#1606 Winn Dixie Eggs

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Caitlyn, now 16, returns from Episode 458 (“Cutting on Cam”) to share her Florida teen life with T1D.

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

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

Caitlin 0:13
Hi, my name is Caitlin. I'm 16 years old, and I'm from Southwest Florida. If

Scott Benner 0:20
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This episode of The Juicebox podcast is sponsored by us med. Us med.com/juicebox, or call 888-721-1514, get your supplies the same way we do from us. Med, the episode you're about to listen to is sponsored by tandem Moby, the impressively small insulin pump. Tandem Moby features tandems newest algorithm control, iq plus technology. It's designed for greater discretion, more freedom and improve time and range. Learn more and get started today at tandem diabetes.com/juicebox

Caitlin 1:49
Hi. My name is Caitlin. I'm 16 years old, and I'm from Southwest Florida.

Scott Benner 1:52
Caitlin, you've been on the show before. How old were you the first time? Oh

Caitlin 1:57
my gosh, I don't remember. I was actually thinking about that last night I Oh, was I like, nine or 10, I think,

Scott Benner 2:05
were you on by yourself, or was there a parent with you?

Caitlin 2:08
I was by myself. And then towards the end, you had my mom come on for, I think, like, six or seven minutes, maybe. Do you remember what we call the episode, called cutting on cam, because I was talking about my

Scott Benner 2:20
brother. Oh, that's right, you made fun of your brother the whole time. Wait, yes, I did. That was how long

Caitlin 2:25
ago I'm looking I have no clue. Actually, I found it like not too long ago, but I forgot to look at the date I'm looking at

Scott Benner 2:35
it. It's episode 458, it was posted in March of 2021, which just means we probably recorded it at the end of 2020. Yeah, we did this during

Caitlin 2:46
covid. Yes, yes, I know. I remember we did it during covid.

Scott Benner 2:50
No kidding, 458, I think I put up 1555, the other day. Insane. All right, and wait And how old were you back then? 11?

Caitlin 3:00
Yeah, I would have been 11. That's

Scott Benner 3:02
crazy. Okay, all right, well, this will be fun. What made you want to come back on?

Caitlin 3:06
I mean, it's been a while since we've talked, and I'm also in high school, so a lot of things have changed. I guess. I don't know. I

Scott Benner 3:13
want to find out what changed. So if you had to, well, let's give people like a just a high level overview of yourself, like, So how old were you when you were diagnosed? I think I was eight, eight. So I spoke to you three years into diabetes. I believe. So, okay, all right, and now you're, gosh, seven years in eight. Eight years, yeah. How long does it feel like you've had type one? Feels like I've had

Caitlin 3:39
it my whole life. I'm not used to. Like, I can't remember what it was like to not have to Bolus before I eat, or having to change all my devices every three or 10 days. Like, I don't remember a time before that. I honestly don't remember anything pre covid.

Scott Benner 3:54
I'll say that you don't remember anything pre covid. How long were you locked away?

Caitlin 3:58
It's so weird. I will be told things, and I'll say, Was that before covid, and somebody will go, oh yeah, it was. And I'm like, I can't remember that. It's weird. I

Scott Benner 4:08
find that television feels different before 911 and after, and I don't know if that's real or just something that it may be like, I feel like, I don't know. Like, I feel like, like television was wholesome is not the right word, but I don't know. Maybe, maybe it's not that it was more wholesome. Maybe that it's that I feel less maybe I feel more jaded now, yeah, yeah, that's interesting. So you don't remember anything, bro, okay, well, hopefully nothing important happened those first eight

Caitlin 4:41
years? Well, I mean, like, I remember diagnosis, and then there's certain things, like, I have really good memory. I can remember things from even before I was three years old. I remember holding my brother in the hospital when he was born and I was two months away from being three and but just like little, tiny, simple things from school, like. School field trips. I don't remember them at

Scott Benner 5:02
all. Trust me, I don't remember anything from when I was that age. So it's just gonna get farther or farther away. In your memory,

Caitlin 5:07
it's mostly school things like school before covid was so different that I just like, I think I blacked it all out.

Scott Benner 5:15
Did you prefer it one way or the other? Do you hate the way school has become?

Caitlin 5:18
It's a big shift, I'll say, because everybody's so much older now, like, I remember like, being in middle school, and it was so different from elementary school. And then now, when I look back at it, I'm like, it's a lot different, because everybody's obviously older, so everybody's more mature. But then it's like, also a lot of things changed, because I went to my sixth grade year was the CO it was like, 2020, to 2020, 21 so we had masks, and there was a bunch of repercussions that we had to follow and or not, repercussions precautions we had to follow. So it was very different. It was a big switch. I'll say,

Scott Benner 5:52
I think you were melding together repercussions and precautions. When you say, I

Caitlin 5:56
do that all the time. Now it's really bad. You morph words. Basically, I don't remember what the word was, but it was actually like two weeks ago, I was mixing two words together, and I couldn't figure out what I was trying to say.

Scott Benner 6:07
That's fun. Hopefully you'll do that more while we're talking. Yeah. So what do you think has changed for you about diabetes since we spoke last though, I mean, what's your been your biggest shift?

Caitlin 6:18
Well, I'm on the instead of the Omnipod dash. I'm on the Omnipod five so and I have the app on my phone, which is so much nicer. I will admit that

Scott Benner 6:28
better than having to carry like a secondary device, yeah, it's

Caitlin 6:31
so much nicer. It's literally just in my back pocket, and it's so easy for me to access everything. And also, like, corrects for myself, which is nice. Yeah, you like the the automation, yeah, it's a lot nicer. And then also, I'm on the g6 I believe I was on the g5 when I last

Scott Benner 6:49
spoke. I think you very well could have been. It's a long time ago. Yeah,

Caitlin 6:54
we're trying to get on the g7 I've used it before, but never when it was connected to my phone, but now you can connect the g7 to the app, so we're trying to see if we can get the g7

Scott Benner 7:05
why would you not be able to do, you know, because we don't have any What? No. I mean, like, is your, like, insurance stopping you, or your doctor, or, I

Caitlin 7:14
don't know if she ever got a response from my endocrinologist, but she had asked, Oh, I see if we could. So we're not sure. I'm not sure. I think she probably knows, but I wouldn't there's

Scott Benner 7:23
probably a glitch in the system. Somebody asked somebody, and then somebody probably dropped the ball along the way, and then life gets busy, and you don't check in anymore. You're like, Ah, this thing's working. So you're, you've been automated with Omnipod five for how long? Maybe about a year. Okay, what are the big differences between automation and not automation? No, it's been more than a year, longer than a year.

Caitlin 7:44
I'm a liar. I don't know how long, but I think maybe three.

Scott Benner 7:48
Okay, that doesn't make you a liar, though. Caitlin, don't worry. But tell me, what's the biggest difference like is it around meals? Is it around activities? Where do you see the bigger benefits for yourself?

Caitlin 7:59
The bigger benefits is my blood sugar can, kind of, it will elevate itself, like, if it spikes up, it'll level out, which is really nice. I don't have to, like, always be messing around with it, or always looking because if it's high, it'll correct me on itself. But then also, if I were to put in, like, a correction, it'll take insulin away, or it won't give me anything, because it's like, we've already corrected it for you, yeah, which is nice, just the only, like, I guess it's not a good benefit. It's around activities, because it my blood sugar could spike because right before I go to practice, I eat dinner, which can be really early sometimes, like at four o'clock, because I'll have practice for like, four hours, and then it'll spike up. And then, as I'm working, it like doesn't know that I'm doing activity, so my blood sugar will drop, but then it'll also correct me, so it drops

Scott Benner 8:52
really far, I guess, four hours. What are you practicing to be an astronaut? What are you doing?

Caitlin 8:55
I'm a dancer on a competitive team, so we have a lot of practices.

Scott Benner 9:01
Okay, is that a lot of moving than sitting around and listening, or is it constant movement? It's a

Caitlin 9:07
bit of both. Towards the beginning, it's more like getting to know everybody and getting to know the choreography. But once we hit like, I think it's November, is when we really start to work, and we continue working up until May.

Scott Benner 9:23
So if you have a meal at four o'clock and you miss it on, like a Bolus and you spike up, then what happens during dancing?

Caitlin 9:31
It's usually drops. It's like a 5050 shot. Sometimes it'll level out, and sometimes it'll drop really low. It really just depends on what we're doing, because not every day is the same. Yeah, it kind of messes around a little bit, and that can be a lot, because I my mood tends to change a lot too. When my blood sugar is high or low and it's like, not really good for the people around me. I guess there have been times where I would get really agitated, especially around the littles, because I work with I volunteer. Here for some of like, the classes with the five and six year olds. And I am very good around kids. I will never yell at a kid, or I'm very nice, like, I won't yell at them or scream at them. And there have been times where I'd get really agitated, really quick, and I'm like, I'm sorry, can I step out of the room for just two seconds? And it's usually my blood sugar is the

Scott Benner 10:18
problem is it usually high or low? When that happens, it's usually high. Okay. Have you ever tried going to dance without eating and eating after dance?

Caitlin 10:26
It usually depends on the day, actually, because Mondays, I'm last this is, I'm talking about like last season, because we just ended in May. So last season, I was at practice from four to eight on Mondays. Tuesdays was six to eight, and then Wednesdays was six to seven. So Mondays, I'd eat at four. Tuesdays, I would eat at eight, and then Wednesdays, I would eat at like 730

Scott Benner 10:52
Okay, do you find your control better without an active Bolus and a meal in you while you're there?

Caitlin 10:59
Sometimes, because it usually sometimes on, I know, Tuesdays and Wednesdays, I would do this, it would drop, but then I'd be eating right after, so it would kind of like fix itself. But if I weren't to eat on the Mondays, when I was there from four to eight, it would be all over the place, like I'd be stepping out of the room every five seconds, because it would

Scott Benner 11:18
just drop. Do we get low? Because that a more active day?

Caitlin 11:21
Yeah, that's when I'm at practice. I'm, like, not sitting down for four hours. Basically,

Scott Benner 11:27
yeah, you're really hustling and moving. Yeah. Okay, so on those days, you definitely want to eat before but, but you're saying you need to make a good Bolus for that meal to stop a spike. Yeah, yeah. Are there things that you prefer to eat before you dance,

Caitlin 11:41
I usually will try to eat, have a protein, a carb, and, like, a vegetable or fruit. I found that those work really well if I just have, like, a healthier meal. I guess,

Scott Benner 11:49
awesome. How does it feel for someone to tell you that your personality isn't the same when it's not a thing you're doing on purpose?

Caitlin 11:56
Personally, I'm not, like, hurt by it or anything like I understand, and I'm like, okay, so I need to figure out a way to kind of shift, because I don't like being mean to people. That's one thing. And I don't know if I feel like I've upset somebody. I feel really bad, and I will hold on to that for so many like, I'll hold on to that for a while, and I'll feel really bad. So if somebody was like, I can kind of tell when I'm shifted a little, and then I just will figure out a way

Scott Benner 12:21
to fix it. What does it feel like internally? Like, how can you tell I mean,

Caitlin 12:26
I will, like, there are certain things that I'll say, and I will say it, and then I'll go, that was really out of character for me. I don't know why. I just said

Scott Benner 12:32
that, okay. And then that makes you feel like my blood sugar must be high,

Caitlin 12:36
yeah? And sometimes I'll look and I'm like, okay, so it's a little higher up. Maybe that's why, because I usually, I don't get aggravated at people that often. I'm a very difficult person to make mad. I guess. Interesting,

Scott Benner 12:48
is it discouraging or upsetting that there's a shift in your personality that has nothing to do with you? Like, if you didn't have diabetes, this wouldn't be happening. You know, I'm saying, like, if you're on the dance team, and I run up to you, and I What's that was, remember that girl that there's no way you remember this the ice skater with a pipe so she couldn't skate in the Olympics? Oh, yes, I've, yeah, I've heard that story. I come up and I pipe you Okay, and now you can't dance. That's not your fault. You're frustrated by that. Now I'm not dancing because something outside of my control unfairly, you know, crippled me. And so if your blood sugar goes up, is that not the same thing? Like, didn't something outside of your control change your ability to do something? I mean, kind of you're so young, I'm making you think way too hard about this. I'm sorry. I just like, I don't, I don't think I've ever thought of it like, No, I know. That's why I was asking the question. Don't worry, later, we'll, uh, bitch about your brother a little bit. I can't wait to find out about cam.

Caitlin 13:48
There's, it's really not that much. I'll say that there's not much

Scott Benner 13:51
Cam's a big nothing. Is that what you're here to say this time? No,

Caitlin 13:55
he just he's 13, so he's at that age where he'll mind his own business and all mine, mine we don't really like. He doesn't aggravate me that often, because he's usually just in his own little bubble, and I'm in mine. I guess.

Scott Benner 14:09
How many other brothers and sisters? Any? It's just him, just him, just him. Oh, your parents just made that one mistake of having one more kid. No, you like him? Yeah,

Caitlin 14:18
obviously I'm gonna love him because he's my brother. But it's just I kind of nice that he doesn't aggravate me as often as growing

Scott Benner 14:26
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Caitlin 17:00
My mom is very involved. She will always help me with, like, both my parents drive me to if I have, like, a an appointment with my Endo, they'll drive me there. But my mom helps out a lot, especially with dance, because a lot of the people at the studio, they don't know, or, like, they don't know how to work it, like, control it, or anything. Like, if I have a low blood sugar, they don't really know what to do. So my mom always will tell them, like, this is what needs to happen, and if this happens, call me. Or if this happens, just like, there's stuff there, she's very helpful with it.

Scott Benner 17:34
Awesome. Your dad less so or on the same level as your mom,

Caitlin 17:39
I'd say they're on the same level, just my mom, I My mom also, she works from home. So if something happens, my mom is always like the first one I can text to answer, because my dad, he he works, he's an owner of a business, so he's always like, on the run, or he's on the phone calling somebody. So I'll usually go to my mom first,

Scott Benner 17:58
yeah. If you contact your dad, he's gonna say, was mom not home?

Caitlin 18:01
Yeah. Or if I text mom, she'll go, like, if she's busy, she'll be like, just call like, whoa, text dad or something.

Scott Benner 18:08
Okay, so that's good. So they both have like, kind of an equal value for you on this. Yeah, awesome. Is that

Caitlin 18:13
comforting? Yes, I like, I don't know what I would do without them. I guess especially at such a young age,

Scott Benner 18:19
are there times when that's really evident to you, like something goes wrong, and have you ever thought like, Oh, my God, thank God, these people are here?

Caitlin 18:28
Yeah, I had a an incident. I think I was in seventh grade. Yes, seventh grade. It was towards the beginning of my seventh grade year, and I had a really bad low happen, and I was on the bus on the way home, and my blood sugar dropped, and it was like 30, and it was still dropping, and I was giving myself sugar, and nothing was working, and I couldn't move my left arm like it went weak. I couldn't lift it up. And I had my friend take my phone and call my mom. I was like, I need you to call. I was crying, actually, because I was like, I don't know what I'm doing. I thought I was going to pass out. I got tunnel vision. I was like, Can you call my mom and like, have her do something, because I it was out of my control at that point because I couldn't move. Yeah, and my mom was like, talking to the bus driver, and was like, You need to pull the bus over, and then they called my dad, and my dad, thankfully, he works close to where I live, and we were almost to my bus stop, so he sped over really quickly and got me, like, all fixed up and everything.

Scott Benner 19:32
No kidding. Now, are you famous after that on your bus? Or are people, everybody

Caitlin 19:36
kind of forgot about it, I guess, because nobody said anything the next day. And I was really, like, nervous. I was ready for somebody to say something, and I was like, I don't want to talk about it or hear it. I just remember when I got home, I thought about it in my head. I'm like, people are going to talk about this, and I'm going to be really embarrassed, and I'm just gonna have to pretend like it didn't affect me. But it, for sure, did. Yeah, people were cool. I guess. And they just, like, saw that the bus was pulled over, and I was just and, like, I was getting walked off by my dad, and that was really

Scott Benner 20:07
it. Generally speaking, how are kids with the diabetes? Do they mention it? They bother you about it? Are they supportive? What's your findings

Caitlin 20:16
it? It really depends on how I know them, like, how well I know them. Because when I was younger and I first got diagnosed, my class was very understanding. I was I had the same group of kids kindergarten all the way through fifth grade, so they knew me very well. And when they heard that I was diabetic, my teacher kind of gave them like a rundown of what it is. And like, you know, this is how this is going to work now. And they, honestly, they were very supportive. They helped me, especially my really close friends. They helped me out a lot. And then once I got to, like, middle school, there was a couple of kids who I had to meet because it's a new school, and it went from just being the same group of kids to seven different groups of kids, and some kids didn't understand it, I guess, right? They didn't have background to them, yeah? And they would, they would crack jokes here and there. But my friends, they were like, you can't say that. Like, that's not something you need to

Scott Benner 21:10
say, right? Just, like, dumb, thoughtless, like, sugar jokes and stuff like that,

Caitlin 21:14
yeah. And then they also confused type two with type

Scott Benner 21:18
one. Oh. They thought you did something to give yourself diabetes, yeah, okay.

Caitlin 21:22
And then my friends would be like, No, you don't know the difference. Like, that's why you can't say that. If you don't know what it is, why are you saying it? Yeah. And then once I got to high school, they didn't like, I don't hear anything about it,

Scott Benner 21:32
yeah. Did that make you feel any sort of way when they misunderstood?

Caitlin 21:35
Yeah? Because I was like, why are you saying stuff? But you don't know what it's like. You don't know what it is because I like, I won't say anything if I don't know what it

Scott Benner 21:46
is, kind of frustrating then that they didn't understand, but they felt comfortable talking about it, yeah, okay, but never hurtful. Like you didn't feel like it didn't feel personal.

Caitlin 21:57
It kind of did, but I was really good at I guess, hiding it, I don't

Scott Benner 22:01
know. Is that a thing you've ever thought about since then? Like it present day? Is that a thing that bothers you? Or no,

Caitlin 22:07
no, because I don't hear much about it. And if any kid when I was younger did something like, my friends would pull them aside and be like, you can't say that, and then they would apologize. So it was always it was always good after that,

Scott Benner 22:18
just a core of badasses with bats, like holding kids in corners and lockers, telling them, Hey, don't talk about Caitlin like that. Or was it done

Caitlin 22:25
more they would, they would just come up to them and be like, you can't say that. Like, that's not something you should say about people, because what if that

Scott Benner 22:31
was you? Oh, so, just good old fashioned reverse peer pressure. Then kind of, yeah, hey, listen, whatever works. Do you date? Is that a weird question?

Caitlin 22:39
No, I don't, do you

Scott Benner 22:41
think about it sometimes, I guess just I don't know what is dating look like when you're 16? I'm gonna sound very old for a second. Caitlin, so don't laugh at me. But like, you go to a movie, you go out and get, like, like a drink, to get like a soda, or go to a diner or something like that. Like, what do they do?

Caitlin 22:59
Well, one of my friends, her and her boyfriend, they go on like, little kind of, like lunch dates, especially because it's summer right now and they also play the same sport, so they'll usually drive to practices together. They're both very supportive with each other, which I like, I love to see that, yeah, and, I mean, yeah, I guess, like movies too, work, I know a bunch of like, lunch dinner dates usually happen, or even breakfast sometimes, but

Scott Benner 23:22
that's not something you're interested in right now.

Caitlin 23:25
I mean, like, if the opportunity came, maybe just where I'm at right now, I'm okay by myself, because I'm, you know, I'm not yearning for it. I guess I

Scott Benner 23:35
just, I understand, but if the right boy showed up, you'd maybe talk differently about this. Yeah, I got you. When I say that, is there a boy? You imagine, like, is there a real person?

Caitlin 23:45
No, if, if there was the right person, I guess, or if I felt like it was right

Scott Benner 23:49
person, I'm not rushing you. I don't think you should be dating at all, by the way, yes, I don't think you should even talk to boys because they're dirty. And, yeah, yeah. But you, you know, also, I imagine dance is very there's probably not a lot of boys in your extracurricular activities, right? No, not really. So if you played soccer, you might have a soccer boyfriend, but in dance, you don't have the same opportunity,

Caitlin 24:13
no. But we all just like everybody at dance, you really don't even kind of think about it, because we're all such a close community, I guess. So we're all very supportive of each other, and that's

Scott Benner 24:22
why your mom's got you in dance. She probably loves that you're there for four hours. She's like, there's no boys here. It's perfect. Let her go there. Do you go to competitions and stuff like that, and like travel? Or is it all very local? We

Caitlin 24:37
stay within the state of Florida the furthest we've gone because I'm southwest Florida, I'm like, an hour from Tampa. Am I an hour south of Tampa? I think I'm not sure. This is a question for my parents, not

Scott Benner 24:53
me. Yeah. The compass is very confusing.

Caitlin 24:55
Yeah. And the furthest we've gone north is, or. Orlando, and then the furthest we've gone south is Fort Lauderdale.

Scott Benner 25:04
Okay, so you have travel. I mean, that's, that's a bit of traveling,

Caitlin 25:08
yeah, and then recently that, I think it was, like a week ago, they went to Texas for nationals, because we were invited, but I didn't go, because none of my dances that I was in got asked to go because it was just a matter of who can go, how many are able to get there. It was just picked only, like a quarter of the kids in my dances were able to go, so they didn't bring it.

Scott Benner 25:32
Were you disappointed, or were you happy not to have to make the trip? I mean, I wasn't

Caitlin 25:36
upset about it. It was really fun to see my friends and like my team, because we did really good at Nationals. So it was really nice to see them and to know that, like all the hard work that they all put in paid off, because they did really

Scott Benner 25:49
well. I'm flying to Texas tomorrow. I'm going on a cruise with a bunch of listeners. I actually think it's going to be awesome, but I just don't want to fly. That's I sound not excited about a thing. I'm excited about a thing I'm excited about because I'm like, I have to get on a plane and sit on a plane all day. No, it's okay. It's okay for you. I don't love it, but yeah, so I'm gonna do that. Then I get off the plane, take nappy, go to sleep, get up. Then I'm gonna get on the boat on Monday, and then I guess it's a ship, I should probably say ship. And then we'll, uh, we'll take off. We're gonna go all around Mexico for five days.

Caitlin 26:20
Oh, I've been on one cruise, and that was October 2023, did you enjoy it? Yes, it was very fun. Yeah, I was first cruise I'd ever been on. I got to miss a week of school. I was with my little cousins. So when people would ask me, they're like, oh, did you meet anybody? And I was like, no, because I was really just with my little cousins the whole time. Yeah. And I'm like their babysitter, I guess. So I was just with them, and it was really fun, though I feel like I made the best of it, but I would love to go on another one, and they were talking about it, but it might be not this year, but next year.

