#1508 After Dark: 8 Seconds to Dublin

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Em, 28, juggles type 1 diabetes, bipolar highs and lows, ADHD, and alcoholism while battling her parents for custody of her kids—chaotic, raw, and impossible to look away.

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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.

Speaker 1 0:00
Welcome back friends to another episode of The Juicebox Podcast.

Em 0:14
Hi, my name is Adam Millen. I am 28 years old. Was diagnosed with type one diabetes six weeks before my sixth birthday.

Speaker 1 0:23
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. I know this is going to sound crazy, but blue circle health is a nonprofit that's offering a totally free virtual type one diabetes clinical care, education and support program for adults 18 and up. You heard me right, free. No strings attached, just free. Currently, if you live in Florida, Maine Vermont, New Hampshire, Ohio, Delaware, Missouri, Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa or Louisiana, you're eligible for blue circle health right now, but they are adding states quickly in 2025 so make sure to follow them at Blue circle health on social media and make yourself familiar with blue circle health.org. Blue circle health is free. It is without cost. There are no strings attached. I am not hiding anything from you. Blue circle health.org, you know why they had to buy an ad. No one believes it's free. This episode of the juice box podcast is sponsored by the Dexcom g7 the same CGM that my daughter wears. Check it out now at dexcom.com/juice, box. Today's episode is sponsored by the tandem Moby system with control iq plus technology. If you are looking for the only system with auto Bolus, multiple wear options and full control from your personal iPhone, you're looking for tandems, newest pump and algorithm, use my link to support the podcast, tandem diabetes.com/juice. Box. Check it out. Hi.

Em 2:04
My name is Millen. I'm 28 years old. Was diagnosed with type one diabetes at our VH Royal Victoria Hospital in Barrie, Ontario, six weeks before my sixth birthday in June, 2002 so I've had diabetes for if you do the math, I don't want to do it, but a pretty long time.

Speaker 1 2:25
Yeah, yeah, you're 28 now, you said

Em 2:28
I'll be 29 July, 31 Leo, oh,

Scott Benner 2:32
I don't know what that means. Leo, what does that mean?

Unknown Speaker 2:35
It means I bring the fire. You're

Speaker 1 2:38
trying to say you're a big pain in the ass. M, is that? Is that? What's going on

Em 2:42
here? I've worked really hard as a diabetic. I've been a single mom, put herself through college. I was planning to go back to school, but I just went through a divorce. That's been pretty messy, but that's okay, you know, I got arrested with a blood sugar of 16, and then the police in my local municipality were denying me insulin. So when my EMS buddies rolled up, they gave me insulin right away. You know, I've been institutionalized twice in my place of work, and it just made me stronger. It made me work smarter, a little bit harder, but I know when to dial it back as well. So I'm just proud to know what I know, and to never give up and to keep grinding for sure, Scott

Speaker 1 3:21
and I want to go through all of it, so let's dig through so what do you mean? You were institutionalized twice. So I

Em 3:29
work with my mother and my ex husband. We work for the same institution, but I grew up working in healthcare after I finished my diploma for office administration with health services when I got diabetes, you know, there wasn't a lot of this technology. We didn't have these podcasts. We didn't have parents like you, you know, who gave their daughter and other parents and children hope and tips to take care of diabetes. You know, I was diagnosed by a woman who followed me through my entire pediatric course. So when I see a new diabetic child, you know, my heart, it just goes out to them. You know, there's so many barriers to access to education and diabetes. You know, my educators will bring me in, and they'll be like, What do you think you should do? And I'm like, I don't know. You know, why am I here? You know, I can test my blood sugar by checking my pulse. I can test once a day or none at all. And I can tell you, you know, I started getting complications as a rebellious teen, because I grew up with a mom who was like, you cannot eat sugar. So then I would go and I would binge eat in private, and my weight was always fluctuating, but I was always an active kid. For me, I think growing up as a bit of a rebel with diabetes, when someone told me I couldn't do something, I just did it in excess amounts, you know, like being bold with insulin, my insulin needs have cut like in a third recently, I've lost 70 pounds since October, which was ironically, when I. Got married when I was institutionalized, it was because my parents had lied in a court of law, which is okay, we're sorting that out in court with the custody of my children, who I love more than my life. As I'm sure you can relate. You know, your daughter is type one diabetic too, right? Yeah, and as an adult, I'm sure you respect her choices. You know, my mom is always saying things like, don't get a piercing. Don't get a tattoo. Well, I have a piercing. I have tattoos, and I know how to heal them, because when my blood sugar goes high, I can feel it, you know, I can feel capillaries in my eyes with blood vessels leaking. I can feel, you know, when I was institutionalized, they were withholding insulin. Medical Doctor actually got involved. He went to medical school with my endocrinologist, my adult one. So she's always been super respectful of me. You know, I'm really close with her and her husband, who's her receptionist, because we live in a modern world now. So, you know, I used to insulin ration as a university student, and I dealt with a lot of alcoholism and addiction, because, you know, when you go to university three and a half hours away from your parents and you're with a bunch of Toronto kids, well, what are you going to do? You're going to drink to excess, you're going to party. But I was always getting great marks until I wasn't I overslept. I underslept. I didn't know when to take a break, and I'm a musical theater kid when I go on a ramble, it's just because I'm so passionate in in diabetes education and patient advocation and care. So I'll throw it back to you there. Scott, yeah.

Speaker 1 6:33
So, so what's your diagnosis like? Is it a mental health diagnosis?

Em 6:38
Yeah. So in 2016 I was diagnosed with an active addiction. This is a bit of a tough subject, but I had been sexually assaulted at a party. A good childhood friend of mine at the time, had brought me to a party. I don't even remember what I was drinking, what I was doing. I just remember being afraid and feeling alone, and then, you know, she left me there with a bunch of guys I didn't even know. And, you know, they took my phone, they took my bag, and I was in the north end of where I grew up. But I something in me just said, don't call your mom, because she's going to be disappointed. You know, as I grew up in high school doing theater, what did we do? We drank a lot. I drank a lot of sugar coolers, right? Because we didn't have all these sugar free coolers. I grew up in bars as a half Catholic Irish drinking lots of whiskey, so every time I would drink it would be fine for a few hours, but then later in the night, you know, I'm vomiting, I'm blacking out. I'm, you know, my mom is yelling at me, telling me I pissed her off. And that's good and well, but there were no consequences in the morning to my actions. You know, if I was grounded, it was okay. Now you go do whatever you want. So when I raise my children, who thank goodness, take a break

Speaker 1 7:51
for a second, let me ask you a question. Okay, so like, Does your mom have any mental health stuff? Your mom or your dad?

Em 7:56
Oh, oh yeah, my dad has dementia. God love him. You know, he smokes a lot of weed. He was born in 420 of 56 so I really love my dad, but, you know, there's just a lot of history there, and it's not stuff we'll get into. But as it relates to diabetes, you know, my godmother passed away in November from cancer, and I attended her open casket service with my brother. All the photos at this were pictures in my childhood home. They were us growing up together, and my mom was like, Well, I'm not friends with her anymore. I'm not going. And I said, Well, I had the courage to go. I had the courage to see her children pay my respects. And you know, grief is not linear, and especially with diabetes, like she used to come pick me up from school. She had an oxygen tank, and she would feed me sugar and take me shopping and do all the things that my mom didn't want to do with me. I do love my mom, but, you know, she's an Irish Catholic. She doesn't she doesn't believe in therapy, I was actually doing therapy with a young type one diabetic therapist, and we were laughing, because at the end of every session, she'd be asking me about the difference between libre Dexcom, you know, I like to make it old school with diabetes. I like to live on survival instinct some days, because when I have a sensor on, well, then I stopped feeling the highs and lows, you know what I mean? Why is that? Well, I think I get so used to the technology, you know, like I love to turn my phone off. I love to write. I wrote a book of poetry in November called purposeful pain. And it's just through everything I've experienced in my lifetime with addiction, alcoholism, but primarily it goes right back to diabetes, because, you know, as kids, we want to rebel, and my heart really goes out to young type one diabetes now in early diagnosis, and my good friend of mine, who I got on the podcast, her son is three, and I was one of the first people she called to tell me he had been diagnosed. And you know, I was bullied a lot as a kid. I was bullied for being overweight. I was bullied for being one of the guys when you grow up with two brothers, and then you go on. To have two kids who are boys. You know, you don't really feel all that feminine. You live in that rebellious, hyper masculine. I'm going to do what I want, and people can tell me to eat a slice of humble pie, but I'm just going to have the cake and eat it too. Kind of thing, right? Like, I don't believe in Can I point

Speaker 1 10:17
something out? Yeah, I asked if either of your parents had mental health issues, and I've been to a funeral. Now I've been to like I and I heard your dad had dementia, which I'm sorry for. But does he have any mental health issues? Is he? Does he have bipolar disorder? Does he have this? Is there any of that in your family? Let's talk about the tandem Moby insulin pump from today's sponsor tandem diabetes care, their newest algorithm control iq plus technology and the new tandem Moby pump offer you unique opportunities to have better control. It's the only system with auto Bolus that helps with missed meals and preventing hyperglycemia, the only system with a dedicated sleep setting, and the only system with off or on body wear options, tandem Moby gives you more discretion, freedom and options for how to manage your diabetes. This is their best algorithm ever, and they'd like you to check it out at tandem diabetes.com/juicebox when you get to my link, you're going to see integrations with Dexcom sensors and a ton of other information that's going to help you learn about tandems. Tiny pump that's big on control tandem diabetes.com/juicebox, the tandem Moby system is available for people ages two and up who want an automated delivery system to help them sleep better, wake up in range and address high blood sugars with auto Bolus. You can manage diabetes confidently with the powerfully simple Dexcom g7 dexcom.com/juice box. The Dexcom g7 is the CGM that my daughter is wearing. The g7 is a simple CGM system that delivers real time glucose numbers to your smartphone or smart watch. The g7 is made for all types of diabetes, type one and type two, but also people experiencing gestational diabetes, the Dexcom g7 can help you spend more time in range, which is proven to lower a 1c The more time you spend in range, the better and healthier you feel. And with the Dexcom clarity app, you can track your glucose trends, and the app will also provide you with a projected a 1c in as little as two weeks. If you're looking for clarity around your diabetes, you're looking for Dexcom, dexcom.com/juicebox, when you use my link. You're supporting the podcast, dexcom.com/juicebox, head over there. Now,

Em 12:47
you know, that's a great question, because when he started, his mental health started deteriorating, and my neighbors reached out to me. They were worried about me, you know, because I used to babysit their kids. So my dad has been, he's been out and about in the neighborhood. He's been muttering to himself, you know, he forgets where he is. My neighbor told me he went over to her for an hour to talk about selling my car. I have two vehicles in my name, right? And he was driving my cars around. He was driving a car around with no license. And you know, I kept trying to make amends with him over it, because, you know, that's my dad. He worked really, really hard when I was a kid. He used to write manuscripts for airplanes, but his dad actually had bipolar disorder, and this was, yeah, yeah. So my dad was born in the 50s, and back then, you know, wait, I gotta ask you

Speaker 1 13:37
a question. Your dad wrote, your dad wrote manuscripts for air. Is there, like, a whole section of the world that, like, where airplanes are actors I don't understand. Like, what do you

Em 13:46
know? Literally, like, he, he worked for Bombardier, which was a Canadian company. And actually, in 98 my little brother was born in Seattle, so the company took us out there, and then they brought us back to Canada. And I remember when I was diagnosed, like I can remember everything from that time. I call them the finger pokes, those awful hospital things that just like, cut deep, right into your finger. And my dad was really scared of losing benefits. And, you know, he worked so hard. He worked two jobs, actually, in Toronto. He also was a janitor for a school board, so my mom was a stay at home mom, so she raised us, and then, you know, I rebelled a lot as a young kid with diabetes, I took over my own care at the age of nine, and she let me, so I'm really grateful to my parents for that. Did

Speaker 1 14:34
she have any health issues, mental health or otherwise? Well, none

Em 14:37
that I can diagnose, because I'm not a professional. I don't let my parents interfere in my, you know, privacy. I attend regular physician appointments. I got like, 10 doctors in my phone, and I try to follow up as much as I can, because, you know, I have a full license. I drive with glasses at night with an astigmatism. I go to regular eye doctor appointments. So it's really important to. Diabetes, that we don't neglect our self care, and that we have firm boundaries as adults as well. And children can have boundaries too, but I know parents care. So

Speaker 1 15:09
then, what about you? What are all the diagnosis that you have? Your type one? Do you have anything else? Yeah.

Em 15:14
So I was diagnosed in 2016 with bipolar disorder under active addiction. I was taking lithium for a long time, and I took it through having my first son, and he was born with, it's called a ventricular septal defect. So he was born with a little hole in his heart. You know, he was followed by a cardiologist while he was still, like in my stomach in gestation. He was born eight pounds, nine ounces, and they said, Oh, he's really long. He's a toddler. And then my second baby, I lost him in a miscarriage, and I named him Grayson. And that was 2021 so that was with the father of my second or third child, who is named Owen. And my first son is Evan. So Owen was born two years ago, on the 17th he'll be two, and he's my rainbow baby. You know, he is stubborn. He was 10 pounds at 36 in six weeks, because on the gram side of the family, you know, we gave him my ex husband's last name. They had big babies, like my ex sister in law, is tiny, but she was having big old babies. And how

Speaker 1 16:21
were your blood sugars? Your a one seeds during the pregnancy, they were okay. I remember my

Em 16:25
first pregnancy. I went in. I knew I was pregnant, but I was 21 and I was scared to tell anybody, because I was still in university. So when I moved home, my mom was like, I know you're pregnant. Like, there's no like, I was taking tests and hiding it from people. The father of my first son, you know, is not was never in the picture. I raised him alone. So I remember going in and my a 1c, was like, 11, and they're like, you gotta your baby will be born with complications. And I said, Okay, so the next month I went in, my ANC was five, because I knew I had to get my together as a mother. And it wasn't just about me. You know how to do it, though, I know how to do it. You know, with all the stress in my life, my last day a 1c was 7.8 and my family doctor was like, I'm shocked by this. Like, they were like, We're shocked with everything you have going on that you kept your blood sugars in control. I said yes, because I finally learned that no is a full sentence. No, I'm not going to extend my shift. No, I'm not going to extend a 12 hour shift. No, I'm not going to pick up another one. Because, you know, when I worked overnights in an in emergency rooms, I couldn't eat at night. You know, I feel sick at night, so I would try to eat during the day and sleep during the day. But then, you know, you got all those lows because you're taking too much. I take Tracy, but daily, and then I take fast acting, so whatever I can get my hands on with my benefits, or sometimes I just buy insulin and submit it later. Insulin rationing is like a really scary thing that I used to do, but I'm lucky to be in Canada, the New Democratic Party actually just made it free for diabetes to have access to insulin, and can't be denied it based on financial need. Tell

Speaker 1 18:05
me a little bit about how old were you when they gave you the bipolar diagnosis? And how does it like, yeah, it's kind of like, seasons, right? Like, like, yeah, yeah. Like, where are you right now? Yeah. So

Em 18:16
for me, I was 19, going on 20. You know, a bipolar disorder. There's a lot, I know, a lot of type of diabetes who gets active in addiction and alcoholism, and then they get diagnosed with that. And even I've had the same psychiatrist since then, and he kind of, he said to me, You know what? I think you were misdiagnosed and you shouldn't take lithium. When I had my last pregnancy with my little guy, what I did was I reached out to him. I said, I'm not taking lithium. He said, No problem. What do you want to do? I said, I'm going to wean off it. He said, No problem. So that's what I did. And by the end of my pregnancy, I was on no mental health medication, and I was already dealing with what I called pre Partum Depression. I was going to work every day. I worked right up until the last month, January 17 of 2023 was my last day at work. And then one of the OB, GYN, said, You need to stop working. And I was huge, like I had three pounds of fluid. At my last ultrasound, they thought he was going to be 13 pounds. So I had a C section scheduled.

Speaker 1 19:18
So, em, let's go back to the question, though you're delightful, by the way, I love you. You are not listening to me at all. No,

Em 19:25
I don't listen. No. Good early direction.

Speaker 1 19:29
What are the seasons of bipolar? Which one are you experiencing right now?

Em 19:35
So for me, this is not mania. For me, if I was manic, I would be racking up debt. I would be, you know, going around and doing whatever I could, like, I just remember being manic and like, I would just literally be cycling through people through the night, like I would go to one house, someone would, like, pick me up. I'd leave all my belongings with them, and then go to another place. You know, I've. Had people tell me, you're what? Your life isn't worthy. You know, you're a diabetic who works in health care. And I'm like, Yeah, but maybe that means my life is worthy. So mania, like, I could be manic right now, if I'm excited, right? But if I was manic, I'd be sitting here talking in code. I would be like, 333, but for me, you know, I just, I tell it how it is, because life's too short,

Speaker 1 20:24
so hold on. So if you were having a, if you're in a manic phase, yeah, I'd feel like I was listening to someone who was just speaking a different language. And you would be making sense. You you would think you were making sense. Yeah, okay. And then yeah. And then, like, right now, yeah, you are keywording like you're keywording yourself. Yeah, I say something, you get maybe a sentence into it, and then you hear a word in it. You follow the word, and while you're explaining that, you hear another word and follow that word exactly,

Em 20:55
because that's how my brain works. You know, I was actually just told I had ADHD as well.

Scott Benner 21:00
So, I mean, I'm not surprised, if I'm being honest.

Em 21:04
So my diabetic nurse was like, I don't think you have any of that. I think you're just traumatized from diabetes. And I was like, Well, what is it, you know? What is it?

Speaker 1 21:12
So, how does it impact your life? Yeah, I heard what happens when you're manic when you're not? Do you have a moment where you can you see yourself, like, do you look back at a manic episode and go like, Oh my God. Like, or is it like, it never happened?

Em 21:23
No, I definitely when I got sober again, like, I'm just past two months sober, it was really important for me, because my last drink, I ended up blacking out so bad. Like, my ex husband was the one keeping me alive. He was checking my Dexcom. I remember waking up that morning, and I crawled to the shower, and he was going to work, and I called him, and I said, You need to come home. And he's like, no, no, I'm at work. I said, No, no, you need to come home. I couldn't look my children in the face. Manic. Emily would have woken up, kept drinking, not given a what happened? And then she would have been like, on a Benner, right? Like I saw my son yesterday. I hope I see him again tonight. But for mania, like, what I would be doing right now is telling you, oh, I'm flying right now to where you are, and we're gonna we're gonna do this in person. We're gonna do this. We're gonna do that like that is mania. Anyone can have a manic state of mind. Anyone can then go, oh, and I'll proudly tell you I take lurasiddone, which is La TUDA. It's an off brand version, and that is helping stabilize me as well as I had a cancer scare this past year. My white blood cell count was elevated from taking lithium. And then they're like, We don't know if you have cancer, from diabetes, from substance abuse, from this or that. So I just went, Okay, so I think, you know, when you're 28 and you're a young mom and you hear you might have cancer, you're gonna start acting a little crazy, right? So I'll throw it back to you, Scott,

Speaker 1 22:51
I don't know. I'm exhausted. Hold on a second. You mentioned the podcast early on, right? So, yeah, it's been valuable for you.

Em 23:00
It has, you know, but I, I was really bad, like, I hated listening, right? Like I was in, I was active in the groups and, like, what's really important is the message that comes. Like, you have moderators, you have people who have sent me episodes, have given me advice, because when I got back on a pump, well, I dealt with insulin, pooling and tunneling. I've tried pumps and I hated them. Like, if I could only have one technological advance in diabetes, it would be a bionic pancreas that worked, or a Dexcom sensor, or this or that. So for me, like, I've rebelled my whole life with diabetes. Like I would go to a party during two excess and people would be like, are you diabetic? And I'd be like, nope, nope. I would lie. You know, I wouldn't want to listen. You know, even people, like in medical professions, they don't, they don't have any formal education and diabetes. So I'll throw it back to you there, like,

Speaker 1 23:54
if you didn't have the bipolar, yeah, do you think the drinking would be the same? Do you connect the two of them?

Em 23:59
Yeah? Because once I stopped drinking, like, this time around, I said, Well, I had been in I had been sober before, right? Like, I was sober for my pregnancies, anytime I'd see a positive test, and I would always know, very early on, I know my body very well, so as soon as I'd see a positive test, it'd be no more booze. And then, like, my ex drank a lot when he wasn't with me, and I was like, You know what? I'm doing the hard work here, you know, I birthed a 10 pound baby for you, and you, you know, held money over me. You lorded power over me. And then I realized this year, like some things about myself, like I'm bisexual, but I've never dated a woman, you know, he was always like, you're just diabetic, you're just bipolar, you're just a loser, you're just a psycho. And words hurt right? Like, if you stay with a man for just under four years, and every day when he has no formal education, he's telling you you're a loser. Well, what are you going to think of yourself? Young women shouldn't be with men or anybody for that matter. Matter that don't fill their cup up, right? Like, mothers, especially, we can't be pouring from empty cups. Like, how am I going to be driving my kids around if my blood sugar is low, I don't I pull over and I eat the Tim bits I got them, which are Canadian? Don't

Speaker 1 25:14
worry, I know what Tim bits are. I've talked to a lot of Canadians. Let me ask the question again. I think we might do a fun thing where I ask you the same question till we get an answer. Okay, do you think that drinking is a result of the bipolar?

Em 25:28
Yeah, like, I definitely like that is how I got diagnosed, right? Because when I came home from university that summer, my grandfather had died the year before in Ireland, I sat with him in a home run by Catholic nuns. And I just remember being like, where the did all the time go, you know, he was a sergeant major for the Dublin infantry. So for me, what did we do? We went to the local it's called the quarry house in Dublin, and we got drunk. And everyone paid for us to get drunk. Like, I remember sitting next to his open casket, and me and my little cousin went out and got high because I'm like, I don't want to look at that my dead grandfather. I want to numb this pain, right? So for me, I think, like, people misuse and abuse words like this, but like, I'm proud to say this, I don't give a blind what people think of me? You know, I'm Irish Catholic, if that doesn't make you an alcoholic and then an addict, I don't know. What does

Speaker 1 26:26
em Do you think that drinking is a direct relationship to bipolar disorder? Yes? Why?

Em 26:35
Because I think like self medication, right? What do diabetics do? We take insulin, we check our blood sugars, you know, I I love when I run into a young girl with diabetes, and she's like, arguing with her mom, and her mom's like, No, you can't have that ice cream. And then she's like, Okay. And then, you know, I see them part ways in the mall, and then what does she do? She's with her friends, and she's eating like, a kilo of ice Okay.

Speaker 1 26:59
Hold on. Stop, stop. Though, how does the drinking self medicate the bipolar? So

Em 27:04
if I was not taking medication, right, I would be buying a bottle and drinking that entire bottle, because

Speaker 1 27:10
it finishes sentence, because it what does it do for you? It self medicates. Does it slow things down? Does it No,

Em 27:20
it speeds things up, and then later it slows things down, which

Speaker 1 27:24
is valuable? What is this? Is the slow up or the speed down? Valuable for you both,

Em 27:28
you know, because what is bipolar disorder? It's called manic depression. So I have days where I'm like, at the top of the roller coaster, and I'm like, Oh, this is like a carnival.

Speaker 1 27:38
Then the drinking adds to the party. Exactly, okay. But then

Em 27:42
when the party's over, what are you left feeling holy. I don't know what my blood sugar is. I blacked out. I woke up in a field, and I have no idea what happened to me. And all my friends are laughing, right? Who are not diabetic?

Scott Benner 27:54
Are you hyper sexual at any point during it? Oh,

Em 27:57
always like I would party. And you know, I didn't care who I was sleeping with. When you grow up chubby, if a guy gives you the time of day, you're like, Okay, you know, you have no standards for yourself. Like, it breaks my heart when I see little chubby girls and they're like, you know, I'm fat. And I'm like, What is fat? You know, one man is going to love your body the way it is. Another one's gonna say he wouldn't touch you with a 10 foot pole. And you know what? Who cares?

