#1679 Third Eye

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After losing her pancreas and waking up diabetic, Carly shares her journey from shock to empowerment—learning to thrive, parent, and find humor while managing type 3c diabetes with fierce optimism.

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

Scott Benner 0:00
Friends, we're all back together for the next episode of The Juicebox podcast. Welcome.

Carly 0:16
My name is Carly mcelha. I've been a diabetic since August of 24 so pretty recent.

Scott Benner 0:27
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 while you're listening. Please remember that nothing you hear on the Juicebox podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise. Always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan or becoming bold with insulin.

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Carly 2:46
My name is Carly mcelha. I've been a diabetic since August of 24 so pretty recent. And

Speaker 1 2:56
yeah, a year and a month. Yeah, Carly, how old are you?

Carly 3:00
I'm 4040,

Scott Benner 3:02
and you're in the great white north. Is that correct? It is, yes, it's hard to miss. You have some so you have some great little like, beach pattern stuff that I I'm gonna enjoy so much while we're talking. Do I really? Yeah, okay, did you not know?

Carly 3:16
Well, no, but I hear you say things about people, like, when they're from Boston. That's an inflection that's, I'm not from Boston. That's my best Boston impersonation, my best book.

Scott Benner 3:29
So you're 40 years old. You were just diagnosed. Let me get a little background on you. Are you married? Do you have kids? Are you single? Are you what are you?

Carly 3:37
Yeah, I'm married, and I have two kids. My daughter's eight and my son is three, eight and

Scott Benner 3:43
three, okay, yeah, in your extended family, your mother, your father, your aunts, your uncles, your cousins, does anybody else have type one

Carly 3:49
diabetes? So my mom's cousin does. But my issue wasn't necessarily hereditary for type one diabetes. Mine was actually that I had a total pancreatectomy, so I lost my pancreas when during, like a major surgery, and then woke up a diabetic. You are what they call type 3c I am exactly no one knows what that is.

Scott Benner 4:15
I know and believe it or not, I've lost count. There's been more than a half a dozen people on telling this story over the years, over the years? Yeah. So it's interesting to hear it from a different perspective. So you actually have type one in your family, but that's not why it happened. That's interesting. How about other I'm just gonna hit real quickly in that family. Do we see celiac? Do we see thyroid? How about you? Do you have any other autoimmune issues? Not that this one is, yeah.

Carly 4:41
So it started out when I was 14. They initially tested me for celiac disease, but because they had said at that time, my villa wasn't damaged enough for them to to diagnose it as celiac, they just said I had IBS. So I grew up with IBS for my whole life. Mm. I cut out gluten and things of that nature, because Celiac disease is in my family. So that was, well, when I was 18, I was still drinking beer and eating pizza and stuff, and I wasn't supposed to, but I did so, but celiac was something that was always on the radar. And then when I was just out of university, my mom and I actually opened a gluten free bakery, and we had that for about six years until I had my daughter. And so when we had the bakery, I actually did some dabbling in diabetic baking for some of our our clients, because those inflammatory diseases are so closely related. So now I kind of get to use my diabetic baking on

Scott Benner 5:41
myself. I have to tell you that sentence you just spoke might have been the most melodic thing I've heard in weeks. I did some dabbling in diabetic baking. I was like, oh, feels like the beginning of a jingle. Okay, so you have an autoimmune issue. Maybe you were gonna get type one anyway. No, I'm just kidding. So what was the surgery that led to this?

Carly 6:03
Well, it ended up that I started to get really sick in the summer of 23 so it was like, I just, I sort of almost felt like my body was kind of shutting down. I guess technically it was in some capacity. But I was like, just inflammation and constantly ill and not feeling well, but then it started to get to the point where I could actually point to my pain to, like, one specific location in my stomach, and I'm like, it's right here. This is where it hurts. And I think that, like, my whole life I've been telling and obviously, again, like, I'm not going to use names, but I was telling my family doctor that I was having issues like this. This is kind of beyond IBS. I'm almost certain it's celiac disease. And I kept getting disregarded and disregarded, and eventually got to the point where, when I got really sick in the summer of 23 I ended up going into emerge. And then that whole process started. They didn't ultrasound thinking that it might be kidney stones, just the way that I was pointing to my stomach. And so that ultrasound initially showed some issues, but they couldn't see what it was in my pancreatic area. So then it was CT, MRI, MRCP, and then I had four ercps. Three failed, and then the last one was because they couldn't my pancreatic duct was so inflamed. Sorry, this is like, really, TMI, but I'm sure you saw this. My pancreatic duct was so inflamed they actually couldn't even get the camera in there to see anything. So by the fourth ERCP I was at a surgeon in Calgary, and he was like, this, we just, you have to go in for surgery. There's nothing. There's nothing else we can do. So based on, like, for investigation, it's time for surgery, is kind of what he said. And so I remember the appointment very vividly with my husband. We went up together to meet with my surgeon for my pre op, and he was telling me, like, this is what I think is going to happen. We're really shooting for a Whipple. We really want a Whipple, but just so you know, it's possible you're going to wake up missing organs and a diabetic, and then from there, I kind of shut down, and I don't remember a bunch of the rest of the appointment, and then it was surgery, and, yeah, woke up, and then a lot of healing, big, big healing journey from that.

Scott Benner 8:22
Probably we'll get to that part. But let me ask you, yeah. I mean, did they ever put a finger on it? Like, was it like chronic pancreatitis? Did they call it something? Yeah.

Carly 8:34
So basically, when I was able to understand what my surgeon was saying after the fact, he kind of said, I think that you've had chronic pancreatitis for so long that it completely killed your pancreas. Like he said that he's never seen a pancreas like that in a 40 year old woman ever in his career, and he's almost retiring as a surgeon. So he was like, I just don't understand how it got to this point, and neither do I really, like I got, I just kind of thought that that was normal. Like, feeling like that was just my normal, is actually what I was told by my doctor, terrible. It was really alarming to find out that it, it had gotten to that point. And then you wonder, you know, had it been caught sooner? Is it possible that something else could have been done. Or, you know, I might not be a diabetic today. I don't know, yeah, but I try not to

Scott Benner 9:25
dwell. I was gonna say, is that hard not to

Carly 9:27
think about Yeah, yeah, but I, but I really, honestly do have a, I have a really positive outlook on life. I've got my kids to fight for every day and to show that you can kind of overcome any big thing that comes your way. So I try really hard to have that mindset. But definitely there's days, especially in the beginning, I'm like much better now, but I remember breaking down once because I couldn't have popcorn at the movies.

Yeah, that was it. I was it. I was done after that one.

Scott Benner 10:00
But what movie, if you don't mind me asking, Well,

Carly 10:03
I wanted to take my daughter to the movies, so, oh, I think we're going, what the heck were we going to I can't even remember, because it was just like, but we went, and I, I had the popcorn, and then I was like, all over the charts that night, like I couldn't get my blood sugars back in check. And then the next time we wanted to go to a movie, I was like, they can't, can't popcorn. Do anything.

Scott Benner 10:29
Hey, you get the same movies everybody gets in Canada or yours, just about like ice fishing. No, they're all ice fishing, nothing else. Yeah, you just take your kids to, like, animated films about ice fishing. Speaking of Canada, do you live in one of those provinces where it's hard to get in to see a doctor or easy?

Carly 10:47
Well, right now? So actually, I, because of this whole process, I was like, I can't, I literally can't see my family doctor anymore. I was just like, so livid and over it. So I had to try to find a new family doctor, and it took a

Scott Benner 10:59
long time, yeah, I'm, I'm trying to decide, like, because I've heard stories, depending on where you live in Canada, just like anywhere else, right, that there are places where you can say, like, Hey, I'm, like, here's what's going on, meaning, like, I will see in a year, yep. And there's places where that's not the case. And a lot of times, the way it's been put to me, and again, I don't really understand the system that well, but the way it's been put to me by people who live there is that it feels like that, if it's not emergent, if it's not going to kill you, then you're back of the line. Yeah, 100%

Carly 11:29
that's actually what she had said to me initially, when I started to get in that summer, beginning of the summer, and I was like, Look, I am like, not well, like, I really would like to see a gastro. And she was like, that's gonna take like, two years. Do you really want me to put in the referral? And I was like, yes, yes, I do. Yeah. Everyone who doesn't live

Scott Benner 11:48
in Canada remember that when you're complaining about your thing, nowhere is perfect. And I've just, I've had friends who have gone through things that they suffered with for a long time needlessly because no one would see them, and it would take pre, you know, I have a comparable story before I began to use a GLP, I was anemic, and I'd have to get iron infusions. Oh, okay, right, and I don't have to get them anymore. That's neither here nor there. But a friend of mine who is a Canadian or a Canadian, you say it any way you want. I know you said Provence, and it made me laugh. Well, you know, by the way, I said pro Vince, and five seconds later you used a P, R, O, Word where you went pro, and it didn't. I was like, she doesn't. She doesn't even hear it, but whatever. So my friend also needs an iron infusion. At the same time, I had one in 10 days. It took them a year to get it for her. Oh my for and with you being anemic, yeah, suffering the whole time. Oh, that's terrible, yeah? But that's the it just, I don't know, like, I mean, I'm not, I'm not picking on candidates everywhere. But my point was to bring it up that you said, maybe if someone would have seen this sooner, I wouldn't, you know, be using insulin right now and crying about popcorn at ice fishing films, and that's what made me bring it up, because you could be right. And, you know, it's funny, I recorded twice today. You're the second one, and the first person spent a lot of time talking about lost time, about the sadness of time. Lost hers was different in that she has an answer now, and she mourns the time that was wasted and you didn't have an answer forever, and now you're mourning the time that you lost moving forward, yeah, yeah, and needlessly for in both situations, by the way, yeah, maybe for you, but I mean, if taking you taking your chore, So okay, you wake up and what's the thing? Who breaks it to you? Your husband, a doctor. How does it go? Perhaps the best gift that you can give to yourself or to a loved one is that of comfort. And this holiday season, if you use the offer code Juicebox at checkout at cozy earth.com, you won't just be getting something that's comfortable. You'll also be doing it at quite a discount. We can talk about that in just a moment. Right now, I want to tell you that I use cozy Earth towels every day when I get out of the shower, I sleep on cozy Earth sheets every night, when I get into bed. I'm recording right now in a pair of cozy Earth sweatpants. I love their joggers, their hoodies, their shirts, my wife has their pajamas. And I know you're thinking, oh yeah, Scott, well, because they sent you a bunch of it for free, they did send me some for free, but I've also bought a lot on my own. So like I said earlier, Black Friday has come early at cozy Earth, and right now you can stack my code Juicebox on top of their site wide sale giving you up to 40% off in savings. These deals are definitely not going to last. Get your shopping done now or get yourself something terrific at cozy earth.com Do not forget to use that offer code. Juicebox at checkout, you will not be sorry. This episode is brought to you by Omnipod. Would you ever buy a car? Without test driving it first. That's a big risk to take on a pretty large investment. You wouldn't do that, right? So why would you do it? When it comes to choosing an insulin pump, most pumps come with a four year lock in period through the DME channel, and you don't even get to try it first. But not Omnipod five. Omnipod five is available exclusively through the pharmacy, which means it doesn't come with a typical four year DME lock in period. Plus you can get started with a free 30 day trial to be sure it's the right choice for you or your family, my daughter has been wearing an Omnipod every day for 17 years. Are you ready to give Omnipod five a try? Request your free Starter Kit today at my link, omnipod.com/juicebox Terms and Conditions apply. Eligibility may vary. Full terms and conditions can be found at omnipod.com/juicebox find my link in the show notes of this podcast player, or at Juicebox podcast.com

