#1989 Total Eclipse of the Heart
Total Eclipse of the Heart
Amalie's son was diagnosed the day of the eclipse. She asked the doctor if they could watch it first. Then he told her he'd be dead in a month.
Jump to a moment
- Her son Daniel was diagnosed at twelve, on the day of the solar eclipse, in the path of totality. The pediatrician's urine test came back and they were told to go straight to Children's. She asked whether they could see the eclipse first, and the doctor said yes. They watched it, then drove to the hospital, where his blood sugar came back in the 800s. He was not in DKA. They were discharged that night.
- The warning signs read as nothing at the time. He had lost ten pounds over a winter and two people told her kids plump up and sprout up. On a nine-hour drive he drained a 20-ounce bottle before they crossed the bridge, and they made him pee in McDonald's cups rather than stop. It only landed when he started crying on a walking tour in St. Augustine because he was so thirsty — she had never seen anyone cry about being thirsty.
- The line that reframes the whole episode comes on day one of diabetes education. Staff give Daniel the standard speech — this doesn't limit you, you can do anything you want. He answers, "Well, I can't go in the navy." Amalie is a fourth-generation naval officer, her husband served, her daughter is tracking to the Naval Academy, and the family line runs to the 1800s. Her reaction was to look around the room and think: he already knows.
- He keeps naming his own mortality casually. In Costco she suggested skipping a doomsday prep bucket and he said, "I'll probably be dead within a month or two, so we don't need one." At pump changes he would say this is what keeps me alive for the next couple of days. She is clear it isn't depression — it is matter-of-fact, and it started almost immediately. Scott's read is that the feeling is identical whether a person jokes about it or never says it out loud.
- Her actual agenda was money, and it is a specific plan rather than a worry. She is a federal employee with good coverage and still finds the system deliberately opaque — prior authorizations, tier exemption forms, a prescription that costs $250 for thirty days but $80 for ninety. What she wants is a trust, so that Daniel is not choosing a career by its benefits package at twenty-two or absorbing a few hundred dollars a quarter out of a first paycheck the day he ages off her plan at twenty-six.
- Bold Beginnings Series — The newly diagnosed questions answered plainly — for anyone leaving the hospital the way Amalie did
- Juicebox Podcast Pro Tip Series — Management fundamentals with Jenny Smith, episodes 1000–1025
- Juice Cruise — The trip Amalie is trying to talk her fifteen-year-old into — payments available
- Dexcom G7 — Now in ten and fifteen day wear, with a twelve hour grace period and up to ten followers
- Omnipod 5 — Tubeless automated delivery, updated with a new 100 mg/dL target option — free starter kit at the link
- T1D Exchange Registry — Eighteen and over, type 1 or caregiver, US resident
Every word of the conversation
Welcome and Sponsors0:03
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Meet Amalie2:02
Hi. My name is Amelie. I have a son, Daniel, who was diagnosed with type one diabetes in April 2024.
Amelie, you have one of those names that when it's spelled and I look at it, I think to myself, I'll just have her say her name, and that way, I won't have to wonder. But then once you said it, I thought, oh, yeah. Well, how else would you say that? Like, does that happen in your life a lot? Do people...
Yes. My name is mispronounced all the time. I get a lot of Amalia, Amelia. So I always say, my name is Amelie, like a homily just without the h.
Just get everybody going. And, you know, it's funny. Now that you said Amelia, I can see I can see how my brain would fill that in incorrectly. But at the same time, that's not at all how your name is spelled. And I'm now realizing I don't know how to spell Amelia.
Switch the e and the a.
Oh, you're... Switch... Oh, we... Oh, is that it? Yeah.
Oh, no kidding. What's your mom's name?
Amelie is the French name for Emily, and my father, was from New Orleans. So my maiden name is actually very French. So...
I see. I see. I met you... Did did your did your... Does your first name, like, really, like, rhythmically go with your maiden name?
You don't have to say it, but is
it just... Well, I'll just say it. It's Amelie Chardonnay. So... Yes.
It does. Yeah. What what... What's the... Oh, yeah.
Look what you married. Okay. That must have been that must have been disappointing for a couple of years.
Which is actually surprising because when I married my husband, I was like, oh, this is so easy. But it's really not because my last name starts with an f, which is often, people confuse it with, a v. Like, my grandmother thought for four years that my last name started with a v, and I showed her my driver's license. I was like, no. It actually starts with an f.
I don't know how long we were married when Kelly came home one day and just said, are people gonna call me Brenner forever? And I went, probably? I was like... She's like, that's not the name. I'm like, I don't think it matters.
So Yes. Anyway, thank you for indulging me with that, Amelie. I am Mhmm. And also a little behind this... The scenes.
I did this great conversation yesterday with this university student from Canada. I'll just say it here because they'll probably line up in the app... In the, you know, in the podcast somewhere. She said her name at the very beginning, and it was different. And I didn't clock it correctly, and then I spent ninety minutes talking around her name because I didn't wanna say it incorrectly again.
And I felt bad because I had a really nice connection with her, and I wanted to address her by her name a couple of times. I found myself just not doing So, anyway... Alright. Daniel. Right?
Yes. Dan. Okay. I see you went the other way on the names.
Did. We have a Peter, Anna, and Daniel, so they're easy.
Is this what... Is this like if they raise you as a democrat, you become a republican? If they raise you as a republican, you become a democrat? Like, they give you I
don't know.
They give you omelet, you go Dan. Okay. So how old was he when he was diagnosed?
He was 12.
And that's just a couple years ago?
Yes. He's 14 now, about to be 15.
The other kids have any stuff going on?
No. Not at all.
Any autoimmune on the husband's side, on your side?
So I was actually texting with my sister-in-law this morning because I was... I knew that you were gonna ask this question. And I... And his sister had some sort of thyroid issue Mhmm. Where she had her thyroid shrunk, but I don't know what exactly it is.
He's like, I don't know if it was thyroid cancer or the beginnings of cancer or just... So she had that shrunk, so she has to take some pill every day. But that's really it. There's no type one diabetes in our family. There's no type two diabetes.
Four Generations in the Navy6:01
I was a fourth generation naval officer. So, you know, in the military, there's a lot of, you know, no... You can't really have any medical issues and things like that. My husband was in the navy. So we're both, like, you know, fairly healthy.
Mhmm. My father's sister was in a car accident when she was 16, and she developed rheumatoid arthritis. But that, I guess, is... You know, was triggered from breaking her back in the car accident, and she eventually passed away in her mid forties.
I'm sorry. She she eventually passed away from what in her mid forties?
Rheumatoid arthritis.
Really? My
god. This was in the eighties. So she was fairly bedridden. You know?
God. That's crazy. Hey. You know, iSneaki iSneaki might be responsible for families talking about their health, but more than I think I am. I I I think I get a lot of people to go talk to their extended families about their health.
Yeah. Yeah.
Oh, look at me. Just doing good in the world. Okay. That's all I heard
from you. Husband's parents are, like, you know, approaching their nineties. Very help... Like, healthy, live independently, can still drive, like, mentally on top of stuff. His mom is, you know, maybe a little a little cognitive, you know, deterioration, but, I mean, they're doing great.
My mom is 77 and in Portugal right now on, like, a fifteen day trip with a bunch of people. My father sadly passed away from ALS, but that was service related in the Navy. So...
He was exposed to something?
Well, they don't know. But it is... When you go through the VA disability stuff, it's an automatic considered service related. So an interesting fact about ALS is, I don't know if, like, all the diagnosed cases... I...
My percentages are probably off because I haven't said this in a while. It's, like, fifty percent or sixty percent are military. And then of that 60%, like, 80% are navy. So there must be something on the ships.
Oh, that's crazy. Isn't that interesting? My gosh. Well, well, thank you for doing that and, you know, risking your ALS and everything. We we...
Is that, like, a thing that, like, you know, are them... Are midshipmen walking around going, are we gonna get ALS, or is it not a thing you think about while you're serving?
I don't think you think about it because you're young and healthy and...
Feels like how could this possibly... Yeah. I gotcha. Yeah. Were you on a...
What kind of ship did you serve on?
My first ship was a sprint class destroyer. So, you know, a smaller ship, about 300 people. And my second ship was a big deck amphib. So it's like a... Like an aircraft carrier, but it's amphibious, so it carries marines.
So that's about 3,000 people, you know, fully loaded.
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Actually, I haven't been on one since I went with the Navy.
You've never you've never been on the... You're like, that's enough of this? Is it like when I stopped working at a bakery, I was like, okay. I'm not gonna have a cinnamon again. Is that, like, different?
I would go on one. My husband is not interested on going one, and I've actually been talking to Daniel about the juice box cruise. And I was like, well, is this something you'd be interested in? And he's like, yeah. Maybe.
You know,
but he's 14, 15 years old.
So Yeah. We had...
Going on a cruise with your mom isn't, like, high on his list of things to do.
We had a we had a few kids his age on the last one. I think one of them's coming on soon as a guest. I would know if I wasn't running this entire thing by myself. I actually sat here this morning and I thought for the first time, do I need an assistant? Because I feel like I'm I feel like I'm drowning.
So... You probably do.
Yeah. I was like, jeez. Anyway, well, I hope I hope I see you guys there. And by the way, if anybody wants to come, and this was not planned at all, but juiceboxpodcast.com/juicecruise. Come with us, I think, July next year?
End of June? Yeah. Yeah. July. Can't remember when the hell we're doing it.
It's it's, like, seven months from now. I'm not I'm not on top of it yet, but you should be because you can make payments, and then it's easier. I'm
a bit I'm talking to them. I'm trying to...
You know, it takes a while
to convince them to do things you want them to do.
So... Well, I'm just laughing because I'm a terrible salesperson. And and I'm just I'm just like, oh, gosh. It's embarrassing. Okay.
A Nine-Hour Drive, and a Water Bottle12:31
So how is how is Daniel diagnosed? Does it come on very quickly? Does it sneak up on you?
I guess it came on quickly for us. I'll just tell you a quick short version of the story.
Yeah.
We were, it was... He was 12, and we started noticing he was losing... I mean, it's all the tip... It's a very typical story. I was listening to the double pancreas episode or something.
I was like, oh my gosh. This is, like, just like our story. But was losing weight. I take him to the pediatrician. They say, no.
This is, like, totally normal. Like, you know, he's probably growing. So, you know, they kinda plump out and then sprout up and then plump out and sprout up. So I was like, okay. Then I remember one of my best friends is a nurse.
I was like, do you think I should be worried? I think Daniel's lost, like, 10 pounds in the past two or three months. And she's like, no. Same thing. You know?
Plump up, sprout up, plump up, sprout up. And I was like, okay. You know, when your children get to a certain age, you don't see them naked anymore, like, because you're not putting them in bathtubs. You know, you're not helping them in the toilet. So this was over the winter.
And then in April, we went on a spring break trip, and we are driving. We are, you know, we are going to see my in laws, and then we were gonna go to this resort in Orlando, and then we had a wedding at the end. And in between that, my husband and our oldest son were going up to the Naval Academy for a funeral. So it's like everybody was going everywhere. We live in Cincinnati, Ohio, and we were leaving, which is, like, forty five minutes from Kentucky.
So we, you know, get in the car. Everybody's got water bottles, and they're those Gatorades. So they're, like, 20 ounce water bottles. And before we get over the bridge, you know, on this nine hour trip, he had drank his entire water bottle and was saying how thirsty he was. And, of course, being the good parents, we are really, you cannot drink all that water.
Like, run a nine hour trip.
Shut up. Like, we just got in the car.
It was. We just got in the car. And then, of course, he drank all this water. He's like, well, now I have to go to the bathroom. I was like, dude, we cannot stop.
Like, like, we're hardly into this trip. So we stop. My husband, like, loves McDonald's. So we stop at a McDonald's, and he gets those giant Cokes, Sean does, to, you know, drink and then chew the ice, which is also... Anyway, as the trip goes on, Daniel is drinking a lot of water, and then we're making him pee in these McDonald's cups so we don't have to stop on the trip.
So we thought that that was strange. Then he was fine at my in laws. When we were at the resort, I noticed he started getting up a lot to go to the bathroom in the middle of the night, and then he was starving. But he's, you know, like, newly 12 years old, so he's, you know, not on the kids menu anymore, and he wants, like, a regular hamburger. But it's also you're on vacation, so you're eating, like, lots of candy and eating crappy food and drinking sodas and all this stuff.
Long story short, when it really clicked with me, Sean and our older son had gone... Had left for the funeral. And I took the two younger kids, the 14 and 12 year old, to Saint Augustine, Florida. So it's hot, but it's not Mhmm. Miserable.
He Started Crying Because He Was Thirsty16:05
It's still April. And we were on this tour of the city, and we had gotten off this bus. And we were walking in Saint Augustine, and he started crying. And he said, I am so thirsty. He was crying.
Yeah. And in in your life, have you ever seen anybody cry over being thirsty? You know what I mean? Like, what a... It's an aggressive reaction to that.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yes. And I was like, this is so weird. And so I pulled out my phone, and I googled, like, weight loss, really hungry. You know? It's like type one diabetes.
I was like, what? So I I remember I called my sister. My sister and I are very close, so I called her first. I was like, do you think Daniel might have diabetes? She's like, well, calm down.
She's like, maybe just call the doctor and see.
I was like, do think I need to take
him to the hospital? So I'm going through all this stuff. We eventually decided... I called his pediatrician, and I said, I know you guys don't wanna hear this, but I Googled his symptoms, and I think he has diabetes. And they were like, well, it could be a lot of things.
And at this point, he wasn't... I guess he probably was really sick, but we didn't think he was really sick. Mhmm. And I said, no. Just finish your trip.
Go to your wedding. Because we are going to a Reading in, like, very rural Georgia. So I was concerned about, you know, access to a hospital and stuff.
Oh, I've been in a Savannah hospital. You should have been concerned about that. So does this end in a hospital in Savannah? Because if it does, this story is how your son died. No.
It... Oh, it's not a story of how your son died in a Savannah hospital? Because I thought my daughter was going to. Go ahead. Alright.
Sorry. And whatever hospital, I'm not gonna say the name of the hospital, but I mean, absolute So go ahead.
Yeah. No. So we went to the wedding. At the wedding, he was definitely lethargic, and he's like, my stomach really hurts. Again, we're on...
We're at the tail end of this vacation. So we were just like, we're going home. I set up a pediatrician appointment with him. It's actually the the day of the eclipse. So it's, like, August 9, and he's kind of a science nerd.
Diagnosed on Eclipse Day18:19
So I was... Worked in the morning. His doctor's appointment was, like, 01:00. So we went. They just do the urine test.
And I'm like, yep. He has type one diabetes. I was like, oh my gosh. They're like, you need to go to Children's Hospital right away. And I said to them, I was like, well, the eclipse is at 02:15, and he's really excited because we were in the area of total, like, totality.
You're gonna get to experience it. Yeah.
And I said, he's, like, really been looking forward to... Like, all the schools were out here. You know, it was, like, a big thing.
Mhmm.
You know, people were meeting up, and they said, okay. So we went to the eclipse, and then I went straight down to our children's hospital in Cincinnati, which is fantastic. And Sean was traveling for work in, like, these, you know, big important meetings, so I was not been in touch with him. Yeah. And we were admitted to the ER.
He was... Thank god he wasn't in DKA. So we... I don't... I guess I started to get emotional because I'm still at this point don't really understand what is going on.
Like, I mean, I know that he has... That he's been diagnosed with diabetes, but I don't know that much about it. And then, you know, all these people are running in. They're, like, running all these tests on them, and I'm just sitting there by myself. I've got my two other kids at home, like, not sure.
You know, thankfully, we have a really good community up here. So my neighbor, you know, got my daughter and took her to do nails and stuff. My older son had gone to the movie with a friend. And...
What... When you said......
Were discharged that night.
So... Emily Emily, when you said I started getting emotional though, but I didn't understand what I... So can you talk just a second about what what the emotion was there?
What the Emotion Was20:10
Well, you're in the hospital with your son, and you know that this is a big deal. Like, he has type one diabetes. And I remember when they pricked his, you know, blood sugar, he was, like, in the eight hundreds. And then just with the urgency that the medical staff was attending to him was, like, very overwhelming to me.
It just felt... And and you're... For clarity too, you're a person who is trained and spent time on a floating rocket launcher. Right? So Yeah.
Yeah. And so do you think that you... Like, could you feel any of that? Like, I even love that you called your sister and she said, just calm down. I was like, that's awesome.
I I thought, oh, I should have married into a military family. That would have been good for me. I would have enjoyed it if people would have been just like, calm down, buddy. I'm like, oh, okay. Can I talk to you like that too?
This is awesome. But, I mean, did the... Did it help you? Like, did you find yourself fighting your own urge to be upset, or is there a is there a drive to hold it together for him? Like...
Because you sound a mute... You... You're... You've sounded very measured through the whole conversation, but your voice is broken in the last couple of minutes. I don't know if you're aware of it or if you're hiding it or...
But you've... You're upset now.
I'm aware of it. Yeah. I'm not... I just... Like, when you're reliving that sitting there...
And, of course, you wanna be strong. It's just me and him in there, and he's obviously scared and, you know, getting poked. And they're coming in, and they give you an insulin pen, and they're like, you know, give him an injection. And it's... It was just...
It was very overwhelming. And then the amount of people that were... You could tell it was serious by the way the doctors were reacting. And they were like, you know, we're gonna test them for DKA. You might be admitted.
You might not. And you're like, on your phone, like, what the hell is DKA?
Hello, Google? Like... Yeah. Yeah. I always wonder if people working in, like, emergency rooms or places like that hear these stories when they're told and then think, oh, we don't do the good job of helping people not to feel freaked out.
Because it is... It's... I mean, look, it's tough to... It's not their job to help you not feel freaked out. But at the same time, you hear the same thing over and over again.
I was running around spouting out a bunch of jargon. Like, you could be a little, No. There's there's ways to help. So, is he upset? Is he just out of it enough that he's going with the flow?
He was actually very... I mean, he was very lucid. Like, he wasn't, you know, like... I keep saying he wasn't super sick. I know he was super sick, but he wasn't
Acting it?
You know, like... I mean, he was, like, kind of... I think we caught it early enough that the symptoms were starting to show up, but he wasn't... Like, you know, some of these horrible stories. It's like, you know, I'm bringing my, like, almost comatose child into hospital.
Like, he was he was very alert and aware of what was going on. So...
I just talked to a I just talked to a lady who said she... Like, her 18... I guess, then 18 year old was so, like, aggressive during the the... Out of con... Like, not how their personality is at all.
Like, she said they started considering, like, how they were gonna even be able to get them to the to the physician because the person's like that... Because they were over 18, and they were like, I'm fine. I don't need them. They're just really, like, not acting like themselves at all. So...
Yeah. No. I wouldn't say he was that. I mean, one
thing about Daniel's personality is he's... He is a very easy breezy, chill, like, relaxed person. So he takes things in stride very well. And even... He's been like that his whole life.
I remember when I was pregnant with him, like, I would go to the doctor because it was my third... I was like, I have not felt him move. Like, I was so afraid he had died, like, in utero.
He was chilling even before he was born? Yes. He never moved around, and I was like, are you sure?
Like, this is weird. I'm seven months pregnant. Like, I should be feeling him, like, all the time. And they, you know, they finally gave me a heart rate monitor. Like, listen.
When you're getting freaked out, listen, and you'll be able to hear him. So so I always tell that because that is how he is as a person. He is, like, so relaxed and chill and easy breezy. Some might call it lazy. We choose easy breezy.
So...
Some might say it looks like he's sleeping when he's awake. But... Well...
So he was definitely... He got a little emotional, but I think he was trying to process just as much as me. So...
Yeah. He doesn't know what DKA means either. Mhmm. Wow. Yeah.
That sucks. Okay. So do they... I I... By the way, I love your...
Like, you... I know people know to some degree that I take, like, the tiniest little intake form. It's usually just a couple of sentences. But Mhmm. I was sitting with Arden last night, and she's not been feeling well the last couple of days.
And so we were hanging out together. And I said, hey. I gotta get to bed. I have a recording at 10:00 tomorrow. And then we do the same...
We joke all the time. Like, somebody goes, like, 10:00. These people not understand. You make a podcast. Why so early?
You you know? And and by the way, don't think 10:00 is wrong. But, but we're... And I pulled it up, and I saw your note, and I said, oh, this is new. Like, no one's ever written this in this forum before.
So I'm... It's kind of a bummer, the thing you wanna talk about, but at the same time, I think it's a really interesting conversation. So I wanna hear... I wanna kinda fast forward through the next couple of minutes, like... And...
Because I'd like to get to that conversation. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So just real quickly, they leaves the hospital.
Do they talk to you about CGMs, pumps, insulin pens? Like, what's your understanding of technologies you're leaving? What's your understanding of your goals? How how...
Leaving the Hospital Knowing Nothing26:02
My understanding was, like, nothing. I... We left that night. My husband came home, so I had the conversation with him. So we're like, what the hell?
I was like, so we just took a week off work. Like, you need to clear your schedule for the next couple days because we are going to diabetes school. So when we went into the hospital, we were outpatient. So we were in the hospital during the day, and then we would come home. He left on MDI.
The... They, you know, like to approach it, like, out your carb counting, all of that stuff. And then he went on a pump, I think. He was diagnosed in April. And we went on the Omnipod Dexcom pump in September.
Well, I'm sorry. He went on a c... He went on the Libre CGM. That's... Don't get me started with insurance, but that was a whole another...
Figure out diabetes, then you also need to figure out your health insurance. So he went on the Libre CGM pretty quickly, like, within the week. And then, obviously, we had to switch to Dexcom when he went on the Omnipod.
Don't let the bastards get you down, Amelie. By the way, we already have maybe, I think, the greatest title for an episode ever. I've not said it out loud. I... Oh.
I'm so worried that if I don't say it, it won't somehow get captured. But it's gonna tie into something you've already said and something that I believe you're about to say. It's so good. I'm so excited to tell it to you. Okay.
But I would...... To hear it. Everyone listening already knows it because they saw it on their player. It's a weird world, but I I don't want you to know yet because...
Okay.
Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So he gets he gets technology. You guys go to diabetes.
I said, I I love that idea of, like, take some days off. We're going to diabetes school. It's like, awesome way to spend our free time. Does does Daniel come with you to that class, or is it just for the parents?
Oh, no. No. He's with us.
He's there. Okay.
Yeah. So we we were inpatient in the hospital for four days, not spending the night. We would, like, show up at 07:00 and leave at five.
Oh, like a proper job. Yeah. Yeah. Mhmm. They give you a break of fifteen...
I think legally, you gotta get a fifteen minute break and a thirty minute lunch. Did you did you get all that?
You do get lunch and all that. I mean, they were feeding him lunch. It's it's like the fire hose, you know, just
Yeah.
Explaining what diabetes is. You know? I mean, he he was a trooper. Like, it it was kind of sad. So I know my topics are mortality, and I don't wanna jump ahead.
But I told you we are we are a family of, you know, navy military people. My brother was in the navy. I was in the navy. My dad was in the navy. My grandfather was in the navy.
My husband's in the navy, you know, all the way back to the eighteen hundreds. And so our our oldest son was not interested in military. Our daughter is tracking to go to the Naval Academy. And then so when Daniel was diagnosed, like, literally, that first day of diabetes camp, they're like, not camp, but school, like, in the hospital. The...
Well, I Can't Go in the Navy29:14
You know, they they prop them up, and they're they're they're saying to him, you know, you you can do anything you want. This doesn't limit you, you know, that whole speech. And he looked at it. He goes, well, I can't go in the navy. I just looked around and got, like, a little teary eyed, and I was like, he already knows.
Yeah. Yeah.
How does he know that? I don't know.
Well, it makes sense. It's funny when I see people argue about it online. Maybe we'll take a left turn here because since your entire family has been fighting for America since before it was America, it sounds like. I see people argue about this online, and I have to tell you, like, I understand, like, from the, like, from the people, like, people can do anything. Like, I get it from that point of view, but it makes sense not to have somebody on man made insulin fighting.
Right?
It's... The the military is not set up to accommodate those types of illnesses, and it's not when you're in America on a base. It's when you're on a ship in the middle of The Gulf and you're stuck out there. You know? I think the Abraham Lincoln was at sea for two hundred and thirty days.
I don't know if you saw this. Like, they're just not set up to accommodate those things.
Well, they were... You're talking about recently in the Strait Of Hormuz?
Mhmm.
Yeah. They... Like, a couple guys threw themselves off the ship in protest. Like, they'd been out there so long. They were...
That's that's a real story. Right? Like, I'm not I'm not making that up yet.
No. This, like, happened this summer, and then it was funny because the the ship was gonna pull into Phuket, Thailand after two hundred and thirty days at sea. And I've... I I mean, Thailand is... We pulled into Thailand after...
It was our first, you know, port stop, and then people go crazy. The drinking, the prostitutes, the... You know, it's just... You know, there's always an outbreak of some sort of STD when you get back on the ship. And I was like, oh, Phuket's got it coming.
Here we come. Here we come. Is that where that place gets its name from? Because everybody... The the ship boards and everybody...
Docks, everybody thinks, oh, Phuket. Let's go. And this I don't know. Oh my god. That's crazy.
Don't know.
Yeah. But your point but your point is is that as as much as you like to think, well, my deployment's gonna be this long and it's gonna be measured. It doesn't always... It probably never goes exactly the way you expect it to. And what if you're out there for that long?
And what if you have a problem? Or... You know, I mean, listen. It's...
And it's just the nature of the work. I mean, you're working twenty hours a day. You're... You know, in... If something happens to the ship and you go into general quarters, you know, where the ship is under distress, you know, you're in a gas mask and stuff for eight to sixteen hours.
Like, I mean, how do you manage, especially something like type one diabetes, but really any health thing?
Anything. Yeah. Well, I mean, I I I... Again, I really do get the intent when people are like, oh, they shouldn't limit people, and I get all that. But, like, I don't know.
It's just... I think when I hear that story, like, I'd... I... Listen. I watch people tell me they can't go to the gym.
Like, I I go to the gym and I get low. I'm like, what about when I need you to run over here and save my life? Like, know what I mean? Like, I I... That's not a good time for you to go, hey, guys.
I'm sorry. I need a gummy. You know? Like, it's or I've... Or I'm, you know, I'm nauseous because my blood sugar's been high because I haven't been able to tend to it or, yeah.
I mean, listen. It all makes sense to me. But I just wanted to see what you thought having, of course Yeah. You know, served apparently as a child. It sounds like you were in the navy when you were four.
I swear it's got nothing to do with this podcast, and I'm not gonna derail this. But I so wanna know what it's like being a woman on one of those ships, especially married and, like, it must be insane. Am I wrong?
No. I was not married when I was on the ship. Oh. It was fine. It was...
I was... Yeah. I mean, I... So I, you know, joined the navy right after college. I was in the navy for seven years.
I got married when I was in the navy, but I was done with my ship stuff. So it was fine. My first ship was, I think, 30% female, and it had an integrated crew. So that, you know, it had female male officers, but it also had female male enlisted folks. And then my second ship was...
I was in the engineering department, which was about 900 people. I was the only female, like, in the leadership role, but it was fine.
You don't feel like a cheeseburger walking through a room of hungry people? I did not. Oh, wow. That's very nice. Look at that.
Good job.
I I was on
Good job, boys.
Interested in... Well, do... I also... I did not, like, you know, date or, you know, mess around with anybody on the ship. So...
Gotcha. Oh. Yeah. I see. Alright.
I just... I don't know. I I know a lot of guys, and I think if... I... I'm just imagining throwing them on a boat for a long time.
And...
Maybe I was I was fairly naive too. So, I mean, maybe I just missed a bunch of stuff. I don't know. Never really felt unsafe or anything.
Would be great to run a documentary back on you and everybody watching hard going, how does she not see all this?
I don't know. Yeah.
That's awesome. Anyway... Okay. So I'm gonna... We'll get back to Daniel a little bit.
But, like, your note just says I'll just read it. It just said children's awareness of mortality and medical trusts. That's all you put. So I am... I'm interested in what makes you, you know, what's happened in your life that makes you wanna talk about people's understanding of the, you know, the limits of their life.
What Happens When He Turns Twenty-Six35:03
I... So Daniel's only been diagnosed for two years. The insurance per... And I'm a federal employee, so I have really good health insurance, you know, through the government. And it's, you know, one of the better plans, you know, fairly low premiums and stuff like that.
I find the insurance so difficult to manage and figure out. And then I have just seen the cost growth over two and a half years. I switched our insurance this year from, like, Blue Cross Blue Shield because they went to that co pay... Insurance co pay versus the insurance deductibles.
Are they called when you... Out of pocket?
Not even... Like, I don't even have that high of out of pocket. It's, like, $350 or something. But, I guess it's the co pay. You know, when you go and it's like, oh, you got antibiotics.
It's $5. Mhmm. You know, now they're going to these formulas where it's like, oh, well, now you're gonna have to pay 30%, not just, like, the set amount, which really scares me because we probably spend a couple $100 every three months. His his prescriptions are filled every three months for the insulin, the CGMs, and the pumps.