Scott Benner 26:53
Okay. Well, let me say two things. First of all, it sounds like your parents took you on a cruise so you could watch your cousins so they could have a vacation. The second thing is, we're going to do this again next year, in June 2026 where we're going to leave out of Miami and go all around the Virgin Islands. That's where we went. Yeah, that's what we're going to do next time. So hopefully we'll get even a bigger group. We have a big group this time, 100 people and yeah, and then next time we're Yeah, we hope it grows and more people enjoy it, so that'll be fun. It's definitely gonna be a good time. It's gonna be a nice little my wife keeps saying it's gonna be a break for you. And I was like, I don't think so. I think it's gonna be a lot of me talking to people and and everything, which is gonna be awesome. But I don't think I'm gonna come back like, relaxed and refreshed. I think I'm gonna be exhausted when I get back. Yeah, but still going to be awesome to meet people by the time this plays. You all will have heard that, uh, that it went well, because we're going to be putting pictures up on social media and stuff. Yeah. Okay, so we're not dating. We're dancing a lot. Your brother's growing up, yes, nearly the pain of the body used to be. Are you driving?

Caitlin 28:00
So I like to say that I'm I like I am, but I'm also not. My parents will say that I'm not driving. I honestly, like I want to drive. I don't have my license, but I have my permit, and I on I like I want to drive, just I don't know why I get so nervous when I

Scott Benner 28:16
do got anything to do with the diabetes or no, it's just driving. So it has a little

Caitlin 28:21
bit to do with that, because when I get nervous, my blood sugar will either go straight up or straight down, and I'm like, I just have to think of all the different like, there's so many, so many things I have to think about that my brain gets really overwhelmed. And then also I'm scared that, like, I'm gonna hit somebody, or somebody's gonna hit me, and then it's just gonna be, like, a whole thing.

Scott Benner 28:39
Let me tell you something that I hope will make you feel better. After you've been driving for a little while, you'll look back on this moment and realize driving is actually pretty easy. That's why I keep telling myself, when you stop and break it down, it feels like so much I'm driving this big thing, it could kill somebody. I could kill myself, right? I could kill the people with me. We could just crash, and it could be expensive, and even if nobody gets hurt, it's going to be a big pain in the butt, and my parents insurance is going to go up, and I'm going to get in trouble. And you know all this, right? Like, those thoughts, then you're like, you feel like you have to be aware of your own car and staying in the lane and not driving too fast or too slow and breaking on time. And there's other cars. And do I look this way or that way? When you break it down, you think about it. It's overwhelming. Once you're good at it, all of that stuff just happens automatically. Yeah, think of it like this. Did diabetes used to be more encompassing? Did you spend more time thinking about it and worrying about it than you do today? Yeah, it's the same thing. You just need experience. Yeah, that's it. So you got to go out in parking lots and places like that until you feel more comfortable checking your blood sugar. What? What I just hear, are you checking your blood sugar? Oh, no, that was my water. Oh, your water box like she's I didn't want you to be like said, you get nervous. Maybe your blood sugar gets higher or less. I thought it might be, Oh, yeah. Her, you like, check my blood sugar, Scott, I have a CGM. Thank you. And why would I be nervous making your dumb podcast?

Caitlin 30:07
It like clicks like it has, like the part where you sip out of it and then it clicks down. And I guess it was too loud. No,

Scott Benner 30:13
it wasn't too loud. I just, I just heard it. So what we did with Arden, what I did with Arden is I took her to a local like, like, a community college that's near us, so it's a big campus with a lot of roads and a lot of parking lots, and we just went in there and just drove around, like we went in on the weekends when nobody was there. And we just drove around, like, up and back and stopping and starting and making turns and everything, until, like, I saw that she really had good control of the car, right? Yeah. And then we started going in week on weeknights, when there were some cars there, and she she had her permit, right? And she would drive same thing, like, it's traffic, but it's lower speed. And then one day, I was like, Do you want to drive home? And she was like, yeah. So then she drove home on the road, and then we just build it slowly from there. Now, when she got her license to celebrate, I put her right on the highway, like Martin's first drive was 45 minutes from New Jersey to Pennsylvania on the highway. And I we got there, and I was like, Yeah, all right. She goes, yeah. And I was like, he did great. And then she's like, why'd we do that first? And I said, Well, you did that. You could do any of this other stuff. And so I gave her a bunch of confidence. I knew she could do it, right? So I gave her a bunch of confidence. And then she started driving, and she was

Caitlin 31:32
good. So I've been told something like that, except it's with a truck. Yeah, my because my dad has a truck, and he's like, if you learn to drive a truck, you can honestly drive any car.

Scott Benner 31:41
I taught Arden in a very big SUV. The

Caitlin 31:44
first car I drove was my dad's truck, and that was the scariest thing ever.

Scott Benner 31:48
That's perfect. I saw Arden drive a pickup truck pretty recently, and she was effortless at

Caitlin 31:53
it. It's just, it's a big truck. My dad's truck is really big, and my dad is really tall and like, so I'm like, I guess for average, I'm like, average height for a woman. But in my family, my family is very tall on both sides, like my mom and dad, they're both very tall, so I'm considered short to them. Okay, so having

Scott Benner 32:15
five, five by fours, how tall are you? Like, 5554, I'm 555, okay, and then, and so you're in this car that's set up for a giant person.

Caitlin 32:24
Yes, yeah, because my dad is 640 so it's like, I'm in a very so it's all of our family, like, our whole family has massive cars. And I'm like, I cannot drive these because the first time I drove my dad's truck, I was driving around my neighborhood, and then he told me to go parked in the driveway and I almost hit the garage door.

Scott Benner 32:43
Is that, because how big the car is, could you not judge the front of the truck? Maybe

Caitlin 32:46
I couldn't. I could not judge it. I was like, leaning forward. I'm trying to, like, lean up and over, trying to see how close I am. And then I accidentally hit the gas instead of the brake. I was just, I was like, what happened?

Scott Benner 33:01
My wife drove through her parents garage door when she was learning to drive. Like, drove through it like, was in the garage with the door all over the car. Oh, no, yeah, that crazy.

Caitlin 33:14
My aunt, when she first learned to drive, she she was good. The day she got her permit, she was doing really good. And then she almost, I don't know if she almost hit the garage door, or if she did hit the garage door, and then I think she did, and it was like a tiny little bump. And then my grandpa took her on the interstate. That's like, literally that same day, not even five minutes later, he's like, Okay, let's go on the

Scott Benner 33:36
interstate. My mom never drove. She couldn't do it her whole life. She never drove a car. I tried to teach her when I was 16, because I was like, This is so easy, like she'll be but she was bad at it. And I, after she did it, I was like, You know what? Maybe they're right. I don't think this is for you, but trust me, whether it's a big pickup truck or a little tiny car anywhere in between, it's just once you have that feel and that vibe, you can run it like, it'll it'll be okay. You'll just get in, you'll go, you'll never think of it. You won't be, like, looking forward, trying to see over the hood, like, it doesn't work that way. I see some of you people out there driving like you're two centimeters from the steering wheel, like, trying to look through the windshield. Like, sit back, relax. Get a vibe. Like it's how it works good. Just gotta get a vibe for how it all works. And then you'll you'll be okay. You're a dancer, right? Yes, you're athletic. You have good control your body, right? Your body ends up where you mean for it to be when you're doing stuff. It's the same thing. It's the car. The car is just an extension of you through your hands.

Caitlin 34:33
What's also, I guess I'll say, really nice about being a dancer, is my reflexes are really well. So I didn't hit the garage door because had I had not had good reflexes, I would have hit the garage

Scott Benner 34:42
door right? You touch the accelerator, and then you break the time to stop yourself.

Caitlin 34:46
Yeah? That was like. I was like, Thank gosh, I have good reflexes. Because had I had not I would have went right through the cross.

Scott Benner 34:53
Yeah? Well, we don't want that, but, yeah, just get out there and practice more. You'll feel good about it.

Caitlin 34:58
That's what I'm hoping. To do? I want to get my license in July. I hope right or either, like, July or right before the school. School year starts in August. Why do you want it this summer? In July? Like, I want to just be able to drive to school and not have to go on the bus. Yeah, I loved it as a kid. I was like, Oh my gosh, I get to go on a bus in the morning. And then as I got older, I'm like, I have to wake up really early, because our school starts at 710 in the morning. Like, that's when first period starts. And my bus would pick me up at 610 so I would have to be up at five in the morning every morning. And I was like, this is such a pain, and I wouldn't be home till nine o'clock at night because of practice. So I would literally be up for well over 12 hours, and I would like towards eight o'clock. I'm like, I'm done. I need to go home and go to sleep.

Scott Benner 35:48
Yeah, exhaust. Yeah. Gosh, I if I had to get up at five o'clock to go I mean, I guess I did at some points, but if I had to do that now, I mean, if I had to get up at five o'clock to make this podcast, you guys wouldn't have this podcast. I'm sorry I can't accomplish that. That's way too early in the morning if I go to dentist to get my teeth cleaned, and I have, like, my first big I'm the first appointment of the day, you know? And I walk in there and I'm like, the time you guys get here, and the person up front tells me, and I'm like, oh my god, what time just to leave your house? And then she tells me, and I'm like, Have you ever considered quitting? I was like, this horrible, you know, like, she's like, driving for 40 minutes to get somewhere, and I'm like, oh gosh, terrible.

Caitlin 36:29
The only perk, I guess I'd say, of waking up early is I'm not an like, I'm an early bird. Now, I used to be able to stay up so late at night, I can't even make it past, like, 930 without actually falling asleep, and I can wake up at like, six o'clock and be fine

Scott Benner 36:45
when I just turn to an old person at some point, like, I don't know,

Caitlin 36:49
it's just I cannot stay up late. And my friend, she's a grade younger than me, so she'll be a sophomore, and she can stay up really late. And I'm like, How can you stay up late? We wake up at the same time. Yeah. Do you drink any caffeine or No, I do, and it's probably really bad, but I do. Are

Scott Benner 37:04
you using that to help yourself? I mean,

Caitlin 37:07
I guess kind of, it kind of helps. I just, I can't tell if it will help or not. Is

Scott Benner 37:12
it coffee or soda? It's usually coffee, but,

Caitlin 37:16
like, because it's i to me, I don't know if it's like a mental thing, like, Oh, if I drink coffee, I'm gonna feel awake or like, it actually

Scott Benner 37:24
works? Well, no, I think it works. I think you're you're probably addicted to coffee. How long have you been drinking coffee?

Caitlin 37:30
I think, like, a year. I think it was when I started high school I started drinking coffee. I've never had a

Scott Benner 37:35
cup of coffee. Wow, yeah, I'm on a roll.

Caitlin 37:39
It'll either be coffee or if I'm at a dance competition, because we've had times where I've had to be on stage at seven in the morning, and we'd have to be at the place by six, so I would be getting ready at five in the morning. And the crazy thing about dance competitions is they can start at five o'clock in the morning and end at 12 o'clock at night that same day. Ooh, it's the truth. We've had there was one dance competition. I'm not putting them on blast, though, but this one was always so rough for us, so that's why we did it. Our first competition was that one, because it was like the one thing we just get over with. We would have to do convention classes where you learn from dance teachers, and they give you like combo to learn and whatever for an hour. And you would do that from, I think it was like seven in the morning to one or two o'clock in the afternoon, and then immediately go on stage and compete at three o'clock. And awards wouldn't be done till like 1230 in the morning. Is that

Scott Benner 38:40
a money thing? What do they have a bunch of teams there, and they charge them to be there? Yeah, they're trying to make money. Yeah, no. I mean, this is my son play baseball, you know, the way you dance, and you'd go to tournaments sometimes, and the weather would get absolutely just unplayable. And you'd be like, cancel this. And they'd push it back. And they'd be like, No, I'm not canceling it because we're not giving your money back. I probably have said this on here before, and I don't remember even how old he was at this point, but probably, like, 15. I remember watching Cole play center field and pitch in a driving snow storm. Oh my gosh, one of those fall, like, early fall tournaments, and it just it got cold here fast, like, he pitched two innings, and then he came over to me at the fence, and he's like, I can't, I can't hold the ball anymore. I was, I'm like, you gotta go tell the coach. He's like, my hands like, frozen. I can't, like, Oh no, I can't get the grip on the ball. So they just kept using, you know, they got away from the starting pitchers, and then they just started anybody who could, like, hold the ball for a second to throw it. They asked the people, like, what? Cancel this? Yeah, it was before everyone had great cameras on their phones. So I probably don't have a picture of it somewhere, but I remember taking a photo of it when it was happening and like, you could almost not see him on the phone. Oh, wow, it's crazy. I've also seen them play in Georgia. I think it rained all day during a tour. Remember, they still try to jam games in at night, so they drug them back to the field to play like a 9pm game because the rain had stopped, but the rain stopped, then the weather shifted again, and then the fog rolled in. Oh gosh, and they actually played in a game where the kid in right field described that a fly ball landed three feet in front of him on the ground, and he never had any context for where it was. Oh my gosh. He heard the ball get hit, and then he said, I just stood there, and then the next thing I know, it fell right in front of me. And then it's even

Caitlin 40:37
worse, because people will be yelling at you because they can see it, and they're like, it's right in front of you. And you're just like, I can't just like, I don't see anything.

Scott Benner 40:44
That was the moment they actually finally canceled the game because I think people are like, Oh, I guess I could have hit him in the head. Yeah. Then we got adults to think a little bit, but they played the game long enough that they didn't have to what Caitlin refund our money? Oh, no, we played four innings. That's enough. It's all about money. Everything's money and power. Yeah, remember that as you get older? Okay, it's, you're too young for that, but people are motivated by money and power mostly. Anyway, that's not for today's conversation. That's, I don't, I don't want to scare you. You're still learning how to drive. So what made you want to come back and do this again?

Caitlin 41:16
I mean, I guess, like a catch up, because I'm, I don't see, I honestly don't remember how old I was, but it's been a while. Yeah, been a long while. Yes.

Scott Benner 41:24
I mean, it's been years since you and I talked, yeah, well, I appreciate you catching up with me, and I appreciate you sharing how things are going. You've come this far. Where do you think things are going to like, how do you see, for example, do you think you're going to college? And what are your plans around that? With diabetes.

Caitlin 41:41
I hope to go to college. Like, I really, like, I want to go to college. I want to be a, oh, is it like a pediatric therapist, okay, like a children therapist, I believe is that that's what pediatric means.

Scott Benner 41:55
What would you be, uh, theraporizing. I was trying to make a board and I couldn't find it. But what would you be? What would you be helping the kids with? See, I haven't thought of it that much, but that's like, Is it physical to you, or is it like speech,

Caitlin 42:07
more mental? I cannot do like physical therapy or anything like that. I just, I don't know.

Scott Benner 42:11
You can't do physical therapy. You don't, you don't think you could learn the parts of the body.

Caitlin 42:16
I struggle with human anatomy because there's so many bones that, just like, have the most random names. And I'm like, I'm like, No, I can't that's too much.

Scott Benner 42:26
I'm not remembering all that. So something where you might help kids with their their struggles that are maybe more psychological or behavioral, something like that. Okay, that's pretty cool. Do you want to dance in college? I know there's dance teams, right?

Caitlin 42:40
I want to try to, and if I can't do like a dance, like dance in college, I want to hopefully come back to my studio and help out with them, and then maybe do like guest choreography is something I love, like I like doing,

Scott Benner 42:55
so there's an age limit on the team.

Caitlin 42:58
Yeah, once you graduate, you can't, I think it's once you're 18. Okay, yeah, I think it's 18. It's ages five to 18.

Scott Benner 43:07
Okay, and so do you imagine yourself going to school in Florida or traveling to another state?

Caitlin 43:14
I'm hoping to go to stay in Florida. I want to stay in state, just it's really wherever it goes, I guess.

Scott Benner 43:21
Yeah, I'm sorry. What grade are you in? Right now? I'm going to be a junior. Going to be a junior after the summer. Yes, while you're a sophomore, you just finished your sophomore year. Yes, you're making me feel old. It's crazy. Do you feel old?

Caitlin 43:34
Actually? Yes. Because it hit me last week, I was looking through these yearbooks that my friend has, and they were really, really old yearbooks from when I was in, I think, like, sixth grade. And I was looking at them because their little sister had them. And I was seeing these kids who are in fifth grade at the time, and I know one of the I know a couple of them personally, and then I was doing the math in my head, and I go, Oh my gosh, they're going to be freshmen this year. Yeah. And I remember meeting them, and they were, like, six or seven years old, messes you up a little bit, right? Yeah, there was one girl in particular. I was like, I knew her since she was four years old. What do you mean? She's gonna be a freshman in high school, and then also with my little cousins as well, because my the oldest, he's gonna be in fifth grade. And then another kid that I've known, his older brother was a really good friend of mine, and he's going to be in fifth grade as well. And I've met that kid since he was a month

Scott Benner 44:27
old. Wow, wait a year. A senior, and you see those freshmen come in, you're going to be like, they're going to look like little

Caitlin 44:33
babies too. That'll be my brother. Actually, my brother will be a freshman when I'm a senior. Oh, you're

Scott Benner 44:37
going to get to go to high school with him one year. Yeah. And

Caitlin 44:41
we haven't been in the same school since I was in fifth grade. You're gonna be nice to him, yeah? I mean, I'm like, if he needs help with anything, I'm obviously gonna help him. But if he's, like, doing something stupid and he has control of it, I'm like, I like, I can't help you there. You know, it's

Scott Benner 44:56
funny. I mean, it's obvious you're 16 versus 11. When the last time I talked. You. But when I got you to, like, say bad stuff about cam, you were so, like, gleeful about it when you were little. You were like, That kid's a jerk. It was so much. I don't remember a lot about this podcast, but I remember the absolute joy that you spoke about him with when you were talking about him when you were 11. That's great.

Caitlin 45:17
He listened to it. I'll tell you that he did listen to it, and he was like, I don't care. I'd say the same thing about her too.

Scott Benner 45:22
Yeah. I mean, fair is fair, right? So are you on a good track? You think you'll be able to get into college? Your grades going? Okay,

Caitlin 45:29
yeah. I mean, like, it could all I mean, it could obviously change,

Scott Benner 45:33
but Caleb, are you gonna say can all fall apart or, well, like,

Caitlin 45:37
you never know. I mean, I'm good in school. I don't do anything bad. I usually have A's or B's in classes. It really just depends. I'm taking a lot harder classes now, now that I'm an upperclassman, so it may be a little difficult, but I usually figure out a way to, like, make it easier

Scott Benner 45:54
when you say, I don't do anything bad, and you start thinking about other people your age. What do you see kids your age? Doing that shocks you

Caitlin 46:01
like drinking or smoking, like doing substances and stuff

Scott Benner 46:06
drugs? Yeah, yeah. What's the popular drug in amongst your people in your grade? It's usually vapes. Vapes, okay? Are the big ones? Vapes with weed or vapes with tobacco? Or not tobacco?

Caitlin 46:19
It's, I think it's weed. Okay? I'm I believe that seems to be

Scott Benner 46:23
popular. Do you see kids doing anything harder, like cocaine or anything like that?

Caitlin 46:26
Not that I've seen personally, Thank gosh. But like, I haven't, I don't think I've ever heard of anybody at my school good ever doing that? There probably is, but I wouldn't know.

Scott Benner 46:37
What about like parties, like blackout drinking, or people getting together on the weekends and just losing their minds. Yeah, a lot of that, yeah. And why do you think you avoid that? It just

Caitlin 46:49
like, never was something that I ever thought of doing, and I know the benefit, like, not the benefits, but like, what could happen if I do start, let's say, drinking or vaping, like, I know what the consequences are. And I've never been the one to, like, want to do that. It's not something you're interested in. Yeah. Like, I don't plan on drinking when I'm older, when I turn 21 you know, maybe, like, I won't go, like, full on, like, oh my gosh, I'm gonna have a drink every day. But, like, I don't

Scott Benner 47:19
know, you might try, yeah, when you hear about kids smoking weed, for example, do you think that's not something that's for me, or do you think it's wrong? Like, do you feel judgment about what they're doing? Or do you just think To each their own, but it's not for me?

Caitlin 47:35
I guess I'd say it's like, both, because I see it and I think to myself, Oh, you know, I personally would never do that, because, like, that's not something I'd want to do. But like, if they do it, that's fine. But then I just think, like, you know, I would hope they know that this is what could happen if it gets to that certain point. Yeah, and just, like, doesn't seem something I want to go down. I don't want to go down that road. Right, right? I'm going to ask you a

Scott Benner 47:57
question. We're not going to dig into the details of it, because that's not important. It's not important. It's not important. It's not what I want to ask. I just want to know your level of like you talked earlier about how like fast things go by that like you reminded me, I'll tell you the setup for this. You talked about getting low on the bus and how people forgot about it very quickly, which made me think about how fast like, social media happens so people don't really focus on things for very long, till the next thing comes along. I didn't articulate that when you were telling the story. It was just a thought I had in my head. So I'm wondering, like, with how you guys get information and how things quickly things move. What's your level of understanding about like, the world? Do you know what's happening? For example, right now in the Middle East,

Caitlin 48:42
I hear about it, like, on the news and stuff, and then also I get like, uh, stuff from, like, in emails and stuff with, I guess, I guess I'd say the New York Times, because I have, I do, like the connections and the word all and stuff. So I get some stuff on it, because there's some people who will talk about it and talk about it and talk about it. I get that it's a problem, what's happening there, but I'm not affected by it. I'm, you know, thank God, I'm not.

Scott Benner 49:09
But it just feels like it's another place. Yeah, like, if it's

Caitlin 49:14
not, if it's affecting somebody I know personally, then that's when I will really, like, dig into it and focus on it. But if it's not affecting my circle, I guess I got

Scott Benner 49:25
you, it's good. It's gonna have to touch you personally before it would. It would be a thing you'd dig into more or feel impacted by. Yeah, I got you so you're aware of it loosely. Is that fair? Yeah, okay. And what about other things? Like, other I don't know. I don't even know what I'm saying. Like, do you know about, like, that food's more expensive right now? Or is that a thing you hear people talking about?

Caitlin 49:48
I mean, I see it a lot. I see it on the news a lot too. I mean, at like, the grocery store with eggs, especially, I saw it firsthand my dad. I think it was, I think it was with my dad. He looked at it and he was. Oh my gosh. These are, like, eight bucks. I

Scott Benner 50:01
remember holding eggs and going, like, we don't need eggs anymore. It's fine, don't worry about

Caitlin 50:05
it. Yeah, I my parents would buy the eggs and I wouldn't use them. And then my mom's like, Caitlin, you need to start using these. And I'm like, I don't want to use them, because I thought that that, like, you would have to go to the store and buy more, and then it would just add up. And she's like, No, I want you to use them. Oh,

Scott Benner 50:20
what a bizarre circle. You got caught in there. She's like, I'm buying these expensive eggs so my kids can get protein and eat and you were like, I don't want to eat these because I don't want my parents that to pay for more. And that

Caitlin 50:31
interesting. Yeah. I was like, What are you talking about? And when we went on vacation, I think every because we had four families with us, I'm pretty sure every family brought a carton, like, bought a carton of eggs and brought them, and I think we took them all home with us. So I was really confused. I was like, Mom, what are you talking about? You want me to eat these? There's four cartons of eggs in here. And she's like, I want you to eat them so they don't go bad. And I just wasted my money. And I'm like, wait, I'm gonna eat them all, and then you're gonna go to the store and buy more, and then you're wasting your money, either way. I was like, I feel really bad.

Scott Benner 51:01
Well, listen, when I grew up, my mom would buy food and then not give it to us, what? And we'd be like, Can we eat that? And she'd say no. And I'd be like, why she goes? Because I can't afford to afford to buy more of it. And I was like, well, then what do we buy it for to begin with? There was a lot of confusion around that. I think it's just a way of thinking about things. Your mom is like, this is expensive. Go use it. My mom was like, this is expensive. Don't touch it.