Carly 15:56
well because so I didn't do well from the surgery, so I ended up in high observation, and so I woke up, and then obviously, like, there's still, like, I have all the tubes and all the things, and I'm totally whacked out. I have no idea. And I swear I heard one of the nurses say something about a Whipple. So I'm like, Whipple, yeah, that's all I just, I remember saying that. And she was like, said something, something, honey. And I was like, okay, cool. And then she was like, Okay, well, we can't, we cannot get your blood sugar stable. Like, every time we give you painkillers, you drop dramatically and fast, so we have to stop giving you painkillers. And I was like, oh, okay, so this is gonna suck. And she's like, Yeah, this is gonna suck. And I'm like, All right. And she's like, until we can stabilize your blood sugars with your find a painkiller that doesn't drop you. So I think I like, I was in high up for like, the whole evening, and then it was into the next day, and someone said something to me about insulin. And I finally clicked. And I was like, wait, wait, wait, am I a diabetic now? And she was like, yeah. And then I was like, oh, and then that, and then that, and then it was Yeah. But I thought I for the first like, while I would save the first like, at least 18 hours. I totally thought that I, I was like, Whipple, whoo.

Scott Benner 17:21
I do, but you're also high on morphine at the time. Totally, you know, everything went fine.

Carly 17:29
Really, the nurses are like, Yes, honey, whatever, Whipple. And I'm like, Yeah, Whipple, did

Scott Benner 17:35
they talk to you in that accent too? Or do you know, I guess, right. So, okay, well, that's horrifying, yeah. And so you now you realize, but what do you realize? I'm very interested in the first days, right? Because what's your actual understanding of diabetes? You didn't even go through DKA or, like, peeing a lot or something first, you were just, like, my body covers my food with insulin, yeah, go to sleep. Wake Up Now it doesn't do it

Carly 18:03
anymore. Yeah, exactly. So I think that was kind of the biggest shocker. Like, I've been listening and honestly, like, I just just quickly to say that I found you right away, like, I found the podcast, and I found the community right away, and I've been like, listening to it ever since, and it truly helped me have a better understanding of a lot of things, and then also, like, not feel so alone and isolated, but I do have, like I said, my mom's cousin is a diabetic, and she handles diabetes very differently than I do. She is older than me, but she and she was diagnosed when she was, like, eight, or something like that. She's very meticulous and calculated and a perfectionist about her diabetes, whereas I am a little bit more lacks in how I approach it, my idea and my understanding of what diabetes was was a little bit scary because of how I've seen her live. You know, family functions with her scale, weighing her food. She doesn't have a CGM, so she doesn't use a CGM. It's just a personal choice for her, so still finger pricking for all of her meals. So that was my idea of a diabetic. And so I was like, is that what diabetes needs to be for everybody, or can it be, like, a little bit different. And then that's how, when I found, like, your the community, the juice back, Juicebox community, and then, like, listening to the podcast, I was like, you will listen like it's sort of the way you approach it, like it's sort of a science experiment, like you are, and Jenny said it before, you are a Petri dish. And you just figure, you just figure it out. Every

Scott Benner 19:38
day the person in your family did, they literally show up at like, functions, family functions with a scale, with their scale, you betcha. Wow. How much does the penguin weigh when you eat it?

Carly 19:48
Apparently it's like, Ebola is about 35

Scott Benner 19:51
yeah for the beak. Mostly

Carly 19:54
it was Yeah. So it's always interesting to see, like, how she approached, approached diabetes. So

Scott Benner 20:00
prior to your your situation, how did you see her? Like, did you think weird lady? Did you think, Oh, right on, it works for her. Like, how did she appear to you? I used to hate ordering my daughter's diabetes supplies. I never had a good experience, and it was frustrating. But it hasn't been that way for a while, actually, for about three years now, because that's how long we've been using us med. US med.com/juicebox, or call 888-721-1514, US med is the number one distributor for FreeStyle Libre systems nationwide. They are the number one specialty distributor for Omnipod dash, the number one fastest growing tandem distributor nationwide, the number one rated distributor in Dexcom customer satisfaction surveys. They have served over 1 million people with diabetes since 1996 and they always provide 90 days worth of supplies and fast and free shipping. US med carries everything from insulin pumps and diabetes testing supplies to the latest CGM like the libre three and Dexcom g7 they accept Medicare nationwide and over 800 private insurers find out why us med has an A plus rating with a better business bureau at us, med.com/juicebox, or just call them at 888-721-1514, get started right now, and you'll be getting your supplies the same way we do.

Carly 21:34
So in this sense, like you said, I just, like, I have to be a little bit careful, just because, like, I know she's, I know she's gonna want to listen to this, yeah, but like, just in the sense, like I, I love her very dearly and I, but I've always seen her struggles, and I think that's sort of what stood out the most me, because she is just like, she is a lovely human being. She has this incredibly infectious laugh. So when she laughs like she just lights up a room. Everybody's laughing. She's just wonderful, yeah, but I always saw, to me, a pain in behind all of that, of like, just like approaching life every day, afraid. So she has a lot of issues with her diabetes. And I often wonder, well, I don't often wonder. I kind of, I know this, but I'm like, Just wear the CGM, man just put on the flip and CGM because, like, she's like, Yeah, I have lows like, all the time. They're severe lows, like, calling the ambulance in, like, crazy fits. Her husband's trying to hold her down. Lows. And then I was like, why don't you wear a CGM? And she was like, well, because it's going off all the time. And I'm like, this is going off all the time because you're low

Scott Benner 22:40
I am always fat, by the way. If she hears this, yeah, she is invited to come on the podcast. Okay, I would genuinely love to hear her side of like, like, because, because it occurs to me, while you're talking, is that she has a whole like, history and lifetime and experiences, and she's doing the best for herself too. Totally. I wonder what it would feel like to know how that appears from the other side. Like, I think that'd be an interesting conversation. But she also no pressure. She doesn't have to do that. That offers open. So, okay, so that's your feeling about type one diabetes,

Carly 23:13
pre, pre all finding out all of that stuff. Yeah, right, right. And

Scott Benner 23:17
now you have it. And how do you see her now

Carly 23:21
I have much more of an appreciation for what she goes through, like, you know, more sympathy and not that I didn't I'm a very empathetic person, like it's me and my mom were both like empaths to the nth

Scott Benner 23:33
degree. But may I say, Carly, I know you're a kind person, because when you got upset and tried to curse, you said, flipping Oh, did I Yes, the flipping CGM, you know, like, you were passionate, and you were like, Oh, the flipping CGM. And I was like, that's interesting. So, like, I know you're a kind person. I can tell from that you don't have to pre apologize for what you're saying. Like, I know you have empathy for people in your life. I'm interested. Like, how does it pivot for you?

Carly 23:58
To me, it was almost like, like, I understood before. I was like, Oh yeah, you have to, like, do all the things. But now I'm like, I don't know, because diabetes is so different for everybody else, and we've had really good conversations since I've become a diabetic, there's times where I just want to be like, just there's things, there's tools. Like, just utilize the tools. Like people have worked so hard to come this far for tech, for for diabetics, like, utilize it. I don't understand that component of it, but that's because I'm a tech person, like I said, like, I just switched to an iPhone so that I could get the I watch, so that all I have to do is lift up my wrist and I can see my and I can see my blood sugars

Scott Benner 24:42
in a world where that exists, you're wondering why somebody else wouldn't maybe totally try putting on a CGM. So when you said earlier that you see her care as more meticulous, and yours is not the same way. You're not saying you're not striving for low a 1c and low variability, like you're. Saying that you think the way you're getting to your end is easier than the way she's getting to her end.

Carly 25:06
I think my idea of how to live my life is but to be fair, I have two kids. She doesn't. They don't have kids. And so I think my goal is to show my daughter that, like, my son is only three, so he has no idea. He doesn't even remember me being in the hospital, sure, but for my daughter, I just want to show her that, like, you don't have to get like, super caught up in being perfect. You just have to do your best. And sometimes that means eating something and then being like, Okay, well, that didn't work. Let's figure it out, and then maybe we can do better next time. But I'm not gonna, like, freak out and then weigh it next time and then, like, write it down and make sure it's perfect next time. I'm gonna be like, hey, well, last time I Bolus, like, this ish I'm that I'm an ish person. That's the way I could say it. I do things very ish.

Scott Benner 26:03
I want to give you know, respect to people whose brains don't work like yours, but I want to keep going down this path. Here's how I think we get to my answer before I ask my question, what's your A, 1c, well,

Carly 26:14
it fluctuates. The last time I had it was 6.5 but I get really confused because, and I don't know if this is like a difference between the states and Canada. You talk about an A, 1c of like, 5.4 being like, really good. And so, oh, and I got my 6.5 I was like, Oh, man. And then, yeah, then my, my diabetic educator was like, What are you talking about? This is, this is awesome. And I was like, oh, okay, cool.

Scott Benner 26:44
No. So six, five is awesome. The reason, the reason I and, well done, congratulations. But the reason I asked, because when you're making the case for like, ish, right? And like, if you would have said, like, my one sees 11, I would say, Well, maybe stop with the ish. Maybe you ought to get yourself one of those scales and carry it around with you. Sounds like you don't know what the hell you're doing. Don't know what the hell you're doing. But if you're telling me that you're doing that kind of blend of lifestyle and diabetes, and you're having a six, five, a, 1c, outcome, I mean, do you have a lot of lows? No, not really awesome. What do you consider a spike? Like, where does your blood sugar get out really? Like, oh gosh, I got really high.

Carly 27:21
So when I first came out of the hospital, it was intense, because they said, like, type 3c are really prone to those fluctuations, especially highs. I'm not entirely sure why. That's kind of some more knowledge that I want to gain in that respect. But so I was getting, like, pretty high. I could get to like, 1617, 18. And again, this is different because I'm in Canada, like, because you say, you're always saying hundreds and stuff. And so then I actually, that's when I bust out my calculator. When I'm

Scott Benner 27:50
listening to break out your calculator you can do, there's gesintas You could do. Or you can go to my website under Support, a 1c and blood glucose calculator. And then I click on millimoles, because that's what you are. And what'd you say?

Carly 28:04
18, yeah. 18, yeah, yeah. My highest was I almost went into the hospital.

Scott Benner 28:10
And 18 is a 324, here in the Americas. Oh, okay, in the Americas, by the way, what are we like, 12 miles from each other? You sound like you're pretty close to the border,

Carly 28:19
right? Yeah, yeah. I am, yeah. I'm in Alberta. So just like, by Montana.