Yeah.
And I've read people that stayed with this other insurance. They're spending, like, a thousand bucks every three months
Yeah.
To fill those prescriptions. And what I worry about is, you know, I have a son in college. I know your kids are older and, you know, entering that stage of life. I don't want Daniel to graduate from college, go on his own insurance, and he's already eaten up $300 of his probably minimal, you know Mhmm. Take home pay paying for this stuff.
Yeah. This happens to a lot of people. It certainly does. I mean, the amount of money we spend is insane. Like, you know...
And then you put on top of that the, you know, the glucagon. Yeah. I mean, that's, like, a $175. You know? And, hopefully, you don't have to use it.
So my husband and I have talked, and, I mean, we're fortunate that we're in a financial position, you know, where we're talking about retiring in the next ten years and setting up all that stuff. And it's like, I really wanna set up a trust for him because I don't want him to be financially burdened with this disease. Yeah. And it's, you know, however things go, I... Maybe we'll all be dead in four years, right, with the AI taking over the world.
Yeah. Then won't be worried about it. That'd be awesome. I'm sure the AI will come and get Daniel and the other type ones first. They'll probably farm you guys for something.
I don't know how it's gonna go exactly. You know what I mean? But you'll probably get rounded up in the first wave, I would think, or they put you to work. Who knows exactly? I don't know.
Yeah. I I I I have to tell you, like, it's it's funny because as you're saying this, I think... And you're fairly... Like, I... Listen.
Amelie, listen. I wanna be clear. I'm not a person who runs around calling me or anybody else or even using the word privileged because it feels like it feels like virtue signaling to me to some degree. But,
like Uh-huh.
I still understand that people are at certain levels of ability. Right? Like, some people make more money. Some people have better insurance. Like, even the the numbers you're spouting, people at home are probably like, I have insurance.
I wish that's all I was paying. And, like... So, like, there's levels of out of pocket on this down to people who... It doesn't matter what their out of pocket is because they... They don't have it anyway.
But, having said that, we are in a very similar situation. You know, I'm older than you, and I and my wife are... I mean, we just we just got back two weeks ago from, like... We were down south looking for places to move just trying to find a way to save a little bit of money in the last years of our employment. And it's not so that we can, like, you know, go on some, like, world trip.
Like, we're trying to figure out a way to put money in a pile and put it in a trust so that Arden can pay for medical stuff. If she if she turns into, like... Like, I don't know. Like, what if she gets sicker, or what if she is an eardwell, or what if she marries some guy who, you know, screws her over? Like...
Yeah. I mean, like, all the things are... Like, what if she just keeps shopping at the rate she's shopping at it right now? You you know? Like like like, you know, like, what's going to, like, you know, like, I don't want her to look up one day and go, no.
I I can't afford a CGM. I'll stop wearing one. And then the the downstream effects of, you know, well, now my AID system doesn't work, and now this happens. Now my... You know, like, I just...
We'd like her to not have to worry about at least that. But that but that means that we're gonna have to work much further into our lives than we were anticipating too. And Right. And I would be nice to know if we were all gonna get wiped out in a couple years because I really would stop trying so hard. I just wanna be completely clear.
If you could tell me that the Terminator thing was happening, I'd give up right now. I I... And Dan would just be sitting around whatever he does all day. I'd do it with him. With the
You watch YouTube videos with him.
Oh my god. I would love it. Tell him I'm on my way. So... Anyways...
Yeah. But it's a space that I'm interested in, like, really exploring, you know, because... And I read a lot of posts on, you know, your Facebook group and other things, and it's these children also have to, like, really consider, like, what jobs they can take based on the benefits plan, which, I mean, we all do. But when you're 22, it's like, you know, we'll have to get, you know, a job in this field because I need a good benefits plan. And I just I just...
You just don't want them to be constrained so much. So if there's something that we can do to help him that he doesn't have to worry about, you know, that stuff once he turns 26 and gets kicked off of our insurance.
Then that would be nice to do. Yeah. Right. Mhmm. Oh, please.
Insurance Is Built to Make You Give Up41:12
And you said you find it confusing. I I... I'm reminded all the time when people tell me, like, oh, I have a great doctor, but they were never sick before. So then they go back and they're like, maybe it's not as great as I thought it was. And and people say that about their insurance.
Oh, I have great insurance because you've never used it. You wouldn't know. Like, the five times you needed it, it paid for something, and you're like, oh my god. I have great insurance. When you really need it, like like, autoimmune need your insurance, then you find out how good your insurance is.
And it's, a lot of
people sneaky. I think it's sneaky, and it's not, like, forthright. So I don't even know how, but, I mean, I told you as a federal employee, and I stumbled upon this Facebook group that's like federal employee health benefits for type one diabetes. And I'm telling you, if I did not find that group, I wouldn't know what a pre authorization was. I wouldn't know what a tier exemption form was.
Like, I... You know, it's like... And so I go on there every January after open season. I was like, this is what I figured out, guys. You know, this is the health care plan.
You know, you have to... You know, in order to get, you know, the ninety day, rate, your doctor can't write a prescription for thirty days. Otherwise, it's gonna be three time... You know, why would a prescription cost $250 for thirty days, but then you only have to pay $80 for ninety days? Like, make it make sense.
It doesn't make sense.
Sure. Because everything is a... It's a trap to catch you and to... It's for them to save money somehow.
That's what it feels like.
Yeah. How could it not be that? Like, I mean, it... Because otherwise... I mean, as...
You know, joking about AI aside, how easy could it be to just, like, take the rule book from the insurance company, drop into AI, and say, look. Make this easier. Or... You know what I mean? And because it's...
You know, stuff gets layered on top of stuff as as businesses get built. Right? You start with an idea, then suddenly, like, well, we have to make an exemption here. We have to make a change here. And before you know it, it's, you know, thousands and thousands of pages of rewrites and changes and exemptions and o...
Only... Not if you have red hair and you're six feet tall, then it's this. You know, like, that kind of stuff. And then it just gets lost, nobody goes back to look through that stuff. And then you hire somebody who just knows that these are the rules, and then they apply the rules like that.
But at some point, the people at the top, the people making the money and, you know, trying to make the value for shareholders and all that stuff, Those people know that's how they make money. And I I fully 100% believe that making this podcast has made me sound like a conspiracy theorist a time or two, but I think if you really think about it, maybe no. I believe it's set up to try to get you to give up. That's how I think it's set up. I...
It's set up exactly the way my wife sets up sex. She just puts up enough blockades that I'll just eventually go, you know what? I'm good. Like I'm alright. Yeah.
I guess I'll just stop. But I think they do the same thing with that. I think they just... It's like, well, no. You, you know, you have to get a form or you have to do the...
How about the thing where they send you a bill? You pay the bill, and, like, sixty days later, you get the money back. And they go, turns out you didn't know this. Have you ever... Yeah.
Have you had that happen? So I now have... By the way, I'm not giving anybody financial advice, but anytime I get a bill, I don't pay it now. I make them send it to me twice. And if you have any idea how many times the second bill comes back and it says paid zero on it, happens so many times.
Because I got tired of sending... I got tired of loaning my money to the insurance company. So I was like, I don't let it get to collections, but I'm not giving it to you till I'm sure I owe it to you. And I am not gonna spend the time on the phone to find out if I'm sure or not because that's not my job either. So I just...
I think the whole thing is set up in in ways for them to sit on cash, to get you to give up before you ask for reimbursement, to not go get care to begin with. You know how many people have health insurance who just don't go to the doctor because of all this? Because they just don't wanna be involved in it. You know? So I think it's on purpose.
And if it's not, I'm wrong, but really feels like it. So No.
It does. And even... I mean, to your point, like, my daughter said, you know, goes to a dermatologist, and I was looking at the explanation of benefits. And I've been paying a co pay of, like, $35. And then when I get that explanation of benefits, it's like, portion's $10.
And I'm like, what? So do I have, like, a credit at the dermatology office? And it's like, I can't deal with this. It's, like, $20. I don't know.
You know what else can I? I'll I'll I'll complain about another thing. These FSA cards, that's gotta be a scam somewhere too. I can't I can't take... You know, you know, you put a certain amount of money in this every month, and, like, it's a credit card that you can use for medal ex...
Medical expenses. I... You know, you don't have to send in receipts. It's all... Oh, awesome.
And then every six months, I get a note from them that's like, hey. You know, you spent $900 at the dentist. Oh, that's not something you could use on the card. I'm like, of course, it is. I've used this card at the dentist a thousand times.
Well, yeah, but We need paperwork, and we need this. We need... My wife's just like, just mail them $900 back. We'll spend it somewhere else. Like, they...
Even that, like, we get asked for our... They... We give them our money, then we spend it appropriately, and then they tell us that we need to give it back or prove it. And I'm like, I don't know. How do you need me to...
It was a dentist, though. What do you... They don't sell cars there. I don't know what to tell you. It's...
Every... Everything I did there was medical. Like, you you know what I mean? Like, oh my god. I hate everything.
I'm really... I'm getting to that age. How old are you, Amelie? How are you?
I'm almost 49.
Oh, you're almost there. You're gonna hate everybody too in a couple more years. I am so sick of all of you. I'm gonna move to a field.
Yep. Pretty much.
So, and it's not... It's... By the way, it's never people in my life. I love the people around me. It's the it's the machine.
It's just got... I... I'm done. You you know what I mean? Like, I I I don't wanna do this anymore.
Like, whatever this is, I'm done. Thank you. Yes. Yeah.
And every January, when you have to send in your new prescriptions and, you know, it's... But we can't fill it because we don't have a prior authorization. They're like, is Daniel still a type one diabetic? I'm like, yes.
Yeah. And then now you're talking to some poor idiot. No offense to those people. But, like, know, I've had the job for five seconds. They don't know what type...
They they just know they're saying it out loud. Arden had to go into urgent care yesterday. I'm trying not to give her details away. And, we're sitting there, and and it's just the intake. And the intake nurse, and I think I'm being generous because I don't imagine the person's actually a nurse, asks the most off the wall question.
I don't even remember what it was. And both of us, Arden and I looked up like, what the hell did you just say? And all she replied was, sorry. The computer prompts me to say that. Was like, uh-oh.
We had a funny story when we... I mean, it's a little off topic, but I took Daniel in just for, like, a sports physical or something. He had this fairly new doctor. You know, at this point, I'm like, I just gotta get this paper signed so I can upload it so he can, you know, try out for sports or whatever. He's going through the thing, and he said, does Daniel have the phone?
I said, yes. And he starts going on and on and on about how he doesn't think kids this age should have phones, and it's really, you know, disruptive and the screen time and blah blah blah blah blah. And I let him go on for a while, and I'm just like, yeah. I know. I agree.
But he's... I felt he probably didn't intend to... And I think he was, like, freshly out of medical school. I don't think... It was coming across to me like, your 12 year old should not have a phone.
Yeah. You should have said to him, I, really appreciate you giving me a preview of your new TikTok channel, but could you shut up and just sign the paper, please?
No way. I finally just looked at him and I said, I totally agree with you. I was like, but he's a type one diabetic, so there's no way around it. And he got so flustered.
Yeah. We would, except his pancreas lives on it. So we don't know what else
to do. He needs it to deliver insulin. I mean, I was just like
We could start sharpening needles again maybe and give those to him if you like. Or he could just wither away. It's up to you, really. You think the phone's really causing a problem, do you? By the way, like, also, I get it.
Like, I I actually think that the, the pediatric society or whatever the hell that is probably tells them to talk to you about the the ills of, you know, phone exposure, which by the way, like, I'm with you. Like, I I believe I believe all the data about how bad your phone is for you. I'm I'm in. You got me. I...
I'm I'm with you. But, I mean, at some point, like, what are you going on for? Also, later, don't tell me that we don't have enough time to meet with people about their illnesses if you're spending eighteen minutes giving me your political opinion about cell phones in my in my doctor's appointment. Right. Maybe you're just not using your time wisely.
Okay?
Right.
They used to say thanks for coming to my TED talk, but, you know, that's, now I just... I I I would have said, like, he should get his own podcast, but even that's passe at this point. So he should get his own TikTok where he can yell for eight seconds at a time about this, and people only watch five seconds of it. Good luck, everybody. Sorry.
Okay. So we want this kid to have money. You're gonna work towards that. Insurance stinks. Does he come to you with the mortality thing?
Is it a thing you're worried about? Is it conversations you've had already?
He doesn't, like, wanna sit down and talk about it, but he will make comments that, I guess, they were just so surprising to me initially that children... I mean, that he, like, now has this disease where that's, like, in his headspace. The first time he did it, we were in Costco, and they have the, you know, those buckets of food, like, doomsday preparation things.
I I only know because I've seen crazy people sell them, but I... But go ahead. I didn't know I didn't know who
were Costco. And so we're walking around, and he's also... He's hard to go shopping with because, you know, he wants 8,000,000 things. And I told him eventually, was like, you're not allowed to get anything at Costco anymore because I don't want, you know, 500 of these things that you tasted and decided that you didn't like anymore. So
Will someone eat this yogurt?
A Doomsday Bucket at Costco52:01
Right. So we're in Costco, and they have those doomsday buckets. And he goes, mom, he goes, let's get one of these. I was like, I do not wanna doomsday. I was like, I don't want a doomsday bucket.
And he looks at me. He goes, yeah. He goes, I don't know. He goes, I'll probably be dead, you know, within a month or two. So, yeah, we don't need one.
And I, like, looked around. I, like, looked away from him and started crying because that was the first time he'd... Like, he'd said that. Like, I... Like, he knows he would not survive an apocalyptic event type of a thing.
Everyone Has a Plan to Break Into a Pharmacy52:38
Yeah. I was talking to, John who makes the Sugarpixel. We were chatting, and he just... He so offhandedly said to me, doesn't every type one have a plan for how to break into a pharmacy if things get upside down? And I was like I was like, I've already thought about it.
Like, I've I've thought about it in detail. Like, so much so that I'll be prepared to fight you when I get to the Walgreens if you're there too. And it's it's yeah. I mean... And and still, like, the sadness that hits you, like, even if I went to the Walgreens and I took every vial...
First of all, I'd feel terrible as I was taking it. Right? Because I would know that there's somebody else on their way that needs it too, and it would still hit me like that. Even if I took every vial of it. I mean, how long would that keep Arden going for?
Year, maybe? You know what I mean? Right. How
much is not a
Yeah. It's not forever.
There's no endless supply. Right. Right. I mean, we do the same thing. Like, you know, our prescription is three bottles, three vials, you know, a month.
He doesn't use that. And I said to my husband, I said, maybe I just won't fill it this month. He has no fill it. He was... We stockpile insulin.
Yeah. No. It's insane. I have some downstairs that I actually thought the other day I I should try to find somebody to give this to. And then the next script comes up and you're afraid not to fill it because you don't want the insurance company to say, well, why didn't you need it that time?
Right.
You know what I mean? Like, there's a whole, like, fear of... Everyone... Listen. Everyone with insurance and diabetes is nodding along right now.
They they know. They... They're like, yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
No.
I know. Does everybody stockpile the insulin? You know? I... Probably.
Yeah. Of course they do. If they have the ability to do it and they're only... And it's $20 or in a co pay or something like that, no one's saying no to it whether they need it or not. Like, if somebody...
Some... Jenny told me the other day, she's like, know, the g six got sundown and now it's only g seven. Mhmm. She's like, I got enough g sixes for, like, six months. I was like, okay.
You you know, like... Or... And so the people who have, like, the ability to do it or, you know, get their... Or, like... I mean, listen.
I have enough Omnipods to, like... I could wallpaper at least the back of my door with them. And it's because Arden has... Is written... Her script is written out that she might need to change it every two days.
And we do that sometimes, and sometimes we don't. And when you don't, you have an extra Omnipod. And, like, and those pile up over time. It's just... It's the fear.
Everyone's got the fear. But he now... But but you now realize in Costco, which... Of all the places. In Costco, you're like, oh, my son knows that if stuff gets upside down, he's just gonna die.
Like, that's crazy feeling. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Is it the only time he said it?
No. No. No. He says stuff like that. A lot of times when he does a pump change, he doesn't say it so much anymore now.
You know, 12, 13. He's still... You know, now he's trying to be super cool because he's almost 15. But,
no, he'd come down. He'd be like,
oh, gotta change my pump if
I wanna live another three days. Like, you know, stuff
like that. And I don't think it's, like, depressive from him. It's just, like, very matter of fact kind of joking around, but he's like, oh, you know, this is what's gonna keep me alive for the next
couple of days. So I'm
gonna get on it and do it.
Every... And I think everyone's aware of that, if they're aware of it. And absolutely, I think I see people either joke about it or quietly, like, let it eat themselves up inside and they don't talk about it. But I don't think the feeling's any different whether you're the joker or the person who doesn't say it out loud. Like, it's...
It... You are you are constantly... Like, I mean, listen. We're all in a situation where we know our life is finite, but nobody has ever said to you before, like, you know, by the way, if you don't do this one thing, it's gonna be over in a couple of days. Like, that's not a that's not a a scenario that most people live in.
You you know? And then suddenly you get diabetes and you're struck with that. Like, this stuff keeps me alive. You take this away, you take away alive. You know?
And I just think that's... I... Maybe, like, children diagnosed... I don't know. Your daughter was diagnosed as, like, a baby pretty much, you know, before, like, 18.
Two?
She was two. Yeah.
Okay. Two. I wonder if they... Does does she have the same thought process as, like, then being die... Diagnosed when you're 12?
So you've lived twelve years without it, and then all of a sudden, you know, you're very involved in realizing that you have this disease. And The
first time I was...
In the mortality.
Yeah. The first time I was aware of how, like, aware she was, we had a friend who had a child who was... Is pretty significantly dismay... Mentally disabled.
I heard you tell this story recently.
Yeah. And she and she told me she'd prefer to be him because at least he can't die. Like, that's... That was pretty early on. She once told my my sister-in-law was babysitting her one day and her birthday was coming up.
And she told my sister-in-law that she wasn't gonna have diabetes much longer because it was gonna go away on her birthday. Yeah. That one was tough. That wasn't about dying. The rest of it is...
Like, I've seen, like, your your son's big... You know, oh, this thing's keeping me alive or I'm gonna go or when the zombies come, I guess I'll just run towards them. Like, that kind of thing. Mhmm. She says stuff like that a few times a year, you know, like, for for a long time.
Arden's Worst Day58:22
Yesterday, I'm gonna try to, like... So yesterday, Arden Arden has been not feeling well for a couple days. She's been in pain. And I'm gonna try to keep it like that that that, like, private. But we ended up yesterday at urgent care, her and I.
And a shout out, by the way, because the urgent care doctor is a listener of the podcast, and she's awesome. So, by the way, that's that's a heady thing one day when you're in an urgent care and the doctor's like, what's your name? Do you make a podcast about diabetes? I have type one. I'm like, oh, hey.
How are you? So we're there yesterday, and it's been a long couple of days. Like, she's been, you know, pushing through, going to work, going to school, but in pretty constant pain first for a thing. And, you know, we go there really kinda hoping that the doctor's gonna give her one medication. She gives her a different one, which I think might be working, which is great, but, like, not the point.
And, like... So she's sitting there in pain, like, exhausted from the pain. And then she gets the script. It's not the script she's hoping for, so she's... Now she's really, like, let down.
Then we have to stop at the drive through at the Walgreens on the way home, and she goes, why are we stopping? Is it gonna be ready? And I said, no. It's not gonna be ready. But if we don't stop, it'll never be ready.
And she's like, won't they just fill it? I'm like, yeah. Maybe. I'm like, but we can't take that risk. So we pull up to the thing.
We sit there forever till someone comes out. Like, we're, like, sitting there going, like, she sees us. Hello? Like, you know, she she comes out finally. Right away, it's met with I can't find it.
I don't know what you're trying to do. It would have just been called in the last twenty minutes. Here's where it came from. This is the doctor's name. Are you...
Is this your store code? It is like... And, like, she walks away and Arden goes, you're doing her job for her. And I said, Arden, the number of things I'm doing other people's jobs for related to people's health, not just yours, would floor you. And I said, so I'm like, if you don't do these things, it's not gonna work out.
If... I said, if you leave it to that person right there, you're not getting this medication today. I was like, we are going to explain to them what we need and what they're going to do. And so... And I said, gonna be very polite about it.
Nice. But I'm here to make sure they do what they're supposed to do. And then I said, okay. Now I'm gonna take you home, then I'm gonna come back and pick up the drug. And Orden's like, you do this all the time?
I'm like, every time. For you, for Cole, for mom, like, we need something. Like, this is how it goes. So it's a little demoralizing. So much so that she actually said to me later in the evening, I'm really sorry for wasting your day today.
And I was and I was like, you didn't waste my... She said, I'm sorry for ruining your day. And I said, Arden, honey, you didn't ruin my day. You ruined my life a long time ago. I was like, it's fine.
And she looked at me. I went, not about the diabetes, just in general. I said, don't worry about it. I said, actually, you didn't even do it. Mom did it to me back when she said, sure.
I'll marry you. And I said... So, I was like I was like, don't worry. I'm like, this is this is what I do. Like, it's okay.
You didn't ruin my day. I said, was happy to go to the doctor with you. I'm happy to sit here with you now. And so we sit down to do Allego together last night because she starts feeling better. She's pepping up a little, and we start doing Allego.
I swear to you, we're sitting there for ten minutes. I'm gonna tell you the absolute truth. We're sitting there for ten minutes. Her Dexcom loses its connection.
Oh my god.
As she's trying to eat and her blood sugar is going up and we're trying to like bolus for it. Okay. It'll come back. No big deal. We're sitting there a little longer, and she's trying to push Allego down.
And her finger slips. She has a gel nail on. The gel nail catches the end of Allego. It rips the gel nail off of her actual nail and rips a hole in her nail down to the down to the to the the cuticle underneath of her nail. It's insanely painful and doesn't come completely attached.
Now we are standing in the kitchen using a pair of nail clippers, slowly chipping... I'm slowly chipping this nail off trying to get down to the part that I need to see so I can get it off of her. So it's so she stops getting stabbed in her nail bed by her own nail that was literally ripped out a hole in the middle of her nail. Like... And she's just like, I can't believe this is happening.
And she's like, I've just like... I... And you could just see. She was like, I can't believe this is happening on top of how bad I have felt for the last couple of days. Right?
And I'm like, no. No. It's okay. We're gonna get... She's crying.
Like, you know, like, it's... She's clearly done. You know? Like, she's cooked. She's like, I I...
At one point, goes, just kill me. She goes, Jake, seriously. Just she's like, just just kill me. I'm done. And I was like, no.
I'm gonna get it off. And I'm like, all up. I'm like, don't worry. It's fine. You know?
Like, and we're clipping it off and everything. I'm trying to joke with her. I'm like, you better hope your boyfriend's handy because you see here, I'm putting a lot of effort into this. Like, I'm clicking around and everything. Should we get done?
We sit back down. I swear to god. We sit down and her pod goes beep and just expires. So her pod Seriously? Pod just shuts off.
It's, like, three minutes after we get the nail off of her. And she's like, no. Like, it was like she was talking to the universe. She was like, no. And I was like, Arden, no big deal.
I said, look at the high side. You rode that pod all the way to the end. It gave you eighty hours. She goes, that is not comforting right now. I was like, well, always look on the bright side of life.
This thing worked all the way out to eighty hours for you. I was like, isn't this great? Blah blah blah. Right? No.
Swear to god I'm not lying. So, like, so I... I'm like, I'll fill a pod for you real quickly. I filled the pod. Blah blah blah.
Gave it to her. She's letting the dog out. She comes back in. She says, I'm gonna put the pod on my leg. So she pulls her pants down, which, by the way, until your kid has diabetes, you never think you're gonna see your adult children without their pants so much, but just put diabetes in the world.
Everybody's asses out all the time. And so she pulls her pants down. As she pulls it down, and Arden wears her CGM on her hip. I said, oh, I know why your Dexcom doesn't have a signal. Her underwear got behind the sensor and pulled the sensor off.
It was... It pulled it away from her. I said, honey, your sensor's pulled off by your your your underwear. Pull it off. And I thought she was just going to just, like, literally shut off.
Like, I thought she was... I just gave her a hug. I'd like, now I'm hugging my daughter. She's not wearing her pants. The dog's outside.
The pump is laying
on the like, you got a naked shower today. Take it all off. I'm gonna take a bath.
She didn't have the the wherewithal to get a shower. And I'm like I'm like, it's gonna be okay. I'm like, we're just gonna get you set up, and we're gonna keep going. We're just gonna keep moving. It's gonna be okay.
And so in that confusion, she puts the pod on but forgets to prime it. And then she's like, did you not prime this pod? I said, no. She goes, I didn't either. And then the...
And the disappointment just kept piling up on top of itself. Right? So she puts that on. She stands up. My son comes down and goes, hey.
What's up? She goes she goes, I'm having the worst day of my life, and I think she meant it. And then she's standing there. She pops the new CGM on. I I said, see, we're all done.
Everything's good. Like, everything's good. And, like, let's down. And then we put together a couple more steps of the Lego, and I said, Arden, I really think we should go to bed. I said, I think the best thing that we could do to this day is put it out of its misery and start again tomorrow.
Don't you? And she said, yeah. I think so. And I was like, okay. So we packed up and and went upstairs.
I swear to God, I don't know. I mean, something... A plane would have had to crash into the house for something worse to happen during that, like, couple of hours of her life. It's really horrifying. And the diabetes made it worse and worse and worse and worse.
At the same time, she's gonna wake up today and be okay. You know? So it's just the thing you live with. But are you It's
so much sometimes.
It's it's it's way too much. It's absolutely terrible. Nobody should do it. And I told her when we were done, I said, look. I'm not gonna give you a lesson here.
I say, but I've interviewed people who... Whose parents had to sharpen needles in their kitchen. I said I've... And I've interviewed... I...
That's they they were born when they literally... Had to buy... You got one needle and one syringe, and when it got dull, you had to sharpen it. Every time you used it, you had to boil it to use it again. I was like, this is way better than that.
But but the unspoken part is, you know, what would be better than that? Not having a bunch of autoimmune issues. That's what would be way better than that. And I don't, you know, and I don't find that there's any way to be comforting about that part. I don't know.
Like, I don't have a, like, rah rah story for that one. You know what I mean? So... I know. Yeah.
So what you're learning, in my opinion, is that you get a diagnosis and life fundamentally shifts. It's not undoable and it's not it's not impossible to be happier to live great, but the set of expectations you get when you come sliding out into the world and the ones you get when you get diagnosed are... They're different. Sucks. A
100%.
I'm sorry. Really is terrible. No. I'm sorry too. I mean, I'm
sorry for everyone that has to deal with it. And I know it's hard on us as parents as a mental load, and it's really hard on them for a mental load. I try... I do... We do try to encourage.
He Doesn't Want Him Burdened1:08:18
I do it more than my husband does because he's like... One of the things we argue about is, like, does he really need to carry that bag around? You know, if he's going down with a friend and it's gonna be forty five minutes or an hour away, I was like, well, I guess he doesn't need it unless he needs it. Like, unless he passes out and needs his glucagon, he don't need it. Like, I mean...
I don't know how to plan for that. Your husband, is it is it because --...
What I mean?
Is it because it doesn't look masculine or because he thinks it's a...
Oh, no.
No. No. She doesn't
want him to be, like, burdened with diabetes at all. But the fact of the matter is is he will be. And so, you know, I'd be like, well, don't take the bag, but throw this in your pocket, you know, with a couple packs of gummies.
Well, I... So a couple things. You can't go anywhere without a way to save yourself. That's just not okay. But Arden started a new job.
It's, like, twenty minutes from our house. Right? And for the first couple of weeks, she leaves every day with this little... It's a little bag. The bag's got insulin in it, an extra couple of pumps, couple extra CGMs, extra stuff.
Right? And she carries it back and forth and back and forth. You know, she doesn't... It's and she's just one day she goes, I'm not bringing this anymore. And I was like, okay.
I was like, what are you gonna do if your pod expires unexpectedly or you have a problem with one of your devices? And she was, I'll just come home. And I was like, well, Arden, it's a job. Like, you can't just tell them like, hey, my pump stopped working. I'm gonna leave now.
That probably won't be okay. It'll be okay. It'll be okay. It'll be okay. It was like two weeks later, get a text.
Hey.
Can you bring me a pump?
I need a pump. And I was like, yeah, you do. And well, luckily for you, by the way, I make a podcast. So I'm sitting here working on something. I can stand up and leave and come back forty minutes later and keep working.
Nobody's gonna yell at me. But I walked in with that pump and looked at her, and I didn't say a word. I was like, here you go. She's like, thank you. And I was like, no problem.
Like, I didn't, like... I didn't give a crap about it or anything like that, but she was already like... As I walked in, she... I could tell she was thinking, oh, this guy is thinking I should have brought that bag with me. So I tried not to telegraph, and I don't think I did.