Speaker 1 28:25
So did you end up with guys that sometimes liked you and sometimes just didn't like you? They were just there for you, for for easy sex. Oh,

Em 28:33
my God, I'll never forget being in university, and I was in an all girls dorm, and I was I had a really good friend. She had just moved there. She had been sexually assaulted in her old dorm, and I moved out of a dorm due to bullying. And so, you know, what did her and I do? Well, we drink, and then we'd be on these apps, you know, like Tinder, bumble, whatever it is. And then I remember, I invited a guy over, and we were intimate, and while we were in the middle of having sex, he literally said to me, you are not pretty enough for me to be seen in public with. So I literally said, Okay. I stopped it, and I remember crying and going to her room, and she came and freaked out on him. She screamed at him. She was drunk. And then what did he do? He just went, Okay, and he went home and then messaged me and said, Well, I have Asperger's, so I can say that, but I'm like, Okay, why? Like, do you think if I went around and said to a type one diabetic, I'm not giving you a juice box because I'm diabetic, would that make me a good person? No. So this is my whole thing with it is like people use anything to numb pain. They use medication, they use insulin, they use sex, they use drugs, they use alcohol. And this is why, when I talk, I start to ramble. But if I was manic, I would, literally, I would just start rapping for you, because that's what I do. I use music as therapy as well.

Scott Benner 29:50
What kind of rap would I be hearing? Oh, you'd be hearing

Em 29:53
my mom by Eminem, or forever, or, you know, like I really. We love Jelly Rolls music, and I was going to go see him in March, but I ended up trading his concert tickets with someone because I knew if I went to a concert as a health care worker and seeing people in active addiction and drinking, then I would do that right, because I got to work my life one day at a time. How long has it been since you've drank something? December 5 at midnight was the was the last time. Yeah, it's been two months.

Speaker 1 30:26
That's awesome. What are some benefits you've that you've noticed from not drinking, I'm

Em 30:31
more alert. You know, I went back to the gym. I knew how, like, I was trained in crisis intervention in a Midland Ontario emergency room. So when a man started to threaten me, like my ex husband, you know, he tried to break my wrist, and that's okay, it was just a sprain, so I had the courage to drive and go get an x ray, like old me would have just had a drink over that. You know what I mean,

Speaker 1 30:55
good for you? Like, yeah, you lost a bunch of weight recently. How did you do that? Yeah,

Em 30:59
you know, after my wedding in October, I was, like, heavily overweight. I was eating in excess at night. You're a mom, you know, you're not eating through the day. I would be working eight hour shifts, and then I would literally be, like, chugging iced coffee, eating donuts. Not to get political, because I'm kind of apolitical. But if

Speaker 1 31:16
you can go from donuts to political, I'm gonna be so impressed. Go ahead. What are you gonna say

Em 31:21
the day Trump got elected, I was smoking a cigarette outside the back of my work place, crying, and then I bought all our female co workers donuts because I said, What the is going on with the world, that a black woman cannot be president, and that we have to go back in time, and we have to look at women who were silenced with money, with power, with sexual assault, and all my friends were like, you don't look okay. And I'm like, I'm not okay, but it's fine. Everything's fine. That was my life. Like, literally going through the worst of my life, I'd walk into a room and smile because, you know, I know how to act like I'm okay, but like in sobriety, No, nothing's going to be sunshine and rainbows. That's not life. Life is still going to happen, whether or not I think

Speaker 1 32:06
I'm confused about something, yeah, what are you confused you were married four months ago, but you're not married anymore.

Em 32:12
No, I never certified the marriage because it was an abusive relationship.

Speaker 1 32:16
So How long had you been with this person before you had some sort of a ceremony?

Em 32:19
We met on a dating app in january 2021 which was COVID lockdown. So I don't know how it worked for you guys in the States, but for us, like police were like, you're not allowed to leave your house. And then people would be like, we met up. I drove out. He was about 40 minutes south of me, and he had no car jobs. So I was like, perfect. I'm gonna leave my kid with my mom and go for a drive. And then here I was with this man, you know, he met my son shortly after, and I was like, Okay, I'm gonna watch this man like a hawk, because I don't around when it comes to my kids. Like, as a parent, I think you probably feel the same way, like, if your daughter called you and needed you, you'd show up, right? So for me, when I met him, I was like, you're gonna get a job, you're gonna get your license, you're gonna get a car. And we were like, on and off for four years. February 10 would have been our four year anniversary, but we had a messy separation before that. So the things that I thought, yeah,

Speaker 1 33:18
do you ever stand in front of a priest or a judge and get married. We

Em 33:22
stood in front of a wedding officiant in a park in Barrie in October.

Speaker 1 33:27
That can't count. It's Canadian, so like, yeah, all right, so you Okay, so you've you tried to make a more of a commitment four months ago, but now it's over, and he's the father of your the baby you lost, is that

Em 33:42
right? And my second Yeah, and my last shot and your last

Speaker 1 33:46
shot. Listen, this is gonna sound like a dig, but it's not. I'm so impressed with myself that I know that I can't begin to tell you. I swear to God, I'm like, Oh my God, I am following you, yes. And being serious, like, do you know like talking to you like this, yeah, if I'm really gonna listen, it's incredibly difficult.

Em 34:05
Oh, it's, it's difficult for me. Like, you know, my brain is like, just like going through a grocery list of what I need today, like this is what women do, no,

Speaker 1 34:15
but, but, but listen. You started with, I met a guy. He met my son soon after, you know, Scott, that I protect my kids because you must also, I don't even know, like, where that leap came from. Yeah. And then it just, you are. It's, oh my God, I feel like I'm on one of those roller coasters, the jerks you the left and the right, then up and then down. And I'm actually holding on, like, I swear to God, talking to you is like riding a bull. I'm gonna name this episode eight seconds. I'm naming this episode eight seconds for sure. Okay, oh, my God. Does anybody remember the Luke Perry movie eight seconds where he was a bull rider? Anyone at all? Yeah. Thank you. Thank you. I'm calling this episode eight seconds now, but at the same time, I don't think you know you're doing this. Yes, but you were giving such a great insight into your like your situation, and how your brain works, and how your life, you know, functions because of that, that I think that anybody who is listening to you and knows someone who is in a similar situation as you, I think this could give them a ton of compassion, because I know people like you in my personal life, and I watch them eventually be discarded by even people who love them, because it's just so fcking exhausting

Em 35:32
it is. You know, my parents, after my ex tried to break my wrist, my mom kicked me out of my childhood home. I've been living in hotels, and she's just told me she'd pay one for me for a week. You know, I had to meet my son with her in a grocery store, and I gave him Valentine's Day gifts. We gave out boxes of Smarties to some kids, and then my mom's like, I already got him Valentine's first class. I said, I don't care, because that's what I do as a mom. I'd show up for my kids pouring from an empty tank, I'd be like, I need to get gas. And they'd be screaming in the back seat that they didn't get enough Tim bits that day. You know, I have brought them to meetings to support my addiction, and I've done that sober, and I have been uplifted by strangers and thinking I'm alone in this world. I'm not alone, and if any type one diabetic who listens to this Wednesday feels like they're alone. Pick yourself up and dust yourself off, because by all accounts of like, how I used to drink and do drugs, I should be dead if

Speaker 1 36:31
I spoke to other people in your life. Yeah? Like if I talk to your mom or that guy or whatever, yeah, people you've worked for, do you think they'd say, No, M sweet. She's just got problems, and this is how they manifest. Or do you think they'd just be like, do you think they'd have a completely different view of you than you have of yourself? Absolutely,

Em 36:49
my mom is pretty harsh, like she was like, You did this to yourself. You chose to be with a man who assaulted you for four years, who drained your bank account like, that's what my mother said to

Scott Benner 37:01
me. She ignores the mental illness part of it, yeah,

Em 37:03
like she's like, You need to go back on lithium. And I'm like, I'm 28 years old. When I was diagnosed, I was still an adult, and I walked myself into that emergency room, and I was drunk and high, and I laid on the floor, and then I woke up in holding when I got brought by local municipality to the emergency same emergency room, my blood sugar was 20, and that emerged doctor that used to buy me coffee. He was like, just tell me you're high. And I'm like, No, I'm not high. I'm sober. He formed me so that means they put me on a 72 hour hold, and then I stayed under a lockdown in solitary confinement for a week. So I was alone in a room surrounded by people in mental health crises, being denied insulin, denied food, eating hospital food, like, if that's not enough to make anybody seem crazy, I don't know what is.

Speaker 1 37:53
What's the answer? Like, you've been in that situation. You've worked in that situation, right? Yeah. And you know, you know who you are. You know what your ailments are. How should they have treated you? Like, what would have helped you? You

Em 38:06
know what? I don't live in the yesterday, like, basically, my mom should have understood. Like, I told her I went to get an x ray on my wrist, and she just went. That was your fault. But we grew up Catholic, Irish, right? Like my nanny. She's 90 years old, sitting in Dublin, Ireland, right now she's still kicking. She had seven children and a bunch of miscarriages because there was no birth control back then. I actually tied my tubes after this 10 pound baby. I said, I'm not doing this to my body again. And you know, my ex, he wanted three kids. I came from a three kid household, and so did he. But I said this like life is too short. How am I going to be a career woman? How am I going to go back to school and have two kids who are young and they need me, and we're

Speaker 1 38:48
going to do it again. We're going to do it again. What could they have done for you that would have been valuable? They

Em 38:53
couldn't have believed me. They could have protected me. They could have supported me. Because

Speaker 1 38:58
in that moment, it doesn't matter if you're making like, if your brain's making something up or not, it doesn't matter, right? You're still feeling it was a lie. Yeah, wish it was right. You're still feeling it the way you're feeling it.

Em 39:09
And feelings are valid. You know, my little guy just got diagnosed. He's six, with ADHD, and I tried to put him on medication, and now my parents are trying to withhold that, but last time I checked he was in my sole custody. And when I go to a court of law and we go through Crown Prosecution, because that's what's happening, and I'm proud of that, all the facts are there. I know every officer's name my dad would call, God bless him, with his dementia, and he goes, she's attacking me with needles, my four millimeter needles that are enclosed in my purse.

Speaker 1 39:41
So if you're gonna go, do you have to go speak for yourself at some kind of a hearing?

Em 39:46
Yeah, it's gonna be virtual, which is great, because I teach patients how to use technology. So when I get frustrated with technology, I stop and I ask for directions, or I write it down, or I use my wits. Yeah,

Speaker 1 39:58
may I I'm gonna suggest that you make us think. You know, that says stay on topic and put it in front of you, because Absolutely, I'm gonna write it down, yeah? Because I I asked you what they could have done for you, and five seconds later, I was in Ireland with your grandma,

Em 40:11
yeah, because she would be disappointed in her daughter, yeah.

Speaker 1 40:15
But I don't even know how we got to that. And what could they have done for you? My mom, them this my grandmother, like Bob, like, I'm telling you, like, if you go in, if you do that, I don't think they're gonna let you have the kids if you do that.

Em 40:28
No, for sure. Like, but I stay active in my program. You know, I live in love and service. I do what I need to do to stay sober. Because, you know, when you're arrested with a broken wrist or a sprained wrist, and then you get released immediately. Well, most people would have ended up in a bar, right?

Speaker 1 40:46
Well, no, I wouldn't have, but I don't have your problem. My point is like, is the lithium the answer?

Em 40:53
I'm under physician care, and I take Latuda, so that's the lithium is not the answer, because lithium actually elevates the white blood cell count, but if someone is prescribed lithium, that's none of my business. That's called the privacy and health. Stay

Speaker 1 41:07
on you. Stay on you. Okay, so the lithium is not, not an answer for you. That's awesome, like you have the Latitude. Latitude is helping you with with some of the bipolar stuff. What would help? What would help with this piece of it? Believing in women, no, no, it ain't gonna help you because I'm believing you, and trust me, we're not getting we're not getting anywhere proof,

Em 41:24
proof in a court of law, the facts I have, the videos, I have the text message, that

Speaker 1 41:29
stuff's not going to help them. Think that you're going to be a good caregiver.

Em 41:33
But it's not up to my parents. It's up to a court of law to decide. I understand

Speaker 1 41:36
that, but what I'm saying is, is that if you go in there and you're a little slower and thoughtful and stay on topic, I think that's going to be really valuable for you. Absolutely.

Unknown Speaker 41:46
I'm going to write out points, yeah,

Speaker 1 41:49
because what we like, what we've gone over here in the last like 45 minutes, is that whether you're a lovely person or not, it can be difficult for people who are not struggling with the things you're struggling with to see you for who you are and how you feel, because I think they're just reading what you're giving them. You know what I mean? Yeah. Well, let me

Em 42:07
tell you three things that I've done in my sobriety since my parents have turned their back on me. One, I've bought coffee for homeless people and given them cigarettes. Two, I've supported people in early sobriety that have told me they needed help. Three I've called wellness checks on friends who were on heavy drugs, telling me that they didn't think their life was worth living. I showed up for them, and then they showed up for me in turn. But as a mother, you know, we don't show up for people. Are

Speaker 1 42:36
you telling me that you've been successful at looking out for friends and you think you could be successful looking out for your kids. Absolutely,

Em 42:43
I've never left my kids. I picked them up every day from school until they were removed from my custody. Temp, No,

Speaker 1 42:50
you were so close to completing that thought though, like that was good because you, you numbered it, and that really helped you, because you, you said three things, then you gave me three things, and I felt like what you were trying to say was, look, I've helped people in my life. I'll be a good caregiver to my children. And you were just, you were a split second away from getting it out, and then you pivoted,

Em 43:10
right? Well, that's how my brain works, right? It doesn't work that

Speaker 1 43:13
way. Yeah, no, I understand. I'm just trying to tell you what I think the reality of that hearing is going to be, yeah, yeah. Because if you put me in charge of judging you, and I didn't know anything about you or anything else. I just was hearing you for the first time, I'd be like, I don't know, this lady's got type one diabetes. She's fighting with bipolar. She hasn't been drunk in two months, which is awesome, but it's not exactly, you know, two years every question I'm asking her, I end up in Dublin with her 90 year old grandmother.

Em 43:39
Well, that's why, you know, like, I'm Catholic, so, like, I have faith, you know, I have faith in myself when people, you know, bipolar, like I I've been on off medication too, and it's I still go and attend regular appointments. I go to my medical doctor, my family doctor, and, you know what, the right people believe in me. And

Speaker 1 43:58
those are good points. Then those are the points I think you should make. Then, you know, like, seriously,

Unknown Speaker 44:02
because witnesses, right? Well,

Speaker 1 44:05
I mean, people who have seen you do these things over and over again and feel confident that you'll do them with your kids. Well,

Em 44:11
a wise man, his name is Adam, once said to me, the definition of insanity is doing the same thing and expecting different results, right?

Speaker 1 44:21
Yes, but what does that have to do with what we're talking about? Tell me

Em 44:25
everything. Everything is a diabetic, you know, like I in sobriety, I remember everything. So then I want to talk about everything, but I don't have to talk. I can stick to the point which is what I'm going to do on my court date. I

Speaker 1 44:39
wish you a ton of luck. I hope that goes your way. Thank you. Yeah. How old are your kids?

Em 44:43
Evan will be seven in October, and Owen's almost two. What does Evan like to do? Everything. He loves McDonald's. He loves shopping. He loves Pokemon. He loves sports. I got him into soccer. I. Paid for him to take skating lessons, and he was too afraid to let go of the bar. What kind of a Canadian can't skate? I mean, I can skate, I just can't stop. So I just slam into the boards like Sidney Crosby, and then I do it

Speaker 1 45:11
up. I can't do either. But what does he enjoy in school? He loves

Em 45:15
math, which, like, you know, I love math. I love reading, writing. He loves it, too. And I got him into speech therapy, because since he was three, he's had a speech impediment assessment. And, you know, I used to translate for him. You know, I speak sign language, I speak French. So people can listen to this and say whatever they want about me, let them.

Speaker 1 45:35
I don't think anybody's gonna say I think, I think you're very brave to come on here and share your stuff like I really do. I've asked a number of questions I haven't gotten answers to, but, yeah, I have one that I'm really interested in. So like, stay with me. Okay, here, let me ask it this way. Tell me the three things you did to lose weight. I

Em 45:52
started eating like, six meals a day, grazing snacks instead of, like, eating all my calories at night. I stopped smoking weed, because, you know, when you get high, what are you going to do? You're going to get the munchies at two in the morning, and then you're eating like an entire bag of chips. I lost some dead weight, which was my ex husband. That's what I did

Speaker 1 46:13
when your mental burden with that relationship went away. That also helped you maybe not to overeat as much and and that helps you lose weight. He lost 70 pounds. Yeah,

Em 46:22
it's awesome. 70 pounds. That must have felt great. That whiskey weights hard to get off. You know, we got engaged at a whiskey tour in Dublin in March, and then I planned the wedding, and I spent about, I want to say, 40 grand on this man. In the last few years alone, I haven't seen a penny back from him in child support or anything my parents are paying for my children, and I drop off gifts. And, yeah, that's, that's the reality of my life. Don't be sorry. No, no,

Speaker 1 46:49
I listen. You deserve compassion. And it's a it sucks, like it really, listen, I don't care what you're struggling with. You know, a boy, don't need to take, you know, advantage of that. And then, and also, like, listen, it would be nice if they would say, like, you know, all right, I'm, I'm having, you know, some easy sex with this girl who called me from a nap, but I don't need to get her pregnant, you know. I mean, like, somebody could try a little bit, you know, I'm saying so somebody

Em 47:17
could pay their own bills. You know, he was driving around my cars under the influence, and he didn't even have a license. Scott, he was lying. He lies a lot, yeah, and I don't lie. I blow whistles, and then I know when to stop. And then so I like to do lists. I like to write. But you know when your right hand and your right hand dominant was snapped, and then you're putting Voltaire and extra strength on it, and you're still sober. Well, there's a song by Nickelback. It's called Never again. It's about domestic violence and substance abuse. Because as I got more sober, he got worse, and, you know, we work in the same place, so I started telling women how he treated me, and they were shocked. They said he always sings your praises. I said, that's in public, but behind closed doors. So that's why I tell women in domestic violence situations, open the door, yell for help, call someone you trust. Don't make the same mistakes that I did, because you will have regrets. But we don't have to live in regrets. We can find the solution every day. And if you can drink responsibly, power to you, I cannot. Most diabetics can't if they don't know when to

Speaker 1 48:24
stop, right? You don't think type ones can drink responsibly. I think

Em 48:28
they can. I went out to dinner with co workers. I had a glass of wine, but then when I was at home, I was drinking the bottle alone, right? And they're like, Oh, you had a good night. You only had one glass of wine. And I'm like, hahaha, yeah. Because what do we do in addiction? We lie, you know, we say I'm fine, and then people are like, well, what are you doing? And then we sit in a room full of anonymous people, and you know, that's not something to be discussed about either, right? Like my program is not allied with anything. So for me, I show up because people have told me, people have kicked me out. They've told me I'm nothing. They've called me crazy and delusional. And to them, I say, keep coming back.

Speaker 1 49:06
Well, listen, I've only heard you say one crazy thing, and I'm gonna bring it up. How the hell do you think you know who your blood sugar is by your pulse. I

Em 49:14
can tell when your pulse slows down. My blood sugar is usually high. When my pulse is rapid, it's usually low, but not every time, not every time, but it's also like, heightened emotion, right? So if I'm like, in the middle of having sex, and then, you know, I'm exhausted after well, do I have a low blood sugar, or did I just do a physical activity? Right?

Scott Benner 49:33
Exhausted? What are you doing?

Unknown Speaker 49:37
Not to be discussed on this podcast. You

Speaker 1 49:41
know, when I get out of the harness and I'm exhausted, let me just tell you something, yeah,

Em 49:45
when you, when you uncuff the pink, fuzzy handcuffs, and you turn off Sabrina Carpenter, or the sex playlist you were playing, you know, I love Sabrina Carpenter,

Speaker 1 49:55
girl from the from the Grammys, the little like blonde girl me

Em 49:59
every. I know, yes, the little blonde girl, because she was an actress,

Speaker 1 50:03
I don't think I could have sex to that song. I'm just saying, Well, you know,

Unknown Speaker 50:07
Scott, we all have our vices.

Speaker 1 50:11
Oh, my God. All right, I shudder to ask you this question, but is there anything we didn't talk about that you want to

Em 50:16
if there is a young type one diabetic out there, and I don't care your gender, but I'm the only one we did the genetic testing, so I'm the only one in my family. I'm the black sheep. If there's a young girl out there with diabetes and you know she's being bullied or letting people tell her that she's nothing, or that you know her mom is making her feel like she has to eat in secret. Be bold. Live your life. Live your life on your terms, and understand the consequences of your actions, because life is short. And as diabetics, you know we can live our whole lives and we never know. When you know complications arise, you keep trucking and you keep your chin up, you keep your head up. And my Both my grandfathers fought in the world wars, so I wasn't raised to submit to powerlessness. I was raised to have hope, and that's the message I want to give today to anyone out there who needs it. I have

Speaker 1 51:08
a statement and a question go. My statement is, is that I've decided that I'm not calling the episode eight seconds. I'm actually calling the episode eight seconds to Dublin. Hey, I like that. It's literally an awesome title. It might be my favorite. Whatever I prove my question is, is that I'd like to understand, if I could how the podcast, like, this thing that I've delivered to you, like, I want to know how it how it's helped you. Well, I probably should ask for you to tell me the five ways that it's helped you, but tell me how it's helped you. Yeah. So number

Em 51:38
one, when you grow up without technology, you kind of rebel against it when it fails, you know, ripping pump sides out, ripping sensors out that are bleeding. You know, taking a wooden spoon to a sensor because it got stuck. So the technological aspect of it, two the different opinions, because, like, it's not just like you and one other person sitting on a podcast chat, and you have different people every day. You have different expert those are important too, because opinions are important, but the right opinions are what matter. Three would be the Facebook group. Now I do. I haven't been as active in it as of late because, you know, I tend to argue with people and be that keyboard warrior. One mom's gonna say, I eat vegan and I don't eat anything like this. Another mom is going to say, oh, we'll need protein and we food restrict. People can do whatever they want, but they should never tell their kids to eat disordered. Because what are kids going to do when they're not with you? They're going to abuse insulin. They're going to but that's not for me to say either you need what you need four would be the education and the differences in that. Like, I hate when I hear people say, wow. Like, I was taking 60 units of Tracy, but I take about 36 to 40 now. People are like, Wow, you're so fat. Well, yeah, when you had a 10 pound baby and you got a lot of belly fat, you need all that insulin, or it's not going to take you through the next level. And then I want to

Speaker 1 52:57
second for a second, you're doing great, but I'm going to conversate with you for a second. Have you tried a GLP medication for weight because, yeah,

Em 53:04
I was on Metformin, but I have no gallbladder that came out in my last pregnancy.

Speaker 1 53:09
No, not the pills that get injectable, that go for weight, step bound. Or

Em 53:13
you guys use ozempic heavily in America, but in Canada, you can only get ozempic for free if

Speaker 1 53:19
you're type two diabetic, there's no version of it for weight loss, not that we would have to pay for it. Benefits. Don't want to cover it. The reason I bring it up is I have an episode. It's not that old. Now, a mom came on to talk about her kids bipolar. Yeah, they found, I'll find it for you. They they found a number of things that helped, yep, and they were able to lessen a lot of the bipolar symptoms, but then the kid went on a GLP for weight, and then it ended up being valuable with some of the bipolar stuff too.

Em 53:57
Well, that's what I take the medication, as advised by my psychiatrist. But let me tell you, I was in with my Endo, and we were trying to do ozempic. We were trying, I was on Metformin. Oh, my God, I could not poop like Metformin was insane. It made me feel so sick

Speaker 1 54:13
if they ever try anything like that again. Yeah, you need to add, like, a little magnesium oxide to your day, and that should help. Good point.

Em 54:19
I'm actually taking zinc and magnesium, and I take daily vitamins because I have a type one diabetic friend. She's a personal trainer, yeah, so we always check in that way. Specifically

Speaker 1 54:28
magnesium, there's a number of different forms of magnesium, but oxide, specifically will help you go to

Em 54:34
the bathroom. Perfect. Yeah, we all need to poop. Yeah? They say

Speaker 1 54:39
everyone does it. Yeah. I wish I could find it here. I'm not finding it, but I'll, I will find it for you, and I'll get it to you.

Em 54:46
No worries. Cool. All right, you were pretty great at this. I'm pretty good at making statements. Scott, how

Speaker 1 54:53
do you feel when it's over after an hour of this? Are you tired by it? Is it invigorating? How does it feel? You know?