Scott Benner 28:24
Can I just tell people who are in the Wisconsin, Michigan area, their version of this sounds nicer than your version of it? And I don't know why, like, what? There's a harder the accents a little harder Michigan and Wisconsin than it is slightly north in Canada. There's something more melodic about it when you do it, I don't, I mean, I'm not coming down to anybody. You sound like what you sound like. But anyway, so you almost ended up in the hospital with an 18 blood sugar.

Carly 28:50
No, that 18 would be like, actually, for me, where like I would go for my highs when I was still in the beginning. I'm sorry, good, yeah, beginning, yeah. When I was still MDI, I would be my highs would sit anywhere like, you know, like, 14 to 18 ish, and then I'd be like, Oh, sucks. And I'd my husband would be like, God, are you high? And I'd be like, Mm hmm, because now he knows. So I get kind of cranky. But anyway, the time when I went well, I was in DKA, I think I just avoided the hospital. I managed it at home. But I was getting, like, higher and higher, 1820, 22 and then I was like, Okay, I hadn't done a site change yet. This was when I had just transitioned over to my pump, and I think I was on my pump for about a month, so I hadn't had to do a site change from an issue. And so I was like, what's going on? And I just was like, rage, Bolus thing in bed, just cranking insulin in and just like nothing and nothing. And so finally, I was like, Okay, wait a sec. Think logically. Stop. Think logically. And so I was like, change your site, drink some Gatorade, go for a walk. So I did all those things. And when I went to change my site, and I. Pulled the, like, the needle out, and the little sticky adhesive, I pulled it off, and insulin just started pooling out.

Scott Benner 30:09
It was collecting under your skin and not being absorbed. You think,

Carly 30:12
yeah, yeah. They fit, yeah. So there was, I think, like something, it was caught in the needle. I don't really know what happened, but I just know I didn't get any insulin. I think it was about

Unknown Speaker 30:21
12 hours. Oh, gosh,

Carly 30:23
and so, yeah, I just kept climbing, climbing, climbing. So I was surprised that, on top of all of that, being like, I pretty close to DK, if I wasn't already in it, I tracked down the paperwork that they sent home with me from the hospital for my calculations. Should this happen? Found my calculation, calculated what I was what I needed to manually inject, did that like, plowed through some g2 Gatorade, went for a walk and actually got myself down. Good for you. Yeah. I called in sick. I was sick for two days at home, but otherwise,

Scott Benner 31:01
yeah, oh my gosh, that's awesome, like that. You figured it out like that, and took all the steps. Even when you were probably cranky, you were able to

Carly 31:08
think about that very cranky.

Scott Benner 31:12
Can you tell people a little bit about it? Like, what happens when your

Carly 31:16
blood sugar gets higher? So for me, I like, I try really, really hard to not let it affect other people. I know that sounds silly, but it's just kind of the way that I am. So, especially with my kids, like so sometimes actually what I'll do my husband knows, because I just look at him and he's like, she's high, all right, whatever like or just make me a snack and get out of there, get me some sugar free chocolate. But with my kids, I just kind of will look at my daughter and I'll just be like, Dahlia, Mommy's going high right now, just a little bit irritable. Just give me a minute and like, I'll just give myself some insulin, and I'll start to come down, and everything will be all right. And she's just like, yeah, cool, okay. And then she just takes off.

Scott Benner 31:58
Okay, nice. What do they think about, I know you said your one child's a little younger, but the other one was a little older, like Mommy was sick in the hospital, surgery comes home, has this new life? What is that? Has that had impacts on them? Do you think

Carly 32:10
big time? Yeah, for sure. Because she was, like, just turned seven, kind of when everything started to go and we had to have this conversation with her, that I needed to go to Calgary and go like they couldn't do the surgery in my hometown. I had to travel for it, okay, not far, just a couple hours, but obviously I was away from home, and she had to stay back home with daddy and stuff, so she knew that this big surgery was coming, and my my actual heal time, I was supposed to be in the hospital for a month. I was supposed to be in for at least four weeks is but I pushed super, super hard and was released in 14 days, actually, 13, but she came up and saw me, and I was terrified for the day that she was coming up to see me. I still had a main line in my neck. So I had tubing in my neck, and then, like, was hooked up to, like, a gazillion things. I was really nervous for her to see me like that, because she sees me as like this, like, super human. She's always like, really put me up on a pedestal. So my main concern was her to see me like that. And she came in and we had a little cry and a little hug, and probably within 10 minutes, she was like, laying beside me with the remote the crappy hospital TV, watching cable and everything was like, kind of fine. And then I got to come home, and then I was kind of in bed for another couple of months easily. So lots of care. We had Home Care coming in. They had to help me with a lot of things, my stitches and all that kind of stuff

Scott Benner 33:41
I want to hear about that a couple of months you mentioned earlier that your recovery was slow. Was there a reason for it, or is that just expected for that procedure?

Carly 33:49
Yeah, the total pancreatectomy. So they removed from my surgery, they removed my pancreas, my gallbladder and my spleen, jeez. So the pancreas, because it was so sick, started to affect the other two organs as well. So they removed all three. And so the incision runs from my, like, high chest, my scar now runs from high chest all the way down to below my belly button. Gosh. So, I mean, it was huge, like, the surgery itself was huge, and they wanted me, like I said to be in the hospital for four weeks, and I was like, not having it.

Scott Benner 34:25
Hey, you have to take digestive enzymes now with your meals. Do, yeah, what else do you have to do? So

Carly 34:31
digestive enzymes with everything I eat, meals and snacks and my insulin, I eat really, really well. So it could have been due to the inflammation of being sick beforehand, but from surgery, I lost about 42 pounds. My gosh, so I'm like, quite lean now, and so I'm, like, constantly eating.

Scott Benner 34:53
Did you feel like you were What are you trying to tell me that you felt like your body was carrying weight because of just the general illness that you felt?

Carly 35:00
Oh yeah, I kind of, that's sort of how I feel. Like I saw this picture of myself in the summer of 23 that's like me and my kiddos and my husband, and we're just like, in the mountains, hiking and stuff. And I saw this picture of myself, and I actually don't like looking at it now, because I can see the inflammation and, like, just like, kind of like the illness in my face, yeah, and my body. And then I see pictures of myself now, and I it's funny, because I, you know, I have diabetes and I have these issues, but I feel healthier now than I think I have in a very, very long time.

Scott Benner 35:37
Going back, how far? When do you think this started to pile up on you for, like, not feeling, yeah, yeah, before you had kids, after you had them. Oh, yeah, a

Carly 35:47
decade, if not more, that I've been feeling like that. Yeah. Not Well, not this, not as sick as I was in the summer of 23 right? But, but progressively, yeah, getting kind of worse and

Scott Benner 35:58
worse. And remind me you talked about, like, overall pain that was too general to pinpoint inflammation. Did you think you were just a heavier person? Because you also said you ate really well, but you were heavier. So, like, Yeah, is that in your head too well?

Carly 36:13
I ate, I ate. Yeah, I ate well. Like, I mean, I didn't eat. I've never really eaten a lot of junk. And I think that's that goes hand in hand with being gluten free. You just, like, don't have that option. Certainly not like, 10 years ago, that's for sure. That's why we started the bakery. So I always, like, ate fairly well, but just could not lose weight. And I wasn't obese by any means. Like, I'm five four. And before this, I was like, maybe, like, 140 245 pounds. So it's not that I was like, overweight, but you could almost like, my body was just, like inflamed, like you just, there was inflammation, I think now looking back, yeah, you're

Scott Benner 36:51
saying that. Looking backwards, you just, you see yourself, and you think of that person just doesn't look well, yeah, totally. Did you think that at the time, not

Carly 36:59
as much as I yeah, not as much I was, like, just, why can't I just lose weight? Like I'm fairly fit, like I'm not going to the gym every day or anything, but I'm certainly not like, a stagnant person. I move and I I'm active and I eat, like, you know, like I said fairly well, certainly not to the extent I do now,

Scott Benner 37:18
yeah, but no, all that activity, like, you probably Captain a sled dog right team? That's like, you probably do you do all kinds of stuff, right? Like, so you're outside working. I mean, you got to climb over all that snow, and there's mountains, right, pick through, and I'm ice fishing, yeah, right. I'm saying you guys are really active. Do you actually, like, live in a place that, like, looks like New Jersey? Is that where you live? Well, I live,

Carly 37:38
well, no, I live in like, a it's like a, do you know, do you know of Calgary,

Scott Benner 37:42
Alberta? No, no. I know about the Calgary Flames.

Carly 37:45
And we're a smaller, we're a smaller, I would say we're like a smaller version of

Scott Benner 37:50
Calgary. Okay, so where I am, all right? But I mean, you are an active person recently, yeah, you got little kids you're running after and stuff like that. Yeah, yeah. They probably won't stop, right

Carly 38:00
with all and now, especially, yeah,

Scott Benner 38:02
why not? Why now, especially my three

Carly 38:05
year old is a little nut, like my daughter was always like, pretty busy, but my son is like, next level. Gotcha.

Scott Benner 38:12
I gotcha. That's awesome. I'm sorry, beyond having to take the digestive enzymes. Is there any other medications or things that you have to do now that are part of your daily care.

Carly 38:22
No, not really. Like, I, I think, because I choose to eat so well, I'm doing really, really well, okay. Like, I even, like, I had a my diabetic educator. We were talking, obviously, when I was released from hospital, far more often going from MDI to the pump, like they were floored for the pump, like, I'm part of what's called the pump clinic. So actually, my pump is covered, my insulin is covered, all that stuff's covered for me, which is amazing. I can't I can't imagine what it would be like to be a diabetic and not have coverage. But we would talk like, kind of all the time. And then moving to the pump, she was like, this is sort of unheard of, like, most people are, like, six months to a year to get a pump, and I had mine in four. So we would talk lots. And now we talk, like, we'll chat just to, like, catch up. And then she's like, how are you doing? And I'm like, good. She's like, a 1c. Is great. We'll talk to you in a couple months if you want. And I'm like,

Scott Benner 39:19
okay, cool. You just go, yeah. And then she's like, Yeah, and they're just kind of, I've never, ever said a I don't think so you don't think yeah, no, okay, we say

Carly 39:28
things like wicked awesome. So I guess maybe we are very similar to Boston.

Scott Benner 39:35
You say wicked awesome. You've, you've actually used a number of euphemisms while we were talking that I thought were funny today, I'm not gonna remember them all, but how was your direction? Like you said, you found the podcast pretty quickly, right? But what precipitated that? Why did you need to, I guess, like, what didn't exist that made you say, I have to go find somebody who understands this.

Carly 39:56
I think it was the uniqueness of my situation. Because, like you said. It wasn't like, Oh, you went into DK, you were in the hospital, then they told you, you're a diabetic. I literally, like you said, I went to sleep and I woke up a diabetic. And so I was searching for answers for people that might understand, like, nobody knows what a type 3c diabetic is. Nobody knows that, really. And that told me enough to say, like, if people don't even know what it is my doctor is telling me, just tell people you have type one, because no one else is going to know. So I was like, Well, how many other people had a total pancreatectomy? Why did they have it? So I think it was just like, I'm an answer seeker. I want to know. I want I like gaining knowledge. And so I I'm trying to think of how I found I think I just Googled, like, diabetic communities, and then stumbled across the Juicebox, and then loved all the stories. And then whoever facilitates the Facebook page, I had put my story forward, and was like, I wonder if there's anyone else. And she, like, immediately connected me with two other people.