Caitlin 51:24
So funny. But then also, it was four carton of eggs that expired around the same time. And I don't think she would want to throw away a whole carton of eggs because they weren't

Scott Benner 51:33
having a souffle over there a big, uh, a big egg scramble or something, trying to use we did a lot of baking that week. I bet where'd you go on vacation that you came back with all those eggs. It

Caitlin 51:43
was actually where I was at when we were first supposed to record this.

Scott Benner 51:47
Oh, oh, that's right, yeah, you jumped on like, a week or two ago, and it was so noisy. I'm like, Hey, let's do this later. Yeah. What kind of setting was it like? Mountains, beach, Woods. It's called

Caitlin 51:57
weeky, watchy. It's a springs, and it's like a natural springs, and it's really nice. And we have two houses, and we have two families in each and then there's a bunch of, like, I guess, children, because every family had at least two kids. So they would split it up, girls and boys, and I was in the girls house, and thankfully they weren't in the house, so it wouldn't be as noisy, but it was a little there was a lot going on that day. I'll say,

Scott Benner 52:25
wait. Wiki, it's in Florida, right? Yes. Do you need the spelling for it? Because it felt kind of funny. Got it right here? W, E, K, I, W, A, C, H, E, E, wiki, watch now. There's a thing I didn't know existed.

Caitlin 52:41
It's very nice. It's i It's two hours and 25 minutes from where I live. But it's really nice. You drove the whole way. Yeah, I went straight from my dance recital on the 31st of May to go to there. Do you not usually

Scott Benner 52:56
drive that far? I realized when you just said that, I was like, that seems like nothing to me, but my kids went to school like across the country, so I've, don't I've taken a lot of long rides in my life.

Caitlin 53:05
I've driven further. We've driven to, well, I haven't personally driven, but we've driven to Ocean City in New Jersey and New York. We drove,

Scott Benner 53:15
that's a long drive. Yeah, yeah. No kidding. All right,

Caitlin 53:20
my brother and I were really young. I my brother, he wasn't, I guess you could say conscious, because he doesn't remember. Yeah, it's like, when you're at that age, when you're like, two or three, and you don't really remember what happened, but like, you've been told I remember it. I was six when I went but we were really young, and I don't think my parents wanted to put us on a

Scott Benner 53:38
plane. Think this might be a state park, yeah, is it?

Caitlin 53:42
Yeah, it's like a state park. And then there's a, there's a place called Rogers park that meets at the end of it, and there's, like, houses that you can rent out, or, like, Airbnb is, I guess they're really nice,

Scott Benner 53:56
incredibly clear water, I'll tell you that much.

Caitlin 53:59
Yeah, it's very like you could literally be standing above a six foot, I guess, dip, and you could see straight down. Wow, it's very nice. There's

Scott Benner 54:09
a Hardee's and a Winn Dixie right out on the highway. So if you get hungry, you can head over. Yeah,

Caitlin 54:12
that's where we usually shop. I think that's where all the eggs came from. Was when Dixie, Winn Dixie eggs? Yeah, I believe that's where they came

Scott Benner 54:19
from. Is there anything that we haven't talked about, that you wanted to talk about? Any about, any topics I missed or ideas that I skipped over? No, not really. That's it. So now we're down to Cam, okay, he's not a problem anymore. You're saying

Caitlin 54:32
no, no, he is so much like it's just the whole like he minds his own business. I mind mine.

Scott Benner 54:39
Do you feel like this is just him being more mature, or both of you,

Caitlin 54:42
I'd say both of us, because we used to like nag at each other when we were younger, because, you know, we're siblings, we're little, yeah, and, you know, you just kind of like joke around with each other, and then it kind of gets into more and I've seen it firsthand with my cousins, except it's a little different. Because they're both boys, but they have the same age gap that we do, so and they're 10 and seven, so it's like, that kind of dynamic that my brother and I had, except I'm seeing it firsthand for myself, yeah, and they'll, like, play around with each other, and then they'll nag at each other, and then I'm like, Okay, this is exactly like how Cameron and I were. I see it now I can see how much of a pain this was to my parents.

Scott Benner 55:25
You feel a little bad about it. Maybe, yeah, I'm

Caitlin 55:27
like, maybe I shouldn't have gotten so mad at him so easily. Or maybe I shouldn't have told him that he was stupid or something I don't

Scott Benner 55:35
know. In fairness, you were really young. Yeah, it was funny. I was asking you because it was funny, because I knew you were gonna say, like, goofy stuff about him. But it is interesting. Is interesting to see how your opinion of him has changed, you know, over time. It's really awesome.

Caitlin 55:47
He especially changed. He like, we're, I guess I'd say total opposites, because I am very extroverted, like, I will love to go and talk to people and go around and like, you know, meet people. I love talking, so that's why I love doing podcasts. Like I love doing this, because I just talk and talk and talk. But Cameron, he I could maybe, like a little bit of an extroverted introvert, I guess, because he would prefer to stay home and be with himself than go out and do something, I guess.

Scott Benner 56:17
But he's loud when he's being himself. Yeah, he'll play, he'll play,

Caitlin 56:21
like, Fortnite with his friends, and he's really loud. But thankfully, like, I told him, I was like, Cameron, you cannot be doing this because I am recording this and you'll hear it in the

Scott Benner 56:29
background. Oh, right now, you told him he's gonna calm down. Stop yelling. Yeah, he's holding it together for the time being. See, even that's a better, it's an upgrade. You have nothing to complain. You can't even complain about cam at all. No, okay, well, I mean, that's good, don't you think?

Caitlin 56:49
I mean, we haven't had any problems. I guess he's just at that kind of like, moody teenager age, especially when they start. He just turned 13 in March. So I'll like, tell him. I'll be like, hey, Cameron, because Cameron and I, we flip taking the dishes out of the dishwasher and putting them away. So whenever it's his, like, day to do it. I'm like, Cameron, can you, you know, are you able to do the dishes out of the dishwasher? And he's like, Okay, I'll do it. And then it'll be like, an hour later, and my mom's like, did he take them out? And I'm like, no. She's like, Okay, go tell him. And I tell him. And he's like, Okay, I'll do it. And then he just won't. And then he'll get upset and be like, Okay, fine, I'm doing it.

Scott Benner 57:28
Oh, see, I guess we're done. Cam has learned his lesson. He's going to be fine, by the way. This is all going to pivot again. You're going to get older. He's going to get older. It'll change again. You'll find a way to argue one more

Caitlin 57:38
time. It's kind of crazy. I'm a very like, I guess nostalgia hits me really hard. I guess I could say so when he turned 13, I was like, wow, he's 13. I couldn't believe it, because every time I see him, he's still like a five year old to me, yeah, and I couldn't believe that he was 13. And I was like, I feel like my parents right now, like, this is, must have been what they felt like when I turned 13, except it's their child. But I was like, Cameron is 13, and then my friend's younger brother, they're like, my brother and her brother are best friends. And he turned 13, like a month or like two months later. And I was like, Oh my gosh. Everybody is just growing up. And then also my cousins, you know him the oldest being 10. And I was like, wow, everybody's like, growing up. And there's some times where I'm like, I wish I could just stop growing up and be a five year old again, but, I mean, you can't do that. But just I remember the day Cameron, turning 13. I was like, I felt really old. I was like, why is this happening? He's supposed to be seven. I

Scott Benner 58:39
hear you. I some when it doesn't really happen to me much anymore, but there was a few years ago, look at my son, and he was so much older, but I couldn't think of him being that old. He still felt younger to me in my mind. I mean, it's different now, but, like, it was weird. I'd look at him and I just wouldn't see him the way he was, like, for a while. Yeah. So hear what you're saying. It would be nice to stay five forever. So get a little I wish Little Peter Pan going maybe 16 year olds, you've never seen Peter Pan, have you?

Caitlin 59:07
Yes, I have. I used to, actually, I used to fall asleep to that movie. That's what used to put me to bed when I was younger. Really, we had a it was a very, very tiny, tiny TV, like the screen was really small, and it used to be in my bedroom, and this is in my childhood house, and we had the DVDs, and my dad would put on Peter Pan because I guess that's the only thing I could fall asleep to, is

Scott Benner 59:30
Peter Pan. Oh, that's nice. So do you I'm gonna ask you one last question. Do you have, and if you don't, like, Don't feel pressured just to say anything. But do you have any, I don't know, like, advice or thoughts you'd want to share with other kids your age who are living with type one, anything that you find very, very helpful.

Caitlin 59:46
I mean, I guess if you just recently get diagnosed, it's gonna seem like a whirlwind, like your whole life just flipped upside down, because that's how I felt when it first happened. I was like, Okay, I am not the same person I was. You know, a week ago, after I got diagnosed, just know that you'll be fine, like, everything's going to be okay. And I know that's so, like, so cliche to say, but it's the truth. You're going to be okay. It honestly gets so much easier. And just if you know, be grateful that you have people there to support you, like family members, because they're going to be, like, your lifeline? I remember I literally would be terrified to go to school because I was like, how am I supposed to do this by myself, without my mom? And thankfully, like I had teachers and friends who were very, very supportive and helped through everything. So always, just be grateful that you have somebody, and I get your parents or somebody might nag you and be like, Hey, can you do this? Can you do that? It's gonna get very annoying, but just know that they're doing it to help you and to keep you alive. Because without them, like, if I didn't have my mom or my dad or any, really anybody, when I was younger, if it was just me when I first got diagnosed, I would be so lost. Yeah, it was, like my whole life basically flipped upside down, but they flipped with me. Think of

Scott Benner 1:00:59
it this way. Caitlin, you came on here when you were 11 years old, and you spoke about your brother the way you spoke about him. And now you're here five years later, and you're speaking about him completely different way. So I think maybe the messaging might be is that if somebody's annoying you right now, who's trying to help you, you might feel differently about it in the future, right? So even if your parents are bugging you, like there will be a day that you'll look back and think, Oh, I'm so glad they did that. Yeah, yeah, it's much better to have people who love you, who are involved with your life than the opposite. Yeah, I think that's a good message. I appreciate that. Thank you very much. Please tell your mom. I said, Hello, tell cam. It's sorry we couldn't complain about him. He turned into, I'll be like,

Caitlin 1:01:43
when the episode comes out, you'll be shocked at how completely different it is compared to the first

Scott Benner 1:01:47
one. You were kind to him. He was like, Huh? Things really have changed. Yeah. And good luck getting your driver's license and feeling more comfortable driving. I think you're going to be terrific. Just like I said, just, it's a vibe, like you just gotta go do it somewhere, till you get a feel for the vehicle.

Caitlin 1:02:01
It's just honestly a mental thing with me, because I have been told from people that I'm a really good driver, because I'm very aware. I think it's just me mentally being like, this is what's going to happen, and this is how it's going to go. And I make like, a whole play by play in my head, and it's really not what happens. I just need to get over that. Have

Scott Benner 1:02:18
you driven fast yet? Like, have you been over 60 miles an hour? No, yeah, that's another leap. That's a step. Once you can drive quicker, bring that so for my daughter, what we did was in a big like, a big empty space, once she seemed comfortable with the car, I was like, okay, like, let's go over to this side here. I'm not a trained driver instructor, okay, I have taught two people to drive. So I took both of them into a really, like, open area, paved, obviously, and put them on one side of it. And I was like, okay, like we're in the middle. There's nobody here. There's nothing to hit. Just go drive as fast as you can in a straight line. Just like, stop on it, and I'll tell you when to stop. And so we did that over and over again a couple of times until they realized, like, okay, even when it's going faster, like, this is how I control it, because it's not a thing you want to learn the first time on the highway. You know what I mean, yeah. So we would do that over and over again till, like, that didn't seem I just, I think I was just removing their fears as we were going along, yeah, breaking from a high speed you know about getting up to speed quickly, like giving them the whole vibe. But anyway, my last I have one last driving question for you, yeah, are you very dependent on cat, like your vehicles have cameras in them, or are you very mirror oriented? What do you use when you're backing up and changing lanes and stuff?

Caitlin 1:03:38
I mean, I guess I could say both. It really just depends on the situation. Because if I'm backing up, my mom is telling me, like, you cannot use your backup mirrors when you have to back up or something. But when I'm driving, I'm always looking out of my rear view or my side mirrors every time, because I just like to be aware of what everyone's

Scott Benner 1:03:56
doing. Yeah, my kids are so adept at using cameras over mirrors, yeah, and it took me a lot longer to be comfortable with that, and I just think it's, it's what they grew up with that they were more accustomed to, and what I grew up with was mirrors. So

Caitlin 1:04:11
yeah, I personally like the mirrors better. I guess just when I have to back out, it can get a little tricky, having to, you know, turn around and look over and kind of see because, you know, me being the height I am in a really massive vehicle, it's, like, really difficult for me to see, and then I'm like, I'm gonna hit that car. And there's really, like, six feet in between me and the other car.

Scott Benner 1:04:36
Yeah, I know my girl. Listen, my grandmother used to have a tennis ball hanging from a string in her garage, and she'd pull forward until she bumped into the tennis ball and she stopped. And

Caitlin 1:04:43
I might need that actually, that might help me a lot. We're a car with a camera

Scott Benner 1:04:47
in the front where you can just look and go, Okay, I'll stop now, so we'll see. All right, Caitlin, you were terrific. I really do appreciate you doing this. Thank you very, very much. Thank you so much. Oh, I'm glad you had a good time. Hold on one second. You.

US. Med sponsored this episode of The Juicebox podcast. Check them out at us. Med, Comm, slash Juicebox, or by calling 888-721-1514, get your free benefits. Check and get started today with us. Med head now to tandem diabetes.com/juicebox and check out today's sponsor tandem diabetes care. I think you're going to find exactly what you're looking for at that link, including a way to sign up and get started with the tandem Moby system. I can't thank you enough for listening. Please make sure you're subscribed or following in your audio app. I'll be back tomorrow with another episode of The Juicebox podcast. I created the diabetes variables series because I know that in type one diabetes management, the little things aren't that little, and they really add up in this series, we'll break down everyday factors like stress, sleep, exercise and those other variables that impact your day more than you might think. Jenny Smith and I are going to get straight to the point with practical advice that you can trust. So check out the diabetes variable series in your podcast player or@juiceboxpodcast.com I am here to tell you about juice cruise, 2026 we will be departing from Miami on June 21 2026 for a seven night trip going to the Caribbean. That's right, we're going to leave Miami and then stop at Coco k in the Bahamas. After that, it's on to st, Kitts, St Thomas and a beautiful cruise through the Virgin Islands. The first juice Cruise was awesome. The second one's going to be bigger, better and bolder. This is your opportunity to relax while making lifelong friends who have type one diabetes. Expand your community and your knowledge on juice cruise 2026 learn more right now at Juicebox podcast.com/juice, cruise. At that link, you'll also find photographs from the first cruise. The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording, wrong way, recording.com

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

Marla 0:14
This is Marla, and I am a type one diabetic from Kansas, and I've been a diabetic for 36 years.

Scott Benner 0:26
Nothing you hear on the Juicebox podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan or becoming bold with insulin. This episode of The Juicebox podcast is sponsored by Omnipod five. Omnipod five is a tube, free, automated insulin delivery system that's been shown to significantly improve a 1c and time and range for people with type one diabetes when they've switched from daily injections, learn more and get started today at omnipod.com/juicebox of my link, you can get a free starter kit right now. Terms and Conditions apply. Eligibility may vary. Full terms and conditions can be found at omnipod.com/juicebox us med is sponsoring this episode of The Juicebox podcast, and we've been getting our diabetes supplies from us med for years. You can as well us Med, Comm, slash Juicebox or call 888-721-1514, use the link or the number. Get your free benefits check and get started today with us. Med, I'm having an on body vibe alert. This episode of The Juicebox podcast is sponsored by ever since 365 the only one year where CGM that's one insertion and one CGM a year, one CGM one year, not every 10 or 14 days ever since cgm.com/juicebox

Marla 2:48
This is Marla, and I am a type one diabetic from Kansas, and I've been a diabetic for 36 years.

Scott Benner 2:56
Awesome. We're recording then Marla, here we go. Okay, how long have you had type one for 30 just say 36 years. 36

Marla 3:02
Yes, 36 and like, four months. Maybe

Scott Benner 3:06
no kidding, and how old were you when you diagnosed?

Marla 3:08
I was eight, eight years old,

Scott Benner 3:12
44 now I could have done the math. I'm not

Marla 3:14
good at math, but I just know that I'm 44 so and I know I was eight when I was diagnosed. I think I did the calculator when I when I was every year, in February. I'm like, Okay, what year is it? And I'll say, okay, because that was the month I was diagnosed

Scott Benner 3:31
and you stopped to figure it out every year you wanted to make sure you were celebrating correctly. Yeah.

Marla 3:36
I'll say, oh, okay, it's this month. I don't really celebrate. But I'll say, Okay, well, I've made it another year. Yay,

Scott Benner 3:44
yeah. How is it living in Kansas? I love Kansas. I've

Marla 3:48
lived here most of my life, and it's the Sunflower State, and we grow a lot of crops to feed America so and maybe in the world. I don't know how far our crops go, but I didn't ask.

Scott Benner 4:00
I didn't ask. I didn't I didn't get, you should get out the calculator on that and figure it out. Where did you

Marla 4:05
live prior to Kansas? Well, I I was born in Kansas. I've lived a few years in Kentucky, which is interesting, because my father was a second career pastor. He had a career in marketing, aviation. Oh, and also, well, I live in Wichita, which we're the air capital of the world, so we build planes here. And my dad is very business minded, oriented. He grew up on a farm, in a farm family. However, he got a call into ministry. He decided he wanted to become a pastor, so he moved our family to Kentucky, and when I was in kindergarten, so we moved to Kentucky so he could go to seminary, get his masters of divinity, and then we moved back to Kansas to serve churches here. So no kidding, we just moved. Moved for a few years. So I asked my mom this morning. I said, When did I get sick? I mean, I remember what I went through. I know what my symptoms were, but I really don't remember being sick. And she and I was diagnosed the year after we moved back to Kansas. Okay? So she said that when we lived in Kentucky the year before, we were only there for two and a half years. So this would have been when I was seven. I was in second grade in Kentucky. I guess I had strep throat a lot that year, and also fixed the disease, which I don't even know anything. It's like a version. Wait, what's it called Six? Like the number six, but it's a version of herpes. Congratulations. Mom never knew that. I looked it up and it's, yeah, it's like a you can children get it, and it's a rash. Have no idea where that came from or what I don't, I don't remember having that,

Scott Benner 6:03
and that was maybe a year or two before you were diagnosed. Yes,

Marla 6:07
she said, one year before. So I would have been seven. Then we moved back to Kansas, and you want me to tell Do you want me to go into that, please? So, yeah, tell me. But I felt like, but, you know, in Kansas is pretty flat. Everywhere we've lived in Kansas anyway, there are some hills east of us, but in Kentucky, there really are hills. We were in the Smoky Mountains, and so I always thought I would get a lot of ear aches when we lived there, I felt like my mom said, Well, yeah, and you got strep throat also. So I at the time, I was thinking, Oh, it's because of where we live, but who knows, and that might have been, I don't know if the altitude was messing with my system. But then we came back to Kansas and we lived in southwestern Kansas, in a very small town, so we travel for any kind of shopping, even grocery shopping. I don't even think we had a grocery store. We had a gas station, but we would go to Amarillo, Texas, because they had a mall. One day we were there, I guess this was in February. I don't even know why we would be down there in February, but anyway, we were and we were shopping, and I guess every time we turned around, I had to go to the bathroom or and as soon as I got done, go in the bathroom. I was thirsty. So my mom the whole trip, I guess that it was just a day trip. The whole day she was either taking me to the bathroom or getting me a drink. So when we got home, she said, Okay, something's not right. She took me to our doctor, and they, I guess they checked my blood sugar. I don't know that was probably a telltale

Scott Benner 8:02
sign you don't remember any of this, though, really, I don't

Marla 8:05
remember much. Yeah, I so they must have checked my blood sugar, just our family doctor's office and saw that it was high, but I wasn't in DKA. I don't really know how high it was, because we didn't go, I mean, we didn't have a hospital anywhere close, but I know they told us, Okay, the next day, you're going to Wichita, which was about five hours away,

Scott Benner 8:35
really, geez, hey, you might have had that altitude induced tonsillitis. I don't know. I love that you were like, it's possible the altitude got me. I think it sounds like you're just like, I've never heard that. That might be a new one. You know how sometimes people go up into the Great Smoky Mountains and come down with adenoid Oh yeah. Sounds to me like your immune system was just kind of like, maybe sputtering and having issues. You were getting sick a lot for the first for a couple years before, yeah, is there other autoimmune in your family?

Marla 9:05
Well, yes, I knew you would ask. So my whole immediate family, both of my parents and my sister, have, I is it I think it's hypothyroidism when you're when you have under wrap? Well, no, it's not Hashimotos, but they have under, we all have under active. Maybe that's hyper.

Scott Benner 9:25
No, no, you're right. Hypo, so, but like, hypo, yeah. What I'm getting at is this, has anybody ever been tested for

Marla 9:33
Hashimotos? You know, I don't know, because everybody

Scott Benner 9:37
always says no, but then I realize nobody ever gets tested. So

Marla 9:40
that's, yeah, that's true. So, and I know I have, has a cousin that is also has thyroid. I also have vitiligo. I've lost pigment in on the top of my hands, okay, and on a few of my wrists, on a few, like, I have more. Then

Scott Benner 10:00
wait, all three of your wrists have Viti Lago on them.

Marla 10:04
Scott, this is what I was talking about. I said, I'm kind of afraid of what I'll say, so I didn't

Scott Benner 10:09
know which it's funny before we started recording. And I was like, you know, I asked her if I give any questions or concerns you'd like to talk about before we start and, you know, Marla's like, I mean, I'm a little worried about what I'm gonna say. And I thought she seems so sweet and calm, like, like, what?

Marla 10:23
Like, things like that two of my wrists. Like, who says that?

Scott Benner 10:27
You didn't mean, like, you were gonna say something horrifying. You meant you're gonna say something and you're gonna be like, Oh, I sound stupid,

Marla 10:33
right? Exactly like the things that you think about, you know, when you can't go to sleep at 11 o'clock and you're like, Why did I Did I really say that?

Scott Benner 10:42
Why you have reflective moments at the end of the day

Marla 10:45
where you're like, why would you even think it, much less say it?

Scott Benner 10:49
I had Viti Lago on a few of my wrists. What do you think you were trying

Marla 10:53
to say? I have no like on two of my wrists. On both of them.

Scott Benner 10:59
You could just say my wrists

Marla 11:01
Exactly.

Scott Benner 11:02
Hey, that could be the altitude from Kentucky still getting you, I don't know,

Marla 11:07
37 years later, it's still that that maybe that explains all my issues.

Scott Benner 11:13
Well, listen, I want to tell you something I once ate in a waffle house in Kentucky. Oh, yes, and everyone in there had a problem. So maybe it is Kentucky. I have no idea. It was one of the wildest experiences of my life, a waffle house. Yeah, I had never been before, and I always telling my wife, I'm like, one day I'm gonna eat at a waffle house. Like, this was something I should aspire to. And then we went to a wedding in Kentucky. Like, I think we got up the morning, we were gonna, like, drive back, and I was like, there's a waffle house near here. And then we went and, I mean, it was horrifying. I don't even know how to describe what I saw.

