Scott Benner 2/24/21 Scott Benner 2/24/21

#445 Supporting Caregivers

The Psychology of Type 1

Erica is a licensed marriage and family therapist who herself has had Type 1 diabetes for over 30 years and who specializes in working with people with diabetes and their families and caregivers—from those newly diagnosed to those experiencing it for decades. Today, Erika and Scott discuss supporting caregivers.. http://erikaforsyth.com

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

Scott Benner 0:00
Friends, you're listening to Episode 445 of the Juicebox Podcast.

Hey, guess who's back on the show everyone? It's Erica forsyte. You might remember Erika from back in November on episode 407, where she and I spoke about burnout, emotions surrounding diagnosis and dealing with diabetes distress and constructive ways to prevent it from impairing function. Today, Erica is back. And we're gonna focus a little more on supporting the people who are supporting people with type one diabetes. I just loved her the first time she was on, and we decided there were some more topics that we could dig into. While you're listening, please remember that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, please always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan, or becoming bold with insulin.

This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the Omni pod tubeless insulin pump, please go to my Omni pod.com Ford slash juice box to find out more about the Omni pod and to see if you can get a free no obligation demo sent directly to you. Spoiler alert, you can just go to the site, Miami pod.com Ford slash juicebox. Get that demo out to you today. The show is also sponsored by the Dexcom g six continuous glucose monitor. You can get started with that Dexcom G six@dexcom.com. forward slash juicebox. There's links in the show notes of your podcast player links at Juicebox Podcast COMM And you can just type the words into our browser. If you can remember them. My on the pot, you could do it. Here's Erica, I really enjoyed when you're on the first time and I thought oh, this would be great. And then you had you know, we were like, well, maybe we can do these other ideas. Oh, this is terrific. And then you kind of like disappeared but it felt very anti your personality sounds like something happened to that person. And then so you had surgery. Do you mind people knowing this?

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 2:38
Oh, no. Well, I it's a another long strike. By the way. I'm using a different headset is our sound okay? You sound good?

Scott Benner 2:48
Yeah, you sound fine to me. Can you hear me?

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 2:50
Okay? Okay. Yeah, I can't. Yes, well, it's, you know, life still happens even when you have diabetes, as you know. And so I've had some knee chronic knee issues, multiple surgeries, and I re injured it. I think shortly after we had our last podcast, and so had to deal with I haven't had surgery yet, but it is coming.

Scott Benner 3:17
I hope it goes well for you.

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 3:20
A full full knee replacement is in my future that just got to figure out the right timing with

Unknown Speaker 3:27
my life.

Scott Benner 3:30
Wow, that's a I've seen some people go through it from a distance recently. And, you know, I think the it's just the way you would expect as far as I know, like the you know, the earlier in life you do it, probably the easier it's gonna go. The beginning is not quite as much fun as the end is. And then when it's over, they're like, Huh, I can't believe how well this works. So

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 3:50
yes, yes, that is that is the hope for the you know, the end game.

Scott Benner 3:55
I like how you said, even though you have diabetes, other stuff goes wrong, it really does feel sometimes when you're like something else happened to like, don't we like isn't there a limit to how much you get? And there's not

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 4:06
you know, it's, it's so true. But yesterday, I was talking with my husband and kind of talking and preparing it for this Ark next conversation and I got a paper cut. It's like, come on, you know, sometimes there's just there's you there's there's the diabetes, and then there's still other issues that could happen to your body physically, emotionally, and then you can get a paper cut and it could like set you over the edge. I mean, thankfully it did it for me yesterday, but I know it has in the past. Yeah. And that's totally normal.

Scott Benner 4:36
I just it's there's that, you know, just when other things happen. You're just like, I feel like everyone should get a certain amount of stuff and I've got my Yes, you know,

Unknown Speaker 4:46
I've got my fair share.

Scott Benner 4:47
If you hit us it's almost like looking at the waiter when they come around with water and you're like, No, no, you just you just got us. Thanks. We're good.

Unknown Speaker 4:55
We're full.

Scott Benner 4:56
Can you keep your problems over there, please. We have our own

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 5:01
My name is Erica forsyte. I am a type one diabetic, we'll be almost 31 years living with diabetes this summer, I was 12 when I was diagnosed. And I also have a younger brother with type one, but nobody else in my family has been diagnosed with it. I am a licensed Marriage and Family Therapist and I work as a school counselor, but also have a private practice specializing in supporting people of all ages and their caregivers. living with diabetes from diagnosis. Onward, as we know, it doesn't just end or start or end at the point of diagnosis.

Scott Benner 5:52
Let me ask you a question about because this comes up a lot recently, and I don't know the answer. People find therapy online now more than ever, I guess. Yes, it is the the therapist you find need to be in the same state that you live in for insurance reasons.

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 6:08
Yes, you know, and I have had some people reach out from other states as a result of our first podcast, and I'm so grateful for that. I am, I'm in California, and I'm licensed in California, and I'm insured in California. And but now that we're all doing telehealth, it would feel like that would be a really easy and convenient way to meet people people's needs nationwide. But I have I am trying to figure out if there's a way that I can be insured nationwide and or licensed that I don't think that exists quite yet. But that sure would be lovely. Or will California

Scott Benner 6:44
still a pretty big place. So if you're hearing it is today, and you want to reach out to her and you live in California for the moment, how do they get ahold of you?

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 6:53
I have a website. Thank you for asking. It's Erica forsyth.com erkfrsyth.com.

Scott Benner 7:05
Thank you. Listen, I don't think it's any, it won't come to any surprise to people that heard you the first time, I felt like we had a really nice, easy back and forth. You know, as the person who gets to make the judgments on the on the people who come onto the show, I just felt really, you know, we vibe well together. And you really felt like you had a very kind of calm grasp of what you were talking about. And you had a couple of other topics you wanted to hit up. So you're back to do more. Can we start with supporting caregivers who have people?

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 7:36
Yes, I was thinking that we could do that first. Because as I you know, meet with different clients, families, you know, caregivers are often reaching out to me for either support for themselves, but usually, you know how to support their children living with it, but often I find that, you know, caregivers need their own individual support, as well. And I think there's the larger group of, you know, being a caregiver of someone with type one. But then I think there's even smaller subgroups within that category of parents who have who have children are diagnosed in infancy, or in elementary age years. And then there's the parents who have children who are diagnosed in their teen years, which we can talk about, because that's a whole kind of beast in and of itself. And then kind of the aging out right, from Teen to early adulthood. So yes, I mean, I think we definitely could start with you know, how to think about living as a caregiver. With with this diagnosis,

Scott Benner 8:43
I've been corresponding with somebody who's obviously information, I'll keep private for like a year now. And they're the parent of a teen. And things were, you know, the, the team wasn't taking it all that seriously, at least not as seriously as the parent was taking it. And that parent told me that eventually, they had to seek out like therapy for themselves. And then it came to a head and, and this person, just one time one, I just eventually just couldn't take it anymore and said to the kid, like, you know, diabetes is gonna kill me before it kills you. And I wonder how, how common that feeling is because it felt like I could understand what she was saying in the email. So what is the difference between being dying having your child diagnosed at a younger age versus other ages?

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 9:39
Well, I think the the first kind of the answer would be well, in terms of how much control and authority you have over your child and just developmentally, where your child is, are they able to, are they completely dependent on you, as you know, as obviously an infant your younger child that they are unable to eat? They're manage their diabetes care from you know, whether you're doing finger pricks or CGM management, wearing a pump or not. If your child is younger, I would say, you know, this is rough guesstimate around maybe eight, or younger, or maybe even seven or eight or younger than you are probably managing it as the primary caregiver completely. From whether that includes, you know, reordering the supplies and changing out the sights, as well as the day to day, you know, management. And then as you're getting into maybe early as Elementary, or older, I guess, like nine, I would say to 12, eight or nine to 12, maybe they're taking on more or showing some levels of interest and wanting to be independent in some areas, whether it's checking their own blood sugar, or having a discussion with you around carbs. And then obviously, into, you know, preteen and teen where just naturally they are wanting to be more autonomous, more independent. And if you take remove diabetes, from the equation, they're, you know, just teenage years, they're wanting to make their own choices, feel that sense of independence. And then there's that pushback, right with teenage years of if they are showing signs of wanting to rebel, then that often translates into I don't want to take care of my diabetes, or I want to fit in, you know, in preteen teenage years, children are wanting to fit in with their peers be like their peers do with their peers can do. And as we know, you can do that to a certain extent, with diabetes. But oftentimes, it might look like ignoring like, I'm going to have this baggage check chips or this candy bar at the movies with my friends. I don't want to have to either leave to inject or take my blood sugar or pull out my pump, it's going to make all these lights or look at my CGM. So I'm just going to ignore that because I want to fit in. So this is kind of just as a summary, I'd say of what it might look like, as the child with diabetes, but then also, how do you how do you manage that, as the caregiver is challenging on different levels? And

Scott Benner 12:16
how does it impact you to as the as a person, just, you know, I say all the time, and nobody. It's interesting, isn't it? Like, if you look at the world as a whole, the likelihood of you being born living and dying without having some sort of a medical issue is almost completely uncommon like it, you know, and that happens to very few people. But no one makes a baby and thinks, hey, I bet you when you know, let's do this baby thing, and I bet you when it's three, its pancreas will stop working. And then we'll just take care of that or when it's 12, or I bet you when it's 20, its thyroid won't work anymore, or you like you, you have no preparation for that whatsoever. And we see it as uncommon and burdensome, when maybe we really should think of it is expected to some level, you know, some something happening should be expected, but it's not how you feel. So is that different? When a child's younger? Do you get that feeling of like you didn't get what you were promised?

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 13:16
Oh, yeah, that's a great question. I, I from I mean, I think from just speaking from also my parents perspective, having two children, you know, diagnosed when they were older, but then from from clients that I work with, there's that I think that immediate sense of loss, right? Because maybe when it's if you're a slightly older, say eight or 10, you have some of those like prime years of, of, quote, enjoyment, right without having to think about this extra layer of management. And so I would say, yeah, that's definitely, gosh, we're out of the gates that my child's one or two, and he's barely talking or walking, and now we have to deal with this extra layer. And so I'd say probably even a stronger, maybe shock, grief loss. And, you know, all the all of the emotions of grief. Yeah,

Scott Benner 14:12
on top of that, I expect that the you start prognosticating that there's going to be some sort of a loss for the child in the future. You know, the funny thing is, too, if you understand how to manage your diabetes reasonably, I don't think there's that much of a loss. You know, you mean like you're a person who has diabetes, there's things you have to do, it's obviously sucks. And it's but if you could take a long look at it, and I guess I'm in a unique perspective, where I've spoken to so many people at every age, you know, right into their 60s. That what I would tell you is that overall that yeah, I mean, I don't know if it's a coin flip or not like if you're just the kind of person who does well with you know, stuff that comes up or you're not but most people deal okay with it when they don't do well. It's because It generally ends up being because they've been given very bad tools or bad support, or something like that. But the people who, you know, learned how to use their insulin or figured out how to eat that worked for their lifestyle, had somebody helping them along the way, those people generally live full lives, you know, like, we don't, we're not in that part of diabetes anymore, where people just die when they're 40. Because they have type one in less, you know, something significantly lacking in their in their care, or, you know, I mean, let's just say like they're some people just hit the genetic, you know, dumpster fire lottery, and then that obviously can happen. So if I'm a parent, I come into you and I say, hey, I've got my little one year old, two year old 567 year old has diabetes, they're completely dependent on me. And I can't take it. Like, how do you how do you help a parent in that situation?

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Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 19:57
Well, first of all, I think it's if we were pulled back A little bit like when you diabetes diagnosed, this inserts itself into, you know, quote, pre existing conditions. And I know we think about that like as a medical term, but you as a family unit or if you're a single parent, single caregiver, you there are already issues going on in your life, right. There might be marital stressors, there might be job or financial stressors, it might you might be diagnosed in the middle of a pandemic, there might be other concerns with if you have other children, the sibling dynamics, you might have either really successful solid, healthy family communication patterns or or not. And so, upon diagnosis, all of those things that have been with you either individually as a person in your own health journey, as well as your family, are still there, right upon a diagnosis. And so sometimes we would like to think that, that Oh, my gosh, my child is diagnosed. And now all of my other, you know, challenges or concerns are gonna fall to the wayside, but they don't, and they creep back in, immediately upon diagnosis, maybe all of the focus is on there, and you're surviving out of adrenalin and shock. And you're pouring all of your resources and time and energy into that into your child. But slowly, all of those other, you know, quote, pre existing conditions or challenges that you have been dealing with kind of reemerge. And I think that, you know, as a caregiver, your child does look to you, and how to respond to this diagnosis. And, and it's okay, if you're struggling, right, because your child may take it all in stride, I mean, it particularly mean a one or two year old, the child doesn't really know essentially, what's happening, and that's going to that child is that's going to be normal as the child grows up, right. For an older child, they might not think it's anything different. They might have seen other friends with CGM on their arms, or you know that the stigma around all of that is definitely thankfully going down. And the hardest part might be coming to terms with your own feelings about it as a caregiver, about, you know, thinking, gosh, what does this mean for my child is my child going to not be able to do all of the things that I had envisioned? for them? I think I shared you know, thankfully, things have changed dramatically in 30 years. But when I was diagnosed, the doctors told my parents like, she might not be able to play sports, and I ended up playing collegiate volleyball, she might not be able to have children. And so there, I think there was a time when there was that sense of loss and despair for your child that you were grieving for them. And for yourself as the parent, thankfully, the messaging and the data has shifted. I have had two healthy children. And I was able to do those things. And because of now all of the new, you know, the new science and the new products on the market, you can even live a healthier life than I did 30 years ago, as a child, and preteen and teen. So anyway, go back to your question, parent comes in there one or two year old has been diagnosed, I would first allow them the space to grieve like what, what are they they probably are having that sense of loss, I had expectations of having a healthy child that might not live in it and Wiggins as we know, you can be healthy with type one. But without living with a chronic illness, they might have to deal with and have questions about what are some myths that they've heard? Right? Is my child going to be blind? Are they going to lose a limb are they not going to be able to do X, Y, or Z. So dispelling some myths might be something that we would do. And so just give first, initially, just giving them some space to grieve.

Scott Benner 24:07
I see, I see online when people just want to see an athlete, a professional athlete who has type one diabetes, because that seems like the gold standard of moving around, and they're doing it so good. That's a great feeling. I if that person could do it, then somebody else could do it. It does seem to be a lot of fact finding and, you know, backing up your fears with stuff that makes that alleviates them or tries to support problems you're having. But what happens if you're if you're the adult, and you're a person who just doesn't have any more bandwidth, or their coping skills, aren't, you know, gonna gonna lend to this situation? Do you just pick something in your life and, and eliminate it like do you or do you just go okay, I used to, I don't know, I used to sew purses in my spare time, but I don't do that anymore. You know, like Do you like what happens when the cap when you're full all the way to the cap? And then something like this comes in? I mean, what what do people do to find that space? They need to wrap their heads around this because it takes a long time to figure out diabetes?

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 25:15
It does. Yeah, I think that that's an excellent point two, is that it it acknowledging that I might not understand how to how to manage my child's diabetes initially. And so you're dealing with your own personal grief, if that's, you know, the case about what it means for your child to have diabetes. And then you're probably feeling isolated. Because as as we know, it's, you know, it's, it's very rare. And I think that's part of the reason why, you know, type one, community is so tight knit, and probably most chronic illness communities are very tight knit, because you don't really understand it unless you're either living with the type one or you're caregiving for someone. And so I think, acknowledging that, I'm feeling isolated, I'm feeling distressed, I'm feeling anxious about what this means. Obviously, reaching out for support, whether it's one on one, therapy, listening to, you know, your podcast, finding support groups in your community. And if they aren't, they're asking your your child's doctor for that you creating your own, I think being in a support group, as a caregiver is really important. If you are struggling, and feeling like Gosh, I have no more bandwidth, I've reached my limit in terms of providing care for my child. That is signaling that you are in distress. Yep. Whether it's your own personal distress, including dealing with the diabetes distress. And it's exhausting. And so I think reaching out and finding the support, one on one, listening to other podcasts, and finding support groups for you, not just for your child is really, really important.