Em 54:59
Why? It's, it's tiring because, like, I'm an over share, right? You never know who needs to hear your message. But I, I think there's power in, oh my god. Like, I'll go hang out with a friend and then have coffee, and then I'm like, Oh my God, this was exhausting. Why? Because I don't like being alone, but I do like being alone sometimes, and I like to go to the gym and and talk with people who are like Jesus, I don't know how to judge you. Well, you know what? It's everyone judges. I'm Catholic. Thou shalt not judge, though. So I'll leave it at that.

Scott Benner 55:27
Well, I know you're Catholic because you told me 853 times.

Unknown Speaker 55:30
850 times. I'm just trying to explain. What do you

Speaker 1 55:34
think being Catholic has to do with some of the things that are happening to you? Well,

Em 55:38
my aunt was beaten black and blue for years, and then when my, uh, uncle, or sorry, my great aunt, so when he died, you know, his family didn't want a service, but she had one, because that's what Catholics do.

Speaker 1 55:52
But how does that impact you? How does that whole Catholic experience impact you? I

Em 55:56
think it's because I'm a bit of a rebel, but I have a cause now. So I advocate. You know, I bought a magazine about diabetes education, and I plan to give it to a police officer next time I see him, because you can't deny someone insulin.

Speaker 1 56:10
Are you telling me that being Catholic makes you an advocate? Hell

Em 56:13
yeah, it does. Because I'm half Irish, full throttle. All right, man. All right.

Speaker 1 56:18
All right. I'm definitely calling this one eight seconds to Dublin. That's all that. It's the best title of a podcast episode I've ever dreamt up. I

Unknown Speaker 56:26
love it. I approve signed, sealed delivery. I am

Speaker 1 56:29
the person who wrote butthole adjacent and, oh, I love it. The frozen urine of diabetes, I wrote both of those. And I think that frozen urine as I'm freezing in my car. No, I'm gonna let you go so you can turn your heater on, more than anything. Okay,

Em 56:43
that's what that northern Canadian attitude is for, Scott. But you alive when

Scott Benner 56:47
you're when you're the bloods freezing inside of you,

Em 56:51
slowing down, and you're like, ooh, but that's what the remote start is for. I got a 2025, CRV, which is a good car, but you're not as good as your car. You're just as good as your brain. It's

Speaker 1 57:01
awesome. All right, I'm gonna let you go. You were terrific. Thank you so much for doing okay.

Em 57:04
Thanks, Scott, you take care. Say hi to Arden. I will wish you all the best. Go test your blood sugar. You're very nice. All right, have a great day. Okay, take care. Bye. Bye.

Speaker 1 57:18
Dexcom sponsored this episode of The Juicebox Podcast. Learn more about the Dexcom g7 at my link. Dexcom.com/juice box. Today's episode of The Juicebox Podcast was sponsored by the new tandem Moby system and control iq plus technology. Learn more and get started today at tandem diabetes.com/juice box. Check it out. Earlier you heard me talking about blue circle health, the free virtual type one diabetes care, education and support program for adults. And I know it sounds too good to be true, but I swear it's free thanks to funding from a big T 1d philanthropy group, blue circle health doesn't bill your insurance or charge you a cent. In other words, it's free. They can help you with things like carb counting, insurance navigation, diabetes technology, insulin adjustments, peer support, Prescription Assistance and much more. So if you're tired of waiting nine months to get in with your endo or your educator, you can get an appointment with their team within one to two weeks. This program is showing what T 1d, care can and should look like currently, if you live in Florida, Maine Vermont, New Hampshire, Ohio, Delaware, Missouri, Alabama, Mississippi, Iowa or Louisiana, if you live in one of those states, go to blue circle health.org. To sign up today. The link is in the show notes, and please help me to spread the word blue circle health. Had to buy an ad because people don't believe that it's free, but it is. They're trying to give you free care if you live in Florida, Maine, Vermont, Ohio, Delaware, Alabama and Missouri. It's ready to go right now. And like I said, they're adding states so quickly in 2025 that you want to follow them on social media, blue circle health, and you can also keep checking blue circle health.org to see when your free care is available to you. Okay, well, here we are at the end of the episode. You're still with me. Thank you. I really do appreciate that. What else could you do for me? Why don't you tell a friend about the show or leave a five star review? Maybe you could make sure you're following or subscribed in your podcast app. Go to YouTube and follow me or Instagram. Tik, Tok. Oh gosh, here's one. Make sure you're following the podcast in the private Facebook group as well as the public Facebook page you don't want to miss. Please do not know about the private group. You have to join the private group as of this recording, it has 51,000 members in it. They're active talking about diabetes, whatever you need to know. There's a conversation happening in there right now, and I'm there all the time. Tag me. I'll say hi if you're living with type one diabetes. The after dark collection from the Juicebox Podcast is the only. Place to hear the stories that no one else talks about, from drugs to depression, self harm, trauma, addiction and so much more, go to Juicebox podcast.com up in the menu and click on after dark there you'll see a full list of all of the after dark episodes. Hey, what's up everybody? If you've noticed that the podcast sounds better and you're thinking like, how does that happen? What you're hearing is Rob at wrong way. Recording, doing his magic to these files. So if you want him to do his magic to you, wrong way. Recording.com, you got a podcast. You want somebody to edit it. You want rob you.

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#1507 Who Is Randy?

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Phoebe and Randy’s meet‑cute at the gas station morphed into a mid‑40s tag‑team battle with blood sugars: hers since age 12, his brand‑new after pancreatic cancer left him with type 3C diabetes.

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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.

Speaker 1 0:00
Hello, friends and welcome back to another episode of The Juicebox Podcast.

Unknown Speaker 0:14
Hello, my name is Phoebe. Hi,

Unknown Speaker 0:17
I'm Randy.

Speaker 1 0:19
Please don't forget 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. Don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com All you have to do is use the offer code Juicebox at checkout. That's Juicebox at checkout to save 40% at cozy earth.com. AG, one is offering my listeners a free $76 gift. When you sign up, you'll get a welcome kit, a bottle of d3, k2, and five free travel packs in your first box. So make sure you check out drink ag one.com/juicebox to get this offer, when I created the defining diabetes series, I pictured a dictionary in my mind to help you understand key terms that shape type one diabetes management. Along with Jenny Smith, who, of course, is an experienced diabetes educator, we break down concepts like basal, time and range, insulin on board and much more. This series must have 70 short episodes in it. We have to take the jargon out of the jargon so that you can focus on what really matters, living confidently and staying healthy. You can't do these things if you don't know what they mean. Go get your diabetes defined Juicebox podcast.com go up in the menu and click on series. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the contour next gen blood glucose meter. Learn more and get started today at contour next.com/juice box. The episode you're listening to is sponsored by us. Med, us. Med.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, you can get your diabetes testing supplies the same way we do from us. Med, this episode of the juice box podcast is sponsored by the twist A I D system powered by tide pool that features the twist loop algorithm, which you can target to a glucose level as low as 87 Learn more at twist.com/juice. Box, that's twist with two eyes.com/juice. Box, get precision insulin delivery with a target range that you choose at twist.com/juice box. That's t, w, i, i s t.com/juice.

Phoebe 2:48
Box. Hello. My name is Phoebe.

Unknown Speaker 2:51
I am Randy.

Speaker 1 2:53
Are you guys married? Did you meet each other at the Piggly Wiggly and you just decided to be on a podcast together? What's going

Phoebe 2:58
on? A little bit of both. But we are, in fact, married, but we did meet at the local gas

Speaker 1 3:03
station. Wait, seriously, sort of, yes,

Phoebe 3:07
I was working at the local gas station, and one day he decided to bring in a bunch of bottle returns in the state we're in. That's a thing. And I was forced to count how many bottles he was returning, and that was the first real memory I have of interacting with him.

Speaker 1 3:22
Wait, is that Vermont? No, we're in Michigan, Michigan. I was so close. I was going off an episode of The West Wing where somebody was running for president had to go somewhere to the recycling thing to meet people. Was that New Hampshire? I don't remember. Now, let's not get down that road. So we don't usually do multiple people. So there's got to be a good reason, right? So Phoebe, what's your deal?

Phoebe 3:43
So there is a very intentional reason why Randy and I are both here. I have been a type one diabetic since I was 12. I'm significantly older than that now, and I believe that Randy and I were put together on purpose because two years ago, he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer and is now also a type one diabetic.

Speaker 1 4:02
Randy, her pancreas was so strong it came and got yours. It did. It did. My God, how long have you guys been together?

Phoebe 4:10
We have been together since I was 17. We are coming up on our 20th wedding anniversary. Very soon. Phoebe,

Speaker 1 4:18
are you trying to act like you're old when you're 37 is that? What was going on a second ago? I know

Phoebe 4:23
we we are significantly older than that. I'm in my fort. We are both in our 40s.

Speaker 1 4:28
Oh, that is significantly older. Brandy. Are you much older? Same age? Well, we'll be the same age. I just turned 45 yesterday. Oh, happy birthday. Oh, thank you. Yeah, it must be a little more special after getting through what you got through, I would imagine, yeah,

Randy 4:45
yeah. I didn't think I'd be here, but I'm still here, kicking it and doing well, awesome.

Speaker 1 4:49
Okay, so we'll start with, where are we going to start? Let's think about this. I didn't know this was happening, so I have to reconfigure my thought process. I'm going to start with. Of Randy, and I'm gonna ask what it was like initially dating someone with type one. And how did she tell you about it? Well,

Randy 5:08
she hid it from me for the first, I'd say, five, six months. Wow. I had no idea she was diabetic. And then my real first memory of finding out that she was diabetic, she ended up hospitalized because of her thyroid, throwing everything out of whack as well.

Scott Benner 5:28
Hold on for you. What was the thought back then?

Phoebe 5:32
Well, you know, I was diagnosed in the early 90s, and so I was on multiple daily injections and hormones. Make that really interesting as well. And so the my day to day was not anything remotely what it's like today, as a lot of your other people that have been on your podcast have mentioned, you know, blood sugars took a minute or better to result, and you had to have this clear light underneath the blood sample in order for it to result. It was very laborious and no fun at all. And

Speaker 1 6:05
was I not clear? Are you dodging my question? No, I'm trying to answer. Like, what happens when you say to yourself, like, I'm gonna start dating this guy. I'm assuming, in the beginning, you don't know if he's a no nick or whatever, so you're like, I don't need to tell him my all my business. Yeah, at some point he paused at you, and you don't recoil, and now you're going out again. And it happens again and again and again. Do you get to a point where you're like, Oh snap, I've held this back so long, I don't know how to say it.

Phoebe 6:31
Well, I think that was a lot of it. And actually, one of the things that I was thinking about before this podcast, and some of the dynamics I see in in the online and the Facebook groups, and then even some of the conversations that you have with other people. It dawned on me yesterday, actually, especially when I was first diagnosed, a lot of people had a lot of very passionate opinions about things that I should be doing. Some of them were honest and genuine and maybe had good thought behind them, but others were very, very wrong. And so at some point, I just decided, you know, I'll take everybody's opinion with a grain of salt, and it wasn't anything I really advertised. Actually, was definitely not anything I advertised to people that were around me, unless they really had to know. But I didn't have a lot of lows. I didn't have any major symptoms that displayed themselves. I just did never think it was important to tell him, at least that in the beginning. Is

Speaker 1 7:25
it crazy to think that you told him when you realized you were in love? It definitely

Phoebe 7:29
came before that. When I was 18, I had Graves disease, and I underwent ablation of my thyroid with radioactive iodine, and in the 90s, there were, were no medical records, and doctors didn't do a good job of consulting with one another. And so I went from having a very, very overactive thyroid having a very under active thyroid, and when I had the ablation, I didn't even have a follow up appointment scheduled with anybody. You'll be alright, see you. Yeah, that was that was basically it. And honestly, I remember the moment when I was holding the two capsules in my hand in the radiation department, and I said, What are the chances this will work too well? And they said all 100% I said, well, then what do I do? And the technician said, well, you'll just take a pill every day. And I didn't even give it another thought. I was following the advice of what I thought were knowledgeable practitioners at the time. And so then, of course, shortly thereafter, my thyroid was not active at all, and then that caused, you know, hypoglycemic events and hyperglycemic events and all sorts of things. So that was, that was the hospitalization that Randy was talking about

Speaker 1 8:48
all that finally. Okay, so you So fair enough. You didn't tell him on purpose at that point,

Phoebe 8:53
correct? I didn't tell anybody other than people that were very, very close to my right, you know, circle. So

Speaker 1 9:00
now you guys been together a long time, so this doesn't feel weird, but Randy when you realized that that wasn't a thing she was willing to share at that point, how did that strike you? Were you put off by that? Or did you understand the brand new twist? Insulin pump offers peace of mind with unmatched personalization and allows you to target a glucose level as low as 87 there are more reasons why you might be interested in checking out twist. But just in case that one got you twist.com/juice, box. That's twist with two eyes.com/juice. Box, you can target glucose levels between 87 and 180 it's completely up to you. In addition to precision insulin delivery that's made possible by twist design. Twist also offers you the ability to edit your carb entries even after you've Bolus. This gives the twist loop algorithm the best information to make its decisions with, and the twist loop algorithm lives on the pump so you don't have. To stay next to your phone for it to do its job. Twist is coming very soon, so if you'd like to learn more or get on the wait list, go to twist.com/juice. Box. That's twist with two eyes.com/juice. Box. Links in the show notes, links at Juicebox podcast.com. I used to hate ordering my daughter's diabetes supplies. I never had a good experience, and it was frustrating. But it hasn't been that way for a while, actually, for about three years now, because that's how long we've been using us Med, US med.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, US med is the number one distributor for FreeStyle Libre systems nationwide. They are the number one specialty distributor for Omnipod, the number one fastest growing tandem distributor nationwide, the number one rated distributor in Dexcom customer satisfaction surveys. They have served over 1 million people with diabetes since 1996 and they always provide 90 days worth of supplies and fast and free shipping. Us. Med carries everything from insulin pumps and diabetes testing supplies to the latest CGMS like the libre three and Dexcom g7 they accept Medicare nationwide and over 800 private insurers find out why us med has an A plus rating with a better business bureau at US med.com/juicebox, or just call them at 888-721-1514, get started right now, and you'll be Getting your supplies the same way we do. Contour next.com/juicebox that's the link you'll use to find out more about the contour, next gen blood glucose meter. When you get there, there's a little bit at the top. You can click right on blood glucose monitoring. I'll do it with you. Go to meters, click on any of the meters. I'll click on the Next Gen, and you're going to get more information. It's easy to use and highly accurate. Smart light provides a simple understanding of your blood glucose levels, and of course, with Second Chance sampling technology, you can save money with fewer wasted test strips. As if all that wasn't enough, the contour next gen also has a compatible app for an easy way to share and see your blood glucose results. Contour, next.com/juicebox and if you scroll down at that link, you're going to see things like a Buy Now button. You could register your meter after you purchase it. Or what is this? Download a coupon. Oh, receive a free contour next gen blood glucose meter. Do tell contour, next.com/juice box head over there. Now get the same accurate and reliable meter that we use.

Randy 12:47
I understood growing up, I've had multiple traumas and stuff like that. I was struck by a car, I was burned, so I had scars and stuff like that. I understood that some people didn't want to disclose some of that stuff and wanted to keep that stuff private. So I was okay with it.

Speaker 1 13:05
It's because, you know what it's like not to want to share everything with everybody, right? Okay, oh, that's really something. I appreciate you sharing that with me. So, Phoebe, let's go back a little bit. You're diagnosed a long time ago. Regular, mph,

Phoebe 13:20
yes. I started I was diagnosed, actually, because I wanted to be on the track team and I had to go get a sports physical, and I was still in glucose into my urine, so they discovered it in the urine sample. Prior to that, I had been pretty symptomatic for, I don't know, probably a couple weeks, getting up in the middle of the night and drinking an entire gallon of orange juice because I was so thirsty, which, of course, as I know now, that was the opposite thing that I should have been doing, but that was my brain was telling me that I should do. So I lost a lot of weight, and once we got the diagnosis, I had to go to the hospital from the doctor's office and do a glucose tolerance test. I don't know why that is important in hindsight, but they that was what they did. And when I failed the glucose tolerance test, They admitted me to the local community hospital for all of the education and how to do injections and such and hydration. And I was not in DK, but I was pretty close. I'm pretty sure,

Speaker 1 14:20
you know, you just made me realize we are old. We are I don't think anyone who's you know under a certain age would believe that in middle school, because I wanted to play baseball for my school, that I had to go to the nurse's office and stand in a line with 50 or 60 or 70 other boys who wanted to play baseball or do other things and track whatever in the spring, and we, one after another, went behind a curtain when a strange man fondled our balls and told us to cough.

Phoebe 14:47
That is exactly how it was. I have vivid memories of that. Yeah, of course,

Speaker 1 14:51
you do as you were saying. And I thought I bet young people are like shit to get a physical, like, like, they send me to my doctor to get signed off on it, but your doctor. Just goes, Ah, you've been here recently and they sign it, yeah, I was molested. Like, so, yeah, he didn't say anything kind to me or anything. It was just, like, no. It was, turn your head and cough, Randy. You ever get this? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 15:11
I didn't even get dinner out of it.

Speaker 1 15:16
I know, right? Like, you expect a cheeseburger at least, or something, a tote sucker, something that's we call those lollipops here Randy. But okay,

Unknown Speaker 15:29
some Michigan thing. No, I just

Speaker 1 15:31
in the context. I thought we should redirect, right? Okay, so Phoebe, so you start that way. You have other issues I don't know about yet. So I

Phoebe 15:40
am now hypothyroid. I do have some slightly strange diabetic side effects. So I have necrobiosis diabetes, Filipino,

Speaker 1 15:51
if you've heard of that, I mean, just today I did go ahead. So

Phoebe 15:55
basically it starts in kind of a small area. Mine started on my right shin, and degradation or deterioration of the fat layer under your skin. And it's not generally painful or anything, but it does. It's prone to ulcers and injury pretty easily, and then through time, it spreads. So I have it on both of my shins. Now. It's it's ugly, but other than that, it's not really anything. So

Speaker 1 16:20
I don't want to burst your bubble. But as you were explaining it to me, I thought, oh, somebody else has told me about this. So is that localized, or does it spread? Yes,

Phoebe 16:28
it does spread over time. You know, I don't really understand the exact pathology behind it, but it has gotten bigger, but it's been, you know, I've been diabetic for 30 plus years now, so it's slowly progresses,

Speaker 1 16:41
and it's just in that spot, correct. Gotcha, okay? Oh, and I'm sorry, what's it called? Um, there's

Phoebe 16:48
a abbreviation that I always mess up. But necrobiosis diabetes, O, M, B, I'm going to assume the internet

Speaker 1 16:56
can figure out the rest of it. Necrobiosis

Phoebe 16:59
lapedica. Lapedica, yep, diabetic. Corum is another term for it. And LD,

Speaker 1 17:05
oh, also Lucky you. Phoebe, a rare skin condition. How about in your family? Phoebe? Is there other autoimmune stuff? Yep,

Phoebe 17:13
so my half sister is also type one. My biological mother was diagnosed late in her life as a type one as well, and went through the trying to give her metform And then those sorts of things, she was actually crashed or motorcycle in the median of an expressway, and when they picked up, she had really high blood sugar. So that was how she got diagnosed. And my biological fathers type two. Wait,

Speaker 1 17:39
so your mom is the parent you share with your half sister.

Unknown Speaker 17:43
No, actually

Speaker 1 17:44
really, hold on a second. Hold on a second you And holy crap. So your biological father, who has type two diabetes, has at least two daughters that we know of with two different women. They both have type one, and the woman he made pregnant to make you got type one later in life. Yes. Oh, Randy. I was kidding earlier, but she definitely up your pancreas.

Phoebe 18:09
There might be a correlation there, for sure. I think you're onto something, Scott, you guys are

Speaker 1 18:14
like little pancreas vampires or something like that, only you're not near me now, right. Do you know any other people Phoebe who have type one diabetes or problems with their parents?

Phoebe 18:28
Well, so funny. I was thinking in history, because I knew questions like this were going to come up when I was in middle school, the time when I was diagnosed, there were at least three other people that I know of, four other people that I just thought of another one, that were all diagnosed at the same time. Have

Scott Benner 18:43
you ever touched them? Perhaps your patient?

Unknown Speaker 18:50
Yeah, you might be onto something.

Speaker 1 18:52
I want to be clear, because there are at least 10 crazy people listening right now. They're like, I heard this podcast today, and this lady, everyone she touches gets type one diabetes. So that is not, I'm just making that up. I'm just, I'm being facetious, but, but no, that's I mean, what a coincidence. It

Unknown Speaker 19:09
really was, like, amazing coincidence. Yeah,

Speaker 1 19:12
no kidding. My gosh, how's your pets? Pets are all fine, yeah, it doesn't transfer from humans to pets. Then, okay, well, that's good. Not yet. One day your dog will look up at you when you got me. Take me to the would you remember? What age did you start using, like a fast acting and a basal insulin?

Phoebe 19:34
So I started right off with a short and a long term insulin. I don't remember what brands they were, multiple daily injections right from the

Speaker 1 19:42
get go. Oh, you did not do regular mph then no. Oh, okay, I'm sorry. So you started right away with probably, like Lantis and Humalog, or

Phoebe 19:51
whatever was before Lantis, that one, actually, I remember when I started on that. So whatever the predecessor to Lantis was, like,

Speaker 1 19:59
you have a. Lot of different health issues going on, so like, Were your parents helpful with that, or was that all left on you to manage? Oh, as

Phoebe 20:05
Randy already kind of pointed out, and I, as I've been described by some of my friends, as fiercely independent. My parents were supportive, but I started right from day one as managing it myself. You know,

Speaker 1 20:18
30 years ago, they would have called you a pain in the ass, and today it's fiercely independent. Into battle. I think it's good, by the way. I'm glad that we've we've all grown, but I could just tell you that in 1975 my father and his friends would have been like, Oh, she's a pain in the ass, yeah, which not fair for people are listening, and I'm not saying it's a good thing, and, oh, my god, we're just having fun. You took it from them. You were like, I'll do this on my own. Yeah, yeah. All right. And did that work out well for you?

Phoebe 20:44
It did work out very well. Of course, being human and the processes of life, it didn't always work out fantastic. But as of today, I'm I don't even remember the last time I was hospitalized related to my diabetes. I still have all of my toes in my eyes, and both of which were threatened that I would lose them at some point in my life when I was first diagnosed. So I'm very happy about that.

