when I was 18 and 19 years old on each eye. And other than that, any any sort of middle aged aches and pains that I have are not diabetes related.
Yeah. I think the what what level of Zepbound are you using right now?
The lowest possible dosage.
Yeah. Because you don't feel like you can go. So you're doing two and a half.
Mhmm.
Yeah. Okay. Well, that's
basal rate at one point during the day for several hours is point three units.
Point three. And you're an adult, and you weigh and you told me you're you're around hundred and fifty pounds ish more, less. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
So yeah. That's pretty fast. I weigh in the one fifties.
Yeah. I'm
now, five feet tall.
Yeah. That's I used
to be five one and a
half, but I'm Are shrinking?
I am.
I I had to go to urgent care the other day. Don't worry. I'm fine. I know you're all worried about me. And, she's like, can you jump on the scale?
And then we're gonna measure your height. And I was and I thought Mhmm. I thought, oh, well, I'm gonna leave my shoes on. I'll take the extra weight for the actual meanwhile, who's looking? No one sees us but me.
She's writing in a shark for reasons nobody gives a crap. They're never gonna look at it again. Right? And I'm just like I'm like, oh, well, just for my own notification, I'd like to be taller when I walk out of this little cube. Ridiculous.
Oh my god. Well, I'm glad you're doing so well. I just you know what I mean? Like, I've I've found over the years that through conversations, it feels like either people weren't quite taking enough or they were eating more than they were shooting for or whatever. Or because I can't see another reason why some people would come out of that time.
So, like, I'm good. And some people come out of it like, oh, I got a lot of problems. So it it's it's gotta Well, I think
that there's a number of reasons, but, for one thing, I I think I'm lucky.
Yep.
Just
There's luck.
I for another thing, I paid such close attention. Mhmm. Some people don't test. I had a friend who I met at Camp Nida when I went there years ago who, as an adult, tested, like, once a week. I had no idea what was happening.
He wound up getting kidney disease. Right? People just don't pay attention. And for some people this is why I wanted to talk to you about something called narrative reframing or narrative theory.
I love that we got back to this an hour and a half into it. Go ahead. Go.
I know. And I'm so sorry.
So be sorry. This is I'm gonna put out a nice long episode with you. Go ahead.
Okay. Alright. Is that, the whole idea is that we we make up stories about our lives. We tell ourselves stories about who we are, what we're doing, what we value, what our past has been like, what our future might be like. Right?
Narrative reframing1:36:51
And a lot of times, we blame ourselves when when there are problems. That one doctor that I had was like, I'm not the problem. You're the problem. You're not doing what I tell you to do. And there's lots of people who listen to their doctor or don't listen to their doctor and get into this fight instead of a partnership where the doctor listens to the patient and the patient listens to the doctor.
Right? And narrative reframing, lot of times, or the center of it is around externalizing the problem. It is not doesn't it's not who you are. You're not the person isn't the problem. The problem is the problem.
And then how what your goals are and how you deal with it become a problem, because otherwise it gets overwhelming. When people have a one c's that are nine and ten, the story we tell ourselves sometimes is I am failing. I am failing as a person. I'm failing as a diabetic. I'm failing as a patient.
I'm failing as as a human who doesn't know what they're doing, and I'm never gonna get this right. And that is, you know, a cascade that can just be very difficult to overcome. And so when you externalize it, you say diabetes is the problem, and there are things that can be done, right, then you can start to have a relationship with the problem as opposed to the problem being you. And I think it's really, really important. Right?
We are people experiencing problems. We shouldn't blame ourselves or blame other people for the way they're living life and the experiences they're having. It's like, this is where you're at. This is the what you're capable of doing. Do you have a goal?
If you have a goal, then you can start to think about what you're able to do, what you could do about it, and if you're ready to do it. Right? And I take it a step further.
Oh, go ahead. Take it a step further.