Scott Benner 27:16
Yeah, it gets you to that spot where I don't know what psychologically it does for you to accept something. But it stops so much inner turmoil. That just I'm not saying giving yourself over to it, maybe is the wrong way to say it. But just the idea of Nikki's, you'll see people forever, like, well, there must be a cure for this. And they'll they'll, they'll just drive themselves crazy looking for it as if there was a cure for type one diabetes. And the 1.8 million people living with it are unaware of it. But the newly diagnosed person, it's like, no, obviously it exists. It's just that feeling of like putting off the inevitable, which is accepting that this is happening. But there's such a calm that comes after the acceptance.

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 27:56
Yes, yes. And and I think it's hard to know what comes first. Like, if you are feeling confident and competent in managing your child's diabetes, then maybe the acceptance comes after that. Or maybe the acceptance comes, okay, this is this is what we have in our life, we are not going to let this stop us from doing the achieving the goals we want for our family and for our child. We are going to accept this and we're going to put our head down and we're going to figure this out together. And then that calmness and acceptance that may then lead to the finding finding what you need to get your diabetes, your child's diabetes management, and you know, getting into stride with it, I guess. Yeah. And I don't know if one has to come before the other. But I think I totally agree that the acceptance piece is pivotal. And it you might be you might accept it right in it as the get go. You might just be someone who could handle kind of this this trauma. I know we talked about that in our other our first episode. That kind of the Trump traumatic experience that a diagnosis brings, but and then you might accept it and you might be working well with your child and your child's care team. And then you there might be another transition like such as puberty or the child's sick. And you might hit a bump in the road and you might experience some Distress and that's okay. It's not like okay, we're, we've accepted it, we're good, we're managing it. We know how to deal with this, and we're good to go. So to be gracious to yourself and your child that there will there will be a will and you'll ebb and flow in terms of your acceptance in you know, in your relationship with diabetes.

Scott Benner 29:49
It's fascinating as your kids get older. It's like you're an employer and you have to hire the right person for a job. And you know, like you said in the beginning the kids are It's all on you, right? So the kids aren't involved and they hit those years, but they're like, well, I might want to help a little bit, then you look at them, you're like, why would I hire a 12 year old to take care of my son, you know, like, I know you are you but but you're not the right person to be making these decisions, then people have that fight where they don't want to hand it off, I have to admit that I don't, you know, I'm happy to give over pardons, you know, management to her slowly. But I was never in a position where I thought, I'm happy to trade her five, five, a one C for an eight a one c while she's figuring this out for the next two years. So that that wasn't a trade I was willing to make. But it's just tough because you look down and you're like, well, this isn't the person who should be in charge of this, the kids 14 doesn't know anything, he can barely remember which ways up he just wants to play PlayStation, like that kind of stuff, which then translates into when they're teens. And it's even worse, because now they actually they think they know something they don't even doubt themselves anymore, which is fascinating, you know. And then there you are in that situation, where some people run into where their kids don't doubt themselves don't understand how to manage their blood sugar's quite as well. And now they're creating what could potentially be dangerous situations, either for themselves short term or long term, and you as the parent are set back and going, I can't let this happen. It's such a stressful, a stressful thing to see a thing that you can fix that's impacting your child, the thing you probably love most in the whole world. And then you can't impact it because they're the blockade to you impacting it. It's a weird dynamic, where they are both the person the the, the focus of your love and concern, and the end the problem. At the same time, like the reason you can't get to that love and concern. I don't I didn't mean problem, but they're almost like the roadblock and the destination, if that makes sense.

Unknown Speaker 31:51
Mm hmm.

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 31:51
Okay. Yes. And I think there's a reason why I often I'd say the majority of families that I work with are the kind of the newly diagnosed families within, you know, one month two, you know, six to 12 months. And, and then parents and with teens, because those are probably the more challenging seasons. And, yes, I mean, I think it's going to happen, right teens are going to want to rebel to a certain extent or fine, as we said that autonomy or independence, and yet, you know, we research has shown that positive, there are positive results from parents continue to be involved somehow in your child's diabetes management during the adolescent years. Yeah, and one of my mentors used to say, like, gosh, wouldn't it be great if you could just saran wrap the diabetes, part of their lives as teams with within their relationship with their parents, just to protect that, like, let them go do whatever else they've had to do as a teenager, but can we just somehow protect that aspect of their lives, because it does happen where teens either want to deny it, or don't want to manage it, or want to manage it themselves. And then there's consistent, you know, 300 words, and they think they're doing a good job, or they don't want to show the numbers. And I lived that for a period of time, myself. And the ultimate, I mean, I feel like if you are a parent with a teenager at this point, and you're experiencing this friction, and this conflict of a teenager saying, I don't want you to deal with this, I'm going to do this by myself. I mean, I think I know you, you have set up a different relationship with your daughter. And I think it would be wonderful. I know you just had a gallon I just listened to who was was a teenager. And now I think she's 18 who took it on herself and is managing just great and has been very independent and wanting to maintain those healthy habits. I would say sitting down with your with your teen and say okay, in this this category of your life, your diabetes, we are still going to whether I mean it's also different right with the with the CGM where you could look at on your app to see what your child's numbers are. If they aren't if they refuse to wear CGM, and that happens, then it's finding out okay, we are going to look at your meter once a week or once you know, at the end of the day, but you get to have control and agency in your life in these categories. And finding out what it what does that mean for them daily, they're going to want to have sleepovers. They're gonna want to do after school sports. I mean, a lot of this stuff isn't relevant at the moment given the pandemic but that obviously, hopefully that'll normal like normalcy will return there. I want to go to birthday parties or parties and general parties and finding out how can we protect this aspect of their life and come to some sort of agreements, but also giving them the opportunity to feel like they have control and agency in their life in other aspects that you both agree on that, you know, there's a compromise there,

Scott Benner 35:21
I think you have to understand that in every interpersonal relationship, there is a line that you cannot push the other person over. Because if you do, there's just no coming back from it for some reason where it's difficult to get back from it. So. So I'm constantly thinking with my children, like I'm balancing, doing what's right for them with teaching them how to manage for themselves without pushing them away, which I guess would be a nice old fashioned way of saying what I just said, because once they're away, that's the whatever they leave with that day. And you don't want them to leave in an adversarial thing. Like, I want my kids to walk out the door with a bag over their shoulder thinking, I can't believe I'm moving out, like, that's what I'm looking for. Right? Not like, hey, go to hell, I'm out of here. And so you know, and so when that happens when you when you split that day, however it happens, you've taken them about as far as you get to take them. And then and so if they're gone too soon, then they're a bird falling out of a nest that can't fly yet. And, and that doesn't stop them from leaving, you know. So I just think that there's a way to move slowly towards that stuff. And you have to be able to look up on some law, see that your kids like rubbing up against something. And without letting them feel like they're in control, you know what I mean? Like there's a power struggle to with parenting, to kind of let go of all of it, you know, without letting them feel like they're pushing you around, you have to almost quietly back off in your mind, like, I have something else to say, This is not the time to say it. I'll wait for another opportunity. I just, um, I believe in that. And hopefully, it's going to help me my son's 20. And it looks like he has hashimotos out of nowhere, all of a sudden in the last couple

Unknown Speaker 37:05
months.

Scott Benner 37:06
And it's impacting him. And we're trying to get all of his levels together and help him out. And one of the things we've done is we've gotten his his vitamin D level up, and his iron level up. And so the other night, I said, Hey, did you remember your vitamins, which has been great about so far, and he's just frustrated, because some of the side effects of this haven't gone away yet. And he's like, they don't they don't help anything. And I was like, no, it took us two and a half months to get your vitamin D and your iron off. They help. And he got he broke the little bit. And what I was gonna say next was Yo man, you know, if you do one setup today, that doesn't give you a six pack. And six months from now, when you have a six pack. It's because you did the sit ups every day on the way to it. And now that you have it, if you want to keep it, you need to keep doing it. This is what I was gonna say to him. And instead I just went Yeah, that's cool. We'll talk about it later. And because I just was like, This is it, if I push him here, I'm going to lose him on this topic. And I and I can't afford to lose him on this topic. So yes, yeah,

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 38:05
yes. So knowing, knowing your the kind of the boundaries of when to push, and how far. And I and I think you also touched on, you know, as a teen, it's you there's instant gratification that they want and need. And it's so challenging to think about the long term complications implications of poor management. And so every day, it's, you know, yeah, I want this candy bar with my friends, and I don't feel like bolusing or injecting for it. And you're not, they're not sitting there thinking, Well, you know, if I keep doing this every day, for the next two years, I might have complications. And and I think just as you clearly exemplified, sometimes reminding them of that isn't necessarily, it's not the right way

Scott Benner 38:55
to go. No. Yeah. And we, when they're little with, you know, to bring it back to diabetes, when they're little and you mess up a Bolus, their blood sugar goes up. Well, you work really hard to get it down, you hug them you do all the things you do, you know, when they're eight, nine, or you know, when they get into that 1213. And you do it again now, like, oh, they're sitting on the bench, they can't play because they're dizzy. All these things hit you as failure as the parent, like, you're like, Oh, I messed this up, I'm gonna kill them. I'm the reason they're not going to enjoy soccer, you know, like, whatever it ends up being. And then all of a sudden, when they're older. It's interesting, because it, they're, it's the first time that they can turn it back on you. It's like when they realize you're not perfect. You don't mean which happens in every parental relationship. The One day, the guy wakes up and goes, Oh, this guy doesn't know everything, does he? You know, and then God forbid you're wrong, or you get into your late 40s. And you have like a moment where you can't think of a word. They're just It's like watching a lion go after a gazelle with a broken leg. I see my kids look at me like like, Oh, he's not perfect. Now's our chance. Yeah, right. Right. But all of a sudden, you're trying to do the right thing. And maybe, and for a lot of people, you don't know what the right thing is, you don't know what the tools are, you don't know how to manage your insulin, right, you're just trying your best. And over and over again, it's, it's not going well, and your kids start to think she doesn't understand this diabetes at all. And I don't understand it. So we're screwed. And that's and then that can you can get to that spot. And that's why I'm just such a huge proponent of understanding how insulin works. Because it gives you It gives you a chance in all these things. And again, it gives you a chance to have some free time where blood sugar's aren't always bouncing around and you might actually be able to think about paying your electric bill or going for a walk or doing one of the things that's gonna keep you sane or balanced.

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 40:47
Yes, yes. Oh, my goodness. Yeah. Yeah. Not not responding. You're not responding to the roller coaster. You just know, okay, where we are as stable as possible. I'm doing the best I can. And now I can go take care of myself.

Unknown Speaker 40:58
100% Yes. Have you

Scott Benner 41:00
ever seen the movie? 1917?

Unknown Speaker 41:02
No, no. Okay. So

Scott Benner 41:03
in a nutshell, it kind of doesn't matter. I think it's like World War One. And, and there's like, there's like a, you know, it's a road movie. But in a war guys got to get from one place on foot to another place. It's just adrenaline the whole time. And sometimes that's what being a parent of somebody who has a chronic illness feels like to me, like, somebody just came into my life, one day, I was just there doing my thing. And they were like, hey, you're on a foot race now to the end. And you have to run constantly. Because if you stop, something's going to kill you. Like, you just have to keep going. And there is going every time the scene changes, something different is going to be there that feels like it's trying to get you and you have to run around it jump over or kill it and keep going. And that just is how diabetes feels to me like I remember having the conscious thought that my job is to get my daughter to the longest healthiest life possible. And I never thought about having kids that way prior to the day she had diabetes. Hmm. You know, and,

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 42:04
and that is an exhausting narrative to live with, particularly if you are not feeling like you're you have a sense of, you know, competency around it, or competence, you know, and how to manage it. Yes, right.

Scott Benner 42:18
Right. And so at some point, I worked out the things I worked out, which then lessen that feeling. And it's, it's become less and less and less over time, to where I still feel like that's my goal. But I no longer feel like I'm running through 1917, Germany for my life anymore. And, and, and I really do, I really do believe that partly, that's community that did that. For me. I think it's part it's a big part, just understanding how insulin works, because then you start getting what you expect. And there's not that like, theoretical stress, like you almost like put insulin and then start wondering if you did it wrong. And then, and when that happens three times a day, you're 24 hours a day believing you've messed something up, and you're always living in that anger, you know, and then if you're married, one of the parents likely has a firmer grasp on diabetes and the other which can help, which makes you resent the other person for not helping you. And, you know, oh, it's just there's so much going on. But you're what you're saying is, is that if you're a parent of a child with type one, at any age, you really need a place to go no matter where it is, to feel normal to hear some other people who are doing, okay, who may be a little ahead of you on the journey, a place where you can rant and rave and scream if you need to, and then kind of come back out and reset, and give yourself What did you call it? Grace?

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 43:42
Yeah, Grace and grace and space to, you know, do what you need to do. And if you are the primary caregiver, and I know that that works for a lot of families. Because there's not that confusion that I think you shared recently on a podcast that, you know, you went to the store, and you just assumed that that someone else would be watching or managing or helping blood sugars. But I think there that assumption is also exhausting. And so I think if you're the primary caregiver, and you are feeling all of those things that we've talked about the burnout, the isolation, the guilt, or shame around, I don't know what I'm doing or if I made a mistake, to realize that you're not alone. And to get reach out if you if you don't have if you don't know anybody in your circle. I think that's to reach out to your to your child's doctor to say, Are there other parents, you know, with children around my age, my children, my children's age, that we can connect with because they know they have the data. Because the isolation piece I think is big, and then you isolation can make you feel like Not only that, you're alone, or that if then that, then your thoughts can like I'm doing it wrong, and I'm a bad parent. And that just kind of can, you can dig a hole really quickly with them when you're feeling alone. And that could happen to your

Scott Benner 45:12
kids too. And that one of the Yes, it's funny when people come on the show, and they've heard the show. And it's not everybody, but it's, I used to think it was really heavily like, towards the people were like, Oh, my God, I learned how to use insulin that's been so valuable for me, because I see that as the most valuable piece of the podcast, yes, but it's not true. What I hear most from people is, I never knew another person with diabetes, this show gives me a sense of community, all those things, you just said, it ends up being so much more important to the person who lives with the diabetes, then you might understand like, like, when a parent looks for community, they might look for support, advice, you know, that kind of stuff, pat on the back kind of stuff. But when a person with type one looks for community, the community they want is similar but not the same. It's what they need is to just not feel isolated, just like you said, and it's such a bigger piece then apparent not feeling isolated. I don't know why I think that I don't think I have that thought completely fleshed out yet. But community means different things, depending on what side of the syringe you're on, I guess.

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 46:26
And I think that, yeah, the community piece, yes, for the, the person with the diabetes to know they're not alone. They're not this, you know, strange person and to hear tips and tricks, but then again, in the caregiving piece, to also feel either encouraged or acknowledged and to decrease that isolation. But also just a place. I mean, there, if you can't find a caregiver group, specifically for type one, there are just general caregiver support groups out there that might bring together a variety of people cannot caregiving for their spouse with cancer, or whatever the chronic illness might be, just to have that sense of community to know you're not alone in a lot of those similar emotions and triggers that you might be feeling as the caregiver. So my

Scott Benner 47:15
last question I have, yeah, one last question on this is, that's, that's all great for people who are willing to do that. Yeah. You know, like, when I talk about how people eat on the show, I always say, like, Look, it's probably easier to have diabetes and eat very low carb, but most people aren't going to do that. So let's teach them how to use their insulin so they can live the life that they want to live. And similarly, I think therapy is a great idea. But a lot of people don't do it. A lot of people drink instead, or walk out back and cut down the tree with a chainsaw and cut it up a little tiny pieces, then kick it around, or what what do people do who aren't going to seek out community that aren't going to go for therapy? Or I mean, I have to be honest, that little breathing thing on the apple on the iPhone is like deep breathing really is relaxing. But what what can people do so they don't slip off and, and become a caricature of a of a sad person?