I think she just knew. So, I mean, if you can't get back easily, you gotta have this stuff with you. And and listen, I can tell you all the stories you want, and you're gonna ignore me. You know what I mean? But I was in an event last year, and it was...
It's a it's a private diabetes event that I do every year. And and this... And it... It's spent... It's a lot of time people just coming up to me and like, hey.
I noticed this thing. What do you think of this? Like, they just kinda wanna stuff through in the downtime when I'm not speaking. This person comes up to me and she starts off... My blood sugar was over 400 today, and I'm having trouble getting it down.
And I was like, wait. Well, I don't understand what happened. Like, wearing she's a pump. You know what mean? I'm like, I don't know what happened.
You had diabetes a long time. How did your blood sugar like magically go to 400? And it tells me the story. I was on my way to work. I realized I only had like 15 units left, but I thought I can make it through the day on fifteen units.
And then got to work, bolus for my coffee, ran out of insulin, blah blah blah. And I was like, well, then... I guess then what you probably... There's a gap of time when you went home to change your pump and everything. And she goes, no.
I just never did that. I just finished my day at work. I was like, you lived at work for six hours without insulin? And she's like, yeah. It's no big deal.
And I'm like, no. It's an incredibly big deal. I was like, you can't do that. Like, don't do that. And as I was talking to her, I thought, oh god.
I wonder how many people do that. That's all I could think. It's like, oh, it's just three hours. I'll probably be okay. Like, it's an hour till I get home.
I probably... Like, that... That's probably happening all day long. Then she gets back, puts the pump on, but doesn't have any fundamental, like, skills to bring it down. She just puts the pump back on.
So the pump just starts delivering her insulin again. She's not on an AID system. It's just given her her basal. She's like, I've made a couple of big boluses. I asked how much.
She told me, I asked her settings. I was like, that's not nearly enough insulin. She goes, how do you know? And I'm like, well, this is how long you've been without insulin. So then you've been without your basal all that time.
And I was like, so that amount is missing. And I was like, and you have to move the number. And then you're only putting in this much. She goes, oh, diabetes for, like, you know, twenty years. And then, you know, I get her set up.
I get... I I bring her blood sugar down. Like, I'm like, listen. I'm not a doctor, not advice. This is how much I put in.
She puts it in. She comes back here forty minutes later. She's like, oh, my blood sugar is falling. I'm like, yeah. How about that?
And then she tells me a story about how in her community, she's the person who newly diagnosed people come to for advice. And I was like, oh, that's how this stuff happens. I'm like, okay. So, I I mean, tell your husband he's gotta take his stuff with him, and his friends should know how to use his glucagon. You know?
Because you don't plan for something to
go wrong. He does. He's one of the hardest thing of parents is, like, trusting other people. So Daniel's 14. He's 12.
Like, we only let him sleep at one other person's house. Mhmm. But whenever they wanna, you know, hang out and sleep over, I was like, why don't you do it over here? Why don't
you do it over here? Yeah. Our house...
And it's really because, you know... And every time I write the parents, was like, hey. If Daniel's
gonna spend the night, just keep your phones on, please, in case I have to call you. Okay. Yeah. No. Now you're that way.
I'm gonna
show up at your house in the middle of the night.
Hi. Hi. Hello? Come in. Hello?
Open the door. Open the door. I... Listen. I once...
I... I've told this before, but Arden once stayed at a person's house, and the father... I I showed up in the morning. He's bleary eyed, holding the coffee out of his mind. I'm like, hey.
You alright, man? He goes, didn't sleep. And I was like, why not? He goes, I... How do you sleep?
And I'm like, what? He goes, I I I I couldn't sleep because of Arden's diabetes. It just freaked me out. And I was like, oh, yeah. You you gotta get over that.
I was like, is it weird? Or you'll never sleep again. She never went back there. Yeah. I I didn't I didn't see the next invite.
He was nice to do it, but, like, it was more than it was more than he was bargained for.
Yeah. This friend's dad's... His friend's dad's best friend is a type one, so he kind of understands everything.
That's nice.
Self-Managing in High School1:14:41
But, yeah, it's super stressful. Daniel's transitioning... Or he's transitioned into high school. So that's been, you know, with the high blood sugars, really, really hard. I mean, I am an analyst.
Like, you know, my job, I I majored in math, you know, engineering. Like, this is... Like, I work in numbers all day long. I analyze trends and stuff. Die...
You know, having Daniel on diabetes, like, really forces you to pull back a little bit. And I finally stopped checking that glucose, you know, where they give you the trends and stuff because it was stressing me out so much to get, you know, to the 90% in range and, you know, not make his life so miserable being like, you know, you're high. Correct. You're high. Correct.
You're high. Correct. And so when when he was in grade school, the nurse was very involved. She had a a sugar mate and would track... I think there are four kids in his school.
She tracked them all. We had each other's numbers. I could just be like, hey. He's going low or, hey. He's high.
Can you... You know, like, she was, like, Yeah. Very, very involved. When I took him to high school, they do have a nurse on staff full time, which I'm so thankful for. And she's like...
I was like, oh, you're gonna... Yeah. Just seeing what their process was. And she's like, no. They self manage here.
Like, if you want me to do something else, I will. But Daniel and I have taken it as an opportunity for him to try to become independent. Because if you remember, he's super easy breezy. And I don't know if he's not checking his numbers. He's eaten spaghetti and chocolate milk every day for lunch.
Jeez. I just don't think those things go together. That's all. I was like, that's crazy. At his school, you know, you have
to pay for the meal service. Like, it's not an option.
Mhmm.
So he... So we spend the money. So it's just... And I said, you know, maybe make better food choices or you're not giving yourself enough insulin. But he was sitting around two seventy five after lunch until he got home.
Oh.
But terrible. Right?
Yeah. And that makes you feel horrible too on top of everything else. Not does he... He feels horrible. You feel horrible.
Like, you know, you you...
I am so stressed out, and then he is not answering my messages. And I don't know.
I know.
The other... So I think it was this Monday. He was finally, like, at 01:15 all day long. And I said, I said, you did a really good job today. I said, what did you what did you eat for lunch?
He goes, spaghetti and chocolate milk. I was like, what? He goes, yeah. I said, how'd you keep your blood sugar down? He goes, oh, I pre bowls before lunch this time.
I was like, oh, were you not doing that before? Because we had the conversation 8,000,000 times. Like, make sure your... Whatever class you're in, like, maybe set a little alarm on your phone and, you know, at least put some units on board so you get something going. Yeah.
Yeah. I'm doing that. I'm doing that. So just dealing with, like, a 14, 15 year old and trying to give them the space. Yeah.
And you know it's not gonna be super easy, but I think it's a really good learning opportunity for him because I can't do everything and then send them to college in three years. Like, how's that gonna go?
Yeah. It's tough because you find yourself wondering and worrying, but the truth is is it's... You're just gonna have to keep just saying... It's parenting. Right?
Just keep saying this stuff over and over again, and hopefully, it'll stick to him. And look. He had a good outcome there. He he was two seventy five enough times after lunch. He was like, I guess I could do that thing, she said.
You know? Right. And he try... He was he was tired of... I mean, he was sick and tired of being sick and tired probably.
So Yeah. That's it.
It's encouraging.... Hard space to live in, and I know people do it with everything. Everything you do is that you have to watch your children fail so they can succeed because they have to learn on their own. And I'm not gonna go to college and live in this dorm room. Like, I mean, it's just not gonna happen.
Well, I... You know, it... Your point your point is is absolutely true. Like, everything is like that. They they do something.
It doesn't go right. They learn a lesson. They... Sometimes they don't learn the lesson. You know, sometimes it's something small and not a big deal.
Sometimes it's heroin. You know what I mean? Like... And... But Yeah.
But how frequently is it something that makes you feel like, oh, it's gonna kill them right now? Like, that's not... Like, you know what I mean? Like, you don't have a lot of things about that crossing the street when they're driving, you know, finding the right people to hang around. Like, there's stuff where you're like, okay.
Well, that's more immediate danger stuff. But until it's diabetes, and to this point of this conversation, until it's like, if I don't take this, something really bad's gonna happen to me, like, pretty fast. Like, that's... Those are different those are different table stakes at that point. You know what I mean?
It's not just like, oh, I'll let him date that girl and he'll find out. You know what I mean? Like, it's it's... It'll it'll break his heart a little bit, but he's young. He'll be alright.
Decisions You Can't Take Back1:19:51
He'll get over it. That's not that. And and at the same time, if... For many of you, it is that because most of you are gonna get through it and come out the other side okay, but the unknown... I was just talking about this with my son the other day.
I said the worst part about being a parent is making a decision and not knowing how it's going to turn out. Because once it turns out, you can't go back and do it again. It's too late. That thing's set in stone already. I don't know about you.
I think that's the worst part about being in charge of another human being is that I'm...
A 100%. Yeah. A 100%.
I'm gonna say something. And when this is over, whatever the outcome is is on me and it's irreversible. And that's Right. Yeah. That's leadership, I guess.
That's parenting. And it's it sucks, especially around health stuff because, oh, it's okay for your blood sugar to be one eighty for a little bit. Like, let's let him be a kid. And that's all well and good if everything's fine after that. But if you wake up 69 years old from a phone call from Dan who's like, hey, mom.
I gotta get this laser treatment in my eyes. You're gonna, like, go, oh, that was my fault. I did that. Like... And whether that's true or not, it's how it's gonna feel.
So that's why all this sucks.
It will.
Yeah. Go up kids, suckers.
I know. We dropped our oldest son at college a couple, like, in August. When I was hugging him goodbye, I said to him, I was like, don't start a cocaine ring and don't get anybody pregnant. And he looked at me. He's like, why would you say that?
I said, because at least I've said it out loud. So if you do it...
Not my fault.
I told them not
to do it.... That kid. Also, by the way, did you see they just busted a cocaine ring at Penn State? Yes. That's why I said it to him
because this all happens. There was that cocaine ring in Penn State, and then there was something else in Ohio where they busted a cocaine ring at Miami University in Oxford, Ohio. So I said, I'm just saying it out loud so you know that I'm telling you not to do this when you're at school.
Did you see one of the kids' names was, his nickname was Pablo Pledge Cabarr? No. Yeah. Because they made the pledges, like, run the drugs or something like that.
Oh my gosh.
It's kind of it's kind of horrible and a little hilarious. Pablo Pledgekabar, who... Hey. Listen. If you're listening, whoever came up with well, I do...
I I mean, if you can hear this in federal prison, it's a... Good job. That's that's a good nickname. I don't know if it's worth the time you're gonna do, but good nickname. Yeah.
Oh, listen. I told... I've said on the podcast before, I I pulled my son aside. I said there are only a few things in life that are uneffable. And he goes, what?
I said, once you f them up, you can't uneff them. I was like, there's just a couple things. I said, you cannot kill somebody. Car accident by mistake, whatever. I said, even if you get away with it legally, it'll haunt you for the rest of your life.
I said Mhmm. You cannot get a girl pregnant by mistake. I said, that is a thing you can't undo. And I was like, just I said there's only a couple things. Just look for those things that are...
That you can't, you know, you can't tie back up when they get untied. And and avoid those things, you'll be okay. Please. Yeah. Like, that's it.
I I... And good luck. You know what I mean?
Good luck.
Yeah. I hope you enjoy spending my money on whatever it is. And then coming home in four years and telling you, this was a complete waste of time. I didn't need this college education. Like, oh, awesome.
That's great. Thanks. Yep. Yeah. Then he pivots, by the way, and for a 300 on...
We sent my son to school where he came back with a quantitative econ degree and a mathematics minor. And inside of nine months says to us, I don't really think this is the way I wanna go. And we were like, okay. And he's like, I'm gonna learn to code. And I was like, okay.
He goes, I think there's a pathway there for me. And I was like, you're going to learn to code? This kid up until then, I don't think knew how to open his email and didn't know... Didn't... Like, he had a laptop, but, you know, to run word documents on.
Like, he didn't know anything about computers. My wife's like, he's gonna learn to code? I'm like, that's what he said. And so he buys a $300 online course and nine months later has a job.
I believe it.
And I thought...
Well, he sounds super smart.
Mean, he's making that. So... But, Amelie, that's not the point. The point is I was like, oh god. He was right.
He didn't need that degree. That's all it made me think. I was like, this whole thing could've cost me $300. And I was like, ugh. So...
No. He still needed it. I know. Grew up immature and the experiences in college.
Yeah. I mean, I know, but you know what I mean? My goodness. Hey. Do you ever get to push a button to make a missile fire or anything cool like that?
No. But I got to oversee it.
That's awesome. They make...
Gunnery Officer1:24:42
So I was... When I was on the destroyer, I was the gunnery officer. So we had the vertical launch systems, you know, the tomahawk shootout from the ship
Jeez.
And go.
Is it...
We don't actually shoot tomahawks that often
Yeah.
Like, unless you're at war because they're expensive and stuff. But we, I mean, we would do exercises.
Have you ever been in a, like, a a live fire, like, actual situation?
Like, enemy fire? Yeah. No. Okay. I think when we were on the ship, we were in the Straits Of Hormuz, which is that, you know, very little space when you're coming out of The Gulf.
Mhmm. And it's it's intense going through there. And they they call them dowels, but they're the little boats, you know, in that area. And I think our captain, like, shot fired. They were...
He was uncomfortable with how close they were to the ship. So he, like, fired shots... Warning shots. Because when I deployed, it was right after the USS Cole had been bombed in Yemen.
Oh, jeez.
So, I mean, people were, like, a little bit nervous.
Yeah. I...
We're a lot nervous. Yeah. A lot nervous about that, you know, because one of those little boats just drove into the side of the USS Cole and, you know, blew a huge hole Yeah. In the ship.
That's crazy. Oh, I don't know how you do that. That's... I... Even being, like, in a tight space or incapable...
Like, I have a friend who, like, sings on a cruise ship, and she's like, this is... I can't... It's hard to do. Like, yeah. And she's, you know, not exactly doing all the things you just said.
Do you have to learn to fire a weapon even though you're not gonna be around one? Like, are you, like, range trained and stuff like that?
Yeah. Most people in the military. At least, like, a nine millimeter and a shotgun
Mhmm.
Or a rifle. Is it Sorry. A rifle.
Was that a thing that was, like, natural to you, or were you... While you were doing it, you were like, I can't believe I'm doing this.
No. I was the gunnery officer, so I've shot a lot of weapons. You shot a Even the big, you know, the giant ones, you know, where you're holding on with both sides, a 25 millimeter gun. Yeah.
Do you still do it now, like, to keep, like
We have been, like, to the gun range and shot, you know, pistols and stuff. We like our kids to know how... Like, just what a gun is and, like, how to shoot it. So in a very space, you know Yeah. Safe space Because I think those are, like, really powerful, and they seem to be around all the place.
So at least know how to handle and use it, but don't ever actually do that. You know? The same thing. Like
Yeah.
It's a powerful weapon. You don't wanna accidentally kill somebody or do anything like that. Mhmm.
Wow. What a thing. Oh my gosh. Well, are you happy you did this?
I am. I was was excited. I didn't tell anybody. So when I bought the mic, like, I what is this for? I said nothing.
He... But he's relentless sometimes with that. And so
I said, well, I have
an interview. And so then we were in the car.
Yeah.
But what interview? And Sean's like, what interview are you going on? I was fine. And Daniel goes, I know what you're doing. You're talking to that juice box guy.
You should have said it's for OnlyFans and just not spoken another word to him. Oh my god. Would have mortified him. He would have been like, oh my god. I'm not gonna ask her any more questions about anything.
My god. Well
I was excited, and you're very, very easy to talk to. I was a little bit nervous this morning, but, yeah, I mean, you are very easy to talk to and make people feel really comfortable. I know people have told you that, but you're amazing at what you do. Oh, thank you. That's awesome.
I know you're a big fan of Howard Stern. We were big fans of Howard Stern. We listened to him for years. And I can say... I mean, it seems like he's really easy to talk to too.
So that long form... This long format interview process, it's it's really good. It works for you.
Appreciate it. Yeah. You just really need to be, like... I mean, you have to actually be interested in people. That's the first thing.
You can't be like a... You know, you can't be reading from a list and you can't have no thoughts. You have to, you know, have follow-up questions. But I find just being interested in people to be the... And it'd be the really, like, the most important part of...
I've said this before. I'm not embarrassed at all. Like, I once listed Howard Stern interview ish, a porn star for, like, two hours. He never once asked her about what she did for work. And, like...
Yeah. And I don't
He's amazing at what he does, and it's really interesting.
Yeah. Just talk to her like she was just an average person that he snatched up off the street, and her life was incredibly interesting and layered. It was interesting to see how she had impacts. Like like, her upbringing had impacts on her life that she didn't recognize. It was interesting to watch him not tell her about herself, but ask her about herself and watch her learn about herself while she was answering.
And I've just... I've... Since then, I probably heard that when I was, I don't know, 18, 19 years old, something like that. And it's just always stuck with me that everybody is really interesting. So I I...
All the time all the time people ask me, like, do you interview? Like, famous people? This... I'm like, I just I generally end up talking to people who've never been interviewed in their entire life. And I was like, I I find it much more, like, fulfilling to have a conversation like this.
Plus, it's good it's good for me. Like, I get to meet more people, especially as I get older and don't wanna be around anybody. This is good to keep me connected to society. My wife is standing outside with me the other day, and I... And we're, like, looking at this house that I'm I'm pitching is, like, the place where we retire.
And she goes, what do you find attractive about this? I said, stop talking for a second. Do you hear that? I was like, it's nothing. I I never hear nothing.
I was like, this is what I wanna do. I wanna be able to walk outside sometimes and not hear anything. Said, that's all I care about. And I... She's like, well, who's gonna cut this grass?
I said, I don't care. We'll figure that out. I'm like, I don't... I... Yeah.
I don't care. I don't care. Let it grow high, and we'll we'll... I said other people around here seem to just bail it and sell it for hay. Let's do that or let's not.
Oh, you can hire the farmers. They'll come over and do it for you.
Exactly. And then they just take it away and they sell it. I'm like, there's a way. Like, everyone hears grass is cut. There must be a way to handle it.
I was like, I am getting out of... I... We gotta go. I... The amount of times I say we gotta go to her.
Yeah. I think I won't.
My parents bought a big farm in Virginia, like, as their retirement. They're not farmers, but they do. I mean, the farmer down the road comes and plants and hauls that stuff away. So it's, you know...
You're making
sense to ways around it.
You are making sense to me. Your parents did that at what age?
I was in college. So, I mean, they were probably our age. And my dad's best friend from the navy, they kind of had followed each other around for, you know, twenty or thirty years, and they found this beautiful piece of property on the Potomac River on the, you know, outside of DC. It's, like, super country. So it's in a little town called King George, near Fredericksburg, Virginia.
Sure. But that's gorgeous. Yeah. They bought, like, a 100 acres. So...
I don't need that much. I just need to go. I I I can't I can't... I just can't... Can I tell you, I'll finish this thought up?
I I I oddly use this as a reference a lot. Like, I... I'll say a lot of times, like, when you go to get new tires, like, you expect them to know how to use the lug gun and stuff like that. I don't know why that's my example as I don't buy tires that often. But Mhmm.
Having said that, I need tires. And so yesterday, in the middle of my daughter being in pain and, like, me trying to, like, do my job and all the other things, I really need to order a set of tires. And I think I try to call someone on the phone. It doesn't go well. I try to do it online.
You can't get a straight answer about how to, like, where to ship them. I'm like, okay. Fine. I'm just gonna drive to the tire store. So I drive to the tire store.
I go in. I am ignored summarily for twenty minutes, I would say. And then finally, someone comes up to me and is like, are you being helped? And I was like, no. And what I'm thinking is no.
And you've walked past me 18,000 times, but I appreciate you asking now. So I said, I need the size tires for this kind of vehicle. And the guy takes me over to the computer and types something and then turns around and wants me to browse them. And I'm like, okay. I'm like, well, I don't...
I... I'm like, I don't really know which ones I'm looking for. He goes, well, you have the option of all these. I'm like, well, what's the virtue of any of them? He has no idea.
And then I'm like, okay. I was like... And so, like, now I'm off to the side. It's me and my friend ChatGPT trying to figure out what tires to buy. I come back.
I go, I'm gonna get these. He goes, okay. We don't have those. I was like, they're right here on your website. He goes, yeah.
I don't have access to them on this system. It would be easier if you ordered them on the website. And I was like What? I'm like
Oh my god.
Oh, okay. And I was like, and then have them delivered to you. He goes, order your house, and then you can bring them here. I was like, but I could have them delivered to you. Right?
He goes, yeah. He goes, no. But once they say they're delivered, like, give us a couple days. And I'm like, uh-oh. And I go, I'll I'll be back.
I just leave. I'm like, okay. Now I get... Now I figure out I'll call a different place. I get this place on the phone.
I said, their guy, these are the exact tires I want. Can you can you do these tires? Maybe. And now he's clicking around. He comes back.
He says, well, they're this much money. I said, well, on this other website, they're this much money. I heard you guys price match. Oh, yeah. We price match.
Hold on a second. Clicks around a little bit. He goes, I can't find them. I'm like, I'm looking at them. I could send you the link.
Goes, I'm not set up for that. I'm like, I don't I don't even know what you mean by that. I'm like, you're on the website. Right? And he goes, yeah.
I said, well, how about if I just read the model number? I'm gonna transfer you. I was gone. And then this this woman answers the phone and says, hey. How can I help you?
And I don't know. I'm like, I was I was like, I was just talking to a guy at a location. I was trying to get him to... And she goes, oh, you know what probably happened? She goes in this long explanation about what happened.
I was like, yeah. Yeah. That's probably it. And she goes, okay. Well, I can transfer you.
I'm like, wait. You can't help me? She goes, no. I have to transfer you to another person to do that. I have now talked to three people whose job it is to find out if they can knock $30 off of each tire for me.
And all I could think was, what if we just fired two of you and made the the tires cheaper? It's all I could think. But I was like, okay. So I... I'm I'm...
Trust me. I'm upbeat. I'm polite. I'm not... It's not like I am now.
I'm on the phone with this guy for twenty five minutes. And at the end, he goes, I guess we can't do it for you.
Really?
I swear to god. And I was like, I just spent the last ninety to to two hour... Ninety minutes to two hours trying to get somebody to give me tires. And then my wife calls me from work, and all I could say to her was, like, we... I started explaining this to her, I stopped myself.
I said, hey. How's your day going? And I said, tell me about your day. And she goes, okay. And she's like, you alright?
I'm like, if I start telling you about what just happened to me, it's gonna end with me saying, we gotta get out of here. And I was like, and I don't wanna do that again. I was like, so, like like, just how was your day? She told me some nice things about her day. And she goes, are you alright?
I'm like, I just need tires. And
so You need to go to Costco and get tires.
Last night, I just bought them online. They're gonna show up at my house today. And then I'm just gonna drive to places and go, here. Put these on my car. And and and what I'm gonna end up doing is taking the part out where the other people think.
Like, I'm gonna think for them so they can do the thing. Because every time I ask someone to help me, they seemed incapable. And so
really hope they don't tell you that they can't put them on because you didn't buy the tires for them.
I don't. I I don't... I assume I'm gonna have to pay them extra. I don't even care. Now it's funny.
I went from trying to save money to caring what the tires cost. I just need the the book to go on my car, please. It was it was... Anyway, like, that shouldn't be like that. Do you know what mean?
They're modeling the insurance company.
I swear to god. Why would you need to send me to three different people to see if you can knock $30 off a tire?
I don't know.
I don't either.
That's frustrating.
Oh my god. But it's not just that. It's everything. And I sound crazy now. But if I sound crazy to you, you just haven't been alive long enough.
Give it two more decades. Give it two more deck... I mean, if the robots don't kill you. It's fine. Everything's gonna be fine.
I'm like, don't you worry. The robots are definitely gonna kill us. Okay. So
I hope not, but
we'll see. At least I'll have a great website while it's happening.
I know. My cousin was in the marine corps, and he posted something on Instagram the other day. He's like, I've got three years to train. And everyone's like, three years to train for what? He's like...
And then he posted a video of Terminator. I was like, okay. There we go.
I actually heard a thoughtful person say yesterday, I keep hearing this number. There's a 10% chance that AI is gonna, like, wipe us out. And the person said, I don't know if that's gonna happen or not, but I would like to change the messaging to there's a 10% chance that the people that own the AI companies are gonna wipe us out. And I was like, oh, thoughtful. Yeah.
Yeah. So, anyway, I don't know what's gonna happen. You don't know what's gonna happen. But No. We'll all have a plan for breaking into a pharmacy when it goes down.
Total Eclipse of the Heart1:38:10
Oh, and I'm gonna call the episode. Do you wanna guess, or should I just tell you it's pretty long now? I can just tell you.
Well, I assume that has something to do with the navy?
No. Sorry.
Oh, I don't know.
I'm gonna call it total eclipse of the heart.
Aw. I like that.
Isn't that nice? Yeah. And he got to see the the eclipse, but then things got sad afterwards.
I will always appreciate the doctor being like, yes. You can do that.
Yeah. I mean, you got...
Because it was cool. It's like a once in a lifetime experience, and I guess she recognized he was an entire Yeah. Like, health, you know, concerns that, yes, go do that with him before we ruin your life in other ways.
In other ways. Alright. Hold on one second for me. I have to, like, button this up, but I I gotta hit stop here. You were really terrific.
I appreciate you coming on. Thank you very much.
Thank you.
Yep. Heck of an episode today, wouldn't you say? Let's thank Dexcom and the Omnipod five for sponsoring there. That's right, my friends. We were sponsored today by the dexcomgseven.
Dexcom.com/juicebox. Head over there right now. Look into that fifteen day Dexcom g seven. Fifteen days a long time. It's like half a month.
Don't check my math, but I'm pretty sure I'm right. And let's also thank the Omnipod five. My goodness gracious. Omnipod five tubeless. That beautiful algorithm's updated now with that new 100 target.
Get in there. Find out more about it. Omnipod.com/juicebox. You want some tubeless insulin pumping? Yeah.
You do. By any chance, have you tried the small sip series? It's curated takeaways from the juice box podcast voted on by listeners as the most helpful insights for managing their diabetes. These bite sized pieces of wisdom cover essential topics like insulin timing, carb management, and balancing highs and lows, making it easier for you to incorporate real life strategies into your daily routine. Take a deep dive, take a sip, and discover what our community finds most valuable on the journey to better diabetes management.
For more information on small sips, go to juiceboxpodcast.com and then go... Oh, actually, we changed the website. Let me see. Go to juiceboxpodcast.com. And from there, there's these two little lines on the right side top.
That's the menu. Then click that, then click series, then there's pro... There's small sips right there. Pro tips top, bold beginnings, bold... Bolus four, asks that.
There's a lot of them there. There's actually a little search there too. Could you just type small sips into the search? Oh, wow. That search works great.
Look at that. And then you could go right to, like, all results for small sips. Oh, and that takes you to the FAQ. You should check out the FAQ page too. I think that's juiceboxpodcast.com/jbfaq.
Seriously, that thing's amazing. Actually, whole website is... I mean, have you, like, seen it? You should you should go check out the website. The website rocks.
It is a potpourri, a never ending cornucopia of support for you and your diabetes journey. That's right. It really is. What else we got over here? Oh, I don't like the way that works.
I'm gonna fix that. Note to self, Change the change the masthead on the frequently asked questions page. Yeah. I don't like that. Fix that.
Oh, Claude. Oh, hell. I forgot to say thank you. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back again very, very soon.
What is that noise? Stop it. Stop. Can you hear that? My chameleon squeaking.
Are you squeaking? What are you rubbing the branch against the... Don't tell people I have reptiles. They'll think I'm weird. Thanks so much for listening.
I'll be back very soon with another episode of the Juice Box podcast. Look at me. Get all deep in there Been another episode of the juice box podcast. You can hear it. What was that?
Oh, I'm getting alarms and alerts on my phone. I was gonna get real deep and tell you about the juice box podcast.
Read the full disclaimer
© 2007–2026 Juicebox Podcast. All rights reserved.
#1988 Six Years of Questions
Six Years of Questions
April's two kids were diagnosed four months apart. She saved up six years of questions and asked every one of them, starting with: just tell me the bolus.
Jump to a moment
- Her son Jack was diagnosed in November 2020 at nine, her daughter Sienna in February 2021 at eight. In hindsight Sienna's symptoms came first — she had always peed constantly and always had headaches, so the family had a ready excuse for every one of them. Jack's were caught in days because a Utah family who lost a daughter to undiagnosed diabetes had stuck in April's mind: he kept walking back to the truck for water instead of fishing from the shore.
- The Panda Express answer, which is the one she waited six years for. Orange chicken, noodles, no other variables: pre-bolus as long as it takes, roughly 15 to 20 minutes out, about 40 carbs up front and another 40 as she starts eating, call it 80 total — a blanket of insulin laid over the timeline of the food rather than a single number at the start. Scott stops mid-answer to re-read the disclaimer.
- On menstrual cycles he will not give you a four-week chart, and says the chart is not the point: more, more, more, then just right, then less, then it ramps again. Which week lands where does not matter because it is cyclical — you learn your own pattern and stop needing to know why.