Marla 11:48
Let me know. I'm sure I can only imagine. We've, we've been to a few in the South. Yeah,

Scott Benner 11:54
I'm just gonna tell you now, I think it's a it's from the altitude, so I think it's awesome. All right, hold on a second. So you don't really remember much about this whole time, but when's the first time in your memory that you start thinking of your memories as having diabetes, you know, involved in them.

Marla 12:09
I do remember being in the hospital. So we went to Wichita, my mom and I stayed for two weeks in this education program. So I was actually inpatient, and my parents both, I believe my dad came for the first week, maybe, and they had parent classes in one room, and there were kid classes in another room. And now that I think about it. I just think, you know, you you hear about a lot of kids today being diagnosed, but back then, there weren't that many. But I feel like there was a class of us kids. I had a roommate in my hospital room that also was newly diagnosed, yeah. So I remember we did the classes separate, and then we would maybe come together at the end of the day to I guess, I don't know, talk about what we like. I do remember that my I worked with a nurse. She was awesome. I always, I still think about her. I don't have any idea where she is, but she taught me how to inject my shots, right? I believe we practiced on an orange. So she taught me how to draw the insulin. She taught me how to tap the bubbles out, how to pinch my skin and inject. Well, then when we met back up with our parents, I was showing my parents what I learned, and I started to tap the syringe, and my dad said, No, don't do that. What are you doing? Because he thought I was doing something I shouldn't have been doing. And I said, No, that's what I'm supposed to do. I'm getting the bubbles out I had. I guess, I don't know, maybe I had learned how to draw the insulin before they did, or something. I remember him saying, No, don't tap the syringe, though. And I was like, No, that's what she told me to do. I know what I'm doing. I'm eight. I've had diabetes for two days.

Scott Benner 14:13
Marla, I have a couple of thoughts here. First thought is, two weeks, yes, is it a re education camp where you like? What the hell was going on when you think of a CGM and all the good that it brings in your life is the first thing you think about. I love that I have to change it all the time. I love the warm up period every time I have to change it. I love that when I bump into a door frame, sometimes it gets ripped off. I love that the adhesive kind of gets mushy sometimes when I sweat and falls off. No, these are not the things that you love about a CGM. Today's episode of The Juicebox podcast is sponsored by the Eversense 365 the only CGM that you only have to put on once a year, and the only CGM that won't give you any of those problems the Eversense 365 Five is the only one year CGM designed to minimize the vice frustration. It has exceptional accuracy for one year with almost no false alarms from compression lows while you're sleeping, 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. Today's episode is brought to you by Omnipod. We talk a lot about ways to lower your a 1c on this podcast, did you know that the Omnipod five was shown to lower a 1c that's right. Omnipod five is a tube free automated insulin delivery system, and it was shown to significantly improve a 1c and time and range for people with type one diabetes when they switched from daily injections. My daughter is about to turn 21 years old, and she has been wearing an Omnipod every day since she was four. It has been a friend to our family, and I think it could be a friend to yours if you're ready to try Omnipod five for yourself or your family, use my link now to get started. Omnipod.com/juicebox get that free. Omnipod five Starter Kit today. Terms and Conditions apply. Eligibility may vary. Full terms and conditions can be found at omnipod.com/juicebox

Marla 16:20
I don't know, but I do know that we had in the back in the 80s and the 90s, Wichita had an amazing endocrinologist. His name is Dr Richard Guthrie, and he just he was very determined and and dedicated to families and children and type one, and just teaching us everything that we needed to know, setting us up. And today, I'm just amazed. I have friends that have been diagnosed, and they they might go to the ER and spend, they might spend one night and come home and know nothing,

Scott Benner 17:05
yeah. Like, did it work? Did those two weeks really set you up? Well, yeah, I

Marla 17:10
think they did. My parents, they had a ton of information, yeah, I feel like we were comfortable. Not that everything always went well. I mean, you know, with diabetes, every day is a new day, and we learn new things. Even after 36 years, I still learn new things, so but I felt like we were set up. Well, I don't know. I should probably ask my parents.

Scott Benner 17:33
Marla, do you remember what your outcomes were like? Because there might be a difference between you being comfortable and feeling prepared and actually being prepared, or maybe there's not maybe you were like, rocking some crazy

Marla 17:44
I do remember so at this time, you know, we don't have CGM or but I do remember my parents would wake up in the middle of the night to check my blood sugar. I do know that during that first few years, I did have a few lows, probably, I think they were very early morning that sent me. I think maybe I had two that sent me to the hospital. And I don't even know that I stayed overnight,

Scott Benner 18:18
just an emergency thing. I mean, this is regular and mph, right? Yes,

Marla 18:23
yes, regular and, but we all, I remember taking 7030 also,

Scott Benner 18:29
okay, so, yes, so you've been through one two, you've probably been through like, three or four iterations of insulin. And yes, probably what like, when did you get a pump to the first time?

Marla 18:39
30? So I am MDI still today. I still don't wear a pump. I know I'm so old school, no, but you know, I will admit that after being a part of Juicebox and I'm actually new to this community, okay, but after reading so much about them. I'm more open to it today than I ever have been. And I see my endocrinologist in just a few weeks, so I'm I'm gonna talk to her. I'm open to it now I struggle with sensitivity, with things being attached to me. So that's been my one major issue for me, what

Scott Benner 19:21
are your experiences with having something attached to you that you didn't enjoy?

Marla 19:24
I just don't like things touching. I just, I just want to be,

Scott Benner 19:28
yeah, spoiler, you're single.

Marla 19:32
No, I'm I'm married. I've been married for 21

Scott Benner 19:36
years. Well, then you figured out how to let icky things touch you. You can do this true. That is true.

Marla 19:41
I I'm more I'm very much more open to it. Now, go

Scott Benner 19:45
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Marla 20:58
yeah, this is a whole nother ball game, and maybe this is why I've been so against it up until recently. I mean, when did they come out? I really don't remember the exact time, but I do know. I do remember them introducing it at our at my doctor's office, my very first endocrinologist. That was so awesome. But I remember it being very strict. And I believe I was probably in junior high or high school. I might have been in high school when, you know, control isn't maybe the best. And I remember them being very strict. I had to log every single number, and my a, 1c, had to be, like, perfect. Like, I mean, below six that before they would give me one. So I believe at the time, that probably just set me off, like, Well, I mean, I'll never be able to do that, not that I would never be I've been in the fives before, but not that I would never be able to do that. But I think from the get go, it was probably a negative, just like, Well, okay, I'll never be good enough. You

Scott Benner 22:07
felt like you weren't doing what they were wanting from you. Yeah, the pump was going to be control, or the man having you, or

Marla 22:16
probably some control also probably I, you know, I like being able to inject, not that I like taking my injections, but that's just what I've done.

Scott Benner 22:28
So you got accustomed to it,

Marla 22:30
yes, but I will say So I began wearing a CGM. Though I've always been open to a CGM, I began wearing one when I was pregnant 10 years ago. Okay, so I did that, and I believe since I've been wearing a CGM now that I'm having to correct more, because I can see my numbers, 24/7, like if I'm outside and my insulin is inside or in the car, and I see I'm going up a little. I think, man, if I just had a pump, I could just tell it, or it would automatically give me some more. And then I have to stop whatever I'm doing and go draw, like, two units of insulin and inject it. Okay,

Scott Benner 23:16
so for that time between the CGM and you know, the first time a doctor said you get a pump and you were like, Get away from me between those two times, what were your outcomes like, like, a one CS. And

Marla 23:28
I have been able to bring it down on my Well, my CGM has definitely brought down my a 1c before. It was always probably in the sevens and eight, okay,

Scott Benner 23:40
and did you have a lot of lows?

Marla 23:44
Don't know, how

Scott Benner 23:46
frequently did you think to yourself, I feel dizzy. I needed something.

Marla 23:50
Yeah. I mean, I would say it's not every day, but, I mean, I remember definite, extreme lows, but definitely when I was a child, I had more, and that might be because I

Scott Benner 24:08
was but in this gap of time again between, like, somebody saying, do you get a pump? And you saying no, and then 10 years ago, when you get a CGM for your pregnancy, like, would you say that? Like, there were scary lows monthly and lows to be dealt with every other every other day or so, or something like that. Okay, yes, yes. And then how often do you think you were super high and didn't know it?

Marla 24:31
I'm scared to even know because now I see it. You know, I love my CGM because I can see it all the time and correct but yeah, there's no telling. You know, I and one thing that I've learned from being a part of the Juicebox community is how awful highs make people feel. They don't make me feel bad, because when I was diagnosed, I was maybe in the three hundreds, I wasn't up there. Like a lot of people are,

Scott Benner 25:01
well, I'll tell you this though, like, if you're high a lot, your body will get accustomed to it, so you won't feel like you're, you're maybe

Marla 25:08
that's, yeah, maybe that's true also, especially when I was, you know, in my teens and 20s. Yeah. Do you have any complications? No, I don't. I mean, praise the Lord, I really don't. Because, I mean, I didn't have the best control in my probably college years and early 20s.

Scott Benner 25:29
When do you get fast acting insulin? When did somebody hand you Lantus the first time or something?

Marla 25:35
That was, yeah, that was probably in call. Would that have come out, like, in the,

Scott Benner 25:41
I mean, late 80s, nine, early 90s, around there maybe,

Marla 25:45
okay, so, yeah, I was on that, probably in high school. You might have

Scott Benner 25:50
been in high school already if you're running around with seven, a one CS, but you're also very low a lot, and very high a lot. Then, I mean, that's not really a 70 1c right? Like, so it's, yeah, throwing off the average, and then you get the CGM. Like I said 10 years ago, was this for your first pregnancy,

Marla 26:07
it was for my last so I went through and she's my third. So I've had three. I have had five pregnancies. I have three living children. But you know, when I was diagnosed in the late 80s, it was 1989 of course, you know, they say, Well, he's not going to be able to have children. And of course, you know, that made my parents sad, but we never made a huge deal about it, but it was just always kind of in the back and I've always wanted to be a mom, but that's always in the back of your mind. So like, when you date someone or get serious with someone, and I haven't dated a lot of people, but I think I've had to have that conversation a few times well, just so you know, I might not be able to have my own children, but then, you know, when we got into the 2000s my doctors were much more open to it and saying, Okay, well, you'll be fine. You can do this. Make sure you're more in range and have a better a, 1c

Scott Benner 27:12
so this is interesting. So you're diagnosed right around the time my friend Mike is diagnosed, okay, you're describing the the year that I graduated from high school, okay, and he's not with us anymore. I don't mean to be a bummer. Oh, he didn't know you're kind. I appreciate it. He has a story that's not different than yours, really. Like, diagnosed, like, you know, 7030 regular mph, you know, shoot twice a day, three times maybe, you know, eat when you're dizzy, like that kind of stuff, and then he just, like, never changed, like, they didn't move him to faster, insulin any quicker. But it's interesting to hear you talking about this, because you just did find, like you're saying, You just found everything kind of recently, like Juicebox and probably the Facebook group and stuff like that. So you're seeing people talking about it in a different way after having lived with it for 36 years the way you did. You know what I mean? Like, yes, it's got to be a shock. No. Like, just to see, like, oh, this has been happening. I have not been aware of this. Or no, are you just happy to see something different? Like, I'm trying to figure out what happens to you when you look up and see the world doesn't, from

Marla 28:19
my viewpoint, I'm I'm happy to see something different. Okay, I'm pretty optimistic, but I I'm also a realist, and I know I feel better when I'm not alone, and so I know I just love this community and seeing all these moms know that they're not alone because, okay, their child is going through the same thing that another child is going through, and

Scott Benner 28:46
that's cool. So you're getting the community vibe out of it. Yes, I

Marla 28:49
love that, okay, but I also love the information. For me, just Yes, seeing how people, how these young kids, are handling their pumps, I love that. I'm like, Well, okay, if they can do it, I can do it. You know, I know that if I were diagnosed today, there's no question I would be on a pump because of my circumstances in 1989 and that season of the diabetic community in the medical world. At that time, I wasn't so I kind of wonder about that, like, Hmm, okay, what effects am I going to have in 2030, years that could have been changed? I don't know.

Scott Benner 29:30
Yeah. I mean, it's not listen, it's one of those things like, right? It's not worth worrying about, but it is interesting to think about. And, and you had two kids before you even had a CGM. Were those pregnancies? Did you know those pregnancies

Marla 29:43
were actually pretty great? I had healthy pregnancies. My a 1c with my first child was probably the best it's ever been. I was 5.6 i. Leave when I was pregnant with her. However, I did have two miscarriages before I had her. So after my miscarriages, I said, Okay, I'm gonna and my a 1c was maybe in the sixes. At, you know, during those miscarriages, my doctor doesn't believe we don't know what caused them. My doctor doesn't truly believe it was diabetes, but who knows?

Scott Benner 30:24
You know, I think the A 1c is nice, but, like, I think the unpredictable variability is probably it's hard on you, like, it's hard on your system, but it's got to be hard on your fetus too. Like, right? So you don't have a CGM, Hemi, you didn't get a pump. Did you think of yourself as behind? I

Marla 30:39
got my a 1c down to five point I think it was 5.6 Yeah, or 5.7 yes on shots and just my glucometer. I took that glucometer with me everywhere. I didn't used to take it with me everywhere, but I did that year. So that was 2007

Scott Benner 30:58
so you're 34 then

Marla 31:01
yes, well, no, at that time, I would have been 27 because she was my that was my first, the first I did have one weekend where, well, I know now I was dehydrated, but I woke up with a migraine. And I've never had a migraine in my life. I rarely get headaches, maybe, maybe once or twice a year, I woke up with this just pounding headache. Felt sick. I was throwing up, and I was just in so much pain. My doctor, we kept calling my core husband. He kept calling my OB, saying she's not getting better. He kept saying, go to the store and get Mountain Dew. Have her drink, you know, 40 ounces of Mountain Dew, straight and

Scott Benner 31:50
help. This was medical advice, yes,

Marla 31:54
yes. For a migraine. I

Scott Benner 31:57
appreciate that, you guys. I mean, he wanted you to have caffeine. Probably, yes, yes, you could get that from T I just wanted to

Marla 32:04
say, All right, so we finally, we end up in the ER, my I'm like, I think my mom came to stay with us because my husband's, you know, he just, he cares so much, he loves me so much that he it overwhelms him when something like that happens. So we end up at the ER, and I'm like, What is going on? They're like, we don't know why, but

Scott Benner 32:29
let's give you some fluids. They didn't give you the Mountain Dew. They somebody didn't yell, 40 mls of Mountain Dew not

Marla 32:35
hitting you. They gave me fluids through an IV, and that headache went away within probably 10 minutes.

Scott Benner 32:44
You just saw what happens when you're not dehydrated anymore. Oh, my

Marla 32:47
goodness, I've never been dehydrated, I guess, or to that extreme. So that was really the only issue for that pregnancy. I had a great labor with her. She was six pounds, six maybe 12 ounces,

Scott Benner 33:02
and you switch doctors. How? Immediately after he suggested soda to you for a health issue?

Marla 33:06
Well, no, I stayed with him because I I love him. I don't love a lot of doctors, but he's actually one that I do love. Has

Scott Benner 33:16
he had any other great influences on you? Did he ever give you chocolate for hemorrhoids or anything like that. Or,

Marla 33:21
Oh, I think that was mentioned, maybe what I don't think that was mentioned by him, but I think after delivery, yes, I do remember someone mentioning chocolate. That's funny.

Scott Benner 33:32
Are you seriously? Because I randomly just made up two things and said it out loud, no,

Marla 33:35
chocolate is a laxative, right? I

Scott Benner 33:39
mean, it's got thanks it's

Marla 33:44
yes, it is. My aunt

Scott Benner 33:47
told me I need everybody in Kansas right now to pack your cars up and drive in whatever direction seems attractive to you. You gotta get the out of there right now. Okay,

Marla 34:00
we need people to build airplanes and farm.

Scott Benner 34:04
We need a couple of doctors for those people too.

Marla 34:07
I know, okay, no, the doctor is not the one that told me to eat chocolate. But even after you have a baby, you have to be careful. You know, you don't want to get the roids. You're right.

Scott Benner 34:21
Normally, they'd give you magnesium oxide for that. But, you

Marla 34:24
know, magnesium, yeah, well, everything my other children.

Scott Benner 34:29
So what about Hold on, what did magnesium just make you think about

Marla 34:33
my third daughter, my third child, she was, we'll get there. She was my. What are we talking about? She was my, like, hardest pregnancy, not so much pregnancy, but delivery, I

Scott Benner 34:47
should come out sideways, hold onto your liver, or something like that. And

Marla 34:51
the delivery wasn't that terrible. Actually, I really can't complain about that, but the recovery, yeah, my magnesium, my. OB, I believe she had a little bit of jaundice. And I remember my OB and my daughter's PCP standing in the room, in the hospital room, trying to decide, okay, are we going to let them go? I mean, the jaundice is better with the baby. And I remember my OB looking at my daughter's doctor and saying, I'm going to make this real easy for you. They are not going home because her magnesium is all messed up. I don't know how he said it, but I remember him saying, I'm going to make this real easy. She is not going home. So I do it. And that was the doctor that suggested the Mountain Dew, and it was

Scott Benner 35:39
probably what do you give you for the magnesium problem, Doritos or Ho Hos? Hadley handled,

Marla 35:44
no, I wasn't able to eat Doritos or Ho Hos in that hospital. I have another story about Okay, so I don't know that. I believe they gave me something through the IV. Is

Scott Benner 35:57
there? Can you imagine? That's what they did. I just figured, since he suggested soda, he might suggest potato chips next.

Marla 36:04
This was a weekend when my, when my dehydration episode happened, I'm almost sure that it was his nurse that said, Drink the Mountain Dew, anyway. So Yes, with my third child, my second daughter, yeah, I don't know my magnesium, and I'd never, I didn't, never thought about my magnesium. And then afterwards, I hear all these people say, Oh yeah, that's real important. Gotta check your

Scott Benner 36:29
magnesium. Were you taking, like, prenatal vitamins? Yes,

Marla 36:33
okay, yeah, I was. So I don't know. So then I had this sleep in the room that I gave labor in. You know, you usually give labor in a room and then they send you to another floor. I don't know if that's every hospital, but that was this hospital at the time. Okay, so they made me spend the night in the actual room that I gave birth in.

Scott Benner 36:56
So we were like, were they afraid? They'd never seen somebody with three wrists before. I

Marla 37:01
don't know, I think they needed to keep a closer look on me. I

Scott Benner 37:06
guess, Marley, you don't hear my sarcasm at all. It's awesome. It's my favorite thing that's happened to me this this week, for 100% you do not hear my sarcasm at all. Oh, my goodness, fantastic. Sorry, no, don't be sorry. It's fantastic. I said, did they keep you in the surgery room because they had never seen a person with three wrists before? And you were like, I don't know. Maybe, yeah,

Marla 37:30
well, at this point in life, Scott, you don't I mean, yeah. Well, when I've had this much trouble with doctors, there's no telling. But then okay, so I was sent to another room the next day. Well, then I believe that night, this was just a normal birth, and I was in that hospital for five days. That's not with my other two I will say I was only there for maybe two

Scott Benner 37:55
days. It was natural, yes, didn't care or anything.

Marla 37:58
This was no, no, no, it. But so they sent me. I think it took a few days for this magnesium to come up, I guess. But I did go low. I was nursing, and this was the first baby that I was able to nurse, just because, I don't know, the other two just weren't having it. I swear

Scott Benner 38:20
to god, I almost said something out loud that I definitely think people would not like me for afterwards. But were you having trouble producing milk the first two

Marla 38:27
times? No, well, those first couple days, you're just, you know, it's not like, what is it called? It's a loss. It's not, yeah, so I don't know. I think my kids were just hungry.

Scott Benner 38:41
Probably. Were they lazy suckers? Were they not like? Were they latching? What's that thing that they say? Were they latching

Marla 38:47
on? Just we were like, you know, and you know, with my first it's like, all brand new. And every time, you know, hormones are going crazy. So you just didn't want to do it. No, well, I did, but it wasn't working. So I was like, Okay, well, it

Scott Benner 39:07
wouldn't come out. You get mad at yourself when that happens. Is that? Like, what's that? What's that feeling like? Is it disappointing? Do you get angry? I

Marla 39:15
was disappointed, but I also wanted to sleep. So I was, I mean, I was disappointed, but it wasn't enough to make me go crazy or to make me go into a you know, there are lactation specialists, but they're not available all the time. They they might they're probably so many more resources. Now, that was 18 years ago. So my third child, though, the one that I was in the hospital for five days. One of those nights, I told my husband, I said, you know, I feel I feel low. I think I'm going low. So we had my glucometer. I was not. Okay, so this is the child that I began the CGM when I was pregnant with her. I did love it, but I also hated it because it was all new. I don't know when did CGM, when were they released? When did those come out?

Scott Benner 40:16
I mean, the Dexcom 24 I think it's the first time. I don't remember honestly. So this was

Marla 40:24
2015, okay, maybe they had been out for a while, I don't know. Well, once again, we live in Kansas, so we get things a little bit later than the rest of the world. However, one night, I tell Phil, I think I'm low. So he checks it on our own glucometer. You know the hospitals, the nurse is checking me throughout the day on her own device, but I have mine too well. It's 26 that's low. It's low. And so I freaked the nurse out. He tells her, you know, she needs something. And at this time, I think with my first one, I may be gone into like, the 60s, you know, which is 60s for me. I I'm fine. I can walk around, I can do everything. But when I was maybe in the 60s with her in the hospital, and they would give me real pop, I would be like, Oh, that's a treat. You know, I don't usually like real pop, but sometimes when I'm low, I do like it so but this time, this was eight years later, and by that time in the hospital, all they would give you if you had a low blood sugar was the gel, like the glucose gel, which is disgusting,

Scott Benner 41:41
not looking for that Wall Street 26 so that's pretty low Yes. So yes, I probably did. Well, can I ask a question? I don't want you to be insulted by Yes. Do you have ADHD?

Marla 41:52
I probably do. I as an adult, I have really noticed that yes, I not been diagnosed as a child. I don't think I did think it's

Scott Benner 42:05
something to happen later. Oh, yes, okay, I want to stay here with you getting that CGM so you get that CGM. Like, do things get easier? Do you start seeing like, Hey, this is awesome. Like, I like being able to see this. I can make better adjustments, or was it just the thing you used for, like, telling you you were low. Like, how did you, how did you use it at first?

Marla 42:27
Okay, so I started with the Dexcom in 2015 and at first, yes, I loved it, but I did stop wearing it after I had her because it just, I think it got to be too much for me to handle. I think I was over stimulated, honestly, the alarms and my husband freaking out, calling me, I shouldn't say freaking out. I should say caring about me and loving so much that he would want to make sure I was taking care of myself with a newborn and two other children at home.

Scott Benner 43:10
Next time I freak out, I'm going to tell my wife, I'm just loving her extra see where that gets me. Okay, so did you when did you put it back on and why did you put it back on?