I take it a step further because I also like to use humor. So there are days where no matter what you do, everything just goes kablooey. Right? You wake up, your blood sugar is shot up for no apparent reason, you are trying to take insulin, the problem is not the the attachment, the insert to your skin. The problem isn't the things that you've eaten.
Maybe you the problem isn't that you had enough to to to drink that day. You don't know what the problem is. Right? Those days, instead of feeling defeated, I will say it is the fae the fairies. The diabetes fairy
Giving it away.
Has come to collect their payment.
Diabetes fairies, it is. I'll take it as an outlet. I so the real message here is every day is not gonna be perfect. Let's not get lost in why today went sideways. Let's just move on.
Get get things back on track and move on.
That's right. And not bury yourself in blame.
Yeah. Well, I mean, listen, after all I said earlier, let me just say here, it's a it's an obvious spot where framing and language makes a big difference. So Mhmm. You know, what did you do? What did you eat?
How did this happen? You know, show me your logs. You must have done something. You must not be listening to me. You must not be.
You must be it's all really difficult for people to climb out from underneath of. It really is. Yeah.
And I I had an endocrinologist. Can I name drop?
Go ahead.
Doctor Lauren Golden, she used to be at the Naomi Berry Diabetes Center, and then she moved over to, I think, NYU Langone, but I left New York City. Mhmm. Was one of the best endocrinologists I've ever had in my life because she partnered with me, and we problem solved together.
Yeah.
And by problem solving together, even if she was doing the majority of the brain work, made me feel like I was part of that process
Here on the team.
Taught me how to problem solve on my own. Yeah. And that has carried me since then.
I have I wonder if people would know that I have almost never almost never directly spoken to Arden about something she should do about her diabetes, like like, educationally. Like, there's maybe been twice in the last ten years where I've been like, hey. We gotta go to lunch. We gotta explain something to you. And, like, sat for an hour and was like, this is this.
Do this. This. This. This. Otherwise, it's all just modeling, I guess, is the word for it.
Right? I just you just do it out loud so people can hear, and they'll figure it out on their own. And then also you get the benefit of not them not feeling like you're telling them what to do, which people human beings have a really hard time with. I like Absolutely.
Absolutely. And that's why with your podcast, you have all these different like, I have gone back and looked at the pro tip series, you know, the you when there's something specific that I wanna think about fine tuning. Like, let me go back and listen or let me listen to this and see if there's something new I could learn or something I already know, but maybe it will refresh my memory a little bit.
Right? And
when you use the term bold beginnings
Yeah.
That's narrative reframing. That's that's totally narrative because people are so intimidated. And here you are saying, you can be bold. You can do this. Yeah.
And so I like to mention that.
I'm no dummy, but thank you. Regina, I I figured that out before AI. What do you think of that? Yeah. Mhmm.
Hey. I I'm not a big fan of using AI. Nowadays, I would just be like, hey. I just made this series about this. What do think I should call it?
And it'd be like, here's seven answers, and here's the reasons why you should call it that. Not me. I looked and I thought I honestly, I thought, well, people tell me all the time, like, that being bold with the idea of being bold with insulin was, like, transformative to them. I was like, alright. Well, bold seems to be important.
And, you know, I want this to be for new, really diagnosed people. You know, you are at the beginning. Oh, there's an alliteration. It wasn't that hard everybody. And I just threw it you're giving me credit for something that seems like common sense to me.
But, can you imagine that I can you imagine that, someone said to me on Saturday that they they described the series inside of the podcast almost like diabetes canon. Like like, oh, well, that's the stuff where everybody learns. I've I I listen. Hand to God. A half a dozen educators came up to me at ADCS and said, hey.
I taught myself how to do this job using your your your series about diabetes.
I can believe
that. It was really lovely. And I and I thought that's great. But it made me when one of them was telling me this, all I could think was when I put it out, p so there were some people online who were like, who are you? What is this?
This is bad. It's not good. You don't know what you're talking about. You don't have diabetes. Blah blah blah blah blah.
