Scott Benner 10/31/25 Scott Benner 10/31/25

🎃 #1668 Bolus 4 - Halloween 🎃

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Jenny and Scott talk about bolusing for the top ten most popular Halloween treats (plus a few others).

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DISCLAIMER: This text is the output of AI based transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors and should not be treated as an authoritative record. Nothing that you read here constitutes advice medical or otherwise. Always consult with a healthcare professional before making changes to a healthcare plan.

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends and welcome back to another episode of The Juicebox podcast.

Jenny and I are going to go over the top 10 most popular Halloween candies and how to Bolus for them right now, just in time for you to go tricking and treating if your loved one is newly diagnosed with type one diabetes and you're seeking a clear, practical perspective, check out the bold beginning series on the Juicebox podcast. It's hosted by myself and Jenny Smith, an experienced diabetes educator with over 35 years of personal insight into type one, our series cuts through the medical jargon and delivers straightforward answers to your most pressing questions. You'll gain insight from real patients and caregivers and find practical advice to help you confidently navigate life with type one. You can start your journey informed and empowered with the Juicebox podcast, the bold beginning series and all of the collections in the Juicebox podcast are available in your audio app and at Juicebox podcast.com in the menu while you're listening. Please remember that nothing you hear on the Juicebox podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan or becoming bold with insulin. Like my like, what are you wearing? Is that? Oh, you don't know. Is that Young Frankenstein? No, well, it's the it's the bride of Frank The Bride of Frankenstein, because today is Halloween, because today is

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:41
Halloween, and if I could, I don't even know that I can, I paint my pod, because for Halloween,

Scott Benner 1:47
let me say I also have a bride. Oh, that's awesome, Jenny, you did that yourself. Yeah, it's lovely.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:54
It's like, paint markers. You know, they're easy to use. The paint markers, I didn't know you were a

Unknown Speaker 1:59
Halloween person. Oh, we love

Jennifer Smith, CDE 2:01
Halloween. Our front yard is like, the boys can't wait as soon as October 1. They're like, it's time get the decorations out. Like, we've got, I mean, we have, we have, like, skeletons with like big swords through their bellies right now, and like, all,

Scott Benner 2:15
yeah, my wife is a huge decorations person, but we did some painting in the house this year, so it kind of didn't get done. So there's a mum and a pumpkin, sadly, out front of our house together, and I think that's a little bit of fall. So given this like I'm going to give people real time. Today is October 31 2025, it is 10am and you and I are going to do Bolus for popular Halloween candies.

Unknown Speaker 2:41
This was

Jennifer Smith, CDE 2:42
actually, that's so funny that we were like, on the same brain wave, because you usually come up with the ideas.

Scott Benner 2:51
So I'm going to finish with you. Send it right to rob. He's going to edit it, pull it together, and we're going to get it out this afternoon, in time for Halloween. So here comes the pressure. You ready? I asked the chat GPT, what are the 10 most popular Halloween candies? It said the first one was, what do you think?

Unknown Speaker 3:11
Oh, gosh, candy corn.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 3:15
Ah, Reese's Peanut Butter Cup. Peanut Butter Cup. That would have been my next one.

Scott Benner 3:18
Yeah. We won't ask Jenny if she's ever had a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup, but we will freak you all out by telling you that I've never had one because I don't like peanut butter. Oh, you don't like peanut butter. I don't like anything. You know. I

Jennifer Smith, CDE 3:32
know you're like tomatoes, although you tried one for me. Thank you.

Unknown Speaker 3:37
Well, you know that's okay. I got a

Scott Benner 3:38
couple notes online the other day after that episode went up, and there's like, do you think Scott's had a tomato yet? I said I had salsa and it was a little chunky? Does that count? Because I'm counting it. Let's see two. I've given up in these, by the way, from going to the websites for the companies, I just go to amazon so that I can see the label right. Calories per serving, 160 serving, size two pieces, which it says is 31 grams. There's nine grams of fat, three saturated sodium is not bad at 118 carbs for two, but that's lower than I thought it was going to be, although the total sugars is 16

Speaker 2 4:22
grams for two Oh, wait a minute, yeah, two pieces, 31 grams

Jennifer Smith, CDE 4:29
total carbs. Are these, the regular peanut butter or the mini peanut butter, my goodness, because they they do, you know, again, if you go to the fancy neighborhoods, they give you the real size candy.

Scott Benner 4:40
Then it's not just pantry pack. I mean, I can go back and look again. Hold on a second. We'll see if we can find another one. Here's one that looks a little more okay. Oh, Jenny, look at you. I. Am I right? Yeah, they're a little smaller than the than the average one. The average one is one package is 42 grams. So then that makes the fat, 12 carbohydrates, 24 total sugar is 22 which includes 21 grams of added sugar as a bit of sugar. So if the kid is rolling through the house and grabs this, and they're just going to have it as a snack.

Speaker 1 5:24
What are we going to do? Yeah, it's a great question, because it's a fair

Jennifer Smith, CDE 5:29
portion of fat, right? I mean, my estimate is somewhere two of these is somewhere around 200 ish calories. 2:10am I 210 Okay, and if you consider how much fat? Did you say? 1312, grams, 1212, grams. And if you do the rough math, right, about nine grams, nine calories per gram of fat, really, that's like half of this product is from fat, okay, in terms of calories. And so it's not like sitting down to what I said candy corn, which is just immediate hit sugar. Yeah, this is going to definitely

Speaker 1 6:07
be slower, so still going to

Jennifer Smith, CDE 6:11
need somewhat of a Pre-Bolus. But if you're rocking and rolling with a really great looking blood sugar, nicely in target and pretty stable, you probably get away with maybe 10 minutes. Okay, all right.

Scott Benner 6:23
So if we're just eating, just the Reese's 10 Minute Pre-Bolus, stick to the carbs on the on the label, 24 go ahead and eat. You're gonna see a little bit. I mean, there's 12 grams. I mean, listen, there's 24 carbs, sugars, 2221 added. So there is a shot of sugar there, but you're sick, but the fat's gonna kind of tamp it down a little bit. Yeah, okay, and tell people why chocolate is not a good, good treatment for a fast dropping sugar

Jennifer Smith, CDE 6:57
because of the fat, you know, naturally has fat in it. This obviously has very likely added fat as well, along with the peanut butter that has fat in it. So thus the higher fat content of this compared to just candy that's simple sugar, so it's not going to hit your bloodstream fast enough, from a digestive standpoint, to bring a low blood sugar back up. It also will not stop a really rapid drop. So, you know, blood sugar still in target. But gosh, it's like, arrow down. This is not what you would use on the opposite of that, if you're kind of coasting down nice and slow, and you really want to slow it down and have a treat at the same time. You could use a peanut butter cup to kind of slow that trend and stop it from getting too low. But it's not gonna be fast.

Scott Benner 7:52
I like the idea of every one of these that we do in this episode, which they're gonna get all of them together, that we talk about whether or not it's gonna be a good, low treat out of the bowl for the weeks to come. Yes. Okay, the next on the list, I won't ask you to guess it's something else that has peanuts in it. Peanuts, that would be Snickers, M, M's, peanut M, M's, really that's what chat G P T said. I mean, chat G P T is also not a person, so we'll do Snickers too at some point. Let's see peanut ms, about six servings per container, one ounce, 12 pieces. You know, how many times you've had 12 M M's, right? When you

Jennifer Smith, CDE 8:32
is that? Is that a fun size pack? Is that the typical one that's in the Halloween mixes that

Scott Benner 8:38
you like? Yeah, yeah, yeah. So, okay, let's call let's so we have a way to measure it, 12 M M's that are peanut M M's, seven grams of fat, total carbs, 17 and total sugars, 15 includes 13 added sugar. So this is not the same fat content as the Reese's, but still some. So what do you also lower carbs and lower carbs too. So I mean is, Can M M's be a grab and go snack? Can you Bolus and eat couple months later,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 9:18
I would say you definitely need probably a good 15 minute Pre-Bolus for these. I mean, if, if you're looking at the fat, the fat is not terribly high in this, and it really is a heck of a lot more sugar coating in one, one peanut inside, where you getting, like, 12 peanuts, like,

Scott Benner 9:36
maybe, I don't know, I again, I've never had one of these in my life.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 9:40
So they do make chocolate covered almond. They make almond m&ms. Do you like almond?

Scott Benner 9:46
No, I have never

Jennifer Smith, CDE 9:48
tried to get Scott to eat candy. I've never had

Scott Benner 9:50
an almond. Is that the one that looks like a teardrop like, yeah, and they're real hard, right?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 9:56
They're pretty crunchy, if you get them, you know, fresh. They roasted? Yeah, no, you're like, yep, nope. Won't be trying.

Scott Benner 10:02
That's okay. Thanks. Thanks. Anyway, when you say, when you say nuts, to me, I hear tree bark. I hear dry and, like, I don't know, really waxy. Sometimes, like, peanuts aren't peanuts waxy.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 10:16
They could be, depending on how they're made, peanuts could be a little bit waxy, so you don't eat any nuts at all. This is so funny, like walnuts, pecans, anything.

Scott Benner 10:27
Jenny, let me say this with a lot of pride, I've never had nuts in my mouth. Okay, so that's it.

Unknown Speaker 10:35
Oh, that was great for Halloween. Thank

Scott Benner 10:37
you. Yeah. Hey, listen, I'll pivot off of my list for a second because you brought it up chocolate covered almonds. Just so people have some context. This is just a, I mean, I don't know. It's like, called, I like chocolate covered almonds. Oh, looks like five pieces. Is 10 grams of fat, 17 carbs, 15 sugars, includes 14. So honestly, peanut, peanut, M and M, same idea, right?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 11:04
Comparable, yeah, absolutely, and again, this being,

Speaker 1 11:09
in a way, higher, truly, less fat, yes, less carb. But in

Jennifer Smith, CDE 11:18
my experience, having had something like M M's with peanuts in I do know that they have a faster impact than something like a peanut butter cup does okay

Scott Benner 11:33
when we do number three here, which is Snickers, by the way. Do you want to do the fun size or the miniatures?

Speaker 1 11:41
Oh, I would say, Let's well, who eats one miniature really? I

Scott Benner 11:49
don't. Also never had a Snickers bar before in my

Jennifer Smith, CDE 11:52
life. Let's do the fun size, because I think those are the more common from what I've seen in Halloween baskets as I take my kids trick or treating. Okay, the fun size tend to be more of the given out size now, so I think that might be more relevant to the crowd

Scott Benner 12:10
chocolate, which includes sugar, cocoa butter, chocolate, skim milk, lactose, milk fat, soy lecithin, peanuts, corn syrup, sugar, palm oil, skim milk, lactose, salt, egg whites, artificial flavors. And what do you got? It is one bar, 17 grams, 80 calories. There is four grams of fat in this, and 10 car, 10 carbs, eight total sugars, nine includes eight added sugars. So this is the so this is the M M's with, I don't know if, I don't even know if I'm gonna call it less carbs, right? Because there's 17 grams there. How many grams are in 12 M M's? I wonder. This might be very similar Bolus. No,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 12:56
I would think that it is, quite honestly. Again, what does Snickers have? They've got that Carmeli carrot. They've got the nougat. I mean, that's just all sugar, the chocolate on the outside, sure. And the peanuts, they have fat, but it's not a lot of fat like the Reese's peanut butter cups have. So this is definitely going to have, I would say, similar to the M M's, same vibe, okay, same type of Bolus strategy,

Scott Benner 13:23
yes. Eminem Snickers. Bars. Not again, not good. Low treats if your blood sugar is falling very quickly. But if you're looking out on the horizon and you're seeing it 20 minutes from now, you think you might be drifting down through 80 into 70. It could be the perfect time for

Jennifer Smith, CDE 13:37
a Snickers. Could be the perfect time for a fun size Snickers, yes, and you know, in in line with what we're talking about here, right? Halloween people are many people will go trick or treating. Not everybody does, but if you do, the enjoyment of walking around and moving your body while trick or treating can often be offset without even having to cover these right? You might be able to have your fun size Snickers, or your little peanut butter cup or something while you continue to traverse your neighborhood without any impact on blood sugar and no Bolus, because you're moving. And if you're a kid, are you moving? Oh, you're rapidly moving, like it's the gap. You are flying from house to house to house. You're running up the hill. And it is what it is. So you can very likely get away with sneaking this in and no coverage. Do

Scott Benner 14:31
the kids still love the Halloween the way they did when we were younger? Or has this, um, has the has the new society ruined it for people? Oh,

Unknown Speaker 14:38
my kids

Jennifer Smith, CDE 14:40
love Halloween. They love that. I mean, we actually

Speaker 1 14:43
something fun that we do is we weigh the candy cakes for the hall,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 14:51
from the from the hall. Yeah, exactly, because it's fun to see, like, how much sugar they could pop. Possibly get in their their three hours, I tell you, man, we are out there for the entire amount of trick or treating time that's allowed Jen

Scott Benner 15:08
tell me something when you weigh the bag, if you were so listen, I don't want Jenny to sound like a Scrooge, but she she is a buyback program. She buys her candy back from her kids, right? Don't Yeah, she's laughing at herself now, in case you're wondering what's happening and so. But if you you know, you have knowledge of what they brought back in the past, yes, how many days or weeks would if they were going to eat all that candy, would you want it to be spread out over? You know what I mean? Like, yeah. Is it a year's worth of candy? Do you think in your mind,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 15:41
in my mind, it would be stale and hard by the time they could finish the pots of candy.

Scott Benner 15:46
If that didn't happen, though, like, what's like if you were giving nutrition information to somebody right now, and you said, Look, you got this haul. It's a ton of candy. I'd like you to eat it over six months, like in your mind, because it'd be gone in a week, right?

Unknown Speaker 16:01
Otherwise, it would

Jennifer Smith, CDE 16:02
probably be gone in a week. Yeah. I mean, it's like, one of those big holiday events. It's like, well, we got the Halloween candy. Is a lot of parents are super awesome. They put the candy up. Kids have to ask for a piece of it, or one piece goes into lunch every couple of days, or something like that. Or in, again, the line of discussion, which could be used for lows and which could be used in another way, like a real treat, you may end up separating the piles the really, really quick, sugary, sugary kinds of things versus the not actually. One of the little friends that we go trick or treating with, what they end up doing is they save all the sugary stuff, you know, the Skittles and that kind of thing, the Twizzlers, they save all of that. And then at

Unknown Speaker 16:51
Christmas they use it to decorate their gingerbread

Scott Benner 16:54
houses. Oh, that's a nice idea, yeah.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 16:57
So rather than eating it, they they actually use it for something else?

Scott Benner 17:01
Yeah, hey, listen, I'm just gonna tell you I grew up poorly and you didn't do Halloween. We did Halloween, but, I mean, I had two brothers, so there's three bowls of candy, and then it just turned into a swap meet. You'd be like, hey, I'll give you a malted milk bar for a Kit Kat, that kind of thing. And am I? I'm assuming my mom stole a fair amount of it from us. And also, I have to tell you, I'm a refrigerated candy person. Oh, so we finally hit one on the list that I enjoy, a Kit Kat, although I have to tell you, the GLP has completely ruined the Kit Kat for me, it does not taste the same anymore. So, Oh, that's interesting. I had a little one, like, a couple of weeks ago, and I ate it, and I was like, uh, never mind. So I'm a

Jennifer Smith, CDE 17:44
curious, like, just side note question about it, because I've, I've heard that before, the taste preference, things kind of change, especially for those carby

Speaker 1 17:53
treat types of foods. I had somebody tell

Jennifer Smith, CDE 17:57
me that something similar candy with chocolate, tasted like plastic, and she just didn't want it

Scott Benner 18:04
anymore. It can change the way food tastes. For sure, pizza is not as good any longer, either. You don't get the salty, oily feeling from it as much. And I'm a god. People probably hate the way I eat, but I'm a I'm an oil mopper, so when I get pizza, I take some paper towels and like, I soak all the oil out of it before I eat it. People are like you. You're such a pagan. They probably hate me. I without, I know you understand so. But pizza is not like I have to. I have to. I've just, I actually have to sprinkle a little salt on top of pizza to get the flavor to pop out of it. Now, Oh, interesting for people are like it ruined food for you. It also is going to keep me alive. So, and there's plenty of things that taste fine, I have to tell you, this is not the place for it, but the GLP turned food into fuel for me. So when I hear healthy people talking about Food is fuel, I was like, No, it's salt and fat and sugar. I don't know what you're talking about, but I don't taste it that way anymore. The only thing that I can still get like, a little jump from is, like, sorbet, oh, like, I can have like, a couple spoonfuls of sorbet, like, after a meal or something like that. I'm like, oh, that tastes sweet. Yeah. So anyway, Kit Kats, which I think are, are an awesome candy, or at least I used to believe that. I will

Jennifer Smith, CDE 19:30
tell you something funny about Kit Kats. They're not Kit Kats, but Whoppers, right? You know the malted, the malted balls, which would be entirely a quick hit. I mean, it's like, right? We start, Oscar started reading my older and we went trick or treating, like, Mom, look, these are woopers. I was like, Oh, well, that's wrong, but it totally is hilarious the way that you said it.

Scott Benner 19:58
You're forgetting. You. A milk dud or a whopper that's actually a dud. Like, they're like, you know, Whoppers are like chocolate on the outside, crunchy on the inside. But every once in a while you get one, they're hard or or almost like gummy on the inside. Like something happened to it never had Jenny's like, I've had one Whopper in my life. I've had a fair amount of Whoppers in my life, and I can tell you that that pops up sometimes, and Milk Duds the same way, like sometimes Milk Duds are weird inside, like they don't get mixed, right, or something like that, yeah. But when it happens with a milk dud, it's weird. They get real chewy. And anyway, this is kind of gross. This is just between me and my friends who are out there and like, yeah, Fatty, I hear you. Let's see Kit Kats are next on the list. Serving size one package, 42 grams, 11 grams of fat, seven saturated total carbs. Oh, a KitKat got a lot of carbs in it. 28 grams of carbs. 20

Jennifer Smith, CDE 20:53
is this for the two pack, like you get for Halloween, or is this the four pack?