Marla 43:21
I put it back on. My endocrinologist finally convinced me, and this was maybe two years ago. I know this is so bad. I know it's so bad now that I have it back on. Oh, I'm I'll never be without it.

Scott Benner 43:39
Marla, why are you fighting yourself?

Marla 43:42
I believe at the time, it was just I needed, I don't know if I needed support. I don't know what would have changed. It was a lot

Scott Benner 43:53
the way, I think to say this is going to be upsetting, but you're kind of a pain in the ass. Like, why? Yeah, yeah. Why is I

Marla 43:59
know. Why are you being I

Scott Benner 44:00
can't believe I'm saying this. Like, it's nice. 1975 and you have the vapors. But, like, why are you being difficult? Like, I know, yeah. Do you have any real reason? Like, do you do you have understanding?

Marla 44:10
Yes, I do. So I believe that under possibly different circumstances, I don't know if it was because it was just all new to me when I was pregnant, I think at the time, I was over stimulated, and I thought, well, I've lived with no complications. Well, for 28 years or 30 years, maybe I can get through the rest of this year without all this other stuff happening. So you were just, and I'm not saying that's right. No, I don't. Probably wasn't right,

Scott Benner 44:50
but no, that right or wrong doesn't come in. We're talking about psychology and like and you know, and like, what seems important to you. Like, I mean, you lived a long time believe. Saying, like, oh, getting low once in a while. That's what happens. And this is what happened. Like, so if you just think it's happening the way it's supposed to happen, you might not have a reason to believe that changes are better, that things have progressed. I mean, if you're talking to doctors who are telling you about, like, you know, chocolate and soda as like, fixes for things, I don't imagine they're throwing a ton of good information at you about other stuff, either true. So once you see it during the pregnancy, what you end up focusing on more is like the what you thought of as like the crazy parts that came with it, like somebody being aware and getting upset and stuff like that. So you just took it off again, and you never did you ever think about a pump in any of that time, like you said, you're thinking about it now, but you No, I am none of that time you thought about I just

Marla 45:47
feel like you're so overwhelmed when you have all these like little people counting on you. And that's another, I mean, you could look at it another reason, like, Yes, I have these little people counting on me. I should be the best that I can be. I should be on a pump and on a CGM and but at the time, I was just I couldn't take one more new thing.

Scott Benner 46:15
So I don't say that you can't take care of yourself on MDI without a pump. You certainly can. But if you're getting low a lot and then high a lot, you're not, I mean, you're not having the outcomes you're looking for. You knew those weren't the outcomes you were looking for. Yes or No, true, true. Yes. Okay, so then you do the thing of like, Well, I haven't had any complications, so this must be okay, and I have a lot else to do, so I'm not going to focus on this right now. Yes, right. And now you're seeing people who are are using these things. Are you thinking, Oh, maybe if I would have taken a month to figure all this out, a lot of things would have gotten easier.

Marla 46:50
You know? What if I do start using a pump? I could probably answer that in a year from

Scott Benner 46:57
now, yeah, what's got you even thinking about it right now, like, what looks attractive at the moment?

Marla 47:02
What is attractive? Okay, so I used to not want, well, I've said I used to not want anything attached to me. However, I just feel like I'm correct. I'm I find myself correcting and really, okay. So another thing that since I've been in the Juicebox community is looking at time and ranges my I have never been so focused on my time and ranges as I am right now, and in order to get that percentage higher, I feel like I I could do it so much easier on a

Scott Benner 47:47
Why do you want to improve it? Though? What's what's driving you to want to improve

Marla 47:52
it? Hmm, just

Scott Benner 47:55
the community of people trying that are also working towards it.

Marla 47:59
Yes. Okay, well,

Scott Benner 48:04
have you tried the Pro Tip series yet?

Marla 48:07
No, I haven't. I have seen, I've read other people say how much more in control they've gotten after doing that.

Scott Benner 48:18
When you're impacted by a community and you're, you find yourself like, I like it here. I like what's going on. I might want to try to, you know, I'm going to try to do some of the things they're doing. And then they come, somebody comes along once, twice, 10 times. I mean, I mean, the truth is, is, if you're in that Facebook group, you're going to hear somebody say, you know, one of those series really helped them every 20 minutes, yes. So when that happens, and now your kids are older, right? And you're not in charge of three people all the time, and I'm sure Phil's leaving you alone more often than he used to like, so you have a little more free time to yourself. I'm not because of you, because he's older. You know what I mean? Like, yes, you know what happens when you see somebody say, like, I listen this Pro Tip series, and this is my outcome. And they say it again, and somebody else says, But why don't you say, What stops you from going like, oh, that's free. I'll go listen to that and see what what they're talking about. Don't get embarrassed, because I'm genuinely interested

Marla 49:11
in your sounds so silly, but honestly, just taking the time to look it up. So I listen mostly when I'm on my way to pick up kids from school. We are done with school now, so I and I thought about that. I'm like, I When am I going to listen to my podcast? Because I'm just, I'll still be in the car, but not for maybe two and a half hours straight.

Scott Benner 49:39
What are you busy with? You run an IBM over there. What are you doing? Exactly

Marla 49:43
you would you would think, I

Scott Benner 49:46
mean, I'm a very busy person, and I listen to hours of podcasts every day. So

Marla 49:51
yeah, I think sometimes I just need it to be silent. Sometimes I just need to turn everything off. I don't need some. Thing, I'm going all type. I just get

Scott Benner 50:03
over every time somebody's not around, I put headphones in, okay, to try to learn something. Doesn't even matter what it is like the wayside,

Marla 50:10
so but, but another thing that I do, I really just listen to whatever was the last episode. Sometimes I'll search but for the pros, what is it? Pro tip? Pro

Scott Benner 50:23
Tips? Go to Episode 1000 hit play. Just let them let it play. Okay, and it'll play 25 episodes through the Pro Tip series. Then I think there's one new pro tip that's in, like the 1400s you'll have to go find it. Okay? So the reason I asked, and I'm certainly I'm not coming down on you and I'm not, I don't want you to be embarrassed or think that your answer sounds silly, because I don't think any of that, but I'm in a unique situation where I've made this thing that people overwhelmingly agree work. Some not everybody loves it. I'm not saying everybody thinks it's awesome, but like a lot of people all over the world are like, this group of episodes is really valuable to me, and then I somehow attract what I think now is coming up on 70,000 members in a Facebook group, and I am faced every day with the idea that the majority of those people will not try that podcast. I can't wrap my head around that like because, like, they're looking for help. They find help when they get there, all they can hear being shouted from every corner of the room is a tribal beginnings. You should try the Pro Tip series. You know what? I know you might not have a thyroid issue, but if you do, or maybe if you're even worried that you might like, here's four episodes about that that really will set this right for you. Like this saved my life that I these are not my words that saved my life. Scott saved my I read something before I started interviewing you today made me cry like from an older man who laid out his history, his health history, and a long note, and at the end, it really is just like he said. He just said, I just am saying this so I can say thank you to Scott. Oh, I cried like tears came out of my eyes. Now I think I welled up, but the ladies in my life tell me that if you well up, you're crying. So I'll just say it, I was crying. Okay?

Marla 52:09
Someone was cutting onions.

Scott Benner 52:10
I just think I got emotional, sure, but nevertheless, like I am daily faced with the idea that people see that man's post, or a post like it, and then go, I don't know, how do you get all the way to the protest? So much work, and when am I going to listen to it? Never mind. I'm busy. What are you busy with? I got to pick my kids up at school. The whole day is 24 hours long. Yeah, so that that's the thing that I can and I'm not saying that I'm probably not doing that my own life with something else. Like, don't get me wrong, like, I'm sure there's something I should be doing right now that I'm not doing. I'm trying to understand people so that I can intersect with them in a way that would give more people the opportunity to write the note that that guy wrote. Like, I want you to feel that way. Yeah. Can I tell you something I'm before again, before we started the interview today, I was texting with a business partner about something we're doing together, and they just said something to me that said, like, you know, what do you dream of? And it's not exactly what they said, but trust me, it got the conversation moving in that direction, and then I had just read this guy's note, and I'm all, like, emotional, and I respond back and I wish, and I said, like, I don't know, like, something you probably wouldn't say to a person you're you're doing business with. I said, honestly, like, I sometimes I think about being able to live in two different climates so you can run from the weather, but I want to be near my kids, so I probably wouldn't do that. And I'm pretty boring. Like I said, I just grew up broke, like I've been focused my whole life on just like, having money to retire with, or, like, not get sick and not be able to afford something like, I don't really have, I don't dream about stuff. And I said, and as strange as it sounds, and I'm paraphrasing, because I'm looking at this text. I said, I just read this note from this man, I said, and I'm now, I'm sad, like, I'm I feel melancholy, like, look what this did for him. And I'm just focused on trying to find more people who can be happy. Yes, once you've figured out like that, you can spend your time doing something and it makes somebody healthier or happier or less burdened, or whatever. Everything else seems kind of like ridiculous, right? I don't have things I want, like, I don't want clothes or like, you know, like, I don't really need expensive things. I have a car that I like, you know, like, but I mean, beyond that, I'm probably wearing the same T shirt I'm for three years. You know what I mean? Like, I don't have, I own two pairs of sneakers. Like, I don't have, like, a lot of feelings like that, like, but when I sit and think, when she said, What do you dream of? I thought finding more people who could like, be like, helped by this. But what you're. Telling me, Marla, is that when I kill myself, to find you, you go, I don't know. I don't really have time for that. And so, like, I don't know where to go from there. Like, you know what I mean?

Marla 55:10
Well, I appreciate you, and I know so many others do. I I think you should. I don't know. I Well, what's funny is that I just love everything that you talk about. Nothing's off limits. And you know, diabetes is really not what brought me to Juicebox.

Scott Benner 55:36
It's the community you like, the community

Marla 55:38
the yes, the community just knowing, I mean, people want to know that they're not alone and and I love reading these stories from parents perspectives, because it helps me to see what my parents were maybe feeling in the 80s and 90s. Because, you know, honestly, yeah, we, I mean,

Scott Benner 56:04
so is the answer. Marla, like, I'm not getting everybody, and I just shouldn't think about that. No, I don't think so. I'm imagining maybe I'm wrong, but I'm imagining you and people like you, who are have found, you know, commonality in something, and you're having a good time and enjoying the podcast and everything, and I'm over here thinking, like, maybe it's me putting how I feel on you. Maybe that's the unfair thing. Like, you know, like, because I'm saying, like, I want you to know how to use your insulin Well, I want you to understand, you know, like, like, I don't know basic things about your life that I think would help you, and I think I'm right. I think if you learned those things, that everything would get easier, and probably you'd feel less encumbered and all that other stuff. But maybe everyone's just that's just not their intention. It's not going to be and no matter what someone else does, it's not going to change. Like, I can't grab you and like, make you listen to it like, you know what I mean, like, and I certainly wouldn't even if I could. So, I mean, maybe I'm thinking about it

Marla 57:07
wrong. The fact that I saw, I'm not kidding. I really did see. I don't remember if it was yesterday or when it was but someone, I believe it was a comment. I don't think it was an actual post about the pro tip, and then you bring it up to me. So maybe I, maybe that's opening a door for me. Okay? I believe in the Lord, so I, you know, I might look at it. Is that okay? The Lord's opening the door and opening my eyes and leading me, okay, the pro tip, I need to go there

Scott Benner 57:41
so it's not, it's not up to me how quickly you get to it, like I can expose you to it, and then hopefully, yeah, and hopefully you'll find your way to it.

Marla 57:49
Yeah, all right. But you know what brought me to Juicebox? My daughter has low ferritin, okay? And she's 17, and we've had a heck of a time even finding out what was wrong with her, but she's been sick for about six months, and I posted on Facebook about it, and I have a friend whose daughter is a type she's very young. I think she was diagnosed when she was two, and she had seen a post on Juicebox about someone's low ferritin, and so she sent it to me right away. She's like, well, you need to be on this anyway. She didn't. She knew I wasn't on it, and so I'm like, yeah, why haven't I been on this had no idea. Well, that's crazy.

Scott Benner 58:44
No, that's, I guess, you know what? Honestly, maybe every day, yeah, maybe it's not crazy. Maybe it's kind of beautiful, like maybe it's maybe just how it works. Yeah, I maybe it's just because I'm so steeped in it all day long. It's just personally frustrating to me.

Marla 59:00
Yes, and I understand that would be so frustrating. You put everything, I know it

Scott Benner 59:07
feels like you're fighting against Facebook's algorithm, Apple's algorithm, Spotify algorithm, and like, you know, like you post things that I can't believe that what's going to happen is that my life is going to be about learning how to post things that are worded in certain ways so that algorithms deliver them to your feed. Like, I just so badly don't want that to be my truth. You know what I mean? Like I

Marla 59:30
just, and it's not Scott

Scott Benner 59:33
You don't know, I'm sitting here a lot of hours doing

Marla 59:38
every single day, but you know, that might be what some kids feel like, or what some type one moms feel like my life. You know, at their funeral, are they going to say anything about their diabetes? Probably

Scott Benner 59:53
not. I don't know. I might come up. I hope not. I mean, I hope it's a thing that's in the background and. Just is reasonable for them to deal with. And you know that it's not. I'm sure some people are gonna be overwhelmed by it and never climb out from under it, but I don't know. I just don't want, I don't know, like, morally, like, it's hard to explain, because when I start explaining it, I feel like I'm complaining, and I'm not. I'm just telling you that, like, there's right an amount of work that goes into reaching people in mass is insane, and everything between you and them appears to be fighting you. Wow, even when you have information that you've seen over and over again, works. And then even as I say that, I feel like I sound like a lunatic. So you know, it's not how I imagine spending the bulk of my days learning how algorithms like, how to word things. So algorithms will like, will push your post to somebody I don't know. I genuinely don't know what to say.

Marla 1:00:51
So, I mean, the internet, social media, is not new, but how is it kind of, I feel like, is it kind of like the medical community, like we're looking for answers and don't really know? Okay, this is the thing about diabetes, and the contrast that I have learned with dealing with my daughter and her low ferritin, we know for a fact that insulin is what we need to reduce our blood sugars. Now the balancing act of it all is a whole nother ball game, but at least I'm thankful for that with ferritin. I'm just like, there is no clear cut answer for it

Scott Benner 1:01:40
sure there is, I can give it to you right now. Okay, tell me she's of a menstruating age, correct? Yes, all right, and

Marla 1:01:48
not heavy, but not She assures me. It's just regular, like, not out of the norm.

Scott Benner 1:01:56
Okay, fair enough. Does she have celiac by any chance?

Marla 1:02:00
Okay, this is another thing I know that I know this is another thing, Scott, that I haven't done that I should be doing. I have not had any of my children. I have not had their antibodies tested. And I know there is that someone's told me there's a test for checking their antibodies, and it also checks for celiac.

Scott Benner 1:02:22
Does she make the poopies when she eats bread? Oh, well,

Marla 1:02:26
I don't know about that. However, I do know that her stomach hurts all

Scott Benner 1:02:31
the time. So, so here we go. So she's got,

Marla 1:02:33
I mean, I if we got the test back there, I wouldn't bat an eye at the results if they were

Scott Benner 1:02:38
possible. I don't know anything, but you've got vitiligo on all three of your wrists. You have type one diabetes. You have everyone in every woman in your family has Hashimotos. Your daughter's anemic, and her belly hurts all the time. She's probably celiac, not absorbing her minerals correctly, and that's why her iron is low. Okay? And in the meantime, you take her to a doctor, and you say, my daughter's anemic. Here's all the things that's happening to her. I want to get her tested for celiac to see if that might be why. But in the meantime, you're going to give her an iron infusion so she's not walking around like a zombie, and then four weeks later, she feels better, and that's it. We're on our way right. Then you start looking into why she's not absorbing the iron correctly, which is probably, you know, she probably has some sort of an autoimmune issue too. That's stopping that from happening. Yes, and when a doctor tells you, like, we'll take an iron tablet every day, you say, that's not gonna work. So let's do something more aggressive, like an infusion, and that's it. And she'll go to an infusion center, they'll pop into an IV. They'll Jack her up, maybe hit, depending on your insurance, they'll give you one of two different types of iron. One you have to have infused a little more often, or more frequently to get yourself up. Maybe it'll take like four visits and another one, it's like two visits, okay? And I'm telling you that once her red blood cells regenerate again, with all that iron in her system, she'll turn back on like a bright light. That's awesome. I can't wait. Yeah, it's that easy. But you I actually have down. You got to do it, though.

Marla 1:04:10
Yes, I have found a place that will, it's like one of those, you know, IV places. It's like a medical,

Scott Benner 1:04:18
come to your house and give you the little juice. Yeah,

Marla 1:04:21
yeah. But this place, I think we would have to go there. There's only, there's only one that I can find in Kansas. We have insurance in Kansas that will, yes, well, call your doctor do. Well, this is the thing we've been round and round and round. This is our, this is our biggest roadblock is that her ferret that my doctor's ferritin levels. The range is wild. Their range is five to 240

Scott Benner 1:04:54
Yeah, well, there's normal. Listen to me. Okay, all right, so Juicebox, Juicebox podcast.com, Okay, you go up to the top on trying to get on my own website, which always feels goofy. Imagine I'm like, let me just go to my website right now and I'll but yeah, so you go there and you want to go to, let's see what we have here for you. I'm going to tell you to go to episodes and then, no, no, no, yeah, go to series. And you just, by the way, you just talked me into making a series about iron. Oh, please. I just did that in my head. Please, do? We're gonna go now to the thyroid series, right? Okay, and you're going to look for episode 413 it's called thyroid disease explained. And I think in that episode, Dr Benito also talks about ferritin levels, and she says very directly, a woman of menstruating age with a ferritin under 70 is too low.

Marla 1:06:02
Thank you. Thank you for saying that. So hers. We've had it checked twice. In March, it was seven, and in April, it was nine.

Scott Benner 1:06:12
Cover your ears. Marla, cover your ears. I don't want, I don't want the Lord to hear this through your ears. Your doctors, okay, yeah, so is this the Doritos and soda guy? No, no. Different

Marla 1:06:26
other one. Oh, my God, one. I will say it's the same one that was in the hospital room with me when my OB had to tell him, I'm gonna make this real easy for you. Neither one of them are going home tonight.

Scott Benner 1:06:40
Yeah, listen, I don't know what you're dealing with over there. Okay, Episode 413, 413, she'll say it directly in there. Listen, I'm going to explain this to you. You already know this, but you're going to go back and and fight differently. The test ranges that come back on labs, all they mean is, this is the range we see people fall into.

Marla 1:06:59
Yes, I have done, oh, I have tried to figure out

Scott Benner 1:07:04
the doctor sees green, and they say, though this is fine, I've not met your daughter, and you have not spoken directly about her today. And I could describe her to you right now, because I know what low iron looks like, and you get her an iron infusion today. And I'm telling you they'll have her back in a week. They'll do another one. If you've got great insurance, she'll be done. If you have insurance that wants a cheaper one, you might have to go back a third week and a fourth week, right? It takes 30 minutes. You go in, they pop in the IV, they push in the iron, it's over your body, then remakes red blood cells. Right? Now her blood cells are being made without enough iron. So it's like she's building a sand castle without enough sand, right? So she's making a red blood cell. She's her body does not have enough iron when it's building it, it's going to put that iron, that ferritin and all those minerals, into her bloodstream. The next time her body goes to make red blood cells, it will make them with the correct amount of iron. She will then be able to breathe again, walk around without getting out of breath. She won't get lightheaded, she won't be tired all the time. She won't be distracted, foggy, all the other things that I know she is weak, right? Pale? Is she all these things? Yes, right? Yes, yeah. And then she's going to be fine. Then once she's fine, she doesn't seem like she's dying all the time. You take a deep breath and you say to the doctor, now let's figure out why this happened, because it's not from bleeding. She doesn't have heavy menstrual periods, so I have an autoimmune disease. Actually, I have a ton of them, and so does my family. Let's check for celiac first, but in the meantime, you could have her start eating like she has celiac to see if that starts making her stomach feel better. If it does, then you can hit the doctor with that and say, okay, look, let's get her iron back up. We'll change the way she eats, and let's see if her iron stays up, and if it doesn't, for some reason, we don't let her drift into oblivion again. We give her another iron infusion till we figure it out. We don't let her walk around like a zombie because she's 17, and that sucks. Yes, also, is she gaining weight? Yes, yeah, yeah. I know. Trust me. Do you see how I know? It's because I know, I know what low iron looks like. And you do too. You can't just go to the person and then say that to them, then have them go like, Well, no, we don't agree. And then you go, Oh, well, the guy doesn't agree.

Marla 1:09:14
He's wrong. So I found, Okay, who else does iron infusions? I found this medical

Scott Benner 1:09:22
spa go right to a um, a hematologist. That's

Marla 1:09:26
okay. Well, that's another issue I'm running into. I have asked to be referred to a hematologist. Our doctor, flat out says no. Now I have found another doctor. I'm done with them, because they said no, she's in normal ranges. She doesn't need to go to a hematologist.

Scott Benner 1:09:42
What's this answer to her problem? Then I Yeah, exactly No. He's gonna try to put on a an SSRI soon and Tell You She's depressed or something like that.

Marla 1:09:50
Well, yeah, that that's exactly what he said. Oh, look at me. I know what I'd say. I got you. She Well, this is the thing. We needed a school note signed for her to be out of school. She can't, I

Scott Benner 1:10:05
mean, she could. She can't lift her head up. I don't imagine a seven. Listen better. I had an 11 one time I bent down to pick something up. I almost fell through the floor head first. I took my son to an emergency room. When that happened, I

Marla 1:10:19
know like he's been through so much so, yeah, he said the best thing that you i i didn't want to go because I knew, I knew he wasn't going to believe us, and it was just going to be a big mess. But we needed a school note signed saying that she could finish the semester remotely, because they do have a thankfully, our school system had some kind of program, you know, like, if you have a health

Scott Benner 1:10:45
concern, but, yeah, but see, Marla, this is the problem. Like, instead of just fixing her problem, you're just finding ways to make her problem less burdensome, like, like, and that's not you, but that's Do you? Does your insurance require a referral?

Marla 1:11:00
Well, no, they don't, but because

Scott Benner 1:11:03
Marla, now I'm mad, what are you getting a referral for? Then,

Marla 1:11:05
because she's 17, every single

Speaker 1 1:11:09
hematologist wants her to be an adult, yeah,

Marla 1:11:13
if she's 18, they'll see her without a referral. But because she's 17, they say we need a referral from your PCP. It All right,

Scott Benner 1:11:21
if I curse again, let's see. I

Marla 1:11:26
have found, I, I have found a new doctor for just for my children, and I to see, yeah, but I, and I did find this medical spa with, but, I mean, it's gonna be $300 an infusion. So if she has to have four, yeah, it's a lot of money.

Scott Benner 1:11:49
Yeah, do they offer iron? I'm looking at one that's near me right now to see if they do. They do. There

Marla 1:11:54
is one that does iron. Just offer straight iron,

Scott Benner 1:12:01
like, I mean, Why can't someone know what they're doing? I'm not even kidding, like, just once in a while,

Marla 1:12:07
well, and I Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:12:12
seriously, it's so irritating this poor girl. Like, none of this has to be happening to her right now,

Marla 1:12:18
right? None of it I have. Called so many people. I have like, I just go down all these rabbit holes on every single social media. And I've, I've found some good groups, but,

Scott Benner 1:12:34
you know, you just need one doctor to do the right thing. How old is she? When she gonna be 18?