Speaker 1 21:07
Yeah, and so, well, they set the bar very low for you that, like, if

Phoebe 21:11
you could, there was not really a bar, it was just a low, flat shelf called the floor, I think,

Speaker 1 21:16
no kidding. And that was diagnosis that you got that pressure, not throughout your life, okay? Yeah. And

Phoebe 21:22
actually, my very first endocrinologist did not enjoy pediatric or young people diabetics, and he was not a nice person at all, and I dreaded going to see him, and he was always shock and awe and intimidation were his main tactics. So didn't have a great start in the endo

Speaker 1 21:41
world. Did it work on you? Or did it have a reverse effect on you? It definitely

Phoebe 21:45
had the reverse effect on me. In it and I got tried to get rid of him as quick as possible, but he was the only endo in our area that was accepting people so especially of my age, so I had to put up with him for a couple years. Okay,

Speaker 1 21:58
I'm sorry, it sucks. Yeah. Do you make it to a pump adventure? Are you MDI now? Nope. So

Phoebe 22:04
I'm Omnipod and g6 running in auto mode. And actually, as a result of, I don't want to give you too much credit, but credit where credit's due. After starting to listen to the podcast, my a one C's in normal range for the first time in my life. So, oh,

Speaker 1 22:19
good for you. I also love the way you preface that, like, like, Listen, I don't want to give you all the credit, joking aside again, you should not like, I really see myself as a person who just like, I'm like, here's tools. This is how they work. Like, you got to go do something with them. I didn't do Yeah, I tell anybody who comes to me privately and says things like, Oh, my God, you saved me, or you did this. I'm like, No, you did it. You know what? I mean, like, You did all the hard work. It's not easy,

Phoebe 22:47
well. And you know, I think that the best part about the podcast for me is the fact that my whole life, I've had people coming to me from a position of authority and saying, This is what you must do, or you shall do to take care of your diabetes. And the podcast and your community has really given it from a peer to peer or a knowledge standpoint, and I think that's really what reaches your audience the most. At least it does for me. You know, having somebody, having a peer that says, you know, hey, this really sucks, is pretty powerful. Yeah,

Speaker 1 23:20
I agree. I really do. I think people learn in different ways, and they're engaged in different ways as well. And like, I can see there's times when I'll put up, like, there's an episode that went up this week with, I've been talking about a lot this week, but I had a pretty big impact on me. So with Ryan, who had neuropathy, or, excuse me, uh, retinopathy. And, you know, literally lost his sight, and then had to have surgeries to get it back. And and now has not had that problem since he found the podcast and started listening to it. And there's this, you know, kind of thing that goes on in the background where people will reach out to me and say, hey, you know, like, you, I think you saved that guy's vision. And and, like, that's heady for me. So, like, I've got to, like, absorb that and, you know, sort it out. Because I'm, I don't, like, I'm not walking around, you know, in a cloak with my hands over my head going, everyone, it's me. I'm Scott. I've saved, like, you know, like, I don't, I have no feelings like that. But it's still, when it's put in your face, you think, like, is that really what happened? You know, is it fair for me to absorb it that way? Like, I go through all, like, a lot on this end. And then there are people who, like, just want management talk, right? Like, some people love that conversation with Ryan, and they get a ton out of it. And there are some people that hear that and go, Wow, tell me how to Bolus. Like, then those people want, like, pro tips and like that kind of stuff. And it's interesting, like, there was this moment where I thought that the podcast was just popular, and then I had to really look at it and recognize that there's portions of it that are popular with some people and portions of it that are popular with different people, and that. Some people listen to the podcast constantly and won't go into the Facebook group, into the private group. They won't go there. They don't care. They won't go and I'm like, oh, you should there's so much there. And then there's people who won't leave the private group and listen to the podcast. It's just fascinating how everybody's like, wants the information but needs it differently. So I'm glad it found you. How did it find you? Really

Phoebe 25:23
by happenstance, I do a lot of listening to podcasts, and one day I just came upon it and started listening to it. And when we were going through all the Randy stuff and I was in the hospital, it was a lot easier to listen to stuff than it was to watch stuff on TV or whatnot. So spent a lot of time listening to it.

Speaker 1 25:42
Awesome by accident. Roy, I appreciate that you that you found it, and I'm glad it helped you. Randy, what were your first inclinations that something was wrong? Oh, I'm

Randy 25:51
a paramedic by trade, so I was on the ambulance and between Mount Pleasant and Midland, say it's only 30 minutes, I couldn't go that whole trip without having to use the bathroom. And I'm like, well, that's just weird. No matter how much I drink, you know, I'm like, Man, I'm still thirsty. I'm still thirsty. All them years of being in medicine and being around Phoebe and, you know, never put it in my head, or maybe I was just in denial. I finally took my blood sugar, and then I told my boss, I'm like, Hey, I gotta leave. I gotta go to the doctor. And then that's when they told me that I was a type two diabetic. About 14 months later, I was on the ambulance again and had severe abdominal pain and almost like chest pain. It was like very diffuse across the bottom of the diaphragm, like a tight, constricting band. And when I got to the hospital, we did a 12 lead EKG to check out my heart make sure I wasn't having heart attack. We did some enzyme test and blood work, and found that I was in having a pancreatitis. And then to the end of 2022 I started having abdominal pain all the time, chronic diarrhea, fatigue, all sorts of weird symptoms. And then I just figured that this was the new norm. We've done lab work, colonoscopies, you know, anything you can imagine, and we couldn't find it. And then my doctor and Phoebe were like, maybe it's actually time we started doing some imaging and looking inside and seeing what's going on. And then they found, I want to say, the first time term that they used was a lesion on the pancreas. So we were told that we needed to follow pancreatic lesion protocol. So we ended up going down to the U of M and didn't endoscopy er CP, which is where they put a tube down your throat and Bailey, basically ultrasound from the inside, and they placed a stent because on the inside of my pancreas, all the ducks were pretty much clogged with IPM, and which, if for the lay person, is fish eggs or tapioca pudding, inside of all the ducks that were blocking all of the digestive enzymes, they said that I was pre cancerous, and said that this always turns into cancer if we don't do anything. So Doctor Cho, who's one of the best in the state of Michigan, he was the top guy at U of M to conduct the surgery, and by the time he finished, I want to say I was in surgery for nine and a half 10 hours. We started out as a Whipple procedure, and he said he was just going to take enough of the pancreas, but he couldn't find any clear margin so it can became a complete pancrea. And the result of that, I lost my spleen because there was no place to attach. That also got rid of the gallbladder because there was no place for that to go. So it's like the pyloric saving Whipple, but with the complete pancrea splenectomy, COVID systectomy, we're all done at the same time.

Speaker 1 29:10
What are the impacts Randy of losing your spleen? Well, I have to be very, very

Randy 29:14
cautious around anybody who's sick and being on the ambulance, anybody with a respiratory disease or anything like that. My other crewmates and co workers kind of shield me from some of that. So if we walk in and somebody's got a known thing like COVID or norovirus or RSV or anything like that, they'll have me sit outside and wait and tell they get out so we're not in a temp find area, but I wear a mask on all of my patient interactions, you know, to help protect myself as well. But it's been interesting.

Speaker 1 29:47
What's the spleen do? I'm blanking on what it does,

Phoebe 29:50
basically the graveyard for your immune system, so all your old red blood cells and such go and get reabsorbed in your spleen. Yeah.

Speaker 1 30:01
So then what happens? Nothing. Instead of that happening, like, do you take medication? Like, do you like, how does it, how do you replace its function? Or, can you not? You can't. Okay,

Randy 30:13
yeah, it's just caution. So, like, my white blood cell count is going to be continuously elevated because of it. And then, what about the gallbladder? The gallbladder is just one of those things that it's kind of like the appendix. It can be there it cannot. So, like, I have trouble with greasy or spicy foods now,

Phoebe 30:35
okay, yeah, AIDS and digestion of food, yeah. So

Speaker 1 30:38
spleen, filtering blood, storing blood, fighting infection, supporting the lymphatic system. Gallbladder stores bile, releases bile, aids digestion. Oh, geez. And we know what the pancreas does. If I just asked you, how has your life changed without those three organs? Like, what's the thing that jumps to your mind first? Well, I've

Randy 30:57
never been a great patient to begin with, being in the healthcare field, remembering to take my meds. I have to take what's called pancreas after each meal to help with digestion. Remembering to take those in a timely manner mid meal. I usually have to take three of these, like giant horse pills to help with that you get any depression from it, not really more anxiety from when I was going through chemo than anything.

Speaker 1 31:27
Yeah, yeah, I would imagine, yeah. I want to ask you about that, but I gotta tell you, Randy, before we get to your chemo, and how horrible it is. I want to just say that the most shocking thing about your story so far is that you were at work on an ambulance. Thought you had to leave because you were sick, and they didn't offer you a ride. That's their whole job. No, they gave me a ride. Okay? I was like. I was like, did they really make him drive to the hospital? Like, because that's their whole thing. No,

Randy 31:51
no. Every, every time that I've needed to go to the hospital, one of my bosses have always jumped on the truck and been a part of it, and give the other paramedics that work with me a hard time because I'm a very hard IV start. You know, I'm just

Speaker 1 32:05
saying it wouldn't be really if they wouldn't take you to the hospital, as long as I was like, that's really terrible. They had

Randy 32:11
me drive the ambulance to the hospital for them, they're like, we'll go with you drive.

Speaker 1 32:15
It's like an Uber that you drive. That's awesome, sponsored by Medicare. When they come to the conclusion, like, this, is it, you have to have this procedure. Did they call you pre cancerous? Why do you end up with chemo afterwards, they

Randy 32:30
called me pre cancerous, and then when they went in two months later, when we finally did the surgery, I ended up being in stage two with both extra can and endocrine cancers. So I also got both types of cancers. Initially. They usually do just like the adenocarcinoma, Sonoma or den of carcinoma, but I also had the extracurric carcinoma. On top of it, one out of every four patients is likely to make it through five years without the chemo, but 75% die without having it. So like, Well, I've been patient zero throughout this whole thing. You know, anything that could go wrong or had a complication, I ended up being that patient. Okay? So I'm like, let's just do it. How long did chemo last? It was scheduled for six months, I had a reaction to my first treatment plan, which was full fair knocks. They cut for short. They call it 5f, U. They call that the no joke chemo, because it's so hard on the system I would go in for, it's usually scheduled for six hours in the chair and then 46 hours on a home pump. I would have staff that came in at the same time as me, and that would leave before me from my first two treatments, because it was so hard on my system.

Scott Benner 33:50
Hey, did you get the bone pain? I

Randy 33:52
had bone pain. I ended up looking like an alopecia patient at one point. I think it was my third treatment of the gabapentin, or not gabapentin, I'm sorry, the other treatment that I had, I lost all my hair. I had no eyebrows, no eyelashes, nothing. I had a pretty good beard going at the time too. So that come out and you get the restless legs, yeah, yeah. Got Russell flag that go away a little bit every now and then I'll get, like, a kick in the middle of the night while I'm trying to sleep. It'll startle me awake, but tremors in my hands. I still got some of those that are pretty residual. I had the beginnings of neuropathy, but treating that with B 12, and that's been pretty tolerable.

Speaker 1 34:36
Okay, and so what's your long term prognosis?

Randy 34:40
I just live every day, one day, one day at a time when I was going through chemo, they said that they put me in touch with a case manager said, we've got yelled, set up, you'll go on permanent disability afterwards. And I'm like, why? Like, if I can still stand up, I'm gonna go to work. They're like, nobody goes back to work. After having pancreatic cancer, I'm like, Well, I'm different,

Scott Benner 35:02
and you've done that. Yep,

Randy 35:05
yep, the place that I work at now has been phenomenal. They sent me to school to learn how to be a dispatcher. When my short term disability ran out, they brought me back into the dispatch center, which is only two people. I would sit in a room locked in there with that other person, and I'd wear a mask, and they'd wear a mask. And, you know, while I was on chemo and nobody could walk in or out, we had our own little kitchenette and bathroom and everything, so I didn't have to go wandering through the halls or anything like that. That's

Speaker 1 35:35
nice of them. Yeah, Phoebe, what's it like when, when your your spouse

Phoebe 35:39
gets sick like that. Zero out of 10, wouldn't that recommend? Are you

Speaker 1 35:43
having your own personal struggle with it, while also having one? That's the two of you.

Phoebe 35:48
Well, for sure, I also am a paramedic. One of the reasons I wanted to come on the podcast is because it's so important for everyone to be or have a good patient advocate and really speak up when you don't understand the thing, or even sometimes when what they're saying doesn't sound right. And when he was in the hospital, he was hospitalized after his major surgery for 18 days at the big university hospital here in the state, and I felt like I couldn't ever turn my back, because we had some amazing staff members, but we also had a few be member, be team staff members, and there were a couple of times where I had to step in and be like, you are absolutely not doing that. I just feel like I've had to, you know, always speak up and be his advocate. But it's not been easy. It's been pretty tough. Yeah,

Speaker 1 36:44
have you guys talked about death? Have you had that conversation? Well,

Phoebe 36:49
I would say death is a joke in our house most of the time. Career side effect is it's something we've dealt with for a lot of years with other people, but having a realistic expectation of what it's going to be like at the end. I think is good, but, yeah, we've definitely had some long conversations about the end Randy. Do

Speaker 1 37:08
you go you have, like, meaningful conversations with family and friends beyond Phoebe, like, do you do the rounds? Or are you so busy trying to get better that you don't have time for that?

Randy 37:19
I talk to everybody. I feel that everybody that wants to talk to me has made it a point to call me every day or text me. You know, some of my family members are going through their own struggles right now with like, my brother in law's got cancer right now. So we we keep in touch and discuss things like that. I think everybody knows my side of it. As far as you know, I'm good with whatever happens. You know, I know where I'm going. Phoebe knows that she can just light the pine box on fire and just let it sizzle in the backyard if needed.

Speaker 1 37:54
But she's gonna push you out in the Lake Michigan, but we're doing a Viking thing. It's gonna be awesome. There you go. If you're listening closely, my whole vibe has shifted because, like, you know, I'm sitting here thinking, like, everything I know about cancer is through my mom, you know, like, and I stopped myself from asking you to describe that bone pain to me, because I wanted to know what she was going through. And I thought, that'll just derail this. If I, if I ask you that question, everything else that happens to us happens slowly. If you're lucky, right? You die slowly you get old, slowly you get fat, slowly you get like, everything happens slowly. Cancer is like, wow, something's living inside of my body and it's eating me, and we're gonna try to kill it, but everything we know how to kill it with doesn't really kill it as good as it needs to be dead. It's an infestation. You know,

Randy 38:44
it would always make me chuckle. It was one of the few things that I joked about going through chemo, because I was trying to be sensitive to everybody else that was going through it in the room that we were in. Because, you know, not everybody has the same sense of humor that I do, but they would gown up, double glove, face shield, face mask, everything, and then I would be sitting there in a T shirt with a med port, and they would be injecting poison straight into my veins. And I'm like, This doesn't seem right. Yeah. Thank

Speaker 1 39:15
you. Appreciate this. Yeah, Randy, like, when that's your best option, right? You know what I mean? Like, that's, that's the crazy, that's the crazy stuff. Like, you know, you're like, somebody's holding you hostage, and the only way I can shoot them is to shoot you too. And, you know, and then hopefully you'll make it through it. And, I mean, that's a position to be put in, you know, it's just uncommon in most other walks of life, yeah, and it's just on you, like, you're just, you're working one day, and you're like, I have a pain. And then somebody says you have type two diabetes. They probably gave you Metformin. You know what I mean? You're probably like, oh, I guess I'll have to stop eating pizza now. And then, you know, a number of months later, this is where you're at very quickly. Are your parents alive? Randy? They

Randy 39:55
are not both. My parents are deceased. My dad was a type. Diabetic. My mom's mother was a type one diabetic, really. So, yeah, I had it going against me, too. Your mom's

Speaker 1 40:09
mother was a, yeah, you guys don't have kids, but that's probably a good thing.

Randy 40:15
Yeah, we decided very early on that if we were going to have kids, we would adopt.

Speaker 1 40:19
Oh, yeah, no, I think it would have came out of Phoebe with an insulin pump in its hand. It would have hand. It would have been like, Yeah, I'm here. I'm so sorry to talk about like this. But does this change how you plan your life? Is it like you open your eyes in the morning and be like, Huh? All right, I guess we'll do it again. Do you plan out far like you have a vacation plan two years from now, or anything like that?

Randy 40:39
We got a vacation planned in August. Honestly, everybody at work, I tried to be super positive. I was pretty negative after being in Paramedicine for as long as I had been prior to cancer, my joke was always, you know, I started in EMS when the Dead Sea was just sick, and now I go in and I'm excited to go to work, and everybody's like, Oh man, I can't believe we're at work again. And I'm like, Dude, I get to come to work. This is awesome.

Speaker 1 41:06
Everything feels like I can't believe I'm gonna say this fee, because you listen, you know I'm gonna I feel like I feel like a douche bag, and the words are still in the back of my throat. But everything feels like a gift at this point, right?

Randy 41:17
Oh yeah, yeah, absolutely. And I try to be sympathetic to Phoebe and the fact that she was the rock star through all this, I just had to not die. She had to go and make sure that I didn't die, you know, even when I go to the ER now for something, she feels like she has to be there to make sure that they don't kill me by accident, you know, just

Speaker 1 41:36
Yeah, Phoebe. So we have this in common, like everything that went wrong for my mom I thought was because I didn't make the right decision.

Phoebe 41:44
Yeah, I don't necessarily feel that, but just keeping an eye, because I come from a medical education background, and I've worked with a lot of different clinicians over the years, I just feel like everybody makes mistakes, and nobody's perfect, and I don't have the bandwidth to allow the mistake to happen to him.

Speaker 1 42:03
Yeah, yeah. I mean, from the beginning, from when she was first sick, to, like, when we figured out what it was, then the steps you take afterwards, like, everything, like, gets it's always hindsight, like, right? Like, right? Like, there's something about that fight or flight that makes you see things as more, I don't know, doable than they might actually be. Like, I remember the first time I was with my mom in in the hospital, and I'm like, there's something seriously wrong with her. But they were like, oh, it's like, it's a, it's this, it's that, it's like, you know, it's all these things like, and you look back now and you think, like, well, she was this old. She was this was her situation. Like, nobody thought cancer. Then, like, we could just check, you know what I mean? And then, like, there was this time I took her to the emergency room, and we realized, you know, much later, that they imaged her without draining her bladder. First, they just couldn't see the cancer because they were because the bladder was so full, and then there were three weeks before we figured out to get back again. And like, you know, there's that party that's like, Did those three weeks cost her three years? Like, like, I don't know, you know, and maybe not like, I have no idea, but like, I don't know. It just comes back. It feels like once somebody's older and not even older, because Randy is a good example, right, man, like there's so much happening to you. You need someone helping you, right? Yeah, I'm assuming you feel like somebody put a pot over your head, hit you with a bat, took off the pot and went, do you want chemo? Right? How are you supposed to answer that, right? Well,

Randy 43:33
the other thing was going through the surgery and the amount of medications that I was on. What was it? Phoebe, at one point, I had like, 750 milligrams of morphine or something like that, in

Phoebe 43:47
a in a 20. No, it was not that much. It was 24 I don't remember the exact number, but yeah, I don't remember. In fairness

Scott Benner 43:54
to Randy, he was high, he wouldn't be able

Unknown Speaker 43:57
to remember. Yeah, he doesn't remember

Randy 43:58
any of it. Yeah, there were three days from the time that I went in to when I come out that I can't recall.

Speaker 1 44:05
Yeah, awesome, by the way, you finally get to try morphine in your life and you have cancer. I mean, it just what a bummer.

Randy 44:12
Yeah, my boss, who came down and took over for Phoebe to keep an eye on things so that she could get a break and go get a shower and stuff like that. She's like, you know, you never think that you ended up having to give one of your co workers a sponge bath. But here we are, and I'm like, what? Wait, that really happened. She's like, No, I'm just messing with you. I'm like, great mess with the guy that's high.

Speaker 1 44:32
Everyone you know, sponge you down while you were asleep. Awesome. She's Phoebe had

Unknown Speaker 44:38
a conga had a conga line. Yeah, Phoebe,

Speaker 1 44:40
maybe you are a little bit of pain in the ass. That was something there. It's awesome. I feel like I'm out of my depth even talking to you. Like, what should I be asking you guys about? You know what I mean? Like, what do you want to share with people?

Phoebe 44:53
Well, when I was listening to the podcast, actually, you had a call out for people that work in meta. Full education, which is when I originally sent the email to you. And I know that was a long time ago, but you are just so busy and hard to get a hold of. So

Speaker 1 45:08
on purpose makes me feel, uh, makes me feel important. No, no, you know, I just told somebody this the other day. Phoebe, I won't take you down this road too far, but the way I have it set up is if you have to sign up for something, and six months later do it, knowing that it'll take a further six months after that for anybody to hear it. Then when I turn this microphone on and you're here, you really want to do this, yeah, and that's how I make sure to get people who are really going to add something to the podcast. Because if it was just, like, if I just jumped on Instagram and I was like, Hey, who's not busy right now and wants to make a podcast 25 no nicks, would be like, I'll do it like, you know, and I believe I use nudnik Twice in an episode, but especially for you guys in Michigan, because, you know, like, three Jewish people, I think that must be crazier for you. You know what I mean? Like, I think making the process difficult makes the outcome better, yeah, for sure, yeah. So anyway, go ahead. I'm sorry.

Phoebe 45:59
Oh no, you're fine. So through the course of my life, I've had a lot of different jobs, and for a while, Randy actually the beginning of all Randy symptoms with his diagnosis of his pancreatic cancer, we're working at the same organization, but I was teaching new first responders and new em teas their craft, and I thought it was important to come on and kind of give that perspective from the caregivers side of things, so to speak. And I know you've had some other people on as well, but then also just to say how important it is to really speak up. And I know other people that have been on have talked a lot about just doing what the doctor said, and we talked before we even started today, about, you know, just doing what is told of you, but that's not always the best track. And certainly for Randy story, it's was absolutely the wrong thing to do, because the thing he didn't really tell you about is how much heartache and struggle in advocating for ourselves had to happen between his pan great Titus, which we still don't know why, although it's probably the pancreatic cancer, why he had that, you know, now three years ago or four years ago, they just said, oh geez, that we don't know why it happens. And then he started having all these symptoms, and like he had mentioned, you know, he just accepted it as a norm, and here I am at home banging my forehead against the wall saying, This can't be normal when you're spending, you know, three quarters of your day in the bathroom with abdominal pain, and then trying to talk to his care providers and his doctors and saying, Hey, we got to do something. And we had one GI doctor that he was seeing that started him on this. I don't even know what it was, but it was a suspension that he mixed up that was supposed to help with his diarrhea. He did it for a while, very religiously, and he went back and he was still having all the symptoms. And the doctors like, Well, gee, I don't know, just keep doing what you're doing. And it was so long and so laborious and so painful and emotional for us that it was tragic. And I just kept saying, This can't be it. This can't be this can't be the answer. Just keep doing what you're doing is not working. Nothing's changed. And so then, when we finally got the imaging results back with the pancreatic protocol recommendation, everything just kind of like we had taken forever to go, click, click, click, up the roller coaster Hill, and we were finally at the top of it, and then before we knew it, we were having surgery and had a diagnosis of cancer. And to your point, Scott, you know you go along every day, and all of a sudden, in the blink of an eye, it just switches,

Speaker 1 48:44
oh, that's like getting hit by a car, which also Randy knows about, like, yeah, yeah. It's terrible, like that. You have this experience in so many different ways, but of you know, like you're just moving along, doing your thing, and then all of a sudden, everything just changes,

Phoebe 49:01
yeah, blink of an eye changed. No kidding. Hey,

Speaker 1 49:04
this is gonna seem like a left turn, but you guys listen to the podcast your mom's house. No no. So I don't either like, I've heard it enough times. It's a comedian Tom Segar and his wife, who's also a comedian, Christina. Oh yeah, I've listened to him. Okay, so there's the opening of, I don't know anything about this. People who listen are probably like, I think it's probably a running joke in the podcast. But there's this, like, voice clip of somebody yelling, who is Randy? And I swear to God, for the last 51 minutes, I've got to fight that out of my head. While we're talking Randy's telling me about his gallbladder and his pancreas, and they're taking stuff out, tapioca pudding, eggs from fish. I don't know about like, just sounding like, goop in his pancreas. In the back of my head, there's this, there's this voice going, who is Randy? Is killing me. Like, not the same way cancer is trying to kill you, Randy. But you know what I mean? Like, you know. Right, right, right, right, right. Oh, my God. Anyway, cancer is a scourge. It's terrible. It is. Yeah, I can't tell you my beloved Philadelphia Eagles are going to the Super Bowl next week, as everyone knows, and I'm sure you're all happy for me. Thank you. And my brothers and I, we, none of us live in the same state. We have a group text that we use during the Eagles games. We've been very religious about it this year, texting back and forth with each other during the games, like, complaining about plays and like, why is he not under center? And, like, why you like, you know, stuff that, oh, stuff that, when it's happening, Arden goes, I can't believe you care about any of this, or think about any of this. And I'm like, my brother's making a good point. Like, I was like, but anyway, we get to the end of the game, the Eagles win. They're gonna go to the Super Bowl. And my middle brother, Brian, who my mom lived with at the end of her life for a bit, he's like, Oh, I'm sitting here like a bitch crying, because I the last time the Eagles, like this happened for the Eagles, like, mom was here and like, and I sat with her, and I watched the game. And then it brings the cancer thing up again, like, in everybody and that, we don't talk about it, but you know, everyone, like, just goes back through it all. Yeah, and if you're lucky enough, like, man Randy, I, you know, obviously I, if people listen like, I'm not religious, or I'd play for you, but like, I'll hold a good thought for you. If this all works out for you, you end up with a different perspective than other people have, which will be incredibly valuable for the rest of your life and for the people around you. But if it doesn't go your way, then it's all for freaking nothing, and it sucks, and then it's just you going through this shit, and there's nothing that anybody can say that'll it is just gonna be what it is, and you're gonna deal with it as best you can. Is that how it feels at times,

Randy 51:41
I guess. You know, I've got a pretty good perspective on things, you know, I'm 45 years old, you know, I've, I've outlived many things that have tried to kill me. To be that douche bag that you are every day is a gift, you know.