Scott Benner 20:56
This is the, this is the like, classic, like, four pack, four pack, okay? And wow, 22 sugar or 23 sugars includes 22 grams of added sugar. So this is just, I mean, this is, this is the ones we talked about before. But just more, more, more carbs,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 21:17
more sugar and interest. Didn't you say 11 grams of fat. Yes, ma'am,

Unknown Speaker 21:23
that's interesting to me, isn't it? Does that

Scott Benner 21:25
feel low to you? No, it feels high because the wafers inside and there's no caramel or anything, right? Yeah, oh, I see your point. Well, maybe that's just where the flavor of this, by the way, most of this stuff is made by Hershey's, right? Like most of this stuff, Hershey's

Jennifer Smith, CDE 21:41
or Mars, I guess still, yeah, that is really, that's, that's the striking thing about this one. Is the fat content of a Kit Kat. I would never have guessed

Unknown Speaker 21:51
it to

Scott Benner 21:52
be that high. Okay, so similar to Reese's, but, but now, you know, because when you're bolusing for it, like, there's a there's a stretched out, you know, this is going to hit you for longer than you think. Because I think people don't think of chocolate like that. Like, I think they just see chocolate and they think, like, not, I don't know why, but chocolate, not carbs, I think is like a elite that happens in people's heads. I also see people treating loaves with chocolate all the time, and like, I'm just, like, Please, just please. That's not going to work as well.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 22:22
If you want the chocolate, eat the chocolate. Bolus for it, but don't use it for a low,

Scott Benner 22:26
yeah, also Kit Kat. I mean, in my opinion, has to go into the refrigerator. I don't know how you could Wow, yeah, I don't know how you could eat it warm.

Speaker 1 22:35
I know people like, as we said, initially, Reese's Peanut Butter Cups in the fridge or even the freezer,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 22:44
especially Reese's brand specifically, which tends to be a really soft milk chocolate type of chocolate compared to the dark chocolate type of peanut butter cups.

Scott Benner 22:56
So next on the list, Jenny is just a HERSHEY's Bar, so going full size bar, 13 grams of fat, 26 grams of carbs, 25 sugar, 21 added sugar. So just

Jennifer Smith, CDE 23:12
similar to a Reese's Peanut Butter Cup,

Unknown Speaker 23:14
it's a lot of fat.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 23:17
I will tell you my side story about her or about Hershey bars

Speaker 1 23:23
when I was younger and working with my dietitian educator and we were transitioning to,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 23:32
rather than just the exchange system, we were moving to learning to read labels for

Speaker 1 23:37
portions and carbs, my dietitian asked me, she's like,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 23:42
now that you know how to read a label and you know how this might match with insulin,

Speaker 1 23:49
what do you want to try? And my answer was

Jennifer Smith, CDE 23:53
an almond Hershey bar. That's what I was. That's what I wanted. Yeah, I don't know why I really, I really don't

Scott Benner 23:59
classic. It's visually classic, a Hershey bar. It really

Unknown Speaker 24:02
is. Yeah, that was what I wanted.

Scott Benner 24:06
I didn't expect to do this. This isn't on the list of top candy, but in case some of your neighbors are out there a little drunky around the fire pit, making s'mores for kids, let me jump right. Let me jump over and tell you that jet puff s'mores, vanilla, marshmallows, 21 ounces, it is. Let's see serving size two pieces in these marshmallows, you got 27 carbs, 20 total sugars, includes 20 added sugars. So if you take that 27 carbs for the marshmallow and go back to the Hershey bar. And what is that there? That is 26 that's 53

Jennifer Smith, CDE 24:51
and are you gonna eat a whole Hershey bar on top of, I don't know, unusually, you do. You probably do. Do a third of our Hershey bar on top. Or you'd probably do the fun size Hershey bars, which almost fit on top of the graham cracker.

Scott Benner 25:11
Okay, oh, God, we haven't even gotten to the graham cracker yet. Graham Crackers are the devil.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 25:18
They are high carb. They are like a saltine. A saltine cracker actually has a higher glycemic index than fruit juice. You know that to treat a low blood sugar, if you didn't have anything except a saltine, you are golden. Man. I

Scott Benner 25:33
didn't know this. That's crazy. Also. Now I can't put little crackers in my soup anymore. Thank you, Jenny. But one serving of I'm just gonna go with the honey made graham crackers. One serving, which is two full cracker sheets, is it says 24 carbs. I asked four squares. Yeah, yeah. And I want to just tell you right now the nothing hits Arden harder than a graham cracker. I mean, we used we we still have them in the house in case she gets low and doesn't want to eat a lot, because you can just take it anyway. Think about that before you look at us ruining s'mores for people happy Halloween.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 26:11
Everybody visit the house that's serving the smores in the middle of your trucking Yeah, not that you can really plan that, but maybe it's the like, we have a house in our neighborhood that has, like, it's an older couple, and what they do every year is they make home, make in their garage. It is a make and serve mini sugar coated donuts, really, and they serve apple cider at the same time, like mini cups of apple cider and four mini donuts in each little pack that goes to each kid that gets in line. Yes, it is like the best visited house in our neighborhood.

Scott Benner 26:50
Imagine, that's awesome. Jenny, Skittles are next? Oh, I just think of skittles is. Let's see how right I've been about this. I just think a Skittle is a carb. Oh, 100% Yep. And here it is. Oh, a serving size is 27 pieces. It has 26 carbs, 21 added sugar. I mean, I'm assuming most people are going to save the Skittles for low treats, right? But if you really wanted to enjoy a bag of Skittles, like, what are we doing? Like, I mean, this is a big Pre-Bolus, yeah, right. Long, maybe find a falling blood sugar before you start eating, because they're gonna hit you pretty immediately, right, correct, absolutely. Okay, all right, listen, I'm gonna do a couple more, then I'm gonna ask a bigger question about this. So, okay, next on the list, Sour Patch,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 27:38
kids. Oh, these are like, Skittles. I mean, not in terms of like, Skittles are nice because they're a gram of carb per Skittle, right? They're easy to count. They're portionable, etc. Sour Patch Kids, I can't remember what the carb count is. They might be like two grams per Sour Patch Kid, I'm looking

Speaker 1 27:58
but are going to be similar and hit Pre-Bolus, because otherwise it's gonna get you, yeah,

Scott Benner 28:05
Sour Patch, kids, I have it here as one bag, and let's see, there's 21 bag. I wish I had it differently than a bag, but she's one bag. 51 carbs, 44 total sugar. Like, this is just sugar. This is, I mean ingredients, in case you're wondering, ingredients, sugar, invert sugar, corn syrup. That is three different ways of saying sugar. So sugar, invert sugar, corn syrup, modified corn starch. That's it. It's sugar and and the corn the corn starch to hold it together in a bunch of colors to make the things so things so you might as well go to the Sugar Bowl and take a spoonful of it. Correct? Yeah. Okay, long Same, same as the Skittles for Bolus thing. Now, I think in my mind, a Twix bar in the refrigerator is the way to go, and it and it. Why do you laugh at the refrigerated part? You have to refrigerate it. It's awesome that way.

Unknown Speaker 29:09
Am I the Am I crazy?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 29:12
No, you're not. The only thing I've ever stuck in the refrigerator, honestly, is our peanut butter cups. And when I was growing up, I was a Girl Scout,

Unknown Speaker 29:20
the thin mint cookies.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 29:24
Those went in the freezer, and that was the only way to eat a thin mint cookie from Girl

Scott Benner 29:29
Scout. Okay, I have to tell you, like, somebody brought home girl scout cookies last year, and they just like, I have done a good enough job of like, weeding crappy food out of my life, but they made me sick, and I was like, What's in these garbage things like,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 29:43
so, actually purchase them for donation now, like, they don't, I'm happy to donate. I was a girl scout for eons, yeah? But I purchased them and then they have a donation. Like, sometimes they send them to the troops overseas. Or, you know, yeah, right, yeah. I know, I guess I just, I'm just putting money into something for somebody else, but,

Scott Benner 30:04
and he's like, I'm gonna live forever, but these people will be happy for a short time and then drop dead. So a full size Twix bar, one cookie bar, again, I feel like this is a, oh my god, 15 carbs, five grams of fat in one that means a package with two of them, and it is 30 and 10. Okay, so in one bar, five grams of fat. So a lot of this candy is the same, really, as far as Bolus and goes, right? Yeah, it's about, it's about how much sugar you're going to get hit with right away and how much fat is going to delay that hit

Jennifer Smith, CDE 30:41
right pretty much. And these, I would honestly go kind of along the lines of the peanut M M's and whatever. Yes, there are 10 grams of fat, but, Gosh, 30 grams of sugar. If you're going to eat both of them, that's a lot of that's a lot of carb. You think of the cookie and the caramel inside.

Scott Benner 30:58
Yeah, yeah. Starburst is next on the list. I'm just going to go original and sell tell you that six pieces, six star, I would never have six Starburst at once. But whatever I okay que sera, although I don't know if I'm the crazy one. Yeah, I'm starting to believe I am the longer we talk like this. But does anybody else match flavors up? Like, if do you take a red one and a yellow one, squish them together, squish them together, and then eat them like, see, right?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 31:30
I haven't done that since I was little. In fact, as you were talking before, about your brothers and you kind of doing a trade kind of system. My brother and I, we did do that when we were little, my favorite. They were the cherry ones, the red ones, they were my favorite. And then we would end up swapping and switching. But we did do the same thing. We'd see how mashed we could get it together, and then eat it almost like, almost like a twist and sandwich.

Scott Benner 31:57
Yeah. I mean, this makes sense to me. I haven't thought of that in a long time, Scott I like how you're like, I haven't done that since I was a kid. I did that with gummy bears three days ago, because gummy bears, Arden's low treats are those Albanese gummy bears. That's what we keep around the house. And I saw them the other day, and I was like, Scotty, gonna have a gummy bear? And so I, when I reached in, I grabbed like, four or five of them. And then I I found myself picking colors that I thought would match well with other ones. Anyway, six pieces of Starburst, two and a half grams of fat, 24 carbs, 16 from added sugar. This is just, this is sugar, just like everything else. Yeah, get way ahead. Maybe get the blood sugar moving on your side, moving down.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 32:41
I wanted to add one that it maybe it is on the list, but it has been a long term one that a friend of mine, she goes and she just buys the packs of them because they are her low treatment. Okay, it's the Gosh.

Unknown Speaker 32:57
What are they called? Now they're aspirin candy or that's actually

Jennifer Smith, CDE 33:04
in a particular community of people. They call them aspirin candy or Winkies, but they're the Smarties. Okay?

Speaker 3 33:12
Smarties, yeah, very common because they look like little. Oh, they look like little, yeah, okay,

Scott Benner 33:17
well, we'll get to them. We'll do them right after classic candy corn. How's that sound? Oh, this was number 10 on the list. I'm just gonna go to branches, because it's the overall pick on Amazon, and I figured that's how people do it.

Speaker 2 33:31
Geez, let's see. Oh, it's by package. No, no, don't they can't they break it down for me by by corn. You know, that's

Unknown Speaker 33:39
the funny thing is that that's, it's a Halloween or a

Jennifer Smith, CDE 33:47
sort of a, maybe, yeah, maybe things. But you don't really get candy corn in your treatment. Like there aren't individual wrapped packages of candy corn,

Scott Benner 33:57
no, but there's not a dish in your house somewhere. Is that just my wife, who thinks it looks nice and she won't eat it, but is killing me with it slowly.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 34:04
When I was younger. Yes, we did. We had a pumpkin that my mom put on the kitchen table that would have these and then the autumn mix,

Speaker 1 34:12
which no longer contains the brown, cocoa

Jennifer Smith, CDE 34:16
flavored autumn those were the only ones that I ever wanted as a kid.

Scott Benner 34:21
I don't this is a weird candy to me, because I can't eat more than two or three of them before. I'm like, these are horrible. But the first couple, I'm like, awesome. I don't like the chocolate tipped ones as much as the others. But have you seen the ones that are pumpkins now, those I like better than the candy corn. Anyway, this is not this is neither here. Have been around for a long time. I mean, I mean, I just found out about it a couple years ago. So 717 pieces of candy corn are 27 carbs. Holy Hell, that two is that two per almost, right? 22 sugar, no fat. So hit you like rocket fuel. Let me tell you what's in it. Sugar. Corn syrup. That's it? No, no, it's sugar. Corn syrup, and then contains less than 2% of the following, salt, glycerin, egg whites, confectioners, glaze, natural and artificial flavors. Mineral oil, honey, carnauba wax. I thought you put that on your car, but I guess you can eat it too. Vegetable oil, coconut oil, canola, artificial colors, sugar, it's sugar, okay. What did you say? Smarties? Smarties, yeah, these are definitely people put these aside for for low treats, for sure, right? Because they also they, they, what do I hear people say? They travel well in cars. They do okay in hot cars, right? Yeah, there's a lot of different reasons

Jennifer Smith, CDE 35:45
they are. I mean, in terms of it, I mean, they're just all sugar, and unless they've changed, I think they're for the whole entire role of Smarties. I think they're like seven grams of carb for the whole

Scott Benner 35:56
role. I can't even find, it's so funny, I can't find the nutritionally there's no nutritional label on every one of these I click on, I'm assuming that what they think you think is like a dummy. It's sugar. But let me see here. This one's from the company. Maybe they It's sugar free, gluten free, peanut free, family owned since 1949 Smarties your way you can put them on a cupcake. Jenny, Oh, would you like to sweeten a moment at a graduation party or birthday or social gathering? Maybe by gifting Smarties who like what soulless person in their marketing department came up with that I do not, my goodness, I just want to see the nutritional label on it. They are not giving it to me about that. Let me see if I can find it somewhere

Unknown Speaker 36:44
else. Chat. GPT give it to you at all.

Scott Benner 36:48
It would. But then, you know, I get from people. I'm like, Hey, use it all the time. I don't need to hear from people constantly. A roll of Smarties. Six carbs, that sounds pretty close. Yep. Okay, 25 calories, no fat. But they and tell people, because we just, we haven't said it here. The reason, when you're low and use one of those gels and you rub it on the inside of your cheeks is because that's a quick uptake for that glucose, right? Like the lining of your cheeks, it is absolutely so these simpler sugars, I tell people I've mentioned it sometimes people I'm like, you know, don't just drink the juice. Like, sometimes put in your mouth and hold it in there for a second or two. Like, let it, like, absorb that way, really, what's the word for chewing? Mask, what? What's that mastication? Yeah, yeah. Like, chop the hell out of that sugar. Keep it in your mouth for a little while. If you're having gummy bears or something like me, throw them. You throw them in your stomach. Now you have to go through the more of a digestion process to uptake.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 37:47
And as you're talking about that, you know, I actually consider Smarties as close as you can probably get to the glucose tablets. Can you find the ingredients for glucose tablet, or for Smarties No, no, no for Smarties, because I can guarantee that one of the first two ingredients is dextrose.

Unknown Speaker 38:07
Okay, hold on

Scott Benner 38:12
a second, the ingredients in the original Smarties rolls are dextrose, citric acid, calcium steroid, natural and artificial flavors and colors. Isn't dextrose? What they put in the IV in the hospital to Jack your blood sugar off real fast

Jennifer Smith, CDE 38:28
it is. I mean, they'll do a dextrose strip for a lot of reasons, right? But that's what glucose tablets are. They're dextrose. Dextrose is the simplest form of sugar, so your body really can absorb it in, as you're talking about absorption through the mouth, through the gums, right? It goes right in, and it gets into circulation, because your body doesn't have to chop that bigger, more complex carbohydrate up, unlike a Hershey bar or a Snickers even, where those are carbohydrates and they're sugars in there, but they're not dextrose.

Scott Benner 39:04
Okay, you're making me wonder about Neco wafers.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 39:08
Oh, Neco wafers. Do you know what the funny? Do you know where the Neco wafer, one of their

Scott Benner 39:12
facilities is, is it? Is it in Boston, Boston? Oh,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 39:17
you know, the only reason I know because we ended up somewhere on a business trip. We lived on the East Coast, and we went up to Boston for something, and we were driving, and we drove right past the Neco wafer there was like, there it was. And I took a picture, because I have a friend who,

Speaker 1 39:34
anywhere she can find Neco wafers, she will buy several

Jennifer Smith, CDE 39:39
Neco wafer packets, because she loves

Scott Benner 39:41
them. I grew up not far from the Nabisco factory. Oh, and when you got near it, you would just, you'd roll your windows down because the whole world smelled like warm cookies. It was really kind of thing. Yeah, it's not there anymore. Nico wafers, sugar, corn syrup gel. All right, listen. So here's the last bit. This, in my opinion, right? Let's wrap this up. Put a nice bow on it. You're going out there and you're worried, right? I see people constantly, always, newly diagnosed, people. My kid was just diagnosed. Halloween is coming. What am I going to do? And I think, I think you should treat the running around like, you know, the Pre-Bolus for picking out of the bag, right? And just make it through, yes. And if you're going to sit and hork, I don't know if this is a word, but if you're going to sit down later and work down a bunch of candy, you're going to have to take into account that there's a lot of carbs in it. There's fat in some of it. You're going to get a really hard hit from simple sugars, and you might get stretched out from the fat. I think if you can get through this night without a bad low or a protracted high, I think have a good time. You know what I mean? Like, I don't want to see be 300 overnight. That's that's going to be you misunderstanding the carbs and some of this food and the fat and some of this food. And I don't want to see you like not doing anything and running around and getting low. So, I mean, I didn't have a podcast when my kid was little, and we took her out trick or treating, but it's what we did. We you know, we watched her blood sugar, and when it did something, we're like, hey, guess what? It's time for. You know, you can reach into your bag and grab something now. So

Jennifer Smith, CDE 41:16
Right? And I mean, with the tools that we have now, comparative to what you had when Arden was really little, right? We now have all these algorithms. I mean, you were the algorithm, right?

Scott Benner 41:29
So staring her in the face to see if she looked low. I don't even know what the hell that means exactly.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 41:36
I mean. So you can make use of those tools. Do you know my funny little thing about Halloween is that, in my history of life with insulin and pumping, I moved to using a DIY system years ago, and my start day

Unknown Speaker 41:51
was Halloween. Oh, no kidding, yeah, I

Jennifer Smith, CDE 41:54
started, I started looping, essentially for my first DIY system. Yeah, on Halloween. On Halloween.