Scott Benner 40:58
Was that Nico that did that for you? Yes, yeah, yeah. So,

Carly 41:02
and then, like, the things that Jenny says, I like, super connect with because I love, like, health and nutrition now, yeah. And so, there's just a lot of a lot of things that I connected with on a lot of levels. Well, that's awesome.

Scott Benner 41:13
I just want to say that there's a number of really lovely people who help with the Facebook group, and I can't thank them enough. They volunteer their time, and they're really, really incredibly valuable in a way that I don't think we can properly quantify.

Carly 41:29
Maybe, No, I totally get it. I like, I for a living, like, I'm admin support. I work at a university, and I'm admin support for a couple of departments, and so I understand that the work it takes kind of in the background that people don't always get to see.

Scott Benner 41:42
No, they're special people. They really are. I definitely couldn't do it by myself. Like, there was a time I used to, and then one day I was like, Oh, it got too big. Yeah, not so much. Like, I'll live here 24 hours a day if I try to do what I was doing before. And then there was, I got scared. I was like, Oh, I wonder if this will, like, find its level. You know what I mean, like, like, well, I work this out, and with those people's help, and, you know, I think we actually been talking about a lot today offline, but, you know, just sticking to the ethos of, you know, let people share their stories. Yeah, I think that's the most important part. I'm so glad it's helping you. No,

Carly 42:18
it, is it? And I've been listening to it for long enough that when you sent me the link, and I was like, Oh, it doesn't say the time zone. And then I thought to myself, well, it's got to be 11. It can't be one, because if we're two hours apart, that would put Scott at three, and Arden will be off school. And then I'm like, Oh, my God, you do because she's like, 20,

Scott Benner 42:40
you're thinking of her like she's in high school, right? Yeah, no, younger, younger than that, younger, yeah, yeah. That flips people out sometimes. The first time that happened, when the blog was first up, I used a photo of Arden at the on the like was the only real photo I ever used of her was just like the blog used to be called Arden's day. And, yeah, there's this little picture of her, like, super small, I think, in like, this yellow shirt. And people, it definitely was the yellow shirt because she had done a photo shoot for her children's hospital for their diabetes pamphlet. Okay, one of the pictures just came out really well. And I was like, Oh, I'll use that picture on the, on the on the blog. And then she got a little older, and she was like, Hey, I don't like looking like a baby on the internet. And I was like, oh, okay, cool. Like I said, but the header is kind of like, iconic. What if I could, like, and I had, like, an artist, like, just recreate it. And I was like, How is this? Like, it's not really you, it's just reminiscent of it. And she's like, Yeah, that's fine. And then that went on like that for a while. Then eventually, one day, I was like, I know that I thought of myself as a blogger, but I really make a podcast now. Like the blog's not really the same thing as it used to be. So I switched it. Basically, if you type in ardensday.com I think it just, it goes right to Juicebox podcast.com And nevertheless, like when all that changed, it changed in people's minds. Then years went by, and then Arden pops up in a photo somewhere, and people are like, whoa, wait. Yeah, that's insane, like that. She's a grown woman, in my mind. She's a two year old child in a little yellow shirt, right? And now you're showing me a picture of a 1718, 1920, year old person. Yeah? It flips people out a little bit. Yeah, that's really awesome. Can you like, nuts and bolts? Tell me what you learned that's been most valuable for you about using insulin? Like, what are day to day things that you do now using insulin? Yeah, that you took from the podcast that you're like, these are foundational for me.

Carly 44:36
There's, I can't remember which episode it was, but you were talking about how people are, like, just sort of released as adults, opposed to children, adults, more so are released from wherever, if they were in the hospital or they were whatever, and they're like, you're a diabetic. Now have fun. Goodbye, you know? And then it's like, we just have to figure. This thing out on our own, and so I think it was just the foundational knowledge. Like, I love the little the little bits. It's not called the sips. Is it called the small sips? Yeah, the small sip like that one was huge for me. I love that because it just gives you an opportunity to, kind of, like, start from those basics that you are not taught. And even if they were taught to me when I was in the hospital, I, like you said, I was so whacked out on morphine for half of it, I don't remember half of what they said anyways, yeah, so it was just building that foundational knowledge up again and to have that, and then also to be able to have those stories. And I think the biggest thing for me was it's not so much what you say, but it's how you say it. When you say, Be bold with insulin, it's not that you're saying, like, go out and like, Just give yourself a bunch of insulin and see how it goes. You're just saying, don't be afraid to try things and then build on that knowledge that you have. So I think for me, that's been the biggest thing is, like, just don't be afraid. You said, like, what's going to happen? You're going to try something, you're going to give yourself some insulin, you're going to go low, then you're going to, like, whatever, drink your juice and come back up, or you're going to go high and you're going to give yourself some insulin, as long as you're doing it in a safe, knowledgeable way, then do it so that you can figure this thing out, otherwise you're just going to continue to be scared or live in that same zone of being high all the time, being low all the time, whatever it is. So you

Scott Benner 46:29
found it empowering, yeah? Oh, that's awesome. That really makes me happy. It also makes me happy that the small sip series worked because, oh yeah. I mean, it's been out for a while now, and I've gotten good feedback about it, but I also put out a lot of content. So I think sometimes that doesn't really allow people to like share with me how they're feeling, because the podcast keeps going and they think they're keeping up. I don't, but I have gotten a lot of good feedback about it. That was really, you know, it's funny you brought that up, because that's another example of how the Facebook group helps the podcast, because the quick lineage of that is we made the Pro Tip series first, right? And a person that helps with the Facebook group, Isabelle, tells me, one day, I think there needs to be something more intermediate than the Pro Tip series, like something for beginners. And I was like, Oh, okay. She said, I find some newly diagnosed people seem overwhelmed by the pro tips. And I was like, Oh, well, we'll do a bold beginning series and get people started. And then at some point I had the idea. I was like, you know, there's enough ideas in this podcast. They're like, foundational for people, really. And what are those ideas? Because I've learned that what strikes me isn't always what strikes you. Like we just, it's important to put all the information out there and let people, like, pick and choose from a kind of a la carte and decide how to build their own, build their own diabetes care, right? Yeah, out of these ideas, like, you take the things that work for you, that makes sense to you, that speak to you, whatever. But how would I know what those are? How would I know how other people take the podcast, right? So we put out the call to everybody in the Facebook group and just ask them give me foundational moments from the podcast for you. Yeah,

Carly 48:09
I think it's not even so much for the people listening. It's who I'm also asking to listen to this content for not just myself, but just say so, for example, my mom was terrified when I was diagnosed. My mom was terrified, like, she's like, You have to live like this. She was heartbroken, like, you have to live like this now, and I hate this, and it's so terrible, like, we're very, very close. And so I told her, like, just be open. Be honest with me. Tell me your feels. You're allowed to feel them just as much as I am. And then that's what she said. I'm heartbroken for all of this, and I also feel so lost. And I was like, Okay, listen, if you want to take this, and it's funny that it's called small sips, because I said, take this in small sips. Listen to this slowly digest this material, so that you understand when I come over and I'm like, Hey, I got a Bolus whatever, or, like, I'm using terminology that scares you because you don't know it. Use this information to empower yourself, and then you will feel more confident in and maybe less nervous about me and what I'm going through.

Scott Benner 49:15
Take away some of her sadness. Maybe

Carly 49:17
Yeah, exactly like, it's just yeah, just listen to it and kind of gain that knowledge, because she's very much like me and just needing kind of a knowledge base to feel more comfortable.

Scott Benner 49:26
Are you telling me that that series not just helped you with your management, but it helped your mom to be more comfortable about what was happening to you? Yeah? Goodness, you know, I laughed off the other day when a woman emailed me and said she was going to nominate me for a Nobel Prize. But now I'm thinking, do it. I'm gonna take that. By the way. I don't think can a regular, how do you nominate somebody for a Nobel Prize? I don't think,

Carly 49:48
I don't know, can't like, I would nominate you for a Nobel Prize.

Scott Benner 49:53
You're Canadian. I don't think they'd even listen to you. How do you Yeah,

Carly 49:59
how do you. I know there's people that have gotten it that you're like, what?

Speaker 1 50:02
Really, really? Yeah, this could happen. Yeah, I think so, oh my God,

Carly 50:07
because I'm gonna say this, but again, like I'm in Canada, and so we see things differently in regards to people in power in the States right now. But didn't somebody nominate themselves for a Nobel Prize? I think

Scott Benner 50:21
you're thinking about a I think you're thinking about a Webby Award. It says here, you generally cannot directly nominate someone for a Nobel Prize, by the way. I want to just be clear, I don't think I deserve a Nobel Prize, as most are by invitation only. Instead, 1000s of qualified individuals like professors, previous laureates and members of the National assemblies are sent invitations by the Nobel committees to submit candidates for the following year's prizes. Okay, I don't feel like this is

Carly 50:49
gonna happen. Hey, listen, you gotta dream big.

Scott Benner 50:53
What she said is just, you know, just a nice compliment. I didn't really think anybody was getting nominated for anything, but as you're talking about it, I do want to take a second and say I'm really happy that that worked that way for you, and then I'm not gonna lie to you, I'm a little personally impressed, because I wish you could see how I actually make the podcast. You just

Carly 51:12
like, are you hanging out in your basement, full studio and stuff? Now

Scott Benner 51:17
it's a spare room in the house. My point more is about the way it's put together, which is just, it's me trying to sit back and absorb what I'm hearing and what I'm seeing online, and trying to imagine other ways to help people.

Carly 51:35
Yeah, and that's it. It's not necessarily what it's not how you're doing it. It's what you're doing. There's no

Scott Benner 51:42
big plan. Is what I was saying, is what I would have said. There's a whiteboard. Is a six by four whiteboard with my scribblings on it. And I stare at them until one of the scribblings makes sense to me, and then I give it a shot. So, like, here I'll give you an example, so that people can, like, timestamp this. If this ends up happening, it may not right? But if this ends up happening a year from now, you might hear me making more references that are rooted in stoicism, for example, right? Because I read a book, and then I dug a little more deeply into it, and then I started seeing that like, oh, a lot of these like, original Stoics, they have feelings like, like, I have, I have no formal education, right? Like, so I didn't know that somebody had said this hundreds, 1000s of years ago. I didn't know that this is how some of the Greek I

Carly 52:30
was just gonna say, are you

Scott Benner 52:31
talking like philosophical? Yeah. Like, like, philosophy, like I actually said to my wife last night in a moment of sadness, maybe I should have gone to college. I think I would have enjoyed getting a philosophy degree. Cool, and she's like, well, you still can. I was like, I don't know how you mean that I'm working. And I said, I'm I'm gonna just dig into it more on my own, like in my personal time, yeah, but I might have enjoyed that. Like the person I am now thinks that I would have enjoyed that. I don't know if the person I was then would have been like, what am I gonna do with this? Or if I would have been too busy thinking, how do you make a living with this? Like, please don't waste my time. It's interesting to look at messaging that is so accurate and powerful that it reverberates through not just generations, but through time, right?