Speaker 1 51:57
So you already have, you have that perspective now, like now, I just, I'm saying, like me talking to you being, you know, I don't know, like, somewhat like Pollyanna about it, like I'd like you to live with that gift for decades. Oh, yeah, you know what I mean, and not just for you and just but because, like, what that knowledge will bring to you and how you'll be able to spread that to other people. And it's a, it's a very hard fought perspective. You deserve to be able to share it. I guess

Randy 52:23
I've actually had a couple of cancer patients that I transported, and I've got a new perspective. As far as like you were mentioning with your mom, and the bone pain, I can't even describe it to you, and how much it hurts babies heard me complain about it. I don't know. It's like everything is a giant ache. And it's like trying to explode is kind of the only way I can even fathom talking about it, is explaining to them what they're going to feel with some of the you know, if they're on either of the cancer regimens that I or the, sorry, the chemo regimens that I were on, you know, what they can expect, you know, and the importance of, you know, washing your hands. Don't let anybody touch your blood, because it's, it's basically like AIDS, I tell everybody, just think of it like you have AIDS. Don't let anybody touch your toothbrush, you know, keep your toothbrush in a different spot. Wash the toilet. Clorox wipes on the toilet seat and everything that flush toys. You talked

Speaker 1 53:25
earlier about anxiety that came with all this, like, has that gone away for you? Do you still have it?

Randy 53:30
I have it when I walk into that building. Now I have a new thing that we call scanxiety, because of all the MRIs and I've got to go get another pet scan and CTS and stuff like that, because you're always waiting for that other foot to drop when it comes to finding out, you know, if it's truly gone or not.

Speaker 1 53:51
Like a significantly worse version of getting your teeth cleaned? Yeah, I love getting

Randy 53:55
my teeth cleaned because I couldn't have it done while I was on chemo. Oh, I meant for people who are like, I'm

Speaker 1 53:59
definitely going to have a cafe. I'm going to get my teeth cleaned. To get my teeth cleaned out. I want to get my teeth cleaned because I'm gonna find out I have a cavity, like that whole family, yeah. PB, you know something you said earlier has been stuck with me the whole time, like it's been the only thing that's fought out the who is Randy in my head, when you said peer to peer, talking about people understanding your situation and how valuable it is. And then Randy basically just said the same thing, like, you know, like, I understand what that bone pain is like if somebody gets in that ambulance now, and I know they're going through chemo, I know they have that pain, and I know what it feels like, and I can be more, you know, a better servant to them in that situation through understanding. And then I just was mirroring it back in my head to the diabetes thing, because I stood in the shower this morning like repeating this thought in my head that I keep looking at all the conversations we have with people, and I keep doing this thing privately that I haven't figured out what to do with it yet, but like later, I'll take our conversation and I will feed it into like a. Into an AI model, and I'll ask it to pull out everything that Phoebe said that's valuable for people living with diabetes, everything that Randy said that'll be valuable for people who've had cancer, anything that I said that might have been helpful. What did Phoebe say the podcast did for her? And I get all this great feedback, and I'm looking at it, and I know there's a way to aggregate it and redeliver it to people to help them, but I can't keep it all in my head at the same time to figure out what that is. I'm standing in the shower and I'm like, I can't keep it all in my head. Like, why can't I wrap my head fully around what this is and how to red, disseminate it to people? And like, I'm like, I'm gonna figure it out. Because I want to leave a thing that people can go to and listen to or talk to, you know, ask questions of in the future, because I can see a world where, if you look at everything that happened to you Randy and everything that Phoebe had to stand in the background trying to figure out what's going on. And like, did that doctor just say something valuable or something stupid? Should I say yes to that or no to that? Like, if you had a prompt to go to, and you could go to that prompt and say, the doctor said this. Like, here's Randy's situation and here's everything it needs to know today, the doctor said this. What should I be agreeing with? What should I be leery of? Where do I have more questions? What are the pros and the cons of this? If you could have done that along the way, imagine how valuable that would have been. And now imagine if you had that for diabetes. I think there's a way to do that. I think there's a way to put a prompt on someone's phone or their computer where they can go to it and say, Hey, today I ate this. I did that. This happened. Here was the outcome. What should I have done differently? Yeah, and I think that those answers to those questions are in the conversations that we've all been having for the last decade.

Unknown Speaker 56:55
Yeah, I think you're onto it. I

Speaker 1 56:56
do too, but like, I'm not smart enough baby to, like, pull the whole thing together. It's just very frustrating because I feel like I'm standing in front of a puzzle and all the pieces are in front of me, and I can't figure out where to put them. And anyway, that's what I thought about in the shower today. Hopefully I remember to wash my hair. I think I did.

Randy 57:15
It's a puzzle which is a picture of grass, and you got to put all the pieces together.

Speaker 1 57:18
It's exactly how it feels. I know all of the pieces are here. I don't know how they go together, and I don't know how to redistribute them back to you as a picture. Like, that's the thing I'm trying. I'm gonna figure it out. It's and unless I, you know, wake up and I have, like, would you say, like, uh, pressure in my abdomen or whatever, unless something happens, I get hit by a car, you know? And then then you guys are all you're on your I did my best. It didn't work out. What do you want from me? I think I'm super close to it, like the idea. So anyway, the

Randy 57:55
very first podcast that I listened to you, Phoebe sent me, and that was a woman, I believe she was in Canada, and she was the first one that told us about type three diabetes, because she didn't have a pancreas either from the pancreatic cancer, yeah, and that's technically what I have, but it's just easier telling people that it's type one, because nobody knows about type 3c you

Speaker 1 58:19
know, other people have With 3c have said the same thing to me, like, like, it's just easier if I tell them I have type one diabetes, yeah. But they're also like, they seem worried that people who have type one through auto immune pathways will be insulted by that if they find out that that's not how it happened. I think that's a lot of like, you know, like, it's nice, but that just feels like people are too impacted by the Internet, if you know what I mean, oh yeah, no one's judging you. Just live your life. What have I not asked you that I should have both of you, please.

Phoebe 58:51
I think we covered everything that I wanted to talk about. I appreciate your time, and I hope somebody gets something out of this besides suckers and peeing in a cup. Well,

Speaker 1 59:03
Randy, anything that I've missed with you? I don't think so. Scott, I got a couple of questions for you. All right, Randy is Q A time. What are your questions?

Randy 59:10
How old was Arden, when, when she was diagnosed? And how old were you? Oh,

Speaker 1 59:14
that's interesting. I don't know how old I was. She was two. She had just turned two. She was probably sick on her second birthday, and we didn't know. It probably took us a couple more weeks after that to figure it out her birthday is in July, like we figured out at the very I know people are, some people really know the dates and the times, but like I end of August, I think we figured it out her birthday was, is July, 22 and but that's interesting. How old was I? I've never thought about it that way. So that was 2006 and I was born in 71 Okay, 8191 2001 2011 2000 Oh, I went past it. All right, yeah. 8191 2001 and then five more. I was 35 Five. Oh, my God, I was 35 No, that can't be right. I'm going to be 50 she's going to have diabetes for 20 years this summer, and this summer I'm going to be 54 so I guess I was 3034 Yeah, math, you know what I mean, yeah. So I was 34 and she was two. I'm a couple years older than my wife, so, okay, you were

Unknown Speaker 1:00:21
an adult when this all started going down, Randy, I'm not

Scott Benner 1:00:25
a adult today. I don't know what you're talking

Randy 1:00:29
about, but what I'm saying is you probably had a career going on at that point, and then you shifted, you know, and started doing all this research. How hard was it for you to do that?

Speaker 1 1:00:38
Randy, I was a stay at home. Dad, when that happened? Oh, really. Okay, I've been a stay at home, dad, since 2000 in January. I quit my job in January 2000 because my son was going to be born in February. Oh, okay, yeah, I haven't had to shave to be nice in front of people since for 25 years. It's awesome, by the way, none of you should have a job. Having a job sucks compared to not having a job. I just want to say that, but no, I was a really involved stay at home dad very, very involved. I used to joke all the time that I'm probably too overly shy of being able to give birth. I had this experience when my son was young. He was only, like, a year old. And I realized, like we'd made this decision, my wife was going to work, I was going to stay home. And I started realizing over that first year that she was having reactions to things that were very maternal, and my reactions weren't the same. And I thought, well, if my son's going to get robbed of those things from her, and she's being robbed of the experience. I'd be an absolute asshole if I didn't do my best to reproduce that experience for him and to share it with her. Like I just gave myself over to the process. Like, I don't know another way to say it, like, instead of being the person who was taking care of Cole, I tried to turn to the person who was raising Cole, if that makes sense, yeah. And so I did that for years, and then we decided to have Arden, and Arden popped out, and I was doing it again, like, you know, just going along. We were getting ready for a vacation. She was she had been sick recently, she had a Coxsackie virus, and then I went to visit my mom to say goodbye before vacation so she could see Arden for a couple minutes, like, on her lunch break or something like that. And afterwards, I took her out to the truck, and I changed her diaper, and her poop came out, but it was dry in these, like, I don't know, nickel size pellets, and I squeezed them, like, with, like, not with my hand, but through the diaper, and they crushed, like, uh, like, dusty. They were completely, completely dehydrated. And that got me to go back to the doctor. And he said, Oh my God. Like, she's still got Coxsackie. She shouldn't still have that. And I remember him saying, like, that doesn't never happen. You don't get Coxsackie. Get rid of it and get it back again. And then we went on vacation, and she, she was very thirsty. She had this giant drink in the car. And when we got to the vacation house, when I took her out of the car seat, I thought she had spilled the drink into her seat, because her I had to take the car seat out of the car and dump it out. It was that full. Oh, wow. And I thought she had taken this large drink and dumped it in there, but then when I dumped it out, I realized it was all like urine. And then over the next couple of days, while everybody else went to the beach, I stayed in the house with Arden, and I tried to take her out to the beach one day, and she stood in the surf and just stared. And I thought, like she looks like she's dead. Then later that night, we tried to take her out in kind of the nighttime air, she did the same thing. And probably 1112, one o'clock in the morning, everybody on this family vacation was up playing board games. I yelled across the room to my wife that I forgot to tell her that Arden's breath smelled weird to me that day. And she asked me how, and I said, I don't know it was like fruity or metallic. And then my wife's face just dropped off her skull, and she's like, she has diabetes. Then it just all kind of started from there. And then I became a stay at home dad to a kid and a kid with diabetes. Probably a year later, I started writing a blog. I just wrote the blog because I was trying to raise money for the JDRF, and I had gone so poorly that I thought, Oh, I'll use a blog to, like, get the information out. Because I was emailing people stuff. I was, like, nudging people through email and being like, you should donate to this. And here's why I learned about blogging, which was not a thing back then. I did that for a number of years. 2007 a blog was really popular for a long time. I think it was like 2013 I got a book deal to write about being a stay at home dad, and on that book tour, Katie Kirk told me I was good at talking to people. And so like a year later, when I really thought blogging was done, it was dead, as far as I could tell. Yeah, I thought, well, I'm helping people like, and this blog's gonna stop, and it's not gonna help people anymore. So I started a podcast because Katie Kirk told me I was good at talking to people. Oh, yeah, that's awesome. Yeah. Now this is its 11th year, so that's kind of the process that gets you to Phoebe going like, I found that podcast was really helpful. Yeah, which is why, when someone says it like that, you think, Oh, I wish they had all the context of how it's just here, you know what? I mean, like to do the thing, to do the thing for them. But in the end, it doesn't matter, like, as long as it helps, it helps. Oh yeah, yeah. That's it. Other questions, Randy,

Randy 1:05:35
how did you guys feel with your mom going through cancer?

Speaker 1 1:05:39
Oh, wow. Initially, like I said, it felt terrible that we just didn't figure it out fast enough. And then once we figured it out, I think my first takeaway was that how much her age mattered now, like before, she was just getting older, right? And getting older was part of being older, and she issues in her 80s, and it was like, it just is what it is. But when you have to fight cancer and you're 80, it's different, you know, like all of a sudden, like, what you aren't physically is super important. At some point, nobody wanted to help her. And I remember the helpless feeling that no one was going to help her, that she was just going to go into hospice and die, yeah. And then it just hit me one day, my neighbor's kid was a surgeon now, and so I texted him, and I told him what was going on, and I asked him if he knew anybody. And he went to medical school with a girl who ended up working in oncology. So he texted a friend and and said, Hey, my parents, neighbors, mother is in this situation. You think your guy would see him see his mom for us. And she's like, Yeah, cool. So I just got a favor. I got a text favor. And took my mom to the surgeon. He did all the looking at her, and he came into a room and he said, Bev like, if we don't do anything, you're going to be dead in a few months. And if we do something, you might live longer. I don't know. She's like, I don't know. He's like, you could die during surgery. Like, I have no idea. And my mom said, If I'm going to go down, I'm going to go down swinging, she said, in the room, and we set the surgery up. My brothers came in and it was COVID, so we basically had to walk into a hospital and, like, shove my mom forward in a wheelchair. Like, hope somebody came and got her, yeah, and then we went and sat in a diner and just ate breakfast and waited to hear that my mom died during surgery, because that's what it felt like was going to happen. And then she woke up and did exceedingly well. Went through chemo. Things were going great. She completed her task. She wanted to move out to Wisconsin to live the end of my my brother lived in Wisconsin for years, and she'd been around me and my other brother for so long. She's like, you know, this is the end of my life. I want to go like, be around Brian now. So she went out there with him and like, you know, it wasn't like a full year later, but we were all out there and she was dying. It just the cancer just came back. And, you know, the only good thing I can tell you, Randy, is that it came back so fast and furiously that she didn't know she had cancer again. I'm happy my mom passed away, not knowing that her cancer came back. Yeah, so, you know, because it was just, it was a lot to hear the first time. You know, anyway, you're a bummer. Randy with your questions, what else you got? I got

Randy 1:08:31
one last question for you. Go ahead. How do you feel? How do you think Jason Kelsey is feeling about this? Oh, if he retired too soon or not, you

Speaker 1 1:08:39
know, so in my house all week, we kept saying, like, can they just sign him for a game? Like, like, you know what I mean? Like, he, like, he won't play, but like, he just put him on the roster so he can get a ring, you know? And, um, and not only that, but both our, like, our centers hurt, and so the backup got hurt. And, like, I'm sure they'll be already two weeks from now. But like, there's a legitimate like, Could you maybe, if we just needed you for five or six downs here or there? Could you be ready? I'm sure it would kill him. He probably you can't stop and start playing professional football at those positions, right? Right? I don't know. Man, his life looks pretty good to me. I can't imagine he regrets anything. But once the push comes to shove, though, and the games happen, and I don't know how you do something like that and don't miss it every time you have to look at it, you know what I mean, like, what? How would you feel if, like, the if those people told you, like, don't ride that in that rig anymore, and then an ambulance went by, you'd be like, Oh, I missed doing that, you know? Yeah. So, yeah, I don't know. Man, I do believe this. I believe he's going to root for the Eagles during the Super Bowl, as we all should. Yep, yep. You

Randy 1:09:43
think people hate the Eagles? I don't think so. No,

Speaker 1 1:09:47
you should let try be an Eagles fan. It's awesome. Yeah, it does look like it, dude. It's so much fun to be from Philadelphia and just not care about what people think and yell and scream about football for a couple hours every once in a while. You guys are in Michigan. What do you have? Like College, lions, oh, yeah, that didn't work out at all. Right, we've got the wings. What do they say out there? They say, what the injuries, right? We would have been there, but it's the injuries. Yeah, you think that's true. We'll

Randy 1:10:14
get it next year. Next year is our year. That's what we say every year,

Speaker 1 1:10:18
dude, I listen. I gotta be honest with you, when I was a kid growing up, the lions were the patsies that showed up on Thanksgiving for the Cowboys to kick the shit out of Yep. So you guys have come a long way, honestly, yeah,

Randy 1:10:29
yeah. Then, you know, we have the Green Bay rivalry that we've always had. I

Speaker 1 1:10:36
will say this. I'm not usually critical of other people's decisions, because they figure it's hard to be anybody, but having a position player throw a pass at that part of the game when it's on the line didn't make any sense to me at all. No, it just was. It's just a bridge too far, like now it's not a time for a trick play. Now's the time for getting a couple of yards and keeping going. So anyway, Phoebe's like, I don't care about any of this, right? Lions

Phoebe 1:11:03
go Lions go lions. You've been

Scott Benner 1:11:07
told to say that

Unknown Speaker 1:11:11
dedication they lose every year, but we still like them.

Speaker 1 1:11:14
Yeah, listen, it's fun. We were sitting watching the game last week, and Arden goes, I'm watching like she looked up, and she goes, I don't understand anything that's happening. And I was like, not at all. I'm like, sit here for a couple hours, like, we'll explain it to you. She goes, No, thank you. So anyway, all right, you guys are terrific. Hold on, one second for me. Okay, yeah, okay.

Speaker 1 1:11:42
Having an easy to use an accurate blood glucose meter is just one click away. Contour next.com/juicebox That's right. Today's episode is sponsored by the contour next gen blood glucose meter. The episode you just enjoyed was sponsored by the twist a ID system powered by tide pool. If you want a commercially available insulin pump with twist loop that offers unmatched personalization and precision for peace of mind. You want twist twist.com/juice box. This episode of the juice box podcast was sponsored by us, med, us, med.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, get started today with us. Med, links in the show notes. Links at Juicebox, Podcast com, you

Speaker 1 1:12:44
I can't thank you enough for listening. Please make sure you're subscribed, you're following in your audio app. I'll be back tomorrow with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast. My grand rounds. Series was designed by listeners to tell doctors what they need, and it also helps you to understand what to ask for. There's a mental wellness series that addresses the emotional side of diabetes and practical ways to stay balanced. And when we talk about GLP medications, well, we'll break down what they are, how they may help you, and if they fit into your diabetes management plan. What do these three things have in common? They're all available at Juicebox, podcast.com, up in the menu. I know it can be hard to find these things in a podcast app, so we've collected them all for you at Juicebox podcast.com, the episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording, wrongway recording.com. You.

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Michelle, now 62 and three decades into her type 1 journey, gets candid about balancing blood sugars, kids, and the fallout of a tough divorce while still finding her footing.

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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.

Speaker 1 0:00
Here we are back together again, friends for another episode of The Juicebox Podcast.

Michelle 0:15
Hi Scott. My name is Michelle. I'm excited to be on your podcast, so thank you for having me nothing

Speaker 1 0:21
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. AG, one is offering my listeners a free $76 gift. When you sign up, you'll get a welcome kit, a bottle of d3, k2, and five free travel packs in your first box. So make sure you check out drink AG, one.com/juice box to get this offer, don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com All you have to do is use the offer code juice box at checkout. That's Juicebox at checkout to save 40% at cozy earth.com my diabetes Pro Tip series is about cutting through the clutter of diabetes management to give you the straightforward, practical insights that truly make a difference, this series is all about mastering the fundamentals, whether it's the basics of insulin dosing adjustments or everyday management strategies that will empower you to take control. I'm joined by Jenny Smith, who is a diabetes educator with over 35 years of personal experience, and we break down complex concepts into simple, actionable tips. The Diabetes Pro Tip series runs between Episode 1001 1025 in your podcast player, where you can listen to it at Juicebox podcast.com by going up into the menu. The episode You about to listen to was sponsored by touched by type one. Go check them out right now on Facebook, Instagram, and of course, at touched by type one.org check out that Programs tab when you get to the website to see all the great things that they're doing for people living with type one diabetes touched by type one.org I'm having an on body vibe alert. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by ever since 365 the only one year wear CGM that's one insertion and one CGM a year, one CGM one year, not every 10 or 14 days ever since cgm.com/juice box. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes and their mini med 780 G system designed to help ease the burden of diabetes management, imagine fewer worries about mis Bolus is or miscalculated carbs thanks to meal detection technology and automatic correction doses. Learn more and get started today at Medtronic diabetes.com/juicebox

Michelle 2:56
Hi Scott. My name is Michelle, and I live in San Diego, and I'm excited to be on your podcast. So thank you for having me. It's

Speaker 1 3:04
my pleasure. It just occurred to me, I don't think people address me usually when they introduce themselves. I think you might be the first person who said, Hey, Scott, I'm Michelle. Is that possible? Lee, I don't know. I can't that can't be true. I don't know. Yeah, I want to start off Michelle by telling you a funny story. Okay, yesterday I recorded with Melissa. When I set Melissa's recording up, I was looking at the wrong day on the calendar and set it up as Michelle. So she and I have that kind of preamble conversation that you and I just had about the things you can do and not do and all that stuff. I am calling her Michelle through the entire thing. So at the very end of this little preamble, I realized her name's Melissa. Oh my god. So I say to her, I'm like, why did you not correct me? Correct me, you know? And she said, you'd be surprised how often people call me Michelle. Really, I was like, I didn't realize that was the thing she told me a little bit about that we moved forward. But then I say to her, Look, the file still says Michelle on it. It has your name on it, and I'm looking at it on the screen, I said, so there's no doubt we're gonna get lost in the conversation. I'm gonna go to address you by your name and look up and see Michelle staring me in the face, and I'm gonna say Michelle instead of Melissa. And it only happened one time, you know. So anyway, so we're going on. We're having having this whole conversation. We're doing great. It occurs to me for a minute that she's part of the Facebook group, and I want to bump over and just see who she is, right? Like, get a visual on her. And when I look the very last thing that she's posted in the Facebook group, the first comment that I see on her post is you, oh. And so I was like, so that freaked me out, and then I told her, and she wasn't freaked out by like, come on. I'm like, this is the bizarre coincidence. I'm like, Yeah, for sure, the two of you are date, you know, back to back on the calendar, yeah, like, which is, you know, already random, and I have had this whole confusion about your name. Which is bizarre. And then I go online to see who you are, and when I'm looking at you, the very first name I see under you is hers. Totally bizarre, like she wasn't flipped out by it, and then that threw me off. My bad anyway, yeah,

Michelle 5:11
well, I honestly believe there's no such thing as a coincidence, so I don't know any Melissa and I are meant to be friends. One day,

Speaker 1 5:17
I'll tell you right now, my only goal today is not to call you Melissa. So anyway, I got it. Tell me a little bit about yourself. Do you have type one? Are you the parent of someone type one?

Michelle 5:28
I have type one. And I did the math last night because I never really know. I kind of know I'm like, 30 ish years. But I kind of even wrote out my story because I was like, I gotta remember this part or that part or whatever. Just to prompt me, I have type one, and I've had it for, I think, 31 years.

Scott Benner 5:45
Wow. How

Michelle 5:46
old are you? Oh, my God. I just had a birthday last week, and I'm 62 no kidding to me, is like, totally old.

Speaker 1 5:53
Happy birthday. Oh, listen, I'm 53 and I'm freaking out. So no,

Michelle 5:56
you are always freaking out about your age. I have to say on everything, you're always like, I'm so old. You are

Speaker 1 6:01
baby. Yeah, okay. I put my T shirt on this morning. I looked in the mirror and I thought, Oh no, I have to do something. My shoulders look old. Do you know what that means? Do you know what I mean by old person shoulders? Yeah,

Michelle 6:15
I do. Yeah. I can't have that. Oh, my God, that's not true. I already told

Speaker 1 6:19
my wife I'm not against steroids or something,

Unknown Speaker 6:25
just get those shoulders pumping. I'm like,

Speaker 1 6:26
Am I like, a testosterone candidate? And she goes, your testosterone is fine. I'm like, but am I a candidate? I feel like you're not answering the question. So apparently I'm not. But anyway, yeah, so 62 years old, diagnosed 31 years ago. So you were in your early 30s when you were diagnosed. So

Michelle 6:43
wait, I always have to do the math. I was 28 when I got married in 1991 and it was like a year and a half later. So I think I was 29 and a half, wow, right? As soon as you got married to a year and a half later, yep. And I know what you're gonna say. Did he ever think, like, I should run because

Speaker 1 7:00
you say that, yeah, like, Oh, damn, I picked the wrong one, anything like that. You know, I'm

Unknown Speaker 7:04
sure he said it to himself at some point, because we're

Scott Benner 7:08
divorced. Now, you should ask him, do you still talk to him rarely?