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 48:10
Yes, well, I think, oftentimes, you might not even realize it as a caregiver that you are experiencing burnout. Oftentimes, I hear someone who might come in to my office, and they'll say, Well, you know, what, my spouse noticed that I was talking about how tired I was, or how I wasn't, I wasn't doing the things I used to do that I really enjoyed, or I am feeling helpless. And I'm talking about that. Or maybe Yeah, maybe I'm drinking more coffee or drinking more wine or I'm not. I'm withdrawing from my friends and family, and I didn't And oftentimes, you might not even realize that that has happened. And so it sometimes takes someone on the outside to kind of reflect back in the caring, loving way. Maybe it's time for you to get help. But if you aren't, if you aren't at the point of being able to reach out because that does happen. Yes, obviously deep breathing, to do the things try and reflect back on. Okay, what was one thing that I used to do that I enjoyed before my child was diagnosed, whether that was I used to go on walks every morning, or I used to do the certain activity. So I think reflecting if you're at that point where you feel like your hands are in the air, you are exhausted, and you don't even have the energy or desire to to go to a support group or to meet with a therapist, to think back. Hey, what did I used to do, pre diagnosis that I enjoyed, and slowly maybe integrating that asking for a break for an afternoon or once a day or yet once a day or once a week from being the primary caregiver and doing that thing, whether it's exercise or deep breathing or meditation Or meeting up with a friend?

Scott Benner 50:03
Can I share two things?

Unknown Speaker 50:04
That's where I would start? Yeah, please.

Scott Benner 50:06
So one of these is embarrassing. I'm gonna start with one. That's not embarrassing. How's that sound? So during the pandemic, I've taught myself to make barbecue, to make pizza from like the dough to the scratch to How To Cook it like a real like Neapolitan. Because I just have this time, I don't know what to do it. And then at Christmas, Kelly gave me a drone. It's this little thing. It's a very small one. It's not, it's not very expensive at all. But I found that, first of all, I was scared of it. Like my I was scared to use it. It's something I've talked about for years, like I want to try to fly a drone one day, that's all I said. But it turns out that my spatial awareness is what I was scared of, I was afraid that what would happen when I was pointing one way, and the drone was going another way that I wouldn't have the coordination to deal with that. And so I practice in an open field, you know, and what I've learned over the last couple of weeks is that once the drones up in the air, and it's moving, it's the only thing I'm able to think about where the drone will crash on the ground. And there's an I never been a person to stop thinking about other things. And so just one thing that was not life or death to anyone, right, has really changed. And I will find myself running outside in the middle of the afternoon when I have an hour just to put that thing in the air for five minutes. Just because I come away with some sort of a relaxed feeling when it's over.

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 51:35
Well, and it's something that you are completely in control of that.

Scott Benner 51:42
Well, well Also, it also gave me this idea, like if it cuz it can go up in the air. And your first thing is like, what if I What if it crashes, and you actually have to let go of that to do it. It's almost like not being afraid of insulin anymore. Like, you know, like, Oh, I Bolus and it goes up. And I know I should use more. But I'm afraid until you just go hell, I'm going to use the amount of needs, until you say to yourself, if this thing falls out of the sky. That's the price of doing business if I want to fly a drone, and so once you let go of it, it's completely free. Now my other thing, and I don't know how many people will take me up on this. But when I'm completely alone, which I used to find myself a lot, and I don't much anymore, I guess we most of us don't feel it anymore. When I have a problem, I talk it out in my head. But there are times that I feel I don't realize it and I'm thinking of something in my head. And then all of a sudden I'm alone in my house and I'm talking about it out loud. And I've come to realize that it's nothing different than sitting down in front of a microphone to make a podcast where there's no guest. And I just I find it easier to talk through things if I can hear it almost like at the end of when I after I wrote my book, it was supposed to be turned in on a certain day. And I remember sending the publisher, a note and saying just get like, Can I have it for one extra day? Before I give it to you. And the last thing I did was read it out loud to myself. Because for some reason. hearing it in my head and hearing it out loud were two different things. And I don't know if that's valuable or not, or if I'm crazy, but those two things helped me like focusing on something it's not my life for a little while giving yourself over to that and sometimes I talk to myself when I'm but not to myself. Um, I don't know how to put it. I'm not talking

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 53:27
about your verbally processing out loud.

Scott Benner 53:29
Yes, I'm not going Hey, Scott, and Scott's not answering in a slightly different voice. Not happening like that. It's almost like I'm explaining something to someone who's not there.

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 53:39
Yes, and hearing yourself, say it out loud. Probably achieves a lot of things. But it could be common you're releasing or getting an out of your brain and out saying I made a similar exercise would be you know, writing it down journaling to get whatever that is out onto paper, then you can see it. And maybe for some like sounds like for yourself, it's helpful to for you to say it out loud. And then to hear it.

Scott Benner 54:06
Yeah. Do you know how often this happens to me in the middle of it? I think, gosh, I was wrong about that. Like you can actually you just think something you held like so dear. And then you're like, I'm not right about that. Dammit. And I don't know, it just that's what works for me. But I just want people to do something for themselves. Because your kid getting diabetes can't just be the start of your life or death run across World War One. And then when you get to the end, somebody pat you on the gas and goes, Wow, good job, and then you drop over dead because you just use the last 60 years doing it. I just you know, it can't be like that.

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 54:40
And yes, and I would add you know, and I'm so grateful that you shared what those two things that worked for you. I think oftentimes caregivers might feel like if they take a break from caregiving, something's going to happen to their child. And that this this fear of like responsibility and guilts around, what if what if I leave the house for 30 minutes? Is my child going to have a seizure or he's going to go really high and the chances are probably not. But even so that I think they're going to be okay for that short amount of time. And it doesn't have to be a long break. I think finding those windows of time like for you, you had an hour to run out and do the drone, it could be 10 minutes to say, you know what, I'm gonna go do my 10 minute walk around the block. But finding those moments to take care of yourself to step away from the diabetes is really, really crucial. Yeah,

Scott Benner 55:35
I want to say that take it from me, I was the person who used to think I didn't like sleeps not as important for me, I thought after Arden got diabetes, it all of this will catch up to you at some point, if you don't take care of it, it won't, we're not going to escape through like, don't be the person who's like smoking, that doesn't give me lung cancer, it gives everybody lung cancer eventually. So you're like, you know, you're not the special one who doesn't need to sleep eight hours or, you know, can can operate a nine pots of coffee for the rest of their life. It just doesn't work that way. You have to find the balance, you know, do you agree?

Unknown Speaker 56:10
Absolutely. Yes, you might feel sorry, go ahead.

Scott Benner 56:15
I know, I'm sorry. You finished now. So I was gonna say,

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 56:18
oh, say I agree. Because it but the initial stages, there is that fear of I can't I can't leave my child. And and maybe that feels like in in the first couple months? That might feel true and is true. But to realize that yeah, that is not sustainable. And to involve other people as needed.

Scott Benner 56:40
No, no, yeah. In the beginning of the Apocalypse, we're all running and screaming. But it's Yeah, point you got to find a building to hide into and let the zombies walk around outside while you chill out. That's all. It's very simple. Now, here's the bigger problem, you came on to talk about two things in the hour that we booked. And now 15 minutes later, we're on to the second. So what do we do?

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 57:00
You know, we we while we were I tried to integrate a little bit, you know, we were also talking about just, you know, teenage years. And I feel like we integrated that a little bit into our conversation. But if we want to dive deeper, perhaps we can do that another time. Or if there are questions that come up from your audience, specifically and other topics, we could do that too.

Scott Benner 57:22
Well, I am all for having you back on. So if you're up for it, I'm up for it. It's just you. You're like my, you're like my emotional Jenny. Like to me.

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 57:37
Well, thank you, I that's a nice compliment. Yeah, I enjoy being here and chatting with you. And hopefully, you know, helping those who are out there listening, and I'd love to be back. Seriously, I want to

Scott Benner 57:48
wish you a ton of success with your knee surgery. I know you don't know when you're doing it yet. But if you ever want to do a podcast on painkillers, you let me know. Okay. Because I wouldn't be like,

Unknown Speaker 58:00
oh, that would be interesting.

Unknown Speaker 58:03
What should a family do? They should shut up?

Unknown Speaker 58:08
No,

Scott Benner 58:08
not even under drugs? Would you say that? Give me your web address again.

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 58:15
Erica foresight.com.

Scott Benner 58:18
And for now you need to be in California if you want to talk with Erica. But yes, through this pandemic, I've just spoken to too many people who are struggling in ways that a lot of us can imagine. And that for each one of them speaking to somebody has been what's helped them so far. You know, there's just no shaman. I mean, you wouldn't you wouldn't break your arm and go I'm not gonna go to a doctor this will probably heal on its own. You know, like if you if you have a problem that you can't deal with on your own, go to a person who can help you deal with it, because it's just, it just when it goes wrong for somebody like psycho when psychological issues go wrong for somebody, they go, they can go really you can just get lost. And like a spiral. Yeah, what I there's a couple of people I'm thinking of that I've spoken to I don't even know how they got back again. It's it's a triumph to get back again. And the truth is they all did it with support of one or multiple people that helped them along.

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 59:21
Yes, yeah. I mean, that's and that's really the goal of therapy for you know, from my perspective is restoring that hope, you know, and and, and healing and growth that can occur in an individual and family system, otherwise I wouldn't be doing what I do.

Scott Benner 59:38
Yeah. Well, I appreciate that you that you're doing this one day, you know, a year from now, I'll actually talk to you about your diabetes like you're just like, like you don't know anything about this other stuff. I just said it the Jenny the other day. I said one day we should like interview you like you're a person and not like Jenny a CD and she's like, I am a person and I was like yeah, what can I do that one day and she's like, okay, so um,

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 1:00:00
Yeah, happy happy to do that too. Because Yeah, I'm also i'm also live in Buckhead, and I understand very much all the challenges. Yeah.

Scott Benner 1:00:10
Before I let you go, yes. Is it important for someone? Or not important? What's the How do I want to ask this? Is it? Is it extra value that value added for my therapist to have type one? If I'm in there talking about type one? Or do you think that a therapist that doesn't have it can do it justice? Well,

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 1:00:29
you know, I think and there they are, there's trainings, you know, the a DA and APA did trainings for therapists who are specializing and working with, with families with type one. So I think they can provide certainly, you know, expert advice and professional and psychological support. I know that particularly with, with teens, it brings I can validate what they are going through, and they can they understand that I really get it. And so I think that's an extra value add for me just personally working with particularly the teenage population, which was different from maybe someone to say, like, gosh, I really, you know, I don't get what you're going through, but I know it's hard. Yeah. But I think, yes, I certainly there are therapists out there who are excellent, who are trained well, who can provide the support you need who do not have type one, but it can it can help with certain populations. And for people who

Scott Benner 1:01:27
do try therapy, and like my son, they're like, why don't you take the vitamin D every day or every other day? or whatever? Like, how much time do you give it before it builds up some efficacy for you? Like, you can't just go into one session and be like, that's it, I should feel differently, right? And how long until you know, if this therapist that you chose isn't right for you, like, What's that, that soaking in period? Like in the beginning?

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 1:01:52
That's a great question. And I often tell my clients, you know, it, it has to be a great fit for both parties. And usually, I often suggest or encourage them to give it a go at least two times, two sessions, and to see how, because when Usually, the first session has maybe a lot of nerves and just kind of general overview of what their B looks like and feels like. So it's a by two or two, if not, by three sessions, you aren't feeling like your therapist is either meeting our needs are understanding your goals, then it's okay to to move on. And in terms of experiencing efficacy, or some change, or hope that there's going to be change, I often suggest 10, roughly, you know, 10 sessions three months to not only work on building the rapport and trust and identify and then identifying the goals, where do we want to go? What's our hope? And then at the kind of approximate three to four month mark, to take a pause and evaluate, Okay, are we are we going in the right direction? Are you feeling like your needs are being met? These are questions I'd be asking my client. And then by then by the three to 10, six, six month mark, I would hope that my client is is experiencing some change. Oftentimes, you might hear a therapist say it might feel worse before it gets better. Which that that often happens if you're doing a lot of trauma work. And if you're processing maybe the grief around the diagnosis that you have never done, that could feel maybe painful at first. But then the hope is that you would transition slowly into receiving and experiencing healing around that and moving into maybe more acceptance and hope. So that's kind of a general guideline. timeframe. But you know, every every client is different. But I'd say on average, that's, that's what happened. I appreciate that. I

Scott Benner 1:03:51
just wouldn't want somebody to just do it and then leave and go on. Not

Unknown Speaker 1:03:55
all I don't

Scott Benner 1:03:55
feel perfect. Like this didn't work. And I can imagine everything you said and all the different possibilities being true for somebody. So I want just like a general guideline for them to think yes,

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 1:04:05
Yeah, it does. It does take time to undo, you know, your thinking or your and move to healing. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:04:14
right. Now listen, it's all just our parents fault. I'm just kidding.

Unknown Speaker 1:04:19
Sometimes, yeah.

Scott Benner 1:04:21
Well, I really appreciate you doing this again. And I will talk to you soon.

Unknown Speaker 1:04:26
Okay.

Scott Benner 1:04:30
First things first, let's thank Dexcom and that g six continuous glucose monitor and remind you to go to dexcom.com forward slash juice box. Are you looking for a free no obligation demo of the Omni pod tubeless insulin pump, or perhaps a free 30 day trial of the Omni pod dash Hello 30 days. That's one 12th of the Year by omnipod.com Ford slash juicebox. Go find out what you can get. Head over there. It's like One of those crane machines and somebody already dropped the quarter and all you got to do is move the joystick around and see what you get my Omnipod comm forward slash juicebox. Don't forget T one d exchange.org. forward slash juicebox. And of course, thank you so much to Erica for coming on the show. There are links in the show notes, all the sponsors, and a link to Erica, if you're in California, and you'd like to check her out. Thanks so much for listening for the great reviews you've been leaving on your podcast players. And of course, for sharing the show with other people. I really appreciate it when you do that. And when you hit subscribe in your podcast app, I think I just decided how to celebrate 3 million downloads to let me take a look here just real quickly, I won't keep you much longer. You're fine. This one was only an hour, you can do it again. When are we going to hit 3 million. Rough math is about a month from now, about a month from now the show is going to hit 3 million lifetime downloads, which is very, very, very cool and extremely exciting. And I think I know what I'm going to do to celebrate it. I think I'm going to make I don't want to say yet, but I'm going to do something and we'll see if you like it. I always do giveaways and I have to be honest. And only one person gets something and that doesn't seem very celebratory. So I'm going to try to find a way where everybody can have the same thing. We'll see. I'm trying to figure it out. Give me a second. Okay. I'll be back soon. 3 million. It's a big deal. By the way. It's a podcast about type one diabetes, 3 million downloads. Are you kidding me? Gonna have 4 million probably. And I think we definitely hit 4 million this year. Easy. It's just It's crazy. I never imagined first month 2015 January 1000, like 200 downloads or something like that. In a month. I don't even I can't even tell you how many downloads I get in a month now trade secret, but it's a lot. And I wonder if I can find? Hmm, hold on a second. Can I find out exactly how many downloads the podcast had in the first month? I can. I just have to change this to January. If you're still with me, I love you guys. Thanks so much. It's actually March. I started this show in January. But I didn't start it on a service where I could track downloads. I was I did not know what I was doing. Let's just be fair and say that. So maybe March 24 is the first trackable download. So why don't we do April? Even though the show started in January, I just didn't know what I was doing in January. Yeah, I can do this. Hold on a second. I know you're like I already Hold on a second Scott. What the hell but give me a second. Make it how many days are April's that 31 or 30? June to December Maple moon and just I don't even know that Brian. Isn't that crazy? Yeah, what are you gonna do? April 1 to may 1.

Unknown Speaker 1:08:24
Monthly totals.