Marla 1:12:39
October 30 should

Scott Benner 1:12:41
be dead by then. Never mind.

Marla 1:12:45
I know I'm like, I gotta do something to get us through the summer.

Scott Benner 1:12:49
Here's my best advice. I would just call PCP offices. I would explain very simply, don't get wordy. Just say, Look, my daughter has low iron. She's under 18, my current doctor does not understand that her seven ferritin needs to be addressed with an infusion, and because she's under 18, I can't just book her directly with a hematologist. Is this a thing you would help us with? Please don't ask me to come in and talk to us. I need to know if you're amenable to getting her to an iron infusion, because I don't have time to waste because this girl's quality of life is terrible. Okay, I like that. Put it to them that way. Let them answer you. One of them is gonna say, you know, yes, we'd be happy to help her. She definitely sounds like she needs an iron infusion. You go, Great. Can you see her today? Okay, this is emergent. She's now out of school because of it, certain days, all she needs is an iron infusion. I know that she's going to be okay after this, and then tell her after that. We don't this is not from bleeding. We think it's possibly celiac, because we have a lot of autoimmune in our family. But can we first get her back on her feet before we try to figure out what's getting her there, like what's knocking her down, and then just wait for somebody to answer you, and if they give you a good answer, great. Make the appointment. And if they give you a beta answer, say, thanks very much. Hang up the phone and call the next place. Okay, yep, I like that. Thanks. Stop waiting for somebody to do the right thing. Like just Yes, just keep going. Call anywhere you have to call. Yes, you could get off with me now and have this worked out in an hour.

Marla 1:14:21
Yes, you absolutely. So my mom back to immediate family autoimmune endocrinology issues. Both my mom and my sister have had thyroid cancer. So my mom has told me her oncologist is also a hematologist. That's what I'm finding out all the hematologists are also on college

Scott Benner 1:14:43
because mostly like hematology is where people go for confusions, for their cancer treatments too.

Marla 1:14:50
Yes. Okay, so, so I called hers, and he's one in town that he his license just won't allow to see her until she's 18. However. I knew the girl who answered the phone was so nice to me, and she couldn't tell me that who she was when I called, but she told me afterwards. She's like, that was me, and I know her in real life. I'm like, of course, that was you. I know you work at a doctor's office, and I just didn't put the two, but she actually told me then who refers which doctors in town refer good to their clinic. So

Scott Benner 1:15:31
Marla say goodbye and go, go call them right now. Yeah, that's good. We did a good job. It's a nice podcast. We're all finished. And now let go save your daughter. Because this is, trust me, I've had this. It's way worse than you think

Marla 1:15:43
it is. I know that's what I'm hearing. I just feel

Scott Benner 1:15:48
she's not just tired. Yeah, it's horrible, like, really, really, really horrible.

Marla 1:15:53
And isn't that weird that every it happened to us, but everyone that I talked to that it's happened to also, they'll say, yep, your doctor will say you need to go to a therapist.

Scott Benner 1:16:05
Yeah, no, because that's what happens to women. Oh, they get told, like, you know, Oh no, it's in your head. Or are you just sure you're not sad? Maybe you're hormonal. Like, yeah, don't sleep. Better, put your phone down. Blah, blah, blah. Like, back in the in the 50s, but they say to women, you get what you get. She's got the vapors. Get right, like she's hysterical. Remember that in the 60s? Yes, now it's whatever it is. Now she's depressed. She's got no iron in her body. That's what's wrong with her, like all and by the way, go look up signs of low iron, depression is one of

Marla 1:16:45
them. Yes, it Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:16:49
your body is a machine that is running off of so many different minerals and hormones and water and glucose and all these other things. And it's when these balances get off too badly. You're moving forward on sheer will. At that point, your daughter's trudging along because her body doesn't want to die, but it does not have the ingredients it needs to be successful. That's all this is. And so you give her the ingredients back, she'll come right back to life, like a plant that you put in a window and watered. Oh, and then you get and then you look at her and you say, Okay, now we need to figure out why this happened. It's very likely, like, let's go look at celiac first. That's probably what's happening. You're probably not absorbing your nutrients correctly, or maybe she's eating, like, I don't know, I don't know how you feed her, but like she maybe she's not getting iron in her food. But the point is, she's so low now that even if you tried to supplement her with, like, good food and, you know, vitamins, but and she was able to absorb them to get her from a seven to where she's not going to feel like this is going to take years, and it probably it's just, it's too much. There's no reason to ruin this time in life. All right. Marla, say goodbye and go do that right now. Please. You're making me Okay. Thank you, Scott. You're very welcome. Hold on one second for me. You the podcast episode that you just enjoyed was sponsored by ever since CGM. They make the ever since 365 that thing lasts a whole year. One insertion every year. Come on. You probably feel like I'm messing with you, but I'm not. Ever since cgm.com/juicebox Arden has been getting her diabetes supplies from us med for three years. You can as well us med.com/juicebox or call 888-721-1514, my thanks to us, med for sponsoring this episode and for being longtime sponsors of the Juicebox podcast. There are links in the show notes and links at Juicebox podcast.com to us, med and all the sponsors. This episode of The Juicebox podcast is sponsored by Omnipod five. Omnipod five is a tube, free automated insulin delivery system that's been shown to significantly improve a 1c and time and range for people with type one diabetes when they've switched from daily injections, learn more and get started today at omnipod.com/juicebox, of my link, you can get a free starter kit right now. Terms and Conditions apply. Eligibility may vary. Full terms and conditions can be found at omnipod.com/juicebox,

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#1604 Weird Antics

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Brady’s been living with type 1 diabetes for 12 years, diagnosed at age 5 and now 17.

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

Scott Benner 0:00
Welcome back, friends to another episode of The Juicebox podcast.

Brady 0:17
Hello, everyone listening. My name is Brady. I'm a type one diabetic since the age of five, I'm now 17, almost 18, going to college soon, and getting out of the house for the first time. It is can be a little nervous, especially when you've had your parents support you for so long.

Scott Benner 0:38
Check out my algorithm pumping series to help you make sense of automated insulin delivery systems like Omnipod, five loop, Medtronic, 780, G twist tandem control, IQ and much more. Each episode will dive into the setup features and real world usage tips that can transform your daily type one diabetes management. We cut through the jargon, share personal experiences and show you how these algorithms can simplify and streamline your care. If you're curious about automated insulin pumping, go find the algorithm pumping series in the Juicebox podcast. Easiest way Juicebox podcast.com, and go up into the menu, click on series and it'll be right there. Nothing you here on the Juicebox podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan. 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 Miss boluses or miscalculated carbs thanks to meal detection technology and automatic correction doses. Learn more and get started today at Medtronic diabetes.com/juicebox 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/juicebox this episode of The Juicebox podcast is sponsored by the twist a ID 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/juicebox. That's twist with two eyes.com/juicebox. Get precision insulin delivery with a target range that you choose at twist.com/juicebox. That's t, w, i, i s t.com/juicebox.

Brady 2:42
Hello, everyone listening. My name is Brady. I'm a type one diabetic. Since the age of five, I'm now 17, almost 18, going to college soon and get out of the house for the first time. It is can be a little nervous, especially when you've had your parents support you for so long,

Scott Benner 3:01
you thinking about that as you're heading off to college,

Brady 3:04
definitely. So I'm sure if there was any other people in my position, not just diabetes alone, but any college kids, any kids with a medical disability,

Scott Benner 3:15
just listen, any kids that have to cook for themselves, even that might have been a little nervous, right? So you're five, when you're diagnosed, you have any brothers or sisters,

Brady 3:24
or actually, we have a big family. I haven't seen one of them in a bit, two brothers, two sisters, two brothers, two sisters. You're almost 18. Are you the youngest? No, I'm one of the oldest ones. You're one of the oldest. Oh, no kidding, my littlest brother, he's only seven,

Scott Benner 3:40
seven. So from seven to what's the oldest 19 now, no kidding, Okay, any other autoimmune issues in the family? My

Brady 3:50
mom has arthritis for the last few years. I guess that's the only noteworthy issue.

Scott Benner 3:57
Nobody has hypothyroidism, celiac, other type ones, nothing like that. Okay,

Brady 4:02
I was the only one

Scott Benner 4:07
randomized trial. Do you remember anything about being diagnosed at five? I would imagine, maybe

Brady 4:11
not surprisingly, yes. So funny story. We were going to Orlando because I'm Florida based as our my uncle was coming down to visit, so we were driving up to Orlando. It's a three hour drive from where we live, and I was using the bathroom frequently. Obviously, we had no clue at the time that that meant my sugar was high, so just munching on some pretzel goldfish. And my mom was like, Okay, maybe you shouldn't eat these pretzel goldfish. And I was drinking a lot of water, and then she's like, why are you drinking so much water that she took away the water for me. And then we were at the resort for the weekend. I don't remember too much about the resort itself, but then afterwards, we went to a doctor's office. They didn't do anything. We went to another one. They didn't do anything. We went like about five of them, and we finally met this. Guy, and he's like, oh, let's, let's see what your blood glucose level is, or blood sugar. And I guess I was like, around 900 when, when he tested me, huh? So

Scott Benner 5:12
your mom had to take you to a number of different doctors to get somebody to find an answer to your problem.

Brady 5:17
Yeah, okay, at least three. At least three, at least three, and

Scott Benner 5:21
then this one checks your blood sugar 900 they put you in the hospital.

Brady 5:25
Yeah, according to my mom, because she's told me the story, the doctor said to her it would be faster for her to drive me to the hospital rather than calling like an ambulance. So she drove into the hospital and they hooked me up to everything. I was in there for about a week. No

Scott Benner 5:39
kidding. Do you remember any of that? Or is it all just kind of a blur? I

Brady 5:43
remember some parts of it like I remember being given this, like JDRF bear called Rufus, and I still have in my closet. I don't know if you've heard of that name before. I've heard of Rufus the bear. Yeah, in fact, because we were doing like a kindergarten day or whatever, like spirit days of high school. I brought him with me to school in my one to one recreation of the kindergarten outfit.

Scott Benner 6:09
Wait a bit, tell me this again. Start over. What was that?

Brady 6:12
So we had a school spirit week about a month ago, and for one of the days, it was like, dress up as your kindergarten self, really. And so I brought Rufus the bear with me, and his fur is all bad, and he's like this old bear, but I brought him to school with me. Anyways, as a 17 year old 12th grader,

Scott Benner 6:33
what were some of the other ridiculous outfits? Did everybody do this? It sounds like a great idea. Actually, a

Brady 6:38
lot of people our school had a lot of spirit, especially our seniors that were there, yeah, and people had wacky outfits. They had dyed hair, they had people would pull on shave their beards that they had just to look like their kindergartner selves.

Scott Benner 6:54
Colors that don't match right like because you remember, when you're a kid, you put all these colors together and you're just like, I love blue and green, and you're like, that doesn't look right at all. It doesn't matter. Doesn't look great. I just saw a little kid walking around the other day. He had, like, bright blue sneakers on yellow shorts and a red top. He looked ridiculous. And he looked so happy. He was, like, running around as like, this little like, four year old with his grandfather. Did he have his little propeller hat on as well? No, but he was close. He really was. So at what point your mom and dad help you with your diabetes as you're younger? I imagine?

Brady 7:26
Um, yes, so when I was diagnosed there, we didn't have any access to CGM or pumps at the time, so we had to do syringes for the first two years. And so my mom would always have to do syringes, and I kept her up at night. You know, I was but a small child, so I was carefree, yeah, you didn't know what was happening, right? Yeah. But, like, I heard her talking about something, like, how she was, like, always afraid of, like, drawing ever too much insulin from the vial with the syringe and putting too much into me. Then I switched to pens a couple years later, and then I still have those, actually, for a

Scott Benner 8:02
backup. Your mom worried a lot that she was going to give you too much insulin. Yeah,

Brady 8:06
from what I've heard, especially when I was first diagnosed and needing to deal with syringes.

Scott Benner 8:11
And is that a thing that stuck with her? Did she get past that, or does she not really involved in your care at all anymore?

Brady 8:16
Oh, no, she's still heavily involved. In fact, she was messaging me this morning because my sugar was like 170 after I just had a bagel, like I dose for it, but I was still going a little up.

Scott Benner 8:30
How do you find that that relationship? Do you enjoy her helping you?

Brady 8:35
Yes, most definitely. I don't know where I would be without her help, but at the same time, I'm sure in the next couple of years, I would like to become fully independent and without her having to breathe down my neck. What do you mean?

Scott Benner 8:53
You don't know where you'd be without her help. What do you think she's covering for you that you wouldn't do? I mean, obviously, when you're five, you need help, but as you're getting older and older, did you take on more and more responsibility?

Brady 9:04
Yes, okay, I'm a heavy sleeper. The alarms and texts that she would send would help wake me up even now.

Scott Benner 9:10
So she's kind of on top of it when you can't be Yeah, yeah. How have your a one sees, your outcomes been over the

Brady 9:18
years, hovering in the the the sixes and sevens. Wow,

Scott Benner 9:21
that's awesome. You say that's your mom's work a

Brady 9:25
lot, but I will. I can give myself credit, like I Bolus and stuff. Yeah,

Scott Benner 9:31
you do what you need to do, right? Yeah. So what happens is, like, take me through it for a second. You're 12 years old. It's lunch time. Your mom's texting you at school. Or how does that all work? I

Brady 9:42
kind of did my own thing at school. I would I do what I need to do in elementary school, I'd have to go to the nurse's office so the nurse would watch over me. But by the time I got to 12, middle school age, I was doing it on my own at school. Okay? She would only message me if I were to, like, go high while I was in class. Like, how? Is like 202 20.

Scott Benner 10:01
Okay, so you would manage your food, and did you get low? Did you have lows that you had to manage on your own, or did the nurse help with those even after you

Brady 10:09
Yeah, I would, I would go low sometimes, like 60. I would drink a juice, because I have, like, juices and snacks in my actual classrooms. Yeah, and it's been like that for a very long time after Elementary School, really, I stopped heavily relying on the nurse. So after elementary school is about what age? Um, well, what is this? Fifth grade? So, 11, okay,

Scott Benner 10:30
and so you you'd taken care of lows on your own. You're bolusing for your meals. Your mom's only getting involved if she's seeing high blood sugars,

Brady 10:38
yeah, yeah. And then if I were to, like, consistently stay low for like, more than 10 minutes. That's when she'll say, like, you're low. She ping

Scott Benner 10:46
you then try to figure out what's going on. Yeah. I mean, the way you guys had that set up that worked well for you. Okay, it didn't feel overwhelming. You didn't feel like she was too in your business or not enough. Was there ever a time where you were like, I wish she'd help me more than this? No, not at all. No. Okay, so you guys found a nice balance. Now, was your dad involved in this

Brady 11:05
at all? Yes, and no, my mom was, uh, or still is a stay at home mom, while my dad goes to work each day. And so he, I do have sharing on my Dexcom. So he'll sometimes say, like, oh, you should do that. But other than that, he's, he's

Scott Benner 11:21
less involved. Yeah, do you think because he knows your mom has it, or is it not his? Is it not his wheelhouse? Like, or what do you think?

Brady 11:30
I think it's a little bit of both. He's always been working, like, his whole life, so I'm perfectly like, I've accepted that, like, someone needs to work, someone can't be

Scott Benner 11:42
so he puts his effort where it fits. You put and your mom puts hers where it fits. Yeah, yeah. And you more than fill in the gaps. It sounds like you you have a lot going on here, really, like, as far as your interaction with your own diabetes, you seem very involved in it. So would you just call it like, a good blend of the three of you doing

Brady 12:01
what works, I would say, so Okay, yeah, anything about it? You would change? Definitely my ability to Pre-Bolus.

Scott Benner 12:11
Do you forget or do you not like doing it?

Brady 12:14
When I eat food, it, it'll register that I need to dose. So I'll dose like as I'm eating the food or right after, because a lot of the time I'll, like eat on a whim. At school, I know when I'll eat, so I'll dose for that. But at work, like, I don't know when I'm going to break, they'll just send me on break, so I get my food and I dose. Okay, okay. What about at home? Do you Pre-Bolus better when you're not at school? Same thing at home, like, I'll eat whenever it is really the one thing that I do truly need to work on, and that's why I probably experienced that like momentary high after eating before coming down again.

Scott Benner 12:53
So I hear that, you know, you should be doing it, but you're also not like. You don't seem like you're, you know, beating yourself up about it, or feeling like it's an imperative. So can we dig into that just a tiny bit? I'm endlessly fascinated by the pre bolusing thing, because I get exactly why it would be bothersome and hard to remember and all that other stuff. But is it not a thing that you can turn into a habit, or is it not important enough to do it like what stops it from happening? 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/juicebox, that's twist with two eyes.com/juicebox. 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 bolused. 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 now available in select areas, so if you'd like to learn more or get on the wait list, go to twist.com/juicebox that's twist with two eyes.com/juicebox. Get on the twist wait list and be notified as soon as it's available in your area. Links in the show notes. Links at Juicebox podcast.com. The contour, next gen blood glucose meter is sponsoring this episode of The Juicebox podcast, and it's entirely possible that it is less expensive in cash than you're paying right now for your meter through your insurance company. That's right. If you go to my link, contour next.com/juicebox, you're going to find links to Walmart, Amazon, Walgreens, CVS, right? Aid, Kroger and Meijer, you could be paying more right now through your insurance for your test strips in meter than you would pay through my link for the contour next gen and contour next test strips in cash. What am I saying? My link may be cheaper out of your pocket than you're paying right now, even with your insurance, and I don't know what meter you have right now. I can't say that, but what I can say for sure is that the contour next gen meter is accurate. It is reliable, and it is the meter that we've been using for years. Contour next.com/juicebox and if you already have a contour meter and you're buying test strips doing so through the Juicebox podcast link will help to support the show.

Brady 15:45
That's what I've been trying to figure out for so long. I think it's just I'm still, like, scatterbrained, like, I'm always doing stuff, like, even now, before I was on the call, I was building a Lego set. Like, it doesn't like, go into my mind until, like, it's like, I, like, I Yeah, until it's too late. Well, do you have ADHD? Most likely, yes, you think you might. It's not it's not diagnosed. It's not diagnosed. Do you have anything else going on? No, no. Okay, so ADHD, meaning, well, how Wait? How are you in school? Like, how are you, like, grades wise? So I'm actually just, I've graduated with a 5.0 GPA. I excel well, at school, like, I'm an excellent test taker, but when you shove like, a bunch of assignments in my face, I'll try to do all of them, and then, like, I'll forget to turn like, one or two in. And I think that's most prevalent in my math class. Okay,

Scott Benner 16:42
you have a better than perfect GPA.

Brady 16:44
So at least what around what our school system does is like a weighted GPA. So like, I've taken college classes throughout my entire, like high school career, right? So now graduating because of that, like weighted college classes compared to, just like your normal gen ed classes. It allows me to go higher than a four. In fact, our valedictorian had a six point

Scott Benner 17:05
something. GPA, geez, what are you planning on studying in college?

Brady 17:09
I guess this goes back to my scatter brain thing, like I have no clue what I'm doing, so I picked the most broad category, which seems to be business. So I'm going in as a business major. What I'm doing with that? I couldn't tell you. Are you strong in math? I was until about algebra two.

Scott Benner 17:26
That's pretty far into it, though. So what does that mean? You're good at you can do algebra, geometry, trig,

Brady 17:32
die. Suck At trig. Then no, no. Trick was introduced to me in about pre calculus, and that was the math class that I probably should have wiped for my schedule, but I continue to take it because

Scott Benner 17:46
I'm stubborn. What is failure at trig look like? What's your final grade? It was a D, no kidding, yeah, you passed it, but with no firm understanding of it whatsoever. No Right? Because did your brain just not work that way?

Brady 18:01
I think it's all like the signs and the cosines, tangents. I like numbers and trigonometry isn't really numbers, it's words. And like, well, I'm good with words, but not in math.

Scott Benner 18:14
So your English grades are high. They are Yeah, and you write, well, I do write. Well, that's a good that's a skill, man. Not everybody has.

Brady 18:23
I could write anything. Give me a prompt right now, and I could type you up an essay in an hour.

Scott Benner 18:29
No kidding, all right, would you share where you're going to college? Have you been accepted somewhere?

Brady 18:34
I was accepted to a lot of places, but due to like, financial struggles into getting into those places I've resulted to going to Florida, Gulf Coast University. Okay? And when do you start? I think it was August, 19, and I move in August, 14 or 15th. Oh,

Scott Benner 18:52
and so let's get to it now. Are you excited? Are you nervous? Is this broken up in different sections? Is there like part of you that's going to school and party that's thinking about diabetes, like, how, how is this whole thing like coming to shape in your

Brady 19:03
mind? Obviously, my whole school journey has been about going to college thus far. So it's always been there, and I've always been thinking about it. And now that it's like, here, it's like, yeah, I am. I'm excited, and I've been given the resources to do well in college, I think I said it at the start, there's always that nervousness and anxiety that follows you when you first leave the nest for the first time. Sure. Do

Scott Benner 19:30
you have any friends going to the same school? No, no.

Brady 19:33
Well, close friends, no, but many people I know are going to the school? Yes.

Scott Benner 19:38
Okay. Do you think you'll have trouble with the social aspects of it, beating people, forming relationships, or is that not a thing you're

Brady 19:45
worried about? No, I've, I've always been fairly social. Okay, so I don't think I'll struggle with talking to new people. Gotcha,

Scott Benner 19:53
how far is it from your house? Like, is it a drive, a plane?

Brady 19:57
It's about 30 to 40. Minute drive, depending on traffic, not far. And will you commute, or will you stay there? I will be dormant there for at least the first year.

Scott Benner 20:07
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Brady 21:17
I do want to do it because I've been told countless times that going to live in college is why? Is one of the big reasons you go to college like you don't want to miss out on the college experience, the

Scott Benner 21:30
experience. So how old are you? Did you say, Brady, you're almost 18, right? I'm almost 18. Yes, your mom knows you're doing this, right? Yes, yeah. Are you going to be partaking in alcohol and or drugs at college. Do you do that now? Oh,

Brady 21:43
oh, no, I don't even drink soda.

Scott Benner 21:47
You're not a drinker. No, it's not a thing you think you're interested in getting.

Brady 21:52
Not at all. I have stayed away from alcohol drugs. They disgust me if, if you get into it, it's unfortunate, but I can understand why you continue to do it. If you're already doing it.

Scott Benner 22:10
Are your family drinkers? Like, is there a beer at a football game? Wine at dinner or anything like that?

Brady 22:16
Yeah, sometimes, but not overly excessive. It's like, there, it's

Scott Benner 22:19
present, but you've never seen it as a problem. No, okay, it's never been a problem. All right. Now, Brady, yes, some really hot girl comes up to you at a party and her belly shown a little bit, and she's like, Hey, try this drink. Do you go, no, no, no, I'm disgusted. Or do you go, Oh, I've been waiting for a hot girl to talk to me and take a little drink. What do you do? I

Brady 22:41
wouldn't drink the drink, but I would be like, kind about it. If someone approached me, I'd still respect them and talk to them, but I just, I guess, humbly decline.