Scott Benner 42:00
You know, Halloween reminds me of the JDRF walks that we don't do them anymore, but we did them for the first 10 years of Arden's life with diabetes. And you know, the first one was October around here, she was diagnosed in August. So, I mean, she had had diabetes for less than maybe six or eight weeks. You get there and it's Philly, and there's a giant table of hot soft pretzels. And the first year, I was like, oh, soft pretzels. Then I understood. And then every year after that, I was like, Is this a cruel joke? Right? We take a bunch of newly diagnosed people who are not good at bolusing for anything, and give them a giant piece of dough. And then people just walked around with high blood sugars the whole time and though. And as the years went on and people had CGM, you just list it just be Beep, beep and soft breath, I was like, why is this happening?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 42:56
And I bet at that point there also wasn't the like. Now I just helped do the event here, which was really nice. It was in October. It was a lovely day. But the nice thing about the options that were there, they had multiple different options for multiple different choices for people, and they had all the carb counts and the nutrition information, so that as you pick things, I guarantee your soft pretzel that year probably had no nutrition facts. It was like, just

Scott Benner 43:23
enjoy the pretzel. Yeah, yeah. Meanwhile, and it's not for this episode, but if a soft pretzel doesn't have 75 carbs in it, I'm like, I'd be surprised. And they're awesome around I don't know where they are the rest of the world, but in Philly, they're good. They're good. Yeah? So anyway, happy Halloween to everybody. Have a great time. Please post your pictures in the Facebook group of your kids tricking and treating and let me know if any of this helped. Because we're gonna, well actually, I'm gonna text Rob right now and be like, Hey, would you edit a podcast for me today and get it right back? So let's see what he says. Fun. Thanks so much, Jenny. Yeah, you

Hey, kids, listen up. You've made it to the end of the podcast. You must have enjoyed it. You know what else you might enjoy? The private Facebook group for the Juicebox podcast. I know you're thinking, uh, Facebook, Scott, please. But no. Beautiful group, wonderful people, a fantastic community. Juicebox podcast, type one diabetes on Facebook, of course, if you have type two, are you touched by diabetes in any way? You're absolutely welcome. It's a private group, so you'll have to answer a couple of questions before you come in. But make sure you're not a bot or an evildoer. Then you're on your way. You'll be part of the family. I can't thank you enough for listening. Please make sure you're subscribed or following in your audio app. I'll be back tomorrow with another episode of The Juicebox podcast. You.

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Scott Benner 10/31/25 Scott Benner 10/31/25

#1667 After Dark: Persistence

Curtis, a combat veteran and paramedic, recounts surviving catastrophic injury, memory loss, and misdiagnosis before finding clarity with LADA, resilience through family, and purpose training a service Chihuahua for his diabetes journey.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Scott Benner 0:00
Here we are back together again, friends for another episode of The Juicebox podcast.

Curtis 0:14
Hello. My name is Curtis. I'm a newly diagnosed Lada went from type two to lotta just this past couple of weeks.

Scott Benner 0:25
This episode of The Juicebox podcast is sponsored by skin grip, durable skin, safe, adhesive that lasts your diabetes devices, they can fall off easily, sometimes, especially when you're bathing or very active. When those devices fall off, your life is disrupted, and it costs you money, but skin grip patches, they keep your devices secure. Skin grip was founded by a family directly impacted by type one, and it's trusted by hundreds of 1000s of individuals living with diabetes. Juicebox podcast listeners are going to get 20% off of their first order by visiting skin grip.com/juicebox you nothing you hear on the Juicebox podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan. Today's podcast is sponsored by us med. US med.com/juicebox you can get your diabetes supplies from the same place that we do. And I'm talking about Dexcom, libre, Omnipod, tandem, and so much more us, med.com/juicebox or call 888-721-1514, summertime is right around the corner, and Omnipod five is the only tube, free, automated insulin delivery system in the United in the United States, because it's tube free. It's also waterproof, and it goes wherever you go. Learn more at my link, omnipod.com/juicebox, that's right. Omnipod is sponsoring this episode of the podcast, and at my link, you can get a free starter kit. Terms and Conditions apply. Eligibility may vary. Full terms and conditions can be found at omnipod.com/juicebox, hello.

Curtis 2:07
My name is Curtis. I'm a newly diagnosed lotta. Went from type two to lotta just this past couple weeks,

Scott Benner 2:16
past couple weeks. So how long ago did you get your initial diagnosis.

Curtis 2:21
The initial diagnosis, type two, was a year and a half ago, and before that, I was considered pre diabetic. And you know how they always say with pre diabetes, you know, exercise, lose weight, you'll be fine. That didn't happen.

Scott Benner 2:40
Did you exercise and lose weight and weren't fine? Or did none of it happen?

Curtis 2:44
So I went to kind of extreme. I went and did the whole low carb diet. You know, where I work is, I'm very active. I drive a brown truck that delivers packages. You know, everybody loves us, but so I'm constantly working and everything. And I lost, I was almost 300 pounds. I lost maybe about 30 pounds. Went back in and was told, Oh, well, you're not doing it, right? You're not doing you're not you're not exercising, you're not losing you know, you lost a little weight, but you're not eating right, and that's why you keep on creeping up. And it kept happening to where we ended up having me placed on Metformin and then another medication. And this was my outside doc, me and her didn't see eye to eye. And you know, I have her as a doc, but I also have my VA doc and my spouse. My wife is a nurse practitioner, and I trust her with a lot of the decisions. When it comes to, should I do something?

Scott Benner 3:58
Tell me, VA, Doc, you were you were in the military? Yes, no, just tell me. When did you go in, and how long are you with you?

Curtis 4:04
I was in from 1999 all the way till 2008

2006 was the second time I got injured. The first time I got injured I was our Humvee was hit by an IED, and I got knocked out, pretty good, nothing too tremendous, you know, then it got back and got deployed again, and the last injury, which took me out of being in the military, I was blown up three pieces of shrapnel and shot seven times Jesus. So I've gone through about 52 I believe, operations so far throughout the years. And actually that. When that injury happened, I had a traumatic brain injury to actually, where I don't remember my past. The only thing of that day that I truly remember is laying down on the ground, facing up, looking at it the most beautiful blue sky I've ever seen in my

Scott Benner 5:18
life. And do you think that's after you were you were hit.

Curtis 5:21
That was definitely after I was hit. Yeah, Chris, tell me, were you in a firefight? Yes, and no. So the IED was a I was told everything that happened. Yeah, remember, we had an IED roadside. It blew we were in a firefight, and that's when I got hit three times in the chest, and I was brought down, and unfortunately, my flight jacket was one of those ones that weren't up to spec, and it went through my Kevlar missed my heart barely. One went into my lung and one went into my abdomen. So then they we were because of the firefight and everything going on, it was the two hostile of an area to fly in and evac me, but I told us, going into the Humvee, they backtracked, and apparently I heard my buddy got blown up by an ID pretty close to us, and I wouldn't let them stop and take me. I made them go get them, and on our way back through the city, we were ambushed. And we were ambushed. I rolled on top of my buddy and I got hit four times in the back. Jeez. So then, of course, we, you know, got evacked out of there, went through a lot, a lot of hospital. I mean, I was in the hospital for two and a half years. Unfortunately, he succumbed to his injuries.

Scott Benner 6:55
So I'm sorry, man, that's, that's something else. And you were in the hospital for over two years after that. Wow, yep. How old were you when that happened? That was in 2006

Curtis 7:08
and I'm 42 my early 20s. Okay, my gosh, so yeah,

Scott Benner 7:15
well, I'm glad you're okay. I mean, I don't know if you are not, but I'm glad you're alive, I guess. And, and let's find out about the rest of it. So you told me before we started talking the you wonder if what's happening to you now doesn't have something to do with then, but what's the connection that you're you think you might see there? Yes.

Curtis 7:35
So while all this was happening in the hospital and everything, you know, I died a couple times in different operating rooms. In the reason I'm thinking, I'm not sure. I don't know about the data, but I had multiple blood infusions because I throughout from when I got injured to getting to a safe area, I was given blood multiple times, and then throughout some of the operations because I was still bleeding out, until they were able to stop all the bleeding and everything. I think they said they went through almost 17 units of blood at that

Scott Benner 8:12
time, just keeping you alive, to get you to a place where they could address what happened to you. Yes, my gosh, because they could airlift you out. Correct?

Curtis 8:21
So, right. We got back behind the wire, and I was taken straight into the surgery surgical area, and where they stabilized me from the time I got injured to stabilize at that location to be airlifted out, I went through 17 units of blood,

Scott Benner 8:39
my gosh, so there's like a more mobile surgical center close to the line, back behind the wire. They get you as stable as they can, to get you off to a hospital where they can address things further

Curtis 8:50
Correct. Yeah, we were transferred from there over to Germany until we were completely stable and able to go back to the United

Scott Benner 9:00
States. Yeah. Did your buddy make it as far as Germany, or did he pass before then

Curtis 9:04
he actually made it all the way back over the US, with me, and then during one of his operations, there was complications, and he passed?

Scott Benner 9:11
No, I'm so sorry. You know, before we started to record, you said, I don't know if there's a connection, but I feel like there could be. So what do you think between all those surgeries and the damage and the infusions and everything like, what is it that you're wondering about

Curtis 9:26
when I finally got diagnosed correctly? You know, I'm lot of now, and I have, what was it? The i Two is crazy high where, currently, right now, my beta cells are being destroyed, just trying to figure out from the trauma to all the blood infusions and all the operations is something either might have got it from somebody else's blood to even was the trauma, the kind of the onset that kind of kicked whatever in gear

Scott Benner 9:58
I see your brains just. All over the place trying to figure out what might have happened to you. Is there autoimmune in your family? You know, beyond type one diabetes? Is there thyroid, celiac, other autoimmune issues, I don't know, even psoriasis or what's the one where your skin gets different colors that Michael Jackson had? Why can't I think of it

Curtis 10:18
all of a sudden? Oh, I know what you're talking about. But, yeah, yeah, anything like that, mom, dad, uncles, aunts, anything you know, I knew you're gonna ask that, so I contacted my family just to make sure every I was correct, and we have no autoimmune. Okay, my father does have type two diabetes, but other than that,

Scott Benner 10:38
yeah, tell him to get in line. Everybody's got that. Okay, so you're not seeing any other autoimmune throughout your family line, correct? Okay, listen, I'm nobody in this scenario, but, like, I don't think you can get type one through an infusion, like, just like somebody else's blood. Kind of a situation that doesn't sound right to me, the traumatic part doesn't not make sense, but it's it would be uncommon with the other stories that people have told me, If the trauma was 20 years before the diagnosis, can I ask you a bigger question around that, I guess, why do you want to know? Why do you care how you got it? Curiosity? Yeah, just to know.

Curtis 11:17
Yeah, that's it. Okay. Just a curiosity. And then, you know, right before I actually finally had to start going to see the doctor and getting told, Oh, well, you're type. Two out of the military. I did a lot of different things, including, I've been a paramedic forever, and during covid, I was a paramedic on the weekends, and during the week, I was doing my normal job, and I caught it once. It wasn't that bad. Caught it again when it really came about, and I was out of work for about a month trying to get over it. Had a real hard, hard time, and I'm considered a long covid patient now because of it. And then I started having to go see doctors again, and that's when I know was told, hey, you know, your sugar is elevated. You got your pre diabetic. You're going to become diabetic if you don't take care of it. And so I really started trying to get as healthy as I possibly could. And then the doctor that I had, she, you know, she was trying to help. She wasn't the nicest about everything, and didn't believe anything I said. And then when I went to the VA to do blood work and everything else, like I normally do, the blood work came back that I was very elevated with a 1c and I was started on ozempic to see if that would help, along with the pills. And I was on that for about a year, and when I went back to my primary care on the health side, my prime, the doctor that I had, she left the practice, so I was given to, I was given a nurse practitioner to look over my care. And when I was telling her everything was going going on, and I told her, this is my care team. This is how I like to operate, she looked at me and said, well, all y'all are stupid awesome. I was like, okay. So I was like, Well, this is gonna be the first and probably the last time I'm gonna see you, ain't you?

Scott Benner 13:16
Oh, give me a second, because there's a lot to unpack here. So let me go back to you in the military, you weren't 300 pounds. Would you weigh in the

Curtis 13:24
military? Because I was also a bodybuilder in the military. I was about 232

Scott Benner 13:30
40. So how tall

Curtis 13:34
Can I ask five eight? My wife says I'm 510 but you

Scott Benner 13:38
know, that's what she just tells her friends, you're not tall, you're not short, you're you're carrying a lot of muscle. It sounds like, yes, where does the weight come? Is it come sitting in the hospital? Does it come after that? Today's episode is brought to you by Omnipod. It might sound crazy to say, but Summertime is right around the corner. That means more swimming, sports activities, vacations, and you know what's a great feeling, being able to stay connected to automated insulin delivery while doing it all. Omnipod five is the only tube free automated insulin delivery system in the US, and because it's tube free and waterproof, it goes everywhere you do, in the pool, in the ocean or on the soccer field. Unlike traditional insulin pumps, you never have to disconnect from Omnipod five for daily activities, which means you never have to take a break from automated insulin delivery ready to go tube free. Request your free Omnipod five Starter Kit today at omnipod.com/juicebox Terms and Conditions apply. Eligibility may vary full Terms and Conditions. Can be found at omnipod.com/juicebox type that link into your browser, or go to Juicebox podcast.com and click on the image of Omnipod right at the bottom. There's also a link right in the show notes of your podcast player. You've probably heard me talk about us. Med. How simple it is to reorder with us med using their email system. But did you know that if you don't see the email and you're set up for this, you have to set it up. They don't just randomly call you, but I'm set up to be called if I don't respond to the email, because I don't trust myself 100% so one time I didn't respond to the email, and the phone rings the house. It's like, ring. You know how it works. And I picked it up. I was like, hello, and it was just the recording was like, us. Med doesn't actually sound like that, but you know what I'm saying. It said, Hey, you're I don't remember exactly what it says, but it's basically like, Hey, your order's ready. You want us to send it? Push this button if you want us to send it, or if you'd like to wait. I think it lets you put it off, like, a couple of weeks, or push this button for that. That's pretty much it. I push the button to send it, and a few days later, box right at my door. That's it us. Med.com/juicebox, or call 888-721-1514, get your free benefits check now and get started with us. Med, Dexcom, Omnipod, tandem freestyle, they've got all your favorites, even that new eyelet pump. Check them out now at us, med.com/juicebox, or by calling 888-721-1514, there are links in the show notes of your podcast player and links at Juicebox podcast.com to us, med and all the sponsors.

Curtis 16:18
It just came after that. You know, being sedentary in the hospital. I did gain weight, and then it just kept on being an issue. And then, you know, I had the depression, real bad after everything, especially losing my buddy, so much so in when was it, I was released out of the military with a medical honorable discharge in 2008 I completely felt lost in everything I did because I didn't have that structure anymore. I led to drinking very heavily, and at one point at my lowest, I decided I didn't want to deal with this anymore. I attempted suicide. You made an attempt. I did okay. I was successful in the attempt, but what I used didn't work. So I to be honest with you, I put my handgun to my head and I pulled the trigger. The firing pin hit the blasting cap of the round. The round just never went off. When that happened, I realized how stupid I was, because I was going to end my life and I was just going to put a ton of burden on my family. After that, I decided I'm done with it. I stopped drinking, and I stopped taking all my payments, and I went through a horrible detox in the hospital for a little bit of time. Once I got detox, I came back out, I started becoming, I was a paramedic for a system here, again, working as a paramedic. There was a young lady that sparked my interest for some reason. You know, I was always, You don't ever play where you work. But there was a young lady at one of the hospitals that me and her became really good friends. It was great. She helped me through a lot, and she was the first person that I've ever let in to my bubble, ever since I left the military, especially with, you know, my scarring and everything, because I have skin grafts, and I have scars where I've had operations and everything, and it's not the easiest thing to look at. Okay, one time, she had to do something, and I told her to just come stay at my house, my apartment, because she would something was being done at her house, and I worked nights. She worked days. I was like, you can sleep in the bed. I'll take the couch, and we have opposite shifts. We won't see each other. Well, I think day two or three, she came in because she got off a little earlier, and I was I took a little bit later shift, and I was coming out of the shower, and she was coming into the apartment. I didn't hear her. She didn't hear me, and she walked into the bathroom, and that was the first time that I've ever seen a woman walking in on me at my most vulnerable time, and she saw the scars and the markings and everything, and she didn't look horrified. And that was in 2011 and I'm happy to say that that is my wife. Now, she completes me. I mean, she has helped me tremendously from the depression to the memory loss and everything else that I've I've had to deal with ever since my injury. Yeah, and

Scott Benner 19:40
yeah Curtis was that was the memory loss. Does it cover a segment? Or does it cover everything before the injury? Like, I mean, did you forget the day and the week, but not your 10th birthday? Or, do you know what I mean? Like, how much did you lose when

Curtis 19:55
I was injured and had that I did not have any memory? From anything prior. I didn't know who my parents were. I didn't know I was with somebody at that time. I didn't know who anybody was. All I know was something was going on, and I didn't know what what was going on, and it freaked me out. Yeah, still today, I have a heart. I have maybe a handful of memories from my past before the incident, just little spurts, because something happened and it brought up a memory, but yeah,

Scott Benner 20:27
did stuff return? Like did somebody have to tell you that's your mom and reintroduce you to her? Did that come back?

Curtis 20:32
I didn't know who my parents were, and they told me who they were, and I still was very reluctant to believe it. Wow. But one day, I was sitting at home at my place, and Phil Collins in the air, in the air, yeah, came on over the radio, and it sparked a memory. And I was like, it surprised me. It was of me and my father. When he used to own part of a towing business, he would always take me in the tow truck, and we go and do everything. And it sparked a memory of me and him riding in the truck, listening to in the air tonight, and then I saw his face, and that's when it clicked, that is truly

Scott Benner 21:21
my father. That's the first time you're able to believe it really was your dad.

Curtis 21:25
Yep, and that happened. Oh, probably 2010 2011

Scott Benner 21:31
Did you share that with him? Did you tell him? Yeah, good.

Curtis 21:34
That's awesome. Yeah, it was really rough on my parents, because, you know, they see me as injured as I was, and so confused and scared, and they just wanted help, but I was so scared that I didn't know who they were, and I didn't want anybody

Scott Benner 21:51
near me. No, I understand that from little things to big things. What if someone lied you about something about your personality and told them like, you love this but you didn't, or you don't. I mean, like, if you were married, somebody definitely would have said you love doing the laundry and vacuuming, right? How do you trust anything? Because you're hoping these people are being clear with you, but you have no way to, like, I mean, I'm assuming there's pictures and you know, stuff like that, but still you're saying it's, it's hard to swallow that pill. Yeah.

Curtis 22:18
So I've seen all sorts of pictures of my past and videos and everything. And then once my brothers and my sister found out truly what I did in the military, I now no longer have a relationship with one of my sisters and two of my brothers

Scott Benner 22:37
because of your job in the military. Yes, sir, they don't like what you were doing, correct? Would you tell would you tell me what your job was?