Carly 53:16
Yeah. Well, that's what I do, like, so I help students figure that out because so I'm admin support for at the university. I help the Geography and Environment students currently, right now, I support Geography and Environment Women and Gender Studies. And then my very good friend, who's admin support for philosophy and anthropology, we have, like, mutual students. And so I see it all the time, these, these lovely students with great big ideas and, like, kind of an understanding of life that's just a little bit beyond, say, like my science students and whatnot. I always thought it was really cool. I've always loved philosophy and things like that, so, but I'm actually changing, well, not careers, but I just got a new job offer last week. Oh, congratulations. Are we happy about it? Because of everything that's happened to me is why I applied. So I'm actually moving over to, it's our MediCal program. Awesome.

Scott Benner 54:06
Good for you. Yeah, and it's possible that during my hot showers or quiet moments or whatever, that one day I put together, hey, there are these kind of, like, again, foundational ideas in stoicism that I think might lead people to who are struggling with chronic illness to find maybe some stability or something, and maybe I'll find a way to mix it into something. Or maybe I won't, like, I don't know, like, my point was that I don't know how. I don't really know how to quantify or qualify how the podcast gets built out right, other than to just say that it's me existing in this space, talking to all of you, and trying to wonder about things and see what happens.

Carly 54:47
So as it evolves, yeah, and as it has evolved, that's what I think is so cool. That's why it's been interesting actually, to kind of binge through it as it were, like, I know you've been doing this for so when did it start? How long have. You been

Scott Benner 55:00
January 2015, this is my 11th full year of making the podcast

Carly 55:04
nice, so in 11 years. So I've been listening to 11 years worth of content in a super condensed timeframe.

Scott Benner 55:11
I must change drastically, but I bet you don't notice it, though, right? Because, no, not really. You're growing with it. Yeah, that's interesting, isn't it? Isn't that awesome? Like, I find that fascinating. I wish we could have time to do that with everybody, yeah. Like, how cool would it be if you could spend a month or six months gathering up an understanding of a person in your life? Oh, I would love that. Wouldn't that be neat? Right? Like, if you could, if you if your mom had been making a podcast for the last decade, and then you got to sit down and listen to the whole thing.

Carly 55:45
Yeah, I would be floored. I would I would love it. They have a thing now. It's a book like, so it says on the front it says something like, I already know what you're gonna say, yeah? Like, Mom, I want to know everything about you, or whatever, yeah. And then they just spend however long, like, just writing everything, you know, like, my dad tells me stuff like, Oh, this one time when I was, like, 16, and you're like, yeah, like, then you could read it all as if it was like a novel. I think that would be so cool.

Scott Benner 56:12
Okay, moms to fill in for families. I'm gonna get one of those for my

Carly 56:17
wife. Yeah, I know. Just start writing in it now and then. Yeah, cuz I

Scott Benner 56:21
have a podcast. They, if the kids care about me, one day, they can just listen to this. I mean, it's called, is it like, I want to have your story, mom or something? Yeah, yeah. I'm gonna, I'm gonna. This is a nice gift. I'm in charge of Christmas this year again. No, no. It almost happened last year, by the way. It's not, let me just be clear, in case she ever hears this, she's never giving up control

Carly 56:42
of Christmas. No, she's not. I can guarantee you that it's

Scott Benner 56:46
just the thing she says to me when she gets frustrated because she doesn't think enough people help her with Christmas. Okay, I know what's going on, but that's not the point. The point is, I got to be ready, right? Because she's like, Well, fine, you're in charge of Christmas. I said something like, what did I say? I'm like, Well, everybody's getting $500 then we're done. Totally, yeah, you're all just gonna open up a card with cash in it, and then we're gonna go to the movies, and then you're gonna be pissed. But I can't really do that. I gotta come through.

Carly 57:12
What if you actually, like, throw down for Christmas and you get everybody, like, the perfect gift, and then she's like, Oh,

Scott Benner 57:18
you see that this has to happen Carly, because I am generally thought of as not a details person. And when I go shopping for people, like, I'm more pragmatic about gifts, yeah, I'm not as good with like, oh, somebody would love this. I'm like, Oh, they could use this, or they would enjoy this. Or, like, it's not I'm not as good with the like, I don't know, everybody wants a back scratcher. I'm not as good with the flowery part of gift giving, right, right? You know? Or when I do something, it like, everyone's like, ah, like you, son of bitch, is all you. Although I want to, I want to say this. I never said this before. I want to give my wife, her, her. What do people say now, flowers, that feels like a thing. It's gonna go away pretty quickly. But my wife, one year got me a squatty potty, no way for Christmas, and I opened it up. And part of me was just absolutely insulted. I was like, This is not a Christmas present. This is a thing you pick up on a shopping trip. She's like, you're gonna love this thing. Shut up. Blah, blah, blah. And I was like, I'm insulted. And just between you, me and everybody else listening. I love school. I think everybody should have one.

Carly 58:25
That's right. So RuPaul actually, like, who I like, adore is, like, one of their spokes people for squatty potty, yes, yeah. And so I know about them. And actually, it's really funny that you say that, because one Christmas I got my husband. It's called a something pushy, and it's like, like a bidet, basically, that you install in your toilet.

Scott Benner 58:47
Oh, she got me that one time, and I made her take it back. I don't know, but I was, may I just sound spoiled for a second? I was like, I don't want an ad on bidet. Give me a bidet or gives me nothing. Get me a bidet or nothing. I don't want to be treated like this. I don't turn into a fancy white lady often, but that was one of the places where I did it. I was like, I do not want an ad hoc bolt on piece of plumbing running across the floorboards bidet. I was like, you either get a plumber in here and get me a toilet that shoots water up my or you don't love me. And by the way, we don't have a bidet. So I think I know where that happened, where that got cut off that. I also don't know if I would want it, but I put up a pretty big I almost said, stink, but that's just such a ridiculous point. I'm not gonna do it. Yeah, I was like. I was like, I don't want some bolt on bidet. This is not okay with me.

Carly 59:43
Yeah, ours still isn't installed. That's why I'm left. Of

Scott Benner 59:46
course, not what. It's one of those things that sounds like a good idea. So you start looking at running plastic tubing across exactly, wait, I gotta tap into the water like I'm not doing that. Stop it. Listen. I. To put an end to a lot of business ideas. In the first meeting, I'd be the guy in the room that goes, no one's gonna tap into their pipe. Forget it.

Carly 1:00:08
It seemed like a good idea at the

Scott Benner 1:00:10
time. Well, yeah, not for nothing. I've talked to people who have used them, and I like, I think I'd like it. Rick, you know what I mean, but like, but not, I don't want to. I almost said half. There's so many puns coming out about this that I don't mean, nevertheless. All right, so listen, you doing okay? How you feeling? Like, what's the year later, somebody went into my body, yanked out my What did they yank out your pancreas, your gallbladder and your spleen? Yeah, I don't even know what a spleen does the gallbladder, you know? I

Carly 1:00:40
mean, I know I didn't either. Actually, it's funny, because I didn't actually know that they took those other two organs until two months later. Hey,

Scott Benner 1:00:48
you know what I would make fun of you, except Arden had her tonsils out recently, and a few weeks later, she goes, Did he take out my adenoids, too? And I went, I don't I think what I was like, I think so. And she's like, You don't know. And I'm like, you don't know. She goes, and I said, No, let me stop you. I'm like, he definitely did. And I went back to the and I realized I was I got sick the day I took her to that first appointment, and I was woozy in that appointment, and didn't realize that I got sick later that day. So I do have a bit of a of a reason for that. But nevertheless, she asked me, what did they what did they surgically remove from me? And I was like, I'm not 100% sure thing in your throat, yeah. And so we yanked out the paperwork, and I was like, there's a big, long word here that I think means both. And I said, I think this is what happened. We looked up, and sure enough, she had both taken

Carly 1:01:44
up. That's exactly what happened. Because when I said that, I had that pre op assessment, and he started talking about things, and then I sort of shut down after he said something about losing my pancreas and a diabetic, I just sort of went and I don't really remember, but apparently that's when he was kind of explaining what a total pancreatectomy is. And so then after the surgery, they needed to see me back up for like a post, post op checkup or whatever. And then they sent me the, just the write up the post op report, and I'm looking at it, and it says, you know, this normal, that normal, whatever. And they had checked my pancreas and found some tumors and things of that nature. But then it said pancreatectomy, and then spleenectomy and one other word. And I was like, whoa, whoa, whoa, what are these other two? So I phoned my surgeon, who was just lovely, and I'm like, Hey, Dr, blah, blah. And he was like, yeah, no, I took all three. And I was like, Oh, all right, awesome. Cool. Well, that would explain the incision size, but yeah, so I didn't actually find out for quite some time after, which was funny, but it just means I have to be careful about blood infections with my spleen, stuff like that. Otherwise, it's fine. Yeah, I know that's

Scott Benner 1:02:55
probably a thing that people listening are like, Oh, good. You let somebody do a surgery on you and even know what they were doing, like, but you I think it's important, by the way, important to point out for people who are listening to this, who are in charge of giving people, you know, news in a medical setting, that you were told something and you just zoned out. Yeah, I was in shock, for sure. Course, you are right. Like, somebody just told you, like, there's a chance you're gonna wake up and have type one diabetes, basically, and you're gonna need insulin, blah, blah, blah. And then they're like, Here, here's a lot of other important things you need to know. And that happens, by the way, when you tell people, like, Hey, your kid has type one now, and then you start telling them other things in the they don't hear you, yeah, totally. There's a buzzing in your head at that point,

Carly 1:03:39
yeah. And I know I've heard, like other people that you've interviewed say the same thing, and I related on, on so many levels, but it's, it's true. It's like, what I what I would say to people, is, for my most important thing is, God, that just advocate for yourself and in the medical health system, like, don't just take people's word for it. If you feel like something is wrong, push and, like, just try to get answers and just don't stop. Because I that complacency, I think, is kind of what got me to where I where I am.

Scott Benner 1:04:11
But you beat yourself up a little bit because you think you could have pushed sooner, yeah,

Carly 1:04:16
maybe, yeah. I guess that's one of the things. But I'm also working on, like, I believe in, like, making sure you have the proper supports and things of that nature. So I definitely like talk to a therapist about, like, it's like a medical health, medical trauma therapist, and she's fantastic. And so she's really helping me and giving me some big tools about, like, letting go of putting that back on myself.

Scott Benner 1:04:39
I was hoping you're I actually was gonna be my next question. I had a dumb joke. I was working up about a polar bear who was gonna get to that, but I just, you just said it so I know there are no polar bears in Canada. People who are Canadian have come on and told me that also you don't have penguins. I don't know if you

Carly 1:04:56
know that or not. Oh, well, we do. They're just at the zoo. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:04:58
that's what you had. Guys. End up saying, but I'm saying like, they don't natively walk around there. I thought for sure they did at one point and not, not the case. But some people do have sled dogs. That's not a that's not a thing I made up. Yeah, there are people who ride around on horses called Mounties.