Scott Benner 22:51
Yeah, yeah. Okay, so you don't think there's a thing I pick girls, because to me, that's where I would I'd give up. I'd be like, sure, I might not. I'd be honest with you, but like, that's the thing that would get me in that direction, like, there's no like, you couldn't peer pressure me into it. I wouldn't care about that. It doesn't sound like you have any feelings that that you can I don't think I could peer pressure you into something,

Brady 23:10
right? You could try. I think it would be very difficult. Don't think it

Scott Benner 23:15
would work out. And All right, so you don't think you will drink. I mean, you don't think everyone's Am I wrong? Everyone smokes weed, right? Not me. No, not you. But I mean, like in high school, like in high school,

Brady 23:29
it's definitely there. The people that I associate myself with aren't doing it. Aren't doing it, okay, and those are the close friends I mentioned earlier. But people, yeah, I know they're doing stuff. Do

Scott Benner 23:41
you have a problem with it? Like, on a like, Do you have a judgment about it, or you just it's not for you?

Brady 23:47
When I was younger, I guess I I found it disgusting. But like, I've grown older, I've worked for two years now, I've, I've seen enough of the world to acknowledge that. Like, if, if they're getting by doing weed and still doing well in school, because, you know, many people that I do talk to are still getting a 5.0 GPA while still screwing around at parties. Like, if that works for you, that works for

Scott Benner 24:14
you, how do you get rid of your attention? Like, what do you do to relax?

Brady 24:18
Build Lego, I guess, play, games. Just watch YouTube. You like more solitary stuff, yeah, but I play games with friends, like, I'm never playing a game by myself. I'm always with like, a person or two on a PlayStation party or something like that. Okay, have you built the r2, d2, Lego? No, but I do want to get that. I have built a giant star wars, Venator. I don't know if you've seen that, no. Which is that it's this Venator from the prequel trilogy, and it sent me back a good $600 Oh

Scott Benner 24:52
my gosh. What'd you do with it once you got it built? That's always my problem with it. Once it's done, what do

Brady 24:57
you do with it? So I'm. My whole room is just covered and displayed in Lego so I really just display it and I dust it from time to time. My brother will play with, like, the smaller cars that I have. Yeah, I like building cars in the Star Wars things.

Scott Benner 25:12
Yeah. I mean, that's that's gonna keep a hot girl from offering your drink, for sure. Don't let them see that. Okay, but she's good. Well, maybe not. Maybe one girl will be like, All right, this is awesome. What do you like about building Legos?

Brady 25:24
I've just always liked building things. I guess it's just satisfying to see a whole product come together.

Scott Benner 25:32
We do, like, in the house, like, usually around Christmas time, my wife will build, like, buy a set and like, put it in the kitchen, because then people will, like, stop and, like, put a couple of steps together and then leave it alone. Or sometimes people, like, I'll sit down and, like, obsess on it and work on it all day, or something like that. But then we get done with them and we're just like, what are we like, what are we going to do with this? We end up breaking it apart and putting it back

Brady 25:55
in the box. See, that's that's just sad. Yeah, like it, although

Scott Benner 25:58
we do have, Arden did just ask me to hang the Spider Man portrait where he seems to be coming out of the portrait. Oh, yeah, yeah. That one. My son and daughter did that one Christmas, and she asked me if I'd hang it up for so actually, that's the thing I'm gonna do this weekend.

Brady 26:12
I have my eyes set on the Milky Way galaxy. One another, art, one.

Scott Benner 26:18
My sister in law just told me she built the radio, and she said that it's an old timey radio, and you actually build the entire inside of it. She said she was so sad because the inside was so intricate. And then you close it up inside, like, you know, it's in there all the like, you know, yeah, all the, you know, the guts of it, but at the same time, like, you never see it again. But there was also, they put a little Bluetooth receiver in it so you can actually use the Lego radio, like a Bluetooth

Brady 26:45
speaker. I did not know that. Actually, I know what you're talking about. Yeah, I didn't know what that was. That was on

Scott Benner 26:54
her 40s. She was like, this thing's so cool. And I was like, all right. I had no idea she liked doing that stuff. My son loves it, but, like, I think he's hit an age where he's just like, he's like, I don't know, I can't be doing this anymore. Like, do you know what I mean? Like, it's although,

Brady 27:06
yeah, my whole family thought that I'd be grow out of it, but I'm still building. You're

Scott Benner 27:09
still into it. Oh, listen, I think it's awesome. The LEGO Store. Do you have a Lego store near you? Disney, springs, Orlando. Oh, okay, yeah, you you have access, though, because it's weird when you get into a room. There's so many different like, you know, like, there's like Harry Potter towns, and the little Polaroid camera that Land Rover truck is incredible looking. The the discovery. Do you know which one? I mean,

Brady 27:32
yeah, there was two of them made. There was like a brick built one, and then there was a Technic one, and they both released around the same time frame.

Scott Benner 27:39
It's interesting stuff. I actually happen to know a person who works with a company. Oh, that's and, like she, she has one of the craziest, interesting jobs, where she just shows up at places and and puts together, like, large displays. So I've

Brady 27:53
talked to a bunch of Lego employees when I go to the Lego store in Disney Springs, and I've gotten some wild inside information, such as getting 50% off if you work there for over three months,

Scott Benner 28:05
is that not where you're going to get a job then? Or is it not close enough? I

Brady 28:09
mean, it would be like a three hour drive to go to work. That's

Scott Benner 28:12
not gonna be worth it. Yeah, imagine you drive six hours a day to get 50% off on your latest Yeah. He says that gonna work out. That'd

Brady 28:20
be a hell of commute time.

Scott Benner 28:22
And what you said you game with friends? What do you do?

Brady 28:24
A decent amount of stuff. I'm a completionist on games, so I liked 100% games, a lot of Minecraft, but also, like just single player games that we play together, like we've been enjoying the Resident Evil series. We've played a lot of indie made games, which are just kind of things that, like small creators have made, yeah, things like that. Okay,

Scott Benner 28:48
Minecraft. Have you ever had it crash on you and not save

Brady 28:52
in the old days? Yes, when there was no auto saving? Yeah,

Scott Benner 28:57
my son had a situation where, like, something happened with his Playstation, and he just, it just erased this, this whole thing.

Brady 29:03
Oh, so that has happened once. Don't play Playstation when it's storming, because if, if lightning hits and you lose your power, Minecraft is one of those games you just where it's gone, it will just delete the save data entirely.

Scott Benner 29:18
Yeah, he was like, it was an existential crisis. I take your point about the completion part, like, he liked the working on it part. Like, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, the thinking. I think it's a mind exercise thing, because my son's not like a person who's like, lost in his room playing games, right? He plays two games. But I think there's something about the thinking and the planning that he really likes about Minecraft, and you can see it work in his real life and in his, like, professional life and everything. Like, I was looking at code he was writing the other day, and I just, I mean, he was explaining it to me, and my brain was like, I don't know what I'm looking at. Like, I don't understand how he's keeping this all straight in his

Brady 29:57
head. I wish I could get in. The code. Yeah, it's

Scott Benner 30:01
really something, man. Like, he's sitting in front of three monitors. He has a monitor going, like, portrait, so that the code, like, can, like, stream down this, you know, yeah, I've seen those things before, like, a 33 inch monitor and a portrait in portrait mode, just full of code. And he's explaining to me how this part, you know, feeds this part, and how this and, like, you know, they're going to verify it, and they're doing all this stuff, and he's working for this company, and, you know, and all I could think was, like, how are you keeping this straight in your head? But then I really thought about it, I was like, you know, it's the same way as, like, when he was 12 years old, and he'd be like, you know, here's my minecraft board, and he's, you know, he asked us to stop and, like, show it to us sometimes. And, I mean, it goes on seemingly forever, and he knows where everything is, yeah. It all comes together, yeah. So I think there's something incredibly valuable about it, honestly. So I mean, if your brain works that way, how was the movie? Did you like the movie?

Brady 30:53
Heavily biased in favor of it, of course, but I can acknowledge that it was an objectively horrible movie.

Scott Benner 31:00
I don't know. I was just wondering, like I was dying to know what somebody who likes Minecraft

Brady 31:05
thought of the movie. The movie was amazing to me. I loved the memes associated with the I went to see it twice, once and then once again in 3d Yeah. Was a little different. Not worth not going to see it, though.

Scott Benner 31:19
Not worth seeing it a second time. Okay, so you'll head off to college. You're gonna, you know, start on a business track. What we're really talking about here is, like, it's gonna be your first time away from home. Yeah, it's gonna be your first time making sure you're eating. You're about to learn, Brady, that the quality of food at college is, yeah, I'm really excited. It's going to affect your blood sugar. So you're gonna have to learn how to be more aggressive with your blood sugar. You might have more lows. You know, you have to make a decision about, are you going to tell roommates about diabetes? How much you're going to tell them? You're going to ask them to understand glucagon? Like, have you, like, thought through all that? Like, where are you on that? Yeah,

Brady 31:54
I've, I've thought of that. Fortunately, I do have a kitchen not far from me. I'm Dorman on the second floor, and the building's kitchen is also happens to be on the second floor. So I've been learning how to make things like eggs and stuff. And then for the glucagon thing, I actually recently got like a nasal spray, which works similarly to a glucagon the vaccine, yeah, that, yeah. And then with the insulin thing, I've been in talks with my doctor about an even more rapid acting insulin. Let me see what it's called Metformin. Wait, you're taking Metformin? No, not yet, but we've been talking about doing that. It's just,

Scott Benner 32:35
do you have insulin resistance? I think so. How much insulin are you using a day between

Brady 32:42
like 75 to 90 units. Do you have any weight issues? No, no, I'm you're lean. Weight, healthy, okay, I'm six foot, almost six

Scott Benner 32:55
foot one. Have they talked about trying a GLP medication for you? GLP medication, yeah, like a low dose GLP might help with your insulin if you have All right, ready, ready? If you have insulin resistance. So if you have so we know you have type one diabetes, but if you didn't have type one diabetes, would you have insulin resistance? Still? Would you be pre diabetic type two for example, if that's the case, the GLP meds that are made for, you know, initially were made for type twos, like ozempic, like, you know, you probably hear people joking about it all the time, right? Manjaro, those things, yeah, some people with type one who also have insulin resistance use a significantly less amount of insulin when they're also using a GLP. Now here's the thing, they're going to quell your appetite, which is not exactly a thing you're looking for. Probably. I see a lot of people, my daughter being one of them, who micro doses it so doesn't take the full dose, but takes enough to keep the resistance down without it impacting your hunger too greatly. If they're talking about giving you Metformin. Metformin is gonna try to do the same thing. It just might not be as successful as a GLP would be. So it's worth talking to a doctor about, and I have episodes about it. You could listen to with doctors who talk about the glps. I can even tell you the episode numbers, but I mean, it's not a bad idea to look into a way to get your resistance down, because if you're using, I mean, if you're already using 90 units a day, and then you're gonna head off to school and the food's gonna be crap, and then you're probably gonna need more insulin again. The truth is, is that the more you use, the more reasonable it is to consider that you might end up with a low later from having all that insulin on board.

Brady 34:42
Yeah, that's, that's what happens. There's actually, like, a few things that insulin does with me at least, such as when I do go high, like, let's just say, 300 They'll stay at 300 for like three four hours before the insulin that I gave myself when I was still 250 actually starts kicking and goes down. Yeah, and I don't think it's supposed to be that long for insulin to start acting. So

Scott Benner 35:15
listen, you said that you just recently listened. You were telling me before we started you listen to the small sip series. Your mom, yeah, forced it on you. I imagine. Is that about what happened? Did she say, Hey, listen to these. Yeah, it's okay. Did you find them like insightful or valuable at all? Or did you

Brady 35:33
I did find them insightful and valuable, your tug of war thing, I feel like I focused on that a lot. It makes sense completely. I can see why. I think you said there was like a woman that you explained

Scott Benner 35:45
to, yeah, young girl, young mom over the phone. We were just talking on the phone, and we talked about it in the end, Brady, what you're going to learn is, as you move forward, is that this whole game is timing an amount that you know. It's all about putting the insulin in the right place, at the right time, at the at the right amount. So you'll learn that as you go. You'll figure it out with smaller meals, and then adapt what you learn to bigger and bigger ideas. But I mean going right from where you are now to school, it might be a mess. You know what I mean? I think you're very smart to take this time right now and really dig into understanding how the insulin works for you, especially because once you're gone, you're going to be gone like you and your mom can talk and text and everything, and that's going to be great, but it's a big enough shift going off to college. We want to try to limit the amount of time you have to put into diabetes, because there's, you know, you're going to be trying to make friends, you're going to be trying to go to class and learning how to, like, get your stuff done and feed yourself and wash yourself. Like, you know you said earlier, like, oh, there'll be a kitchen nearby. But I don't know if you've ever heard the mike tyson quote, everyone has a plan till they get punched in the face.

Brady 36:53
Oh, yeah,

Scott Benner 36:55
yeah, yeah. He said it like this, everybody has a plan until they get he has different voice than me, but he's right. You know, like, you go into something thinking, like, I know what I'm gonna do, and then the first time somebody pops you in the nose, you sometimes you lose track of what you're gonna do. You see that happen with college aged kids a lot like, oh, there's a kitchen. I'll cook for myself. And six months later, you're just eating Ho Hos between your fingers. And, like, that's it. This is food. I'm good. You don't want to get into that position where you're overwhelmed. Because the things you're going to give away first are are important, more important to you, maybe, than other people. You're going to give away having good meals. You're going to give away pre bolusing. Like, you know, I mean, like when you're trying to make space in your brain, you're going to prioritize things, and if you don't prioritize food and diabetes at the top, then that's going to tumble on you, and then you're going to get it's going to come back around the backside and kick you in the twice. I'd like to see you be able to, like, really understand what you're doing before you go now, how long has your mom been telling you, hey, you need to know how to do this because you're going away for college and you resisted and or was your mom trying to hold on to some control, and maybe she didn't transition you quickly enough. What do you think is happening?

Brady 38:09
It's a good question. I think an aspect of it was, when I was younger, all of the doctors I had were like, saying, like, yeah, it's okay to hover around 200 and I think that mentality stuck with me in a sense, yeah, and like, it doesn't scare me that I'm 200 when it really should, well,

Scott Benner 38:28
you should, at least want you make you want it to be lower. Yeah, I don't need you to be scared. But like, you should recognize it as like, this is not optimal. We should adjust this. Yeah, for sure. So what I was getting at earlier is, I mean, sometimes parents say stuff like, you know, I want them to do it. But it's also it's hard to give away, like, connection and control when you're a parent, too. I can see how raising a high school kid, you could say in 10th grade, like, oh, they should know by now, but there's time 11th grade, there's time, there's time, you know. Like, well, now it's getting so close, he doesn't really know what he's doing yet. No time left. Yeah, there's no time left. I'll just stay involved and, like, you know, like, I'll help. And not to say your mom did that, or not, like, I'm just saying, like, it's a possibility, and there's also a possibility that you're in the same boat where you're, like, I don't really want to do this all by myself. So, like, we can put it off a little longer, but now you're,

Brady 39:17
I mean, it's June, right? Like, yeah, it's June 3. Yeah,

Scott Benner 39:22
it's here. You know what I mean? This is what Mike Tyson was talking about. So like, you know, you're gonna get a plan that hopefully resists the punch in the nose as much as possible. I think if the small sip series made sense to you, you should go dig into the pro tips and listen through that one. It's

Brady 39:39
your little advert at the end of each of the episodes. It's like, if you think you can, I'm trying made sense to you, Brady,

Scott Benner 39:46
I'm trying to help you. Like, it'll dig in a little more, and it'll give you a chance to and then you just kind of go out in the world and try it, man. You just gotta get an idea and give it a shot. See what happens. Take your data in. This is, you know, I Bolus here. This happen next time. I'll do it a little sooner, a little later, maybe a little more, a little less, and then just keep having those experiences. And I'm telling you, if you continue to have those experiences, watch your results and adjust. One day, it'll just work. And I'm not even kidding, one day you'll just over, you know, overwhelmingly, make good decisions in situations, and you'll have outcomes that you're generally looking for. And when they don't go the way that you want, you'll also know the steps to take to adjust them and get back on track without getting low. Yeah, what you're looking for, you know what I mean? I get it, yeah. And listen, you're young, and you don't feel young. That's the great thing about being young is that this is the oldest you've ever been. This is the smartest you've ever been. And you feel it, man. You're like, I'm doing great, but you'll keep learning. You'll look back on this time at some point and think, like, Wow, I can't believe I thought I was ready to go to college, but it'll work out.

Brady 40:54
That's my like, hope and mentality. I feel like I have been experimenting over the last year, trying to see what works. And obviously I haven't found it yet.

Scott Benner 41:07
You will, though. I you just need to eventually, it's just tools, man. It's tools and experience. You need to know what to do. You need to know why you're doing it, and then you need to do it enough times that it makes sense to you. That's it. It's really not

Brady 41:19
one of those tools. Actually, I mentioned earlier that I'm like, a heavy sleeper. I got this thing called the sugar pixel that has woken me up successfully.

Scott Benner 41:30
Yeah. Well, I'll tell you a secret about my daughter, heavy sleeper, to say the least. And it was the biggest concern we had when she left for college, because my daughter didn't go 3040, minutes away. She went 13 hours by car away. Dane, you know, you left you there the first night. I was like, Well, I guess she'll probably be dead in a week. Yeah, she just told us one day she goes, No, I just wake up. And she goes, I don't know now that I know it's on me, I just wake up.

Brady 41:54
That's another aspect, I think, in the back of my mind. For years now I've always known, like, I have this support system. And while I don't consciously want to, like, think that like, I don't know I like, subconsciously know that, like, there is a support system, yeah, because my brain is like,

Scott Benner 42:16
the comfort makes you soft. The comfort that your mom will handle it makes you a little soft, makes you go, Okay, well, I'll let her do it. Then you don't have it's not a conscious thought. You're not like, Oh, screw her. She can do it. I'm not getting up. I take your point, and that goes away. And you're like, Well, I guess I'm either gonna, like, you know, have a seizure in my bed, or I'm gonna do this myself.

Brady 42:33
So back in ninth grade, and this was years ago, I had a I was in robotics. We went to an international competition in Texas for a full week. During that week, I managed my own diabetes much better than on my own when I didn't have like that comfortable betting, yeah, set for me in case something did happen.

Scott Benner 42:57
It makes sense to me. It makes sense to me that that the responsibility like you rose to the challenge the situation required more of you, and you gave it more

Brady 43:04
a sort of like adrenaline or, I guess, pure survival instinct.

Scott Benner 43:09
I would guess you just, you just, you're like, Oh, well, this is it. I gotta take care of it myself. Or I'm, I'm screwed. First of all, you already have decent tools, that small sip series, man, like, I'm not gonna lie to you, like, that's not just a thrown together thing that's curated, like those are small ideas that are really big ideas pulled out of years of podcasts by hundreds of listeners.

Brady 43:29
I got a sense of that, especially when you had, I guess the doctor speak with you, or like the nurse, I forget her name, but yeah, I could tell that it was like so many things put together a

Scott Benner 43:41
lot of conversations that got distilled down into ideas. Then we got to watch people in the community use those ideas for years, watched what worked, what, you know, what didn't work for people, and then, you know, go back to them again and say, like that. That list started by me asking people just like, tell me a phrase from the podcast that's been, like, transformative for you, and we pulled together that entire list. And, like, I don't know if I said it in there or not, but like, if something's on that list, it's not like one person said, you said, blah, blah, blah. It really helped me. 50, 100 200 people said that was really valuable for me. You know, we pulled together the ideas that large amounts of people agreed were really valuable, but you want to dig into them a little more and find out what about them is. So it's going to be trial by fire. You're going to go to school and you're going to, you know, you're going to do it, but if I was you, I'd keep doing what you're doing, like I talked to your mom right now about cutting her out right now and almost acting like you're away at school just to see how it goes because you don't want to figure out, you know what I mean, like, you don't want to get in there. Yeah, you don't want to figure out when it's too late. What will you tell roommates? Like, have you met your roommates yet?

Brady 44:51
I actually have my own private room and bathroom, no fancy so what I'll be doing, most likely, is when I get there. During, like, the move in day I'll leave my leave my door open, and then, you know, talk to people who are, like, nearby me, and then I kind of guess go from there. Yeah,

Scott Benner 45:10
you've thought about it, I imagine. But it's a tough thing to meet a brand new person and be like, Hey, would you like to learn how to squirt this in my nose in case I have a seizure? Yeah, because they're gonna go, No, man, I don't want to know that, especially guys might be tougher than you might find like a sweet girl who might help you. You know they mean,

Brady 45:27
I actually so this year, I was the only boy in an old girl class. There was like six girls, and the teacher was also a female, and that was funny, and they all knew me from previous years, and they all knew I was a diabetic and stuff. And, like, there was a kind of support system there. Yeah.

Scott Benner 45:48
Now you, you'll, you'll definitely, uh, you'll find people Hey. Episode 1378 is called heading to college with type one low blood glucose incidence. It's a three part series on going to college, and it's me and this person who her name's Andrea, right? And she's worked at colleges, helping kids with accommodations. She's also a type one. She's also worked in the past that, you know, organizations that solely help kids with type one at college. So look for those episodes. She can talk you through some of it. It's really good. And I'm going to email you the GLP list. In case you want to listen to it. I'll email you the pro tip list too, so you can, can take a look if you're interested. But I You can do it like I've been talking to you, yeah, you know, 45 minutes now, like you're easily smart enough and you're invested. It's just a matter of, like, making a decision that, like, you're going to prioritize it and then try to be ahead of it. And I'll tell you right now, man, like, I don't know a way to say it, that it'll be like, flashy, like a T shirt slogan and stick in your head. But life is about preparation for tomorrow. Like, if you're focused on prepping for tomorrow, today goes well. But if you run over there going like, oh my god, I'm here at school, there's people. I'm overwhelmed. I'm taking classes like, Wait, do you see all the things that hit you in the first 24 hours that you didn't think of? Yeah, I can see that. Just getting food for yourself, trying to meet people, wait till the first time is you're woken up by a bunch of drunk, high kids running around and you're irritated by them. That's going to be a problem in my daughter's first number of months at school, she called me one night and she's like, my roommates came home and they're all drunk and they're vomiting everywhere, and I'm trying to take care of them. And then she said something like, it made me realize she felt responsible for their safety. That's actually insane, yeah, and not a thing that she left school thinking was gonna happen to her. She didn't realize she was going to be the person in that scenario who would feel like guilt that they weren't able to handle themselves and that it was like, she's like, well, if they can't take care of themselves, and I'm here and I can now, it's on me. That's stressful. So those are the things you're not gonna be able to plan for. Maybe they won't happen to you. Exactly that something else might happen. You know, you have no idea. You might start dating a girl and she might break your heart, you know, like that, that's true, yeah? Like, any of this, I've dated before, you haven't actually, no, why not? Well, I don't know. I just haven't really felt the need to, yeah, I guess. Like, I've had the same friends since, like, middle school, and we've always done everything together. And, like, even in high school,

Brady 48:19
I met new people that girls and boys, I just

Scott Benner 48:25
haven't had the interest. Brady, I'm worried about your generation. You're not out there like trying to find a girlfriend currently. No, no, you think girls are really pretty though, and

Brady 48:34
you're Oh, yes, okay. I do think there's pretty people and and

Scott Benner 48:40
there's girls out there, you're interested in that way. You just don't make the move. It's

Brady 48:44
less being interested in more, in the sense of, like, I don't want that on my plate as

Scott Benner 48:51
well. I don't understand. I'm old. You understand much older than you. But at your age, I thought of almost

Brady 48:59
nothing else. Yeah, yeah. I think of my studies, friends that I have, the family that I have diabetes, work, and then, like, Lego and games,

Scott Benner 49:10
yeah, no, no. I thought about pretty girls. That was it. And then the rest of it, if it fit, was fine, but also we had nothing to do. Like, you know, I mean, if, I'm putting myself at your age 18, that makes it. Hold on, how old was? What year was it? When I was 18, it's just gonna freak you out. It was 89 you're fine. Yeah, I think was 89 I was 18. And you know, to say that, you know, there was nothing to do, is a there just wasn't a lot to do.