Scott Benner 1:08:27
Wow, this is crazy. There were days when the show only got 100 downloads a day. Some of these that had like 43 That's so weird. Look at this April. You care about this? April 1 20 1533 downloads. The second nine the third four on the fourth that had 18 all right now just imagine I go forward a day every time I say number 610 34 what even made me keep doing this 109 130 340-617-1627 90 102 152 43

I'm like halfway through April not 2626 Wow. 5724 that's how the whole month goes just like that for for a perspective. Here for perspective, since I started talking about how many downloads there were in April until now. The show has been downloaded 203 times while we were just talking about it. That's crazy, isn't it? It still freaks me out.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:01
Anyway,

Scott Benner 1:10:01
I feeling very celebratory about it. And I've learned I want I want se me there. I was like count Dracula's like I want to tell you about the thing I want to celebrate somehow. So I think I have an idea. People online helped me with what they want me to put it together, I should be able to announce it very, very soon. It's not that exciting, but I think you'll like it. And that's it. All right. We excited? Good. I want to do the thing. I turned into Dracula from a 50s movie there for a second. Anyway, wasn't Erica great. While we're still chatting. I love her. She's coming back again. I'm gonna make her come back. I can't actually make her. That's not how the world works. But I asked her and she said yes already. So she's coming back. Oh, one last thing. I was supposed to put this the front of the show. I'll do that next time. Each episode has transcripts now at Juicebox podcast.com. So many people ask me for transcripts, and it was a ton of work and not fun. But they're there. They're there. hate it when I say that. But they're on Juicebox podcast.com. Now so you go to this specific episode, link for the episode you're listening to you scroll down a little bit. Christ let me look. I didn't mean to curse. Hold on. Juicebox Podcast calm scroll down. Like here's the last episode, falling forward. Number 444. I click on it. The episode page comes up. Scroll down, tells you a little bit about the episode shows you some places you can listen on different apps, you can actually listen right there, there's a player. Then it says click for episode transcript. This is above the sponsor. So if you get to the sponsors Dexcom touch by type one on the pod T one D exchange de vocht. glucagon and the Contour Next One blood glucose meter. You've scrolled down too far, scroll back up to where it says click for episode transcript. When you click on that, it opens up words everywhere. There's a tiny disclaimer at the top. And I'll tell you why. Because the transcripts of the transcripts are being done with artificial intelligence. They're not perfect. So just as this text is the output of an AI based transcribing from an audio recording, although the transcript is largely accurate, in some cases, it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcript errors and should not be treated as an authoritative record. Nothing that you read here constitutes medical advice, blah, blah, blah. And then it's a transcript. Scott Benner Hello everyone and welcome to Episode 440. For me, talkie talkie all of a sudden Jeff comes up. My name is Jeff. I'm 34 years old. I've been typing. Every episode has this. There's a couple that have it that don't have it still. If you find one that doesn't please email me and let me know. But otherwise, to all the people out there that asked for transcripts. They're there. Go get them. I hope they make your life better. I sincerely do. That's definitely a no no. I'm going bye

#444 Falling Forward

Growing up with Type 1 Diabetes

Jeff was diagnosed as a child, today as an adult he describes his life with type 1 diabetes.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello everyone, and welcome to Episode 444 of the Juicebox Podcast. This show is sponsored today by the glucagon that my daughter carries. g evoke hypo Penn, Find out more at G Vogue glucagon.com forward slash juice box. Today's episode is also sponsored by the Contour Next One blood glucose meter, you can find out more about ardens meter at Contour Next one.com forward slash juicebox. And don't forget about touched by type one. Learn more about that touched by type one.org on Instagram, or Facebook.

Face shows with Jeff. He's a type one who was diagnosed at a younger age, and then had a number of life issues pop up. A lot of them actually, he does a great job of taking us through them and sharing his emotions.

Please remember, while you're listening 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. As you're listening around the podcast, don't forget to check out the defining diabetes episodes. And those diabetes pro tip episodes. You can find them both right here in your podcast player, or a diabetes pro tip.com. And of course everything's available at Juicebox. Podcast calm.

Jeff Flaxman 2:07
My name is Jeff flaxman. I'm 34 years old have been type one diabetic since I was 12. If I was better at math, I'd tell you the year but I gotta think back through but I was in sixth grade when it happened around Easter and, and managing it since pretty much by myself. Wow.

Scott Benner 2:24
Yeah. And we'll dig into that in a second. But I have to let you know that every time I see your name pop up on my calendar, the Beatle song tax man runs through my head. So I'm glad. I'm glad you said your letter that makes sense to you that every

Jeff Flaxman 2:36
one last name.

Scott Benner 2:37
I just hear the very like, I'm the tax man. Every time I say it, I'm like, Ah, that's gonna fill my head up now for the next 20 minutes. So I'm glad to get this one out of the way so that I can move. Yeah, we

Jeff Flaxman 2:49
can cross that off your list then

Scott Benner 2:50
and move to a different Beatle song. Anyway, so let's see, you have quite a story, Jeff.

Jeff Flaxman 2:57
Yeah, I've had some ups and downs.

Scott Benner 2:59
Yeah. Where are you now just so that as we get 20 minutes into this people aren't, you know, starting a GoFundMe for you or something like that things? Oh, no, no, no,

Jeff Flaxman 3:08
things are fantastic. Now I'm married my wife, we've been together since 2011. So nine years, I've got a five year old daughter's two year old son, both of which are not diagnosed as of this time with type one, but it's always in the back of my mind. Working successfully, I think I teach Middle School in the middle of a pandemic. So it's a lot of fun. Okay, all right, good.

Scott Benner 3:29
Well, I just wanted to do I, you know, I'm not I don't, I don't want by the time we're done the third part of your story. I don't want everybody to be like, oh my this poor guy. So you're good. So but you still have quite a tail. Alright, so let's start again, you were diagnosed in just a sixth grade. Sixth grade, it

Jeff Flaxman 3:46
was April of God 1234. Sometime in the late

Scott Benner 3:52
90s. Sometime in the late 90s. Excellent. You're in sixth grade. I'm going to do by my thinking on that and say that most people are five and kindergarten. And then six plus five is 11. So I'm going to put you around 11 years old. Okay. All right. seem fair.

Jeff Flaxman 4:08
No, I was 12. Because after my birthday in sixth 12 perfect.

Scott Benner 4:12
All right. Okay, everybody. So Jeff's going along living his life. Happy birthday. They sing the song, they eat the cake, and he gets the diabetes. Do you remember much about the but not what you wish for? Would you blow out the candles? I imagine?

Jeff Flaxman 4:24
No, no, not a bit. No, it was a near Easter. And I remember distinctly is my brother always reminds me of it because my diagnosis fell just before his 15th birthday. So he lets me know I ruined his 15th birthday party by being in the hospital. He couldn't have his friends over couldn't have his party because of me. Yeah.

Scott Benner 4:43
It's nice to have a brother, isn't it? Yeah, I

Jeff Flaxman 4:45
mean, he's a great guy. I do. I love him very much, but that's just our relationship. The diagnosis came on. I had started wrestling at that time, which is a pretty demanding physical sport. And after the season ended, I just kind of crashed like before. I couldn't do much constantly tired and just had one of those, like a week long what I thought was the flu what my mom thought was the flu at that time. So it's just you know, you stay in the couch, you feel awful, miserable, can't get up, can't do anything. But I had to go to the bathroom a lot, because you know, the diabetes. And then at one point, it just got, I guess I was probably close to DK, I don't remember. And I just remember what I was saying. That's it. We're going to the hospital. Let's go. But that's

Scott Benner 5:28
scary for parents. They're really you know, now you have kids, you can really imagine if your kid was just lethargic and lying around, you know, how long before you just were like, Oh, geez, this is this is something

Jeff Flaxman 5:41
terrifying? I don't know. I mean, when my youngest was like three months old, he hit one of those fevers above the doctor level. So we had to take him to the ER two in the morning. And that was a horrifying six hours. I couldn't imagine what this would be for my parents. Yeah.

Scott Benner 5:56
Yeah. The first time your kid gets a high fever, you start imagining their heads soft boiling inside of their skulls. And you're Oh,

Jeff Flaxman 6:02
yeah, I mean, worst case scenario instantly.

Scott Benner 6:05
goes, Yeah, it's interesting how you're, you know, you jumped to the worst conclusion. Well, luckily, your mom jumped to that conclusion that got you to the hospital.

Jeff Flaxman 6:12
Yeah, we got there. And it was I remember that I mean, a wave of doctors swarming around me, and probably within the first minute of being there. I heard him say diabetes. Hmm. And maybe 10 minutes after that I was in an ambulance going to a major hospital, where I met, which I hadn't mentioned is the Chicagoland area. So Lutheran generals were I was folding diagnosed. Gotcha.

Scott Benner 6:33
Okay. Do you remember much about the early days of having type one for you, and what that meant, as far as how you managed and you know

Jeff Flaxman 6:43
why, because I was older at 12, I have a very distinct memory of all of it, it was that time, there was NPH. And our insulin is what I was on, take the long acting in the morning. And then I had like a sliding scale. Throughout the day, depending on what I tested that of what I would do before each meal. Not each meal, I think it was just breakfast and dinner, maybe each meal, one of the two. And you'd take that amount. And that week in the hospital, I didn't really get it at first what it meant. Until I had an older I'm guessing he was an endocrinologist came in and just had one of those sit down, come to Jesus conversations with me and 12. And I distinctly recall, he's like, well, this disease basically cuts your lifespan in half. If you take care of yourself, you can make it a little longer if you don't pay attention right now. You'll be dead before 40

Unknown Speaker 7:36
knows Oh, okay.

Scott Benner 7:39
So he wasn't dressed like a clown or anything like that. He wasn't Oh,

Unknown Speaker 7:43
no, it wasn't a patch

Scott Benner 7:44
that wasn't there that day. He wasn't going for as well. So interesting. He he went for I'll shock you into it, which I've heard from a lot of people is not a valuable management tool from doctors. But how did it work on you, maybe it works perfectly on you. Ah,

Jeff Flaxman 8:00
it worked really well, that honeymoon period, the first few months of having it, I was awesome. at it. Like numbers, were always good constantly testing, writing it down in this little Journal of what we need to have there. And I remember at that time, we didn't go to an endocrinologist, my family doctor took over managing my diabetes care. And they did a great job. Well, you do all the people, they're pretty close. But looking back on it, I want to ask my parents, what the heck are you thinking? Why didn't we go to a real endocrinologist for this stuff for how serious it was? But 12? I didn't know the difference. Sure. But that first one, he came back in the low fives that I had during that honeymoon period to where they're like, Oh, he's so good at this. This is great. Forget testing twice a day, you can probably test three times every two days, and you'll be good. And so that was it. So back then, that was the level of knowledge. And also I guess you're not in an endos office. Right? So yeah, yeah. So I think there's a little delay there for it. But I didn't really have serious lows or serious hires. I mean, it would roller coaster constantly. And now that I have a CGM and I'm using that I I can't imagine what was going on in the in between times, there has to be 36 hours without a check.

Scott Benner 9:16
So you were basically honeymooning, which we all kind of now understand is just a time where your pancreas is just working for a while off and on, like sputtering to its to its end until that organ became useless, right. And the By the way, for the people listening who know that the pancreas still does some things after it doesn't make insulin anymore. I know we all know just

Unknown Speaker 9:38
I know that. I only look at it through the diabetes.

Scott Benner 9:40
Yeah, useless for diabetes, let's call it that. useless for insulin. So but I'm just fascinated by that. The idea that they didn't understand that this was going to, you know, get worse at some point, you know, and your pancreas was not going to be helping anymore, and so they tell you the exact wrong thing. Which is you don't even have to Look that off and just maybe a couple of times every three days when really what you should have been doing is looking more frequently. Right when this happened, and on top of it, it was

Jeff Flaxman 10:08
there. I was being taught to like I was a type two at that time.

Unknown Speaker 10:12
Yeah.

Jeff Flaxman 10:12
You probably say new most being a family practice.

Scott Benner 10:15
Late 90s. Doesn't seem like that long ago to me

Jeff Flaxman 10:20
that long either. But I'm 34 now 12.

Scott Benner 10:24
Just like it is not long ago. I'm halfway to old.

Jeff Flaxman 10:28
Sunday. It's not really

Scott Benner 10:29
No, no, there's once in a while I get up in the morning and my heel and my ankle hurt. And I think, how did that happen?

Jeff Flaxman 10:37
Do I can't place this this bruise. I don't know where it came from.

Scott Benner 10:41
I wasn't running yesterday or anything like that. Like, you know, I didn't jump off of something. I didn't kick anything. It's just doesn't seem right. But no, I mean, I hear you. I'm just saying that. I guess even for me, as somebody who talks to people a lot about this, if you tell me late 90s. There's going to be somebody who diagnoses you in a hospital doesn't insist that you go to an endocrinologist, send you to a GP who doesn't appear to understand diabetes really at all. I just that feels like it would be an older problem. But I'm assuming that stuff still happening. And we just don't think of it that way.

Jeff Flaxman 11:18
I mean, it probably does in some places where it's still there. Yeah. It's medical care is not exactly consistent across the 50 states.

Scott Benner 11:25
No kidding. Okay, so there you go here, do you? Do you then slip into this idea of we'll just look every once in a while. And then what happens then? Yeah,

Jeff Flaxman 11:33
I mean, that's what it became, like, Oh, I guess that's okay. So at that point, I'm probably four or five months in, I start, I'm still testing those times a day. But I stopped writing them down because I'm a kid. I'm 12. And I'm not taking the time to do that. Yeah. So I just stopped. And I mean, the the weird thing, we'll get to it, but my parents being divorced, we're not on the same page with that. And they took a very hands off approach and like, well, he's got it. The doctor says his numbers are good. So he can handle it. And I did. And they didn't know anybody else with Type One Diabetes. So there's nothing to compare it to. Right. Right. They had no idea. They heard what they heard from the general practitioner, and he said, things are doing well. He's taking care of himself, we're not concerned.

Scott Benner 12:17
And so that's that.

Jeff Flaxman 12:19
They just my mom, dad, like, well, he seems to have it under control. They had an idea of what was going on. But meal times, I would do the sliding scale correction, I would give all my injections since the day I was diagnosed, they never did those for me. Just

Scott Benner 12:34
that's how it worked. Were they checking in a one See,

Unknown Speaker 12:38
um,

Jeff Flaxman 12:39
the general practitioner did. But I couldn't tell you what the numbers were after that first one, I just know The first one was really low. And then it might have been every six months they check and they won't see after that.

Scott Benner 12:49
But you don't recall anyone saying to you, Hey, this is getting out of hand, or

Jeff Flaxman 12:53
I don't think they ever did. I mean, there were times I might have gotten to low eights type area. throughout those young junior high and early high school years. We'll get to it the story gets more complex, and then a one c testing stops, eventually we'll get to that. Yeah.

Scott Benner 13:08
Well, I just think that I'm trying to I don't know, obviously, but the ADA sets standards for a one C, and doctors who know and doctors who don't know are probably following that they probably just look at that test and go, you know, like, you don't I mean, like you and I now think of a one c? You know, as one of the one of the measurements we use to try to figure out if we're doing a reasonable job, man is

Jeff Flaxman 13:34
a decent benchmark nowadays.

Scott Benner 13:36
Right? Right. But but the I guess my point is, is that it's making me think about like, your story is making me think about Arden being diagnosed with hypothyroidism where there's this range that it says is normal. And I don't know if people understand where normal range comes from for like, you know, your thyroid test, for instance, but it's just a most people tested, fall between here and here. And that makes this the range. So if your number falls in that range, many doctors will just look and say, Oh, you know, the range is, I don't know, five to 10 urinate, you're good. That's it, just you know that that's how it works when when they don't have a real drill down understanding of what they're looking at. They're just really looking at a number from a test and a number on a chart and you fall into that number and I'm wondering how much of that didn't happen to you and doesn't still happen to people where maybe back then the ADA had a once he said it eight or I don't know where

Jeff Flaxman 14:35
I couldn't tell you what it was seen eights in there like sometimes he would say well, you seem to be going a little higher and maybe you should check your blood two hours after you ate a meal.

Scott Benner 14:47
That was it. Like Like a let's see looks a little higher. Let's test a little more frequently.

Jeff Flaxman 14:52
The you want it to be about 150 to 180 after a meal and my 13 year old stupid kid brain there's like yeah, oh Okay, I'll do that every third day. Maybe

Scott Benner 15:03
we'll make that a Thursday thing. And no, I hear so okay, just you know, in perspective like that's it now I don't even know where the you know the quote unquote like the recommended a one C, is it seven now or something like that I'm not even sure.

Jeff Flaxman 15:21
I couldn't tell you I'd imagine seven me my endocrinologist now who I have a good relationship with. I'm in the low sixes running there, and he seems pleased with what's going on. And I'm happy Of course, I'd like to do better, but I'll take a low six.

Scott Benner 15:34
Okay. Yeah, I'm googling right now. I have 2018 here.

This is the actually diabetes.org. So this is the ADA.

Oh, they're just giving you the if you're able to see has been between 5.7 and 6.5. This is probably for type two people. You're pre diabetic. If you have a one save Six, five or higher. You are diabetic health line has from 2018. For years, the American Diabetes Association has recommended that all people with IBS aim for target a one c below 7%. Even more stringent. They're not recommending below. So in 2018, they started recommending below 6.5. But for a while it was seven. I wonder what it was prior is maybe the internet doesn't go back quite far enough on this one for me.