Curtis 22:46
Let's just put it this way, I was deployed to unalive targets or people.

Scott Benner 22:51
Okay, so you were moving through places, hitting targets?

Curtis 22:56
Yes, in a way, okay, I had a very small skill set that not many of us had. Unfortunately, I do have some of the memories of what I've done in the military ever since it's been so long and the faces haunt me on a daily basis. You

Scott Benner 23:15
stop me if I'm asking too much. Were you a sniper?

Curtis 23:19
I was a Scout Sniper, yes, yeah,

Scott Benner 23:21
God, yeah. That's the thing we talk about. This is me being academic about it. I obviously have no context for it, but having a big conversation here the other day about, like, what it must be like for these kids that are flying drones now too, you know, because you're controlling the thing, and the thing is shooting somebody and but with you, you're you're looking through a scope and you're seeing that person. Yes, there's no getting around it. Do you ever think maybe it's good you don't remember it?

Curtis 23:49
Yes, I do, because the little bits that I do remember and the constant reminders I do have and the nightmares they

Scott Benner 23:57
suck. Curtis, it occurs to me as you're telling me that like if you don't remember anything from your past, but you can picture, you know, some of the the engagements that you had, but you don't have the rest of who you are like the rest of who you were. Might have been trained to deal with that better. The new you doesn't have that training or that experience, right? You see, I'm saying like you maybe, maybe the old you was good at it, which I know is kind of a horrifying thing for people to hear or think, but, but maybe that person was better suited to be a sniper than the person who you are now. And now you're stuck with some of that person's memories but none of their coping

Curtis 24:35
skills. Well, I see what you're saying, but you know, one thing that has helped me is, you know, being a firefighter paramedic for as long as I have been while I was in the service and out of the service, and everything that we've seen on the different calls that I've been to, from shooting, stabbings to suicides, homicides, you name it, it is actually made it to where I was able to cope a whole lot better because of. Everything that I've been through and seeing, okay, but there's always going to be some of these images that I'll never get out of hand. Do you ever wonder if they're real? Sometimes? Yeah, yeah, Wow, gosh, man, but it's a lot. Unfortunately, I know it is real. That's the bad part. Yeah. Also, I'll

Scott Benner 25:20
be listening to Weird road to go down, and I understand that people could be morally outraged by the job, but is your sister and you mean, you're in the military, they give you a job. You do the job, right? Like, what would have happened if you said no? Thank you. Does that happen? Do you know what I mean?

Curtis 25:33
Like, if you were to say no in a time of war, yeah, that could be punishable up to including

Scott Benner 25:42
death. That's a tough thing to for your sister to hang on you. I think. I don't know. I'm not, I'm not in her situation. But maybe it's, you know, just hard for her to talk to you. Maybe it's just hard for her to make sense of all of it. I don't know. I'm so sorry. There's a lot in there. Man, you're young too. Still, you're, would you say you're 42 Yeah, it's been 42 you've been through a bunch. Let's figure out the diabetes part. Like so we heard the part about you, um, being diagnosed as a type two. They gave you Metformin. Ozempic. Ozempic, help you lose weight.

Curtis 26:11
Actually, believe it or not, ozempic. I was on the highest dose, and they did nothing for my weight.

Scott Benner 26:16
What were you taking? I can't think about the highest doses. Is it two?

Curtis 26:20
Point? Is it two, two or three, I can't never remember that's

Scott Benner 26:24
that's not enough to lose the weight, if it's not working for you. But okay, so you were on ozempic. Did it help your blood sugars? I mean, it might have helped a little bit back then, right?

Curtis 26:31
It did help the ozembic, the Metformin, and the other met. I was on the combination of them, I still ran kind of a higher blood sugar. But yeah, I was still staying in the pre diabetic range.

Scott Benner 26:46
For people who thought you had type two or pre diabetes, they were pretty happy with the care. They didn't realize that you were just in a very early stage of

Curtis 26:53
Lada, correct, right? And with how my job is very active, that helps while I'm at work, my sugars stay pretty dag I'm good. But anytime I'm not at work because I don't have the adrenaline going and I'm not going fast, that's when they kept on, my sugars would go up. Yeah. So I lost the one doctor because she moved, and so I got this new one that said I was stupid pretty much. And at that time, it was time for my interest to get a new pre authorization for Zimbabwe. She was like, Yeah, I'll fill it out, but I don't think they're going to give it to you because you're under what you

Scott Benner 27:30
need to be. Oh, for the A 1c she should have tried for Manjaro, or we go V for you for weight before.

Curtis 27:36
Well, she filled it out, and then it came back that, you know, they denied it. And I was like, Well, can you, you know, rebuttal this and get it figured out and see what we need to do? Because this was my a, 1c, and she was like, No, it's just, you know, that's what they're gonna say. And she was like, you're pretty much just gonna have to get sick worse than you are now.

Scott Benner 27:58
I gotta. I got a close friend this happened to recently, where they basically told her to get type two diabetes and then they'll give it to her. And she's like, Yeah, no. I mean, awesome, right? Like, what a message from I know it's insurance, and insurance isn't health care really, you know what? I mean, it's that's not your doctor. Your doctor wants you to have it, but can I ask a question? Like, it's gonna kind of bother me until I ask it to you, go for it. It's a hustle job, right? I see the guy that works on my street. He's running the whole day in and out of that truck. How are you 300 pounds hustling like that? I

Curtis 28:29
don't know, because we hustle, and when we hustle, and I'm in a state that stays very, very hot, I live down in Texas, you're sweating your ass off on top of everything else. Exactly, during the summer, the back of that truck can be anywhere from 120 to 150 degrees, easy.

Scott Benner 28:46
So for people listening, are you eating a lot of calories, and that's how you're maintaining the weight? Or do you think it's something more metabolic? Or do you you have any idea?

Curtis 28:56
We weren't sure because I was on a low carb honestly, for my breakfast, I was drinking a protein shake that I made at home. So it was all natural. You know, you knew what was. It wasn't just Exactly, yeah. So there was that. And then for lunch was chicken and broccoli every single day, Jesus,

Scott Benner 29:14
and you 300 pounds and you're in a sweat box and you're running around like a lunatic, yes, geez, at what point do you say to yourself, How is this not impacting my weight?

Curtis 29:24
When the referral or the pre authorization got denied at that point, I was at 270 okay? And I was like, well, let's see what's gonna happen now. And so I kept on doing the same thing I always did and and because the nurse practitioner, or was she a nurse practitioner or a PA, either one, but she didn't believe me. I was like, You know what? How about you get me a Dexcom? I was like, then I can prove that I'm not lying. Because you don't believe believe me. This the woman that called you stupid. Yes, yeah. Well, tell me again. Why? Did she call you stupid? What did you say that gave her that response because I told her how, with my VA doctor telling me that even though I'm on the pills and ozembic at that time, that if I couldn't get everything under control, my sugar was going to keep on elevating to where we were going to have to look at the possible use of

Scott Benner 30:22
insulin. To you said that, and she said, You're stupid. Yep, that's common, isn't it?

Curtis 30:27
And the thing that was funny was, my wife was at that appointment with me, but she will not open up her mouth unless I you know, yeah. And she was biting her tongue going she was looking at this woman as you're an absolute

Scott Benner 30:47
idiot. I don't understand sometimes, but

Curtis 30:51
she held her tongue so they agreed to do the Dexcom. And three months go by, and I go back to her, and at this time I am incredibly sick. I gained another this is the time now I'm about 300 pounds. I have no energy whatsoever. I feel like absolute my a 1c, is now skyrocketed. Oh, geez. And she was like, Huh, well, maybe you do have type two I was like, Well, I've got something because I don't

Scott Benner 31:24
feel right. Yeah, something's up. So she went from believing that you were pre diabetic, but now thinking maybe you definitely have type two diabetes, right?

Curtis 31:33
And, you know, I brought in the Dexcom reports, and I brought in a binder of everything, every single thing I ate, and at what time I ate it, every single day.

Scott Benner 31:45
Yeah, you're on a little bit of, a little bit of a mission to show her, huh? Oh,

Curtis 31:49
yeah, when you tell me I'm wrong, I'm gonna prove you I'm

Scott Benner 31:52
right. I mean, I don't know why people can't just hear what you're saying and go, Oh, that's pot because you didn't say anything that's not reasonable. Like, you know, could have just said, Hey, let's, let's look into that for you. But nevertheless, okay, so you brought up reports. I'm sorry. Then what

Curtis 32:05
happened? So then she was like, Okay, well, let's see if we can get you on ozembic insurance. Comes back that prioritization. They okayed it, but they're not going to cover that drug because that's not on their formulary. Now,

Scott Benner 32:17
awesome. I was like, Okay, great.

Curtis 32:19
So then I was got, I was put on monjuro, okay? And she was like, now that I'm putting you on mongero, you have to come see me every, every three months and whatnot, or I won't continue the prescription. Did the mangero help you lose weight? Well, after I started taking the monjuro, I started seeing my blood sugars coming down. Yeah. I ended up getting up to 12 and a half milligrams of monturo.

Scott Benner 32:49
That's the dose I'm on. By the way, 12 and a half. Yep, yep. With that,

Curtis 32:54
my diet, exercise, you know, still constantly doing everything I am now, currently, today, I'm at 210

Scott Benner 33:01
pounds. Hey, man, look at you. That's awesome. Congratulations. I appreciate it. Yeah, I wanted to let you tell the story, because I wasn't sure where it's gonna go, but I was just chomping at the bit myself to tell you, like, get off the ozempic. Go for the manjar, the Zepp bound, you know, because it's also got a G I P in it, and that'll definitely help with the weight loss. You've lost 90 pound,

Curtis 33:20
yeah, but during that time I, you know, I was slowly climbing each level that you had to and, you know, my blood sugars was still messing around. Just not, not something, it's not right. I went back to that Doc, and I was like, Look, something's not right. I still don't feel right. I think something more is going on. And she's like, No, you just need to lose more weight. You need to eat right? And then this will all go away. I was like, it's not going away. That's the problem, because now my sugars are starting to increase again,

Scott Benner 33:54
right? Also, you're now, you're 20 pounds under when you were running around Fallujah, wherever the hell you are. So, like, I don't know where you are. I'm not asking, but like, I mean, you're out in the let me make the assumption you're out in the desert, right? Yeah, yes, right, right. You're 20 pounds under the weight you were when you were operating there, and you're still seeing the blood sugars. And then she says, lose more weight. Did you say that doesn't make any I can't stand

Curtis 34:19
I looked at her, and I was like, you know, if you're not going to help? I was like, it's pretty sad that I'm asking you for help, because I'm trying to better myself and get my health back into where it needs to be, and you're hinder of it. Like, you know what I'm done, right? I was like, I'm gonna go find another doctor, because you're just not going anywhere. I then went to another provider that's actually works with my wife at the same clinic, and they overtook my care and with how everything was, they were like, you know, let's try a little bit of long acting insulin, just to see what happens. I was like, okay, because I have what is that the dawn for. Phenomenon, phenomenon where I would be high as can be in the morning. It was crazy, right? And so we titrated, and I was, I ended up going up to, I think, 22 units a night, okay? And it was kind of working. But then summer came and working outside, pardon my language, it was a crap shoot, because it was like, okay, am I gonna get too hot to where? Then during the day, I'm gonna be even worse off, because I took too much Lantus and and then it went from having Lantus to then I had ended up having to have short acting as well. And insurance covered Nova log, bless my provider, they put me on a sliding scale. And I looked at him, I was like, Okay, I'll try this for a week, and we'll see how it goes. But after a week, if it doesn't do what it should do, I'm going to do it my way. Okay? And they looked at me and was like,

Scott Benner 35:55
How'd you know that there was a different way when they tell you sliding scale, how do you know there's other ways to use insulin

Curtis 35:59
from your wife. When I was diagnosed, you know, my wife had a good knowledge, but when I want to know something, I researched and I researched the, you know, what out of everything, so much so that I saw a lot of type ones are carb counting, and I'm like, okay, yes, I'm a type two, but I'm on insulin. Type ones are on insulin. So why can't I do the same thing a type one does?

Scott Benner 36:27
Yeah? To see if that works. Yeah. Man, it's just, I mean, if you look into it, it makes sense immediately. So that's great. So at what point does someone realize you're not type two? Is that recent? That more recently,

Curtis 36:40
it was very recently, so at the beginning of this year, I told the provider. I was like, Look, I really think I need to be placed on a pump. Because with me working outside and taking the long acting, yeah, and taking the short acting, I swear that long acting messes with me throughout the day, if it gets too hot. I was like, something needs to change. And she was like, Well, I've never worked with a pump. I don't feel comfortable with a pump. Oh, okay. I was like, Okay. I was like, well, then the next step is I need to get somebody in my care team that's comfortable with a pump. I talked with my wife, and I told her, Hey, I'm really looking at a pump. I think that'll probably be the best thing for me with how everything is. She was like, Okay, how do you want to go about it? I was like, well, several years ago, I went to a dinner with my wife that had a speaker in our area talk about diabetes and ozempic, okay? And so I learned a lot from that, little meeting. Well, for Endo, she is huge on research when it comes to diabetes and everything, and she is very well known. And so I was like, well, then that's who I want my endo to be, and that's also the endo that my wife refers to, okay? And I was like, Well, I want the best. I don't want something mediocre. We had a consult put in because of how my schedule was and everything else, told it was going to be about a four or five month wait, and ended up being closer to six months. I went and saw her middle of August to prepare I you know, I asked my provider. I was like, hey, what I want done is, let's do labs. So when I walk in there, I have everything to give her, and there's no question about anything. I was like, so I want all my labs done that I do every three months. But I also want all my antibodies for type one

Scott Benner 38:36
done. Get that out of the way too. So yeah, just so I

Curtis 38:40
walk in a week before my appointment, you know, all my labs come back, and I look at my wife, and my wife has been saying, you know, there's something about you that's different. You're not type two and you're not type one. She was like, you're in between, because you have a lot of the traits of both of them. And that's why we went with the testing, and when we got the results back, before I went to the appointment, it showed that I had pretty much Lada. And my wife was like, I knew it. And I was like, well, you sounds like you're right. I'm not ever gonna say you're wrong, that's for sure. So I did my research, got it all figured out. And then I also put in a list of, hey, this is what how my progress has been. And because I knew, because I've had a fight with several providers to get anything done correctly, that needed to be done, yeah, so I was ready to go in there. I was going to listen to them, but I was ready to react if I need to, and say, Hey, here's the facts. This is what I want. This is how we're going to do it. I walked in and, you know, they were asking me some questions, and I had everything from them, from how much insulin I was taking at any given time, I told them, You know, I was doing the sliding scale, but I went and did the carb counting. I know my car. Ratio. I know my insulin resistance, I know it all. What do you want to know? And they looked at me and said, How do you know all this stuff? And I was like, Well, I researched a lot, and then I got tired of researching, and I was starting to look for podcasts. I said, I listened to five or six podcasts before I was like, You know what I'm done. None of them are helping. They were boring to me. And then I was like, then I of course, saw your podcast, and I was like, Huh, I guess I'll listen to his newest one, just see how it is. Okay. And during it you were talking about the Pro Series episode, 1000 1026 or something like that, yeah. And I was like, huh, now I'm really interested. So I listened to those, and that's what helped me with my carb ratio, insulin resistance and just getting my levels all figured out myself, I'm glad. And when I went into the Indo, I said, here's everything. And they're like, Well, what would you like to do today? And I was like, Well, honestly, I was coming in for help, and they were like, well, has anybody talked to you about a pump? Because she, she looked at my blood work, and she was like, Oh, you're Lada. And I was like, Oh, wow, I'm not even gonna have to fight for this. Yes, you just looked at I was like,

Scott Benner 41:13
Curtis is like, I'm so ready for this fight, and nobody gonna fight. But you know why there's no fight because you, because of all what you did, right? They were like, You're

Curtis 41:22
a very type A personality. And I'm like, No, I just want to make sure I have all my ducks in a row before I walk in, trying

Scott Benner 41:27
to stay alive. Thanks. Yeah. What do you think, Curtis, is it about you that makes that your reaction? Because I talk to people all the time, and they all have, you know, the same ability you do. And they could, they could make decisions like that and get out ahead and collect information. But some of them do, and some of them don't. You have any idea about why you're a person who does

Curtis 41:46
the big thing is, is, I'm tired of feeling sick. I just want to feel good again. I wanted to be better. You know, I've got my wife, I've got four kids, and I'm looking at this going, if I don't take care of myself, I'm gonna start being like my father, who's type two, that's not really good control, and you can see it. And I've tried helping him, but he's like, Oh, I'll listen to what the docs say. Okay. But I was like, I do. I'm not ready to leave this planet just yet because of my stupidity. Again, I got you and you know, instead of using a firearm. It's, it would be diabetes, taking care of myself. Yeah, so you'd be

Scott Benner 42:25
making the decision, yeah, it's so funny. You're talking about this Curtis. I made an episode earlier today with Erica. She's in a lot of the mental health stuff. I kind of drag her into an episode where I was like, Look, I want to talk about the trolley problem. And I think, and I don't know if you know that that's like a like a thought exercise, right? If there were five people as a runaway trolley, five people tied to the track, you have nothing to do with tying them there. And then there's a lever, and if you pull the lever, the trolley would divert onto another track, but there's a person tied up there, would you pull the lever divert the track so that the one person was killed instead of the five people. Pretty common, you know, thought exercise. It's, you know, people talk about all the time that bigger picture. You'll have to listen to the episode to hear kind of where my brain went with it. But it made me think about people's inaction and and how with health, you can see people make the decision that, like, I didn't do this to myself, there's a big bad wolf out there somewhere. They tied the people to this track, this health track that I'm on. It's got nothing to do with me. If I don't do anything and something goes wrong, it's not my fault. It's an unseen foe's fault. It's a bad guy somewhere that did something to me, but if I get involved in it, now suddenly the outcomes are on me. It's easier to do nothing and then get to blame a faceless thing later. And you're telling me that that's what your dad's

Curtis 43:48
doing, kind of but he's actually now starting to he's control of Look at him. Awesome. You getting through to him too. I am. And I actually have, I was telling my mom. I was like, hey, you need to get dad to get tested for type one. I was like, just because of how I've been watching his numbers, because they let me start looking at his numbers through his Dexcom. Yeah, I'm seeing how one, a pump will help him tremendously. So I'm not really trying to push it on him, but I'm saying, hey, a pump could really help to tell them, hey, try Pre-Bolus. Don't, don't do this sliding scale like you're told. Let's figure out your carb count. Let's figure out insulin resistant and everything else. And go from there. Yeah, I was like, once I did that, things turned

Scott Benner 44:35
around for me. Curtis, I gotta tell you, you've been talking for 50 minutes. You've said a lot of interesting things. But I just want to point out that what my ego heard was there are five other podcasts out there about diabetes that are boring. That's all I heard. I'm just kidding. I'm kidding, but that's I pre I appreciate you being kind about mine.