Carly 1:05:15
Oh, yeah, for sure. Yeah. There's even a dude that rides a buffalo in a small town that's like 30 minutes away from where I live. He just like rides. He rides it to go get groceries. Really, totally true.

Scott Benner 1:05:29
And no one should ever forget the girl that came on that was a can can dancer in the Yukon. That was maybe one of my favorite Canadian stories, because I tried to joke with her. I was like, would they just sit there and, like, throw gold coins at you? And she got quiet, and she was like, Yes. And I was like, Oh, my God, I was just kidding. It's my favorite part when I say something stupid and people go, No, that's actually how it works. That's crazy. All right. Have you ever lived anywhere else except there? Or do you ever wonder about, like, living in maybe, like, more of a No, I don't know. Like, you know,

Carly 1:05:59
I like it because it's, like, a it's, it's really a good place for families, because we're, like, small enough that I can get across town in like, 20 minutes, and then we're close to some things, like, we're pretty close to Calgary, if we want to, like, go and do things like that. I lived in Ontario and I was little, but I don't really remember. It's still, like, just, you know, yeah, young and don't remember that, but,

Scott Benner 1:06:21
well, this was lovely of you to do. I appreciate you coming and sharing this with me. I want to ask if there's anything that I didn't ask you that I should have.

Carly 1:06:30
I don't think so, but I was gonna say, and you might be like, what? And maybe I shouldn't, but my husband actually has a polar bear skull.

Scott Benner 1:06:40
What? No, just okay.

Carly 1:06:44
I thought you were genuinely shocked, because I think it's pretty strange. I don't have it in my house, but he's a My husband's a tattoo artist, and he does like artwork on things like that, like, like deer skulls and like weird things, like badger skulls and weird stuff like that. And he has a client that researches polar bears, and she was up, she's in like, so it is in Canada, like in the Northwest Territories, and she researches them. And they had a polar bear die of natural causes, and she actually brought it back and for him, and he has it. How

Scott Benner 1:07:21
big is? So there you go. It's huge and but you don't let it in the house. God, no. Is it scary or creepy?

Carly 1:07:28
Or, I haven't actually seen it yet, and this is where it gets even grosser. So you have to, like, have them cleaned properly, yes.

Scott Benner 1:07:36
And bugs eat. That's how they do it. They put them in bugs, right? Like, yes, yeah. Like, super worms, or those kind of things. Yeah, I know about things. Go ahead. So there's a

Carly 1:07:45
dude in town that does that, and so the skull right now is with this gentleman in that process.

Scott Benner 1:07:52
When you said he does that, you mean he owns a bunch of bugs and a tub,

Carly 1:07:57
it's so gross. Like, yeah, yeah. I found him because we had a bearded dragon for like, 12 years, my little my little beardie, and she passed away. I'm sorry. And because my husband does artwork on skulls, I had this crazy idea that, instead of I didn't want to just bury her in the garden or do anything like that, I wanted something to be memorable, and to have a keepsake of her forever. And so I asked my husband if he would do an art project on her skull for me so that I could put it in like a shadow box with, like a bunch of flowers and stuff. So I had to find someone that I could give her to that would do this process for me. What do you Google to find that? Oh, my God, it was such a process. But I found this guy, and so he did this for us, for our bearded dragon. And then when my husband got this polar bear skull, he talked to this guy, and he's like, I've got this thing. And this guy was like, You have got to be me.

Scott Benner 1:08:57
Wow, yeah. You were like, I got a guy that can do that. Yeah? Seriously, what do you like? Try to imagine everybody you want to take the carcass of something somewhere and have it clean down to the bone. What do you Google to get that done? Do you see what I'm saying? Ridiculous,

Carly 1:09:12
nervous. Yeah. I'm like, How do you do this without having, like, your thing flagged? I

Scott Benner 1:09:17
have two. We're done, but I have a question. So anybody that doesn't, anybody that doesn't have any interest in keeping a bearded dragon, you can go now or hit skip ahead a couple of times and listen to the ads. For me, the biggest complaint I hear from people who have bearded people love their Bearded Dragons, but people say that their excrement smells terrible. Is this true?

Carly 1:09:37
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, I mean, we were obviously kept her very, very clean. But yes, it's kind of gnarly, because it's like, more like bird poop. Yeah, yeah. Have you

Scott Benner 1:09:47
seen the girl online who taught her bearded dragon to poop in the toilet? What? I swear to you, it's awesome. Due respect to her, I know how hard it is to make content and keep it for people want to keep coming. Like, so she does, like, a little overreaction to the but she takes, I don't, I don't, she sees the thing when it gets a little puffy, yes, yeah, it kind of comes to her at the at the front of the cage, like, hey, it's time for me to shine. And then, like, takes it to the toilet, holds it over the toilet, and records it. And during the recording, you hear like, and then she's like, and then the girl's like, and then they think the toilet, and then she wipes it up and goes no way to God, yeah, she's a lovely girl. I mean, as far as I can tell from watching her YouTube shorts, I

Carly 1:10:34
said to people, and I was like, I mean, I have no idea. They're like, Oh, what are you going to talk about? And I was like, if I'm being completely honest, I don't know, because things happen very fluidly on Scott's podcast. So now I can say we started talking about diabetes and ended up talking about,

Scott Benner 1:10:52
yeah, exactly. So I don't know if people know this about reptiles, but like, some of them don't urinate,

Carly 1:10:59
right, right, yeah. Because, yeah. I mean, we can get very technical, but yes,

Scott Benner 1:11:04
they pass something called a urates Totally. When they go to poop, first a piece comes out that's white, and that's them dispelling their urine, and then the poop comes afterwards. Yeah, exactly. And you have to make a decision about how you're going to clean that up. Like, are you going to be one of those people's, like, every time it comes out, you're going to go in there and place it up and change, like, substrate or something. Or are you going to do what I do, which is, I have my chameleons are over a dirt floor, and then, and then in the dirt live basically like pill bugs, like Roly polies, oh yeah, isopods, those live in the dirt, and then they come out at night and eat the waste. Oh, no way, your isopods do that. Yeah, that's what they're there for now, once in a while, like my the guy who's looking at me right now, he is my Parsons chameleon. He's eyeballing me right now because I didn't feed him yesterday. And he is like, you're talking about my links, my man. It is 230 and I have not had a roach yet. Today is how he's looking at me when he's on a roll. His crap comes out like an inch and a half or two inches long and maybe an inch around. I don't even know how it gets out of it. And that thing, if I'm in the room, I pick it up and throw it away. Oh yeah, for sure. And I want to be clear, I flush it. I'm not a monster. I don't throw it in the garbage. And for those of you who throw dog or cat excrement in the trash, I want you to reconsider your life. Okay, the toilets right there, for God's sakes like I'll take it out, because I don't want to be in the room with it, because it's horrifying. But if it pops out at the wrong at the right time, and I'm not in here, it's gone in, like, a day while, yeah, the bugs just like, eviscerate it.

Carly 1:12:52
So when I'm when I'm ready for another reptile, I will keep isopods in mind.

Scott Benner 1:12:57
Contact me about what you'll do, because I have thoughts. I'm gonna tell you that right now I have, I don't think I can ship them to Canada, but I have Sri Lankan pygmy lizards. So these little, tiny lists are so cool. I love tiny one, very little, very pretty. And I also am doing a have, like a desert setup with geckos in it. So, yeah, they're very these little, like, communal geckos, that they're just awesome. So that's it. And then I have my chameleons.

Carly 1:13:29
Well, that's how I fell in love with with my beauty. I got her as a baby because I went in and was like, I'm not leaving without you.

Scott Benner 1:13:35
Yeah, no, no. They are hard to look at and ignore. They're very popular in the pet trade and in the community, probably like overbred sort of like leopard geckos and stuff like that. There's maybe too many of them are, yeah, Ball Pythons. Another thing that, yeah, you don't like a snake. No, you know what's interesting. So when I go to my guy to get my street, my guy to get my Sri Lankan pygmy lizard, which, by the way, shout out to him, Frank Payne. Living Art by Frank Payne is just go check out his website. But we live close enough to each other that like he'll do like a reptile show, which is not a thing, and I'm not casting aspersions, but not really a thing I would do normally, right? And but I'll meet him there, because it's, it's an easier drive for me, and I got to pay the 10 bucks to go in. And I figured I paid the 10 bucks I'm gonna walk around. And I walk around and there are so many snakes, so many I'm like, No, everyone's like, they're not gonna sell all these snakes. Like, what's gonna happen to them? Like, that's all I can think about when I'm there, I'm like, there are 1000s of snakes in this room. They're not gonna sell every one of them.

Carly 1:14:45
Where are they gonna

Scott Benner 1:14:46
go? Yeah, what are the what? Also, I've never held a snake before, and I don't think I ever will, to be perfectly honest with you, and I don't know why or why not, I'm not scared of them anymore, like being around them has made me like. Pretty chill about it, but like, yeah, not a thing I'm up for. But oddly enough, when I watch my chameleon move around, I do realize I watch his tail a lot, and there's something about his tail moves just like a snake, right? Because it's like a prehensile tail. These are words you should look up if you don't know them anyway. And my other as I'm shouting people out. I will also shout out frams cams.com, if you want a panther chameleon, frams cams, rams cams, they have a connection to type one diabetes. They breed really beautiful chameleons. So, oh yeah, I won't tell you their connection, because that's their personal stuff. But like, okay, they have a connection to type one and if you're looking to get a panther chameleon, you should check them out. They're awesome. These are not paid ads. These are just people I think are lovely.

Carly 1:15:44
So yeah, I think I don't I can be around snakes. I think I was, I was far more afraid of things when I was younger, and now, as I'm older, I'm not as afraid. I could definitely be around like a smaller snake, but like a Python, like a big snake, there's no way if it was out of its cage, if it was out of its cage, I would probably be panicking.

Scott Benner 1:16:04
I don't want to be bit by surprise by something. No, that's okay. Yeah, thanks. These chameleons are not gonna bite me. These little like my little gecko and like, they're not gonna bite me, like, my bigger concern about having a snake other than the fact that they're not actually that active. So I don't know how great they are as pets like to begin with, but, but that aside, I don't want to make a mistake one day, or move too fast, or forget that my hand smells like a mouse or something like that, and then look down and see a snake holding on to me. No, no, thanks, right? I wouldn't want anything biting me, to be perfectly honest, right? Like so, I'm sure anybody who has a snake is thinking, Scott, there's probably some simple steps you could take that. You could take that wouldn't happen. And I God bless you. I think you're probably right, but you've found my line is what I'm saying. Now, having said all of that, if I were to get a snake, I actually do know the kind I would get.

Carly 1:16:53
What would you get? The small snake? I'm assuming, well,

Scott Benner 1:16:57
for sure, they're small. Like, I don't want anything too big, like, because that would freak me out. Also, I'm never getting a snake. I just want to say, want to say, and now I realize I can't think of the name of them. They're, Oh, I feel like an idiot. Are they the white ones? You just said White

Carly 1:17:11
rainbow. They're, like, really beautiful, iridescent. Like, there are some snakes that are absolutely beautiful.