- A 5.5 A1C is a knowable quantity, not a personality trait. Put him in a white room with a kid who listens and he says he can do it on settings and timing alone. Everything above that number is the human part — the 200 you decide not to say anything about today, and the difference between a seven aimed at six and a seven aimed at seven and a half.
- Her kids want their high alarms off at school. Scott's answer: he cannot construct the argument that a low alarm matters because it could kill you today but a high alarm does not because it will only kill you later. He did not arrive at 236 pounds on the first day either.
- Bold Beginnings Series — The newly diagnosed questions answered plainly — where April would send anyone three weeks in
- Juicebox Podcast Pro Tip Series — Management fundamentals with Jenny Smith, episodes 1000–1025
- Twiist — An insulin pump with the twiist loop algorithm, targetable as low as 87 — or call (877) 489-4478
- US Med — Dexcom, Libre, Omnipod, Tandem, iLet and more — or call (888) 721-1514
- Eversense 365 — One insertion a year, with unlimited data sharing through the Eversense Now app
Every word of the conversation
Welcome and Sponsors0:04
Hello, friends, and welcome back to the Juice Box podcast. If you don't love today's episode, you can have your money back. You should not, in any way, shape, or form, take anything you hear on the juice box podcast. As medical advice, I'm talking about medical advice, regular advice, any kind of advice. This is a 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. I cannot stress that enough. Hey. If you have type one diabetes or you're the parent or guardian of someone who does and you're over 18 years old and a US resident and you would like to help type one diabetes research, please go to t1dexchange.org/juicebox and complete their survey.
And when you're done that, head over to YouTube and follow my YouTube account because I've been posting some pretty great stuff there lately, and I think you would like it. That's pretty much it. Here's the show. Today, we've got a great podcast, and it's sponsored by great advertisers. US Med, the Eversense three sixty five, and Twist.
You know about Twist? It's an insulin pump. I'll tell you all about it in a second. I'm having an on body vibe alert. This episode of the Juice Box podcast is sponsored by the Eversense three sixty five, the only one year wear CGM.
That is one insertion and one CGM a year. One CGM, one year. Not every ten or fourteen days. Ever since cgm.com/juicebox. This episode of the podcast is sponsored by the Twist AID system powered by Tidepool.
That features the Twist loop algorithm, which you can target to a glucose level as low as 87. Wanna learn more? Go to visit .twist.com/juicebox. That's visit .twist.com/juicebox, and twist has two i's. Understand?
Twiist.com. Visit .twist.com/juicebox. Hey. US Med is a longtime sponsor of the podcast. It's where we get our diabetes supplies from.
You could as well. Usmed.com/juicebox, or you can call (888) 721-1514. US Med, that's where my daughter gets your supplies. Use the link or the number. Get your free benefits check today and get started with US Med.
Meet April2:22
My name is April. I am the mother of two type one kids, teens. They're not kids anymore. They're teens, which is completely different from type one kids. And I love the podcast.
I've been listening for years, and it saved my life literally and my kids' lives, literally.
Wait. Lit... Alright. We'll get back to literally. But Literally.
But tell me how, how is raising a teen with type one different than raising a younger child with type one?
Oh, I feel like it's just such a more delicate balance than when they were... My kids were diagnosed. If there is such a thing, they were diagnosed at the perfect ages. My son was nine. He was diagnosed in November 2020.
Four Months Apart3:10
He was nine. And then my daughter was diagnosed in February 2021, and she was eight. So just old enough to communicate with and talk through things with and be able to reason with, but still young enough that they seem to be reasonably adjusted and doing fine with their diagnosis. And, you know, they weren't babies. Yeah.
I see people on Instagram, and that just seems like such a nightmare. I went over once and helped a newly diagnosed family put on their first Dexcom, and the Dexcom was literally as big as his butt cheek. It was so sad. I cried the whole way home. So I'm very grateful for the age my kids were, and they were just easier than.
They just did what I said. They asked my opinion a lot. We did it more together than we do now. They are away from me often, and they know everything already.
So Since they
know they do a pretty good job. They they do a good enough job that I try not to complain at them, you know, as often as I can as often as I can. So Well, I Yeah. That's probably the biggest thing.
I take your point. Right? They're old enough to listen, not not old enough to complain and argue. Right?
Exactly. Yeah.
Yeah. They're right in that sweet spot. I mean, everybody knows that's the sweet spot of raising kids. There's there's... You know, every every part of raising a kid has its pros and cons.
But if you're just talking about the part where they think you know everything and they're willing to listen and they don't call you names behind your back, eight nine is not a bad time.
It it was it was really perfect. Yeah. They both had great attitudes and... Yeah. So I do consider myself pretty lucky as far as that goes.
But, yeah, that is not where we are anymore. Although, like you said, there's pros and cons to both, and they're... It's nice now that none of us feel crazy. We're all adjusted, and we don't cry anymore. We don't fight over pump changes or Dexcom changes.
They just do it. You know? So, like, my physical load in it is just when they want it from me. It's not me having to do it, which is a nice place to be.
Yeah. What are they now? 14 ish around there? 15?
13 and 15. 13. Mhmm. My my younger daughter is almost 14, so we're coming upon six years.
These the only two kids, or are there others?
I have a 24 year old, yeah, from my first marriage, but she... I do think that the gene is probably from me because I I know you always ask that I have hypothyroidism.
Mhmm.
And my mom has... I don't know what it is. She calls it autoimmune disease. She And I don't even know.
She she has a name for it? My my my wife's grandmother
That's just it.
Oh, my wife's grandmother would call, she'd say I have the sprue, and I think that meant celiac. So so so you're
That's funny.
So you... Wait. The person in your life calls it the autoimmune disease? I have an autoimmune disease?
Yeah. She says that I have autoimmune disease. Well, so she also... We're we're working. She just moved across the street from me, and I was like, if we're gonna be neighbors, you cannot call this diabetes anymore.
And I don't know what diverticulitis is, but we don't have that. So we don't need to talk about that anymore.
She says diverticulitis a lot?
Yeah. That's like a... That's the answer for a lot
of things. Oh, oh, I see. Everything that's wrong is... I... I've got diverticulitis.
Yeah. Of Clearly, our our generation's just diabetes, diverticulitis, and autoimmune disease.
Gotcha. Well, diet The health concerns over there. Tell her diet can't beat us, and then see what she says there. Well, that's that's Yeah. She's moving close to you so you can be helpful?
Yeah.
Okay. Yeah. That's nice. Your 24 year old, does she have any autoimmune stuff?
No. Not yet. She's the one that wouldn't be able to handle it well either, so we're, like, crossing our fingers that that stays far away from her. She's never gotten the antibody test or anything. She just doesn't wanna know.
She's like, at this point, I I don't really care to know. We'll just figure it out
Okay.
As it comes.
Listen. There's... Most days I feel like I can't I can't deal with any of this either, so I I take I take her point. Yeah. I guess because some people are gonna, want me to ask you, did your kids have COVID before they were diagnosed?
Asymptomatic COVID in October7:30
Yeah. My son did. Mhmm. He did. He, had it in October 2020.
Our whole family... Oh, wait. Actually, I didn't know that he had it. I... You forget.
My husband and I had it really bad and lost our smell and everything. And we live in Utah. Everything was still pretty. Everything was really relaxed here.
Mhmm.
But at that time, it wasn't. Well, I guess compared to the rest of the world, it probably was, but it it was still very. And so we were, what was it called? What did we call that? Quarantine.
Quarantine.
And so he wasn't around anybody else, but, he never had symptoms. So then after he was diagnosed, then people with diabetes, people asked me about it if that was... Can you hear that dinging? Sorry.
No. I'm good. Don't worry.
Oh, okay. My my text messages are coming in.
You listen a lot, right,
to the podcast? I do not as much as I did. I used to be diehard, but, of course, now it's... But, yeah, I I still drop in monthly.
My point my point is is you've heard me enough to know that if it was something I could hear, I would have complained about it by now. So it's fine. I I can't I can't hear the data.
That's true. You don't edit much out. You usually kinda
do this sometimes. So... Yeah. Oh, oh, I'm sorry.
So... Okay. So, anyways, we went... After he was diagnosed with diabetes, we went and got a test to see if he had had COVID. Whatever that test was, you could go.
Okay.
I think it was a blood draw, and he had had COVID. So he didn't have symptoms. My husband and I did, and he had had COVID. I'm assuming he had it at the same time as us because we're all quarantined together still. And then my daughter, we are a vaccinated family, but I don't do flu shots probably just because I'm type b, and it just seems like one other thing to do, and I don't really care to do that.
You're type b? What does type what does type b mean? I used to hate ordering my daughter's diabetes supplies. I never had a good experience, and it was frustrating. But it hasn't been that way for a while, actually, for a number of years now because that's how long we've been using US Med.
Usmed.com/juicebox or call (888) 721-1514. US Med is the number one distributor for Freestyle Libre systems nationwide. They are the number one specialty distributor for Omnipod Dash, the number one fastest growing tandem distributor nationwide, the number one rated distributor in Dexcom customer satisfaction surveys. They have served over one million people with diabetes since 1996, and they always provide ninety days worth of supplies and fast and free shipping. US Med carries everything from insulin pumps and diabetes testing supplies to the latest CGMs.
It means I'm a nightmare, and I cannot believe that God thought I could handle two diabetic children. Although, I do do a fairly good job, have to say, but, you know, I'm just disorganized. I'm kind of just, like, dealing with the day as it comes and just whatever has to happen. And for me, it's just never been a flu shot.
Are you... Can I ask for a second? Are... Do you have a fairly successful life? Yeah.
Yeah. I
would say yes.
I I I think it's funny when people talk about it. Like, oh, I I mean, you say I deal with the day as it comes, but what what would I say? I'd say that I reorder my to do list by necessity. It's all just the way you frame it. You you know what I mean?
Like, I mean, if you're paying your bills and your kids are warm and safe and everything and no one's street fighting, on Instagram, I think you're probably doing fine. You know what I mean? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Check and check. We've got all those we've got all those things are are all correct.
You've never been in an you've never been in an Instagram reel punching another person in the face? Good for you.
Close, but no.
Not. April's, like, not yet, but I don't know if you heard. My mom's moving across the street.
If I'm gonna be fighting anyone in Instagram, it's gonna be in the comments, I think. I've almost fought a couple people in Instagram comments, but I've held my own. There's no cameras around.
I don't hold them back. Oh, so... I'm sorry. So your your... Did your daughter have COVID too?
No. Well, oddly... Funny enough, she refused to do... It was a finger poke. That's what it was to get that that test, and she wouldn't do it.
And I... Again, I was just like, okay. Whatever. I don't care. And then, you know, she get...
A Graphic About a Kid Who Died of a Cold11:56
I got... So I got her the flu shot that year trying to protect Jack, my old... My son. You know, our family got flu shots that year. I was out of my mind with concern.
Mhmm. I had seen, like, a graphic that was like, we need a cure. This 10 year old died of the common cold, and I couldn't get anybody to explain that to me. Like, it almost makes me cry even, like, thinking of me, like that version of me that saw that graphic. And I sent it to two of my friends that were nurses and was like, what does this mean?
How how does somebody with diabetes die of a cold? And me... They were both like, I don't know. Like, you know, I I don't know what that would mean. And I'm like, well, somebody with diabetes posted this, and so they know that this is true.
And why did they die of a cold?
And Oh. And they couldn't give me
an answer.
Other people know things are true just because they're willing to put them on the Internet?
Oh my gosh. I don't know. Were you really...... Man. I thought everything was true on the Internet.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No.
I I hear you. So you were...
I mean, obviously, that was true. Like, they had developed ketones. They weren't watching, you know, whatever. Like, the cold didn't kill them. DKA killed them.
Right.
So if you watch for DKA when your child has a cold, they're not gonna die of a cold. But I couldn't... I didn't know that yet.
You couldn't separate it that early. So in the beginning, you just thought if my kid gets sick, he probably will just die because the lady on the Internet said it.
Yes. Yeah. I was so worried.
I hear you.
We... There's, a a story that me and my best friend, so then my daughter was diagnosed, assumingly she had an autoimmune response after the flu shot, which is normal. You know? But then looking back, she had symptoms earlier than Jack. Mhmm.
We just
Didn't see her.
Had ways of excusing them quicker. Yeah. She'd always peed a 100 times a day, and she always had water. You know? So...
But, she was sick. She was having headaches. She was not feeling good, you know, in that fall, and I kinda chalked it up to different anxieties or whatever. And then, yeah, after that was diagnosed and
April, make sure noticed
it pretty
I understand the timeline. You think your daughter was a slower onset that began before your sons. You just didn't put the pieces together.
For sure.
Okay. Alright.
For sure. Yeah. Well, not... Yeah. I'm gonna say for sure.
I guess you can't you can't say that about really much.
But Feels like that.
Was not feeling well that fall. Mhmm. But then Jack, he had his... Like, he was easy to potty train. He was just such an easy kid, never asked for anything.
Kisses for Kai14:29
And I caught his, diagnose... His, you know, symptoms so fast from a viral family here in Utah that had lost their daughter, to an an... You know, undiagnosed diabetes
Oh, gosh.
Kisses for Kai c. I don't know if you've seen them Sure. That family around. But...
I'm very aware.
Sorry. What was that?
I'm sorry. I am very aware of them. Yes.
Yeah. Yeah. You know, they were close to our community, and it had just always stuck in my mind for the years. Actually, I had even had Sienna tested for diabetes when she was, like, three because of that, because she peed all the time. And it was a no.
You know? And they were like, we've had so many families come in because of this, but sure. We'll test her. And, anyways... Yeah.
Walking Back to the Truck for Water15:17
So Jack peed in the middle of the night once, and it woke me up. And then the next day, him and my husband went fishing, and he kept going back up to the truck for water bottles and, like, you know, interrupting their fishing streams. Mhmm. And my husband came home frustrated. He was like, we didn't even get to fish because we had to keep walking back up to the cooler because Jack was thirsty.
And I was like, oh, those are symptoms of type one diabetes. And he was like, oh, you you just... You've always jumped to the worst case scenario. I'm like, I do. You're right, and it's gonna save a lot of money.
April April,
how is it possible that you didn't say to him when he said you always jumped to the worst case scenario? You didn't say, how come you didn't think to bring the water down to the boat?
So true. They were fishing from the shore, but, like, that
would be way too reasonable. Just bring the cooler to the shore. What are we doing? 100%. The most boy thing I've heard so far today.
I couldn't fish. I had to keep walking back to the water.
My boys are so boy. They are very, very boys for sure. Like, I I always joke. My husband, you actually talked with him once about trying to get your son in your son in touch with
I remember.
Scouts or maybe college coaches. And, yeah, I I joked for a long time that when Jack was, you know, 12, that fun year of baseball that they were the same age. Like, he coached him, and Jack's best friends were Ryan's best friends. And, know, they were at the same age for a couple years there, it was so fun.
Can I tell you
So, yeah, they're very boy y?
He Came Back Up for His Glove16:47
My my son left my son left for a weekend with with friends on Friday, and he's, you know, like, taking stuff downstairs, and a buddy of his is gonna come by and pick him up. And they're gonna drive to some lake, and one of the kids has a place there, and they're gonna hang out for the weekend. And I... He, he walks past me, and I was like, I'll see you. He's like, bye.
And he left. But then he ran back up the stairs, and he's like, I forgot my glove. And I said, I thought you guys weren't playing golf. And I... Because I thought he was coming back up for, like, golf gloves.
And he said, what? And I said, you said you forgot your glove. I thought you weren't gonna play golf. And he turned and... I was kinda yelling out into the hallway to him.
And he turned and came into the room, and he had his baseball glove. And he's like, this thing's, like, brand new. He's like, I'm gonna have to break this in again. And I said, yeah. You haven't used that in a really long time.
And he goes, I don't even know the last time I threw a baseball. And I said, I I do. And, you know, and then... And I told him, like, exactly where we were and when we did it and everything. And I said, were in the backyard.
Don't make me cry.
Oh, wait. Wait. April. I was like, we were in the backyard, and you were pitching and talking about going down south and going to this pitching clinic and maybe working out there for a month. And and so that's why you were still throwing after college ended.
And I was like, and then a couple days later, you know, you told me that, you know, and this whole thing about how I'm not gonna... I think I'm not gonna... I'm gonna stop playing baseball and everything. And they said to him, we haven't had a catch since then. And he's like, oh.
And I and I was like, well, that's, like, maybe three or four months after you graduated from college. So that's, like, four years ago. And he's like, oh, he goes... He just goes, like, I have to take your word for it. And he and he's like, see you.
And he left. I don't think he made it halfway down the stairs, and I was like, oh, I'm gonna cry. I was like I was like, I'm gonna cry. So, I didn't pretty teared up for you. Yeah.
I I just teared up. I didn't cry, but I was so happy to see him take his glove with him.
And Baseball is the most special sport that nobody understands unless you live it because I thought it was so boring. I remember going to my nephew's games, baseball games. I mean, like, we are not doing this. This is torture. I hate this.
I
I had a baseball player. Particularly emotional, like, moment a couple of weeks ago. And my wife and I were just talking. Like, we were kinda sharing back and forth things we're worried about about the future. And I said, how do know...
I might... I I could be a lady. It's hard to know exactly. But, I said, I said, you know what I'm really worried about? And she goes, what?
And I said, the day Cole moves away, I wanna have a catch with it. I'm I'm so afraid that, like, the... What happens that day is gonna get crazy, and I'm gonna forget to take him outside and throw a ball with him for a couple of minutes. And she's like, that's one of your major concern. I'm like, that's one of my major concerns is that I'm not gonna, like, pull Cole aside before he leaves for good and just go out back and chat with him for a little bit and throw a ball.
And and then I started crying telling her. She's like, are you okay? I'm like, I don't think so. So No. Yeah.
Older kids is not okay. It's not it's not okay. It's it's cruel, and it's so sad.
Yeah. Well
They grow up way too fast. The diabetics could rush a lot. You know?
It'd be Like, if you guys could, like, figure this out quicker, that'd be great. So your so your kids are diagnosed. You're... I mean, a lot of pressure, obviously, trying to figure things out, and you have another diagnosis not long after that. Would you say that one of them was more impactful than the other?
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Harder By About a Thousand22:34
My daughter's diagnosis was harder by about a thousand. Because? Probably because... Well, for one thing, my son is just so happy go lucky and easy. He didn't...
He was doing his own shots in the hospital, and I don't think he ever, to date, has shed a tear over any upset situation regarding diabetes. Yeah. He's just been really easy from the get go. Even when we thought, like, oh, we can't eat sugar or, you know, on our way to the hospital, he was positive about it and just really easy. And and his sister did follow in his footsteps largely, but she was still younger, and she was a little...
She was scared seeing what her brother had been going through. And I knew probably largely from the podcast how much harder it was for a girl. And then just being a girl, being a mom, like, in the mix of life thinking, like, she's gonna be my age one day and dealing with, like, how hard life is right now, and she's gonna have diabetes. And then also just, like, the technology for a girl to wear, which hasn't been an issue for her at all. She's never hidden her tech, but I didn't know how she would handle that.
You know?
Sure.
So she was a dancer, and so it was just like it was... Her body was just gonna look different and be different anyway. And then also just two just felt a lot heavier. So they were both hard, but for some reason, that one took me down for a couple months.
Okay.
For sure.
You found the podcast very early on after your son's diagnosis?
Yeah. I I found it so early that I I went back and listened mostly from the beginning. I think you were under a 100 episodes at that point. Right? Does that sound right in 2020?
Anyway I don't know.
It was it was a it was a reasonable enough amount. Like, if somebody's diagnosed today, they could... You'd probably go back to the beginning to kinda see, like, where you started or what your approach was then. That was my thought.
Okay.
But I think I did get, like, reasonably close too. But I I I had also realized the series were where I needed to focus. Yeah. And... Yeah.
So it had... But, yeah, I found it early, probably within three weeks. My neighbor, a neighbor of mine, had come over and recommended it to me. She's like, when you can breathe, this is what you need to do.
K.
And so
Well, I'm looking here. Episode 300 was in January 2020. So I I was probably in the three hundreds around that time. But even
at that Maybe I remember you getting to a thousand because I remember you were emotional. Right? Or do you think that was 500? I was kinda just like this quiet.
Now talking about my son's baseball glove. So episode five... When I got to 500 episodes, that was July 2021. Yeah. And I was talking about
I remember just listening to it, and you were, like, really proud, and it was kind of like a Yeah. Milestone moment. I'm still very thinking maybe that was 100.
Thank you.
Yeah. You should be.
I'm still pretty proud. So you... So if you were that far along then, yeah, then the pro tip series was in existence already. Is that what you found?
Yeah. I really liked defining diabetes. I really liked that one. I think I started there because or or maybe it was variables. Those two, I think I listened to before the pro tips because there was just...
I didn't know what somebody meant when they said bolus. You know, we were still saying dose. We kind of still do because that was the word we were born with. Mhmm. Yeah.
There was just a lot of terms that I didn't know. And then... I mean, I probably binged those in a couple of weeks. And then I was onto the pro tip series by the time Sandra was diagnosed, so she had much easier management. I would say we we knew a lot by then.
Cutting a Fruit Snack in Half26:32
Like, with Jack, there's so many silly things that I can recall, like cutting a fruit snack in half, several times to equal 15 grams of... I mean, just... And then, like, him picking up a Styrofoam cup from the gas station and drinking it and me just, like, losing his mind, losing my mind that he had taken a drink of a full sugar soda. Like, I just didn't... I didn't know anything.
I was so scared all the time of everything. And then as I started to listen to this... The podcast,
I Wow.
Became a lot less scared. So by the time Sienna was diagnosed, I was more reasonable, but I was just a lot more emotional with her than I was, Jack.
More Sure. Reasonable. Reasonable about the diabetes, more emotional about what had happened to her.
Exact... That's exactly right.
Interesting. Because you're... And you said how hard life is as a woman at your... How old are you?
I'm 46, I think.
What were you talking about? Like, perimenopause, stuff like that?
Well, my doctor says I'm not in perimenopause, and I'm like, well, what are you... What do we blame this on?
Well, what's
Why am I crazy?
Why You know? Why
am I hot? Why am I why am I mad? Why...
Why am I hot? Why am I mad?
Yeah. Give me the reasons, and it's not perimenopause. So I guess she says I'm lucky, so that's great news. Now, you know, it's just like... It's just whack a mole.
Life's just busy when... And not to say that it's not for men. It is. Like, being middle aged is... It takes a lot of work.
Yeah. I So I had I had some dirt to spread around. Like, you know, I have a, like, a dead spot in my yard. Right? And I thought, well...
I thought you were talking about gossip. I'm like, this is exciting.
No. I... Listen.... Dirt you got. I have plenty of dirt about that kind of stuff, but I am not a person who does that, so I won't be doing any of that.
I respect it.
Thank you. I, no. I I have, like, this little, like... It's a spot in my yard that's just... It won't it won't go grass.
And I had one other spot. We had to put a French drain. I don't know if this is boring for people, but there's too little too much water gathering in a place, and I had to dig a trench and put in this, like, drain to move the water away. So I needed some topsoil to put there so I could try to get grass to grow back. And I thought, well, if I have to get topsoil to put there, I'll get it for this other spot too and see if I can get grass to grow in this other spot.
So, you know, a couple $100 worth of dirt shows up at my house and gets dumped in a pile. And I look at it, and I think, I'm too old to move all that around, like, in any reasonable amount of time. And I I had some time. My son takes off and goes somewhere else, and I I called my nephew up. Was like, you got a couple hours.
I was like, I can give you a couple bucks if you wanna come help me just kind of wheelbarrow this turd around. You know? So it's three hours of him doing 80% of the work, and then 20% of it is me. And I got done that night. I was like, oh my god.
I feel terrible. Like, I was tired and achy and, like, just ridiculous. Like, really silly ridiculous. And then that night, I go to sleep, and I said to Arden before we went to bed, I went, hey. Do me a favor.
My old is tired. No diabetes stuff tonight. Okay? I was like, if you're in control of this at all, could you please, like, wield back control this evening? And she laughed, and I was like, thanks.
03:30 in the morning, my wife is like, Arden's blood sugar's low. And I... And it woke me up. And all I did, like, I've done a million times before in my life, is walked into her bedroom. I was like, hey.
Your blood sugar's low. She had this thing. I was like, this will do it. Eat this. She ate it.
I walked back to my room, and I thought that'll definitely do it. Like, I I looked at her numbers. I looked at how... I looked at what the algorithm had been doing, like, the hour before, and I was like, this is a slow drift to, like, a 60 blood sugar. What she just did is a 100% gonna, like, take care of this.
I set a temporary, target a little higher so it wouldn't bolus right away when she went up, and I was done in five minutes. And I laid back down, and one of those old thoughts crept into my head from when she was younger. I thought, let me just let the CGM cycle a couple of times before I go to sleep. So I did, and it was, like, two two generations of this of this CGM. So maybe ten minutes later, her blood sugar had a diagonal arrow up.
It was exactly what I thought it was gonna be. I'm gonna go back to sleep, and then I couldn't fall back asleep. And I think I sat up from 03:30 to, like, 06:00 in the morning, but I had to be up at eight. I I had to be up at eight, and I had, like, an hour and a half drive to go in one direction. I had to meet somebody and drive back another hour and a half.
I got home yesterday at, like, 03:00 in the afternoon. You would have thought I single handedly won World War two, the way I looked and how I felt. And it was... It's bizarre because all I did was move a little dirt around outside, which, by the way, not on a hot day, and, then not get quite as much sleep and drive a little bit. And you you literally would have thought I I was part of, like, the the invasion that took Normandy.
So I was I was wrecked. Mhmm. I don't. I take your points. But because you're a woman and you're having...
You're going through things, you started layering that on top of what's gonna happen to your daughter later Yeah. That fear.
Yeah. I... Yeah. I just... She was my little girl.
You know? She was just... Like, Jack's just like a brute. He just... Right now, he he just had shoulder surgery.
Mhmm. Diving back into first base, dislocated his shoulder, kinda get it to he could still hit throughout the season, so it was freshman year. He was able to be a DH, and so that was okay. And he, you know, handled that well. It wasn't healing, so he had surgery on it at the end of July.
This weekend, he was up with friends in a in a cabin, and, they were drifting in a razor, and it flipped. And he went like this to protect his shoulder, which kinda pushed the bottom half of his body out the door. There wasn't a door. Right. And he landed on it.
It landed on his ankle. So now he has... We... He... We...
I I went and got him. The mom is in emergency room, like, Tom and her. She, like, made sure that he was fine otherwise. And I was like, just don't take him to this little mountain clinic. Like, bring him to me, and I will take him to our children's hospital here.
And, so we just met. Instead of sitting for two hours at the clinic Yeah. And us driving five hours to get him, we met and got him and brought him home to our hospital. I would have never asked that of his sisters. Like, he had to drive for five hours in a bumpy truck with a foot that hurt to breathe on.
Like, he's just... And and he should be devastated. He's just so easy. You know? I took so just quick.
A happy kid. I'm just so grateful for him. And his example does rub off on all of us, so that... He he was just born that way. Nobody here can take credit for that.
He just came that way. And, yeah, he just... It was hard for me to, like, ever really feel bad for him. I I did, but you really can't when somebody's not feeling bad for themselves. You know?
Like, he was just fine. He never felt bad for himself. But then when Sienna came along, I just felt so sad. Probably just how every parent feels for their kid. I just was devastated for her.
Now You know?
Any of that worry and concern end up being necessary, or has she been fine?
Encouraging Diabetes34:22
She's been totally fine. She really has been. She's been completely fine. I I I have an Instagram page where, you know, I I feel like I tried to do what the podcast and even the Facebook group did for me. When you...
It's... You can't talk about diabetes without talking about the hardships. It's just not possible. Mhmm. But I think the thing that drew me to your podcast and that kept me there was it was just really solutions based, which is what anybody wants.
Nobody wants... Like, we just want answers. We wanna control it. We wanna fix it. We wanna make a best case scenario.
Like, that's what parents want for their kids is answers, and it feels like there's none of those when you're first diagnosed. It feels completely crazy and out of your control. And so there was so much commiserating and drama and crying and hardships in these other Facebook groups. I couldn't stay in there for more than a day. I was doing that to myself.
I couldn't take it on for other people. And so, once I got my wits about me, then we kind of just started an Instagram page trying our best to just be like, hey. There is a way to live and to live well. It doesn't mean it's not hard, but there's a lot of hard. You know?
I mean, I I know that this is completely crazy, but my older daughter struggled with acne, and she struggled socially for a few years. You know? And and in in my mind's eye, like, postpartum depression, my kids getting diagnosed with diabetes, and those years for my daughter, they feel pretty interchangeable. Like, life is hard. And if you can find a way to, like, get on top of the hard and just keep going, you're gonna be better than just, like, drowning in it, you know, succumbing to it Yeah.