Jeff Flaxman 16:34
Somewhere, but I mean, yeah. Or to a point where there is serious concern.

Scott Benner 16:38
Right? Right. Right. Now here you Okay, so you're chugging along. This is basically how you're living your life with with diabetes.

Jeff Flaxman 16:46
Yeah, I mean, I was carb counting didn't exist then. Or at least not where I was trained. So I was on an exchange diet. So starch, protein, fat, and I was very, and still to this day, very regimented in what I would eat, where I would have the exact same breakfast every day for like two years straight and never change it.

Scott Benner 17:03
Did you ever, like hate that? Or was it just the thing you did? I

Jeff Flaxman 17:09
think I did it first. But it got to a point where it just became so ingrained in me. Even now I'll make my lunch for school, it would be the exact same lunch every single day. I mean, breakfast today was the same as it was the past 20 days, English muffin with peanut butter and coffee and that's just what I go.

Scott Benner 17:30
Gee Volk, hypo pan has no visible needle, and it's the first premixed autoinjector of glucagon for very low blood sugar and adults and kids with diabetes ages two and above. Not only is chivo hypo pen simple to administer, but it's simple to learn more about, all you have to do is go to G Volk glucagon.com forward slash juicebox g vo shouldn't be used in patients with insulinoma or pheochromocytoma. Visit g Vogue glucagon.com slash risk. Everyone deserves an accurate blood glucose meter. And not everyone's meter is as accurate as you would hope. I'd like you to check out the Contour Next One blood glucose meter. Because it is oh geez, what I want to say here, it is the most accurate, easy to use, and easy to transport meter that Arden has ever had. On top of all that, it's inexpensive. And it may even be affordable. If you don't have insurance. Check it out at Contour Next one.com forward slash juicebox. Some of the highlights of this meter are second chance testing meaning you can go in for blood get a little but not get enough, go get more without ruining the accuracy of the test. We're wasting a test strip. And of course, it's got a super bright light for nighttime. It has an easy to read screen. And there's even an app to link to the meter if you want to use it if you don't, you can just use the meter without it but if you do, you pick up some extra bonus features. They have a test trip savings plan and you may even be eligible for a free meter you'll be able to find out all about that and whether or not you're eligible at Contour Next One forward slash juicebox there's links in the show notes of your podcast player and links at Juicebox podcast.com. If you can't remember that URL while you're out on the internet, check out touched by type one there at touched by type one.org on Facebook and Instagram.

I so would love to rerun your life in an alternate reality and see if that's how you if you just love eating like that or if it it's just from the diabetes because I do know people like that I've worked with people who every day they eat the same exact thing and I'm just like it's fine. acid

Jeff Flaxman 20:00
is what I love it. It's just that's, that's normal to me. Yeah, that's what I did my childhood. And the only places it changes is dinnertime because those are more robust meals in our family and even as a child, it was gotcha. Then I would always have highs or lows after dinner because the meal was never consistent, but it never fit.

Scott Benner 20:17
Right, right. So what would you consider to be the first I'm looking for the right word. I don't want to say tragedy, but maybe tragedy is the right way. What, what, what?

Unknown Speaker 20:28
What was let's start going down that rabbit hole.

Scott Benner 20:30
Yeah, what was the first major hiccup I guess, in your life.

Jeff Flaxman 20:35
So we'll backtrack a little bit there. So sixth grade, I get diagnosed, we go all the way back to second grade in school. So four years earlier, my parents split up separated with and it's in the mid 90s. That wasn't that uncommon at that time. Lots of kids had it. And I think in no disrespect at all, but the best way to describe my mother was a sometimes functional alcoholic, I think is the best way to say it. Okay.

Scott Benner 21:02
So meaning that sometimes she was blackout drunk.

Jeff Flaxman 21:06
Yes. Sometimes she was out of it. And in second grade I, I was well aware of what was going on at that time. I know my dad would kind of hint and asks, How is mom today? And we'd say, Oh, it's a good day. It's a rough day. type thing.

Unknown Speaker 21:17
I tell you, Jeff, there were other girls, but this is the one I fell in love with. Sorry, buddy. Yeah, I

Unknown Speaker 21:24
mean, I

Jeff Flaxman 21:25
never got that into it. My dad was trying the whole custody battle for it. But again, it's the mid to early 90s. Dads don't win custody battles very often. Right? It just it wasn't gonna happen. He was probably a more qualified parent looking back at it.

Scott Benner 21:40
Can I? Can I ask you real quick? How involved? Were you in the drinking? Like, did she did you? Were you pouring drinks or

Jeff Flaxman 21:48
bringing mommy I was never She. She always tried to mask it and hide. Okay. My brother and I brothers older. We always knew like we were well aware. And there were times as I got older, it got pretty confrontational where I would find her bottle of wine and just dump it in the sink and be a fight. And I'm an 11 year old kid doing this. Yeah. Like I'm not dealing with this today.

Scott Benner 22:10
And that really is how I felt like if I get rid of this wine today, it'll be easier.

Jeff Flaxman 22:13
Yeah, today, it'll be easier. Yeah. It was kind of a constant. But by no means Was she a bad mother. I mean, we still had food on our plate. Every dinner we were still taking care of and well, we weren't rich by any means. But you weren't poor.

Scott Benner 22:25
But she was struggling with alcoholism. Like very mightily

Jeff Flaxman 22:29
other substances to she she likes to she smokes quite a bit.

Unknown Speaker 22:32
She saw. That

Scott Benner 22:34
was the least of her. I just have to ask you. Yeah, maybe I don't maybe you made it clear. Just you're just talking about weed, right? Oh, yeah, totally. Yeah. Okay. All right. So

Jeff Flaxman 22:43
then I, it was explained to me. Oh, shoot this layer. That's fine, though. It was African violence we had growing in our backyard sometimes. Oh,

Scott Benner 22:51
is that how it was? Told you?

Jeff Flaxman 22:53
Yeah, that's what it was. It's like, Yeah, okay. I'm sure that's what it is.

Scott Benner 22:56
I have one on my windowsill in my kitchen. I hope my kids don't want they believe that I was running a small train. Don't let them listen to this. They might get confused about that. God, if my kids end up listening to this, I'm dead and they just miss me. Okay, sorry.

Jeff Flaxman 23:15
I'm pretty scarred to this. Now, but that's fine. No, Jeff. I

Unknown Speaker 23:18
didn't mean I didn't mean not thinking okay. All right.

Jeff Flaxman 23:22
No, so the divorce was probably the early one. And that that was rough to deal with. But I had gotten used to it. Like I just grew to accept. That's what it is every other weekend and Wednesdays are with my dad. Other days. I'm with my mom. We live in the same town. It's constant. Like those two, it's those the type of divorce where you didn't want to be in the same room as the two.

Scott Benner 23:43
Yeah, my parents had

Unknown Speaker 23:45
co parenting

Scott Benner 23:46
as you'd say today, right? No, my parents had one of those. And I felt like it. It was really difficult on me for a large number of years. And oh, yeah, it didn't, it just it doesn't just go away. Whenever, you know, everybody settles into their new life. It wasn't it definitely wasn't like that. I think I've told people before here, like I used to wake up in the middle of the night and stare out a window on the second floor. And every time a car would drive by, and the lights would appear before the car would appear. I would let myself believe That was my dad coming home. So I could feel better for a couple of seconds before, before the car would drive past the house. And back to like, you know, harder than that would lead me downstairs to dig into the back of a coat closet, the plot of family portrait that my mom hidden, I would just stare at it for a little while till I felt better and go to bed. And I was only like maybe 13 then. So that was you know, I don't think people understand what they mean when they say we're gonna get divorced. It'll be better for the kids. Actually, what would be better for the kids if you stop yelling at each other and

Unknown Speaker 24:49
just figured it

Scott Benner 24:54
would be better together? Yeah, get me out of here and then do your thing. Whatever you're gonna do, you've been in it this long. But anyway,

Jeff Flaxman 25:04
if the divorce was the constant that happened, we knew it was there. My dad had a constant battle to try and win custody. And it's just, it wasn't in the cards for whatever reason. Maybe a mom had a better lawyer, I don't really know, I was too young to understand that she kind of kept us out of it. It just never happened.

Scott Benner 25:22
And, and you were about how old while this is going on just because I'm trying to move. So

Jeff Flaxman 25:28
second grade. I think you're eight or nine, somewhere in that range.

Scott Benner 25:34
It's all up and so your dad kind of gives up on the custody thing at some point in that eight, nine year range? Well, no, he never gave Oh, no. No kid with a constant constant

Jeff Flaxman 25:44
fight. Like eventually, it got to the point where he'd get a whole week, a month on top of all that, or half the summer he got more and more visitation and stuff and we keep fighting for it, but never never got the overall win. Wow. He

Scott Benner 25:56
really was trying. That's great. Yeah, yeah. Good for him. Well, that's, that's lovely, actually. Okay, so we're gonna go forward. Yeah. We're gonna call divorce. Tragedy one, I think we're gonna call diabetes tragedy, too. Yeah. Third,

Jeff Flaxman 26:12
when we move forward to eighth grade, I'm pretty well managed by now. Things are going well. My dad started the online dating world. And you know, AOL, if you remember that you go to your message board. So he was a single parent message board and found a bunch of girls started talking to them instant messaging before there was he online dating eHarmony. He found some girlfriend that way. He just he was, she had four boys of her own. And then they were end of eighth grade year, they bought a house, they were gonna move in together. Me and my brother are four step brothers, all of us. We're going to be together.

Scott Benner 26:50
For a while. We're going to move in, like full time. We're not just just, yeah. So just the time that he had you for Okay.

Jeff Flaxman 26:58
Yes. Well, it makes it messy. My brother who was 17 could have moved into full time. He could have gone to court and said I'm done with you, Mom, I believe in. But he didn't

Scott Benner 27:08
stand behind for you. Did you ever think you guys were talking about it?

Jeff Flaxman 27:12
We did. And eventually we'll see. He made the choice to leave.

Scott Benner 27:15
Yeah. I it's hard not to everything. Oh, yeah. And

Jeff Flaxman 27:21
may, April, May of that eighth grade year before graduation? My dad gets diagnosed with lung cancer.

Unknown Speaker 27:28
Yeah. Okay.

Scott Benner 27:31
Well, I guess let's just hit the Was it a shock to him? Or, you know, was he a smoker and was like, Oh, I got

Jeff Flaxman 27:38
heavy heavy smoker, work construction. So you've got both of those working against them. Right? how all of us were caught off guard by No kidding.

Scott Benner 27:46
How old was he around that? 4747. Okay, so a young man ends up with lung cancer double, or do you remember?

Jeff Flaxman 27:54
It was one but it was stage three at the time? I think four.

Scott Benner 27:59
So how does he talk to you about that?

Jeff Flaxman 28:02
Um, just kind of sat us down and told us he's like, Look, this is it. I'm gonna do the chemo. We're gonna move through it. And we're optimistic.

Scott Benner 28:11
Yeah. How much understanding Did you have that? It might not? end? Well for him?

Jeff Flaxman 28:17
I'm about a month and a half in,

Unknown Speaker 28:20
we figured it out.

Unknown Speaker 28:22
Could you just see him declining?

Jeff Flaxman 28:24
Oh, it was it was quick. Yeah. got diagnosed. And then three months later, and the summer he passed. Okay.

Scott Benner 28:32
Ah, all right. So how does that one mean, I guess I'm it's hard. I'm running through it in my head. I guess the biggest impact to you besides your dad being gone, which was obviously the largest impact is that you're now with your mom full time and there's nowhere to go right? Or does the orders. Did your dad ever get married to the woman that he was what he

Jeff Flaxman 28:51
did? He got married to my stepmom and she stayed.

Scott Benner 28:55
Okay. So did you continue to see her?

Jeff Flaxman 28:59
Well, the court said we couldn't, but I just did it anyways.

Scott Benner 29:05
Were you like living close enough to each other that you could make your way?

Jeff Flaxman 29:09
It wasn't the same district so it would be from school. So I went to high school. Some days I tell my mom, I'm staying at my stuff. I'm staying and I'd stay there. And then the next day I take the bus back home my mom's house and go back and forth. It was freshman year.

Scott Benner 29:26
Did your mom fight you on that? Or do you think it was like he gave her the night off?

Unknown Speaker 29:30
She loose functioning she

Jeff Flaxman 29:32
had lost a lot more control the disease by them first. Okay. All right. She been further and further. How is

Scott Benner 29:39
all this impacting your, your type one care? Like I'm trying to imagine you fitting that into all of that chaos?

Jeff Flaxman 29:47
It was rough. Like I mean, I still because I was so regimented. I still followed I eat this at this time I do this testing. I stopped testing as much I had One kind of scary low spell, I remember that my brother woke me up out of. And then here drink this orange juice, you moron, you'll be fine. That mean, besides that one low it was, I'm not gonna say it was well managed, but to my knowledge at the time it was well,

Scott Benner 30:17
so you're up to your expectations. So what

Unknown Speaker 30:20
was that go into? What

Scott Benner 30:21
was that really the focus that? Don't get dizzy don't pass out. And you're doing well?

Jeff Flaxman 30:27
Yeah, I mean, I can tell when it was really, really high blood sugar because the urination and everything which now I realize, Oh, that's just because ketones was spilling over and my my liver is slowly killing myself right now.

Scott Benner 30:38
Hmm. So you didn't correct those situations though, right? You just knew your blood sugar. No, the idea

Jeff Flaxman 30:42
of a corrective Bolus just didn't cross my mind. And I say Bolus, but that doesn't. It wasn't a Bolus didn't cross my mind. Like if I was high. I'm like, Alright, so I take a little more in the sliding scale. I'll check again in the morning. And I waited up. That was

Scott Benner 30:57
it. So it's, it's next time I'll be a little more aggressive because I can because I'm peeing a lot right now. And I know I'm high.

Jeff Flaxman 31:03
Yeah. So I know, I need to take more at the next meal. I'll bump up that sliding scale. And I think, gosh, by that time, I wasn't mph. And our I don't know if you know they had that like 7030 blend, or is like the mix. And I was taking that one at that time through a pen, which was much more convenient.

Scott Benner 31:19
Wow. It's so interesting that your experience with diabetes mirrors my friend Mike's So specifically, I'm I'm always going to be sorry that I didn't get him on here to talk about it. But he passed away last year. Oh, I'm

Unknown Speaker 31:32
terribly sorry. No, no,

Scott Benner 31:34
I thank you. But he he is experienced, it's just so like it. It makes me feel like this was just the time with diabetes. And this is just how it was done. And and I know

Jeff Flaxman 31:46
there was better because I know pump technology was starting to come out. I mean, this is my dad passed in 2000. So the early stages. I mean, they've been there for a while, but they're starting to become more and more mainstream at that time.

Scott Benner 31:59
Okay, but but nobody was talking. Yeah,

Jeff Flaxman 32:02
it just wasn't even brought up that idea. Wasn't there? Like I'd heard about it in the magazine. Like that's stupid. I don't want to be a robot.

Scott Benner 32:09
Yeah. Okay. All right. Okay. All right, Jeff. Yeah, let me wrap my head around this for a second throwing a morning. Cheese. Sometimes I do these more midday and I'm a little more awake. I'm not not awake right now. But it's, um, you know, this is the part in the show where, you know, like a secondary character comes in and has like a happy moment so that we all don't look for a window to jump out and

Unknown Speaker 32:37
we'll get there. Yeah. Okay.

Scott Benner 32:41
I'm sorry about your father, your father passes away from lung cancer. Sounds quick. Not that this matters. But Mike's dad passed away from cancer around the same time very quickly. He says, I'm just now realizing that I met my wife in probably around 94. ish. And she was still in college. And I remember being I was visiting her. She went to college about an hour and a half away. And I think everyone knows what I mean. When I say I was visiting Kelly at college. I was visiting Kellyanne Conway,

Jeff Flaxman 33:15
you guys are playing straight like it

Scott Benner 33:17
get what right? Yeah, we were just go fish a lot of times, and then right to charades. Then I would go home. And Mike called and said, Excuse me. My dad has cancer. He thought he had a hernia. So he went to the doctor. And I remember Mike going and he did have a hernia. I was like, okay, yes, but he also had non Hodgkins lymphoma. And he went from like this big robust guy, to just, I mean, he shrunk to a shrunk away and died. And in two months, you know. And yeah, it was it was really something. And Mike's mom passed away a number of years later from cancer as well. But anyway, I remember driving feverish Lee home through like a state and a half to get to Mike to talk to him. And it had to have been just a couple years before you were experiencing this. But at a younger age, Mike and I were We were in our early 20s. At that point, anyway. Okay, so you're trying your best to stay with your stepmother as much as you can. Your mom? Yeah, I mean, it's lining.