Scott Benner 1:17:18
Yeah, no, I 100% believe that too.

Carly 1:17:21
Yeah, I still don't know if I want to hold it. They can be beautiful from afar, yes, but it but in, like in Alberta, where I am, we have rattlesnakes, oh, and so you have to be really careful. We take the kiddos down to the like, we call it down to the coolies to walk around or whatever. But you have to be careful at a certain time, because you'll hear them, yes, they'll start rattling at you, and you have to get the kids out. Also at the University, where I am, we have, like, a big patio where you can, like, go and sit. It's ground level. You can go and sit outside in the summer and have your stuff, but we have it taped off on the far right corner, because the Rattlesnakes go out and

Scott Benner 1:17:59
bask. Yeah, yeah. Listen. And I've heard all the people tell me, like, look, rattlesnakes aren't gonna bother you. If you don't bother them, it's all, it's not the they want to get away. I believe you, I don't want to get bit by one. I'm not gonna go eat my sandwich beside him. Yeah, no. And I know there are people are like, Oh, look, they're fine, and they're beautiful. And I've seen some rattlesnakes that are beautiful. I don't care. I don't because, again, I just don't want to get bit like, that's the thing. And I know rattlesnakes are poison. I don't know if they're poisonous or venomous, venomous. I'm not sure the what the distinction is. And I know there's, you know, anti venom, or whatever, you'll probably be fine if you get to I just don't want to be bit by something. Having said that, the cutest little snakes are called Hognose Snakes. Ah, okay, if you've never seen them. They are kind of adorable. All right, hodner, snakes, Cognos, I don't odd knows again, but what you hear from people is like, you get a nice winner, maybe you don't, what if I maybe I don't. What if I get something that lives 25 years, that maybe

Carly 1:18:54
isn't that nice? Yeah, exactly. Then what you got to live with this thing for 20 years? I already am married. I don't need that. You understand my my daughter already says things like, when Zoe dies, she whispers it to me, that's my dog. She's right beside her. When Zoe dies, can we get a chameleon? I'm like, Zoe's right

Scott Benner 1:19:13
there, and she's looking at you like she can super near you. Okay. Also my suggestion, if you're going to get a chameleon, depends on how much space you have, I guess, and what your level of desire is about modulating humidity for things, I have to tell you, like, if everything in this room had to go and I could only keep one thing, it would be really hard not to keep my Parson's chameleon. He's really kind of awesome, okay, and like a dinosaur, not handleable. It's not a thing you would handle. Oh, you don't handle him at all. No, he's been on my arm twice the day I got him, and recently, when I had to weigh him, he I think he got confused and walked on my arm. I think he was like, Oh, what's this? And then he got on me. He was like, This is not right. But then he hung out. With me, okay, for a couple minutes before I put him back. The little ones though, like, if I'm being serious, for people listening, like, if you just want a little lizard, like something that's not so fast that it can just get away and is manageable in a smaller enclosure, it can be really nice, like, just to kind of watch them live and exist and stuff like that. I love that, yeah, but it's hard, it's hard, it's hard to ignore how cool he is, although, having said that, my panther is blue,

Carly 1:20:27
so like, you're kind of like you're what you think of chameleon. When you think of a chameleon,

Scott Benner 1:20:31
yes, it's what, it's what you think of. More of when people think about chameleons, he is super active. He runs all over the like, I watch him constantly. He's either sitting perfectly still hoping to God that a bird doesn't eat him, or he's running around like crazy. If I had one wish about talking to my chameleons, I wish I could just say to them, Hey, there's no birds in here. Chill out. You're cool. Yeah, you're cool anyway, all right. Well, it's cool

Carly 1:20:56
because a beard, a bearded dragon, has a third eye on the top of their head to see. I don't know if chameleons have the same thing. It's like a It's a scale, one of their scales, that is actually clear and that so that they can feel it or see a shadow, yep, above them, if there's a bird flying, I

Scott Benner 1:21:11
very sadly know that. So it's not really an eye, but it is a thing that they Yeah, yeah. All right, yeah, the third eye, yeah. Okay. I don't know what we're calling this episode, but you were terrific. Thank you for doing this with me. I really appreciate it. Hold on one second for me. Okay,

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#1678 Sneaky Chocolate Bar - Part 2

You can always listen to the Juicebox Podcast here but the cool kids use: Apple Podcasts/iOS - Spotify - Amazon Music - Google Play/Android - iHeart Radio -  Radio Public, Amazon Alexa or wherever they get audio.

Danny shares his raw journey from decades of denial and neglect with type 1 diabetes to losing his leg—finding strength, purpose, and a mission to help others avoid his path.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

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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.

Danny 0:14
Hi. My name is Danny. I'm a type one diabetic for 37 years. I am from the UK, and I want to start raising awareness to the dangers of not looking after your diabetes.

Scott Benner 0:28
This is part two of a two part episode. Go look at the title. If you don't recognize it. You haven't heard part one yet. It's probably the episode right before this. In your podcast player, the podcast contains so many different series and collections of information that it can be difficult to find them in your traditional podcast app sometimes. That's why they're also collected at Juicebox podcast.com go up to the top, there's a menu right there. Click on series defining diabetes. Bold beginnings, the Pro Tip series, small sips, Omnipod five ask Scott and Jenny, mental wellness, fat and protein, defining thyroid, after dark, diabetes, variables, Grand Rounds, cold, wind, pregnancy, type two diabetes, GLP, meds, the math behind diabetes, diabetes myths and so much more, you have to go check it out. It's all there. I'm waiting for you, and it's absolutely free. Juicebox podcast.com, 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. 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 dot com

Unknown Speaker 1:40
slash Juicebox.

Scott Benner 1:43
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 missed boluses or miscalculated carbs thanks to meal detection technology and automatic correction doses, learn more and get started today at Medtronic diabetes.com/juicebox,

Danny 2:08
so yeah, on the sixth of May, I ended up having a right leg below knee amputation. And, you know, it completely rocked my world, and it tested me mentally. But I was so lucky that I've got such a good family partner, you know, the family friends, my friends, have been absolutely amazing over these last three years. So I recovered well after the OP. Got sent home after two weeks from hospital, back at home in a wheelchair, everything was going reasonably well. My diabetes was well controlled, and by this point, I was on a CGM. Now I've been put on the Libra two back then, so everything was going well. I was I was constantly checking that app on my phone, constantly scanning, because there was to get funding in the UK, you had to do a minimum of eight scans a day on it. You have to use it, yeah, to get it paid for, to get it paid for. So I was constantly, like, every half hour, scanning it. But it was good. It was that was the life changer for me. But a little bit too late, and it got to June when I was about to go and start some physio, go back to see the consultant to start physio. And went in, they checked the stamp message, yeah, looks good, but we just want to have another doctor look at it. And they noticed that the stump, my stump had been, was infected again. So I got admitted back into hospital, and I spent a couple of weeks on antibiotics again, and they said, you know, we need to take a centimeter off the bottom of the stump to try and keep it below the knee. We'll have a plastic surgeon on standby. There was all this big operation lined up, and about two hours later, I woke up back on the same Ward, not on like a medical ward. It was back on the diabetic ward. And I thought, thanks. Either gone really too well, or sanks not right here, because I could see my stump or bandaged up again. And they said that the bones too infected. We thought we caught it all when we done the first amputation, but we have to go above the knee now. And I was just like,

Scott Benner 4:20
how does that change your your outlook? Like be explain to people why below the knee is preferable.

Danny 4:27
So the below the knee is preferable because it's easier to walk when you've got a knee, just to get up and walk, to stand, everything. So this was a whole new challenge.

Scott Benner 4:39
So I was like, how high up did they? Did they have to take it to me

Danny 4:43
so that they've gone just just above the knee as such? Okay? It's slightly above the knee. So I was like, right, so it's a different type of leg that I've got to learn to walk on now. But I was, I was still quite positive about this. Okay, so this happened on the. Stick for July in 2022 when I got amputated above the knee. But my body took it really badly, really, really badly. I ended up spending nine, nine and a half weeks in hospital at that time. By time I got sent home, it was nine and a half weeks

Scott Benner 5:18
after they took above the knee, nine and a half weeks because you're you just did not rebound well from the surgery and the infection and everything.

Danny 5:24
No, it took weeks for me to settle back down. I think it was because I had too many two traumas in a short period of time. My body just couldn't handle it right. But in this time, in the background, there was a little pin prick also on the back of my left heel, so there was a bit of diabetic neuropathy on there as well.

Scott Benner 5:48
To tell somebody,

Danny 5:51
yeah, they, they, they had noticed it okay, and where I was in hospital for that nine and a half weeks, you know? And I'll, I'll never hold the hospital responsible for this. People saying you should do, you should do. You know, it's not great. They didn't dress the little, the thing that was a pin prick on the back of my heel. They put me on a mattress and where I was fidgeting so much on all the drugs that I was on, you know, some really strong hallucinogenic drugs. I was saying all sorts of random stuff, where it rubbed it, it slightly started making the whole the whole bigger. It got infected. It got infected again. So in and out of hospital in 2022 in total, I was in I was in hospital four months in 2022

Scott Benner 6:41
Danny, are you gonna? Are you gonna tell me you lost your other leg? Yeah, oh, my God.

Danny 6:47
Okay, so that went forward to 20 in and out of hospital. 2022 caught covid Just before Christmas.

2022 why not?

Yeah, if I'm gonna, if I'm gonna do it, I'm gonna get everything. So I managed to get out in the 23rd of, 23rd of December, which was quite good, because I got out of all the Christmas shopping. So that was, it was quite a good little rest up in hospital. And, you know, everything was fine, but that ulcer was getting bigger. It was, it was the size of, you know, it was five centimeters diameter by now. So it was, they were filling me more and more with antibiotics. Me and my partner went away in the new year of 2023, and we ended up having to come home a day early because I was that the foot was smelling really bad. You know it was the infection was it was just eating away at the back of my foot. So this process carried on for a few months, and it was literally a year to the day when I had my above knee amputation. I ended up having my left leg amputated below the knee in 2023 on July the sixth.

Scott Benner 8:03
No kidding, but lead in that entire year, lead up to that, did you feel like this is where it was headed, or were you able to remain positive?

Danny 8:11
At least, I was always I'm always very positive person. I'm always a very positive person with everything that I do. I like to be involved with charity events, doing bits. If I can help someone out, I'll be the first person to put my hand up and do stuff. But at this time, when they told me I was, you know, it got to it was like March time again. And they've said, right, you know, if this that we're going to carry on giving you antibiotics. But if this doesn't work, you know, you know the end result here. And I think in my head, I knew what was going to happen, that I was losing that left

Scott Benner 8:48
leg. Those antibiotics don't work because of the 30 years of Yeah, of damage, right? Like, it's yeah, things are too far gone once it gets to that point.