No matter whether... No matter what you're dealing with. So, yeah, I just felt like that was our approach, and Sienna just jumped on board with it. Anyways, all of that to say... So I do try and reiterate that to people sometimes.
Like, my kids aren't your kids. They were diagnosed at an early time, and they're just easy kids. Not to say that they're easy all the time, and especially right now is probably our hardest time with diabetes and the balance there. But, yeah, try not to compare yourself because whatever reason, these kids are just a little bit more resilient. They just kinda...
Probably because I'm not, so there had to be... There are karmic balance there.
Look. We gotta pull it together. This lady is gonna be no help whatsoever. So
Exactly. Exactly. They know. They know. They do their own laundry.
They're like, if we want socks, we gotta wash those ourselves. Because mom's so She's not
getting those socks. Well, I think that I think that it's interesting what you said. For first of all, what struck me is the idea of, like, you know, how quickly it can turn into one, you know, flu over the cuckoo's nest where everybody is just in a room just being being sad together, you know, or being or being a... Yeah. It's it's very easy to fall into that despair and then find comfort in other people's despair.
I'm with you. Yes. I think, obviously, because of the way I make this, I'm with you. I think that there are simple actionable things that you can do that will move you incrementally forward. And that one day, not to oversimplify it, but you'll have been through it enough times where it just suddenly isn't a thing you talk about a lot, and it's not overwhelming.
And like you said earlier, like, you're not fighting all the time or arguing or crying or worried, you know, or thinking or thinking that, like, you know, five sips of a sugary drink stand. I mean, did you really cut a gummy bear in half? Yes. I said save.
So, like I think
the fruit
snacks that we had that, like, first week of diagnosis were... Must have been 16. I I don't know. Like, I don't know what math or what reasoning I was doing, but we cut first half. Isn't that a
No.
But see insane.
It's... If... It... What it moreover is is just a great example that you don't exactly know what's going on, and everything is scary. And that's why my point is, you know, simple stuff.
Like, you said defining diabetes was helpful. Like, first, understand what these terms are that people are throwing around. I mean, you're saying them. You should know what they are and what they do. And after that, like, have some experiences.
Learn how to get your settings straight. Like, it it really is as simple as I'm... Listen. It's not simple, but it is as simple as I'm making it sound. I've just, you know, spent some time this summer putting together a survey of what people like and don't like about the podcast and if it's been helpful to them or not.
It's a pretty thoughtful... Like, it's set up in a pretty thoughtful way. It's not just me saying, like, say nice stuff about me. Like, you know what I mean? Like, it's...
It it... It's there so that we can get, like, a pretty reasonable answer. And the answer I seem to be getting back is that for motivated people who listen to the podcast... I... And I just mean by motivated, like, they show up and they do the thing and listen to it and try to learn something and move on with whatever it is they can grasp.
No matter who they are or what situation they're in, they all seem to have a pretty good outcome. So I must be right. Like, you know, there's some basic foundational ideas. You have to understand what they mean. You have to learn how to put them into practice.
And then after that, you've gotta practice. Practice in regular life is, you know, is easy to deal with. But when you're living through days like you're, you know, the one... The ones that you're talking about that can be hard or even the ones that can be easy, time takes... Time is long.
Every day is not a problem. Every problem is an opportunity. It's hard to see them as opportunities because they feel like problems. But you eventually do just... Like, if you don't give up, you really do just wake up one day and think like, oh, my intention and my knowledge really do lead in this spot mostly over and over again.
Yeah.
Yeah. It's it's... It really... Listen. You can apply it to anything.
It really is simple. Just be be the thing, do the thing, wait it out, you'll win. And, you know
Well... And I think that the thing... I think that where mo... Where some people are missing is the thing. Like, there's a lot of people that ignore the thing in in...
And and, again, I I just reiterate this because I I don't want people to feel hopeless. But at the same time, I I I get the opportunity to be strict with my kids because it works. There's a few different things that live in my head from early diagnosis that, you know, I repeat or that kind of become my mantra because I do see people that that don't do the thing because it's too hard to fight your kids on it or to get them to listen. I don't know. I just...
You said something at one point that was like, you wouldn't let your kids take... Like, I don't care if she doesn't wanna wear a pump. Like, I I... If she needed... I wouldn't let her take, like, a horse tranquilizer or something like that.
You know what I'm...
I guarantee you I told you a story about my father and that one time a doctor... You know, back in the day, they didn't care if pills tasted good or how big they were. They didn't know about stuff like that. So I got sick one time, and they gave me a pill that was, like, like, a horse pill. It was huge.
And my dad was like, put it in your mouth and swallow it. And I I was like, it doesn't taste good. And he's like, I don't care. And he's like... And I was like, it's hard to swallow.
And he goes, I don't care. And I just think back, I'm like, that man would not let me say, oh, I don't like having something on me, so I'm not gonna have as reasonable... Like, know, have have access to temporary basal rates. You you know I mean? Or something to that effect.
And by the way, if you don't wanna do a pump, don't do one. I'm not saying that. I'm saying that, like, what a weird world where you're letting a seven year old make medical decisions. Like, what else is that kid in charge of? How you pay the mortgage?
Like, when are you listening to a little kid ever? They don't know what the hell they're... You barely know what you're talking about. You think the seven year old knows? That that...
You know what I mean?
Such a good way to say it.
Yeah. Like, come on. Like, somebody's gotta be responsible, and everything's not fun. And so, you know, sometimes you gotta do things you gotta do, and they're not always pleasant. And and listen.
I'm not saying torture somebody, but, I mean, a couple of unpleasant moments... And by the way, I wasn't sick anymore because my dad made me take that that pill. Like... So
Mhmm. You know
what I mean? I just... I feel
like You have to lead them through it. You don't let them stick their finger in a light socket. You know? Like, you're in charge of the best outcomes. You cover the light socket with the covers or, you know, whatever.
Like, you're the one that's in charge of making it okay and leading them through that.
Parenting Isn't Being Somebody's Friend43:05
Yeah. And I mean, not to be overly simplistic, but parenting's not being somebody's friend. And, you know, like, I don't want you to... And and people could hear that and have... You know, I'm not saying scream and yell
and make don't like to hear that. Yeah. It's not It's not fun. Not well received. But
Yeah. It... It's definitely not fun. I mean, I've No. I haven't enjoyed one second of this.
So I I keep waiting. This morning, my wife my wife wakes up. She goes, what time is it? And I told her, she goes, could you rub my head for a minute? And I was like, yeah.
Sure. So I rubbed her head. While I'm rubbing her head, I get a text from Martin. Could you come rub my knee? And I was like, oh, sure.
So, like, I I I... Know, I've... Art was like, oh, my knee hurts. I was, yeah. I'm, like, yeah.
I'm rubbing her knee and everything. And I said, you know, I keep thinking one day I'm gonna wake up. Someone's gonna rub my head. And I was like... I said, do you think that'll happen ever?
And she goes, well, hasn't so far, but maybe. And I was like, you're right. Maybe tomorrow's gonna be the Yeah. Yeah. Tomorrow will be the day.
But but that's not the point. That's not why I got married and had kids. Or do you know what I mean? Like, it just... Like, I think what happens is that society goes through, like, moments where it's popular to feel a thing or say a thing, and then it becomes, like dogma.
And then you can't say the opposite of it because if you say the opposite of it, you're bad or you're wrong or you hate children or whatever the hell. You you you know what I mean? And and you don't realize you're being manipulated by somebody often through social media or media in general or ways that we can talk to people in in big in big spots. And this is not new to, like, the Instagram era or the TikTok era. Like, this has been going on forever.
Like, you know, a narrative gets set up by somebody who has an interest. I don't know what their interest is, and I don't have time to think about it. But I guarantee you it's money or greed. And so so you say one thing and someone else says another thing. And if their interest in it is greedier or moneyer than yours is, then they're gonna keep upping the the the, I don't know, the shame of it to put back on you until you shut up and stop saying it out loud.
And then if you... If once you're alive long enough, what you'll see is that everyone will fall in line, do the thing until a louder majority decides this is enough, then they speak up, and then the pendulum swings back in the other direction. It... I've watched it... Yeah.
It's the it's the pendulum that really, like
It's exactly right.
Causes the issue.
I've been alive long enough now that I've actually seen some arguments happen more than once through the zeitgeist of of of humanity. And so, like, I'm like, oh, I know how this goes. They say this. That one says that. This one gets scared of this.
When they see you scared, they double down. They're gonna reap the rewards from it for a couple of years. And then once they're fat and happy enough, they'll I almost said f off, but I'm trying not to curse anymore on the podcast. They'll they'll go away because they've gotten what they want out of it. Then you'll all think that you found your balls and spoken up again, and then it'll swing back in the other direction.
And while it's swinging back, somebody on that side will find a way to make money off of it. And then that'll happen for a while until somebody notices that there's money to be made, then they'll reach out from the other side and yank it back again. You're just gonna keep doing this to each other
So for a
and over.
Anybody that... That's lost us on that, we're talking about parenting
strategies. Parenting strategies.
And Yeah. Uh-huh. On a global level, living life strategies.
Yeah. But but that is exactly what happens. Yeah.
And we are meant to be parents. Right? Like, that is the... That's the the setup there. Like, no matter what, we we have a stewardship over creating best outcomes for our kids.
Anything Besides Feel Sorry for Me46:51
And one of the one of the other voices that... Probably the strongest one that's in my head is a a good friend. She also had two kids or two siblings with diabetes. I ended up being in contact with one of them. And, both of the kids have ended up...
So they're adults now. They're my age in transplant. So about the same time my kids were getting diagnosed, these two adults were getting transplants.
Okay.
So for anybody that doesn't know, you end up needing a kidney transplant. When they do that, they also give you a pancreas transplant, so you no longer have diabetes. But you are on immunosuppressant drugs for the rest of your life. Anyways... So I had met her shortly after.
The brother, the transplant didn't work. He's, you know, unwell. He has not lived a good life. The sister, the one that I'm in touch with, has lived a good life. You know?
And you always look look for that. Like, you always wanna find the people that are adults and okay. You know, they have kids. They have families. They have eyes and feet, and they're okay.
And she is one of them, and I I am very grateful for our friendship and all that she's opened up to me. But, she did have a transplant, and she said that one of the things that she works through, is she's like, I wish my mom would have done anything besides feel sorry for me.
Okay.
It's like that that got that got us nowhere. You know? And I... Like, even saying that will make me bald because I feel so bad for the mom. Like, if my kids had been diagnosed with nothing, no knowledge, I mean, nothing.
It was a mess back then. You know? I would have done the same thing. That would have been the only tools I had, which was just empathy and sympathy. But that...
That's not what we have right now. We have so many tools there. If you're... I guess if you're lucky enough, not not... These tools aren't offered to everybody.
They're expensive as freaking crap. I have... I had to get a full time job so that my kids can have the best diabetic care that our family can get... Give them. But even that is a privilege, you know, that I was able to find that job.
And, anyways, it's a privilege to have this diabetic technology that my kids have, and I am not gonna let them waste it best as I can. Now we walk through that kindly. Right? Like, I lead them through that, but it is... This is a privilege.
And I feel so bad for that mom, and I feel so bad for her adult kids, For their realities and where they are now, it's hard.
But Yes.
Those are the words that are my beacon of light is like, wish my mom would have done anything besides feel bad for me.
Right. Right. And be... And it's funny enough because it was your inclination at the beginning. Right?
Like, oh, no. What's gonna happen? Blah blah blah. Like, I I... Listen.
None of that's lost to me. I think if you listen to this podcast long enough, you'll hear that I'm a very caring person. Like, I really do try hard to put myself in other people's shoes. I... I'm also the kind of person who will tell you the story about my dad and the pill, and I don't have any...
Like, I I don't... I'm not gonna make any pretense about it. I'm not gonna apologize for it. But you just did a thing, which... And I'm not saying you did a bad thing, but you just did a thing that I I basically alluded to five minutes ago, which is I've been alive long enough to know that you didn't used to have to tell a story about, oh, I had to get a part time job to help pay for my kids' stuff and then take out a sidebar to make sure that everyone who doesn't have that money knows that you're a...
You you feel for them. Yep. That is not a thing that used to happen in conversation. Like, you're trying to tell me a story about, like, hey. I know my kids needed this stuff.
It wasn't easy for us. I had to go get a job to help pay for it. I'll now pause for sixty seconds to remind us all that not everybody's lucky enough to have diabetes. And, of course, they're not. But what does that got to do with what you were just saying to me?
And the and the and the truth is is what it has to do is that over the last ten or fifteen years, we have been told that you can't celebrate any sort of success without making sure to take time to remind everybody that not everybody has the same luck. We all know not everybody has the same luck or opportunity or or whatnot. Like, it's a weird thing to have to say it. But why is that important? Because when I started making when I started making the podcast, I was doing kind of a similar thing.
I was looking at the blogging sphere and watching everybody. This has nothing to do with apologizing to, to people for their lives not being the same as everyone else's. This has to do with... They'd write about something about their diabetes, and then they'd spend another paragraph apologizing for having said it out loud. It was very interesting.
Like, somebody would say, well, you know, I'm having all this, like, trouble with my blood sugar. And a person who knew better would say, well, you know, what I do is I put my insulin in, and then I wait, you know, ten or fifteen minutes until my blood sugar... You know, I pre bolus, basically. And then they'd finish that thought in their paragraph, and then the next paragraph would be a long dissertation about how dangerous that could be and that you should talk to your doctor first before pre bolus thing. And I would always look at that and think, you just told them the answer and then talk them out of it in the very next step.
Like, you definitely taught... You made it sound scary afterwards in the very next step. And I was like, that's why no one's having any success. And then I meet some of these bloggers in places, and they're rolling around with five five a one c's. And I'm like, why don't you tell people how you do it?
And they go, I don't wanna be part of that culture. I'm not... I... It's not it's not for me to say. And and they were doing the same thing.
They were telling you something then apologizing for it, then telling you something then... Or telling you something then telling you how scary it was. And I was like, what if we just told them this is what pre policing is? You're an adult. Why don't you go figure out if it's something you wanna do or not?
Instead of me then scaring you about it five seconds later. I don't... I just think that one of the reasons that your kids are okay today is because I grew up in a time in the world where I don't feel compelled to apologize for how I feel about something. And and people and people will still, like, you know, talking about... You know, I know you wanna talk a little bit about social media and your kids and stuff like that, and we should, and we'll pivot right here to it, actually.
But no matter what I do day to day on this podcast, I am gonna hear from people who think I am that that think I'm Gandhi. I'm gonna hear from people who think that I'm the devil. I'm gonna hear from people who think that I'm pushing devices on behalf of somebody. I'm gonna hear from people who think that I'm pushing drugs on behalf of somebody. I'm a carb pusher.
You saved my life. Like, I... If you listen to the course of a day what people's reaction to this podcast is, you might think I'm 10 different people, five of them awesome, Five of them absolutely the ruination of the world. I'm the same guy saying the same thing, and it all depends on how people are preprogrammed to respond to that stuff at this point, I think. So, anyway Yeah.
You're right. You're right.
It's just ridiculous. You're totally right. The whole thing's ridiculous. Listen to me. Learn how to make your settings right.
Learn how to pre bolus. Use insulin correctly. Learn from your mistakes. Don't wallow in your... In self pity.
Keep moving. You'll probably be okay. Agreed. Yeah. That's it.
And and maybe some of you won't be. I'm sorry. That's terrible. We all don't get
No. If you do those things, you will be. Like, do do do
you think you
debunked brittle diabetic? Like, have we debunked that?
I must have because I see other creators glomming onto my messaging. So, yeah, I guess it must be working because people are doing it now. Also, while I'm complaining and I will just complain for half of a second, when I decide to write about something on my blog and you think it's a great idea, maybe don't do it right away the week later. Like, wait a little bit. Pretend for a second you didn't get the idea from me.
That's all I just want to say out in the world for the people who we know are listening....
Message is for someone.
Yeah. Yeah. It certainly someone. Why you why don't you wait a half a second before taking my idea? It's okay.
Have a
a smidge of pride. I mean,
just have the tiniest bit of self respect. That's all I'm saying. Okay. We'll move on now.
K. I'm I'm glad. Yeah. We're... I'm fine.
April, I'm fine. Don't worry
about it. I I don't... I I need to... I guess I didn't know you're still blogging, so I'll I'll need to
How He Blogs in 202655:29
find out. Is that... Well, can I tell you something? I blog 2026. Do you wanna know how I blog now?
So the way I used to... The the waste... The way I used to blog was I'd have a thought, and I'd sit down and write and write and write and think, okay. That sounds okay. And then I put it away, and I'd be like, don't really have all my information yet, or I gotta go do some research about this piece here because I'm not sure.
Or I have to wait till I have some more experiences. The way I blog now is... I mean, I... I'm absolutely... You can go look at the blog posts.
I think you'll find them to be fairly worth your while. I have ideas, and I sit down with a writing partner who is an AI thing, and I let it do the research for me. And and then I look at the research it does, and I go, yeah. That's kinda how I was feeling right there. Like, that's the thing I thought that it would have taken me six more months to find out, or I would have never had the time to go dive into the research to find out if that that study even ever happened.
And, you know, it's very well documented that it's it's AI. And, but I'm basically directing the AI through the things. And I think that they are... It's not blogging like, oh my goodness. This is how I feel.
I'm so happy. I'm so sad. Aren't you happy and sad too? Like, it's not the manipulative it's not the manipulative human blogging that had been so popular for a long time. It's really just ideas that I have or things that I'm interested in or things that I think somebody should be paying attention to and put together in a way that I think is is readable and understandable and gives you enough links that you can go and try to check out more for yourself and see what you think.
I'll go back.
I I do think that that's the number one thing that people newly die... Like, if you're newly diagnosed, you're listening to this episode, like, learn. Learn. Click the links. Learn more.
Spend time every single day. Two hours a day. I... I'm not... I would listen to two or three podcasts a day to catch up and to listen.
And I read books, and I listened to... Well, there wasn't a lot of YouTube content at that time. No. No. No.
Books and and your podcast. And it... It's just like you have to learn. You you have to learn.
Stop Looking at Those People Like That57:47
Also, stop looking at those people curious. Yeah. Stop looking at those people like they're like they're Jesus Christ himself. Like, I'm just a guy. I have a thought.
I put it out there. You gotta keep going with it. Like, I'm not gonna give you the answer, like, exactly the way you want it or
I do wish you would do that.
You think I... You wish I would just tell people what to do. Is that what you're saying?
I wish you would just tell me what to do. Yeah. Like, I... We're we're at an hour, and if you're gonna kick me off, I didn't get to any of my questions. No.
I'm not gonna kick you off, April.
I'm not
gonna kick you off. We can keep going. That's not the point. Also, I'd... Listen.
If the pro tip series isn't me just telling you what to do, it's me telling you what I do. You can go do whatever you want. But, like, listen. This isn't... It's really not difficult.
Settings, timing, understand the impacts of your food, don't stare at a high blood sugar a one c in about 6.1. Done. That... It's over. Yeah.
It's not that hard. Now get
that complexion. Everybody wants. Do you wanna know what I think people want?
Go ahead.
If I were to speak for the people. Okay. So you have the Dose four series or Bolas four. Bolas I I do love. I listen to those.
And I do like them, and I'm at a I'm at a spot where you and Jenny can speak, and I can speak with you. Like, I'm interpreting what you're saying.
Mhmm.
But I want you... That this is one of my top number one questions that I have. This is all I've wanted you to do for me.
Okay. So hold on, everyone. April has questions. She... Before we started recording, she said, I have questions that I wrote down that I wanna ask you if we have time.
I And was like, absolutely. She's like, I know I've asked you questions online, blah blah blah. But... And I'm... Hold your questions for one second.
Okay? And then we're gonna jump right into them. August 12, about fifteen days ago, I put together a blog post called, are people with type one diabetes immune compromised? And I think it is a reasonable description of that idea. You should go check it out if you care.
But what I can tell you is I see people argue online about this all the freaking time. All the time. Okay? I wrote an article, and I'm gonna tell you I wrote it, but I didn't write it. But I did because it wouldn't exist without filed it.
It wouldn't... Yes. It wouldn't exist without me. Okay? Yeah.
And it... The whole thing, it's called your thyroid dose was set for a different body. It's literally an article just to make sure that people with type one diabetes know that when they go on their thyroid medication, it's set by weight.
Do they almost all?
A lot of people have thyroid issues, but that's not
My kids have thyroid antibodies. Yeah.
Yeah.
So I'm sure it's coming, but I just didn't know, like... I actually didn't know how
But the but the over... The overlap for the article article is is that that a lot of them are also going on GLP ones now. So something you're seeing happen is that people are losing weight, and their doctors are not thinking to adjust their thyroid medications. No one is gonna write that article for you but me. Okay?
And and so go take a look at it. Here's one here that I did last month that I may or may not have been alluding to a moment ago. It's titled GLP ones keeping, keep surprising us. Now it's skin disease. It's basically built around the idea that a lot of people with psoriasis are seeing, like, good outcomes from GLPs.
But if you really read it and get through it, there's a lot of research coming for people with type one diabetes and other issues. Like, you're gonna see you're gonna see GLPs used for a lot more, you know, in the next couple of years and and with, I think, some pretty resounding success. You know, there's here what data... A lot of my stuff is gonna tell you what the data actually means, not what the headlines hope for you to want from them about, like, different cures I'm making. Exciting.
Yeah. And then from there, like, why does movie theater popcorn wreck your blood sugar? I put that out this summer because people go to the movies, and, you know, they... And that's the thing that they are always struggling with, etcetera, and so on. Like, I do stuff like that all the time.
If you ask me, did I write every word of it? I didn't. But every word of it wouldn't be there without me because I'm the one going, no. That's not what we should be talking about there. Like...
And I don't just say, let's talk about this. I say, what's the truth about this right here? Is there research around this? What does that research say? Oh, it says that.
Make people aware of that, and then give them a link back to it in case they wanna go look for more of it. This is not, like, this is not sexy link clicking that it's gonna make me... I'm not selling ads on this or, like, anything like that.
You know, I have always thought that. I wanted to tell you, like, you should put the... You were... At some point, you were go... I don't know if you're going back and forth or whatnot, but you were talking about, like, making the podcast, like, a paid subscription or whatever, which I would have happily paid for.
My thought about that was, like, you can put the... These podcasts that we do behind a paywall and then put the the series that saves lives, like your Jenny series and your series free. Yeah. I make money. Like a morally
make enough money.
Way to go about
it. I do okay. You're not Like,
I'm fine. Yeah. Yeah.
I just Well, this
was this was probably five years ago.
Well, yeah.
But You were were room... You were, like, want talking about it on one of the podcasts.
Yeah. Because some company came to
me this is entertaining.
Somebody Told Him to Paywall It1:03:10
Yeah. Well, some company came to me and said, like, you should paywall your podcast. You have, like, millions of listeners. This is... You...
This is how much money you'll make. And I was like, I ain't doing that. Like, I really... All I thought about about that was It'd be hard. Well, then it it...
You know, it's so funny because I'm not a person who would say out loud, like, we have to stop and realize that everybody doesn't have the same privilege. I'm just a person who quietly lives my life that way. So I just... I looked at the podcast, and I thought the minute you put a a price tag on it, you limit people from finding it, and everybody should have access to it. You know?
I'm also... I'm... You know, I'm I'm... Everything I say is gonna sound like I'm fighting with it. I don't like coaching.
I don't think health coaching's cool for the most part. I get why people do why people do it. If I was in that situation, I might do it too as a as a job, but I happen to be in a position where I get to say, I don't wanna charge you to learn how to make your your settings better. It's not a thing I'm
comfortable with. Is entertainment. That is life saving. So that's free. Morally, you can feel good about saving lives, and that's free content.
This is entertainment. Lot of so there's a lot of, like, lines there. I would also tell you that without the entertaining part, people don't find the other stuff. And without the other stuff, they don't find the entertaining part. And then they'll...
You know? And then the community helps them to feel less alone. You don't want them to just have the pro tips. Like, listen. I've got this all thought through.
I... It works well because of what it is, and then I don't have to stop and scrounge around and try to find a way to make money out of it. I mean, it's just... And it's and it's absolutely... I find it to be absolutely laborious watching people online, like, scraping and scrimping to get some, like, clicks on a reel or get a couple of views on something so they can go to some company and charge them a couple $100 to make videos.
They can do another one so they can... I just... It's it's just... Oh my god. It's it's terrible.
Like, I'm so happy not to be in that situation. Like, I I... And I think it ruins the community. I think it just turns Yeah. And it's not around to me.
Listen. You can take diabetes out of it. Like, everyone is trying... Your time and attention is a commodity, and everyone is trying to get it so they can go sell it to somebody else. And while that is probably how this podcast works in theory because I sell ads on it, I don't think of it that way.
I think of it backwards. I make the podcast valuable for people. That's why somebody wants to buy an ad on it. Other people are trying to make clicks any way they can so they can sell an ad on it. And trust me, there's a difference.
So when you don't hear me yelling about, like, a cure every five seconds or it doesn't look like I'm just recycling the same... Like, I will tell you that there are so many diabetes podcasters and content creators and Facebook creators and all this other stuff that when I look at their stuff, what I think they did was I think they went to AI and said, tell me the 10 things that people argue about online. Now adapt them to diabetes. What are those 10 things? And then they just regurgitate the same crap over and over and over again to try to get poor people like you upset, right, about a...
About dying from a cold. And then they... And then look at what the downstream... For all them listening, and we all know you're all listening. Okay?
So, like, look at the downstream effect of that for April. Like, one of you goes online to try to get clicks and starts talking about some poor kid's life that ended too soon, and it makes this poor lady mental. And then... You know what I mean? Like...
But what...
I almost lost a best friend over it. I'm not Why didn't you even get to that story?
People When say people say I'm complaining about not... Trust me. I'm not complaining. My life is fine. Y'all can do whatever you want.
I'm gonna be fine one way or the other. What I'm telling you is is that this is what's happening to you and and... Or or this is what you're doing to people. So just
For the record, I don't do that on my on my Instagram
page. Thank you. It's lovely.
You're welcome.
That's just one person.
Follow me. It's a good account.
I'll do it. What's it called?
Encouraging Diabetes. Write in the name.
I'll look. I mean, I do... Mostly my
my I fluff you a lot over there.
My I do. I know you do. My Instagram is mostly about, like, lizards, if I'm being perfectly honest.
I have seen that. I've no... I'm I've wondered if you needed some I'm fine. Help.
No. No. I... I'm fine. Okay.
So you're
You're alright. You are fine.
You have questions for me. I'm willing to answer them now. Please go.
Six Years of Questions1:07:43
I've been wanting them for six years worth of questions.
Go. Go. Go.
Okay. Okay. So what I'm saying, like, what do people want? Listen. If you're newly die...
Oh my gosh. The honeymoon. What a nightmare the honeymoon was. If you're in the honeymoon, don't listen to any of this. But, I have just died to know an exact bolus.
And maybe you are under a gag order, but let's say, you know, you guys do the the dose four series or bolus four series, and it's great, and it does make perfect sense. And I love it. I listen to all of those. Well, I think I'm all caught up. But, anyway, I just want to hear you say.
Just Tell Me the Bolus1:08:24
Let's... There's no variables. Arden is gonna eat orange chicken with noodles from Panda Express.
Okay.
She has no variables. She has a a new pump site. We can give that as the variable. She has a fresh pump site. She's not gonna go running.
She's in a neutral point of her cycle, and she has no other variables. She's gonna eat the whole thing. So we're gonna say a whole two meat plateful of orange chicken.
Oh my god.
I want you to tell me what your bolus is. You don't have to talk about the protein. You don't have to talk about the sauce or the breading or the noodles. I just wanna hear what you say. Do this.
How are you supposed to talk about that without talking about all the other stuff? I mean, you said
orange chicken.... And all the other ones.
Yeah. Orange chicken.... Chicken. With rice?
This is just me and you... Like, we're neighbors, or I'm your sister, and you're helping me dose my daughter. And so you're gonna say, you're already fifty grams right now. Yeah. I just wanna know the bolus.
Oh, so if it's... This is apropos of nothing. No one do this. Okay? But if you're talking about orange chicken
Exactly. Exactly.
And... So orange chicken with sugar on it and running the chicken and the and the rice, that's it. Just rice and chicken?
We're gonna have noodles. We like noodles.
The Wait. Orange chicken and noodles? Cabbage. Mhmm. Oh, well, we're gonna have to pre bowl us.
And, I mean, we're gonna wanna How long? As long as it takes. So if you're... If I'm... Am I driving to the Panda Express, or is some person who lost their job to AI bringing it to my house?
What's going on?
You're in the you're in the drive through of Panda Express ordering, and you live ten minutes from home.
You just said something to me that I don't know is true. There's a drive through at a place called Panda Express.
Ours has a drive through. We don't go through it very often. That's for sure.
When people ask you if America is, on the decline, answer, there's a drive through at Panda Express. That's the only thing you have to say. Okay. So what I would say is no matter what her blood sugar is... I mean, if it's over if it's over 80, I would wanna see a fifteen, twenty minute pre bolus because I really want the insulin on our side before the sugar on the coating of that chicken starts going in it.