Jeff Flaxman 34:26
It's a rough mix, because at that time, my brother was a senior in high school, and he just moved out of my mom's house, he never went back.

Scott Benner 34:33
Okay. And for all the reasons for all imagining,

Jeff Flaxman 34:36
yeah, so he and I talked a lot. And we communicate. We both did the same sports in school on the same teams. But he just said, I'm not going back there. And I had to,

Scott Benner 34:47
yeah, was there ever any conversation of like, I wish you could come with me.

Jeff Flaxman 34:52
Or if we didn't, we kept our emotions to yourself. Gotcha.

Scott Benner 34:58
We're not to this point. matters. But where does the senior in high school go to live when he leaves his house?

Unknown Speaker 35:05
When he left my stepmom,

Scott Benner 35:06
he Oh, he actually went there and she Yeah,

Jeff Flaxman 35:08
okay, you just stay there. We all had rooms there. He just stayed and never left and my mom was too far down that alcohol pipe. She couldn't fight it.

Scott Benner 35:17
Gotcha. I understand. What's it like living at home with your mom by yourself?

Unknown Speaker 35:25
Um,

Jeff Flaxman 35:26
it was hectic. But that's the best way to say it. It was rough. I, we had gotten to a point we understood each other pretty well, we still would joke and have fun. And I just knew like, well, you're drinking so I'm gonna play video games or hang out with my friends or do my own thing. I'll wake up when I need to catch the bus by myself. I I had it figured out by them.

Scott Benner 35:47
And I'll get older one day, and I'll leave like my brother did.

Unknown Speaker 35:49
Right. And like, and

Jeff Flaxman 35:50
eventually I'll just get older. And that'll be the end of it.

Scott Benner 35:52
I see. Was she working?

Unknown Speaker 35:56
Yes.

Scott Benner 35:58
Trying to imagine how you're getting your medical

Jeff Flaxman 36:00
blueprint company. She worked in ran blueprints that have prints art supply store?

Scott Benner 36:05
I say okay, so enough that she could pay for your insulin and that sort of stuff.

Jeff Flaxman 36:09
Yeah. Well, my father's Carpenter union, like insurance kept and then the all that pension stuff. So money was there for my brother. Okay,

Scott Benner 36:19
okay. Were you in charge of going, like, making doctor's appointments and getting your medications and things like that?

Jeff Flaxman 36:26
No, that again, that's the functional part. She still kept all that together.

Scott Benner 36:30
Okay. She's trying. I mean, I guess for people who don't under like, don't see alcoholism, as a, as a disease would probably be like, what, you know, how could you do this, but she's in her lucid moments, doing her best to take care of what she thinks of as your most pressing needs. Correct. Gotcha. Wow, that's really kind of pretty beautiful, you know, in a strange, strange way.

Jeff Flaxman 36:54
Yeah. in a weird way, but it is. Not. I

Scott Benner 36:56
mean, you know what I mean? Like, it's just, I mean, imagine, imagine having a couple of minutes of looseness, you know, in a day, and when that happens, your your responsibility kicks in, you say, you know, I have to get Jeff, insulin and stuff like that. That's really, um, it's a it's a, it's an interesting look into, into what it feels like to have a kid I guess, you know, even when you're strung because you, you know, it's, it really is interesting, right? If your mom had some sort of adult debilitating cancer that wasn't going to kill her, for example, and she only had a couple hours a day where she could function. No one listening would think, oh, how could she do that? They'd be like, Wow, what a hero. You know,

Jeff Flaxman 37:42
when they relate to the alcohol, that's the stigma connected to the disease. Right?

Scott Benner 37:45
Right. Yeah. Something. Okay. All right, Jeff. Let's not, let's not how much longer Does your mom last?

Jeff Flaxman 37:53
Well, about a year. Okay. She gets into a pedestrian accident crossing the road gets hit by a guy.

Scott Benner 38:02
Well, I wasn't expecting that, Jeff. Yeah, it was rough. Wow. I'm sorry. Ah, I you know, I just felt like we were building to you know, something else. Oh, my God.

Unknown Speaker 38:15
No, it was quick.

Scott Benner 38:16
Were you with you weren't with her. Were you know, No,

Jeff Flaxman 38:19
I wasn't home. She went out and Oh,

Scott Benner 38:23
my God. Now you're by yourself. How old?

Jeff Flaxman 38:26
Um, shoot me thinking that sophomore? I would have been

Unknown Speaker 38:32
15

Scott Benner 38:33
Are you okay? By the way while we're talking?

Jeff Flaxman 38:36
It's coming and going.

Unknown Speaker 38:37
I'll be right. Okay.

Scott Benner 38:39
I just listened for everybody else. This was Jeff's idea. Okay, he reached out to me. I'm not torturing him. He wanted to be on the boat. I did this to myself. Yeah, exactly. Well, you know, Oh, my God. Oh, that's terrible. Okay, so, who handles a funeral when there's a 15 year old at home and a senior in high school? Who's not living at home? Like, is that follows family plan? Yeah, family came in. When that happens. Is there any noise from your sister? Like, I'm gonna take care of you now from her sister about like, who like was there a will like who you left to?

Jeff Flaxman 39:17
Well, that was the elephant in the room. That was the weird thing. I was at the hospital because the police came brought me there. And they asked who can we call? So I knew we had family friends that were close. And I said call them

Scott Benner 39:31
yeah. You really didn't even feel like you had anybody left right.

Jeff Flaxman 39:37
Yeah, that form I stepped out there with the two but brain just didn't go to step on that time. It went to my family friends. Gotcha.

Scott Benner 39:44
Okay. Were you in a home were you renting? No, it was

Jeff Flaxman 39:51
a home my parents owned Okay, we're not own the bank owned it but we were there making payments.

Scott Benner 39:57
What happens to that house is it just get absorbed by the bank?

Jeff Flaxman 40:02
Um, no, my aunt put together everything and sold it.

Unknown Speaker 40:07
She was and that

Scott Benner 40:09
money goes to I'm assuming debt and then to you and your brother

Jeff Flaxman 40:12
debt first so most of it debt and the rest was split between my brother.

Unknown Speaker 40:17
Okay? Wow

Jeff Flaxman 40:21
I'm my brother's in college so he can't afford a house or anything and he's going through what a college freshman goes through so he's got his own hobbies you call him out in school? All right. Well not bad but you know the college experience.

Scott Benner 40:35
Yeah, no, I understand. Yeah, there's he's, he's focused on other things. And where do you go to live? That family

Jeff Flaxman 40:43
I went home with that night I just they took me on. Wow, that's

Scott Benner 40:49
that do you bounce around from there? Because, you know, I

Jeff Flaxman 40:53
actually stay with them. I don't keep traveling back and forth to my mom's at that time.

Scott Benner 40:57
Okay. It was was your mom's death the end of your relationship with your stepmother?

Jeff Flaxman 41:05
No, no, I was with her. She comes into the store again, I'm

Scott Benner 41:07
a little bit worried. Okay. Geez, you really should write all this down, by the way, cuz this isn't

Unknown Speaker 41:13
nice. I've tried

Scott Benner 41:15
at least a season and a half of the Friday Night Lights TV show for one of the characters so you could kind of there I can see it. Yeah, no kidding. We just put a football game around this and some sad music. And I think we'd be okay,

Jeff Flaxman 41:27
Texas, playing in the Qatar summer. And I

Unknown Speaker 41:29
really feel like this would work. Like goodness.

Jeff Flaxman 41:34
A new family takes me in Yeah. They try to understand diabetes, they transition me to a new doctor. The benefit at this time because I'm technically an orphan, I guess you'd say free healthcare from the state that that's

Scott Benner 41:48
finally something good happens.

Jeff Flaxman 41:50
program. Everything's covered. I'd pay a dime for anything ever.

Scott Benner 41:54
Does that lead you to? When do you get to a more modern way of management? When do you start counting carbs? And oh, God,

Jeff Flaxman 42:03
not till after college?

Scott Benner 42:04
No kidding. Okay. All right. It's like

Jeff Flaxman 42:05
2000 to 2008 2009 when I started counting carbs, and we're only in 2001 right now.

Scott Benner 42:12
So these next few years, are you living with this family who bring who brought you in and finishing high school?

Jeff Flaxman 42:17
I lived with them for a year. And then they had a family strife, a divorce there. And I just said, You know what, I don't need this again. And we agreed I just moved in with my stepmom for the rest of high school there. She took me

Scott Benner 42:28
was that was that traumatic to watch the family that took you in? start experiencing the things where your life started to unwind years earlier?

Unknown Speaker 42:37
Not really.

Unknown Speaker 42:39
No, you weren't?

Unknown Speaker 42:40
I think I'd

Unknown Speaker 42:41
become numb to it by that.

Scott Benner 42:42
Okay. And so I have to ask you at this point, are you doing anything to help yourself that? I shouldn't have said Help yourself. But are you? are you managing your pain anyway? Are you doing drugs? Are you drinking? Like, are you how are you handling everything that's happening to you?

Jeff Flaxman 43:00
None of it I I started working a part time job at a local restaurant and just I focused myself on work on school on sports, and that was my escape.

Scott Benner 43:12
And that's just sort of your personality to this day.

Jeff Flaxman 43:15
I mean, I drink now so but I'm also 34. But I know I never went in. I guess the call that the amazing part. I just never saw that as an option. Gotcha.

Scott Benner 43:26
Well, that's excellent. I doesn't occur to me. My life's not been great. A lot of different junctures. And I don't I've never I've never been into numbing myself ever. And I don't know. I'm not I'm not morally opposed to it. If you know what I mean. And I just did yeah. And I just don't, and I never have like even I'll tell you right now I'm I turned 49 the other day. If I've had the equivalent of a case of beer in the last 30 years, I would say that's probably an over exaggeration. Oh, good. No, yeah. I just it just does not occur to me to do and I don't

Jeff Flaxman 44:04
at that time, that my age of 1516 1718 up through high school. I never touched the stuff. Gotcha.

Scott Benner 44:11
I'm friends were you just it was just friends and work and just young friends.

Jeff Flaxman 44:18
Sports, some video games here and there.

Scott Benner 44:20
And take care your diabetes.

Jeff Flaxman 44:22
Oh, wasn't perfect in school, but maintained right?

Scott Benner 44:26
GPA? Hmm, is this how do you how do you decide that you want to be a teacher? When does that pop into your head?

Jeff Flaxman 44:33
Um, throughout late high school, I had some good teachers there and I'm like, wow, these guys get it. They talked to me like I'm an adult and I think I could do this. Wow. Okay.

Scott Benner 44:43
And is it a conscious feeling of like, there are gonna be other kids like me one day and they're gonna need somebody like these people.

Jeff Flaxman 44:50
Well, that's a lot of it's like, I can reach an audience of kids. Most teachers can't, because they don't have the shared experience. Right.

Scott Benner 44:57
Are you still in the Chicago area Yeah,

Jeff Flaxman 45:00
we're in the northwest suburbs there. So about a, I don't know, 4050 miles out of the city. Okay. All right.

Scott Benner 45:08
So you go to college for you get into college

Jeff Flaxman 45:13
at Eastern Illinois. So down here you buy champagne. And start as a history major, because I loved history. But early on, I realized the heck am I going to do with a history degree? I mean, that's not really a applicable job skill. And I'm sorry, to anyone who's listening. But I don't know what you do with a history degree besides become a professor or a teacher. So that's the world I went.

Scott Benner 45:35
Yeah. Yeah, I guess poetry maybe would be along there to

Jeff Flaxman 45:39
possibly it's in there.

Scott Benner 45:41
Although Wouldn't it be nice to just pick something like that and just sort of lose yourself studying,

Jeff Flaxman 45:46
get through historic documents understand the past and make a living wage doing it? It would have been great, but it just wasn't feasible, not how it works. Yeah.

Scott Benner 45:54
Do you meet your wife in college?

Jeff Flaxman 45:57
I do. We meet early on in high school in college freshman year. And hit it off pretty well dated the whole time through and kind of ever since. So we've been together since 2004. How slowly

Scott Benner 46:08
do disseminate your life story to someone when you meet them like this?

Jeff Flaxman 46:12
Ah, just sprinkle it in. It's like a little bit of salt on a meal there. You don't want to dump it all at once because it ruins it. They get sprinkled in here and there. Yeah,

Scott Benner 46:18
just your six eight months in and you're just like, Oh, you know, like that time my dad got cancer and then you just roll right past. She's like, wait, what do you say?

Jeff Flaxman 46:26
You just drop a little bit and I told her that the big parts of it their parents deceased and all that but kept the details out of it for

Scott Benner 46:33
No kidding. I would make sure she was pretty locked down before I started telling Rob

Jeff Flaxman 46:37
didn't want to scare him away too fast. I'm lucky she decided to stay with me anyways, so I got

the keep that one say without all this. You're saying? Oh yeah, I mean, just my personality and kind of a don't budge. I'm stubborn. And you know what? standard guy thing and she's the same? Yeah. No, I

Scott Benner 46:53
I always wonder when Kelly's gonna grow tired of all this and just be like, Alright, that's enough, buddy. Yeah,

Jeff Flaxman 47:01
this was fun while it lasted.

Scott Benner 47:03
We've had this conversation one too many times. But no, no, that's okay. So you guys meet in college? And does she I'm not looking for where she works. But she have a similar path that she

Jeff Flaxman 47:16
does. Yeah, she's a teacher. Also, she taught for a while. She stays at home with the kids now for a second was born. She taught the elementary grades. So kindergarten and second.

Scott Benner 47:25
Teachers seem to fit together really well.

Jeff Flaxman 47:27
We do. One bonus of this. This COVID time here. My daughter started kindergarten and thank god my wife was a kindergarten teacher.

Scott Benner 47:36
Yes. So she's just so your your poor daughter is getting some one on one attention. Hmm.

Jeff Flaxman 47:41
Yeah, she's, uh, that poor girls gonna be impacted too much by she,

Scott Benner 47:45
she won't know anything. She's just like, I don't know, my mom just pulled out a bunch of papers. And we started going.

Jeff Flaxman 47:51
And we empty the crawlspace and built a little classroom in our dining room the other day. That's really nice.

Scott Benner 47:56
Okay, so you're out of college. Now?

Jeff Flaxman 48:00
Well, in college is where it gets messy to wait, hold

Scott Benner 48:02
on, I'm sorry, something else is gonna happen.

Unknown Speaker 48:05
Not bad, but

Jeff Flaxman 48:06
the insurance and stuff. This is where when I was less than 18 years old, the state covered everything.

Unknown Speaker 48:13
Okay. But

Jeff Flaxman 48:14
as I turn 18, the state does not cover my medicine.

Scott Benner 48:18
And you're in college.

Jeff Flaxman 48:19
And I'm in college and insulin prices aren't what they are now. But they were still expensive. Sure. Well, how do I get the whole like school insurance? Can I get on yours? And like, Well, you could but there's not enough kids that are part of it. Your insulin would not be any cheaper here than it is retail at the store.

Unknown Speaker 48:36
What do you ended up doing?

Unknown Speaker 48:38
I paid for it.

Unknown Speaker 48:40
You were working while you were in school.

Jeff Flaxman 48:43
I was a resident assistant for two years there. And then I stayed summers on campus to work there that whole time and just worked my way through. I mean, I got a lot of grants because of my situation having no parental income. So school was relatively covered by grants and all that was able to skate by

Scott Benner 49:02
by so I'm going to take a detour for a second and ask you sort of a bigger question. Sure. I sometimes look back on my life. I was adopted like it, you know, in the in the first days of my life, my parents divorced when I was young. I became sort of my de facto father for my two younger brothers. I watched my mom struggle I got jobs in places where I didn't fit like I used to work in a sheetmetal shop and I'm not a sheetmetal worker, but I went and I did it you know for five years. Making people listening now would be shocked by this but i think i think i got that job at for 25 an hour. And by the time I left it five years later, I believe I was making 575 an hour so it was a real you know real moneymaker for me.