Curtis 44:51
Oh, it's on. It's me being honest. And actually, once I went to the Endo, I will say that they were. On board with everything that I requested. And then they asked me about pumps. And I was like, yeah, it's easy. I want the tandem Moby. And they're like, but that's tubed. I was like, You got to understand, I work outside. It's hot. If it gets too hot, I can take that off, put it in my cooler to cool it down a little bit, and then put it back on.

Scott Benner 45:20
You. Like the idea of it being able to take it off? I would also imagine with the Moby being able to wear with one of those, what that on body kind of thing? Or you could clip it sleeve, yeah. So you have options there too.

Curtis 45:32
Actually, believe it or not, I wear boxer briefs and clip it. For some reason, they put pockets on them for some time on the boxer briefs, yeah, just a little, little, little pocket to put, like, your phone in it, or what, I just dropped the Moby in it, and that's where it sits. Curtis. You

Scott Benner 45:49
got to be careful. You lose a little more weight. Those briefs are going to slide right off you.

Curtis 45:53
I went from what a size 42 to a 34

Scott Benner 45:56
Isn't it crazy? I mean, you've lost 90. I've lost about 70. My brother and I were somewhere the other day, and he's getting, like, picking up like, a sweatshirt as a memory of the day somewhere. And I was in there with him, and you guys might know from listening to him, I'm very cheap, so I was walking around, and I'm like, Oh, these are expensive. Blah, blah, blah. And he's like, you can afford a sweatshirt. Oh, my God, I want to spend all the money on that. And then I saw a t shirt, and I was like, I do like that T shirt, though. And it was stylistically, not something that I would have bought prior to having lost weight, because there was an image on the front. I would never want somebody to be looking at the image, because then you could see the topography of my visage. You know what I mean? Like when you're wearing a solid color, it's a little harder to see your tits, I guess is what I'm saying here. I had no trouble buying the image with you on the shirt, and on top of that, I tried on a couple of different sizes, and I left with a medium, and I was a two XL. You know, what a great experience and be, you know, plus the way I feel, and, you know, how much better I feel and am and etc. Are you feeling like now that you've got your diabetes and check on top of your weight. Can you describe the change that's happened for you from 300 pounds not on insulin to on insulin to 20 or two

Curtis 47:11
Well, I will say having insulin is a little different. It was a big change to get used to, but I mean losing the weight and with me constantly exercising, I didn't have a lot of excess skin that some some people do, which is great, right? But because I've lost weight, I've got more energy, yeah, and I feel like I can do more, whereas there's some things that I couldn't do, because just walking, I get a little

Scott Benner 47:37
winded. You must have exhausted yourself. That work during the day, so I would imagine weren't worth anything. When you got home

Curtis 47:44
exactly, I was ready to go to bed. And then even right now, if my blood sugar goes anywhere over 135 I am worthless, like me and my wife can sit there, everything's fine. And once it hits over 135 I get, like, automatically sleepy. I'm ready to go to sleep,

Scott Benner 48:00
you've gotten your management to the point where sounds like your your blood sugars are lower your and your variability is very low too.

Curtis 48:08
So my last blood draw, my a 1c was a 5.2 or 5.1 and the standard deviation that I run with the Dexcom is anywhere from seven to

Scott Benner 48:23
12. Jesus, that's awesome. Do you think you're still honeymooning? Do you think the lot is still like, are you, I don't wanna say full blown, but like, are you still

Curtis 48:32
currently not converted all the way? I still have some of my beta cells. Okay, that's another thing. So I'm Lada, but if you look at my medical record, it doesn't say that. It says I'm type two insulin dependent. That's crazy, and the reason we had to keep that was we knew that if they were to switch mine to type one or Lata, you'd lose the Manjaro, I would lose manjuro, and they want me to stay on the mangero, because mongero is helping my insulin sensitivity, but it's also helping my heart, my kidneys and everything else. Yeah. So we're going to keep that going as long as we can, because there's studies going on right now about type ones with a GLP, oh yeah, and

Scott Benner 49:16
everything. Keep your head down, Curtis, and they'll be coverage for type ones sooner. Oh yeah, and

Curtis 49:20
so I'm just waiting for that, and then it'll get changed. The middle of August, I was seen by the Endo, and by the end of August, I had the Moby, and I started the Moby, and I went from taking anywhere from I had the 22 units of lannis, and then throughout the day, I was taken anywhere, including the lannis, anywhere from 40 to 80 units a day. Now I'm actually looking at my summary on tandem right now, and it says my average daily daily use of. Uh, insulin is

Scott Benner 50:01
23 units. 23 that's basal

Curtis 50:04
and Bolus together. That's basal and Bolus together.

Scott Benner 50:07
If you have insulin resistance, kids that GOP will help you. Well, I don't care what type you are, that's really awesome. Good for you. That's great. Yeah, you're making me feel through it's the end of the week. You're my last recording this week, and I'm sitting here feeling like, I feel like something I did help somebody, you know what? I mean, like, so I'm having a making me feel good. I appreciate that you share this with us.

Curtis 50:29
You definitely have helped. I mean, you know, after, after that indo appointment, I was like, You know what? I'm about to get put on a pump. I'm gonna listen to the Pro Series again. Started on the Pro Series, and I just started listening every episode after that, and I'm at episode, what was it? Almost 1300 Wow. It's like 1298 because with my job, since I don't really have a lot of interaction with a lot of people, I just listen to the podcast every day, all day long, and it's fun to listen to, because you hear everybody's different stories, and then someone will say something. It's like, Huh? I didn't think about that. Yeah. Well, let's look into

Scott Benner 51:11
that. That's the value, I think, of people, besides the entertainment of it is, is that if you just let people talk, they'll say something that's really valuable. You said something. I mean, it's half an hour ago now that I still feel like in my chest, like I still feel it like, you know, you talked about your attempting suicide. And, I mean, just like the dumb luck of that, of that firing pin, not, not doing its job, right, and, and, and what you took from it, like everything that came to you after that. It's really, I just think, really valuable, because you probably would have had that thought as that bullet was traveling through the chamber, and it would have been too late, yeah, you know what I mean, like that thought that hit you of like, I shouldn't be doing this, and you got, you know, whatever steps in and gives you an opportunity to make another decision, and then you took it, and then everything of your story after that is really just a masterful example of being an adult and taking care of yourself. You're really kicking ass,

Curtis 52:14
man, I appreciate it. I can't take all the credit, though. Now

Scott Benner 52:18
you got a wife, I'm sure she tells you when you're being dumb. That's probably helpful.

Curtis 52:21
And I do tell everybody at the time I married an Irish Red Headed ER nurse Okay, where she could kill me, bring me back to life and kill me again, just because I ticked her off. Well, she is now advanced, and now she's a nurse practitioner, so now she's got a slew of other things she

Scott Benner 52:42
can do to me. So yeah, and she make four babies for you. Well, we're actually a blended family, okay, okay,

Curtis 52:48
I have one son, and she has two sons and a daughter. I'll tell you straight up, they're all my kids. Yeah, I don't care what anybody says. Anytime anybody asked me if I How many kids I got, I always tell them for Yeah, look at you, because I've been with them since they were young. Yeah, our daughter, she's she's now a nurse. Our oldest son, he is an engineer. Our middle son, he is actually today, taking the test to become a to get into the police academy. So we're hoping he does well there. Good luck. Our youngest is finishing up high school. Wow.

Scott Benner 53:24
Man, look at you guys. That's awesome. You're a lovely person, too. Curtis, this is my first time really meeting. I've seen you online a little bit, but not to this level, obviously. Yes, sir, yeah, man, this is really wonderful view. What made you want to share this with everybody? Everybody's

Curtis 53:37
got a story, and you know you guys, right? My story might impact somebody to say, hey, you know, I've been there, and if I can pull through it, you can, yeah. I could tell you I still have my dark days. I always will. I

Scott Benner 53:54
wanted to ask you about depression. Is that something you still fight with

Curtis 53:58
every day? Yeah. But I can honestly tell you, I'll never, I'll never attempt on my life again, because now one I realized how stupid I was backed in and that was before I met my wife. Now I've got all my family, include my parents and brother. I've got four kids that look at me and if I was willing to do that and hurt myself again? How would that help them? And so everything I do is I do it for my family. I don't play that game anymore.

Scott Benner 54:28
Yeah, there's worse reasons to do things. That's for sure. That's a that's a that's a pretty good one. I really do appreciate you telling me this. I want to make sure. Is there anything? Like, I don't want to I'm not cutting you off, but like, if I just feel like you did such a good job of telling your story that if I keep talking, it's just gonna, it's gonna ruin what you did. But I want to make sure there's nothing that we missed.

Curtis 54:48
The biggest thing is is, you know, if somebody on the edge of, Do I need a pump? Do I not need a pump? Should I be on insulin? Do your research. I mean, honestly, do a little bit of research goes a long. Way, and with me doing the research and me presenting everything that I needed to at the doctor. But you know, I had it all in a binder, everything from my meds, my history, to everything about my diabetes to my lab work, and they just flipped through it and said, Wow, you are really organized. They didn't

Scott Benner 55:20
have a problem. Yeah, you did their job for them, really, right? I will

Curtis 55:24
say my indo did tell me they're like, Well, you know, you have a five two, which is really good. Just realize that these pumps, you might not keep it that low, because, you know, their target range is higher than what I've always kept my stuff at. I was like, I understand that, but it'll help keep me feeling better. Yeah, I mean, and instead of having to have two different insulins, I have one insulin. And, you know, I run the control IQ algorithm, I let it do its thing, and it keeps me in check really well. And the reason I went with tandem instead of the Omnipod one, if I was to pull the Omnipod off to cool it down, well, I just, you can't put it back on. I don't get it exactly. And with the Omnipod it, they tend to be less aggressive with their algorithm than the control

Scott Benner 56:19
IQ. Do you know Curtis that right now. I think Omnipod is in a they're doing a study right now. I think they're calling it just it's Omnipod. I don't know if it's five, 2.0 or something like that, but they're doing a study right now to make the algorithm. I'm going to use the word more aggressive. I don't know how they would characterize it, but one way or the other, that's not important. What's important is you find something that works for you and that's for everybody listening. Now, beyond that, what's important is finding something that works for you. But then, of course, once you find it, using my link to buy it, twist.com/juicebox omnipod.com/juicebox. Tandem diabetes.com. So Medtronic diabetes, you would just find the links at the web page. So we can keep making this podcast and hearing from people like Curtis, who has a fascinating you really have, somehow don't remember the first 22 years of your life, only the last 20, and still have four lives worth of stories to tell. Seriously. Oh yeah, no, man, that's that's incredible. Like, I mean, you talked about you're one person. You talked about being injured in battle and nearly dying. Did you get the Purple Heart? Yes. Did they give you a medal for covering your body? They requested it. I did. I didn't want it. You didn't want it. Okay? No, well, you deserve he was a brother. No, I hear you, man, but like you weren't wearing that vest anymore when you got on top of him, right? Nope, yeah. Okay, so that in itself is a story. Then there's everything that happened you with your memory loss and your recovery, that's a story in itself, fighting through this type two diabetes misdiagnosis thing. I mean, I don't know how many times I'm going to talk to somebody about it, but it's horrifying, and most people don't have the great outcome that you had. So like, I know how difficult that is. The subplot here of the story with your your sister judging you the way she does, and you've lost family, tried to take your own life. You're fighting with depression, and you're still living a really successful life out in the world, being a great part of it, being a dad to four people, a husband to somebody, and finding a way to take care of yourself, and then taking five minutes to come on here and tell everybody else about it. Yeah, seriously, man, if I had a medal, I'd give it to you. I do not. You're welcome. I don't have one. Just in case you're wondering, I could give you this Dexcom fidget spinner that I have here. I don't know where to send it. I got this at friends for life, guys, if you've been hearing this on the podcast, I apologize. Can you hear it?

Curtis 58:36
I hope not. Oh yeah, you can't hear this. Just heard something spin.

Speaker 1 58:39
I've been fidget spinning for like, weeks now, while I'm talking to people, and originally, probably right now, Rob's editing this and thinking like, is that what that noise is? I didn't know what that was. Usually it's a cricket gets loose in my room and I can't find it, and I'm trying to record and it's in the background, like making a bunch of noise. But that's a different story. If you don't listen to enough of the podcast, that's not going to make any sense

Curtis 59:00
to you. Just let one of your little guys run around. You know

Scott Benner 59:02
what? That's not though I'm getting right now. One of them is definitely looking at me like, let's do one more. One more Roach today. He's giving me the big eyes. So,

Curtis 59:10
so the cool thing is, just to add on to the story, because with my lows, I can't tell you when I get low until I hit about 30. Oh, once I hit 30, I got less than five minutes to do something about it, or I'm down.

Scott Benner 59:27
Yeah, we don't want you that low. How does that happen? I mean, you're on a seat, you're in a CGM, right?

Curtis 59:31
Sometimes it happens pretty quick, fast. It's just really weird. So because of it, that's one thing that my wife was very worried about, you know, us sleeping, and next thing we know it, she's not hearing the alarms. And I am very hypo to where, if you look at service dogs, and people have said stuff about it on the Facebook post, they're like, $30,000 yeah.

Scott Benner 59:54
I mean, I don't know who's supporting that. I actually, apparently got, got somebody one for free in a giveaway. I. Forgotten about it. I interviewed, I interviewed him, and she, she the kid, her kid, her kid, her son, won a trip to camp Sweeney through the podcast, and she's thanking me for it, and then she's like, also, I'm the one that won the service dog in your giveaway. And I was like, wait, what also? Well, listen, first of all, let's be clear. Do you have backsemi or G vogue at the house? So you have glucagon with you? I have g vote because of your podcast. Good, good, good. Let them hear that people know activity. A lot of times you'll see like, latent lows overnight when you have activity, but you have activity every day with your job. Yeah.

Curtis 1:00:33
So we actually end because I used to have a service dog in the past. Unfortunately, she died of cancer.

Scott Benner 1:00:40
Oh, my God, I'm sorry. Was that more for, like, just emotional support

Curtis 1:00:44
kind of Yeah, she actually was deployed several times over in the sandbox as well. She was actually a military working dog. She retired and got to come home and live with me. She was converted into a service dog to help me through the PTSD and all that Shepherd Curtis, she was a Belgian Malinois. Oh, wow, beautiful dog. Okay. Oh, she was, yeah. And I told my wife, you know, if we're gonna do this, we'll train the dog ourselves. One and two, I was like, I don't want a big dog again. I was like, I need something small, because I ride a Harley all the time, and so much so that I gave her something impossible to find, and leave it to a woman. She found it. So now I have a I'm not kidding you. She's less than two pounds, a little chihuahua.

Scott Benner 1:01:38
Are you telling me that it's you on a Harley with a chihuahua in a saddle bag.

Curtis 1:01:44
Yep, she's been trained for my lows. We still train daily by using saliva from when I was low and everything. But she she is jumped on that bandwagon, and that little dog can detect a low,

Scott Benner 1:02:01
really quick. Kidding, you trained your own service Chihuahua. Uh huh,

Curtis 1:02:05
yeah. So just think about a big, big guy jumping off a Harley with a chihuahua on his

Scott Benner 1:02:11
chest, honestly, Curtis, all I can think about is when I sit down three months from now and explain to chat GPT to make me an image of a of a burly guy on a Harley Davidson going through Texas with a chihuahua in a saddlebag to see what it comes up with. Oh,

Curtis 1:02:28
you're gonna have to send it to me, because in 20 or next year or 2028 I'm actually going to be doing a 10,000 mile motorcycle challenge. Good for you, and I've got to raise money for a charity, but I also have to get sponsors for it, because it's going to cost about $17,000 to do to go on the ride. And it's a ride where you can't use GPS. It's all secondary highways. It's not really any interstates. The directions that you're given are old maps go, but not maps go. Map Quest directions you have a tracker. If you go over 99 miles an hour, you get disqualified. If you get pulled over by a cop, you get disqualified. And whenever you stop to sleep, you have to sleep next to your motorcycle.

Scott Benner 1:03:20
Oh, you can only sleep where you can put the bike.

Curtis 1:03:23
No, last year they went from Daytona, Florida down to Key West, Key West to Homer, Alaska. A buddy of mine did it, and he actually finished first. It was awesome to watch him. Yeah, and I've decided that what I am going to do, because in my local area, there is actually a diabetic alert dog trainer. I'm talking with him, and what I'm going to try doing is getting enough raising enough money to where I can actually pay for two diabetic alert dogs to be given to diabetics in need, and I'm hoping that I can give at least one

Scott Benner 1:04:04
to a better Oh, I hope you can do that too. That'd be amazing, really. So yeah, Curtis, I had the opportunity last year to give a number of slots away to kids to go to camp, actually, a diabetes camp in Texas called Camp Sweeney, right? I can't tell you how, how good that ended up feeling. It wasn't even money out of my pocket. I was just doing it like from the podcast, you know what I mean? Like I was kind of the front face of it, and I felt terrific about it. I really did so much. So they reached out to me just recently, in September of 2025 they reached back out and they said, Hey, would you give some more away for next season? I said, Absolutely, that'd be great. And I've already reached out to a sponsor and asked them if they could cover the part that the camp Sweeney can't cover. And I'm hoping to give four away again next year, just because you'll see how good it'll make you feel if you're able to give someone that dog is what I'm saying. Oh yeah, definitely it'll be special for you. I wish you a ton of a ton of luck. I hope you can accomplish that. I. I know it's hard to get people to sponsor things and, you know, like that kind of stuff too, because they're going to be looking for, you know, what are they going to get out

Curtis 1:05:06
of it? Well, I'm even going to try getting tandem involved, Omnipod, anybody that I can, just to get awareness out. Yeah, the cool thing is, is my goal to do, it is to be one of the top, elite finishers. So if you finish in 10 to 14 days, you're an elite finisher. 14 to 21 days, you're a finisher. In anything over 21 days, you're a slow ass finisher. Well, I want to be the first one across

Scott Benner 1:05:35
Curtis coming in. Is this a company that tracks the riders? Or is there a

Curtis 1:05:38
website? There is a website. I'm not sure if they want me to let people know, but it's a very, very popular challenge for motorcycles.