And I would also say that there's gonna be a lot of impact over a timeline because of the white rice and the noodles, so I don't want all the insulin in upfront. But if if you're telling me she's really gonna eat it all without me going online and finding out what carbs are or counting the chicken pieces or doing any of that, just talking about Arden specifically, I'd say I'd like to see a 40 carb bolus twenty minutes before, and probably as soon as she starts eating, if not, like, ten minutes later, I'd put in 40 more. And so around 80 carbs for her for that. And then I would then I would, like, get ahold of myself and try to do some sort of account on that on that chicken and the and the noodles and the rice and try to make sure that I'm somewhere near the right number. But I would tell you that I think whatever's gonna happen about an hour after that first bolus is gonna tell you if it was enough or not.
Best guess.
And so you do 40 up front. You do another 40 when she starts to eat. Would you extend that 40, or you do two full forties and then put an extended on after told Or you just can let the algorithm take care
of that? Well, you just took out the variables. I didn't think there was an algorithm. I thought I was just I was just throwing insulin in in two different shots trying to curb the initial sugar hit and then try to jump on top of the secondary, spike from the the rice and the and the and the, the pasta. That's what I was doing in my mind.
If But you're gonna tell me she's on an
That's good enough.
Yeah. I mean, on an algorithm, then, you know, what's gonna happen is if you don't get in enough that the algorithm can horse trade with the bowl... The basil because they... The... Once you put it in, the the algorithm's gonna give away the basil, and you have to have enough in there to overpower the food plus all the stuff that the algorithm's not thinking about, the fat and the protein and the secondary, like, bump, all that stuff.
I mean, in the end, I would just put a blanket of insulin over top of the timeline of the impact of the food. That's really it. Yeah. Go ahead. What's your next question?
Oh, by the way, real quick. Okay.
But That's a good answer.
April, nothing you hear on the juice box podcast be considered advice, medical, otherwise. Always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan. Okay. Go ahead. Next.
Or we're becoming bold with insulin. You took that part out.
I I... It's in there sometimes.
It out.
It's in sometimes and in lot of other times. Go ahead. Go. Go. Go.
Alright. Mhmm.
K. Next one. What does Jenny eat for breakfast? You guys reference her same breakfast that she has because she knows what to do with it. I don't know what it is.
I don't I wanna know what she's doing for and I aren't married. Right?
You guys talk enough about food and diabetes. I would assume she
I'm gonna You've
asked at some point.
I don't know that I have, but I would bet Jenny is a Burry's, maybe some oatmeal, some oats maybe, some granola, an egg. Mhmm.
I I...
That's my
guess. Whites.
I bet you she eats the yolk, and, she's crazy. No. I I would... Listen. Jenny eats the way you think Jenny eats.
Yeah. Yeah. Alright. I just wanted to know exactly what she had milled out, especially if it contained oats because, you know, milling oats is a practice.
I would... It wouldn't be a lot, I don't think. I bet you her carbs with... Even with the fruit, and this is really just me guessing. I would imagine the carbs for Jenny's breakfast doesn't go much over 25 or 30, be my guess.
Mhmm. That's it. I mean, I don't know. I have to ask her. I'll ask her on stage.
We're doing a bolus four live at touched by type one in September. Yeah.
I need I need to I need to go to an event. I... I've never gone to an event. I need to. I think I would really enjoy it.
Yeah. You would. Okay. Next question. Go ahead.
I can't believe that was one of your questions.
Alright. Me neither. Alright. I... This is a question.
It's... You've maybe covered it somewhere, but I want... I wanna know if you know specifically because we are just putting our toes into this this world. Cycle week one, insulin resistant. Oh, wait.
Let's let's say cycle week four, insulin sensitive, because we're having double arrows that are crazy out of nowhere that we've never had. But I'm asking you. I'm asking you what So Could you list out the weeks of the month?
I don't think I can we... Don't think I can. Typically look like. No. I don't think I can.
I think that I can tell you that... I think that I I don't keep... So here's why. I'm not keeping track of Arden's period. That'd be weird.
Okay.
You used to.
No. I've talked about a lot. No. No. I keep track of what happens.
So Yes. There's like Agreed.
Yes. There's like a gen... Generally a week where you need more, and then there's a week where suddenly things are, like, what you would consider to be like, oh gosh. If I could wish for it to be this way, this is how it would be. And then there's another week where suddenly it's, like, less, and then it ramps up again, and then there's more.
But how that falls against the event, I I am... I'm a boy too. Like, I don't have that committed to memory. If I had to guess out loud, I think it's more the week before, pretty normal during, as soon as it's over, more... A little less, and then the more starts again.
Is that how is that how you see it?
I I I think that that's how it's going to look. Yes.
Yeah. That's But but at the same time, like, if I got the... If it's, like, the week before is less and this one's... If I got that backwards, it doesn't matter to me because it's cyclical. It's just Mhmm.
It's just
You're right.
It's more more more just the right amount, just the right amount, less less less, more more more more more more just the right amount, less less.
And and who cares why?
I couldn't possibly care less.
What it is.
Just roll. Like, do that thing in that big Willie song. Just roll with it. Although, he's he's persona non grata now because he slapped Chris Rock. So, just be flexible.
Okay?
K. K. Got it.
Also, if Okay. I I don't I don't have a lot of opinions about, this, but he should not have hit Chris Rock. I just wanna say that that's my opinion about that.
I know. That wasn't the case.
How about Chris Rock? Standing his ground like that. I was like, That's crazy.
He did handle that well. That was respect. Yeah.
That was guys were. That was that was pretty fun. Alright. Next question. Go
How Do You Feel About Diaversaries1:17:20
Okay. Next question. How do you feel about diavosaries? What do you guys do for that?
Are you asking what we do for it or how I feel about it?
Both.
Alright. Well, ask ask one and then ask me the other one.
Okay. How do you feel about diversaries?
I think that people should do whatever makes them happy. And if having a celebration and making a cake and putting on a hat and taking a picture and saying, I'm stronger than this thing. I made it another year and screw diabetes, and we won. I think that's... I genuinely think that's awesome.
And you should a 100% do that to any degree or level that you want. May... Maybe we should stop for a second and and and and shy out that, if you have the privilege of being able to afford a cake, then you should do that. But, no, I think you should do I think you should do whatever floats your boat. Like, I am a live and let live person, and I think that's fantastic, and I genuinely mean that.
Is it something I would do? No. But I also don't judge you on what I would do. I judge you on what you would do, and what you would do sounds pretty awesome to me. I think it's great when people have diversaries and that they're super excited and everything.
And I don't think... I don't have a thought about them based on my opinion of them. It's not a thing. I... It doesn't occur to me.
And I
So that day comes and goes and you guys
What what... I don't know I don't know what day that is. You think I know the day Arden was diagnosed with diabetes? Mhmm. No.
No? I don't know. It's in August, I think. End of August, maybe? Wait.
Yeah.
It's You didn't know that you were lucky. You don't have to go to Teppanyaki or buy some Starbucks if you can afford it.
I don't know. Listen. I don't think my, my wife and I celebrated our thirtieth anniversary a couple weeks ago. And I went out and I got my wife a a bouquet of, 30 red roses, and then I had the florist put a pink and a white rose in the top in the middle, like like a cake topper, like a like a a husband and wife on a cake. And I brought them home, and I put them on the countertop.
I got... Bought a card, and on the card, I wrote something lovely to her. And I signed it the way I signed, like, the first card I ever gave her. And I left it on the counter. Aw.
You're lovely for saying ah like that. Ask me what my wife got for me. She did not get me.
That's just your wife?
No. No. She didn't get me anything. Okay. And and we didn't go to dinner.
We didn't... Mean, maybe we went out to dinner, but I don't even remember. Like, the the... We're working. Okay?
Alright, April. We're hustling. I'm I'm over here.
To do.
Yeah. I am trying to get through and do so I can stop. Like, my whole goal is to is to retire in a healthy manner such that I can enjoy the rest of my life before cancer or a fall in the shower or some terrible... A a very, family in my town right now. Poor guy wakes up one day with a headache, and he's got brain cancer.
Way way too young. Right? Like, I'm trying to I'm trying to pay my bills, feed my family, get my kids off to a good start, nourish my soul by making this podcast, help all of you, save a little bit of money, and and dip. That's what I'm trying to do. Yeah.
I ain't got time for the rest of this. Like, I don't know. Like, if I told you what my weekend was like, where I jammed in pleasure for myself, probably sounds sad to people. I had a great time. I don't...
I I am not... I don't have downtime. I don't remember the last time I sat on my sofa. But one day, I'm gonna be able to tell you, I don't remember the last time I got off this god sofa. Like like, I'm trying to, like...
I'm I don't know. I don't think about the world that way. Like, I'm going. My wife is a hustler. I'm a hustler.
We're trying to... And I don't mean hustler, like, trying to, like, hustle it out. I mean, like, we're we're grinding. You know what I mean? Yeah.
And so... And I don't know that grinding's the right way to be. Maybe we're wrong. I couldn't even begin to tell you. Maybe we should figure out when the hell Arden's...
Was diagnosed and get together and have a big f u celebration around it or celebrate being here another year or something like that. It's just not how it occurs to me. I could tell you for sure it's not how it occurs to Arden.
So... Yeah. I'm so curious about Arden. There's so many... I I I could have, like, so long conversations.
Have you seen her her
efforts?... Temperament seems... Yeah. Well, too. When she had when she
gotta listen to I don't understand. There's, like, 10 episodes called I don't understand, and it's just me and, like, college age Arden talking about things she doesn't understand. For instance, money and other stuff like that.
If you listen to her K.
Like, she's different now. She's older again, and I am gonna try to get her to come back on again. But, like, she... I I say this all the time, and this is the way I would I would describe it. You go find Arden right now or at any point in her history and ask her about herself, and then maybe the last thing she's gonna tell you is that she has diabetes.
If she remembers to say that, I don't think she would say that.
Yeah. So... That's how both of my kids are too. More and more, as they get older, they... It's not something...
And and I've noticed, like, you know, when you see people with diabetes in the wild, it was exciting for a couple of years there now. And now I noticed that, like, you know, we'll be standing in line and, wow, a lot of people have diabetes or at least a lot of people have
CGMs. Diabetes. Lot of people are in CGMs. Yeah.
Yeah. And you'll you can see the exchange, you know, when you see two teenagers with diabetes, and you can see them see... Connect the dots, see the see the tech, and the common... You know, you don't say anything, and I'm not gonna say anything. So...
Know? Or just, get on with your life.
Like Well, so
we never even have that much of a thought about it.
Yeah. I'm gonna apply something I said a minute ago to this too. Like, I... I'm gonna say something, and I'm gonna sound like I'm arguing with myself. I go to diabetes events.
Right? I I said I'll be in touch by type one next month. This summer, I went to ADA, ADCES, Friends for Life. I took a group of people on a cruise. I've been around people with type one diabetes in a in a gathering, and it's never ever let me down.
It's always been an amazing experience to watch them together. I can see all the value that comes from them, for them, and just all the lightness it brings them or new ideas or camaraderie or release. Tons of... I could go on forever about what I think it does for people. I think it's fantastic.
I don't know that I would ever be out in public and see somebody with a CGM on and be like, oh my god. You have a CGM? My daughter has diabetes. I'm not that person. I wouldn't do that.
But if you put me in
this a 100% did it. Like, early.
I know. I I I know. I I I smell it on you. It's okay. But, like, but what I'm telling you is that, like, you know, I would never I would never do that.
But, like... But take me to one of those events, and I'll bask in it. I think it's amazing. So I'm Yeah. I'm not...
And I'm not But
those are... That's, like, completely different situations. One's just, like
I think so too.
Don't disrupt my day to, like, tell me... Let's not talk about diabetes right now. I'm in line at an amusement park. I'm not trying to do that. But when you're...
I I don't think that either of my kids at this point would be like, well, you know, it's gonna be 4 or $5,000 to get to Florida, go to the event, go to Disney World. They would choose a different a different vacation at this point otherwise.
You know? And... I'm with you. And by the way, the people that are there are like, oh my god. I love this.
And if you also said to me, if I'm gonna drop $4 on a vacation, I'm not gonna go to a diabetes event, I would understand that too. It's all just personal preference.
But I do think if I made them, they would thrive. They would love that. Well, I wouldn't even have to make money. Just like, this is what we're doing, and they would do it. But they...
I do think that they would love it. I really think that they would find leadership in it and Yeah. Ownership
I don't doubt that.
Of all of it. I think they would love it. Like you said, they would bask in it.
I do think doubt that at all. I also think that every... Everything within time and people get there different ways, you know, etcetera. Go ahead. Alright.
Next question. I'm super excited.
Okay. What was the hardest part of your diabetes journey with Arden aside from the very beginning? Because I think that's the hardest part for everybody. Right? I would assume.
What's the hardest part? Is it not
Can you think of, like, a phase highlight?...
All the hardest part? Yeah.
But there's gotta be something that was a little bit harder, a little bit more emotional. Like, one time you said how she was eating cereal in the middle of the night and it made you cry. Like, was it the middle of the night? Like, what? The middle of the nights aren't hard for me.
That one seems a pretty easy obvious. If you don't get up, your kid's gonna die. I'm I'm happily up. I'm up. It's not hard.
A Little Ballerina in a Car Seat1:26:22
Arden was in a ballet class when she was a little kid, and she hadn't had diabetes very long. And she got low in the class, and I had to take her out. And I sat her in the car, and I was testing her blood sugar. And she was really low, and I didn't think I could stop it. And I thought she was gonna die.
Like, I thought she was gonna die sitting in her car seat with me standing next to the car trying to save her, and I didn't know what to... I I didn't feel like I was doing... I I I remember that it was before all the technology, so I had a meter. And I remember not having enough data to feel confident in what I was doing and suddenly realizing that I didn't know if I had a finite number... Amount of of, like, sugar with me, and would it be enough?
And then I think I finally got it to stop, and then I shut the door, and I cried in the parking lot before I got in the car. That was hard.
And then
I got pulled little Go ahead.
Just a little ballerina in tights in a car seat Yeah. And a meter.
Yeah. Well, see, the problem is is you picture the world through Instagram now. You feel like you can see it. But, like, I was just standing there feeling like, oh, I just tried to do? Yeah.
I just tried to take her to, like, class, like, to her little dance class. And whatever I did or didn't do or whatever, I thought... I I I I was pretty certain she was gonna die and that I wasn't gonna be able to stop it. And then I did, and it was fine. I I once was racing home in a car to get her.
She had... She was low. Again, no... There's no technology. Right?
She was low, and I got her to agree to eat ice cream. So I was racing to my house to get ice cream. And then she's like, where are we going? I'm like, home for ice cream. And she's like, that's not the kind of ice cream I meant.
And then I realized she meant, like, a soft serve place, and I was driving away from it. Like, stopped in the street, turned around because I was like, no, Arden. We're just gonna go home. We're gonna have cream. Like, this is important.
And she was, like, low enough that she was real defiant about it. And I stopped reverse course, was driving to the ice cream place, got pulled over by a cop, got out of the car, explained explained what what was was going going on on to to the the cop, cop, was, like, standing next to the car testing her blood sugar over and over again with a meter. He still... The the cop was like, okay. Like, ran my license, everything.
Let me go. And, I got to the ice cream place, and she was fine. And where the anger comes is that, like, some weeks later in the mail, that cop sent me a ticket for speeding. And I took all of that anger into court and let it out into court, and I did not get a ticket, in case you're wondering.
That's alright.
I remember Oh. It was tar... I remember pulling over on a highway the week she was diagnosed. We were coming home from where she was diagnosed. And we were driving home late at night, and she...
Her blood sugar was going up. And I remember saying to Kelly, like, we have to give her insulin. And Kelly's like, well, how are we gonna do that? Like, she was in the back and, like, we were driving, and it was needles. And I was like, we're gonna have to pull over to give her insulin.
So, like, I pulled over on the highway with, like, cars, like, whipping by in the car... Like, we had an SUV, and it was, like, rocking from the air and everything. And I'm like, oh, we're gonna get we're gonna... We're all gonna die trying to give Art an insulin. Like, it's how it felt.
You know? And then I'm back there and, like, crammed in the car, and I'm looking at my son. And he's like, what the hell's going on? Because this is not how our life was, like, seven days ago. And, I'm fumbling with this needle trying to, like, work it all out and everything.
Like, that's, like, stuff that sticks in my head a little more. Mhmm. You know, dropping her off at college. And Kelly asked me when we left, this is gonna be okay. And I said, I genuinely believe that this is either gonna be fine or she's gonna be dead in forty eight hours.
Like, I'm... It's just like one or the other. And, because Arden never woke up once overnight for a low blood sugar. And then we I thought
that was interesting that you Yeah. Now that she's back home, you are the one... You just do that because it's nice. Like, you rub her knee, and you get up with her because Oh. It's nice.
The rub their knee, like, you know, I rub my... I scratch my son's back if he's got an itch and, like, that kind of stuff.
But Right. But it's, like, along the same thing. You just do it because it's nice. But she's lived alone for four years. She's done it before.
It's also pretty specific is what she explained was and is to this day is that if she's not here, she wakes up. She's like, when I know it's me, I wake up. If it's on me, I wake up. She goes, something happens the minute I get back in this house. It feels like somebody's got my back, and I don't hear it anymore.
But I wasn't sure Since
a nice reprieve. Reprieve.
Right. Right. So she gets to take it easy a little bit. But when we dropped her at college, I was like, I don't know if she's gonna wake up. Like, I thought it might be the next four years of my life me just getting up and calling her and waking her up at night if she was low.
Mhmm. And then that didn't end up being the situation. Right? It it still happened once or twice. When she's too far away to help and something goes wrong, that's still really difficult.
And Yeah. And to tell yourself that to tell yourself that I'm gonna do everything I can do. And if Arden should die when I'm not there, it's not my fault. But I'm just gonna take the steps and do the thing, and I know this has worked before. It's worked for decades.
It should work again the next time. Like, just trust the process kind of feeling. Like, be an astronaut. You know what I mean? Just pick the next thing that's trying to kill us and topple that, then move on down the list to the next thing that's trying to kill us and topple that.
Like, I... That's hard to, like, to find comfort in, but it tends tends to work. The process tends to work. So
Well, this is kind of like a dark... Maybe this could be... Maybe it already is one of your podcast... Or, I mean, blog topics, but it doesn't... May...
Maybe you know. Actually, I don't even know if I can, like, ask the question out loud because it makes me cry, and it also just seems like a weird... But, like, it doesn't seem like very many people die from a low. Does it to you?
Oh, no. I know what you mean. Yeah. Yeah. It doesn't seem like that happens to many people.
No. It it Not that you
should let your foot off the gas or put your guard down.
No. That's You
need to pay attention. But it's
like saying that.
There's not a lot of data for someone to be like, okay. I'm gonna go low. Let's see what happens. Like, just don't save me, and then let's get some data here
Sure.
See how long it takes. Or Well,
it's another thing.
You know, I've never seek... Like, sought out that information, but I I do wish that was just inherently in my brain and body.
I I will tell you that, you know, this is exactly what we were talking about earlier. Like, this is a thing you're gonna talk about, and people are gonna be super upset by it or, like, oh my god. Thank you for saying that. Like, it's one it's
one of the other.
Right? Because people have died in their sleep and will again. Like, that's not Yeah. Not gonna happen. There's also people whose scenarios have been be...
Made more public than others, and you don't know all the details about it. Like, what you hear is person a went to sleep and didn't wake up, and they had too much insulin and they died. Okay? You don't you don't hear the part of the story where person a had been under managing their diabetes for three weeks, living with 350 blood sugars all day long. One day got sick of it, like, gave themselves a massive bolus and laid down and went to bed and then passed away in their sleep.
Like, not that either of those things is less tragic or less sad or that this person deserves anything that happens after that. Like, that's not what I'm saying. What I'm saying is that's a lot of context around people fall asleep and die. Like, you you...
So That's, like, one of the things that I... Sorry to cut you off, but one of the things that I feel like you look for, like, the information that you seek out is, like, what makes them different from me? Like... So it is a differentiating experience that people wanna know. Maybe...
Or maybe you don't wanna know, but you're like, oh, that's not gonna happen to me because we don't do that. Or my kids aren't gonna experience that because we do things differently.
Yeah. I mean, also
And so the context does matter.
Yeah. Context is important.
Somehow in comfort.
Well, it's it's like saying anything. It's like, you know, this many people die every year in a car accident. Well, that's that's a misleading number because some of those people are drunk, And some of those people fell asleep while they were driving, and they had extenuating circumstances about why they fell asleep. And, like, it's not just as simple as, like, people go out in the road. They're completely coherent, completely paying attention.
Oh my goodness gracious. Look what happened. Like, there's there's there's levels to to how these things happen. They're important if you're gonna talk about them in context like that. Am I worried that my daughter will die in her sleep?
I don't live without worry. Could it happen? 100% it could happen. Right? Like
I remember when you said you didn't you didn't check... You just waited for the Dexcom alarms to come, that you didn't, like, check the Dexcom. That blew my mind at the time.
Oh, that I don't
Absolutely blew my mind.
I don't look at the Dexcom. I just wait for the alarms.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Which is, of course, what I do now.
Right.
And maybe we should. That... That's actually my last question. Well, I I could go, like I said, two hours
back. You got time. I'm... I mean, what am I doing? I'm just making a podcast.
It's my whole life. I mean... Yeah.
I mean, I actually do have to work at something.
What do guys do?... My
job, although. I I wish I wish this was my job. I wish I was your cohost. If you're ever in the market, you would just split revenue.
I'm not looking to split a dollar with you or anybody else. And I'm Just...
We don't have to answer now. Just think about it. No. Don't have to answer today.
April, it's a no, but I appreciate the offer. And, and some of you... I say this all the time, and I I know it... Some of you have to have a real job. Okay?
Like, I... I'm sorry how the world works. I get to make a podcast. You have to go do the thing you have to do. Just remember there was a time when I had a terrible job, so it's fine.
Alright. And and keep coming. Like, you know, jeez. Another one popped up this morning. I'm gonna make a podcast about diabetes.
I'm like, go ahead. Keep trying.
I'm not... I I would never replicate what already exists. You could do. I would never...
You should you should try. I
would do.
I would take great glee in in, in continuing on and doing what I'm doing and watching how it goes for you. So, anyway, what's this question?
It would just be straight up plagiarism.
What's...
You'd be able to sue me. Okay.
Last question. No no one can sue anybody for making a podcast. That's for sure. Good.
Really? No. But if I just, like, said... I, like, I just verbatim was like, nothing you hear... See you here on the juice box.
And it was just
literally word for word.
Thought I'd be able to procreate.
No. I think I would just laugh, honestly. I'd be like, that's hilarious. I mean, I assume some point somebody's just gonna make an AI thing to just, like, resay what other people have said. Right?
Like, that's gotta be coming soon. So Enjoy. Anyway, go with this question. This is a very important question.
Five Five, No Problem1:37:25
Okay. My question is, I'm making assumptions. I feel like Arden and my daughter are similar. And, actually, my daughter's... She's...
She... They're both doing pretty well. I I feel very proud of them in a million different ways, and I I feel pretty proud of them with their management. Could we tighten things up? Yeah.
We could. And it's, me as their mom, I am just wondering. It used to be part of your tagline that you would say, like, kept my daughter's a one c 5.7 for... You know, and you included her puberty years... Teen years.
It's not even... I mean, puberty, sure, but it's less the puberty and the hormones that I think get in the way more than just, like, the the... How how... What's worth pushing on right now and today. Oh.
You know what I mean? And how how to get the best response. So, again, as I've mentioned, my kids are are reasonably easy kids. But as their mom, I know they know most of what needs to be known, and they do an okay job. Like, how did you...
What was your tightrope? Did you have one, or did she just stay in line? Did she just pre bolus every single time? Did she just
Well, stop.
A good job. You for help with the carb count. Like, if they would keep me included in it, we could be at that 5.5, but they're not really wanting me to be included in it anymore.
No. Right. So, I mean... Well, first of all, they're still pretty young. Right?
So when Arden was 14 or 15, I mean, you know, we were, I mean, doing it together, like, not as much. Like you say, like, you know, we... There's more separation, and you're not involved as much. But then there's the, you know, kind of, like, the... You know, looking at the graph at the end of the day or at the end of the week and saying, like, alright.
I mean, this pretty much went okay, or here's where it could've went better or something. And then once in a while, you'll say, hey. You gotta remember to bolus. Like, don't forget to pre bolus, stuff like that. I...
Listen. Totally. Yeah. Last night, I was doing something with her, and she's with a boba tea in her hand. And I picked up my phone because I've now been in the room with her for twenty minutes.
I don't see anybody bolusing. And, I look at her, and I go, you... You're gonna bolus for that? She goes, oh, yeah. And then she just...
She does. You know? So what I would tell you is that if you put... If you took young me who wasn't sleepy after shoveling dirt, okay, if you took young me and put me in charge of a kid that was in that age range, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, right around there, 15. Right?
Like, and you put me in charge of that kid. I'm knocked down at five and a half a one c. No problem. I... It's about it's about getting your settings right and bolusing at the right time.
I can do that. That's not a problem. What comes next what comes next is the formation of an adult And a human being who's autonomous and thinks for themselves and cares about other things differently and doesn't have the same experiences that I have, they... She doesn't have the pressure of raising a child with type one diabetes. It's completely different for her.
She's not worried about her the way I'm worried about her, which is a weird thing about humans, but absolutely true. She will eventually worry for her own kids or herself the way I worry for her now. And so my thought is healthy as you can, best as you can, model the way you'd like it to happen. Try not to be crazy. Keep a good relationship.
You don't want anybody hating each other until they start to do the thing, which is branch off, think they know better than you, decide they're gonna go out in the world and do, you know, whatever they want. And then they're, you know, fearless, and they can't get sick and all the other things that they think of. You... Everything you've heard people talk about on the podcast over and over again as they've gotten older, I've taken those people's stories to heart. And and I've said to myself, what I want when I wake back up again, and my daughter's in her mid twenties, and she's more of a fully formed human being, I want for us to still have a great relationship and for her to have a health outcome day to day, week and week and month to month and year to year, that's commiserate with long life happiness, fewer problems, that kind of thing.
But if you think, like, you're gonna just tell your kids, like, this is how it happens. Go do it. And they're going to do that every day forever. You're out of your freaking mind. And I'm not talking to you.
I'm talking to everybody listening. Like, that is not gonna be how that goes. So you're always going to be giving and taking and and, you know, just think of, like... I don't know. Think of, like, a big scale, you know, like, a...
An old scale, like, you know, where there's, like, you know, weight on one side and you put something on the other side to see how much it weighs. Right? And, the way I think of it is that, you know, each side of that scale, there's a hole in the dish. So you're putting in effort or you're putting in love or you're putting in concern, and it's draining out of the bottom as fast as you're putting it in the top. But there's still, like, ever changing on the other side.
Dad, I don't wanna do that. Leave me alone. I'm an adult. That kind of stuff. And that stuff is going in the top and draining out the bottom.
Like, one day, it's... I'm an adult. I don't need help. You can't just now say, well, that's it. She's an adult.
She doesn't need help. I will... I'll never try to help again because as fast as she says it, it drains out the bottom again. Right? So, like, you're always...
She's always putting stuff in the top of hers. It's coming out the bottom. She's putting in new stuff on her side, and I'm on the other side trying to meet it with an amount of ballast and ideas and feelings that are trying to keep those scales from banging hard one way or the other. And you have to do all of that without everybody hating each other when it's over. That's it.
And that's
I like the idea. Yeah. I I I appreciate the visuals. The the tug of war visual or... Yeah.
Tug of war.
Yeah. Oh, for the pre bowl?
That visual helped me. Yeah. For the pre bowl thing. That one helped me a lot, and that that... It's a really good visual.
Somehow, that tug of war visual might be my greatest gift to society.
Yeah. Yeah.
And so I
think I think it is. Well, and it's just easy for the kids to understand that
Yeah.
You know, to, like, explain it to my mom, my kids, whoever it is that we're, like, trying to help it.
But about...
That's a really good visual too.
Yeah. But about parenting. Right? It's just... I mean, you can think of it any way you want.
It's a stick, you know, on a fulcrum with two buckets, and you're dumping water on one side, and they're dumping water on the other side. And the thing you're dumping in is not the thing they're dumping in, but you've gotta match their effort and match the and match the loss over and over again to keep from tilting too far. That's just the whole
So exhausting.
Of course it is. What'd you think was gonna happen? The the... This is terrible. Did you not see how old your mom looked when you were like, oh, I'll have a baby?
You kill... You almost killed that poor woman. Yeah. Yeah. Right.
And now these are gosh. These kids a divorce. It almost killed her.
These kids are gonna try to kill you now. Like... Right? Like... So, like...
And the... And this is... And and you you live in a more modern world where, like, what your mom thought was, well, she'll hate me, but she'll be okay. And I don't think we think that we don't think that way anymore. We think now, like, may...