Jeff Flaxman 49:51
It's a good percentage growth though. If you look at it that way.

Scott Benner 49:53
If you look at it that way, I was really on my way to something. Probably by the time I was 60. I would have been making somewhere in the seven Are $8 range? Nice? Yeah. Oh no, for sure. Really hard work, tough extreme conditions. I didn't belong there not meaning like I was too good for it or anything like that just I didn't have the skill set. I didn't grow up around people who worked with their hands. That I was wrong, I was out, I was a fish out of water. I left that I'm still on the hook to, you know, I used to tease my brothers, I was like, my kids are gonna be great, because I've made every conceivable mistake with you guys. So now I can I can look back and see what's going on. Anyway, there's a trial by fire nature to my life. And there certainly is to yours like you, your life actually makes my life seem like I was part of the Brady Bunch. So how valuable do you think that is? Now as an adult with kids? The struggle?

Jeff Flaxman 50:51
It's tough. Because I, I want to raise them the way I know. But my experience there is they're not shared by other people. So what I think of it, this is what you have to do. These are the essentials. Apparently, I guess I'm asking a lot of my kids at times like, well, this is just what you have to do. There is no choice type thing.

Scott Benner 51:09
So it's skewed. Obviously skewed your understanding of like family life and your that's probably something that you have to work through everyday. But what about you, you personally like? Are you a tough person? Like, could I just pick you up and take you to another country and drop you alone? Where you didn't speak the language? You think you just be okay.

Unknown Speaker 51:28
I'd probably survive. Yeah,

Scott Benner 51:29
yeah. No kidding.

Jeff Flaxman 51:31
I find a way to get through it. I mean, that's that that hardened exterior, I guess, right? Just, I can pretty much take about anything you're gonna throw it.

Scott Benner 51:40
I usually tell people privately, like when the zombies come, you come find me because we're getting through it. You know, like, I'm not going down like that. And I have that sort of like, when things go wrong. I don't think like, I don't have a woe is me feeling ever. I'm always like, okay,

Unknown Speaker 51:59
that's gone.

Scott Benner 52:00
Yeah. How do I attack this? Where do I like where, you know, where's my in here? What can I make work? What am I gonna have to do to get this right for me again. And I know, that's not probably a completely healthy way to live. But I do think it came from how I grew up, I'm imagining you have it a similar,

Jeff Flaxman 52:18
it's that I think about survival mode is what I go into, I

Scott Benner 52:21
look at these are the things that absolutely have to do have to get done. And they will get done. And I'm able to kind of ignore the rest. Do you have any abandonment issues? Like do you feel like your family's about to be taken from you constantly?

Jeff Flaxman 52:33
No, I don't think so at all, I've been very blessed with the people that took me in when they did,

Scott Benner 52:38
yeah, so you have that coverage in your, in your mind, I just I I used to at the very beginning of my marriage, I was very over, aware that like, I never wanted there to be a problem. Because to me, it felt like a problem was gonna just start me down this road that I watched my family go down and didn't end up being the case, obviously, and I don't feel like that anymore. But in the beginning, I just didn't want anybody to fight ever. I was like, if someone fights, you know what's gonna happen, you're gonna move out, this is gonna happen, we're all gonna be broke, my kids are gonna end up raising each other, like you have that like that horrible feeling of like, you know, like, this is gonna repeat itself. I don't feel like that anymore. But I did when I was younger. So I wasn't sure I had that when I was younger. But now I

Jeff Flaxman 53:25
guess I can see through that. And when my wife and I do have an argument, I'm like, Look, this. This is not worth the time. We're spending on it right now. There is so much bigger things and I guess I'm able to move past it.

Scott Benner 53:37
I feel the same. I actually feel like I'm sure everyone does. But if I could just live a couple 100 years, I think I'd be really great. By the time I was like 170 like I really just

Jeff Flaxman 53:46
get figured out there. I

Scott Benner 53:48
really think I'm getting this figured out. Yeah, I just feel like I started in a whole you know, it took a while. Just a

Jeff Flaxman 53:55
few feet behind everyone else. Yeah. Well,

Scott Benner 53:58
that's pretty generous, but I yeah, okay. So when do you guys get married?

Jeff Flaxman 54:04
Oh, we get married in 2011. So that's she graduated college and Oh, wait, I graduated in oh nine because I took a victory lap there. I did. So well. The first four I needed one more year.

Scott Benner 54:19
I didn't leave enough of my money here with your people. Let me

Jeff Flaxman 54:23
Yeah, exactly. Hang on. We got married in 2011. And that's when I was actually able to start looking at diabetes and saying, you know this, it's not going anywhere. I've got the job thing figured out. I've got I'm engaged. I'm going to be married. I guess I should probably figure out this diabetes thing though.

Scott Benner 54:40
Okay. And so in

Jeff Flaxman 54:42
college I and this is going to be awful to anyone in college to hear but I probably tested my blood sugar maybe 6070 times throughout those five years, maybe because test strips were expensive and I knew I needed the insulin I could You'd probably make it without the test strips.

Scott Benner 55:03
Okay, so you just sort of eyeballed it. Like, based on the past, you're like, Oh, I should give myself about this much insulin here and my blood. Yes, probably it

Jeff Flaxman 55:11
was still on the 7030 mix for most of that time there. So

Unknown Speaker 55:16
I'm like, Well, I

Jeff Flaxman 55:17
think we go here it goes, they're on. There were a few more of the dangerous lows and highs a few times there, throughout all that, because that that 7030 mix at a time, it would be like stack on yourself so much of the long acting, and then it would all just dump at one time.

Scott Benner 55:32
How much of your diabetes was your girlfriend in college, like aware of?

Unknown Speaker 55:37
Ah, God,

Jeff Flaxman 55:38
even to this day? I haven't done a good job of teaching her What's going on? Like I was talking to her last night about this. She knew I had the this coming up. Yeah. Like you realize, I really don't know what you do with diabetes that much at all.

Scott Benner 55:52
It's interesting. Now I don't get so

Jeff Flaxman 55:53
programmed to self care.

Scott Benner 55:57
Yeah, I don't find it to be uncommon for many people that I talk to honestly, it's, it is it is either just one or the other. I've nobody's No one's ever said anything in the middle. They're always just like, Ah, it's on me. She doesn't really know he doesn't really know. Or it's or it's, oh, no, we're in this together. And it seems to be more wrapped around the timing of when the person was diagnosed. So what probably what care must have been like for them, then versus now when you can share it with somebody and, and think I'm just so used to dealing with it myself. I

Jeff Flaxman 56:28
just continue to like, I'll tell her how the doctor's appointments go. And when, hey, there's a low coming on here. The sensors telling me so I'm a you're in charge of the kids for the next 20 minutes while I battle? This monster here,

Scott Benner 56:40
huh? Yeah. And I mean, where would you even begin for to understand it, you know,

Jeff Flaxman 56:45
I have no idea. But I know how to do a better job. And that's kind of my goal.

Scott Benner 56:49
Okay. So so when you when you move into what we would call more like modern care? How long did it take you to figure it out?

Unknown Speaker 57:00
Well, I

Jeff Flaxman 57:00
started a pump in 2011, in probably eight years, seven, eight years. So 2018 about is when I really started buckling down and figuring things out here. So were you just sort of using the pump as a way to not have to inject.

Unknown Speaker 57:15
That's basically

Jeff Flaxman 57:16
what it was from about 2011 all the way until 2017 2018. It was I I had the education but at that time, I'm a hot shot like 25 year old I don't need to pay attention to what you're telling me. I've had this disease since I'm 12. What do you know? Yeah, Mr. Doctor guy.

Scott Benner 57:32
Yeah, that's um, another common

Jeff Flaxman 57:38
man, which was tremendous myself. I was stupid. Do that. No. But listen to the professionals. Yeah, I'm

Scott Benner 57:43
not saying no, I'm just saying it's a it's a pretty common feeling after you've been living with it for a while to just feel like, I don't want your help.

Jeff Flaxman 57:52
Yeah, but I was on the Medtronic pump system, and I still am today, which kind of makes me feel like a pariah being talked to by you and you Dexcom people there.

Scott Benner 58:02
You know, Jeff, it's funny. I hear people say sometimes, like, I'll see you online. Like I saw somebody that they say, Oh, you should try his podcast, especially if you have an omni pod and Dexcom. And I'm like, Is it really any different if you have a tandem and a Libra like it? It's not I don't have an allegiance to it. I know, people probably laugh to hear that. It's what my daughter uses. I know it to be really what you know, it's just what I know. And yeah,

Jeff Flaxman 58:25
and I, I don't really take any offense to it, your stuff is helpful. I mean, hearing a lot of that stuff that resonated with me, and I was able to implement a lot of the steps there myself.

Scott Benner 58:35
Thank you, Jeff. And I do have like, you know, I have in the past and I remain I I don't, I don't appreciate what I feel like I saw Medtronic doing around trying to close insurance coverage around just their pumps. And I thought that was pretty shaky, and I didn't like it. So I set it out loud. One time. You know what I mean? I

Unknown Speaker 58:58
I get it. Yeah.

Jeff Flaxman 59:01
I'm on that for so 2011. Yeah, sometime I eventually, like adapted and like 2013 2014 around there. I got there first. CGM, which I think was the enlight sensor is the one Medtronic had then but I didn't wear it. I didn't like it.

Scott Benner 59:21
Was the was the sensor wire? Like? I've heard people describe it as a harpoon was it is was it really bad?

Jeff Flaxman 59:28
I don't think so. No, I mean, I, I'm kind of weird. If my pain tolerance there were I wouldn't even use the inserter I would just kind of find the spot and just stab myself with it and

Scott Benner 59:37
just push it through with a hammer if you have to.

Jeff Flaxman 59:40
Yeah, like sometimes it hurt a little bit. But I was able to do it just got through. But what made it really difficult is I coached wrestling and my teaching job where I was at, okay, and I'm not sure if you're familiar with the sport at all, but wrestling with this thing hanging off your body there didn't play well together at all. So I tried By the sensor and then it would just get ripped out halfway through a practice.

Scott Benner 1:00:04
Yeah, I don't see how grappling. Does that make a big scene about it like,

Unknown Speaker 1:00:07
Oh my gosh, I'm dying.

Scott Benner 1:00:10
Yeah, I don't see how grappling and then that sensor would be would work together that well,

Jeff Flaxman 1:00:16
it didn't it didn't go well at all. But I would wear it maybe one week every two months because at that time the sensor only last. I think three or four days is all that one would last before you'd have to change it again.

Scott Benner 1:00:28
Hey, why do wrestlers ears get big and weird?

Jeff Flaxman 1:00:32
Ah, that's it's called cauliflower ear. So when they wrestle too much they don't wear protective covering over their ears in practice. And really the simplest term is the cartilage in the ear breaks and then re calcifies harder.

Unknown Speaker 1:00:45
Gotcha. So that's

Jeff Flaxman 1:00:46
what's happening the whole time. So it breaks re calcifies. And it breaks again, Re calcifies until it turns into this closed thing that is gross looking.

Scott Benner 1:00:55
Then my second wrestling question is how do I get ringworm from the mat? Why is that a thing? These are the all I know myself.

Jeff Flaxman 1:01:04
Because those mats are stored in usually a hot place. Like when they're rolled up. It's a environment with a little bit of sweat that's on it and the close quarters, it's able to live inside that, uh, I don't even know what the material is called, but it's able to live there.

Scott Benner 1:01:20
And then you get your face rubbed into it a couple of times. Yeah.

Jeff Flaxman 1:01:23
back of your head face. I mean, there's any number of things that could be gotcha. Oh,

Scott Benner 1:01:27
by the way, that's all I know about wrestling. That was the entirety of it right there.

Jeff Flaxman 1:01:32
Well, you know, you're not alone in that. That's those are all pretty common things. Yes. I asked

Scott Benner 1:01:36
the The only thing I could say from here is Jimmy Superfly, snuka. And then I'm kind of I'm kind of done with wrestling. And then you're out what I know. I do remember us all getting together to watch those like big wrestling pay per view events when I was we were kids. But I do also remember thinking I don't want to be doing this.

Jeff Flaxman 1:01:59
I don't know sports talk with me. It was good. I was I was good at it. And I just I enjoy that it teaches that independence. Maybe it matches myself there like you're the only one out there against another person. And as close as you can get to a fistfight. I can tell you, it's gonna come out some

Scott Benner 1:02:14
of the toughest people I know wrestle. So it's not it's it's brutal. It's killer. Yeah, it's not it's not surprising to me that you did it, actually.

Jeff Flaxman 1:02:23
But I coached that for a while. But then my second child was born and I couldn't manage the schedule to coach and do that. So in 2018 that was when I'm like, I'm not doing this anymore. I don't have an excuse to not wear the sensor. It's time I do this. Right.

Scott Benner 1:02:39
And one of the things I'm sorry to say I'm sorry, how old

Jeff Flaxman 1:02:44
I'm 32 years old by then like, you know, I've had this for 20 years. Let's Let's kick this in the tail. Gotcha.

Scott Benner 1:02:49
And what happened after you made the decision to pay more attention and and do this in a more so I started

Jeff Flaxman 1:02:56
like that seeing that sensor data was so eye opening at that time was like, holy cow. This is what's been going on between my testing times like I ate breakfast the normal breakfast there, and I'm feeling fine. I tested for lunch numbers are good, but I didn't realize that. Like I just had some beeps going off here on mine that my breakfast shot up a little faster than avoided because of the coffee and come down. I didn't know the roller coaster I was on.

Scott Benner 1:03:22
Yeah. What's the first step when you realize what's happening?

Unknown Speaker 1:03:27
Ah,

Jeff Flaxman 1:03:28
and first it's that frustration like what the heck did I do wrong? Like what where did I mess up? I followed this and then it I mean, you know it you hear it all the time it comes down to change the basil rates there, push them up here, slow them down there, carve a little extra there. And I think my whole life I grew up with that fear of insulin scary. That I mean, that stuff can kill you. So I was always hesitant to give myself too much.

Scott Benner 1:03:54
Yeah, why we said it earlier. Right. Don't get low. Don't pass out don't get dizzy. Yeah,

Jeff Flaxman 1:03:57
I mean, that was my fear. Like low is terrifying. High is gonna kill me in the long run. But lows, those are terrifying. I don't want those.

Scott Benner 1:04:04
What's that sentence mean to you? Like, it's gonna kill me in the long run? Did you ever think it meant you know, when you were 40? Or did you just think it meant is just something you didn't? I don't

Jeff Flaxman 1:04:14
think I never placed a timestamp on it. I want it to be but I knew by probably Gosh, by my late 20s, early 30s I knew the higher my blood sugar was the longer the more long term damage. I was opening myself up.

Scott Benner 1:04:28
Yeah, I just think that cognitively people don't Delve too deeply into what that means when they make the trade from that when they feel like they're trading now for later. Yeah, you know, it's some people's later will be you know, I don't know I'll die when I'm 72 instead of when I'm 75 but not not, you know, people don't think of it as you know. I'm gonna need laser surgery in my eyes when I'm 30 like, yeah, that's not that's not how your brain wraps around it. I guess. It's self present still, like my eyes.

Jeff Flaxman 1:04:58
I'm still further The heck I put myself through there in high school and college, barely testing. Who knows what those numbers were. I mean, I didn't have an A one c check from the time I was 16 until I was like 22. It just didn't happen because it wasn't in the cards. I didn't have insurance. I couldn't really go to a doctor, I was able to my family doctor would renew prescriptions without seeing me because I knew I couldn't afford.

Scott Benner 1:05:21
Yeah, they were trying to help you quote unquote,

Jeff Flaxman 1:05:24
yes, yeah. And it was it kept me alive. Sure.

Scott Benner 1:05:27
No, hey, listen. I mean, I, I always think of that. That movie where the climber gets his arm pinned under the Boulder, and after a couple of days, cuts it off with a pen knife. And I think of like, the enemy. Like, yeah, you just make the best decision in that moment. You can to just live for one more second, you know, like, you're just like, and that's how I think of sometimes how I think of a lot of your stories of diabetes. And back in the day of people just like trying to get through today, this hour this day. Yeah, I'm gonna

Jeff Flaxman 1:05:57
I'm gonna tackle today and tomorrow. I'll worry about tomorrow.