Scott Benner 1:05:49
Can you just tell me what the challenge is called? Don't, don't worry about the website.

Curtis 1:05:53
Well, I guess, I mean, I don't think they'll kill me for it, but it's called the Hoka Hey, motorcycle challenge. Okay, and it's really cool how it's done, and it's a big challenge for a person to do, because to get done in 10 days, that means I'll be having to do 1000 miles a day.

Scott Benner 1:06:11
Yeah, it's, that's something else. 1000 miles of riding is dude, I've driven 700 miles in a day in a car, and it'll almost, it almost puts me out. You know what I mean. So being up upright on a bike, how would you have you thought already about how to manage your type one during that

Curtis 1:06:30
well, because of the insulin needs, and also I get back injections done because of my

Scott Benner 1:06:36
injury in the back. Yeah,

Curtis 1:06:38
I can't carry it all with me without it going bad. So I've already reached out to them about, you know, my wife meeting me at all the checkpoints to where I can swap out and get the equipment and everything that I need to take care of my diabetes for that stretch.

Scott Benner 1:06:57
Yeah. So you're just gonna have enough on you that if something emergent happens. You can deal with it, but that kind of big supplies are going to be from checkpoint to checkpoint, right? And

Curtis 1:07:07
that's the only place I can meet her, is at a checkpoint, which is fine with me. Pepper, my little chihuahua, she's actually going to take the ride with me, so she's got a little carrier that'll be right behind me in my seat.

Scott Benner 1:07:18
Yeah, well, it's awesome, man, I'm looking, I'm looking at the challenge online now it's great. I really hope you something you can get accomplished. All right. Well, listen, let me, let me say thank you and goodbye. This was absolutely awesome. Really want to just one more time tell you about I'm proud of you, like this is quite an accomplishment, that you're a person who really did a lot with their life in the face of a lot of challenges, and it's very commendable. So congratulations. I appreciate it absolutely. Thank you absolutely. Hold on one second for me.

Okay, us, med sponsored this episode of The Juicebox podcast. Check them out at us. Med.com/juicebox, or by calling 888-721-1514, get your free benefits check and get started today with us. Med,

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Scott Benner 10/30/25 Scott Benner 10/30/25

#1666 A Year from Hell (and Back)

Julie, a pediatric nurse and mom, shares her son’s type 1 diagnosis, her daughter’s thyroid cancer, and finding laughter, learning, and light in the middle of a storm.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Scott Benner 0:00
Welcome back, friends. You are listening to the Juicebox podcast.

Julie 0:14
Hi, Scott. My name is Julie, and I have a 17 year old son with type one who's had it for about a year and a half.

Scott Benner 0:22
Now, if your loved one is newly diagnosed with type one diabetes and you're seeking a clear, practical perspective, check out the bold beginning series on the Juicebox podcast. It's hosted by myself and Jenny Smith, an experienced diabetes educator with over 35 years of personal insight into type one. Our series cuts through the medical jargon and delivers straightforward answers to your most pressing questions. You'll gain insight from real patients and caregivers and find practical advice to help you confidently navigate life with type one. You can start your journey informed and empowered with the Juicebox podcast, the bold beginning series and all of the collections in the Juicebox podcast are available in your audio app and at Juicebox podcast.com in the menu while you're listening. Please remember that nothing you hear on the Juicebox podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise. Always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan or becoming bold with insulin.

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Julie 2:35
Hi, Scott. My name is Julie, and I have a 17 year old son with type one, who's had it for about a year

Scott Benner 2:43
and a half now, 17 year old son, year and a half. Do you have other kids?

Julie 2:47
I do. My oldest daughter is 23 and my middle daughter is 20. So my son, Kyle is my youngest,

Scott Benner 2:56
and he's had type one for a little over a year, year and a half, a year and a half. Yep. Any other autoimmune in the family? How much time do you have? I want to hear

Julie 3:04
about it all. Okay, so my oldest daughter has an immune deficiency, IGA deficiency, which sounds scarier than it is. And Kyle, my son also has that I have chronic hives and Hashimotos. So does like throughout my extended family, there's the same thing with thyroid and that kind of thing. Okay, so,

Scott Benner 3:29
yeah, awesome. How long have you had Hashimotos?

Julie 3:34
I was diagnosed probably 15 years ago, but I don't really have any symptoms of it. I'm not on medication or anything like that for it. Just, you know, what

Scott Benner 3:45
have I told you first? I want to tell you this. I barely got through high school. I want to make sure you

Julie 3:50
understand that. Okay, okay, good, good to

Scott Benner 3:54
know. I considered going to college and took one class. It was an English class. I got an A, and then I stopped going. And that was after I was an adult. Because my wife was like, you could have gone to college. And I was always like, no, I'd be terrible at it. And she's like, No, you wouldn't. And I took a class to show you the difference between how I think and how my wife thinks. She's like, Look, you got an A. Keep going. And I was like, I got an A. Why do I have

Julie 4:14
to keep going? You're like, I totally proved it to you.

Scott Benner 4:17
If I went back long enough, I'd have a degree, and then what? Anyway, there's a little look into me, but I'm gonna tell you a quick story. Okay, my wife has thyroid. My daughter has thyroid. My son has Hashimotos for sure. Okay, my wife my daughter, haven't been tested to see if there is this autoimmune but, I mean, like, Wouldn't surprise me, right? How did we figure out my son had Hashimotos? This is the part you care about. Okay? The first time we thought it was something, he started acting much differently, like his just his personality flipped. He got like he was unkind and short tempered. And like all this stuff. And while my wife's walking around going, like, What's wrong with him, I was saying to myself, Oh, I remember this from when we got you diagnosed with thyroid problems because you were I was like, I know what this is going to be, right? So I took him to the doctor. His TSH came back a little elevated, but back then, I didn't think of it the same way as I think of it. Now, had I thought of it that way, then I would have said, like, hey, medicate him. He's definitely got this. We had to go through a couple of rounds. He had a spike in his TSH, that then went back down again, and classically the way his, you know, doctor thought about it back before we found a great Endo, they were like, Oh, that happens sometimes, and I'm like, oh, okay, yeah, but about six months later, it was a college baseball player and it was covid time. Was it covid or something? It was home for the holiday. So one of the other is in the house, and, you know, in the basement, there's like a, like a rack where he can lift. It's also the same weight set that I ignore and don't, don't use. Sure he's downstairs lifting. He comes flying up the stairs in a panic, and he is covered waist to neck in hives. Stop. Yeah, hold on. See, Julie, this is worth it. Just hold on a second. So we do all the things that a person would do in that situation, right? We took him to, you know, a dermatologist and, like, you know, proper channels, and they hit him with, like, a big and I always get this word wrong. Is it histamine blockers? Okay? Histamine? Yeah, I think my pronunciation is not always good, and hit him with a blocker. Then they added another one, and before I knew it, he was taking a cocktail of three over the counter blockers at the same time, and nothing changed. If he got upset, if he got excited, if his body heated up, he broke out in hives. The only thing that stopped the hives was time, right? And because it was November, and we started realizing that it had something to do with his body temperature. He would sometimes go outside in shorts and a T shirt in the winter and stand out there, freeze his ass off, bring his body temperature down, and the hives would go away. Oh, I get that. I've done that. Yeah, we were playing cards one night. It was definitely covid Because we were playing cards one night because we haven't played a game since covid, I have not sat with my family and played poker. By the way, I gave my children. This is what covid did to us. I went to the the ATM got cash out, gave it to everybody, and I was like, Hey, we're gonna play poker. We did that too. I was like, if you win, you can keep the money.

Julie 7:35
We ordered a table on Amazon. Yes, I

Scott Benner 7:41
didn't know you were gonna doubt yourself as being a Caucasian lady so quickly in the conversation, but that's awesome. He just laughed. Something funny happened, and he started laughing, and then boom, broke out in hives. Now this went on for a while, and it was getting really upsetting. We were talking to the doctor about biologic injectables the zolair, yeah, that's where we take, yeah, that's where we were. And then one night, one late night, when I was absolutely just bereft, worried about him, I was up googling before chat GPT, and I tripped upon an NIH article that said, in very, very rare cases, symptoms of Hashimotos can include hives, and we put him on medication, and he hasn't had hives since then.

Julie 8:32
Wow. It's not supposed to be about me. I feel bad now. We're getting to it. I was at Mayo Clinic. I've been to, I was in the ICU for a week because I would get, it's called angioedema, where you get, like, tongue swelling and all of that. So, yeah, this has been quite

Scott Benner 8:50
I'm not saying this is your case, but what I am saying is, if you have Hashimotos, but you're not taking medication, would you tell me what your last TSH was?

Julie 8:59
Um, I don't remember. I just know every single time it's normal,

Scott Benner 9:07
I want you to go look, it doesn't have to be now. And, and I'm gonna say something. Say two. I'm gonna tell you if it's over two, 2.1 just gives 2.5 Yep, get the medication.

Julie 9:17
Oh, well, how do I get a doctor to do that? If they say it's normal. You got to get a good

Scott Benner 9:21
doctor, okay, it's also not normal. It's where most people's fall when they test it. So when they tell you what normal is in a blood test, it just means that most people fall in this range, right? So they call that the green range. What I'm going to tell you is, you go listen to episode 413, of the podcast. You'll listen to Dr Addy Benito, talk about thyroid, and when you get done, you're going to be mad and you're going to go get thyroid medication. Do you have, oh my gosh, 10 years of my life, really, it's gonna I expect a holiday card. If this all works out

Julie 9:52
for 13, okay.

Scott Benner 9:56
Do you have any other thyroid symptoms? Are you hard? To get rested. Does your hair fall out? Do you have dry skin, brittle nails? Any Well,

Julie 10:04
I'm 50, so we have the whole menopause thing. So you know, yes, yes, exactly. If

Scott Benner 10:12
menopause doesn't kill my wife, I'm gonna be amazed.

Julie 10:17
I mean, the nightmare,

Scott Benner 10:19
yeah, not good anyway. I hope that helps you. Thank you. I hope my son's random story helps you. And if it does, seriously, let me know. Send me a note if it doesn't help. I don't want to hear back from you if it doesn't work. Okay, yeah, okay.

Julie 10:34
So, yeah, yes, thyroid is crazy,

Scott Benner 10:37
yeah, thyroids really is crazy, yeah. If I can make a suggestion, don't do that thing where you said, Well, yeah, I'm tired, but I'm older, like, because, because, okay, I'm telling you, a little bit of Synthroid, you know, tears and whatever they end up giving you, if you notice, it brings down your TSH, but your symptoms don't go away, you know. I mean, are you a very tired

Julie 10:59
person? I am, yes, I am, but I don't really sleep. But, I mean, I also have, my oldest has thyroid cancer right now, so, like, I'm seeing how tired she is right now, so I don't think I'm as tired as her. But you

Scott Benner 11:15
also don't have thyroid cancer, right? Okay, listen, I think this is it. Don't, don't ignore your own health just because you're helping your kids, etc so on. You don't need me to tell you that, all right. So this kid of yours, yes, goes out and gets himself some diabetes, yes. How did that happen? How did you notice it?

Julie 11:32
I didn't notice it. That's what is so scary to me, because I'm a pediatric nurse.

Scott Benner 11:39
Sorry, it's

Julie 11:41
not funny. I'm still not okay about it. Go ahead. Go ahead, tell me what happened. I was really not okay about it. He had a well visit, like his yearly physical in November of that year, and everything was fine. And the only thing we were discussing there was some fatigue and a really low heart rate. But looking back, his heart rate had been in the 40s for a few years. He's an athlete, really, swimmer, basketball, that kind of thing. That was all we really talked about. But then in December, he started to complain of leg cramping, to the point where he was asking me to make, like, ice baths without ice. Like, just make cold, cold water, you know what I mean. And he would come home from practice and just really complain of his legs really hurting, which is not like him. And we were at a game, and he pulled himself out of the game, and this was sophomore year where he was a swing player on varsity, so he was trying real hard, you know what I mean, to really do well, and for him to leave practice was just shocking, and I knew something was wrong. Never in 1000 years did I think type one diabetes. I was thinking electrolyte imbalance. So what do I do? I'm pushing fluids. I'm pushing Gatorade. I'm pushing propel, you know, he's seeing the trainer there, and I see them, you know, rolling out his legs at each game and giving him the packets of electrolytes. And he just couldn't play. And then we were in a game like our biggest game of the year, and two minutes left in the game, I think it was either tied or real close, he goes up for a shot, and he collapses and couldn't get up. So I go down, and I'm like, is he being dramatic? Like, this is weird. And we kind of, like, pull, like, almost carry him off. He goes to see the trainer. After about 30 minutes of massage, he still couldn't walk. So they said, we think, we think you need to take him to the ER, yeah. So we get to the ER, and they find everything looks okay on his labs, except his, what's called CPK, was high. I don't know if you're familiar

Scott Benner 13:56
with I am, because my daughter had a really high Cpk one time, which she had a ton of muscle pain one

Julie 14:01
time. Oh, really, was this before she was dying? Oh, no, she was baby.

Scott Benner 14:05
Yeah, it wasn't before she was diagnosed. It was one summer while she was playing a lot of softball.

Julie 14:10
Oh, okay, yeah. We usually see it in, like, real, real high levels in peds, like, with crushing injuries, like if you're in a car accident, or if you run a marathon and you're not ready, you know there's like muscle death, almost. But he wasn't, I mean, tremendously high. So they diagnosed him with what's called Rhabdo, which you treat with fluids and monitor kidney function, because it can cause kidney damage. I was very surprised he had Rhabdo, because he, I mean, yes, he works out excessively, but it wasn't like a new thing. He had done nothing that would indicate like, oh, he really went at it and it caused this at that ER visit, his blood sugar was 160 and I remember vaguely being like, why is he 160 but then I thought, well, he had had four Gatorades. And we came right here. So I honestly didn't think anything of it. The physician didn't say anything of it.

Scott Benner 15:05
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Julie 17:26
I didn't, I don't know, it just didn't do anything for any of us. As he got the IV fluids, his Cpk level started to come down, so they did not admit him, and he was able to walk. He still had pain, though. So we go home. They say, Stop basketball for a week, hydrate like crazy. So I see him drinking and drinking and drinking, and I'm like, Good job, bud. This is what the doctor said to do. You know, thought nothing of it. So we go for our follow up, and he's telling the doctor. The doctor said you can probably go back to basketball when you feel better, but it's been a week, levels are better. You know, you can probably go ahead and work out. And he said, I can't. And we were in shock, because, I mean, I know your son's an athlete, so you understand, like, Yeah, they really want to, I mean, it's all they care about. So he said he then he started to describe the feeling as weakness. So then I went down a neurological path, like, in my nurse brain, I was like, Oh my gosh, what is going on? He's got two immune deficiencies. Like, don't we have enough? Are you kidding me right now? Like, do I need to see a neurologist all of that? Yeah, we go back to the doctor a third time. They say, everything checks out, you know, just continue to to hydrate and just rest. So we're walking out, I can, like, picture where I was standing. He looked at me. He was looking at the paperwork, and he's a guy trying to get buff, you know. And he says, Mom, why would I have lost 10 pounds in a month? And that got you Yeah, yeah. So I called his pediatrician from the car. I said, he lost weight. Can you order, you know, a fasting glucose for the morning. But really, I still wasn't convinced, because I was like, I don't know, this is weird. And she said, Well, let's do a celiac, you know, labs as well. So I was like, Okay, great. Next morning, take him to the lab. Of course, I log in and see it's 560 his fasting glucose that morning. So I go to pick him up at school, take him to the ER and off we went

Scott Benner 19:34
to tell him in the car. Do you let them tell him at the hospital? Oh,

Julie 19:37
I told him in the car. And I didn't have a great experience at at our hospital. I mean, the ER, doctor was like, well, this may not be diabetes. And I was like, Okay, can you just call endocrine like, you know, there's really nothing else that I know of that can make your glucose,

Scott Benner 19:54
yeah, this is gonna be it.

Julie 19:56
This is it. This is it. So the next morning, we. He, you know, did the whole eight hours of education and, and that was it. So I really missed the boat, and then I go to his room that night and see, you know, like, 26 bottles of water, and,

Scott Benner 20:12
yeah, the whole thing, how long did, was the process from when you now, in hindsight, think that the type one was coming on, and when you figured it out and you were in the hospital, I used to hate ordering my daughter's diabetes supplies. I never had a good experience, and it was frustrating. But it hasn't been that way for a while, actually, for about three years now, because that's how long we've been using us Med, US med.com/juicebox, or call 888-721-1514, US med is the number one distributor for FreeStyle Libre systems nationwide. They are the number one specialty distributor for Omnipod dash, the number one fastest growing tandem distributor nationwide, the number one rated distributor in Dexcom customer satisfaction surveys, they have served over 1 million people with diabetes since 1996 and they always provide 90 days worth of supplies and fast and free shipping us. Med carries everything from insulin pumps and diabetes testing supplies to the latest CGM, like the libre three and Dexcom g7 they accept Medicare nationwide, and over 800 private insurers find out why us med has an A plus rating with a better business Bureau at us med.com/juicebox, or just call them at 88872115143, 87211514, get started right now, and you'll be getting your supplies the same way we do.

Julie 21:48
I honestly don't know. I mean that July, he had covid, but he he wasn't real, real sick with it, like it was very mild. He gets sick a lot because he has those two immune deficiencies, and he takes a daily antibiotic for those when I look at photos, I see about three months of paleness and just not looking great. I'm gonna cry now, and I'm not a crier. I didn't see it like I didn't see it in real time.

Scott Benner 22:14
Yeah, well, I would say three months is a reasonable amount of time. The other health issues, confuse the picture, the being the athlete, I think you did a great job figuring it out. Oh well, thank you. You're very welcome. My kid was almost dead, so, you know, oh, I

Julie 22:31
can imagine, what was she, too, right? Yeah, yeah. I mean, and you look back and you feel like an idiot, because, well, I don't know how you'd see in a two year old, other than the drinking because she

Scott Benner 22:41
was, she looked like a runway model in the 80s. Oh, she was so thin. And then you don't realize it when it's happening, for some reason. Yeah, it's only a couple of pounds too. If I told you, the difference on her frame between 19 pounds and 17 pounds was drastic, really, yeah, but you just didn't, I don't know. Just didn't know. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I think back on so many different little things that happened along the way that, you know, it's funny. I hear everybody else say it, but like, here I am saying it too. On their face, each of them is horrifying, and you don't know how you didn't get from like your son tried to take a shot playing basketball. He's a 17 year old. Kidney collapsed and couldn't stand up for a half an hour, and you were like, he probably needs a Gatorade in the world. Have you ever seen that happen? You know what I mean, right?