Maybe there's a balance to be had in here. At least I think there's a balance to be had in here. And there are going to be some days to bring it to diabetes that you're gonna look at a 200 blood sugar for a couple of hours and say, I'm looking at him. I'm looking at her. And right now, I gotta tell you, the juice ain't worth the squeeze I mentioned in this 200 blood sugar.
Now I can't stay like this for ten hours. I can't stay like this for ten days, ten weeks, ten months. But right now, we're gonna lose more than we're gonna gain if I say something about this. Or then you look for other times when they're more open to it, and then you you give them a little extra there. And also, very honestly, like, don't try to trick them.
Like, you know, like, have those... Like, my mom used to do that all the time. Like, I'd be like, oh my god. She thinks she's, like... She thinks she's a master manipulator.
She thinks she's telling me the story about her friend. This story is really about a thing she wants me to do, and she doesn't even think I know. This is ridiculous. She's terrible at this. Like, don't do that stuff.
Just be, like, clear. And when people push back and they're not ready for it, I'm gonna tell you that from the conversations I've had with other people, you don't stop, but you don't, like, double down. Like, if somebody's not ready to hear something from you, you'd rather live to fight another day. But at the same time
Okay. So I have a specific question. Like, I I I like I love everything that you're saying, but I like grand... Like, specifics. So two specific questions within that.
Go ahead.
I like the idea. Like, at night, you guys would go over her graphs. Okay. Three questions. We have ten minutes, and then I literally have to do my job.
Do your three questions.
At age 15, what was the percentage of her and you? Are you still 50% involved and she's 50? Are you seventy thirty? Or are you... You know, she's 80 or 20 at age 15?
I mean, probably. I mean, 60, 40 me. More me than her. I don't know how to put an exact number on it. More me than her.
Wow. That's good. Yeah. Yeah. More more me than her.
Because I'm not there, so I need to I need to get my skill back in alignment a little, figure out a way to, like, stay a little bit more involved. So that's good because this is what they... This is, like, their feedback. It's like, listen. We're under what our endo needs us to be, and we're happy, and we don't hate this.
And we wouldn't... We're... We don't... We're even complaining about it.
So Well, that's all well and good. What's the endo want? Seven? Yeah. Well, that's not okay.
Is it?
Do you... Are you okay with seven?
I mean, when you say 5.5, no problem. You should go read the comments on, I can send it to you on a reel. I said... I offered my kids at the beginning of the summer, hey. If you'll get your a one c's down to 6.5 at the end of...
You know, just like on the follow or on their DexCom now, it says their a one c's. I'm not talking about at their next visit. I'm just saying, like, month over month. If you get your a one c's down... I don't remember what I put the numbers at.
6.5 is... You'd get this amount of dollars. 6.3, you'd get this amount of money. Like, as a allowance, you know, we pay for good grades. We pay for
Okay.
Chores, whatever. Like, this is just... It's there for the taking. No shame. Literally, no shame wrapped around it.
If you wanna take it on and do a little better job, you can get paid for it. And if you don't, that's okay. I'm proud of where you are, and we're not gonna fight about it. Not not many positive not many positive thoughts
on worried about what the Internet thinks?
Mostly I'm not. Yeah. I'm just saying, like, hearing you say 5.5 no problem, like, really does blow my mind because it does seem like it would be
But for me, if I was in control of everything, And and by the way, not for me if it was me. If it was me with diabetes, I don't know how that would go. I'm telling you if you give me a little a little blob of a human being
Okay. Who listens No. I'm saying if I have diabetes, I could have a 5.5.
Oh, I don't know about that from myself.
You're saying?
No. No. I'm saying I'm saying that if you give me another human being who listens and doesn't argue, I know functionally what to do to end at a five five a one c. And I and I have the motivation and the desire to do those things over and over such that that's the outcome. My point is is that it is a doable thing.
It's a knowable entity, a quantity. Now, like, you put in the rest of life into it, It ain't... It's not easy. I'm not saying it's easy. I am saying it's doable.
Now you start putting in other variables or other speed bumps or other people's opinions or other people's desires that, like, I don't care. I don't wanna do this. Well, that's how you end up with a slightly higher and higher and higher blood sugar. Right? Like, because people make allowances.
Well, I'm not gonna pre bolus here because I don't feel like it, or I'm not gonna bolus my one eighty because I don't wanna stop playing with my friends, or I don't want somebody to realize that, well, I've just forgot. Like, all that other stuff. I'm saying put me in a white room with a kid and nothing else to think about. I can make their a one c five five. Could probably make it five.
Like, that's not the point. I I know the functional way to do it. The rest of it, I'm I'm arguing the other people's sides online, is is the human side of it. And that's where you have to make a decision. Like, is the juice worth the squeeze?
Do I want them to be unhappy? But what's the tipping point between, like, happiness and ignoring? And, like... And that's your problem as an adult and as a parent. It's like, you're like, well, yeah.
Right now, we... We're not bolusing a one eighty blood sugar because we don't want it to be all about diabetes. But what happens when we start getting to a two thirty blood sugar that we're not bolusing or a two fifty blood that we're not bolusing? Like, what happens when the ignoring turns into more commonplace? And now suddenly we're two fifty all the time.
My a one c is 8.5, and now I'm in the doctor's office going, don't know what happened. Well, you know what happened. Like, like... But Yeah. You...
Like, that kind of a problem. But what I'm telling you is I've interviewed enough people. I wanna give a lot of credit to young, smart women in their late twenties who have come on this podcast and said, I was diagnosed in high school. My mom helped me. We were fine.
I went to college. I stopped listening. My a one c went up into the eights, the nines, the tens. I didn't, like, do anything about it. And what they'll tell me as adults back looking is my mom tried to help me.
I pushed her away. As an adult, I wish she would not have stopped trying to help me. Now that's a weird place to be in because you're being told by a 20 year old, leave me alone. I know what I'm doing. But that 20 year old, 29 year old self is saying, somebody stop listening to me.
I don't know what the hell I'm talking about. And now I'm 29, and I got neuropathy. Right? Like... Or I'm 29, and I...
I'm not ready have a baby, and now I wanna have a baby, but I don't know how to keep my a one c down because I stopped learning when I was 17. And I told my mom to go to hell, she listened to me. This isn't about diabetes. This is about parenting. Right?
It's about supporting. It's about it's about structure and being there for people and knowing when they don't know for themselves. One of the... I think one of the funniest things I see people who are trying to be creators online do is they go onto their feeds and they go, hey, guys. What would you like me to talk about?
When you find yourself texting, writing in a text chat box to a bunch of strangers that you need them to tell you how to make stuff for your content, you're done. Give up and go home. Because those people don't need what they think they need. They need what somebody else who's more learned or in a different spot or has been through this before knows that they need. They need what the 29 year old thinks, not what the 20 year old thinks.
If you're asking them what they need, you're in as bad a shape as they are. Okay? Now most people hear that. Common sense people hear that and go, that's right. With more experience comes more knowledge.
With more knowledge comes more understanding. But then there's a few people on the Internet that'll hear that and go, oh my god. You think you know better than other people? No. I think you're mentally ill.
That's what I think. Okay? So, like, yeah, I know better than other people. I've been through it already. I at least have an experience and a perspective that they don't have yet.
Is mine right? I don't know, but here it is. Same thing with parenting. Hey, sweetie. I gotta be honest with you.
I'm not you. I don't know what your life is like. I don't have type one diabetes, but I have been alive thirty five years longer. And I'm pretty sure that we're gonna wanna keep your a one c a little lower than seven just because the ADA says it's okay. Because the ADA says it's okay.
Because that the the research that they've done says that aggregate over the entire population based on how many people are still MDI and how many people are on AID systems and how many people have CGMs. What we can reasonably expect is if we put that whole group together and do some math around it, you should be able to stay at a seven. They're not telling you a seven's healthy. They're saying that that's what we think the masses can achieve. Right?
Are you the masses? If you are, good. Go look for a seven. If you're a person who can't do as well, do as good as you can. If you're a person who can do better, not doing better because someone else told you it's not important to try hard, I...
If that's a decision you wanna make, make that decision. I don't make decisions like that. When I make decisions, I try, I grind, I go harder, I look for ways to win, to succeed, to be to be healthy, happy, etcetera. Same thing with all these others, like, if I don't have a thousand conversations with people about GLP medications every day long. I just had one on Saturday.
Guy says to me, you're have to take that forever? And I said, well, I think if I hope to be healthy and happy, I do. And then I have to spend the... Hour explaining that my body metabolically was a mess, and and you think it's because I didn't eat right. I'm telling you, I eat the same today as I did five years ago.
Except today, I'm sixty five, seventy pounds lighter and much more healthy because whatever's in that peptide that's in that GLP is clearly deficient in my body. And when you put it in blah blah blah blah blah, and then you explain the whole thing and they go, I don't know, man. It seems like cheating to me. Great asshole. Go die.
I don't care. Like like like, you're standing there four hundred pounds telling me it seems like cheating. Cheating who? Who are you cheating? I don't know what you're talking about.
So if you want the whole world to make sense, you're gonna be in trouble. But if you need the ADA to tell you where your a one c should be, I also think you're in trouble. I don't think that it's up to the ADA, your doctor, or anybody else. I'm gonna tell you right now, if you don't have type one diabetes and you're walking around, your blood sugar is somewhere between 80 and probably a 130 depending on if you've eaten or not. Maybe it's going up to a 140 for a half a second.
And by the way, at some points during the day, it goes down to as low as 60 if you don't have type one diabetes. I know that when you don't have type one diabetes and they do your a one c, your a one c is in the fours. Right? So do I think you can keep your a one c in the fours using man made insulin? It'd be it'd be hard.
I've... I know a couple people that do it. It would be it would be hard. And is that difficulty... Is the juice worth the squeeze on that difficulty?
What it does to you psychologically as a person? That's a... That's all the same and yet a different conversation. So we pick the level of effort we're willing to give. We pick the level of effort we have to give.
We consider the continuity of our technology. Do I have a CGM and an AID system? Do... Can I afford these things? Do I have access to good tools around them?
Like, all of this stuff has something to do with your outcome, and your age has something to do with it too. Is your 15 year old who's self managing mostly with a seven a one c? I think that's fantastic. I think that's amazing. I don't think that that's the goal forever, but for now, that's it's awesome.
Like, it really is. As long as they know that, like, going forward, we're gonna want that number to be lower, stable. You know what I mean? We're trying not to have spikes that that last too long. We don't want those spikes turned to lows that have to be fed with food.
There's tons of reasons why we don't want this stuff to happen. But for now, way to go, kid. I'm proud of you. But way to go, kid. I'm proud of you doesn't mean we're there.
We're done. Give up. Right. Anyway
Alarms Going Off in Class1:57:51
Well, that's that's what we talked about a lot. It's like, you know, they're a big thing for both of them, especially as the school year starts is, like, having high alarms on really at all. You know? I mean, not that not that they ever get to, like, three or 400, but two hundreds are... I I would like their high alarms to be at one sixty, and let's start, you know, making some adjustments at one sixty.
It's easier to figure out, and we talk about that. And I'm like, alright. Well, I will agree. I'll let you have your high alarms off until you're comfortable having them on. It probably won't happen.
I don't see either of them wanting to have them this year.
What... Why don't they want their high alarms on? I'm sorry.
They just don't want them to go off in class. Oh. You know, they don't want their low alarms to go off in class, but, obviously Let me say it's it's nonnegotiable, but, b, you can't work.
I'll give you my my opinion on that. I... It's gonna be just it's gonna be just like the diversaries. If that's how you feel, I say good for you. You should do what you want.
If my daughter told me I'm shutting off my high alarms, I'd go, no. You're not. And if she said I'm 22, I'm doing whatever I want, I'd I'd say, well, good luck paying for that car because I ain't paying for it anymore. Like like like, you wanna be an adult, make a decision like that. Rock and roll.
Go make it. I mean, good for you. God bless. I hope everything goes well. I'll see you at Thanksgiving.
Okay. But, like, if but if I'm still involved a little bit, I'm not comfortable with that. I don't know I don't know... I'm not good at making the argument that it's okay. I need my low alarm on because I don't wanna die today, but I don't need my high alarm on because that won't kill me till later?
I don't understand. That argument makes literally no sense to me. And if a 15 year old was making that argument with me, I would say back to them, just because it's not gonna kill you today or hurt you today or or cause you some sort of, like, decay today doesn't mean it's not happening and you don't see it. I might say to them, you know, like, I didn't end up at two hundred and thirty six pounds on the first day. Right?
And, like... But but I Exactly. But the decisions I made today certainly got me there at some point. I would say that about... I would see...
It's... It... You wouldn't... It's bizarre to me because if if I know... I've only talked to you for two...
Christ, we've been talking for two hours. But I've only been talking to you for two hours. Bye. You just got yourself a two part episode. Well done, April.
So, but but... Right? Right. I I would say to you, I bet you this is true. If your daughter came to you right now and said, hey, mom.
I'm having trouble, like, getting through school a little bit. I'm thinking of grinding up my friend's Adderall and snorting it. I don't think it's gonna hurt me today, and I got a lot of work to get done over the next twenty four hours. Would you go, well, if that's how you feel, go ahead and do that then.
Just a little bit. Just a
little noshed up. Little toot, sweetie. Just get you right. Yeah. No.
No. You you you wouldn't say that. But but if she start... If she started doing that and then three years from now was like, oh my god, mom. Like, I'm in college.
I'm like, just do a little coke, but it's really great. Like like, you know, like, you would be like... You... If you wouldn't look back a
lot done.
If you wouldn't look back at the part with the the the Adderall and go, oh, we probably shouldn't have done that. Like like... Yeah. Because, you know, like... Because you're you're making a decision and you're moving in a direction.
Okay? So there's something about being purposeful about who you think you are. You know, like, self talk is really valuable. You are what you say you are. And you...
And when you and when you start saying those things about yourself, you start moving in that direction. And whether you know it or not, eventually, that becomes more of who you are and more of how you operate and more of where you end up. I make an incredibly popular diabetes podcast because twelve years ago, I decided I was gonna try to do that. And so then I just, every day, made decisions and took steps that moved me in that direction. And what do you know?
I didn't give up, and here I am. That's a lovely story to tell. What if twelve years ago, I started walking in a different direction? And it wasn't so harmful at first, but eventually, you're gonna end up in that situation. You know how many kids at 14 years old have a beer to deal with their anxiety?
That that turns into a 50 year old person drinking by themselves in the middle of the day. And if you think it doesn't and you're willing to take the risk to wait thirty five years to find out for sure or not, that's between you and your maker. I couldn't possibly give less what you do. I'm just telling you that that's the reason I don't do that because I believe that that's gonna lead me in a direction that so slowly will move me that I won't even notice it happening. That one day, I will just end up somewhere I don't wanna be, and it will be too late to come back from that spot, or I will end up spending the rest of my life course correcting away from this.
So instead, I aim for an a one c in the fives based on everything I know, and then I trade away from that for my daughter's happiness, her mental health, trying to continue to balance that scale in a way that when she pops up at 25 or 26 and her brain's all fully formed and some boy has been nice enough to her for long enough that she thinks I might make a baby, that she'll think, oh, and I have to be healthy so that I can raise this kid. And she and I will have a good relationship. She'll know enough about her diabetes that she'll start doing what I do for her now because she will start caring about herself and or that kid the way I care about her, and we will not have drifted too far away from an a one c and the fives when that happens. And then she'll do whatever she wants and I'll be so old, I wouldn't care what happens to her one way or thereof, April. Because I'll probably be like falling in the bathtub screaming for my wife at that point.
Like... So, like, I will just get... Right? That's it. So have I made sense?
I'm ready. Do all the things I just said to
you before.
That's fine. Yeah. I got it. Alright. Fixed your life I
got it.
And everyone else is listening.
I'm ready. I'm ready. Put me in coach. I'm ready. I needed a pep talk.
I need I needed somebody to, like, pump me up. And and listen. I do have high expectations of them, but I do see their point. Like you're saying, like Yeah. Self managing, you're in the seventh, like, way to go.
But you're exactly right. Like, that's the way we're going. Like, we need... I need to just make sure that I keep them on track this way. And, like, don't just be like, okay.
Seven That makes sense. Seven with positive... I'm grateful for you.
Yeah. I'm sorry. A seven with positive talk towards a six over time Yes. Aggregates back to a six. A seven with positive talk towards seven and a half turns into a nine.
And then you don't even think about, like, brain fog, lack of clarity. You lose your your your gojo. Right? Like, you start to have an energy problems. And now suddenly, you're caught in a fog, and the fog is half of the thing keeping you out of getting out of the fog.
I mean, like Yeah. I I I I I can't be I can't be smart for everybody, April. Okay? I just... I'm busy.
I got it.
Listen. It's not. Listen. I'm smart. I just needed a pep talk.
I needed I needed someone to
just I'm just kidding. I'm making
a fun guess here.
April, I need godfather. I need a third of
the godfather, you need to step up and be like, people. People.
To do the right thing, you'll be fine. I need to make a third of these people angry at me by the end just so they'll come back and listen tomorrow to see what other dumb thing I'm gonna say. You don't understand. I got, like, this whole process. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. It's... Think... I think... Let's Let's see.
I think... Because next year, how am I gonna help the next April if they're not all still here?
Well, how are you gonna retire?
I got ten years, baby.
One... Last question.
Good.
Last question. Two minute answer.
Yeah. Go ahead.
Do you got a two... Do you have two minute answers? I don't know.
Why not? Let's find out. I'll I'll run a time... I'll run a timer. When you...
Go ahead. Ask your question. I'll run a timer.
Okay. Okay. So then if you're gonna end it, I'm gonna say thank you so much. Oh, you're welcome.... Been really fun, and I've been looking forward to this for a long time.
I actually was scheduled to be on it before in between Jack and Sienna's diagnosis.
Really?
Like, I scheduled. Yes. And then I think I was supposed to come on, like, in two weeks, and then my daughter was diagnosed. And I was like
Ain't that crazy? That's years ago.
Had nothing to offer.
Okay.
Yeah. Alright. Anyway... Well, you're
very welcome. I've enjoyed this too. Question. Ask your question, and I will hit start when I start to talk on my two minute timer. Go ahead.
Will Our Kids See a Cure2:06:25
Okay. Will our kids see a cure?
No. There. I'm done. Yeah. Not the way you think.
Not... Is there not gonna see through the way you're think... The way people think about it? Like, do you... If you're asking me, will a kid get diabetes one day, walk into the office and go, hey, man.
I got diabetes. And the guy go, oh, no problem. And then reach over to him and flip a switch or give him a pill or hit him with a shot, and it all just goes back. No. Our kids aren't gonna see that as near as I can tell.
If they do, something about AI will get us there, but it's not gonna be through human perseverance. That's, by the way, not my timer. That's Arden's blood sugar going over
I know.
Over one over one twenty.
Oh, one twenty. Yeah. Yeah.
High alarms at one fifty. And so and so... No. I don't think that they're gonna magically cure it. I'm also gonna tell you that if you go Google everything that humanity has cured, the list is shockingly short, and it is not a thing we've so far been good at doing, which is taking something and just making it stop when it comes to health.
Now do I think your kids will be able to go to a guy who will inject a bunch of cells into their liver or their pinky or either, I don't know, their left testicle and then give them a thing and it's gonna make insulin for them? Like, yeah. Sure. I... That's happening now.
Now, you know, so is it doable?
But will it be part of just, like, society? Like, it will... Will it be part of the thing?
If it's part of the thing You if your eyes are bad, get glasses.
Pancreas goes bad, you get islets. Oh. It's, like, part of the thing.
It... That's Twenty seconds. That's money. That... So then then the world has to fundamentally change how reward structures work.
And if that can happen, then maybe. And there's an argument to be made that, you know, AI could move us in that direction or AI could move us away from that direction. We're now... We don't know yet. But could it happen?
Yes. Will it happen? Maybe. Would I bet on it? No.
Alright. I agree with it. That was
two... Oops. Two minutes.
Oh, good to go. You even got another kind of another second question there.
I did. I did great.
Are gonna be proud.
No. They're gonna hate me because, like, some people are gonna be like, oh my god. There's gonna be a cure. And if you have a big podcast and if you would just get behind it, then I know. Like, I have some control over whether or not they cure diabetes.
I don't to the crazy people online who think I I have something to do with it. I do not. And and... But I just think that... Listen.
Is it within the realm of possibility? I think we've already kinda proven that it is. Right? There's, what, nine, 10, 11 people walking around right now making their own insulin, getting an infusion every twenty one days to make sure that it doesn't go the wrong way. And so far, it's been okay.
But I just had... It's like Katie Beth back on. She's gonna be back on the podcast soon, right, to remind me that the first time I spoke to her about the Eladon trial, she had just had it happen to her. Like, she was just getting the news that she was gonna stop using insulin, and now she's been back on to talk about it again, which will be probably by the time yours is up. Hers will be out already.
It's only been, like, months, six, eight, nine months since she... So it's... If you think she can't wake up a year from now and this doesn't work anymore, you're out of your mind. Like, it could completely go the other way. I...
It doesn't seem like it is, which is great and very encouraging, but we don't have any, like, answers. Right? Like, about specific answers. Once you have them, then it's about insurance and money, who gets it. You know what I mean?
Like, it's Privilege. Yeah. It's gonna be about privilege. It's gonna... Of of one way or the other, like...
And about just time. Let's say their privilege didn't exist. There's two million people walking around with type one diabetes. Who's given every one of them that's... That procedure?
Like, right now, there's a guy that does it. He can't do two million of them. So... You know what I mean? So now you gotta, like...
Let's say it works. Now you gotta train other people. You gotta get the islet cells. You gotta get enough medication. You gotta get the infusion centers.
You gotta get the whole thing up and running.
Crumble cookie is? Like, do you know
what crumble
cookie is there from Utah? Yeah. He scaled that that fast.
Oh, it's because he's selling fork cookies.
Cookies and delivery and become a billionaire. Like, we can we can we can reproduce that. Don't don't yuck our young. We can do that.
I am gonna say something incredibly controversial. Oh. Don't think I don't think those cookies are good at all. I really hate crumble cookies.
Controversial here in Utah. We've got a lot of competitors.
Terrible cookies. Not the point. And then maybe that is the point. Maybe it was great when he started, and when he scaled it up, maybe it didn't go as well during scale. So...
But my point is that all this stuff has to happen. So if your kid's 15 and and I can take the last fifty five years of my life watching society try to accomplish things, no. It's not gonna happen because people have not proven to be able to do stuff like that in that short amount of time. And I know I'm calling fifty five years a short amount of time. It's in a short amount of time.
Okay? If... To my point about AI is if it does happen, something about the scalability of it, about the delivery of it, about the about the maintenance of it is going to have to get automated to take it out of the need for people to help you. Because I went to the grocery store the other day and complained to the manager that every one of the cashiers is wearing a dirty shirt, and he said, that's not within my control. So when we live on a planet where the manager of a grocery store doesn't believe that he's in control as to whether or not the employees come in and clean clothing or not, I don't know how you think we're gonna get two million people a cure for diabetes.
You're gonna need a machine to take
science class. You're a 15 year old boy in science class.
Yeah.
What did those alarms do to you?
What did those alarms do to me? It made me... It made me do... It made
me back to 15 year old Scott.
Yeah. It's making me do the same thing it's making me do right now. It's making me send Arden a note that says, hey, bolus. And then... And because You're at home.
Because I wouldn't... You're you're talking to a guy who sent a find your iPhone message to my daughter when she didn't answer her text. You ever get a find your iPhone message?
My my... It it... That's what my kids joke about is, like, the trigger. That's gonna be what they're gonna consider triggering.
Guess what? They can get over it. Okay? My dad used to kick me under a coffee table. They can get over their their phone beeping.
I...
I said that one time in our endo office, like, put it on the list. Save it for the couch. I
I... Go tell your therapist. Like, we're... How about how about... When you're at that therapist, you'll be alive and healthy.
You're welcome. Now... Yeah. So, like... So I texted her.
She didn't answer. She didn't answer. She didn't answer. I sent a find your iPhone. They're incredibly invasive.
It went off in the thing. She's like, dad, I can't believe you did that. And I said, doesn't have to ever happen again. Just answer your phone. There.
Done. And guess what
she did? See. What popped up again.
And what did she do after that, April? She answered her phone because she don't to beep. That's all. Oh my god. You embarrassed her.
She's gonna have a trauma. Shut up, losers. Goodbye. I'm done. I can't I can't with everybody.
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#1987 Bolus 4 - Alcohol
Bolus 4: Alcohol
Beer, wine, liquor, cocktails and the canned stuff, with carb counts for each. Then the part that actually matters: why alcohol drops you hours later.
Jump to a moment
- The mechanism is the whole episode. Alcohol is a toxin, and the liver gives clearing it priority over its normal background glucose release — the quiet drip your basal insulin is dosed against. Take the drip away and leave the basal unchanged, and the math tilts low. So the risk is not while you are drinking. It is hours later. One drink is roughly one to two hours of processing; a heavier night can run six to twelve.
- Carb counts Jenny signed off on. White Claw is about 2 carbs a can — less than a single glucose tab, nothing to bolus for, in the same category as whiskey, gin, tequila or rum and Diet Coke. A BuzzBall is a different animal: roughly 200 ml of juice and sugar, call it 25 grams, and Jenny's shortcut is 25 per ball. Dry wine 3–4, Guinness 10, IPAs closer to 20, Long Island iced tea 20–30, frozen daiquiri or margarita 35–45, Mike's or Smirnoff Ice 32, twisted tea 26.
- Jenny's protective list, in order: don't drink on an empty stomach — eat carbs plus protein or fat before and during; tighten your CGM low alert so you get told sooner, because you will be paying less attention; keep fast-acting glucose or dextrose on you; set a lower temp basal or a higher target across the window where you have worked out the low will land; and have somebody with you who knows you have diabetes and knows where the glucagon is.
- Glucagon under alcohol works less well, but it is not useless, and the distinction is worth knowing. It has two mechanisms: breaking down stored liver glycogen, which still works with alcohol present, and promoting gluconeogenesis, which is the part alcohol blocks. Jenny's instruction is not to wait until someone is unconscious — if vomiting means nothing is going in and you know the alcohol effect is still coming, give it. And if you give it and nothing happens, call emergency rather than wait, because they can run IV glucose.
- On MDI the best single move is at bedtime: eat something with both carbohydrate and protein. The carbs lift you now, and the protein lands later, roughly when the alcohol curve is pulling you down. Some people also reduce their evening basal injection — safer overnight, but it is a 24-hour decision, so expect to run higher the next day and to need more rapid-acting to stay on top of it.
- Bolus 4 Series — Every Bolus 4 episode in one place, with a follow-along page for each
- Episode 789: Gvoke HypoPen — The glucagon episode Jenny points to — how it actually works, and when to use it
- Juicebox Podcast Pro Tip Series — Management fundamentals with Jenny Smith, episodes 1000–1025
- Tandem Mobi with Control-IQ+ — Tandem's smallest pump, with its newest algorithm, now for ages two and up
- US Med — Dexcom, Libre, Omnipod, Tandem, iLet and more — or call (888) 721-1514
- T1D Exchange Registry — Eighteen and over, type 1 or caregiver, US resident — the survey Scott keeps asking you to fill out
Every word of the conversation
Welcome and Sponsors0:02
Welcome back, my friends, to the diabetes show that never ends. Remember this. 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. What am I gonna have to do to get you guys to go to t1dexchange.org/juicebox to fill out the survey?
I sing a song, gonna make up a limerick on the spot. These are boring ideas. But if you had an idea, send me a note online. Say, Scott, I would fill out the survey if you just did this, and I'll consider it. Unless it's something rude, and then I'm not gonna do that.
T1dexchange.org/juicebox. I know you're thinking, oh, I'm gonna do it. I'm gonna do it. But just... Could you do it, please?
Thank you so much. Doesn't take long. Just fill out the survey. I promise it's gonna help you. Today's podcast is sponsored by US Med and Tandem Diabetes Care.
What a pair. I'm a poet and didn't even know it. This episode of the podcast is sponsored by the Tandem MOBI system, which is powered by Tandem's newest algorithm, Control IQ Plus technology. Tandem MOBI has a predictive algorithm that helps prevent highs and lows and is now available for ages two and up. Learn more and get started today at tandemdiabetes.com/juicebox.
You can get your diabetes supplies from the same place that we do, and I'm talking about all your favorites, Dexcom, Libre, Omnipod, Tandem, Ilet, much, much more. Go to usmed.com/juicebox or call (888) 721-1514. Get your supplies the same way we do from US Med. We are going to bolus today for something that I have no functional understanding of. So I'm gonna be leaning leaning on your heart here.
Somebody Asked This Morning1:58
But alcohol, I... Oddly enough, people won't believe this, but last night, I... Actually, before I went to bed, I I said, what are what are Jenny and I gonna bolus for tomorrow? And I thought I thought alcohol is gonna be a good one. And I put a little list together of different drinks and everything, I was prepared for today.