Scott Benner 1:05:59
Yeah, yeah, it's a it's a, a real luxury of the technology that we can all sit around now and look at this data and think about, you know, look at it at a more micro level and then start to consider macro out over the years based on you know, I can I can keep this a one c like this forever. If I want to now, like I know how to do Yeah, yeah, it's a it's a luxury for certain.

Jeff Flaxman 1:06:23
I mean, by 2018, two kids, I'm managing things a lot better. The lows are really ever happening, the highs, before I could see a 240 and say, 220, I'll deal with it. But now, once it gets above 150 on the sensor, I'm like, What are you doing? Stop it. And then I started attacking and correcting. That's excellent.

Scott Benner 1:06:43
I'm happy for you. What are your What are your agencies like now? I'm

Jeff Flaxman 1:06:48
low 70s for a while. And then probably a year ago, now I jumped to the 670 G, and I've been on their auto or auto mode. They're the semi closed loop system since then, that bring you down more? We'd like to say that.

Scott Benner 1:07:04
Can we say that with any Honestly?

Jeff Flaxman 1:07:07
I can't it has at this point. There is that frustration? I'm sure you're well aware of it, the whole FDA or whoever it is that doesn't let them set a lower target in there. Like when I go through it, and I noticed my blood sugar's at 140, which isn't bad. But I see the arrows up, I know what's coming. And I try to get myself a Bolus in that mode to autocorrect. And it's like, No, no, you're not above 150 you can't pull us right now. We'll take care of it in the algorithm there.

Scott Benner 1:07:36
Do you have to get out of the loop somehow to do that, then,

Jeff Flaxman 1:07:39
I mean, I could exit the loop and then go back into it to fix it there. I mean, that's the correct way to do it. But most of the time, I will go to Bolus which I know is a no no. And I should slap myself on the wrist for that. Well yeah, like I'm gonna take care of it myself because you're not doing it fast enough.

Scott Benner 1:07:57
Right. I think you're just adapting the I mean, you said it to the FDA set limits on on where they could have targets and you know, I think the one you're using is basically the first one out the door so there's

Jeff Flaxman 1:08:08
Yeah, it's only gonna get better for all their companies from here and I'll for sure

Scott Benner 1:08:13
yeah, good for you know, I think do what you need to do. I would I have thought you're gonna say you injected a little insight i didn't know i i don't know why just pretending carbs went in didn't occur to me. I just think after talking to you for an hour I was like he probably just stick some insulin in his leg real quick with the knee.

Jeff Flaxman 1:08:30
Oh, I I have a box of needles here but I haven't touched a needle system in a long time. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:08:37
we have the same needles from ardens diagnosis still like we use probably three a year maybe you don't I mean

Jeff Flaxman 1:08:44
that's just so foreign to me. Yes. He was diagnosed so young and

Scott Benner 1:08:49
pump that whole time I mean good for her. Yeah, it's very cool. It really is. It just it makes me happy to think that she and just all the other people who are coming online you know today in the in the recent past have access and at least the hope you know, I know everybody can't afford it and some people don't have insurance obviously that that's helpful and that is sickening. But just that that exists and that people are talking about it differently. I just interviewed an 18 year old girl yesterday who was struggling and she said she came in one day and her endo just said look i don't i I'm not getting through to you. I think you should listen to this podcast. And and hurry one season the is is is incredible. Now it went down like two points. But the point is is that like that the doctor didn't just for the rest of her life. Just let her agency sit in the eights and go I don't know like you and I don't jive together so I guess this is your life. The doctor for that

Jeff Flaxman 1:09:47
doctor that was good for her to have that doctor.

Scott Benner 1:09:49
I thought so too. Yeah, we're just really interesting. The way it goes. All right, Jeff, listen. Did we miss anything? Did your Did you have five cats run away? You know, I

Unknown Speaker 1:10:01
mean?

Jeff Flaxman 1:10:03
I think that's the ups and downs. There's probably some more in there. But then the diabetes, we don't need to go deep into the rabbit hole here. Yeah, no,

Scott Benner 1:10:11
no, I didn't. It's tough. At one point about halfway through I, I heard your voice break. And I was like, Oh, I

Jeff Flaxman 1:10:16
was breaking up a little bit there. But I,

Scott Benner 1:10:19
I got through it too for you. It's is it cathartic to talk about? Or just is it not something you think about much anymore?

Jeff Flaxman 1:10:27
I don't think about it. And I usually call it my fatal flaw there. But I like to keep emotions buried down deep where they belong. Gotcha. Jeff,

Unknown Speaker 1:10:35
Catholic Jeff, by any chance?

Jeff Flaxman 1:10:37
No, my wife is. So I've got a little scene next to my okay.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:41
She could teach you how to

Jeff Flaxman 1:10:44
teach me and I go through the motions and nod my head I understand.

Scott Benner 1:10:49
That's really accent and you said, you mentioned your two younger kids. The no signs of diabetes. Where do you stand on looking? Do you do trialnet? Or do you just wait and see? Ah, no, I'm

Jeff Flaxman 1:11:01
waiting for the symptoms. Yeah, I like the covers there. I haven't bothered look through the whole DNA genome there to see if it's in there. Because if it is, it's going to hit them anyways. And if it's not, I think I'm Cognizant enough to be aware of when it's happening.

Scott Benner 1:11:15
I think that is a valid stance on this. I think they're, I think everyone's stance on that is valid, but I don't have a way to argue with either the people who are like, I'm just gonna let life unfold and I'll take care of it as I can. Yeah, and if my

Jeff Flaxman 1:11:28
daughter and son they never have to deal with that they can eat all the Reese's Peanut Butter Cups they want good for them.

Scott Benner 1:11:33
Would that be your go to if you didn't have diabetes all the time? Would it be the Almond Joy?

Jeff Flaxman 1:11:37
That coconut is amazing.

Scott Benner 1:11:40
Almond Joy has nuts mounds don't Is that right? I think that's the message you're not old enough to remember those. Those commercials.

Jeff Flaxman 1:11:48
I've got a vague memory of those commercials, but not much.

Scott Benner 1:11:51
I think all the Charlie Brown specials used to be the advertiser was I think mounds and Almond Joy. And you have no idea like like What a crazy like, you know, even you were too young for that. But the idea that like once a year, you know, the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown would come on like the day before that before Halloween. And

Jeff Flaxman 1:12:12
I remember little that as a kid, but it was more for a nostalgia. It wasn't like a huge viewing event that

Scott Benner 1:12:17
oh my god, no matter where you were, like the entire world just ran home to watch Charlie Brown. It was you know, you it was gonna happen and then it was going to be going again. And you couldn't you couldn't find it or rewatch I remember when it came out on DVD, or VHS. Maybe VHS, VHS. And the idea that I could just watch the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown at my leisure was mind numbing,

Jeff Flaxman 1:12:41
though Yeah, that's, I see it with kids now to like in this world of Netflix and Hulu and Disney plus, like, my children don't know what a commercial is on TV. Yeah. If they can't go from one Mickey Mouse Club house directly into the second one, they think something's wrong in the world, something's happened. Well, you

Scott Benner 1:12:57
know what the funny thing is that once I had access to it on VHS, I never watched it. And it stopped becoming appointment television at Halloween, because the feeling was there that I could just watch it whenever I want. And so actually having more access to it stopped me from ever watching it again.

Jeff Flaxman 1:13:16
Well, isn't that a strange phenomenon? It really is.

Scott Benner 1:13:18
I think I think that happens to I think the access that you ever do that you ever decide you're going to watch something and spend a half an hour scrolling and then never watch anything. Oh, yeah, that

Jeff Flaxman 1:13:31
happens quite a bit. Like, Ah, man, I need to watch something here. Let's see what's on and then you just, you go into that. It's like getting on a deep Google on something where you're 12 Wikipedia pages in and then you find nothing. By the end of it. You're like, Well, okay, it's

Scott Benner 1:13:43
bedtime. Now I tried. So my point is, which is better?

Unknown Speaker 1:13:46
Now, I have no idea

Jeff Flaxman 1:13:48
why we're not gonna fix that. We're better so because you watched it. It was on you knew it was there. And that was it. I'll

Scott Benner 1:13:53
tell you what, those commercials work. I've never had a mouse or an almond joy in my life. But I could sing that damn song If I had to. So

Jeff Flaxman 1:13:59
yeah, those those advertisers know what they're doing.

Scott Benner 1:14:02
They certainly do. Jeff, I can't thank you enough for opening this wound and sharing it with everybody your

Jeff Flaxman 1:14:09
email, able to help some other parents out there or even people that have it that I mean, life can throw a lot at you. But it's I don't know, I say that it's not an excuse to give up.

Scott Benner 1:14:21
Is that like, I never do this on this podcast ever. But if I said to you, like, leave people with a message is what is the message? Like, how did you get through all this?

Jeff Flaxman 1:14:34
I, I just saw it as there was no other choice. I mean, I had to get through it. Yeah.

Scott Benner 1:14:41
All right. So nothing we can pass on to people. I think, by the way, too. It's a fallacy. The idea that Jeff knows something that if you just knew your life or your kid's life would go better. I think that your reaction to all these things that happen is, is classically who you are and you know it worked out for you because That's your personality. And maybe that's a little dumb luck even, you know,

Jeff Flaxman 1:15:03
I think there's a heavy amount of dumb luck in my life, I've kind of always tend to fall forward on things. I mean, sometimes yes, sometimes No, but I've always found the best in that situation.

Scott Benner 1:15:13
Yeah, I might have to name this episode falling forward. Because there's, I don't know what else I would call it to be perfectly honest. I really appreciate you doing this. I genuinely do.

Unknown Speaker 1:15:25
Oh, no, I enjoyed

Jeff Flaxman 1:15:26
it. I mean, it's a little rough at times there. But I again, I hope that I'm able to help. Even in teaching, I see it as like, I noticed a kid with diabetes come into class, I instantly try to connect with them and say, Hey, what's your numbers out there?

Scott Benner 1:15:39
Yeah, he used your full name when you introduced yourself, if not that, I don't know how they would. But if one of your students ended up hearing this, you're fine with that. Right?

Jeff Flaxman 1:15:50
Yeah, that's fine. If they hear it, they hear it. Yeah. How much? I don't think there's anything incriminating. I

Scott Benner 1:15:56
mean, we'll find out how I didn't mean that. I meant it's personal. But I meant, like, how much of yourself? Do you share with your students? Is that not how that works?

Jeff Flaxman 1:16:04
Um, well, when I was an English teacher, I taught some novels we would read in there and there was death or something like family tragedy, I would connect with him there on that moment to get it across and open up to them a little bit.

Scott Benner 1:16:15
I say, I say that's a, it's a listen, I have to ask you before we go, I think, where do you stand on? I mean, we're recording this in August 2020. Yeah. Where do you stand on going back and being in a classroom for kids? As far as team like, what's your thought?

Jeff Flaxman 1:16:36
Well, I in my school, I teach it, I'm on the committee's to figure out how to do that. And we've all come to the agreement that it's a lose lose situation, whatever choice a school makes, someone's going to end up losing their correct choice right now.

Scott Benner 1:16:52
Can we please everyone? Can kids be taught effectively over video?

Jeff Flaxman 1:16:58
Yeah, older kids, definitely, I have my concerns on how an elementary first, second, third grade will do it. And it's not so much the kids can't learn. My concern is I don't know how many teachers have the skill set to make a successful video to interact with him that way and have that technology knowledge behind them to manage all of it is

Scott Benner 1:17:20
is are you finding that some teachers just don't have the desire to be, like, put on video like this is they find it embarrassing? Oh,

Jeff Flaxman 1:17:28
definitely some that like, I'm not recording myself, they're not comfortable doing that. I mean, I teach. Now I teach like a stem in technology class, and I have no issues making videos and YouTubes. And I do some video editing in the background and making things so I don't have a problem with it. But I know there are some that either don't have the skill set, or just not comfortable putting their face on YouTube for a lesson. Because at some point, those kids are going to edit that video down and make them look ridiculous. And I hope it's hilarious what they do to me, I can't wait to see it.

Scott Benner 1:17:58
That's the right attitude. I'll tell you, I was talking to somebody the other day about the internet. And I said, The funny thing about the internet is if you don't pay attention to it, it doesn't exist. It's just yeah, it's not really there a way to look at it. It just it you don't know there could be, you know, right now, countless people in the world who just hate my guts. And if they never tell me and I don't go looking for it doesn't matter to me. And yeah,

Jeff Flaxman 1:18:24
that you don't see it or hear it. It's not real.

Scott Benner 1:18:26
But I don't know what other way to say if it's not impacting me, it doesn't exist. And so, you know, I don't that concern about what other people think you mentioned in the beginning, like, I don't care what people think. I have that very same feeling. I'm very structured in the idea that if I say something here that's valuable to some people, and some people hate me. I'm just happy that it's valuable to somebody. And yeah,

Jeff Flaxman 1:18:51
because if they don't like it or hate it, then they're not gonna use it anyways. So Fine, let's move on just sort of meaningless. I

Scott Benner 1:18:57
can't help everybody. Anyway, I now I want to see the videos that the kids making you too. So

Jeff Flaxman 1:19:04
if you search my name on YouTube, my channels there you can see some of the ridiculous stuff I put out last spring form. It's there. No kidding.

Scott Benner 1:19:11
All right. Well, good luck with all this man. I really, I hope it works out. You know, as best as it possibly can. And that, you know, everything gets back to normal, hopefully, you know, as soon as possible. Gosh,

Jeff Flaxman 1:19:22
I hope at some point we're able to function in a society that resembled something of 2019 Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:19:27
I mean, I just don't. I mean, I think obviously a vaccine is going to be the thing that makes people more comfortable because I saw those pictures from Georgia The other day, they went back to school.

Jeff Flaxman 1:19:36
Yeah, that Oh, that terrifies me.

Scott Benner 1:19:38
I mean, high school we've elected we're starting remote. There will be no in person instruction. At this time. My daughter chose to stay home even though she could have chose to go on it. there's part of me that thinks that they're all gonna go back. One kid's gonna get sick. Teachers gonna get sick. custodians, give me a sec. They're gonna panic and send everybody home anyway.

Jeff Flaxman 1:19:55
And yeah, that's exactly what would have happened and that's why our district just said it's not worth it. I mean, While you're planning, you'd have been sending your daughter into a minimum security prison.

Scott Benner 1:20:05
My son's college basically came out and said that once we saw all the precautions we had to put into place, it would have been financially a burden for us. And just ridiculous. They were talking about tenting urinals in public restrooms, like putting 10

Jeff Flaxman 1:20:19
Yeah, I mean, there was that we had rotating bathroom schedules and when you were allowed to go and when you weren't, yeah, it just the diabetic kids would have to pee every 20 minutes would have been up poops Creek, they wouldn't have chance.

Unknown Speaker 1:20:30
Little Jeff, what would he have done?

Unknown Speaker 1:20:32
I don't know. It'd been rough. Oh,

Scott Benner 1:20:35
my God, Jeff, this was really terrific. Thank you. I'm gonna let you go. But I really appreciate it.

Unknown Speaker 1:20:39
No problem. You

Scott Benner 1:20:39
have a good rest of your day take care of you as well. A huge thank you to one of today's sponsors. Gvoke glucagon. Find out more about chivo Kibo pen at G Vogue glucagon.com forward slash juicebox you spell that GVOKEGLUcagon.com/juicebox. I'd also like to thank the Contour Next One blood glucose meter and remind you to go to ContourNextone.com/juicebox. And of course touched by type one is at touchedbytype1.org on Facebook, and Instagram. February 2021 is shaping up to be the most successful month of this podcast and I can't thank you enough for sharing the show with others, whether that be a link, or by word of mouth. The show is growing because you are sharing it. Don't forget to subscribe and your podcast app if you haven't. And please accept my heartfelt thanks for being a listener. And we'll be back soon with another episode that you're going to love.

#443 Type 1 Clinical Trials

Type 1 diabetes clinical trials

Kim is here to share her daughter's story and a ton of information about type 1 diabetes clinical trials.

To find any clinical trial: clinicaltrials.gov or jdrf.org/impact/research/clinical-trials/

Teplizumab for newly diagnosed: theprotectstudy.com/home/
The functional cure trial company: viacyte.com
To get screened for auto antibodies: For relatives of a T1D 2-45 (free) trialnet.org and for anyone ($55) jdrf.org/t1d-resources/t1detect/

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