Brady 49:40
Yeah, I guess that makes sense, especially with, like, the Gen Z and then I guess the supposed Gen Alpha generation.

Scott Benner 49:48
I don't track any of that. I don't know what Gen I am. I don't know what Gen you are. I couldn't possibly care less. I'm saying there were no computers, no cell phones there, you know, stuff that came on television at eight o'clock at night. That was it like you didn't have. I mean, listen, I. With you now, I'm hip Brady. Like, I watch Youtube every day. Like, I find something that I'm interested in and listen to 10 minutes of something or a half an hour of something every day. I while I'm making the podcast, if I'm not recording, I am listening to somebody talk about something completely different on another screen. Like, and I'm sure you are too, right? Like, we've all, like, changed, like, as far as that goes, Yeah, people watch television while they're doing something else.

Brady 50:26
I am the same way. I'll watch, I'll pull up a YouTube video while, while

Scott Benner 50:30
something's on TV, which is, by the way, stupid Brady, but, but, like, that's how the world works, although I will say, lately I got that mob land on paramount, plus mob land. I sit and watch that very closely, as Tom Hardy is murdering people. Very good show.

Brady 50:44
I've been a very big Walking Dead enthusiast myself.

Scott Benner 50:48
Walking Dead is awesome. The first season is nearly perfect. It is, yeah, yeah. But now kids, like, don't even do that, like, they'll put it on in the background and do something else at the same time.

Brady 50:59
You see, when I'm, like, engaged in the show. I'll watch the show. Good.

Scott Benner 51:02
That's I'm happy for. This is how it should go. But my point is, is that back in my life, there was nothing to do, like, so you got up in the morning, you ate, and then you weren't like, Oh, I wonder what of these 9 million things I could do that will be exciting. There was nothing to do. So I was just like, let us identify attractive girls and keep asking them out until one of them says, yes,

Brady 51:23
yeah, and you can only play Monopoly so many times until

Scott Benner 51:28
True enough is that you're exactly right. There's nothing to do. There was MTV. Like, you could sit and watch music videos over and over again, but that was pretty much that most of us didn't have a car. Like, do you have a car? Can you drive around if you need

Brady 51:42
to? I actually got a car like, six months ago.

Scott Benner 51:46
See, you have, you have access to being mobile. If you need to reach people, your friends, you can reach them in an instant. I was just telling somebody the other day, we we'd walk for 45 minutes to get to somebody's house to find out they're not

Brady 51:58
there. I would do that when I was when I was younger, maybe not finding them that they're not there, but I would walk, like, a good hour to places.

Scott Benner 52:06
It's funny because, like, when you think of, like, the direction of your life, like, what's your goal? Like, to get a job or to make money, or, like, what do you think about when you think about the next 10 years? For

Brady 52:16
the longest time, I've said college, but I can't even say that anymore, can I? Well, I've done the math. I need to make about $110,000 a year to fully sustain myself, coming into, like, the 2030s

Scott Benner 52:30
and that includes $600 Legos once in a while.

Brady 52:34
Yeah, that includes the Lego that includes the medical bills of diabetes and dental and general. And how

Scott Benner 52:42
reasonable is that to make $110,000 with the degree you're looking at? Do you even know

Brady 52:47
it's reasonable if you could actually get a job that utilizes your degree? Because I've also seen that less and less people are actually going with a job that their degree is used in. Yeah,

Scott Benner 52:59
that happens a lot, man. So I A lot of times you'll see that people will, you know, start in one direction end in another, or that the thing you learn, just, you know, makes you available to get a job, and then you grow in that job or move to another one. You're freaking me out, though. Like my first job out of high school, I worked there part time. In high school, I made $4.50 an hour. Wow, yes, they very generously moved me up to $5 an hour when I started full time. So in a week, working 40 hours a week, I made $200 that times 52 would be $10,400 and then there were taxes taken out of that, in insurance. So I worked all year for about like, seven grand, maybe, is that right? That's hard to wrap your head around,

Brady 53:46
right? Yeah, I I've been working for a couple years now as a cashier at like, a family owned grocery store, yeah? Or, I guess, like specialty market. I first made 12 when I started, and then they bought me the 1350 after my first year. And then, because it's be about another month to go into my second year, but I'll be going to college, which means I won't be seeing much in my raise. Anyways,

Scott Benner 54:10
I haven't never done that math before. Like, I know I didn't make any money, but I didn't realize it was like $10,000

Brady 54:17
a year, Jesus, God with my school, I'm actually making about that much as well, personally. So you're making 1000s.

Scott Benner 54:24
Okay, so I'm not trying to make you feel good, but it sounds like you're going to the school you're going to for some somewhat for financial reasons. Were there other schools you were accepted to you would have preferred to go to that you couldn't afford to go

Brady 54:35
to? I would say so. So there's this private college called it was called Rollins College, and it was a beautiful campus, small class sizes, like 2030, across every class, and it was in Orlando where I wanted to go. So of course, I could work at that Lego store and get the 50% off. I hear what you're saying, but, but that that ended up being like 40,000 a year. Okay? Yeah. And because I'm only 17, I couldn't take out, like, loans or anything. My mom has been helping with my college process, and my dad finances, at least. And she looked at the loans with the help of my dad, like, picking out the loans, yeah, and with interest, those loans would end up being like, $400,000

Scott Benner 55:21
Yeah, after the end, what's the cost of where you ended up going?

Brady 55:24
FGCU, and that's about five grands a year that I'm gonna have to pay for, yeah?

Scott Benner 55:31
So 20,000 instead of 400,000 Yeah, yeah. Well, that makes a lot more sense,

Brady 55:37
because it's a public college, and with my high school education, I was able to get a scholarship, which covers full tuition. Good for you. My mom and dad are paying. They said they would pay for my dorm. That's nice. And my grandparents are setting me up with money for food, which means it leaves me to about 5000 a year that I have to pay for that's lovely,

Scott Benner 56:06
that everybody's going to help you like that, and you're not going to come out in crazy debt that you can never get on top of. That's a big deal, man. Well, listen, can I give you a piece of advice? Don't get a credit card. Okay, I is it too? Have you already gotten one? No, I don't have a credit card. Okay?

Brady 56:23
I've been told different things about credit cards, like you want one to build a credit score, but don't use it frequently, okay? And then at the same time you don't want one, because then you'll fall into the trap if you want to get a credit card

Scott Benner 56:37
with a $500 limit and buy something that you were going to buy anyway, and then pay it off at the end of the month before you pay month before you pay interest on it. That's fine with me, but, yeah, you can't get caught in that trap where you're like, oh, I need a sofa and I can't afford it, so I'll do that. Yeah? Or, trust me, it's never anything fun Brady, it's never a rocket ride. It's never c3 po Lego. It's always a sofa.

Brady 57:01
I was, I was hoping for, for that. C, 3p. O,

Scott Benner 57:04
yeah, it's not that. It's always going to be a sofa. It's going to be a sofa. It's going to be, I need shoes. It's going to be, I can't afford to eat this week. And then, you know, you're going to look up in five years and realize you have the credit card company $40,000 and that's a 27% interest and you're never

Brady 57:19
going to pay that off. My grandma came down. My grandma and grandpa came down from Massachusetts for my graduation. They offered to get socks for me, and I took them on their offer, damn, right? You

Scott Benner 57:29
did I take some free socks right now, if anybody wanted to send them over, I finally found socks I like, and they're not expensive. I'd be happy to take some freebies from you right now. You know what a t shirt cost? About $30 yeah, see what I'm saying. It's all ridiculous, my friend, it's all ridiculous. The chocolate chips I make chocolate chip cookies with, they took four ounces out of the bag, and they put the price up $1 saying That's right. Everywhere along the world there's going to be that, there's going to be going on. So we need you go to school, learn something awesome, figure out how to take care of yourself. Meet a girl, it smells nice. That's interesting. Yeah, you want to make the smell. You want to make sure they smell nice to you. It's very important. And vice versa. You don't think this is important the olfactory

Brady 58:13
I think I smell reasonable. I don't smell bad, although I don't like I don't take the measures to actively, like, smell nice, like I'm not using cologne. That's

Scott Benner 58:24
fine. I don't mean like that. I mean like, a natural way people. You just want to make sure you jive with them, I guess, as I'm saying, Oh yeah, I don't want you to run around sniffing people.

Brady 58:33
No, that'd be weird, damn, right. It would be

Scott Benner 58:37
Hi, I'm Brady. Okay. I'm just gonna go, yeah. So I am super interested in this. I just had a an interview recently with a guy in his 20s, and the same thing. I'm like, you dating? He goes, nah. I'm like, What are you guys doing? What about another person would add value to your life? Like you said, like, I have friends and I don't, like, I haven't really thought about that, but, like, what is it that you think another, like a mate,

Brady 59:02
would bring to you? Well, obviously, the love and compassion, I think hearing couples say, like, Yeah, I'll do I'll do this for you. Like, having a support, in a sense, I think just the support of like, having someone by your side, okay, is what a partner? Yeah, pretty, pretty much. If that's a definition of a partner,

Scott Benner 59:24
would you want to be that for somebody else too? Or does that not occur to you?

Brady 59:28
I don't think that in the traditional sense of a partner, I don't think I'd be ready for that when I haven't fully figured out my own self yet.

Scott Benner 59:37
Okay, so you think that you might not be a good partner for somebody else, but you'd need to get to another point where you would have the space to do that for

Brady 59:45
somebody else. Yes, interesting. Okay, what about

Scott Benner 59:50
the Fred, did you mind me asking, like, What about like, the sex part? Are you not like, interested in that part? If I see boobs, they're boobs pretty. I agree with you. They're wonderful. That part, you. Like, you look at girls and you think, like, oh, I would like to, like, be more intimate with people, but I'm not ready to be like a partner to somebody. I think that seems fair, by the way. Yeah, you think girls probably feel the same way, right? I would think so hopefully, hopefully Britney, like, this is my only chance. If they don't feel that way, what am I gonna do? Like, you know, my daughter has a lot of friends, and I think probably people are people, and they they feel the same way, like, you know, like I, I'm not looking to be responsible for another person, but I would like to have some fun and have some connection, you know, with somebody who I get along with. Yeah, I think that'll happen, don't

Brady 1:00:33
you? I think so too. And what's crazy is that I've been like a best friend to a girl since like, sixth grade and all throughout high school, other girls have said, Oh, you should, you should date her. And I'm like, No, but we're just, we're just friends, like we we enjoy you think she would be no, I don't think so. No, no, not at all. You think she doesn't like you that way? No, we make for amazing friends. Like, just, just weird antics, weird antics, doing high jumping or fixing a truck.

Scott Benner 1:01:07
Well, you have all those interests together. Is she attractive to you?

Brady 1:01:12
I think anyone can look attractive as just having the control to act on that or not act on it.

Scott Benner 1:01:18
So if you like her, then she's attractive, I guess. Yeah. I mean, listen, I don't really have a type. Like, I think that how I feel about you, like, emotionally is, is what makes you attractive. Physically, if you're just meeting somebody in public and you don't know them, then you kind of, you know, you use the basic checklist. But like, once you know somebody, I think, I think people are attractive and like, tons of different ways. And is

Brady 1:01:41
she going to college? Um, yes, she's. She's actually going to an all girls school in Georgia.

Scott Benner 1:01:49
Oh my gosh, you're not gonna be able to get to her there. They're gonna have a fence up. Yeah,

Brady 1:01:53
she's already said she's gonna come down to Florida, like during breaks and stuff, to say hi to her family and, of course, friends back at home, because I'll be staying

Scott Benner 1:02:01
local. I don't know, man, maybe she likes you. You never asked. You're not interested to know. No, no, nothing has ever happened and brushed a hand like by, nothing like that. I mean, she's offering to come see you right at college. Yeah, are you offering to go see her?

Brady 1:02:18
I mean, I said I would, yeah, and then, and then she directly said, Well, I don't know how that's gonna work, because they don't let boys in my school. Yeah. And then, like, there'd be no real place to, like, stay unless I went to, like, an actual hotel. Like, if she came down here, she obviously would have her parents to

Scott Benner 1:02:37
go to. Okay, all right. All right. Is there anything that we have not talked about that we should have Brady.

Brady 1:02:43
There is one thing go ahead that has just always been a thing with me, and that's on a pump, whatever pump, the insulin that delivers from the pump isn't effective for like, the first five hours,

Scott Benner 1:03:00
new sites don't seem as effective as established sites, right? Yeah. I think there's something to do with the the kind of, like trauma at the at the injection site. So, like, there's, yeah, like the boom, the needle go. What pump you wearing? Currently, the Omnipod, five. Okay. So then the needle goes in pop. Pop leaves the cannula behind. Now there's inflammation. Body's probably sending white blood cells there, because there's seems like there's a foreign body inside of you. Usually what people do is just kind of Bolus, a little heavier at pump changes.

Brady 1:03:35
That's what I try to do as well. I usually sell like a temp basal for like 35 40% for the first five hours afterward.

Scott Benner 1:03:42
I like that. I like whatever works for you there. I've seen people do a little like, a Bolus from the old pod. Like, if the old pod's working well, like, they'll, they'll, like, pump in some insulin from that one to cover for what's gonna happen with the new site, not maybe being as effective right away. Does that make sense? Should do that? Yeah, that's another idea that you could use. I like your temp basal idea. I would even, yeah, be more aggressive if you need to be with a temp. I've seen people put on a new pump and just Bolus right away, just to, you know, get some insulin moving through that site, any number of those tricks or collection of those should, should be valuable for you. You're gonna see that with any pump, though, it's just, it's your body, like, I mean, somebody just poked a hole in you, you know, that's true, yeah. So it's a it, there's, like, a small trauma that's gone on, and your body's, like, you know, dealing with it, it's settling down, and then it works better. I mean, that's not very technical, but that is what's happening. So, yeah, you were doing it. Try, try bolusing, like, like that, temp basal for five hours. Like, however much that is, because it's not that much, probably right. Like, what's your

Brady 1:04:51
basal rate? And throughout the day, I receive about 50 units of basal at like, two units an hour. You got

Scott Benner 1:04:57
two units going an hour. Wow. How much did you. Say you weighed you're six something, right? Six

Brady 1:05:02
foot. I'm like, I'm like, six foot one. I'm like, about 200 200 Yeah. So my current basal sets at 2.1 for the majority of the day, and then falls to two at night.

Scott Benner 1:05:19
And what's your insulin to carb ratio, one unit covers,

Brady 1:05:21
I think it's like, five carbs. And has it always been like that? It's slowly gone, yeah, slowly going up. And that's why

Scott Benner 1:05:35
is there any weight for you to lose? Like, do you think you're 10 pounds overweight? I

Brady 1:05:38
don't think. I'm not really overweight. I could maybe lose, like, I could use, I could lose a few pounds, right, if I really tried. Are you strong? Yeah? My Yes,

Scott Benner 1:05:50
yeah. Okay, so you're muscular and you're not carrying a bunch of fat.

Brady 1:05:55
Yes, my arms are developed. I have, like, giant legs. My thighs. It actually, if my thighs are so big to the fact that when I'm like walking around, it causes, like the scafing to happen, I think that's what the term is called. Do you lift? I started to this for the second semester of the school year, and I was doing like, 250 deadlift, 100 bench, yeah,

Scott Benner 1:06:23
no, you're you're okay, okay, he man. I mean, I understand why a doctor talked to you about Metformin, I'd be interested. Like, I'm gonna send you this list. You can listen to some episodes and try to see if you think a GLP works for you. But, yeah, trying a Metformin is not a bad idea at all. It might take your stomach a little time to get accustomed to it, but if you can cut down some of your insulin resistance, and, you know, find a way for your basal to be lower, your you know, your insulin to carb ratio to be lower, it's definitely going to help you when you hit that more challenging food at school, it's going to help you in general.

Brady 1:06:54
That's what I was hoping for, because, like, as I've grown like, I come from a family of a very like, large people, terms of, like, height, I guess muscle distribution, even just generally, yeah, and I've I'm eating more as I grow older, but the same, I'm also having to do higher carb ratios. So it's been like a, what, like a, like a curve, where it's just exponentially going up, in a sense, yeah,

Scott Benner 1:07:23
well, this list I'm going to send you here, besides the pro tips, so you know, talk about how to use insulin. There's another list here for the GLP medications, and there's a ton of people who've tried them, like, with varying degrees of success. There's a story here of a 15 year old girl who's like, barely uses any insulin anymore because of a GLP, down to some people who just have, like, you know, like, a 20% decrease. Now, there's other people with type one diabetes take a GLP, it won't touch them, who won't do anything for them, but they probably don't have any insulin resistance. Does that make sense? Yeah, or wait to lose, you know, maybe some of this will help you here, and you can try to, you know, go back to that doctor with the Metformin. And, I mean, I do it quickly because I'd like to see whatever you're doing. I'd like to see it be a pattern before you leave for school, because you don't want to have, you don't have to start a new thing. Like, I don't want you away at school when suddenly your insulin needs change by 30% you know what I mean, yeah, like, or, you know, or you have to remember to take a pill every day. Or, you know, like I said, a Metformin could mess with your stomach a little bit like, so you don't want to be, you know, if you're going to be poopy, Brady, you'd like to do that at home in June, not at school in September. Like, I ain't no way to meet a girl. I want you out there doing your, you know, at your best, while you're enjoying your your school,

Brady 1:08:43
you know what I mean? All right, Brady,

Scott Benner 1:08:45
this was awesome. I appreciate you doing this. So your your mom make you do this.

Brady 1:08:50
She suggested it, and I was the one that said yes or no. And I said, Yes, yeah, of course. But why did she just suggest it? Do you think I think just to talk to a person like yourself who has information and knowledge about diabetes and I guess life as a whole? Yeah, did you find this interesting or valuable? It was, it's been this was valuable. Yes, it's certainly interesting to talk to like someone such as yourself. Oh, cool. I had a great knowledge and expertise. I

Scott Benner 1:09:17
appreciate it, man. I had a great time talking to you. It was awesome. I uh, you making me want to make a Lego that's for sure. I've never played Minecraft. I don't think I have the head for it. I think I'd be like, I dig one trench, and I'd be like, What the hell? And I'd be done. I don't have big picture. I don't think I could hold all that in my head at the same time without, like, there being a win at the end.

Brady 1:09:37
I mean, my family doesn't play Minecraft because they just get dizzy from playing it, like they can't handle the screens.

Scott Benner 1:09:43
Yeah, I don't think I'd be good with it. I will sit down sometimes watch my son play it because, like, I'm trying to figure out, like, what is he thinking about? Like, what's he doing, you know what? I mean, yeah, but

Brady 1:09:55
that's it. Are you athletic? Do you get out and move around? I did cross country in middle school. Mm. Hmm. And I still like running. I like biking a lot, okay? And I like volleyball, but our school didn't have a volleyball team, so

Scott Benner 1:10:07
try to stay active in college, though. Keep moving, okay? Because it'll be it'll be valuable for

Brady 1:10:11
you. I also play a VR game called Beat saber. I don't know if you've heard anyone talk about that before.

Scott Benner 1:10:17
I have not, but it sounds like you're dancing with a lightsaber in your head.

Brady 1:10:21
That's kind of exactly what it is, and that gets you moving very when you get to, like, advanced difficulties, I guess is what you could say it as you're moving around to the point where, like, your arms feel like jello when you're done and you're sweating a bucket,

Scott Benner 1:10:37
Oh, geez. All right, hey, whatever keeps you moving. All right? I think you're on your way, Brady, I think you're gonna do great. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. You got a lot of stuff figured out. The things you don't have figured out, you're thinking about. You got good motivation to go find some ladies. I think that's good too. Of all the things you said today, I felt good about that, because I'm very worried for your entire generation. You just don't feel like you guys are dating very much. I don't know it's weird,

Brady 1:11:04
it I'm sure I think it's the online trends. Yeah, no, I

Scott Benner 1:11:09
agree. It's you. Your life is fulfilling inside of a screen. You know what? I mean? Like, like I said, you certainly have more going on than I had going on when I was a kid. You know, more opportunities for things. They're just, they're solitary things. You know, we want you to be able to, like, be around some real people

Brady 1:11:25
even now, I'm not, we're not talking on, like a radio. I'm talking on my computer, and you're talking on

Scott Benner 1:11:31
I'm talking on a computer too. Don't worry. I'm sitting in front of two different computers with two different screens and a bunch of audio equipment. And, yeah, it's not lost to me. I'm actually a couple weeks from now, I'm gonna go myself and 100 listeners are going on a cruise together. I'm excited to meet people in person, and then I'm going to a diabetes conference a couple weeks after that, where I'll probably meet 1000s of people who have diabetes, actually, in Orlando.

Brady 1:11:54
So does the does the merch store fund that the merch store fund? What

Scott Benner 1:12:00
the the the cruise, no, no, no. People pay their way. And we just, we just put it together to see if we could get people interested in just wanting to meet each other. And overall, that's what it is to a bunch of people who are just like, hey, I'm gonna go on vacation and meet a lot of other people living with diabetes. I don't get to see other people living with diabetes. So it's just a nice opportunity for people to get together. But anyway, like, I'm gonna take a lot from meeting people in person. Anyway, can't touch boobs on the screen, is what I'm saying. Brady, so get out there. Okay, that's always that's true. Don't forget to always ask permission. Okay, yep, okay, all right, hold on a second.

You I'd like to thank the blood glucose meter that my daughter carries, the contour next gen blood glucose meter. Learn more and get started today at contour next.com/juicebox and don't forget, you may be paying more through your insurance right now for the meter you have, then you would pay for the contour next gen in cash. There are links in the show notes of the audio app you're listening in right now, and links at Juicebox podcast.com to contour and all of the sponsors. 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/juicebox, 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,

hey, thanks for listening all the way to the end. I really appreciate your loyalty and listenership. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The Juicebox podcast. You

Hey kids, listen up. You've made it to the end of the podcast. You must have enjoyed it. You know what else you might enjoy? The private Facebook group for the Juicebox podcast. I know you're thinking, uh, Facebook, Scott, please. But no. Beautiful group, wonderful people, a fantastic community. Juicebox podcast, type one diabetes on Facebook, of course, if you have type two, are you touched by diabetes in any way? You're absolutely welcome. It's a private group, so you'll have to answer a couple of questions before you come in. We 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 professional. Ly edited by wrong way recording, wrong wayrecording.com. You.

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