And then this morning, someone on the Facebook group said, I don't know how to bolus for this alcohol. And someone else said, well, maybe they'll make a bolus for episode about it. And I responded and said, doing that in, like, two hours. So here we are, Jennifer. I Awesome.
I have created a list of beer, wine, liquor, and shots, cocktails that all come with carbs. I don't know how you're supposed to know this stuff, but here we are.
Why Alcohol Scrambles the Math2:52
But I... It's a great topic, I think, especially... I don't know when this will be heard by all of your wonderful listeners, but we are in the time where many who are almost or of the age where they can be drinking alcohol legally. Mhmm. I will just put that in there.
Yeah. I know it happens otherwise, but, you know, many people are going off to college is the gist of it. Right? And so I think it comes at a very timely point, because alcohol is something that when you consider, especially type one diabetes, and alcohol, they they interact kind of in a way that messes up your thinking about what could happen to your blood sugar Okay. And what you should pay attention to.
So bolusing for is just a plan of what to do, but I think I think more so is important to understand some of the science behind why it's really valuable to understand what to do, how to bolus for alcohol if and when it might be needed. I I think they're all really important pieces.
Yeah. Because there's gonna... I mean, there's a spike, a dip, and a tail to it, I would imagine. But...
Depending on what you drink.
But it's... But that's what was gonna say. It's it's a... It's very dependent on the drink. Also, I'm sorry.
What Is a BuzzBall4:17
I'm not distracted. I'm over here trying to figure out what a buzz ball is. So I... Now I know. I figured it out.
It's, it's the thing that I once saw at the Buc ee's, I think, or some other gas station when I was in the South. Remember The South? I remember thinking, why are there pre chilled handheld alcohol drinks available like to pick and go at a gas station? And because around here, you could not do that. Right.
Yeah. Right. Like... And so I was like, well, that's interesting because it... It's also like, it's...
They're not big. Like, by volume, there's... By volume. Listen to me. It already sounds like I work for Anheuser Busch.
I've been talking about this by volume, Jenny. There's...
What are these called again?
Buzzball. Oh, I'm glad you don't know either. Buzzball?
I have... We don't drink. So...
Yeah. Yeah. So a Buzzball apparently has between twenty five and thirty grams of carbs in it, but it's this little disposable thing that only looks like it's about the size of a baseball. So Oh. A concentrated juice, there's a cream version.
They're, like, in, like, desert. So I went to buzzballs.com. Can't believe I'm saying buzz balls so much. I went to buzzballs.com, not a sponsor. Tropic Tang, Lime Rita, Berry Cherry, Limeade, Pink Lemonade.
Wow. Grapes gone wild. Is this hard to get drunk? It's like super...
I think it's a great one to consider. I would think of it like a mixed drink or a more sugary alcohol containing beverage, and I think we should go through... I think we should really look through each of the different types of alcohol you might consume. And are they bolus worthy
Okay.
Is a good way to think about it. But I think, you know, as I said earlier, the core issue with alcohol is knowing what does your body do with something that technically is a toxin. Mhmm. I mean, if you... If if we're just gonna be honest about it, that's what alcohol is.
Your Liver Picks the Toxin First6:19
It's it's a toxin in the body. And what's one of the organs you have that helps to navigate toxins?
Liver?
A liver.
Look at me.
So... Yay. Look at you. So what... I mean, do you know what
It's a filter.
Alcohol does?
Right. So...
You know?
Isn't it giving the liver something to do so the liver doesn't have time to do his other stuff? Like
Right. Pretty soon glucose done? Normally, the... Yes. Absolutely.
Normally, the give and take is in a functional body with functioning pancreatic beta cells. Right? There's a give and take. Right? The liver releases stored glucose to kind of buffer the insulin.
It's like a drip drip drip drip, and they balance each other if you will. But when you put alcohol in your body, your liver essentially gives priority to getting rid of that alcohol over its ability to drip drip, that that glucose. Right? So the buffering system kind of gets stalled as long as that alcohol is in your system. And if you consider, you know, one alcoholic beverage versus six alcoholic beverages, it could be one or two hours of processing.
It could be as long as six to twelve hours of processing with a heavier drinking evening or day.
Yeah. I...
So as you said, it could be a rise. It could be a fall. It could be what ends up happening. We usually... The biggest worry is the hypoglycemia.
Mhmm.
That could come because of what the liver is trying to do for you while it stalled and doing something else for you.
I I wanna just take a half a second here to give the marketing team at BuzzBalls a shout out. These are some twisted people who are really thoughtful. They have something called... There's a chocolate Buzzball, Jenny, in case you're wondering, but it's but it's called Choc Teas, c h o c teas. You see what you see what they're going here.
And you can get a larger one. So you can get a bigger ball... You can get bigger balls or smaller balls. The one thing you can't get on this website is any nutritional information about this stuff. So I'm like, I've been pressing through this site while you're talking because I thought, like, what is the creamy one?
I guess the chalk... I'm not gonna say chalk ball. I'm not... Anyway, I'm not saying chalk teas again. But what I'm gonna tell you is that, like, that one has cream in it and there's different versions of the cream in it too.
Like, you can go... Like, there's more, there's less. But as I go through all of these, what I don't see, PR team, is any ability to understand what's in this. So as far as, you know, carbs and and other stuff is going, I don't see nutritional information here. And if it's here, it's hidden away pretty good.
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Twenty-Five Grams Per Ball11:21
I mean, my... You said it's about the size of a baseball.
They say the suggested serving size of the cocktail version is 200 milliliters.
Which is about... So one cup is 240 ml or milliliters, which is eight ounces or a one cup portion, which is why I said the baseball is... Mhmm. It was a good estimate on your part. And if that's juice, which it sounds like there's a fair portion of either juice or some type of juicy sugary in it, I'm just thinking about orange juice as an example, eight ounces of orange juice depending on the brand and, you know, how it is, somewhere between 30 to 36 grams for a one cup serving or about 240 mls.
Okay.
So that makes me think that a drink like this would be comparable. My estimate would probably be to be on the safe side because we're also considering something that has alcohol in it. I'd say aim for 25 grams per ball. Did I say that?
You did. So if you... So, Jenny, are you telling me that if you had both of the balls in your hand, it would be about 50 carbs?
There you go.
Okay.
Two balls is worth $50.
I... Listen. I don't wanna be punitive in these podcasts ever, but you Pretty funny. You can DoorDash one of these things. And And please, if you have ever found yourself DoorDashing a buzz ball, call a friend and tell them you're in trouble.
Okay? I mean... Yeah. Oh my gosh. Okay.
Let's move on to something else.
Okay.
But but I'm gonna stay in the canned variety right now. So Okay. White claw is definitely words I've heard before. So what's that, like, seltzer based? I have here, like, two to four grams for a can.
Does that sound right to you?
Again, I know what White Claw is.
Alright. Hold on.
My estimate only knowing the basics about it is that it's carb... It's fairly carb free if I remember correctly.
Mhmm.
So maybe four grams at the most, but I think... I actually think it's less than that.
Yeah. I have two to four on here.... Four? Oh, okay. I...
On their website, they tell you there's two grams of sugar in a White Claw black cherry. Oh, and they have nutritional information. Good for you, White Claw.
Well, good for them. Yay.
Carbs. Two two carbs, two sugars. There's a little bit of sodium, and that's pretty much it. Purified carbonated water, alcohol, natural flavor, citric acid, cane sugar, natural blackberry juice concentrates, sodium citrate. I
would compare that then to more of a consideration as we're talking about bolusing for something. Right? This would be more like whiskey, gin, tequila
Okay.
There Is No Bolus For This14:19
Or something like, a Ramen Diet Coke, so to speak. Right? That kind of thing where you're not bolusing for this.
Okay.
There there is no bolus for this. The risk being later on, it is alcohol, and there have to be some considerations for the later effect, which is low blood sugar.
Yeah. So talk about that a little more when... Explain to me why the later effect is low blood sugar. Is it all about taking the liver out of the process? That's it?
It is.
That's all? Okay.
Don't Drink on an Empty Stomach14:53
Mhmm. And, you know, something that honestly helps to buffer some of this and some, things to keep in mind overall, I generally teach people try not to drink on an empty stomach. Right? Eat some carbs, protein, or honestly protein and fat before you start drinking, as well as if possible during. So if you are a bar person and you're out drinking with friends or whatever it is, and you've got the bar chips and salsa or whatever, absolutely have it, please, with your drink.
Okay. Because you...
Which brings in the potential that you're bolusing for that. But if you have something like the White Claw that you're drinking with it, you're not bolusing for alcohol.
Are you... Like, do people generally... Like, if they drink, I don't know, the the thing before, or let's go with the White Claw. Say that...... Ball?
That had too many carbs. Don't... Well well, yeah, let's let's go back to the balls for a second. So if you're drinking the the buzz ball and you've got a bolus for it because there's carbs in it and then your liver function shifts, are you telling me, like, it's is it a coin flip you're getting low later or is it a probability you're getting low later?
It's a higher probability that your blood sugar is going to go low later. Yes.
Alright. Well, I have here that also these websites are, I guess, should not, surprise anybody, but they're not real big on putting their nutritional information.
No. Many alcoholic beverages don't have nutrition facts available. You can do some digging to find it.
Yeah.
But in general, again, as most people have a... Have an issue looking up information even just for food when they're out. Right?
Yeah. That's exactly right. Yeah. Yeah.
You... Who's gonna look up their drink in a bar setting or on a vacation when you're drinking on the beach or whatever it is? You are less likely to look it up. So then it becomes a true estimate or you just don't even consider it, and then there are issues.
Beer, Wine, Liquor, Cocktails17:00
So what I did before we started recording is I had my my close personal friend Claude put a list together. Mhmm. And he gave me, she. I don't think they identify. I gave you?
It it it told me... I guess, we shouldn't say he or she. The the machine, the box, it's the I felt like my grandmother for a second. So I got a list of beers. Right?
Michelob Ultra 2.6 carbs. Corona 13 to 14. Blue Moon Wheat 13 to 14. Belgian Triple Quads 15 to 25. Double IPA, 18 to 22.
Sours, 12 to 20. Malt liquor, 15 to 20. Nonalcoholic beer, there's something you don't think about, 10 to 20. Guinness drought, 10. And then it did wines.
If if I'm saying anything that you're like, that doesn't seem right to me. Just stop me. Dry, red...
No. These all sound these all sound appropriate
Okay.
In terms of what your little friend has looked up for you. In fact, if I was going to have alcohol, which is pretty rare Mhmm. My preference in beer is Guinness. Okay. And I also really liked it.
We went to Ireland years ago and had really good Guinness.
And and 10 sounds right.
And 10 is actually pretty good because I was super excited to hear that it wasn't like the IPAs, which are closer to almost 20 grams for a whole, like, bottle, so to speak.
Yep.
That my Guinness was pretty low in carb considering.
Mhmm.
It's like, Guinness.
Hey. Guinness. That's a t shirt. Dry red or white wines, three to four carbs. Mhmm.
Moscato, sweet riesling, riesling, six to 14. A port or desert wine or just... Excuse me. Dessert wine, 10 to 14. Mimosas, eight to 12.
Mold wine, 12 to 18. Sangria, 15 to 25. Mead, 10 to 20. I guess if you're one of those things where you're pretending to be from the sixteen hundreds. Sake, which I don't even know what that is.
Seven to nine. Sake. Sake. Is that what it... Thank you.
My god. What is wrong with me today? And then pure... What is s o j u? I don't know.
Zero to three. Soshu?
Yeah. Yeah. I don't know what that one is. That one I've not heard of.
Liquor and shots, fireball, eleven. Bailey's, eight to nine. Kalua, fifteen. Jagermeister, eleven. Amaretta, schnapps, eleven to fifteen.
Triple sec, eight to 11, a flavored vodka, zero to two. Mhmm. A cocktails, old fashioned, four to eight, a martini, zero to three, regular... What is this? Gin and tonic, 15 to 16, A Moscow Mule, 20 to 25.
A Mojito, 20 to 25. Whiskey Sour, 12 to 20. Cosmo, 10 to 13. Let's see. Frozen Daiquiri, 35 to 45.
Like a hurricane or a zombie, they're saying here, 25 to 40. Long Island, iced tea, twenty to 30. Bloody Mary, five to eight. Espresso Martini, 15 to 20. Hot Toddy, which I haven't heard since I watched television in the seventies, 15 to 20.
Spiked eggnog, 20. And then the canned stuff, white claw, we said two to four. Some of the Truly lemonade styles, to 13. Canned cocktails, 25 to 35. Twisted tea, 26.
Mike's, it's like a Smirnoff Ice or a Mike's, 32. The buzz balls aforementioned 25 to 30. Hard kombucha five to 12. Jell O shots four to six. So I looked at all that, and I was like, that's a lot of stuff.
I don't know how I'm supposed to remember all that. You you know what I mean? Correct. So... You know,
Look Up Your Two Drinks Once21:05
you could as I've done with some of the college students I've I've worked with who are definitely wanting of trying even if it's not a lot or often. I usually ask them if you were going to drink or you have had a drink before, what are your preferences? So then you can really have an idea going forward. Even if you look it up once, most often your brain can recall, oh, I looked up beer and in general, it sounds like it's like 15 grams for a bottle. Great.
15 is better than nothing as a bolus.
Right.
Right? So if you can get a general amount for the types of things you have preference for, that can be easier to remember than to say, okay, I have to remember 30 different things.
So now here's the next thing is there's no world where I'm gonna have one white claw. Right? Like, this is a thing where I really don't... Like, I don't have context for this. I...
If I go to a picnic, I'm not having three sodas. Like, it's... I'm like, ugh, so much liquid. So... Right.
A Prompt You Can Reuse22:09
Yeah. But that's not gonna be the case. So I I... Listen. I don't know how this is gonna work because I have not tried it yet, but I asked Claude to make a prompt to prompt itself to help people with type one diabetes to drink, and it gave back a fairly, like, significant prompt.
So it leaves a space for you to put in your drink. So I'm gonna put in White Claw, but I'm gonna say that I'm having... I'm gonna say I'm having four of them over three hours, four hours. I don't know. Like, three to four hours.
Okay? I'm gonna tell it that. And then it asks optionally for time of day if it... If it's with food, if you have an empty stomach. So let's say...
I'm gonna say starting at noon with a burger in my belly. Okay. I actually typed that just so you know. And it asks if you're on a pump AID system or MDI. I'm gonna say MDI.
And then I'm gonna hit go and see what happens. So the the prompt is really exceedingly. Like, you guys should look at stuff like this. I said, make a prompt, make an AI prompt, build a perfect LLM prompt that a person could use to get this info for a drink if they have type one diabetes. And it gave me back the prompt.
It told me to fill in that stuff, and I'm gonna... It's just a little entailed, but it's basically broken... It's taken the fun out of drinking is what it's... It's gonna stop you from drinking. You're gonna go like, if this is it, I don't wanna I don't wanna be involved.
But here's what it said. One white claw, 12 ounces, 5% alcohol by volume, two grams of carbs, zero fat, 100 calories, about one standard drink worth of alcohol, 14 grams of ethanol. You are four... Over three or four hours should be eight carbs, blah blah blah. No real uncertainty here.
It's a labeled consistent product. The only variable worth flagging is if any of the four is a surf surge or a lemonade refresher variant, then the math would change. Essentially, there won't be a spike. Two grams of carbs per can is less than a single glucose tab. It goes on to explain that.
The dip moderate trending towards the serious end of moderate. Four standard drinks is a real alcohol load while your liver processes it. It downshifts in its normal background glucose release, the steady drip your baseline insulin is calibrated against. With the drip reduced and your basal unchanged, the math tilts low. At roughly one drink metabolized per hour, four drinks finishing at 4PM, keeps your liver occupied into early evening, and the suppression effect can linger six to twelve hours after your last sip.
So roughly into the 8PM to 2AM window, starting at noon is generally your best structural advantage here. It says it it doesn't expect there to be a tail because there's no fat in the drink. Noon to 2PM, your curve is the burger curve, your meal spike possibly... Plus possibly a fat driven drift upwards. The claws are invisible two to 5PM.
Five to 9PM, this is your watch window. The burger's done. The alcohol suppression is still active. Nine to two... 9PM to 2AM.
Lingering suppression means a lighter than usual glucose floor overnight. If dinner was bolus normally and the drift already started, this is where a surprise low was going to land. Next morning, most people are back to baseline. Does that make... That all sounds right too.
It makes sense.
Yeah.
Yeah. Again, you know, what it's really using is the clearance of a particular alcohol drink. Right?
Mhmm.
With... I expect since you gave the type of you gave the type of alcohol to the system to acknowledge, it also knows the alcohol content
Mhmm.
Of that particular kind. And that can make a difference in kind of what you're seeing in the curve of effect. Right? You gave it what? How many?
Three or four
of the clients? I'm gonna drink I'm gonna drink four over the next three to four hours. Mhmm.
I asked... So it takes a long time for that alcohol to clear. Absolutely.
I said put it into a simple paragraph to hand to my college aged child. Four White Claws over an afternoon won't spike your blood sugar. That's barely any sugar, so there's nothing the bolus for. Yeah. The thing the thing to worry about is what's gonna come later.
Alcohol makes your liver pause the background glucose. It's always quietly releasing, and your basal insulin is dosed assuming that glucose is there. So the risk isn't high while you're drinking. It's just like... And it just broke it down and it made it simpler.
So... Yeah.
And I think it makes it harder. I mean, this was a fairly easy one to evaluate for when to expect something to happen. When you when you combine alcohol with a drink that has carbs, such as if you go to a daiquiri or you go to a blended margarita or, you know, any of those, even like the Long Island iced tea.
Mhmm.
Does that look terribly carby? No. But 30 to... I think you said, like, 32 grams for the Long Island iced tea.
Mhmm.
That's a lot of carbohydrate. And if you are sipping that over the course of an hour or two, that's not that's not as much of a big deal. But if you're drinking that pretty quickly, you definitely have to have a bolus for that. And then it's a decision about are you eating with it, what kind of bolus. You still have the potential for that later hit.
Yeah.
But again, you may not be drinking four of them.
Three Long Islands27:54
Yeah. I I saw... I just asked it again. Was like, now start at 8PM, three Long Island iced teas between then and midnight. What do I need to bolus for and watch for?
Keep it simple. You're bolusing for each Long Island iced tea that roughly has 20 to 30 grams of carbs in it from the cola and the sour mix. So call this somewhere between 65 and 85 across the three. Don't cover it all. Each one carries about two to three standard drinks of alcohol.
So three of them is, like, seven to nine drinks of liver suppression stacking up behind the sugar. Yep. Well, that really does make it interesting, doesn't it?
It's a huge hit effect. And I... It's a really important piece to understand because as you... You may start out drinking beer. Right?
Or you may start out drinking like the White Claw or something like that. But if you are someone who enjoys drinking or as you get into a career and that becomes something that's social in the evening with colleagues or work events or something like that, your alcohol desire
Yeah.
Changes in most people. You get a little bit more, I guess, adventurous with
what kind of drinks you eat.
You try different things, and you have to have these pieces as a base understanding. Mhmm. I I have something that I wanna ask, but it may be later in the conversation. So Okay. What else do you want to explore with alcohol?
What do you mean what else do I wanna explore with alcohol? You're right.
We're we're bolusing for different kinds
of alcohol.
Right? So are there other drinks that you wanted to look at?
I mean... Or... Yeah. Like, yeah, let's pick through a a couple of extras here. Like, so we'll go to...
What about a...
Go ahead.
Oh, go ahead. No. You... No. No.
I was gonna say, what about a daiquiri?
Oh, let's do a daiquiri. Go ahead.
Or kind of at the end of, like, a summer vacation going off someplace, although some people do that over the winter too to get away from the cold, so they might be going to a desert island someplace.
Frozen dac... I... I'd love to be on an island. Frozen daiquiri margarita, 35 to 45. Mhmm.
It's interesting. It says the blended ice will slow your sipping, but it's still 40 grams of syrup and juice. So maybe you're gonna see, like, a long slow... Like, a steady spike while you're drinking it. Does that seem right?
Yeah. Yeah.
That seems about right. Whereas a drink that's just more liquidy, again, Long Island iced tea, you're gonna drink it faster because it's not so cold on your...
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I thought you were gonna say, aren't these people gonna have sex after they're drinking? That's what I thought you were getting at.
I was like, don't you think these people are gonna get, like, you know, lubricated and then, you know...
Well, then we have to discuss the activity factor that might be factored in there and what you might plan to do.
What If You Throw Up30:47
Well, yeah. What about what about if you, I mean, what if you throw up too? Right? Correct. So now you've got stuff in your stomach you're hoping to hold your blood sugar up.
You vomit once or twice. That's gone now. And now that... That's probably a free fall at that point then because now the liver's impacted. There's nothing in your stomach.
Oh, interesting.
Now what do we do?
Don't know. I just I just found myself thinking, I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Because what if you can't eat.
Right?
And What if you can't eat?
And your glucagon isn't gonna have the same impact on you. We didn't even go over that yet. Go ahead.
Me. Was the piece that I was... That I thought was gonna be more of like, well, what are some things we should pay attention to, right, in terms of protective considerations, keeping in mind. We already said... Or I said, try not to drink on an empty stomach.
Right? Pay attention to your glucose meter or set your alarms on your CGM for higher low alerts. You get notified sooner. Right? Especially in a state where maybe mentally you're not paying as close of attention.
You could, obviously, and hopefully, have your fast acting carbs on hand from, you know, glucose or dextrose specifically.
Mhmm.
And then insulin wise, if you know enough ahead, this goes into setting an adjusted temporary basal or an adjusted target for the hours in which you defined really nicely, where is the potential for the low going to hit?
Yeah.
So... Right? Setting a different target. All those things are important along with... I always say, have a friend who knows what they're doing with you, at least knows that you have diabetes, that this is here and that brings in, goodness, glucagon.
Glucagon Still Works, Just Less32:41
How many people walk out of their house with glucagon in their pocket or their purse or whatever? Somebody should know where it's there or where it is. Yeah. Because while glucagon will work less effectively, it doesn't not work at all.
Okay. Still some impact from it. It's worth it's worth trying.
It is still worth giving absolutely if it is needed and you can. And this is where I always say, you do not have to wait until you are passed out if you you brought up vomiting or anything like that. This is the case where if that's what has happened and you can't physically get anything else in and you know the effect of alcohol is coming, give yourself the glucagon. Do not wait.
Yeah. Yeah.
And, it's gonna have a little bit of a delay. I mean, it's it's got kinda two ways that it works, which I... We've gone over in one of the episodes. Was a pro tip or a...
We did a glucagon episode about this.
We did. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I was gonna say go to that episode, listen to how its mechanism action kind of is working.
Right? So one, the glucagon essentially helps to break down the liver stored glycogen. It helps to break it down. Right? It's still working even with the alcohol present.
It also promotes something called gluconeogenesis, the glucagon does, and that's a piece that can sometimes get more blocked Mhmm. Overall, in what ends up happening. But if you've been drinking for a while, obviously, the more alcohol that's there, as we've already talked about,
the more
potential for a bigger hit in something that you're using as a rescue that may not work as well as you think it should.
Doesn't matter if it's nasal or the injected, it's gonna have the same... Nope. Yeah. The episode you and I made was seven eighty nine important things to know about Gvoke HypoPen. Seven eighty nine.
I put up nineteen thirty five the other day.
Wow. That was a... I... Yeah. That is a really long time ago.
Yeah. I make a lot of content, but also we're old. And so, also, if you if you you go to the website, juiceboxpodcast.com, and go to search and click... Just type in the word glucagon, you'll get that. But you'll also get
Pop up.
What I think is pretty interesting. It's a small series of people who came on just to tell a story of when they used glucagon. So Okay. Yeah. They're like...
There's, like, these glucagon stories. One of
the that I remember that I did listen to was a woman who... I think she gave it to herself, and then she walked over to the neighbors with a really low blood sugar, and then was... Like, she was traversing outside after having, I think, given the glucagon to herself, or maybe she went to her neighbors and then came back and then gave it to herself. I don't... It was one that I do remember listening to.
Yeah.
Everyone's stories are crazy. So don't don't miss the stories. I... There was a... The the number of people who have told me that I've got...
I've gone out for a walk and had to have somebody drive to me sitting on a curb, I've lost count of that. Like, just... You know, I went for a walk. I got low. I realized I didn't have everything with me, and then I had to call somebody, and I sat down, tried to stay still, and waited for somebody to come get me.
It's... That... That's that's that's a common tale for people. So these glucagon stories, you know, when I I... When I tried to get people to come on to talk about it, a fair amount of people reached out.
Actually, it was really... It's very kind of them because it's not a... They're never fun stories to retell. No. Yeah.
Yeah. You know?
They're they're not. They're scary, and they bring up a lot of, you know, sort of even forgotten, like, feelings about things.
Mhmm.
One... The the last thing that I would say about glucagon is if you've used it and it seems like it's not really working, again, it could have a delayed, but it is also a time to absolutely call emergency.
Okay.
It is not a time to wait if you've used it and you're waiting and you feel no effect or whoever's with you sees nothing happening, absolutely get emergency help.
Somebody needs to get a line into you so they can...
They can always get IV glucose.
Right. Yep. So Jenny, last thing on this one. Besides, maybe I'll make a blog post out of this list of alcohols and just let people, like, go imagine how they could go find out more for themselves somewhere. But I I I took it on the Internet this morning because apparently the last time you and I talked about alcohol, you said it's...
You know, here's what you do on an a I... On an AID system or here's what you would do on a pump, like, you know, maybe do a temp basal decrease, do this, do that. And then we never got back to talking about MDI. So people... Yeah.
Drinking on MDI37:27
So people on MDI who wanna go drinking, are there... I don't know. Are there tips, tricks, stuff that might help them out?
Yeah. Typically, you know, we would usually say in the evening... If you've consumed alcohol in the evening to start out with, to definitely have before you go to sleep or if somebody can help you before you go to sleep, have something that's got some good protein to it. Have something that also has carbohydrate in it because despite that actually boosting your blood sugar up, the goal being that the carbs are gonna get in boosting you up. The protein is going to help to continue to keep things a little bit more stable or higher.
By the time the protein gets in, it's about the point at which the alcohol is probably possibly causing that curve down or the low blood sugar.
Mhmm.
It's one of the best things that you can do with MDI. Some some people toy with adjusting if you take your basal injected insulin in the evening, not not taking it away, but reducing the amount of it. Mhmm. Yes. The whole next day is going to also be impacted by that.
But at least for the overnight time, there will be less basal insulin there.
So it's a safe decision to be made there for overnight, but you are gonna be higher the next day when you wake up.
And you may need more rapid acting with your meals or correctives between, Yeah.
Okay. And because that's also tough for people who shoot it at night because now you didn't take it. You didn't you didn't take enough at night, and you're waiting to get back to that next twenty four hour period to take it again. So you did... That next day might be more fast acting to kinda get on top of that problem.
Okay. Mhmm. And there's... Know, it's funny. I...
A New Pro Tip Series in 202739:21
Actually, that conversation made me think online that maybe it's time, like, when we made the pro tips, for example, like, AID systems really didn't exist. And I thought, like, it might
You're right.
It might really be time to either, like, rethink some of those and update them or to, I was gonna say amend them. But I honestly, I'm starting to think that maybe in 2027, you and I are gonna like make a new pro tip series that...
It's kind of funny because I actually have a note on my desk to meant to talk to you. About that?
Oh, okay. Well, then we're in the same spot.
Okay. It actually... My notes my notes says, go through pro tips episodes. Pick out those that need updating based on AID.
That's what
my notes says.
That's what... Well, listen. I'll put that on my to do list.
I'm curious if it was... I'm curious if the only ones that were out, if they even were at that point, Medtronic had suspend on low. So I wonder if that one was there. And then Tandem had Basal IQ.
Yeah. Yeah.
Right? Which had a predictive kind of nature to just suspending based on what it was kind of seeing or when blood sugar was low. But, yeah, I haven't listened to the pro tips in a
long time. It's... I haven't either, but it's gonna be, it's gonna be interesting because that's... It's a tall order because that series works so well for people. Like, we're gonna have to update it without losing its.
So whatever it is about it that helps people, like, we can't lose that in the retelling of the stuff, and we can't, like No. Retell... We'll figure it out. I mean... Yeah.
We'll figure... Well, my idea truly for considering a big portion of it may be AID specific, we could do it by doing an overview of AIDs.
Mhmm.
And then the next steps or the next episodes, in my opinion, would be each particular AID system and the pro tips within each system.
Okay. To do one for each one?
To do one for each one, I think would hold value because they are different enough and each of them holds value enough to really cover in a more in-depth rather than kind of glossing over it just as a general, this is an AID and this is what it could do.
You know? But talk about the algorithm specifically.
Yeah.
Alright. I'm in. Alright. Let's do that. We'll do that next year.
Yay.
Yeah. Alright. Well, thank you for talking about it. Two people who don't drink talking about drinking. Must be really must be really frustrating for people.
Sorry, guys. Alright. Hold on. Thanks. Yep.
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