Michelle 7:11
Oh, that's so rarely and barely. How long have you been divorced? Oh, my God, I think since 2016 it was official. Okay, I was married for 25 years. Married

Speaker 1 7:20
for 25 years, 25 flipping years divorced for almost a decade. Yep, you think about him often, hell to the effing No, no. It's interesting. Do you remember a time in your life where you were concerned for him, concerned in what way, anyway, like, you know, oh, he looks sad. He looks happy, looks I'm good for him. He's doing well. Or, geez, he seems moments where you're just like, I want the best for this person. Do you remember any of that? Any

Michelle 7:42
of that? I mean, I remember when I was married to him. Yes, I obviously felt that way all the time, but since We've parted ways, I It's odd, but I don't have a lot of feelings for him. I've actually thought about it quite a bit. How kind of interestingly odd that is, yeah, that I don't have many feelings connected to him anymore. That's

Speaker 1 8:03
what I was wondering. That's all, yeah, okay, I'm not asking for a specific if you're wanting to give specifics, Michelle, we will absolutely accept them. But without specifics, what was the level of reason for getting divorced? I fell out of love. He stole some money. He was hanging around with hookers, like, where are we at? Yeah, yeah. Today's episode is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes, who is making life with diabetes easier with the mini med 780 G system. The mini med 780 G automated insulin delivery system anticipates, adjusts and corrects every five minutes. Real world results show people achieving up to 80% time and range with recommended settings, without increasing lows. But of course, Individual results may vary. The 780 G works around the clock, so you can focus on what matters. Have you heard about Medtronic extended infusion set? It's the first and only infusion set labeled for up to a seven day wear, this feature is repeatedly asked for, and Medtronic has delivered. 97% of people using the 780 G reported that they could manage their diabetes without major disruptions of sleep. They felt more free to eat what they wanted, and they felt less stress with fewer alarms and alerts you can't beat that learn more about how you can spend less time and effort managing your diabetes by visiting Medtronic diabetes.com/juice box. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by ever since 365 and just as the name says, it lasts for a full year, imagine for a second a CGM with just one sensor placement and one warm up period every year. Imagine a sensor that has exceptional accuracy over that year and is actually the most accurate CGM in the low range that you can get. What if I told you that this sensor had no risk of falling off or being knocked off? That may seem too good to be. True, but I'm not even done telling you about it, yet. The Eversense 365 has essentially no compression lows. It features incredibly gentle adhesive for its transmitter. You can take the transmitter off when you don't want to wear your CGM and put it right back on without having to waste the sensor or go through another warm up period. The app works with iOS and Android, even Apple Watch you can manage your diabetes instead of your CGM with the ever since 365 learn more and get started today at ever since cgm.com/juicebox, one year, one CGM.

Michelle 10:35
I never wanted to be divorced. I was, you know, I am a divorced child of, you know, parents from when the age I was really young, and then my mom was remarried, and then she got divorced from him, so like that was the last thing on my mind. I don't think anybody gets goes into marriage thinking, oh, one day we're going to get divorced. So I really thought I was going to beat the odds. And I kind of picked this man thinking he his parents were still married, up until a few months ago, when the father passed away. So I kind of really thought the odds were good and going in our direction correctly. And we had three kids, and all while I was type one, and I think he started becoming very disinterested in the family situation, like he would sit and watch TV and eat his chocolate chips and stuff like that. And we'd be all sitting at the dinner table eating dinner, and he would be very non interested in anything we had to talk about or do or anything. He was very much a solo person. When my kids were in a lot of athletic sports, and three girls completely different sports, so I was pretty much all over the place, you know, field hockey and La Crosse with this one Swimming and Water Polo with that one horse riding with another one. He was, you know, do I have to go to the game today? I mean, parents would ask me, where's David? And I would just say, um, he's playing racquetball or something. Probably, do

Speaker 1 11:52
you think it was one of those things where he's, like, I couldn't have just got one boy to play football or baseball or something. Oh, my

Michelle 11:56
God, hell to effing No. He never was interested in sports. The only thing he was ever interested in was Formula One. Formula One

Speaker 1 12:03
racing. Oh, well, how the kids gonna do that at a young age? That's yeah, they could remember,

Michelle 12:07
actually practice, like in our he went to, like, Skip Barber Racing School and did all this crazy stuff. He would, like, put the kids in the car and me and drive like a freaking maniac. And it was scary. Like, it was actually scary. A lot of the time,

Speaker 1 12:21
he's not doing the thing that he wants to do, right? So he's working, I'm assuming, working every day, throwing his money in a pile. And then he gets home and he's like, none of the things I enjoy are my leisure time. So now this begs the question, you let him out of that you're like, all right, you don't want to do this. Don't do it. Did he go do those things? Is he driving a Formula One car for fun or anything like that.

Michelle 12:42
Well, first of all, you made of a lot of assumptions that are inaccurate. So okay, he never was the kind of man who, like, went to work and then came home, like, literally, most of our marriage. He either had a job or he didn't have a job. And it was pretty much 5050, like, I don't know how many times he came home with a box in his hands, going, I got fired today. Legit, my communication back to him would be like, Okay, it's not meant to be. Something better is out there for you. We're going to get through this. But it happened more times than I can even count on two hands. That sucks. That wasn't it. It was a very difficult situation. He just wasn't the kind of person, you know. And actually, when we even met, and we were both dating, and, you know, living in New York City. At the time, in Manhattan, I was working for a huge pharmaceutical company, I'll just say, Pfizer, and I was in sales at the time, and I won this trip to, like, sausalita, blah, blah, blah, Northern California, and he had gotten fired from his job there. And at the time we were I was 28 that's 27 say, and he was just a year older than me, and he's like, Well, I'm going to rent a car and drive down the coast. I said, Cool, I'm going to go back to New York and go to work. I mean, he drove down the coast, landed in Del Mar, the cutest little town ever, you know, in San Diego County, and called me from a pay phone, because back in the day, that's what we did. And just said, I found the cutest little town in the world. This is where I want to live. And I just was like, okay, so that was the start of it kind of and then I ended up moving across the country, like changing my life, because that's what he wanted to do. We got married, yada yada. But basically that was already job one, and it just continued throughout our marriage. Wow, that suck. But no, he actually, after we our divorce was final, and everything else, he moved to Thailand, okay, yeah. And he, you know, kind of went off the grid a little bit, and did that for almost two years. And mind you, we have a daughter that is just 18. So, you know, she was 16 at the time, or 15, and he took off and went to Thailand and moved so he just does whatever he wants to do. And that's all about him.

Speaker 1 14:55
Well, yeah, it sucks. I mean, a lot of that, that's what I was saying when you. And he moved away. In my head, I was like, Wait, I don't think the kids are that old. No, yeah. Like, wow. So he just did. He just looked at him. He was like, girls, listen, I'm leaving, and I'll see you. And that was it,

Michelle 15:10
yeah. Well, actually, my youngest daughter was even living with him at the time. I mean, we live walking distance from one another, like she could right, like a 10th of a mile away from one another, and she would come over to my house, go to his house, but she liked his house for a while, because Absolutely, and I mean zero with a big fat Z, no rules, right? You can come in and stay, and you can have your friend sleep over, and you don't have to go to school if you don't want to, and if you feel like drinking vodka in the morning for middle school, Hey, have at it. Wow. So Michelle,

Speaker 1 15:39
you seem like such a normal person I am. How did this happen? I don't know. Be honest, when he said, I'm driving south, you go head back. I've hooked my wagon to your work trip that you've won, and now it's time for you to go back and make more money. I'm gonna hang out for a little longer. You know, you shouldn't have answered the phone when he called you, right? Like, looking back, you're like, oh, he was breaking up with me. I didn't realize it. No, probably, yeah. I mean,

Unknown Speaker 16:08
oh my god, I never really sorry. I don't want

Speaker 1 16:10
to put me out. But, like, you should have been like, what is this your where? Oh, I hope goodbye.

Michelle 16:14
Like, like, my god, I think you're probably right. That was the number one sign. But instead, I was like, all Googled at the time? Well, I will also say, okay, so I was living in New York City right out of college in Michigan. I went to my first job in New York City. Didn't know a single soul like boom. Ended in New York. I'm there for a few good years. And I was there for a total of six years. But I and I dated quite a bit. The man pool there, you know, it is small. Let's just put it that so was being married a goal? No, no, oh, my god, no. It was never a goal, just because probably being a child. But I really, and I mean, my biological clock was bam, bam, bam, ticking away. I see, yeah, I wanted to be a mom more than anything on the planet. And I really did want to find a good man to do this with. So I found this, like, Jewish man

Speaker 1 17:04
that I thought I've heard stories these Jewish guys are good guys. I'll be all right, yes, yeah. I'm like,

Michelle 17:09
Okay, I'm gonna do this one because the other one that I really, really, really wanted to marry, I thought drank too much, and this one didn't. So I was like, You know what? I'm gonna go with this one. If I'm a betting person this one's going to be having more staying power for me, and that was all wrong. It's crazy. I mean, I'm in touch with his mom, and we connect all the time, and she always says, I'm so sorry. I can't even believe this. I don't know who he is, and I really apologize, like I I can't even believe you had to put up with him. That

Speaker 1 17:36
sucks. All right, so yeah, well, it was nice to see to do. I appreciate that. I just think it's interesting, like all that stuff that nobody talks about ever, nobody ever

Michelle 17:44
talks about. Well, he actually moved back to San Diego, um, just recently, in the last few months, because his dad was 90, and he was going back for his dad's 90th birthday party. And his dad passed away two weeks before the birthday, but he had already had a trip planned, so he came, and then he found a job, and now he's he's telling his kids, because I kind of hear it through them. You know, he's going to stay for another couple years and work his butt off now and then go back to Thailand and retire,

Speaker 1 18:08
but only enough time to get some money so I can get away from you again. Yeah. I mean, I don't bother him, so I don't know what the hell, but that's really something. Well, I mean, all right, diabetes, so you get diabetes. You're so you're freshly married, you get diabetes. Have you haven't had a kid yet, because you said you had all three kids while you had type one. And what's the management like back then? That's regular. Mph, yeah. NPH, and R, R, okay, and you're doing that insulin for how long you remember?

Michelle 18:36
I actually don't, but I do want to tell you a little bit about my diagnosis story. Can I tell you that? I'd love to hear about that. Oh, okay, so I was a pharmaceutical rep in San Diego, working for Pfizer. Still, I actually, you know, I quit my job in New York City, and they were like, don't quit. Don't quit. I said, Well, I'm moving to San Diego. And they said, Well, we're going to be opening up a new division of the company. As soon as we open it, we're going to bring you back in. So in the meantime, it was like six months, but I went to work for a different pharmaceutical company in between for a few months, and then when Pfizer called me, I went back to Pfizer. I'm working, and the first step is I went to Bali. My ex husband and I went to Bali for our first year anniversary, and we're there, and I'm having the time in my life, because I'm a very like, spiritually oriented person. He was not, and still is not, but I am. I'm kind of introducing him to my world. And, you know, it was fantabulous. We're in Bali, and by the last day of our like, 14 day trip, I am sick as a dog. This is where I think it starts. So I get on a plane, and literally, I have to lay across the floor in the back of the plane, because I am just not well at all. We get back to San Diego, and I went to the doctor, and it was like a series of tests, just non stop. And one of the things they said was, oh, I, you know, I had a hard time breathing. I had shortness of breath. It was like a lot of different things. I had anxiety, like it was a cluster of i. Oh no, all these symptoms that I'd never had before. And the doctor finally said to me, you know, they put me on an inhaler for asthma, which I'd never had in my life. And by now, I'm 29 and you know, she said to me, Did you buy any bedding or anything while you were in poly? And I said, Yeah, I had custom made a, you know, a blanket and two pillow shams for our bed. And she's like, get rid of it. I think it's that I got rid of that didn't help the situation. That's a shame. Yeah, yeah. I know all

Speaker 1 20:28
that thinking. I was like, Oh, you threw away the custom bedding. It was an entire pill

Michelle 20:33
suitcase full of stuff that I had to throw away. And I was like, you know, completely depressed about it. But I'm not gonna belabor the point. But it went from one symptom to another, and basically they were like, well, you're really anxious too. We think you have generalized anxiety disorder. So they started giving me Ativan to take and mind you, and I don't understand, but now I'm going to get to the point where I was working at Pfizer, and I'm calling on a physician as a client, talking about my medications. And he goes, Hey, you look like you've been losing weight lately. Have you been trying? And I said, No. And he goes, No, I think you have been losing weight. He goes, Put out your hand. I put out my hand. He puts a Phoenix tissue over it, and it's like shaking. And he goes, I think you have hyperthyroidism, okay? And he goes, I think you need to go get a blood test. And I go, Well, I'm getting tons of blood tests because something's obviously wrong with me. And he goes, Well, this is what I think it is. Tell them to look more closely at that. So I do. And they go, Oh, my God, you have Graves disease. Okay. And so I go, okay. And meanwhile, my eyes were starting to bug out of my face, like Barbara Bush eyes, yeah. And they were really dry. Like, they wouldn't shut at night, and I'd wake up and they'd be so dry. And I was like, This is so uncomfortable. And I was losing weight, but I just thought, because I was a runner, I'm like, Oh, I'm running all the time. You know, I live in San Diego. The weather is always nice. There's no excuse not to get out there. Like, blah, blah, blah. They diagnosed me with that, and then they say, you know, you're going to undergo radioactive iodine therapy. We're gonna stick you on Synthroid, and you're gonna be good to go. And by the way, I will point out my mother's mother, so my maternal grandmother did have a goiter at one point, so there's a connection with that. So I had the radioactive iodine therapy. I think I'm good to go. And I didn't let you know yet that I've been trying to have a baby, and it's not working. Everything I tried, you know, intrauterine inseminations, nothing was really working. Meanwhile, I got pregnant five times five pregnancies before my first child. Oh, gosh. And all of them did not make it. They were varying degrees of very early on, but I was, you know, oh, you're pregnant. And then, no, you're not. And I even went to go see a reproductive endocrinologist, capitalizing on the word endocrinologist, who, you know, I think, would know something about type one or anything in between. And he just would say to me, oh my God, you're in such good shape. You're always just so thin, and, you know, you look great and blah, blah, blah. This is before my type one diagnosis. I just kept having miscarriages, and he was helping me have a baby, basically, back then. Yeah, so this is in 1994 ish. I kept losing weight after the Graves disease diagnosis and I and the radioactive iodine therapy. So this is in back up to 93 in the fall. And then my brother, who's just a year and a half older than me, so he was, like, 31 at the time, was killed. He was murdered. Oh, my God,

Speaker 1 23:25
how, yes, wait, I can't believe you didn't get that diagnosis from the doctor. And say, this is wonderful. Who's going to apologize for putting me on Ativan, and which one of you is flying back to Bali to buy me a goddamn pillow Sham? Like, like, seriously, but how does your brother get murdered? Oh,

Michelle 23:42
my god, yeah, so my brother, who I was really, really close to growing up, because it was just really the two of us. My mom would go off to work every single day. My mom and dad were divorced when I was, like, one or two. We were super close, but he, you know, kind of got into drugs. And by kind of, I mean he got into drugs so and I was always the kind of person, like legit people would offer me drugs, and even, like in college, and be sitting around in bongs, and I'd be like, Nah, no, not for me. No, no, no, thanks. But my brother was like, Yeah, bring it on. He was a very hard worker. He worked every single day. He was just such a hard worker. And he had this girlfriend who he was engaged to for a number of years, and we could not stand her. She had a couple of brothers, I think, three, that were just bad dudes, and all in the drug business. And my brother broke up with her and broke off the engagement and moved out of the house that they had bought together into an apartment and started going to NA, which is Narcotics Anonymous, and started trying to pull his life together. The next thing we hear, it's December 4, 1993 and he's dead. And I was in California. I'm living in California at this point, my mom calls me and says, Marvin's dead. And I said, What? How could this be? And she said, yeah, he was killed with one shot gun, shot wound to his heart in Detroit. And I was like, Oh, my God, this is, you know, obviously, the worst thing on the planet. So it was horrible. The girlfriend, literally, the next day, we pulled up to the house that they had together to get some of Marvin's things. And like, talk to her and, you know, talk about the service and this and that she had just come from getting a manicure, and she was carrying this typewriter, because back in the day, that's what we used. And she was already filling out paperwork on the different insurance policies she had out on him. One of them had taken place. They had a 30 day, then it all of a sudden, it was kicked in, and it was like 31 days that he was murdered. So we had found out she took out an insurance policy on that she had, you know, part of the house. They both worked for Chrysler, and she was in the HR department, and he didn't take her off his beneficiary status to put to my mom yet, which he had said he was going to do, since he had broken up with her, but it didn't happen yet. So she got some money. There was some kind of a monetary situation going on, and I presented all of it to Detroit homicide Sergeant Reginald Harvell at the time, and he just said, you know, sorry, we don't have time to investigate. There were seven murders last night in Detroit or whatever. We don't have time for this. Blah, blah, blah. They went to, you know, do their due diligence, I guess, and interview people, but all of them were at the service the day that they did their interviewing, so nobody could answer questions, and they moved on. That was the end of that. Like I even contacted the Department of Justice. The sergeant called me and said, We have never had anybody from the Department of Justice contact us. And I said, Well, you don't know me, and I think you guys did a, you know, a terrible job at this, and you need to, you know, make amends and figure this out and open it back up. And they never did. Wow. Listen, you're

Speaker 1 26:51
not making any of this up, right? You ever stop and look back and go, whoa. It's been a ride.

Michelle 26:59
Oh my god, hell yes. All the time. I'm like, I am a freaking ass.

Speaker 1 27:04
I actually, I'm gonna diverge for a second, like, I somehow tripped on a YouTube video recently where, like, it's a voiceover, and there's this animation, right? And the animation is this person telling a story, and the story is clearly contrived and made up, right? And it's got just millions and millions and 10s and 20 million views. And I'm like, who's listening to this? Like, because every time the story changes, it's the most like, ham fisted out of a TV show change. Like, it's clear somebody's just making this up to keep you in the video longer, right? Like, it's exactly, it's clearly, what's going on as you're talking. I'm like, oh my god, this is very much like that video, like, and I think, I think sometimes people's lives are so much crazier than we would imagine they could be, yeah, like, that's essentially,

Michelle 27:52
I think if you actually know me, you would never believe any of this,

Speaker 1 27:55
right? No, no, I get that. It really is fascinating. It's why I love talking to people, because they'll tell you things. You're like, Oh, my God, that's insane. Yeah. Like, okay, so, well, first of all, I'm sorry. I know it's been a long time, but I'm sorry that happened, and the person that murdered him never brought to any kind of justice.

Michelle 28:10
Zero, okay, well, we're pretty convinced it was one of her brothers. Yeah.

Speaker 1 28:15
I mean, I wouldn't want to say that on a podcast and get yourself in trouble, but like, you know, oh, I don't care, Michelle, listen, I have to be honest, if you get, uh, sued over this, it'll be great for my podcast. I want you to know that. So it's all right. It's all right with me. I'll let you know. Yeah, because then all the stories, it'll be like she was on the Juicebox Podcast talking about her diabetes. Then suddenly, but wow, that's terrible. Okay, so, but that happens, and then where does your life pivot off from

Michelle 28:39
there? So then I'm not diagnosed yet, and it's December of 93 and I remember going to my brother's service and wearing this black suit. And the jacket was really special. I had bought it in New York City, so it was, like, really different, but it was huge on me. And I was even like, oh my god, it's so big. Like, what? I guess I'm I am really losing more weight. So I go back to the doctor at this time. It's January, and it's right around my birthday, and I'm 30, no, 29 I can't keep it straight. 29 or 30, whatever the hell I am, I weigh 106 pounds and I'm five foot 10. I know that when I got married a year and a half early, I was 132 pounds and five foot 10, so I definitely lost a lot of weight. And I went to one of the endocrinologists that I called on to just say, hey, is something up with me? And he goes, You know, we should probably check you for diabetes. This wasn't my actual physician. This was just a doctor that I called on because I was selling, at the time, an oral hypoglycemic agent for type two diabetes. And so I mentioned it to him, and he's just like, Yeah, let's check your, you know, your glucose. And it was like, 475 or something, okay. And so they're like, Yeah, we think you have diabetes. We're not sure if it's type one or type two, I think because of my age back then. And so they put me on like an oral hypoglycemic agent for a week, and nothing happened. I still was high. I was finger pricking. And then they're like. No, we need to put you on insulin. But they didn't give me any education. They're just like, here's the bottle. Here are the syringes Have at it. And I remember my first low I was shaking so hard, and I didn't know enough, this is crazy, but I was injecting myself with insulin when I started shaking and I ate sunflower seeds because I thought that's what I was supposed to do. I mean, I had zero education, they're not going to help, yeah. So I was like, what? So anyway, I figured it all out, like I got some diabetes education, I you know, yada yada. But it was a long road after that. And then the doctors were like, Oh, this is probably why you're not keeping the babies you have diabetes, you know, blah, blah, blah. This is why you keep having MIS, mis, mis carriages. Now that you're going to be under control, we're going to, you know, I think everything's going to work out, but it still really didn't work out. I had a couple more miscarriages after, like, maybe the diagnosis. So I had three before, probably, and two after. And then I did an in vitro fertilization, frozen embryo transfer, and it worked. And that's my first daughter, who was born in 1995 and she is now 29 awesome. And then I had three more miscarriages, and then I had my daughter Nicole, born in 1998 and at that point, I was like, Okay, we're good. We're not going to have any more babies, this the thing. And the doctors were like, you don't worry. You had so many problems getting pregnant, you're not going to be able to keep a baby on your own. Like, I needed progesterone suppositories. I needed tons of medication to eat keep the baby in there. They're like, don't worry, you're never going to get pregnant on your own. And bingo, seven years after, like 1998 I got pregnant again, and I was 42 at the flipping time. Oh, my

Speaker 1 31:38
God, Hey, real quick. Where does a progesterone suppository. Go, which front of the back, front. Okay. Thank you. Keep

Michelle 31:44
going, Yeah. And, and I would like, stand in my head, you know, like, put it in, stand in my head for, like, go about my business, let it melt. Yeah, yeah. And then, so my third daughter, the shock and awe, was born in 22,006

Speaker 1 32:01
jeez. And I was 43 in the easy pregnancy,

Michelle 32:04
yeah, the first two pregnancies, I hardly, I mean, they were like six pounds and seven pounds, very normal pregnancies, I would say. But they took them. Oh, the first delivery was a nightmare, but, you know, she's here, so that's all good, but it was like a disaster. So the second one, they did C section, and I did get pre eclampsia at the end. Yeah, my blood pressure rose up pretty high. So they took the babies a little bit early, like two weeks that was it. And the same thing for the third one, they just scheduled a C and took her two weeks early, and all good to go, Yeah, but she was heavier. She was like, eight pounds, 15 ounces. I've seen

Speaker 1 32:40
two uneventful vaginal births, and they were still disasters. I don't know. You know, it's a lot. There's a lot going on, you know what? I mean, yeah, so is there a possibility that you didn't have any time to notice that you and your husband weren't good for each other because you were so busy trying to make kids? So this

Michelle 32:56
is what I would say. I didn't want an only child. I really wanted to and he wasn't that it wasn't as noticeable back then, that he was so distant from us, you know, he wasn't like the, I don't know how to say it. He just, it wasn't all that noticeable. And we were like, buying houses, selling houses in San Diego, making a boatload of freaking money selling it, you know, to make more money, to buy another house, to do this whole thing. So we had this, like, great, wonderful, big, beautiful house on a canyon with a huge pool and blah, blah, blah, we were kind of doing all that while all this was going on. I see I'll say

Speaker 1 33:30
something that will probably get me in trouble with somebody listening, but I don't understand people who don't work, like that thing that throws me off. I don't get, like, not having a job and not looking for a job, at the very least, you know what I mean? Like, I don't, I'm not saying that's even what he's doing or not doing, but I know people who do that and I don't understand it, yeah, or they have a job that just, it's terrible and getting laid off all the time, or it doesn't make any money. You don't forget, like, and they don't look for another one. Like, I'm not saying you'll even find one, but like, I don't understand the not looking part,