Julie 23:30
And I think of myself as a good nurse and thorough and but as soon as he said weight loss, I was like, Oh

Scott Benner 23:38
yeah, I'm a reasonably bright person. I once took my daughter's diaper off and her bowel movement was so dry and devoid of moisture that you could crush it like dust in your hand. And I was just like, huh, yeah.

Julie 23:54
Well, lots of two year olds get constipated. I mean, that's a frequent call we get exactly.

Scott Benner 23:58
Well, I did take her back to the doctor. But then the doctor was like, Oh, that's weird. So, yeah, exactly, exactly, ever drink more? And I was like, yeah. Meanwhile, I do. I always look back, as crazy as it sounds, if I would have brought him the diaper, I think he would have looked at it and gone like, oh my god, take her to the hospital, right? You know, like, so anyway, please don't beat yourself up about it. Yeah, there's plenty of stuff going on. Is there any autoimmune on Is there any autoimmune on your husband's side? Can we blame any of this on him or

Julie 24:25
none? No, none. What a shame. Sorry. I know, I know his family lives to like, over 100 like, I mean, it's so healthy.

Scott Benner 24:33
Hey, I want to apologize to you. Made fun of you for the card table, but I bought a pizza oven during covid, so I just,

Julie 24:39
oh, pizza. I don't, I don't apologize for that.

Scott Benner 24:46
I gotta whip that thing out and use it again. First of all, the pizzas are awesome out of it. But, you know, the problem is that I like the cold, ferment the dough. It takes days. I don't have that kind of time to sit down today to have pizza three days from now, exactly. My goodness. Much easier to order out. I'm gonna do it though. Arden wants to have a bunch of friends over. Hey, if you girls are listening, what's up? So Arden is at college, and she told me I should let her tell this story. I'm just gonna tell a tiny bit of it. Okay? She goes to her friend's house where she lives at college, and her friends got roommates. What's up? Girls? Apparently, the roommates listen to the podcast. But no way. She probably hates that. They don't have diabetes. I don't think she hates it, which is interesting. Yeah, they don't have they have no connection to type one whatsoever. So she asked them, and if I'm getting this story wrong, you girls can come on or something. But I believe she asked them why, and they were like, it's a good podcast.

Julie 25:41
So it is a good podcast. Appreciate that so much.

Scott Benner 25:45
Wonder how many people who don't have diabetes are listening

Julie 25:48
sometimes, it's not always about diet. I mean, it is,

Scott Benner 25:52
most of the time it's not about diabetes. I don't know how closely you're listening. Funny.

Julie 25:56
Sometimes it's dramatic. Listen if

Scott Benner 25:59
you make a podcast just about diabetes. I don't know how you would make a podcast, so Right, yeah, it would be something, in my eyes, it wouldn't be a podcast, but it'd be a thing you did once in a while. Nevertheless, okay, so now we've got a diagnosis. Yeah, got a little extra guilt. You've got three kids. I'm sure you already had plenty to begin with, but now you have, you have a little extra Yes, I want to know about pathway in the beginning, how little or a lot did your background help or hurt? And how did you find those first like, I'm going to ask like, first 60 days.

Julie 26:35
Okay, so the first 60 days my background helped me zero other than the fact I knew what it was. I knew it was autoimmune. I knew it was not his fault. I just thought it was a insulin was a dose like, I mean, I'm old enough that I remember, like when I was in the hospital working like we had a sliding scale. I mean, we checked your blood sugar before we fed you, if it was 300 we checked our little scale, we gave you enough, and here's your food. Honestly, Scott, I never one time went back in to see if they finished the food to reach I mean, that was not a thing, right? I knew enough to respect insulin like I did know it was important for me to give what I was told. If that makes

Scott Benner 27:26
sense, I do. I just had this conversation with a nursing student, which was really interesting, because she knows Arden, and I think she's having this, like early onset come to Jesus moment where she's realizing I know what Arden's life is really like, and I know what they're telling me about diabetes. And then she kind of extrapolated and said, I wonder what else I'm learning about that I feel like I have a full grasp of that I don't, in any meaningful way, understand. Wow. Yeah, so it's an interesting gonna be an interesting path for Yeah, is he honeymooning? Or is this

Julie 28:03
like, well, first of all, can we change that name? I've

Scott Benner 28:07
said the same thing. A honeymoon is supposed to be a fun time, really, Turks and Caicos during the honeymoon, I'm on the beach and everybody wants to have sex. It's not that, yeah,

Julie 28:18
it is not like the first after about a week and a half, we spent an entire night feeding him to the point he couldn't even get food in. I mean, it just stopped. And I remember it being mentioned like that honeymoon, you know, with teenage boys, can last a while, so you're really gonna have to watch. And it was that first eight hour day. And I just remember not even, like, I mean, they, in their defense, they may have explained it further and I blocked it out, but I remember being like, oh, so he'll need a little bit less. But, I mean, we went from like 20 units of Atlantis to like five.

Scott Benner 28:55
Yeah, that's a big swing, especially if you've injected this money. Yeah, you know what the use of the word is? It really is. It's making fun of marriage, because the inference, the unspoken inference, is this part is going to come to an end, yeah, yeah. You've been married a long time. You know what I'm

Julie 29:13
saying? Yeah, yeah, I do. I do. But I mean, I couldn't wait for

Scott Benner 29:17
it to come to an end. That's how most people feel. That's how most people

Julie 29:21
feel. Yeah. I mean, once it ended, everything got a I don't ever want to use the word easy, but easier, more predictable, yes. And, I mean, there's still constant changes, all of that, but nothing that dramatic. I mean, it almost like happened in an instant,

Scott Benner 29:37
really, like somebody, someone made a decision and flip the switch. You're like, All right, here's all your diabetes. You can have it all

Julie 29:44
now, yeah. And, I mean, no, I mean, when the honeymoon started that next day, we gave no insulin for food, and what killed me was, is I could see it in him. He's like, Oh, I can handle this. I'll just do likelantis at night. Yeah.

Scott Benner 29:58
This is super easy. You? Yeah. How long did that feeling of last?

Julie 30:03
Well, I mean, it slowly started to creep back up. And I would say the honeymoon only lasted for him for

Scott Benner 30:10
maybe six months. Okay, and did he have a pump during that time?

Julie 30:15
Or no, he does not wear a pump, okay, yeah, he has agreed to trial one in April after basketball season and before college.

Scott Benner 30:25
You know, when those little you know what? I mean, you've got kids, I've got a couple. They agreed. You agree. Just do it. Leave me

Julie 30:31
alone. Yeah? Make me argue with you, my choice. I'm like, okay,

Scott Benner 30:36
pardon I'm an adult. She said to me the other day, I'm an adult. Yeah, I don't need to be told. And I was like, what? Yeah, eight minutes later, she's like, could you make breakfast for me? I was like, I thought you were an adult.

Julie 30:47
What the hell happened? Exactly, exactly? It was just, you know, and I, I mean, I am so incredibly grateful for the 15 years of normal blood sugars that he had. But to be diagnosed, you know, rate when you're craving independence and you're going to drive a car and you don't want to be home ever, yeah, that's a difficult thing. So I do know developmentally, like, it's important to give them a lot of control choices. So the deal was, you know, if you know, you can keep things at a I don't know what the word is controlled. I hate that word. Is he controlled at a reasonable place? Yeah, is he regulated? Now I'm like, Oh, dear God, I can't take it. Yeah, we're still

Scott Benner 31:31
working on controlling the regulation, but I'll get back to you when everything's copacetic, yep, yep. And then we'll be fine. Well, then we'll be fine because you're in the medical field. So everybody uses that phrasing to you, right? Yes, they do. They do. You're like, Oh, if you really understood this, you would not be saying this to me exactly, exactly, well. So, you know, I'm gonna tell you that I think it's a very, really clear minded way to think about all that, like it does suck getting plopped down in the middle of like, just when your kids trying to exert himself and find his way, and, you know, in a natural time when they separate a little bit from their parents, and it's supposed to be stuff like staying out a half an hour later than you're supposed to, you know, like pushing back a little bit. It's not supposed to be like, Oh, I didn't Bolus and my blood sugar has been 250 for three hours, right? That's a really tough place to be, where safety and health intersect with I mean, because you've got two older kids, you already know about this. You already know, like, you got to let them, like, push back.

Julie 32:29
You got to let them mess up. Like, one night I like, I told you, like, until the year we had, I really am not a crier, but like, I remember crying because I got a text from he was at a friend's house, some girl's house, and there was a bunch of kids, and they had done like a fire pit and, you know, all this stuff. And I see his blood sugar going up, and it shot up to, like, 350 and I was like, What on earth? And he texts me and says, Mom, I'm so, so sorry. The mom brought out hot chocolate, and I was too embarrassed to go get my insulin. And I was like, you're supposed to be apologizing to me for drinking a beer like not hot chocolate, right? Yeah, not having hot chocolate. You know what I mean,

Scott Benner 33:17
not wanting some cute girl to see him. Have to go get a bag before he drinks the hot chocolate or something like that.

Julie 33:23
Yeah, I'm like, this is not the quote, unquote trouble I'm supposed to be dealing with.

Scott Benner 33:28
Did you tell him that he had a pump on? He probably could have just opened his phone and pushed a button and pretended he was on Instagram for five

Julie 33:35
seconds. I mean, I say that probably 10 times a day, but, I mean, I also understand his fears with a pump, and he hates having things on him. I mean, the CGM is a no discussion, yeah, but he can't even stand that. Tell me his concerns with the pump. Well, I see he doesn't. I think he just basically doesn't want anything on him. But I think there's some fears with malfunctioning Oh, okay, if I think too hard about that, that stresses me out too. But then I look at all

Scott Benner 34:05
the Oh, are you sayings of 1000s? Are Yeah, are you saying you're worried it's gonna, like, stand up and revolt and give them all the insulin? Not really

Julie 34:15
that. But we have such trouble with CGM readings sometimes that, like, I think those times are what scare him. Like he'll say, Mom, it says I'm high, but I feel low. And then, you know, you'll check it and it's just wrong. And then you think, Well, my gosh, my pump would have given me insulin. You know what I mean? Now I know that that doesn't happen as often as high blood sugars too, when you don't have a pump. But he's really good about double checking his CGM, so I don't think he'd have a problem with that. But the deal is, before college, though, he's gonna have to wear a pump,

Scott Benner 34:52
so I wouldn't wait till five seconds before he's leaving. I know, I know he's saying April. Does he enjoy the spring? Why did he say April? Well, he wants to wait until after basketball season. Oh, see, I would think of it the exact opposite way. And he will. He will one day too, by the way, just by the time he, you know, that part will be over. By the time he gets to it, there'll be a moment when he would, he'll think, oh, basketball might have been easier if I would have done that.

Julie 35:16
I agree. Yeah, I agree. He's definitely a kid that needs to come to his own. I mean, I've started to back off this year a little bit, and I am seeing him treat better, like he has his lowest so for the last, like, I'd say, three or four months, I sort of stopped constantly texting him, like, let's crack, let's crack, let's crack, and he's doing it now. Okay, good. You know what I mean. So he's definitely someone that like it wants to it has to be his decision. Does that make sense?

Scott Benner 35:46
Well, I would also tell you that what you're describing is incredibly common, and most people go through what he's going through. Oh, really, yeah, no, 100% okay, I hate saying this. I imagine somebody's listening to me like, oh, here comes his guy's been making this podcast on time. He's talked to a lot of people, but I've talked to a lot of people. That is an incredibly common story. So yeah, he's not like some outlier, who's, you know, who's like, oh, you know, he's different, or he's this kind of person. I'm gonna tell you the kind of person he is, this human and right? Of course, nobody wants anything stuck to them. The rest of that sentence is that one day it won't bother him anymore, very likely. Yeah. And you know, of course, you're worried that sometimes your CGM says that you're 200 when you're 75 Oh, my God, look at me. Insulin. What happens? Like, Oh, I don't there's a lady on here the other a few months ago, like a full grown adult who told me that she's very concerned that somebody would hack into her insulin pump and kill her. And I was like, who's looking for you? Anything China's coming for you? Or something like, you know, what do you think they got, like, a satellite over your head? They're like, we're gonna zap this lady with insulin. Big Brother's gonna take her out. Yeah, we're really mad about these terrorists. I'll tell you what we'll do, random lady in, like, South Dakota, we're gonna, let's knock Patty over in Tuscaloosa and like, so but then we talked about a little bit, and she laughed, and she's like, this is completely ridiculous. I'm like, yeah, no, I know, but we dug into it a little more, by the way. And she was an older person, and she was raised very fearfully. Oh, okay, it's a really honest conversation where she's like, I'm afraid of a lot of people, oh yeah, because her parents had biases and that they layered on her, and somehow they translated into her thinking like someone was gonna hack her in something, yeah, yeah, anywhere in between that one and the one that you're, you know, your son, is like, Oh, I understand it. Like, I get it too. Like, our CGM is not perfect all the time. The only thing I can tell you, is it in the big picture, it's not a problem,

Julie 37:43
right? No. And I know that. And I would say, honestly, his major issue with it

Scott Benner 37:49
is you don't want to see it. Doesn't want people to see 17 trying to get, Oh, I almost said something you don't want to hear Yeah. He's trying to get girls to talk to him. I was gonna use the L word, you know, like he's, yeah, he's working on stuff, yeah, yeah, yeah. You don't go to a fire pit because you're cold, right? There are better ways to stay warm. There are not better ways to meet cute girls, exactly. Well, you're doing a good job. It sounds like,

Julie 38:17
I don't really think so, but we're doing the best but, but he's doing a good job. He's doing a good What's this? A 1c the last one was 6.40

Scott Benner 38:25
my goodness. What are you out of your mind? A 17 year old kid is a diabetes for a year and a half with a 6.4 a 1c is

Julie 38:33
doing awesome? Yeah, yeah, he does. I mean, I laugh because I don't think we've ever had a meal where it was one shot. And I always thought it was one shot for a meal, you know. But, you know, he's like a 17 year old, there's high fat, there's high protein. I never knew that was a thing, you know, and he just does it. So I'm like, if you're willing to do this, the injections, I guess we'll just go with that for

Scott Benner 38:58
now. I also want to say this, if it works for him, then, awesome. Yeah? Like, I don't, I'm not telling anybody who's listening. You have to be on a pump.

Julie 39:06
Oh, I don't get that from you at all ever. I don't feel like that at

Scott Benner 39:09
all. I listen. If you're buying a pump, you go into the show notes, you use one of the links, and you help me out, right? But, like, but if you, but I don't think you need one, right? I think it's very specific to your lifestyle and what, what it is you want, and, you know what? Listen, I'll, I'll play devil's advocate. The other way. Maybe he really doesn't want the thing stuck to him. Yeah, and he'll do this his whole life and be cool with it. I would say that as long as he's willing to inject, you know, Pre-Bolus and injection, and then 45 minutes later, realized, like, Oh, that was not nearly enough. And do it again. Like, if he's not, if he's not concerned with the injections, then who cares?

Julie 39:42
Right? Right? Yeah, it's just, I feel like a pump would help more. Well, I know it would with just the change. I mean, we change his he's on tracebo Now instead of Lantus. And, I mean, we change that dose once a week, you know what I mean. And the pump, I feel like would just really handle that.

Scott Benner 39:59
I'm gonna go. The other way again, and I'll tell you, yeah, that'd be great. It'd be a lot easier. But, you know, like, it's not, I think what it highlights is that this isn't just a nuts and bolts idea, right? Like it's a thinking, feeling person mixed with this difficult to understand math problem that's also a science experiment that's also, you know, dangerous, and, you know, potentially life altering. And so there's that pressure, and you gotta, like, squish it all together and come to some sort of an agreement with, you know, whoever it is you make agreements with.

Julie 40:34
I love what you just said. I am I'm living in a science experiment. I'm prolific. I just want to say it never ends. That is such a good that's such a great wait. I really like that.

Scott Benner 40:49
I'm glad you're happy, joy, but it's gonna get easier. It will eventually feel normal and like, like you're not fighting uphill all the time. You know, hopefully. I mean, listen the podcast. He's already got a six, four. He seems to understand what he's doing to some degree. I mean, is he having a ton of lows all the time?

Julie 41:05
He has lows because of usually, like harder workouts at night we did for our first time. I'll never be the same. Have a had to use vaccine me to three weeks ago. Oh, that was terrifying. We don't understand it. I mean, nothing makes sense, but it really doesn't make sense. He just dropped one night and eating, eating, eating. I had been in there 15 minutes gave him it usually what works for him at night is one bite of one of those Z bars. Okay, takes a while to bring him up, more than 15 minutes to bring him up, but it usually levels him out. Usually levels him out a little bit. We had been doing that. We were doing juice, candy, everything, and he was like, 3840 I went in after 10 minutes, and he was unresponsive. Okay, I still don't understand what happened. Cannot figure it out.

Scott Benner 42:00
Was there a hard workout earlier in the day? There was hot day on top of everything else? You remember?

Julie 42:07
No, I'm not sure. It just, I mean, I know most people like have never had to use it was weird. And for about two weeks he kept himself running a little higher when we were all fine with that, because he got nervous. Oh, it was terrifying. I mean, it was absolutely terrifying, right? Yeah. I mean,

Scott Benner 42:25
listen, 38 blood sugar, I hear you. That's tough. And when you're used to using something that's slower acting, but then holds them up, and then you need faster acting in that situation. And then, which do you mixed in the juice, and it didn't, it didn't hit him fast. We had been

Julie 42:39
doing stuff for two hours, juice and candy. Yeah. I mean, he was like, in the 60s, 50s, but it just wouldn't move. Did your finger stick? Yo? Yeah? Like, yeah, 15 of them. You know, the thing was just reading low. So I was doing finger sticks, like, every five to 10 minutes. And he was asleep. It was the middle of the night, but he was like, drinking the juice and eating the food and and then I went back in. I was like, this is, oh my gosh. It said low. So I went running in, and he was just out of it.