Like and I can put myself back years ago in that space where somebody could have said that to me. And if I was a different person, I might just shied away or put my head down or taken it offline. There's a lot of things people do when they're pressured like that. And I was just I took that what I again call a healthy amount of narcissism. And I was like, no.
I think you're wrong. And Mhmm. That that's it. Like, so whatever my point to everybody listening is is no matter what situation you're in, trust your gut is good advice.
Mhmm.
So Yeah. Get out there and do good for yourself. Trust yourself. And Mhmm. And, you know
Find the tools that work for you and use them.
Yeah. At first, you don't succeed in all that stuff. All the, all the sayings are sayings for a reason. Just go read them all. Just go Google.
Hey. What are what are all the sayings about success? Then look at them and go, oh, I wonder how these became sayings. It's because they're true. I'll get in there.
Alright. Gina, you're fantastic. I really appreciate this conversation. I never know what to expect when I make the podcast. This was a joy.
I'm glad you talked me into turning the camera on. Please, everybody, don't ask me about that. I wasn't able to put my feet up, and I had to sit forward like an adult and make eye contact for, like, two hours. It was very unpleasant. No.
I'm just kidding. I enjoyed it. And although I did have to do something, I usually have a really hard time video chatting, but there's two windows up. There's you and me. And I look at me when I'm doing that.
We all do that to some extent.
So I covered me, and this got way easier for me. I just I just opened a window and drug it up over top of myself, and you're the only thing moving in front of me besides the timer that's running in front of me with the the camera. And I just was like, oh, I'll just won't look. Because all the time, instead talking about reframing, I'll click on it now. Usually, happens is I start talking and then I look myself in the face while I'm talking, and I don't know why I'm doing that.
I I don't I don't want I can still talk. I don't get lost in the conversation, but I don't see you anymore. And then it feels like monologuing instead of, like, conversating. So I just, like, drug my calendar over and put it over top of it. And I was like, oh, there she is.
That's awesome. So anyway, cover yourself up in a in a Zoom. It might help. I I don't know if I'm I don't know if I'm self conscious or if I'm worried about what I look like or if I I don't really know. Like, I don't know if I'm I don't know if I'm being a social scientist about myself in the middle of the conversation instead of just poking on the conversation.
But if I'm moving in front of me, that's what I'm looking at. Mhmm. It's just very strange.
Well, to use your own words, you have a healthy level of narcissism.
Someone took a picture of me this weekend and put it online, and I literally reposted. I said, if anyone took a photo with me this weekend where my chin looks this square, please send it to me immediately. Please don't you be the only one that has that awesome photo of me because not many of them exist. Okay? So I I put an example, like like this right here.
If you have anything where my chin looks like this, send it over. People are emailing. It's lovely. Anyway, thank you very much. Hold on one second for me.
Today's show was sponsored by Tandem Diabetes Care, the Eversense three sixty five, and Touched by Type one, who you can learn more about on Facebook, Instagram, and at touchedbytype1.org. Head now to tandemdiabetes.com/juicebox and check out today's sponsor, Tandem Diabetes Care. I think you're gonna find exactly what you're looking for at that link, including a way to sign up and get started with the Tandem Mobi system. I'd like to thank the Eversense three sixty five for sponsoring this episode of the juice box podcast And remind you, if you want the only sensor that gets inserted once a year and not every fourteen days, you want the Eversense CGM. Eversensecgm.com/juicebox.
One year, one CGM. If you or a loved one is newly diagnosed with type one diabetes and you're seeking a clear practical perspective, check out the bold beginnings series on the juice box podcast. It's hosted by myself and Jenny Smith, an experienced diabetes educator with over 35 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 juice box podcast are available in your audio app and at juiceboxpodcast.com up in the menu. Thank you so much for listening. If you're not already subscribed or following the podcast in your favorite audio app like Spotify or Apple Podcasts, please do that now. Just hitting follow or subscribe really helps the show.
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