Michelle 34:00
yeah, yeah. Well, I think he would look, I don't know, he has a different personality. I think he's definitely on the spectrum. He would be a loan officer, and then he would be a this, and then he would be that, by the way, he went to NYU, like, he's not stupid undergrad. And then while we were married and I was working, I said, you know, you're gonna get your MBA, kind of like, we need to, like, prop you up and everything. And so he went to San Diego State EMBA program, which is on the weekends. He got his MBA. So this is not a stupid man. He

Speaker 1 34:28
just can't keep the job. Once he has he gets, yeah, exactly. He

Michelle 34:32
can't keep it. And I don't know, obviously I'm not inside, but he even started a couple of companies. You know, he would always be like, this is we're going to make $20 million off this company. And so there were a couple of years where he didn't collect a paycheck at all, and I just worked. And by then, I'm working for Eli Lilly in pharma, selling oncology, bringing home the big paycheck, and he was not collecting. And then he, at the end of the two years, he got fired from his own company. He had like, 49% ownership, and the other guy, he won, him, boom, gone. So

Speaker 1 34:59
now. Money for two years putting his ass into this company, telling you, don't worry, honey, it's coming. Yes, go pay for everything. You're paying for everything. And at the end, he comes back, goes, oh, that didn't work out. I got fired. Yeah,

Michelle 35:09
exactly. Awesome. Yeah. It was fun stuff. And then I will say so I inherited from a great aunt who almost lived to be 100 she was 99 and a half. She was also this wonderful aunt that gave us the money for our frozen embryo transfer and everything that we did trying to get pregnant because she could never have children. Okay? And I had this remarkable relationship with her. My first daughter's middle name is Iva, after her, but anyway, she passed away at 99 and a half, and I was one of the, you know, recipients and beneficiaries. So I received a good chunk of money. And so I said to my husband at the time, and his mother actually said to me, Michelle, if you keep working and making all this money, he will never realize his potential. And she had all this like he is going to be so amazing, you know, wait,

Speaker 1 35:56
you're holding him back by being successful 100% Oh, geez. All right,

Michelle 36:01
so she said to me, you need to quit your job. And literally, I was always like, kind of thinking, like, I don't want to work full time. I want to work part time. Like, Dada. Dada, I actually went part time in oncology, and that was the first time they'd ever let anybody work part time in sales. I was kind of taking a step back, you know, I really wanted to be with my kids. I wanted to be a mom. That's what I wanted to be. So here I am working my butt off, and I finally say, you know, I got this big woman check I am going to quit my job. And I tell him I'm quitting my job, and he's like, oh. And I'm like, Yeah, you're going to have to pony up and figure this out. Now you have your MBA. I can connect you to pretty much anyone you want to be connected with, through all the kids sports and all the people I talked to, and blah blah blah, but the gravy train is over, yeah, yeah. And by then we're in the house that he really wanted to be in, and we had made a lot of money off of our sale of a couple other houses that we had that we were brand new and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. So by the time we sold them and put all these upgrades into them, we made a ton of money, to be honest, because it's San Diego, and it's a good area. It's like the best school district in like our whole area. So anyway, I quit, and I stay home with the two kids, and, you know, I'm being a mom, and he's kind of out there in the world trying to make it happen. And he did, like he for, you know, a good chunk of time. He got a couple good jobs, mostly through my connections, and he was bringing in the money, you know. And then I just started realizing more and more though, like I my third child I definitely would not have had by then, I was already thinking I didn't want to be in the marriage, but she came along, and so there she is. My

Speaker 1 37:30
goodness, that's crazy. All right. So the rest of it is this, what about your diabetes? What did you do? How did it work out? What was the progression? Where are you now? How How did you figure out what you were able to figure out? Honestly,

Michelle 37:43
the Juicebox Podcast helped me a ton. I remember I even sent you an email one time. I was like, heading out to dinner, but I was like, I have to send him an email and tell him, like, blah, blah, blah, how much he's impacted my diabetes with just all the podcasts. And I listen to your podcasts like almost every single day while I'm walking my dogs in the morning. So it's like a treat for me. I don't just listen to it around the house or anything. It's like I'm walking the dogs. I listen to your podcast. You know, just a lot of things have helped me. Insulin now is for later, these little things that I have in my head, like every day, yeah, I mean, but it took all these years, but I have been listening now for several years, and I always love when you say, you know you're older. How did you hear about my podcast? I'm like, on tick tock. I follow you on LinkedIn. I follow you on X, I follow you. I'm like, I want all these social medias that you're on and I follow you. But I learned so much from, like, the whole tug and war thing, everything, I think I brought my a 1c down so tremendously with your tips.

Speaker 1 38:42
No kidding, that's awesome. First of all, I appreciate you telling me that. But secondly, as a person who sits here most of the days trying to figure out ways to get information like that out to people, it's it's good to know that it's working, I'll take a little bit of a left turn for a second. Yeah, I'm forever trying to figure out how to reach more people. And I've been lately thinking a lot about all the people I see in more professional spaces, more professional than making a podcast. I mean, who are out there blowing their own horn and congratulating each other for all the things they're doing for people with diabetes. And then the next thing they tell you is that people say one Cs are an average of this, and we don't know how to like they're not coming down, and we can't, you know, teach people how to use their insulin and blah, blah. So they congratulate themselves over and over again for all the good work they're doing. But then point out that the good work needs to keep happening, because people aren't having the outcomes that they need to be having for good health. And I just look at that and think, how are you congratulating yourself? Like, what is it you're congratulating yourself for? Exactly? Is it for trying? Because in a lot of situations, there's no success at the end for the people like you, tell me you're helping them, but then the people are still not helped. And you look back at this podcast, you're like, Well, this is what helps people like you. Simple ideas, easily communicated that you can recall when you need make application to your life, watch things actually get better, then get to a place of stasis where you're not constantly fighting and you're having outcomes that you would you know, that you would call successful. I've sometimes correlated that with downloads and I have had it in my head for just years, like more downloads, more devices, more people listening. You know, that's going to be the measure of success and and very recently, I thought it's maybe possible. I've just made a type one diabetes podcast as big as a type one diabetes podcast can be. And the reason it's staying so successful and stable is because there are new people coming in all the time. But the fact of the matter is, is that you're not likely to hold on to a 10 year listener on a podcast about type one. Don't get me wrong. Some people are like have been listening since the beginning, but isn't that the measure of success that somebody comes, finds it and then leaves, and that's tough, because those my metrics are telling me make bigger numbers, and their metrics are, if I can walk away from this and be healthy and happy and not think about this again, then I won, right? And if that's what I want for them, then I have to adjust my idea of my own success.

Michelle 41:20
Yeah, yeah. I think reframing in this situation is important. Yeah. I

Speaker 1 41:23
just found myself really coming to grips with it, no lie over the last couple of days. Oh,

Michelle 41:28
wow, yeah, yeah. I hear you kind of say, oh, downloads. And literally, I don't, I don't usually download. But when you're like, we're this many downloads away from blah, blah, blah, I download the heck out of everything. Streaming

Speaker 1 41:39
and downloading is all the same. Obviously, if you're like, Oh, I'd like to help with 10, you can't listen to 10 in a row. Yeah, yeah. And I genuinely appreciate that. Don't get me wrong, I really appreciate it. But, like, bigger picture, look at you. You're 62 right? You've had diabetes for 30 years. You've lived through, I mean, a significant amount in your life, yeah. And when I asked you about your diabetes. I thought you were gonna tell me that, that you were listening for community like, but you're not like. You listen for management. Well,

Michelle 42:07
I listen for management, but I also listen because you entertain me. Like, I mean, you can talk about, I don't know, like a puddle and the freaking sidewalk, and the way you talk about it is like, so entertaining to me. I appreciate that I listen like I people even said, what about this podcast? What I'm like, why I can listen to Scott? He entertains me about anything like, honestly, just there was even a time when I was on an airplane and I was having a lot of anxiety with the takeoff and the landing and blah, blah, blah. And I was like, What can calm me down? And I put your podcast in my ear and started listening to your voice, and you call me right now. See,

Speaker 1 42:42
can I tell you I'm gonna sound like a baby, but that would make me cry if I thought about it much longer. I'm in a 12 by 12 room, Michelle, making this thing, and I don't get out of here very often, because I'm making it all the time. Yeah, it's really touching to hear that like, because I don't see myself the way you just described me.

Michelle 43:01
I'm such a super fan. Honestly, thank you. That's wonderful. Thank you so much. I really am. It's just like you have a gift. You have such a gift, and I love what you're doing with it. And I even love like, where you came from. I mean, you're like, missed 50 days is high school because you were working in the, you know, factory, and, like, all the stuff that I know about you based on different conversations that you've had with people and where you've come to like, I am in amazement of what you've been able to do. And you know, you're talking to these physicians who are bringing information to us that's just been amazing. But you talk on the same level that they do. I mean, I've been in pharma, so I know, like, you are on the same level as they are, and what you've been able to bring yourself up to and make it understandable and break it down is like, truly a gift. Thank you. I've

Speaker 1 43:55
always just thought that it's, it's the blend that ends up being, how it worked out, right? Like, I try not to say this, because I think it's, I mean, I don't want to talk about it, but, like, they gave me my first IQ test when I was in kindergarten, yeah, I remember hearing about it. Somebody, like, whipped me out of a classroom and said to me, like, hey, we want to give you this test. It's going to measure how smart you are and blah, blah. But I grew up in a really, in a poor family, yeah, of like, blue collar people who did not have big expectations for themselves or for me or anything like that. And they certainly weren't looking at education like a like a golden, you know, bullet. Nobody was thinking that. So I speak the way I speak, because I grew up around people who were hard working, people who didn't have time for bull, like, you know what I mean? Like they weren't going to nice things up, or there just was no time for that. You know, at their core, reasonably good people too. You know, my dad cheated on my mom and they got divorced and, you know, people yelled, but people loved each other and like, there was, it was, it's everybody's life, but we just did it on no money and no polish. Nobody had been polishing us up. I've mentioned a million times over as I grew up, when people would, you. Discuss problems or situations, I always think, like, why are they thinking about it so wrong? Like, why is this question being asked? And those three people are coming to one conclusion, and my conclusion so much different than theirs. I don't know, like, I just think my brain works one way, but I communicate another way. Yeah. And then Arden gets type one, and I realized no one's gonna help us, yeah? So I'm like, well, I'll have to figure out how to help myself. But I don't have any education. I don't have any formal understanding about how to problem solve like nothing. So I figured out with, you know, the tools I probably learned growing up. And it turns out that once I understood them and I could speak about them thoughtfully, they're very transferable to everybody, because they're not shiny and they're not over educated, and they don't require you to know big words and you you know, and everybody can understand them. So, I mean, that's it. Like you can make an argument, Michelle easily, that, like, I'm not really saying anything. It's all that difficult. And I would probably make that argument too, that, like, the stuff I talk about about diabetes is not like some it's some crazy, well kept secret that only you know, the Illuminati understand about type one like, and some people will will ding me for that. They'll go, he's just talking about bolusing and timing and stuff like that. I'm like, but those are the things nobody talks about, and that's why so many people have problems. Yeah. And so again, going back to the beginning. So for all those people who are out there in the professional world, patting each other on the back, breaking their arms, patting each other on the back, right, and then nobody has a good outcome. And then someone like me comes along and like, here, just try this and it works for them. Yeah, simple, yeah. Stop congratulating yourself for being so smart and not actually helping anybody, right, right? I'm an idiot, but I know how to Bolus and time insulin, yeah, and I know how to talk about it, so that's pretty much it. I don't know. I appreciate it. No,

Michelle 46:50
I love it. I'm wearing a T slim control IQ and a Dexcom g7 which I just got. So when I got the g7 around Christmas time, I also got the Apple Watch that has my blood sugar on it. And then I just recently got the sugar pixel. I'm all squared away with everything, so I just want to throw that in there for people who want to know, Oh, awesome.

Speaker 1 47:08
That how you're managing, yeah? What's that? How you're managing, what it is you're doing,

Michelle 47:12
yeah, yeah, yeah, what I'm doing, you know, I think I'm a, like, a 6.1 and do I want to be in the fives? Yeah? But legit, my doctor was like, when I when I first came to him, I have Kaiser, he's my Endo. And he was like, What? No, you must be getting low all the time, like the typical stories that you hear all the time. But I just am like, No, this is where I am, and this is where I'm going to stay, and blah, blah, blah. But I do want to tell you about my ozempic stuff. Oh, please go ahead. Okay, it was a couple years ago, and I had been gaining weight steadily, and I got up to from when I had diagnosed at 106 up to 183 obviously, 30 years later, and three kids and blah, blah, blah. But I was extremely uncomfortable, and I said to my regular physician at Kaiser, you know, I really need to lose weight. I think this is, you know, my diabetes is a contributing factor, you know, yada yada, I really want to be on one of the glps. And she was like, Okay, well, first you have to go one full year of trying other medications first. And so, like, one of the first ones she put me on was, like a fen part of the fen Phen,

Speaker 1 48:17
oh, but that thing that gave everybody all the heart this troubles Fen, Fen,

Michelle 48:21
yes, yeah, but it was the fen, the good part that didn't kill people as much, or something, of the fen, Fen, it was the fen, not the fen, yeah. So yeah, I took it. I shook like, like, was going crazy, and then it was like, five days of hell. I stopped taking it. I didn't tell her, I stopped taking it, but I got through that, you know, and then I said, This one didn't work. What's the next one? Then she prescribed it, then I went and bought it, then I brought it home and said, not taking it, gonna use it for the 30 days. Tell her what's next. We did this for a year. Like, kind of a game, like, I'm just gonna say I took it, and I'm not gonna go on this crap, and I'm just gonna try my hardest. I do a lot of yoga. I walk my dogs a lot. I live in San Diego, zero excuses to do anything, and I do exercise a lot, so, but I wasn't losing the weight at all. And so finally, after a year of all these trials, quote, unquote, put me on ozempic. I'm just on point five. It's been almost a year, and I've lost like, 13 pounds or 12 pounds, awesome. And she won't let me go any further, like, she's like, Nope, you lost enough. And actually, on my prescription, it says it's because of GERD. That's

Speaker 1 49:30
why they got you the Zam pick for the reflux. Yeah, has your reflux cleared up after the weight loss? No? Oh,

Michelle 49:35
it's still there every single day. And if I forget to take my medication on time in the morning, literally, by like, noon or one o'clock, I can feel the burning, so I know I need a higher dose, but she won't prescribe it.

Speaker 1 49:46
Let me make a suggestion, perhaps, yeah, why don't you tell her that you want to switch to Manjaro? Because you've heard that Manjaro helps more with reflux, does it? Or? No? Oh, it does well for some people. And. Right? It also has a GI P in it, which might help with more weight loss. So it's possible that you'll get a little more weight loss with it. Also, I get why she doesn't want to move you up. Like, how much do you are you? Do you have any weight to lose? Now,

Michelle 50:11
I weighed myself this morning, just for you, 160, 9.9 now I've shrunk so I'm like, five, eight and a half. I think I have weight to lose. And by the way, when she was on a vacation, there was another doctor standing in for her, and I talked her into the higher dose. So I went on for one month prescription. She wrote 1.0 I got down to 161 oh, well, and then we'll just go. The governor came back and said, No, no, no, she should never have done that. Go to the other doctor. Just make an appointment. Go to her, she's, she's full. Um,

Speaker 1 50:44
I would, I would, I want to. I'd be banging on doors. It sounds like your doctor just doesn't understand the vibe. So, like,

Michelle 50:52
I know, yeah, why don't you look for another doctor? I know it's in the Kaiser system. It's such a tough system, to be honest.

Speaker 1 50:59
Other ideas include, but are not limited to, let's think, I don't know, look for another doctor. Seems like any like the first step, try to get on the other schedule. Yeah. Is this doctor not open to conversation? Why don't you just say, like, look, what do you care? Like, it's working for me. This is what I want to do. Just let me have it. She told

Michelle 51:16
me that she felt pressured by me. Oh, god. What are you

Scott Benner 51:21
still? You're instill in

Unknown Speaker 51:21
San Diego your issue, not mine. Like, what you're in

Speaker 1 51:24
San Diego still? Are you? Yes, yeah. She can't take it. The you asking for a bigger job,

Michelle 51:30
I guess not. She's like, you really have been pressuring me. I'm like, Well, I think I have legitimate reasons to be asking for what I'm asking for. These are not right. You know, how's it

Speaker 1 51:39
helped you with your insulin sensitivity, has your Okay, yeah, so I will

Michelle 51:42
say this, which is, I think, important. So thank you for asking me. When I first started on it, I really had to lower all my profiles and everything by almost half. Yeah, I was getting hypoglycemic all the time. So my daily insulin went from like 40 units down to like 20, and so much better, like, unbelievably better now that I've, like, gained the weight from 161 just for that one month, up to 170 let's say it's been a rocky road because I can't adjust as appropriately, like, for some reason it's not really dialing in as well. Yeah.

Speaker 1 52:14
Well, that's your reasoning. Then, with a doctor, like, I'll use this much less insulin if you if you let me have another, you know, what is it? Another? I don't know. Point five of ozempic. Yeah, point five a week, then I'll use this much less insulin every day, this much less insulin a week, this much less insulin a month. I mean, what are we talking about here? You know, Arden. The other day, I looked at Arden stuff and looked at it in a while. She's not even using a full dose of Manjaro like so the lowest dose of Manjaro would be 2.5 and we milk it into a vial and take out some. And so last week, we were giving her basically the equivalent of, like, 20 insulin units worth of Manjaro. Okay, and I know that sounds weird, but like I don't have another way to measure it. So that day, anyway, that I looked at on her insulin usage, she ate 125 carbs in a 24 hour period and used 16 units of total insulin basal and Bolus together. Wow. Her insulin sensitivity is up to like one moves or like 110 at this point. Carb ratio back in the day could have been anything from like one to four, like, that was about it. One unit covers four carbs. Now, I think it's one unit covers nine carbs. And her basal, her basal during the day, is down to, like, point seven, five from one point 1.2

Unknown Speaker 53:34
Wow, yeah, she's had a huge Yeah,

Speaker 1 53:36
she's not too thin. She's can, like, she can still eat. Like, we was a bit of an experiment there for a while. For a while, it was like, you know, just give her the whole pen, and then she couldn't eat, and she lost too much weight. And we're like, All right, well, that's not okay. So, you know, how do you figure this out? Do you spread it out more? Well, you can't, because the half life, excuse me, the medication, I think I take it. I really think it's only really, really effective. Verse four or so days for hunger and stuff like that. Me too, right? And then I said, the doctor's like, Well, why don't we spread it out? We'll shoot it like, every 10 days. I'm like, I don't know, because, like, for the of the 10 days, her blood sugar is going to be all over the place, because we're count, we're counting on the drug to help with, you know, everything else. And so then somebody who listens to the podcast told me I was in a micro dose that, like, this person's, like, on my own, I'm gonna give myself a little bit of it every day. And I thought, I don't know if that's right or not, like, for you know, I have no idea, but I'm like, How do you do that? And then she's the one that told me about putting it into the vial and then taking it out again with a syringe. And I was like, oh, then I could give her less once a week. Yeah, you know?

Michelle 54:40
Oh, my god, yeah, that's something I could think about, to be honest. Because I definitely know that notice after four or five days, it's like, I take mine every Friday, but by Wednesday, my blood sugars are getting high. I am getting an appetite, yeah, that's kind of voracious. And I'm getting uncomfortable, like, just, I don't like it at all.

Speaker 1 54:59
Well, my bathroom habits are way better in the first five days of the injection than they are in the last two days of the injection. I don't even know why that is like just, you know,

Michelle 55:08
yeah, I will definitely say I am so constipated on ozempic. Oh,

Speaker 1 55:13
magnesium oxide. Do 800 a day. Oxide has to be oxide. You can start with 400 if you want. But I would pre, you know, you certainly could. But if you're looking for a bang for your buck situation, I would do two like 800 milligrams a day till you make the poopy. Then maybe you can go back to 400 and see. And then also, I just put out that episode with Dr Hamdy. If you haven't listened to it, definitely haven't listened to it yet, but it's done, ready for me. He's gonna tell you how very important muscle training, I know I read,

Michelle 55:43
I read the synopsis, yeah, and protein is going to be for you. Oh, yeah, no. I've lost so much of my muscle tone I can tell, like, doing yoga, you know, I'm just like, Oh my God, my he said something

Speaker 1 55:54
that, I mean, I've heard people say versions of it, but he said you shouldn't, in my opinion. He said you shouldn't be on a GLP if you're not doing weight training. Yeah,

Michelle 56:04
I believe it. I mean, I really do well, yoga is my weight training. But I know even my daughter, who weight trains all the time, is just like, Mom, no, you have to be going to the gym and doing weight but I work full time, yeah, and I have my 18 year old living with me, and 20 million dogs, and I'm just like, oh my god, how am I gonna make it to the gym, like,

Speaker 1 56:21
body weight squats, little like dumbbells, like, just keep your muscle tone up and trying to grow. Like, you don't have to try to get jacked up, obviously, or anything like that.

Michelle 56:29
But, you know, yeah, yeah, no, it's important. I know, yeah, I'm believe me. I read that synopsis about that one coming up, and I was like, but now that it's out, I'll have to listen to

Speaker 1 56:38
it. He's also going to talk about in there that he thinks that in the short not in the long term, but in the short term, injectable glps are going to be overtaken by oral medications that are glps that are also maybe mixed with other items that are going to help lose weight without losing the muscle. Oh, wow. There should be a lot of shifting in this space, you know, in the short term.

Unknown Speaker 57:01
Yeah, that's awesome. It's such a it's such a game changer, honestly.

Speaker 1 57:04
Oh, it's, it's insane how it's helping. But we're on the, I mean, if you're doing this right now, you're on the tip of the spear, you know what? I mean. So like, you're going to run into problems, and you're going to have things that you're like, Oh, I wish that wouldn't have happened. You know, you're out ahead and me for me, like me, personally, time's not on my side. Like, I don't want to wait five more years and be 58 and, like, then the pill comes out, and I'm like, Oh, finally. Like, I gotta get moving. I like, Tech Talk. You know what I mean? Like, I'm only gonna be here for so long, Michelle. I'm gonna talk about this, like, in more length, probably in my next, like, weight loss diary. But I had to go out the other night. It's freezing cold here,

Michelle 57:41
by the way. Like, I was just in Michigan for nine days. I know it's freezing cold. I

Speaker 1 57:45
just had to run to the store. And I was like, my god, like, what if I just didn't, you know? So I went to my heavier coat. I have this, like a Carn heart, like, winter jacket, right? That I that I bought to go to, I bought it to take my son to the Obama inauguration. Oh, my god, yeah. First one, I have a great picture of he and I, like, in front of the Capitol, like, you know what? I mean? Like, amazing, yeah, for the inauguration anyway, not not the point. I mean, that's how long ago it was, is my point? Yeah? So I'm like, I don't wear it that frequently, but I have worn it in the last year a couple of times, shovel and snow stuff like that. And I'm like, I'm gonna get out that jacket. I pull the jacket out, and I put it on, and I look like a little kid in his father's coat. Oh my god. I'm sure I turned and looked in a mirror, and I was like, Oh my God. Like, I still am running into these moments where I'm like, I didn't know how fat I was. Like, I really, how did I not know? I just it's the overwhelming feeling, like, How did I not know how the situation I was in? Yeah, I took the coat and I could take the right side of the coat and put it under my left armpit, and the left side of the coat put it under my right armpit. That's bonkers. I wore to the store so I could feel how ridiculous it felt on me. It felt like a hoop dress. Is what it felt like a really heavy, warm hoop dress. Yeah, no,

Michelle 59:00
you've lost. I mean, what? I mean, what? I just listened to your last that ended in january 2025, so just recently, I think you lost total of 70 pounds. Is that right?