Scott Benner 43:08
You want some of my hard earned advice on this? I want all of your advice. Okay, so if this happens again, I hope it doesn't. He doesn't go back to sleep. He wakes up. Okay, you don't leave the room. Okay. The other thing and, okay, all fast acting, simple sugar, stuff that gets absorbed quickly, anything that like, you know, it's, it's easy to just drink the juice, but then the juice has got to go into a stomach, and it's still got to be absorbed. The glucose gets absorbed much more quickly through the lining of your cheeks, really? Yeah, so I never thought of that even just holding the juice in his mouth, or like gummy bears and like you just keep chewing them. Don't swallow them, keep them in your mouth longer. That kind of stuff might help a little bit too. Okay, so I obviously don't know what happened to him, but if his digestion was slowed down for some reason, it might have slowed down the bump. Nothing wrong with using the back semi. That's it. Was a great call. That's my high level look at that. Okay, yeah, I know you've probably a million times have seen a low blood sugar, given something 10 minutes later. It's okay. You're in the middle of the night. You're trying to do that thing. You have that nurse brain too, like, I did the thing I'm supposed to do, so I'm done now, you know what?

Julie 44:28
I mean, yeah, I mean, I kept doing. I mean, I always thought juice was the fastest.

Scott Benner 44:33
Juice is fast, like, for certain, but like, you know, I don't know what could have been going on. Like, you know, had he had a fatty meal Earlier that evening. 100% okay, so then his digestion was probably slower. Interesting, yeah, okay, yeah. I mean, listen, most of the time you're not gonna have to think about it like that, but I would just say, like, emergent response, don't leave the room. Don't let him go back to sleep till you get it straightened out. Okay, yeah. Like, light on, get up. Sorry, this is a problem. We're all gonna sit here together in our underwear and fix

Julie 45:04
this. Uh huh. Okay, yeah, that was crazy. I think

Scott Benner 45:08
people who have children who don't have diabetes are not accustomed to sitting in their underwear in people's bedrooms in the middle of the night thinking like, oh my god, the floor's so cold. Or, I mean, my daughter's 21 and I'm 54 and I'm in my underwear, and she's like, not really in. There's no other normal situation where we'd be together like this anymore. She's in like, a bralette. It's just ridiculous. You know, so dumb. We've seen each other like, probably look so terrible so many times. Nevertheless, also, any number of algorithm based pumping systems would probably, I mean, just think about it right, like his. It would shut his basal down throughout the evening when it thought he was getting lower. It probably would have avoided this. Very likely. Could have replacement, yeah, yeah. Does he have a pump he's leaning

Julie 45:56
towards his only one he will even discuss is tubeless, is the Omnipod?

Scott Benner 46:02
Yeah, yeah. So I believe my link could get you a free trial.

Julie 46:06
I know I have it on there. Yes, yes, I've used your links for this. Julie contour next, and thank you so much. My dad got one. My mom got one. Also, I can have extras. Awesome. You hear that guys? Contour, next friend Andrea got one and brought it to me

Scott Benner 46:26
with my link. Contour, next comm slash Juicebox because I wanted to have extras. Thank you. Look at you. You're hoarding meters. Sorry. Contour, they're not sorry. They're happy for you to have the meter, trust me. Cool. So, all right, we're 45 minutes into this now. It seems like a good time to ask why you wanted to come on the podcast.

Julie 46:45
I think I just wanted to because of, like, the autoimmune history and the crazy year that we had, the fact that I was a nurse and missed it. I think would speak to a lot of people because, you know, you think you aren't going to miss a trick with your kids, and I missed the trick. But can I

Scott Benner 47:05
say something that I've said before, and I've gotten some pushback from nurses sometimes, and sometimes, by the way, I also get the exact opposite response. Some of the people who have struggled the most with having their kids diagnosed and been on here have been nurses.

Julie 47:21
That doesn't surprise me at all, because we're very type A this is what you do, and this should fix it, or, you know what I mean, and it's always one to think we see the zebra running at us. It could, you know, leg cramps can be from dehydration, you know what I mean. And

Scott Benner 47:39
I've come to believe that it's somewhere a mix between that you're in nursing school and obviously nursing school is a whirlwind, right? They're just throwing stuff at you constantly, and it probably by the time you get done, you probably feel like, I now know everything about everything, right? And you don't. You won't realize till you work for a while that you know a little bit about a lot. Yeah. Couple that with how diabetes is managed in the hospital setting, which is to say that, like, it's not really.

Julie 48:05
I mean, I am terrified. I stay up at night thinking about him under anesthesia. I don't know why, really, yes, because who is going to monitor his blood sugar?

Scott Benner 48:16
Can I tell you something? You throw one of those algorithms on him. Arden uses trio. It's awesome. And you're fasted, and you could probably stay fasted forever without getting low. Arden just had her tonsils and her adenoids out. Oh, were you in Rec? No, why about the diabetes part? Yes, I know how to fast Arden so that her blood sugar doesn't get low. Okay, and I could have kept her blood sugar stable

Julie 48:43
forever, really, see, I have not learned that

Scott Benner 48:47
yet. If she doesn't eat, it's, it's with those with a system, it's, you know, I mean, I would think, if you had control, IQ, if you had Omnipod file, any of them, really, yeah, yeah, fast it is like, that's the other thing. Like, he's gonna have to learn. Like, like, when he's lifting or working out or stuff like that, like, especially if he's more anaerobic, like, just do it in the morning fast, like, get up and work out first without any insulin

Julie 49:11
on board. Yeah, he does do that, right? Yeah, yeah. Think about

Scott Benner 49:15
that in the setting of, like, you know, you head off to the hospital seven in the morning. He isn't eating overnight, we got her nice and stable. Yeah, we rolled in there with a blood sugar of like, I think I set her, you know what I did? I set her target higher in the morning, and then I ended up wishing I didn't do it really, yeah, so I think she came out of the surgery at like, 130 or something like that, and I put her target right back again, okay? And tried to get her done. Now, it was scary, because she couldn't really swallow anything. So it was very careful about it, not to make her low, right? But then it's like, you know, the hours went on, I started seeing the, you know, the pattern, and we, we went back to pretty standard, yeah, the worst part about that, I thought you were asking, because. The worst part about it is having that done as an adult is incredibly

Julie 50:03
painful. Oh, that's true. Yeah, that's what I thought you were asking about the diabetes. I just worry about anything in the hospital because, I mean, I never knew that when you're sick, your your insulin needs can triple, like what

Scott Benner 50:17
to make you feel better. Arden had to have dental work when she was a baby, like a baby a little kid, we had to go to the hospital for it. Oh my gosh, the dad just wouldn't put her under in the office.

Julie 50:29
Honestly, I don't blame him, yeah,

Speaker 1 50:31
and we didn't know what we were doing back then. And none of these, like, you know, assisted systems work or existed, yeah, yeah. Back then, I was like, Oh, this is gonna kill her, for sure. Yeah. Sure. Yeah. I thought everything

Julie 50:44
bad. Year I was diagnosed, and then I get a call. My daughter was at University of Tennessee. She was in a hit and run accident. Was hit by a car. Oh, my God. And then in the ER, they found thyroid cancer. Wait, yeah, what? Yeah,

Scott Benner 51:01
yeah, crazy. Oh, actually, I thought the crazy part was that somebody hit her with a car in that orange shirt I knew she was wearing because that

Julie 51:08
thing was an orange at noon on a Monday. Yeah? And it

Scott Benner 51:10
didn't help it, yeah. I think the saddest thing you just told me is that I can send my kid to college dressed like a traffic cone, and they still might get hit by a car. That'll scare people more than anything. They're like, Oh God, we can't protect against anything. So wait a minute. Sea of orange, she got hit by a car and they found thyroid cancer.

Julie 51:28
Run, tell me, never, never saw the person. I got the calm in Pennsylvania, so I don't even remember that day. So, you know, Kyle's kind of not newly diabetic, but new enough. No, I didn't want to leave. You know, I got you and I go down there. Never found the person. She's got, I don't know, like, 30 stitches on her face, knocked cut off her tooth, broken fingers, tooth, well, it was like, cut, yeah, like, cut in half. So, and of course, that's what she's focused on, right like, and then we're down there dealing with her injuries, which honestly, I can't believe she I was just feeling grateful she wasn't paralyzed, but yeah, she was hit. Then they find a mass on her thyroid, so we bring her home, find out it's cancer, then we have her thyroid remove, and had found it had already spread. And then we remove those lymph nodes, we do a follow up. Three months later, there's new spots, so now we're doing the radiation and going through all that. Our dog died. My dad had open hearts like it was a year from hell.

Scott Benner 52:37
God, that's so serious. My I had a stupid question all lined up. I'm not going to ask you now. Oh, you can ask me a dumb question. I might make me laugh. Do you ever find yourself singing that Arrested Development song Tennessee all the time? I would too, like every time somebody said Tennessee, my brain would go tennis

Julie 52:54
all the time. That was such a summer hit when I was in high school. I know, right.

Scott Benner 52:59
That's all it would happen to me. Like, every time you said Tennessee, there's an echo in my head that goes Tennessee. Wait a minute. So your daughter didn't just have like that. You know when people like, oh, thyroid cancer, but they took it out and it's gone. Now, some remain behind, yes, and then repopulate. I'm using the wrong word, but came back again.

Julie 53:19
Yes, it came back again. So now we're in the she's home. Now she went back to school, graduated, moved home, and now we're doing the treatments, the radiation treatment, and then she's just doing online school for a master's degree.

Scott Benner 53:35
And so sorry. Also, did you notice that Pennsylvania does not work in a song at all, not at all. Yeah, terrible. No, really? What's she getting? Her Master's then

Julie 53:45
she's doing it in strategic communication.

Scott Benner 53:49
Oh, I do that with my wife. Yeah,

Julie 53:53
everything I know is from the podcast. Thank you. Every single, every single thing, I'm very glad. I'm

Scott Benner 54:01
glad it's been valuable too. I really am

Julie 54:04
very My favorite was the 10 minute one you posted on Thanksgiving Day.

Scott Benner 54:09
Oh, people love that one, the turkey, the turkey tutorial, yes,

Julie 54:14
that was because no one has time right before Thanksgiving, right? And it was just like a quick little here do this today. And I was like, All right,

Scott Benner 54:25
yeah, it's just something simple, like, I just figured out, like, one day, this is what people seem to struggle with on Thanksgiving. I think it's actually a way to understand every day better. It just, it just focuses you on, like, as Thanksgiving is so fast and furious and so many different types of foods, and more frequency of eating for some people, etc. Like, if you can get through Thanksgiving and not be low and not be high at the end of the day, I think it gives you a ton of, like, motivation to be like, Oh, I could do this, like, on a normal

Julie 54:52
Yeah, for sure. Definitely, yeah, definitely. So,

Scott Benner 54:56
yeah, I'm glad you like that one. It's a, it's a, it's a popular little. Episode. It's just me talking about, like, it's just me talking through how I dealt with Thanksgiving when Arden

Julie 55:06
was little, yeah, and it was good, because, like, a teen is willing to listen to a 10 minute thing, you know what I mean, yeah, like, you know what I mean? Like, I tried the small sips. We've talked about it, but he kind of this, like, that, typical, like, okay, Mom, you know what I mean, yeah, but I'll play it in the car, like, if I'm in the car with him, but if he does on his own, he would probably never admit it to me, because it was my idea.

Scott Benner 55:32
Oh, we're at that part still. Yeah, oh yeah. Goes away. Yeah.

Julie 55:37
He's if he, if it's if he's in control, he he's good, but it can't be, moms, I make him sound bad. He's sweet. Kid. The next few

Speaker 1 55:45
years, the testosterone is overwhelming. It starts to, like, temper down in their, like, early, mid 20s, the boys, oh, good, okay, yeah, yeah. Then suddenly, like that, like that desire to, like, you know, conquer everything, kind of like lessons a little bit. Okay, gotcha. It goes away slowly over time. Your husband's probably just starting to turn into a human being about now, right? You know, Joy. I get it. I just started being an adult, like, five years ago.

Julie 56:14
Same, I feel like, Yeah, same,

Scott Benner 56:17
yeah, exactly. Anyway, what else you got? Anything else for me?

Julie 56:21
No, that's it. Just thank you so much for making me laugh when I need to, but also teaching me, you know, and I love hearing like how other people do things and that my story is not the worst, nor the best. And you just now. I mean, it made me realize that there's so many people living with this, yeah, you're gonna be okay community, you're gonna be a nice community.

Speaker 1 56:48
It's all gonna be okay. It really, it really is. It's tough. I mean, you got some other autoimmune layered over top of it, yeah, which is obviously challenging, right? Listen, I'm not telling you anything, you know, again, I'm not a doctor. It's not medical advice, etc and so on. But I would really, I mean, you're in healthcare, right? Just get somebody to prescribe the thyroid medication to you. Oh, you're talking about me. Oh, yeah, I'm worried about you. Oh,

Julie 57:18
my goodness, yeah,

Scott Benner 57:20
no, no, because you don't understand if that's really a problem for you, you're gonna have a renaissance. Okay, you know what I mean?

Julie 57:27
I'll ask my Endo, just get a new one. Just get a friend

Scott Benner 57:32
at the hospital who can write you or like, yeah, just a friend. What are we talking about? Like, what good is it being you? If this isn't how this can work, you know? I mean, like, you don't need to be spending the next six, eight months talking some endocrinologist and the listening to a podcast about, like, you know, I think if you medicated my TSH and got it under two that my symptoms might go away and I feel more arrested, and the doctor go, that looks normal. And trust me, most doctors are not going to, like, they're not going to agree to that. Yeah, yeah. You must have a friend. Do you not have

Julie 58:02
a friend? Oh, I have a lot of friends.

Scott Benner 58:05
Let's get you tell the friend how much you weigh, and then they write you a script, and then you try it, and then you feel better. Then you go to your Endo, and you go, Hey, funny story. Guess what? I didn't think you were gonna help me with this, so I went over and I got a friend of mine to send a script, and all of my symptoms are gone, and I haven't had a breakout in a while, and I'm thinking of going off this biologic and blah, blah, blah, or whatever ends up happening for Emma. Maybe the biologic still necessary. I don't know what's gonna happen to you, by the way, right? Outline, maybe you'll have a nice outcome, and you could just go like, hey, so Rock on, right. Let's keep doing

Julie 58:40
this, yeah, my PCP might actually, yeah. I hate it when they

Scott Benner 58:45
started calling them PCPs. I just want to say that, really, PCP is a drug. I grew up in the Oh, it is a drug, yeah. Like, why would you start like, what's next? Like, is my nurse practitioner gonna be crack one day? Like, what's next? I mean, for the love of God, you couldn't find a better acronym than PCP. I mean, why don't we just call them Angel Dust and see what happens? I, I, I've never, I'm never, ever gonna be well, yeah, because am I wrong? I'm not wrong, right? I never thought of it. Why would you not think of that? That should be the first thing you think of, you should use it say, why did they just name doctors after Angel Dust? What? By the way, what is Angel Dust? I

Julie 59:27
don't know that one I'm not familiar with, not that I'm familiar with these.

Scott Benner 59:31
No, hold on a second. What drug angel is it? I don't know. I'm just I grew up, I just listened to the radio. I heard people say things I would think, is it cocaine? Because you can get coke with angel dust on it. I know for sure, because I remember from you know for sure from the 80s movies. Hold on a second. Let's see what a disassociative anesthetic developed in the 50s for surgery, but abandoned in humans because it caused hallucinations after. Agitation and psychosis. Street names, Angel Dust, ozone, rocket fuel, embalming fluid, wet and Sherm. How to use it, smoked, often with marijuana or tobacco, snorted, smaller, injected fluid. It's one of the street names. Interesting. Short term by the way, kids don't do drugs. Short term hallucinations, feelings of detachment, distorted sense of strength and invulnerability, agitation, paranoia, dangerous effects, violent behavior, seizures, coma. PCP is illegal and considered a schedule two controlled substance in the US. Wait, is it? Is it like bath salts?

Julie 1:00:35
I'm trying to figure out I've never understood bath salts. Really. Remember that

Scott Benner 1:00:40
time they tried to tell us that basal for making people in dishonor into zombies. Yeah, they get lumped together. And basal are very different drugs. Okay, so what legal drug is PCP most like

Julie 1:00:55
internet baby. I know. Thank

Scott Benner 1:00:58
God. I mean, what do I gotta? I gotta learn everything, and then what? And I got to remember it. How's that

Julie 1:01:03
possibly going to happen? I can't remember anything. Yeah, age four. Maybe that's my thyroid. I thought it was menopause.

Speaker 1 1:01:10
See PCP. Closest legal drug in terms of how it acts is ketamine. Oh, yeah. So there you go. It's not meth. I've never done any hard drive. It's probably pretty obvious that people have they're listening right now is like, why? He doesn't understand any of

Julie 1:01:27
this at all. I know someone's gonna write to you and be like, let me just fix this. Oh, by the way, those people come

Scott Benner 1:01:31
on too, and you're invited to, you want to come on and explain your PCP habit to me. I'm as long as you have diabetes, I'm very willing to hear about it all into it. Yeah, it's not meth either?

Julie 1:01:40
Yeah, it's not meth. Okay? I don't know. No, okay.

Speaker 1 1:01:45
I mean, who knows? I just hear these things on cop shows, so I don't really know. Also, everything I know about medicine is from, is from, like, er, and like, oh, Gray's Anatomy, for sure. What do you mean? Are you kidding me? I've been right about

Julie 1:01:57
things, because you got to watch the pit. That one's pretty accurate. I watched the pit. What am I well, I don't know if it's one of your 87 streaming things that we now have to do every

Speaker 1 1:02:07
time, every time. I can't even tell you how Arden makes fun of Kelly, because Kelly loved the pit, and I enjoyed it very much, and watched it with her. I think it was on Sunday nights. We actually watched it first, like every time it came out. But eventually Arden is like, I think mom likes that guy, not this show, no. And then he popped up in the book. Are they watching some award show? He won an award the other night. Okay, he popped up on the Emmys. And Arden's like, oh, Mom's getting uncomfortable.

Julie 1:02:38
I just like it because it's actually accurate, yeah.

Scott Benner 1:02:41
Actually, I very much enjoyed it. I thought it was awesome.

Julie 1:02:44
Yeah, okay, I need to have someone with type one listen.

Scott Benner 1:02:47
They'll get they stay on long enough they'll get to everything eventually. You were terrific joy. I appreciate you being so honest and forthright and and telling the story for us. So thank you very much.

Julie 1:02:57
Thanks for having me. It was nice to chat with you.

Scott Benner 1:03:00
Of course, I was my pleasure. Hold on one second for me. Okay,

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