Speaker 1 59:08
So, no, no, like, no, 57 I think you probably have a number switch in your head. But, like, even that, like, going back to the the download problem, like the jacket reset me, because I was like, oh God. Like, I'm in this fight weekly. That's like, between 179 175 pounds. And in my head, like, I feel like, oh God. Like, today I'm 178 like, Oh, I got down to 174 I was like, 174 I was like, Oh, I'm almost there. Like, I literally was like, not the number, but my body fat at 174 I was like, I have five more pounds and I'm done. Like, I don't have any more fat loose. It's gonna be awesome, you know. And then, like, you know, you have something salty or something whatever, and your body reabsorbs, or you eat on the wrong day of the seven days, which does happen with the for me with the Z bound. Like, in the first four days, I could eat a brick and I wouldn't gain weight. And then it'll. Last three days, if I have something that's, you know, not quite good for my maybe, if it's just something salty, for example, I'll put weight back on. You eat that salty thing on day two. And it doesn't happen. I don't listen. I don't know why. It's just how it's working for me anyway, I feel like I'm having this battle that I'm losing all the time. Three pounds this way, four pounds that way, blah, blah, blah. And the jacket made me go, oh God, dummy. 178 175 174 who cares? Who

Michelle 1:00:26
cares? Yeah, right, you you won anyway. Because, like, dada, you know, just

Speaker 1 1:00:31
really got me. I was like, I've been so far in this micro fight for so long. I forgot to macro this one thing. I forgot to step back and go, Oh, you've lost 57 pounds, you know. So

Unknown Speaker 1:00:44
it's remarkable. I mean, your face looks totally different on

Speaker 1 1:00:47
all the it's insane, you know, genuinely insane. Yeah, I just like, I look at myself and I'm like, I don't even see that as me. Yeah, it's really anything, all that look stuff apart. It's been wonderful. Health wise, yeah, pain wise, you know, like, my time, because you're not so like, like, you're not thinking about, like, what's gonna what am I gonna eat? What am I gonna do? Like, you know what I mean? Like, even socially, we do different things socially now, because socially used to mean like, go to a restaurant, and now, you know, now it doesn't mean that as much, and it's been a benefit in a significant way, in a multitude of like, variables have been impacted. Yeah, it's really been awesome. I know Kelly's on one too, right? I can't even believe, like, that's her at this point. Yeah, wow. I don't talk about her weight loss, but, yeah, that would be hers to talk about, if she wanted to. But she's doing great on it. She's doing so well. Oh, and it's helping her with other things too. Like, for instance, her perimenopause has been really impacted by the GLP. It has been easier because of that. Wow. We also really think it helped her with a lot of her long COVID symptoms because of like, like, kind of more anti inflammatory properties, maybe. But all we know is, like she got into this spot once where her regular doctor was like, can you just go, go off that GLP for a week? And she did it. And she's like, What a huge mistake. Just what a terrible week of like sweating again and like pain and my, you know, like muscles and like all that stuff. And she's like, I just shot it back in again, and I did just that stopped happening. Yeah?

Michelle 1:02:22
So no, when I went to Michigan recently, just in January, just, you know, I just got home for nine days to, like, take care of my mom, I forgot my ozempic. And actually, I was flying out on a Friday, and that was the day to give myself a shot. And I was like, oh shit. And then I didn't have it for the next Friday, but I was coming home on Sunday, so I had a week without it. It wasn't fun. I mean, I wasn't having those kind of side effects because, thank God, I'm past all that. I was just uncomfortable. I was hungry. I was thinking about food. My blood sugar was all over the place. I was like, this is such a challenge.

Speaker 1 1:02:55
I know I there's plenty of people who listen to this and go, you're cheating, you're blah, blah. I don't care. I genuinely don't care what you think. It's helping so many people in so many varied ways. It's just all like, it's awesome. Do you have you ever considered like you have PCOS? Is there is, have you ever figured out the reason why you couldn't have those kids so many different ways? I

Michelle 1:03:14
don't know. They said it was really I had a super thin uterine lining and my progesterone levels were low. So who knows. Like, the babies that I was had, like, the pregnancies couldn't embed, but like, one time I was four months pregnant and lost the baby, so who knows. That's

Speaker 1 1:03:28
crazy. That's terrible. I'm you've been through a lot. You have a really great perspective. How do you think that happened? Like, why am I talking to a an upbeat person instead of somebody who's like, like, because you could have told your story so much differently. My husband did this. This happened. He left us. He was he left my kids after, you know, after we got divorced, even the way you talked about your brother, it was more about from a an empowerment perspective, like I did this. I tried to push them to do that, like it wasn't like this thing happened to us, and then it was sad. Like, how come you talk the way you talk? I think

Michelle 1:03:59
it's just my personality and who I am, yeah, but I, you know, I also, like, my mom is a very strong driving force in my life. I talk to her every single day, and when she passes, which will be probably pretty relatively soon, it's going to be a huge punch in the gut for me. I think I just have a that's just my perspective, like, honestly, and I have a spiritual connection. Like, it's not a religious connection at all, but it's just more like, I mean, I am super thankful that insulin was even invented, because if it wasn't, I mean, I'd be dead at the age of 30, and Arden wouldn't have ever lived a life like this is all amazing. So I kind of keep that perspective as much as I can every day to be like, this is another gift. And like, look where I get to live pretty phenomenal. But I also do a lot of yoga. And yoga is people say, Oh, I can't do it because, you know, I'm not flexible. It has zero to do with flexibility, absolutely zero. It has to do with your breathing and focusing on the moment, and then you just do the movements. And nobody people can be bad and good and everything in between. There's just no judgment there, like it's an. Power of just no judgment. You just go there and you breathe and you come out and you feel better, and it connects me to everything the rest of the day. I mean, I don't get to do it every day because of work. I mean, there was a time just recently where I quit my other job and I had eight weeks between positions, and I did it every single day, and I was like, in heaven. It just helps to reset me every single time I go, yeah,

Speaker 1 1:05:22
no. I wish everybody could find that one way. I don't care how, like one way or the other. It would be awesome if everybody could find that feeling. Because I'm forever having these conversations and wondering in the back of my mind, how come some people have a thing happen to them and they react one way, and other people react in a completely opposite direction. I don't I wish I understood that better, because they Yeah, you know, it'd be awesome if everybody could have a slice of how you're attacking all this really,

Michelle 1:05:47
yeah, well, and believe me, I'm person with but you know, I I'm definitely not perfect, that's for sure. And that's one of the best things about it. Like, I don't ever strive for perfection in life. I gave up on that a long time ago, like, I had eating disorders as a kid, like bulimia and anorexia and everything. I was just always trying to be perfect, and, like, I gave it all up, and I was like, you know, this is so much better to be in

Speaker 1 1:06:09
this place. Good for you. Do you have any idea how you did that? Probably a lot of therapy. You did have a lot of therapy, yes, yeah, a lot of therapy.

Michelle 1:06:20
Yeah, a lot of therapy helped me through everything. I mean, I had got my Master's in marriage, family and child counseling, like Counseling Psychology too. I just think, you know, kind of learning along the way, taking little steps, baby steps, nothing has to be a big step. Just like all these little things I kind of go through on a daily basis are kind of just keep me going. But I really don't take any days for granted, because I do really think, like I was meant to die 30 years ago, and I'm still here, and it's for a reason, like, I like, even as my job that I'm doing right now, I mean, part of my focus every single day is to bring joy to people's lives. And I know that sounds corn ball, but like, I work with seniors and this and that, and I really try to make them feel good about themselves, and, you know, and it's genuine, like, I'm just like, This is awesome. We're still all still here on this planet at the same time. This is remarkable. Like, this is great, yeah, just this

Speaker 1 1:07:07
simple idea of, like, I can't believe any of this is even working. Like, we're really, genuinely lucky to be here 100% Yeah, no, I know I hear you. Like, there's how many planets just in this solar system, and we looked at all of them, and no one's living on those. And you know, the randomness that it all works is, I have the same feeling

Michelle 1:07:25
you don't brink of where we are. Like, look, even in diabetes, like, just amazing. Yeah. So, yeah, it's just amazing. Yeah, my mother's mother, I think I mentioned her earlier, who had the goiter, also had diabetes. They never really knew if she had type one or type two or anything. She was on syringes when she died at age 67 of a heart attack, which is pretty close to my age. You know, they found all these syringes which were like, glass and blah, blah, blah. And I was just like, Oh, my God, they were huge. No wonder why. Every time I visited her as a kid, I would go to her house and she would be laying in bed with like a wet cloth on her forehead and a candy bar next to her and an orange juice next to her. And I was just like, What a horrible time. She was kind of diagnosed because there was no education, there was no Juicebox Podcast. Let's be real. Yeah,

Speaker 1 1:08:07
it just the information was not great. The technology wasn't great. The medication, it is crazy, right? To look back and see, look at how she was suffering, yep, from a thing that I'm no longer suffering from. And, yeah, I mean, make two more generations. What could it be like? Could it you know what? I mean? Yeah, for sure, they haven't been back on to talk about this story, but if you've heard the episode of the mom who came on to talk about the young girl who, you know, started taking the GLP and her insulin that's heard it kept going down, down, down, down. The mom texted me yesterday to say that they're considering going to every other day basal insulin at this point, and the kids doing one unit of basal a day. Wow. So who knows for how long that's going to work for, but yeah, for this time that she's getting, like, awesome, you know what I mean? Like, just really wonderful and awesome and and who knows, like, what, what we'll learn from that? Or, you know, what could help her if, in the future, it's not going to be like, oh you Gosh, you have type one diabetes. This is terrible. Here's the GLP pill, here's the insulin, yeah, here's your CGM, here's what we're going to do. And then you go off and and eat a normal like, you know, you don't have to make any like, crazy changes to how you eat. And you're using 16 units of insulin a day as an adult, and an A, 1c in the low sixes, like, come on, yeah,

Michelle 1:09:23
you know, and less hypoglycemic events and hypers. I mean, come on, right? No,

Speaker 1 1:09:27
even, like, if none of that stuff exists, that eyelet pump, and the way that they're leaning towards that algorithm, like, it's a normal meal of smaller than normal meal, a larger than normal meal, right? What happens when they dial that in better and better? Yeah, you know, no, it's

Michelle 1:09:41
pretty remarkable, yeah, yeah, yeah. So my grandma died, like, 45 years ago. This is she's didn't get any of this,

Scott Benner 1:09:47
of course, no. And so you feel lucky for having, oh,

Michelle 1:09:49
my god, 100% I mean, yeah. And oddly enough, like, Well, none of my three kids obviously have it, or I would have mentioned it. And I have 14 first cousins zero have it. Go get. Like, I don't know anybody else in my family who got lucky enough to get just you sometimes you have doctors on who are, like, from San Diego. And I'm like, Who are they? Because I want to go see them, but I'm, you know, like, do they have clinical patients that they see?

Speaker 1 1:10:12
Yeah, I don't know. I don't know if they do or they don't. I never really asked them. I just feel lucky that they're like, they're willing to come on. You know what I mean? Like, I'm a guy, you know, doctor that was just on recently, right? And I don't even get him without another person. Check this out. So eventually you'll listen to to the episode that where I'm going to give people the episode number. It's Dr Hamdy, Episode 1411, GLP, essentials. He talks a lot about muscle training, glps, future of diabetes, stuff like that. Really learned. Guy works at Joslin on staff at Harvard, like that kind of stuff. I was invited a number of years ago to go to a private event for a specific religious group of people who do their own diabetes event for themselves. And I was the speaker, and there was a second speaker, and he and I, you know, met over the two and a half day event, which had a little bit I don't know that I ever saw him again. And a few months ago, he sends me a text, and he says, I would love it if you would consider having Dr Hamdy on your podcast. I really think it would be valuable. And I said, thank you. And I reached out to the doctor. The doctor only says yes to me because he knows the person who put me in touch with him and, like, all this kind of like, stuff tumbles into place, and then he comes on and gives that amazing interview to me, a person who, like, if I would have just reached out cold and said, Hey, can you come on? He would have been like, no, go away, exactly. And I've done that, by the way. Like, trust me, there are people who have given presentations on different things online, and I thought this person would be awesome on the podcast, and I reach out cold, and I'm like, Hey, my name's Scott. I run this podcast, the biggest diabetes podcast, don't they don't care. They're like, what is? It's meaningless. But if one person says to them, you should go do this, boom, they're off. And they're doing it. Yep, you know. So even that, like, I don't know anything about this yet, because this is an email that's arrived while you and I have been speaking. And maybe this will be nothing like it could be a big nothing, but an RN. BSN sent me an email and said, Hey, I wanted to send you a recommendation for a Physician Associate I know, and gives the name. He's been using regenerative medicine to help people with type one, type two diabetes, decrease hemoglobin, a 1c reduce glucose, titrate down insulin, and in some cases, come off completely. And blah, blah, blah, like, I don't know if this is like Hocus Pocus, if it's nothing, if it's both, I have no idea, right? I'll dig through it and try to figure it out. And if it seems valuable for everybody, then I'll reach out and try to make it happen. If it doesn't, I'll ignore the email. That stuff all comes from people helping me in return. Yeah, that's the crazy thing. Like, you can say, Oh, you had all these doctors on but, like a lot of them, I found some of them, but some of them were found for me, you know. So it's just the connections you've built. Yeah, right. It's become a hub. Like the podcast became a hub somehow. So I rely on people doing that, and anyway they come on. And my point is, I don't know if they take I don't know much about them when they come on, other than they've got this set of skills and they're willing to talk about it, so

Michelle 1:13:13
yeah, but you have an amazing way of, like, getting through and figuring things out and taking people on different roads. And so we can learn. And I love learning from you, just by the questions you ask people. Thank you. Like, I apply that in my daily life. Sometimes I like, seriously, I

Speaker 1 1:13:29
swear to you, I just my entire life. I've always thought when people ask questions, they ask the wrong questions, or when they get an answer, there's an obvious follow up question, and no one seems to see it, right? Yeah, I noticed that. That's great. But what about this part? And you know, that's where you get the story.

Michelle 1:13:47
I think that's where your real skill lies. Thank you. I

Speaker 1 1:13:51
don't know what else. My son believes that too, and tells me that I'm being held back by having the word type one diabetes in my podcast. He goes, I think you'd be a bigger podcaster if people didn't think it was about such a niche genre. Yeah, he's probably right. And I said, I don't care. I'll finish with this. I just because I just had this conversation with my son like, you know, part of the reason why I kind of pulled that thing out of my butt earlier, about people are out there saying they're helping but not really doing anything, is because that was part of a bigger conversation I had with my son this morning while we were having breakfast, and the rest of it was this. Somebody asked me recently, how do you continually help people like this? Like, how are you actually sustaining this and keeping this going and making it last for years and years and years, and it's having the same or better impact as you go, which is a real question I got asked by a medical professional. And what I told them was, is that I am willing to do the unsexy, repetitive part of this, and that's what nobody else wants to do, that everybody wants to move up and get better and make more money and get a better position. And I'll do this, and then I'm gonna do that. I found a thing I'm good at that helps people, and I do it every day, like that's the thing I've done. I've. Dedicated myself to this part of it, not to making it something else or bigger, or turning it into something or, you know, trying to get wealthy from it, or something like that. Or, well, I'll write a book, or I'll do this, or I, you know, I'm going to branch, yeah, how about this helps people every day, like somebody needs to be doing this job right here, right? So my willingness to just get up every day and do the thing like, you know what I mean? Like, I the shame of it is, is that the only thing that's popping in my head right now is it's time to make the donuts, which is seems inappropriate, but that idea of like, somebody gets up every day and does the unsexy stuff the same way as like, it happens in government too. Like the people you know in government, those people are both like the but there are real people behind the scenes making sure that the, you know, the T's are crossed and the eyes are dotted, and the things happen the way they're supposed to happen. And I sort of see my part in this like that. Yeah, if

Michelle 1:15:53
you were a drug, you're you, I would call you steady state. That's it.

Speaker 1 1:15:58
We just want to keep doing this thing, this thing works. It needs to keep happening. If I stop doing it, it stops.

Michelle 1:16:05
I know it would be so depressing. Yeah, I would just be bonkers.

Speaker 1 1:16:09
Well, I'll keep doing it for you. It stops because of some of the things that you've mentioned earlier. Like, who knows. Like, why do you like listening to me explain something? Like, who knows? Like, it's just random that it worked out that way. So, like, so keep doing that thing. I told my son at the end. I was like, it just takes me back very simply, and I know that by now, either people just don't even know who he is, or they have like, a weird connotation about him. But I grew up listening to radio, listening to talk radio. When I was a junior in high school, Howard Stern came to Philadelphia, and I started listening first with a Walkman that had an FM radio in it, which, by the way, was like, was a boon if you had an FM radio in your Walkman, your cassette player, you know. And I listened and I listened and I listened. And it was just a guy who knew, like, he knew how to keep a conversation going, and he knew what was interesting and what wasn't, and if things got boring, he'd pivot and he'd ask people questions that No, but I never heard anybody else ask a question to him, like people will point and say, like he had porn stars on, or this or that. I'm like, Yeah, you know what? I He's the first guy ever asked, I ever heard ask a porn star about their life, not about the sensational part, about why they were there, like he was talking to them, like they were just like everybody else, like she was a librarian, you know, and and then they'd give these answers, and I'd be like, my god, that's interesting, right? You know, like, like, is that how she got here? Like, is that the path of and so I found that really interesting. But he would give people this bit of information, like famous people would come in and they'd say, like, you know, well, yeah, I have this great job on this TV show, but it's been going for seven years and it's getting boring, and I'm bored, and I'm gonna leave the show, and he'd be like, No stupid show up and make that show every day, because this is gonna end one day and over and over Again, these famous people would not take that simple advice, like, stop thinking there's greener pasture somewhere and that you're meant for bigger things. You're doing this thing that people really seem to like and they enjoy it and they want it and almost need it sometimes, and like, you're gonna stop doing it because you're bored of it, or because you think there's more and over and over again. I'd watch these people just disappear. Oh my gosh. That's kind of interesting. And then what I thought was is the same thing, like, shut up, get up, go to work, do the thing you're good at, right? And that's what I do. Yeah, yeah. That's just kind of how I say it. So, yeah. So

Michelle 1:18:34
wait, let me ask you a quick question. What year was Arden born? 2004 Oh, okay, so she's like, two years older than my youngest. I was just curious. Born

Speaker 1 1:18:45
2004 diagnosed 2006 and yeah, that's it. And she's going to be 21 this summer.

Michelle 1:18:51
Oh, my gosh. Okay, yeah, my mind. She's like, 1819 I know she was switching from one school to another. Yeah, no,

Speaker 1 1:18:58
no, trust me, that's about worked out now, but yeah, you guys are a little behind on my life, like, because, because of the way I do the recordings. But yeah, you'll, don't worry, you'll catch up eventually, okay, yeah, yeah, and then the last six months of the show, you'll get to where I am, like, right before I stop, but I really don't want to. Like, I just had conversations the other day with someone about trying to make a a community outside of company controlled spaces. So like, the one thing that I'm I'm always worried about is the Facebook group is awesome, but it's controlled by Facebook, right? And so like, if Facebook just decides one day to pivot, or that I did something wrong, or that you did something wrong in my group, and therefore, or whatever I'm like, it just it goes away, and it helps people so much. So I'm trying to figure out ways to get that kind of space that's outside of control of like a Twitter or Instagram or something like that, yeah, to support about YouTube, no. Again, you say something they don't like, they'll make sure the algorithm doesn't put you through and I have no. On YouTube to begin with, because I'm not pretty enough, and I don't do the like, hey. Like, I don't do all that stuff. Like, it draws people in which I'm not going to do. I am going to sit down and maybe tell more of my story on video of, like, how I built this whole thing. Like, just so people listening know how it's gotten to this point, because it's been going on for so long now that my concern is, like, to some degree, like, I think I've just become the guy behind the curtain that makes the thing for some people, instead of, like the people who were around in the beginning, who saw us, like building it all up together, you know, right? So I'm going to try to revisit that a little bit, but, but, no, I just think that there needs to be a place where people can convene and talk that's not controlled by the whims of government or social media companies or stuff like that, especially now in general, just like, I think it's been like that the whole time. So, like, it doesn't matter to me, which I've seen Democratic and Republican administrations, and still I see weird stuff, like, both ways. So yeah, so anyway, I like talking to a company about, like, Hey, listen, you know, for me, it's too much money. I can't foot the bill for this, but you could, and it wouldn't really be that much. Like, can't just give me the money so I can make the thing for people, yeah. Oh, for real. And the truth is, is that that's how I started the podcast. 11 years ago. I just said to omnipot, I'm like, I need you to give me some money so I can afford to sit down and make a podcast. Like, you're buying ads. That's what I said. You buy ads on it, right? And and they were like, all right. And then they did it. And so that floated me for a year. And don't get me wrong, it was, it was six grand. They gave me $6,000 in 2015 for ads. And I was like, I had just come off, and was literally a, and probably still am, to some degree, a stay at home dad. So all I said to my wife, I was like, Look, $6,000 let me make the podcast basically. And she I was like, maybe one day it'll be $8,000 or maybe one day it'll be 80,000 like, who knows? Like, let's see where it grows to like, let me do this. And she was like, Cool. Like, it's helping people. Like, you know? Yeah, you know. So I got to do it a little more. And it grew and grew and grew. And so now I'm trying to use that same formula to create another thing for people, and we'll see what happens. Like, sometimes you have luck talking people into stuff, and sometimes they don't see your vision. And you know, so anyway, I'm gonna keep trying that and just trying to find new ways to help people. No,

Michelle 1:22:13
that's it. They're amazing. We're so thankful. I'm just gonna speak for all of us. We're so thankful. Thank you. It's

Speaker 1 1:22:19
very nice. There are 20 people listening right now. They're hate listening, and they think you're an idiot and I'm the monster. Oh my god,

Michelle 1:22:24
they're the crazy. We know that's okay if they're listening and they don't even like you. They're really bonkers. Hey, I

Speaker 1 1:22:30
appreciate the downloads. Keep going absolutely I'll take hate listen downloads. They're fine. They help the algorithm too. You're actually helping me be more popular. So keep it up. Keep complaining about me on Facebook and everywhere else you complain. I wish those people understood every time they complain, they're complaining to a small group of people, and those group of people already agreed with them, but everyone else who's paying attention goes, ooh, I'll go check that out. No, no no, they go check it out. Like when you when you say something crappy about me, you're driving tons of people to the podcast, and some of them will agree with you, but a lot of them don't, and they stay and makes the podcast bigger and, you know, more powerful and everything else. So keep it up. Keep hating

Michelle 1:23:14
You're doing great. Yeah, that's like, there's no such thing as bad publicity.

Speaker 1 1:23:18
If I had to pay somebody for the help that they give me. I think the people who don't like me probably deserve a little more money than the people who do like me. So I really do appreciate you guys. You're out there just doing the Lord's work. Thank you so much. I know they don't believe that, but it's absolutely true, and seriously, like I hope they I hope they feel that very deep down at how much they're helping me and how much I appreciate it anyway, Michelle, I did not call you Melissa, once pretty proud of myself. No amazing Hold on one second for me. Okay,

Speaker 1 1:23:55
I'd like to thank the ever since 365 for sponsoring this episode of The Juicebox Podcast, and remind you that if you want the only sensor that gets inserted once a year and not every 14 days, you want the ever since CGM, ever since cgm.com/juice, box, one year, one CGM. Thanks for tuning in today, and thanks to Medtronic diabetes for sponsoring this episode, we've been talking about Medtronic mini med 780 G system today, an automated insulin delivery system that helps make diabetes management easier day and night, whether it's their meal detection technology or the Medtronic extended infusion set, it all comes together to simplify life with Diabetes. Go find out more at my link, Medtronic diabetes.com/juicebox diabetes.com/juice. Box, touched by type one sponsored this episode of The Juicebox Podcast. Check them out at touched by type one.org. On Instagram and Facebook. Give them a follow. Go check out what they're doing. They are helping people with type one diabetes in ways you just can't imagine. You. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast. If you're not already subscribed or following the podcast in your favorite audio app, like Spotify or Apple podcasts, please do that now. Seriously, just to hit follow or subscribe will really help the show. If you go a little further in Apple podcasts and set it up so that it downloads all new episodes. I'll be your best friend, and if you leave a five star review, ooh, I'll probably send you a Christmas card. Would you like a Christmas card? Hey, kids, listen up. You've made it to the end of the podcast. You must have enjoyed it. You know? What else you might enjoy? The private Facebook group for the Juicebox Podcast. I know you're thinking, uh, Facebook, Scott, please. But no. Beautiful group, wonderful people, a fantastic community, Juicebox Podcast, type one diabetes on Facebook. Of course, if you have type two, are you touched by diabetes in any way? You're absolutely welcome. It's a private group, so you'll have to answer a couple of questions before you come in, but make sure you're not a bot or an evildoer, then you're on your way. You'll be part of the family. The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording, wrong way recording.com, you.

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