Danny 9:00
And you know, that is, that's when I really struggled, you know, mentally really struggled. That's when I thought, you know, I wasn't, I wasn't worth anything I got. I went to a real dark place once they told me, in like the May, that that was it, you know, they would put me on this antibiotic called doxycycline. You couldn't go out in the sun in it. And I just felt like a prisoner in my own home. Everyone we had people around who was out, you know, outside. Everyone's outside in the garden having a barbecue, and I'm sat in stores because I can't sit in the sun, because I've tried it once, sitting in the shade, and it actually burnt the skin. Oh, gosh. And I was like,

Scott Benner 9:44
how does this affect your relationship with your girlfriend too? Or does it not she

Danny 9:47
has been absolutely fantastic, amazing through the whole process. So in that same year, we lost her dad as well. So. She is she and she still does. She just takes everything in a stride. She is one incredible woman. Lucky dancing. Her prey is

Scott Benner 10:08
enough, yeah. How involved do you let your kids be with where you're at psychologically? Do you share that with them? Or who do you share that with

Danny 10:17
they know now, because they're at an age you know my daughter is, she's going to be 21 in November. She's studying mental health nursing. So they know of my struggles. My son's 16. Now they knew that I had struggles. I don't think they knew the extent of just before I lost my second leg, is when that was when I felt worthless. There was a lot of tears, a lot of emotions. You know, it got to, we was living at a mum's at the time because it was waiting for a new house to be new house, our house to be ready for me to move into. And I just it got to 1.1 night, I was just sat and was living at a mum and I was downstairs in a room on my own because I fidget, I didn't sleep very well, and I had them tablets in my hand, and I just thought, how easy would it be just to take these and not be here anymore? And that that was the big that was the main struggle for me. And I, you know, I'm quite open about it. I've admitted to loads of people about it, that I struggled at that time, and I think what sort of dragged me out of it, there was two things. Was, you know, my partner and the kids. That was the big factor, my family, you know, looking at photos, I'm in tears looking at photos, thinking of what I'd leave behind, but what was I worth to them, if that makes sense, and I sort of, I sort of snapped myself out of it, but I still had them dark thoughts, and I was in hospital. I ended up have another stint in hospital because of the infection before I had the leg amputated, and I bumped into this little boy who was staring at me outside. Was sitting outside the main hospital summertime, just having a drink and chatting. There was a group of us out there, and this kid was kept staring at me, and his dad came over. So I'm really sorry he's staring, but he's he's about to have his leg amputated. And I was like, send him over. And we had a little chat. We had a little laugh, talking about superheroes and that. And I see his dad a little bit later on, and obviously his son was asleep. And I said, you know, how is he? And he's like, I knew what he was going through. He was going through cancer, and he was gonna have his leg amputated at the age of six. And I was like, that was the big thing for me. I was like, Listen, I'm 40 odd years old. I've had a good innings as as I thought, What have I got to complain about? That little boy is six years old?

Scott Benner 12:52
Yeah. You found some perspective in his situation,

Danny 12:55
yeah. And I see him two weeks later, he was outside the front of the hospital with his leg and potato pulling wheelies. I couldn't even do them in my wheelchair. I was well impressed. And that was like, right? You need to sort yourself out here. You know, not, there's a problem if you have them sort of down days. But that was something that pulled me through and give me the stuff, the inspiration to sort of kick on. And so I ended up having my left leg amputated. And within days of having that left leg amputated, it was like a weight was lifted off my shoulders. It was the best I'd felt in like two or three years. You know, there was no infection in my body. My blood sugars were good. My HBA 1c was coming down. Everything was moving in the right direction, but unfortunately, it cost me my legs to realize, to sort my diabetes out. If that makes sense, no, I understand actually, Danny, I think you're

Scott Benner 13:57
you very well may be the first person in 11 years to come on here and talk about amputations. I'm not sure how we made it this far, actually, without somebody coming on and talking about it. I appreciate you doing this. It can't be easy to relive Today's episode is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes, who is making life with diabetes easier with the mini med 780 G system the mini med 780 G, automated insulin delivery system, anticipates, adjusts and corrects every five minutes. Real world results show people achieving up to an 80% time and range with recommended settings, without increasing lows. But of course, Individual results may vary. The 780 G works around the clock so you can focus on what matters. Have you heard about medtronics, extended infusion set? It's the first and only infusion set labeled for up to a seven day wear. This feature is repeatedly asked for, and Medtronic has delivered. 97% of people using the 780 G reported that they could manage their diabetes. Without major disruptions of sleep, they felt more free to eat what they wanted, and they felt less stress with fewer alarms and alerts you can't beat that learn more about how you can spend less time and effort managing your diabetes by visiting Medtronic diabetes.com/juicebox 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, Rite, 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.

Danny 16:28
You know, now I look at things and yeah, it's different. Days are a different challenge. You know, getting up early in the morning if I've got a hospital appointment just to be able to get at least one leg on so I can drive now. So this was the thing for me. I've done a canoe challenge last year where a canoe 26 miles and raised money for a charity that I work for now called Steel bones and amputee charity. I'm a Family mentor there now, and I look after about 50 odd families just checking in on them, making sure they that they're okay if they need any help with housing forms and, you know, benefits stuff like that. So it gives me a purpose to turn what I've lost into a positive. Yeah. So yeah, I ended up doing this charity event, which I was so keen to do, sang for charity because I hadn't done anything for two, three years, and I was always heavily involved doing certain things for charity. I've always put my hand up to do things. So I've done that. Then I come up with this crazy idea last August, to drive across the states in a hand control car to talk about my story. Talk to the younger diabetes, not you know. And I have had a few negative comments saying, Oh, you're just trying to scare people. I'm not trying to scare someone. I'm trying to give them the realization of what happens if you don't look after it, if you go down that path of, you know, you're looking after you are looking after tomorrow, but you're more preserving 10 to 1520, years time.

Scott Benner 18:07
Yeah, your story is very valuable and incredibly worth telling. I can understand why somebody would, you know, you know there's, there's people who respond and there's people who don't respond. I think most of the people I've spoken to would not respond well to being told when they were 1215, 20 years old, hey, one day you're going to lose your leg if you don't take this seriously, right? Like, that's not, I don't think that that's a good way to get through to people, but, yeah, a story like this in hindsight. I mean, it's got to be valuable for people are taking insulin. It just does. Like, you know, I don't think you're here trying to scare anybody. I think that you're here saying, Look, you know, they say this to everybody, and it happened to me, and, you know, it happened to you, it could happen to somebody else. It certainly does. And I think having that knowledge is valuable. Like, I don't think you should leave this recording if you're listening to it right now and being scared. But, you know, maybe take, I don't know, like, let Danny's experience be your, you know, your thing, instead of having to get to where he had to get to to learn what he needed to know. I mean, just, you know what I mean, like, ride on Danny's shoulders. He's he's here offering the support to you. Just take it and try to leap forward a little bit, because you're not the only one like the Yeah, I mean, the way you just described, you know, your life over the last hour, that's happening to everybody. Everybody feels like they can just do anything. I'm not going to get sick. This isn't going to happen to me. I can smoke cigarettes. I won't get lung cancer. Like, that's a very human feeling. Like, I've made the point in the past, I don't know where we'd be without that feeling, yeah, you know, I think, I think you have to have that, like, nothing's going to stop me. I can do anything. I think that's really valuable. Right into. Until it intersects with not taking enough insulin. And I have type one diabetes, that can no longer be the answer to that problem. It can't be. It doesn't matter. I can overcome this. You can't overcome that. You can take your insulin and then overcome whatever you want, but you can't overcome the need for the insulin, the right amount of it at the right time that's breathing now, you know that's every day. You got to do it every day. So I appreciate you doing this. I like to hear more, actually. I'd love to know how long it took you to learn to walk, to learn to like, how did you figure out how to get into a canoe and do that that trip? What are you doing next?

Danny 20:40
Yeah, yeah, it was great difficulty. It's great difficulty. It was, it really was. I still can't walk fully because I've had complications with sockets and stuff like that, not, you know, the sockets not fitting properly. So I can walk slightly, but I have to do it aided at the moment, so it's difficult, because obviously one's below the knee and one's above the knee, so

Scott Benner 21:07
it changes your gait on either side. Yeah. Okay,

Danny 21:10
so I go to the gym a lot now I'm at the gym, you know, get myself fit, you know, I've come up with this idea of driving across America, which I'm really looking forward to, but I've put it off once in May because I wasn't ready. If I would have come over there, I wouldn't have been ready, like, physically, mentally, yeah, mentally, I'm strong enough to do anything in my head. I think I can do anything now. Yeah, right. Mentally strong. There's nothing that phases me. But physically, as you get older, a little bit older, it gets a little bit harder.

Scott Benner 21:48
Yeah, I'm, yeah, listen, I have my legs and I'm, I'm with you. I'm 54 there's things you go to do and you're like, that was not as easy as I remember it being the last time I

Danny 21:56
did. No, yeah, no, definitely not. So yeah, it's, you know, I'm back driving. Now. I drive on a hand control car, so I'm getting that independence back, you know, I've had to rely so much heavily on people, you know, like I said, a partner. Every time we've been away, you know, we've only been in the UK on holiday, we've had to drive. She's had to do all the driving, so that should be nice this year. Now I'm driving. I don't let her drive at all.

Scott Benner 22:26
Yeah, you can help, not just how I can help it, yeah, yeah. You

Danny 22:31
know, I can get my wheelchair in and out of my car quite comfortably. Now I don't have to worry about that. You know, I am getting physically stronger and fitter. So, yeah, I'm really looking forward to come to the States, and I'm hoping that after this, it may get me some speaking opportunities across the states to tell my story to people, even if it's just popping into a hospital clinic, I don't know, you know, as well as fundraising,

Scott Benner 23:03
why does that feel so important to you to talk to people?

Danny 23:07
I don't want people making the same mistakes I did. You know, I'm from a generation where men didn't talk about their feelings, they didn't talk about their struggles, and I'm a bit advocate now for speaking up about things. If you're struggling, talk to somebody. It may not be a it may be your best friend, it may be a family member, it may be someone medical to talk to, but don't, don't suffer in silence like I did. You know, hiding away all my stuff and my struggles?

Scott Benner 23:42
Yeah, you had opportunities along the way. Your father in law tried to help you, like there were people. Yeah, it just it took you a while to get to it. Can I ask? Can I ask you put such a an importance on on your work and your ability to make money? What kind of a an adjustment was it for that to go away,

Danny 24:02
that that's that was been the hardest thing, because, you know, I was earning, I wasn't, I'm not a millionaire, trust me, by long shot, I was earning okay money, you know, I was able to do things. But from going from that down to literally, pretty much zilch, it makes you realize the finer things in life, you know, there's nothing more important than your own health. Yeah,

Scott Benner 24:27
it's easy to say. I don't know if it's as easy to believe, and I don't know if it's as easy to enact, make sure that you put it first, but I've shared this with my son before. I was like, everything is health, like health is first, and if it's not there, then, then everything else suffers, you know, like it's, it's not just as easy as you just can't ignore it. You know, it's, yeah, got to be first, and it's got to be, it might, it might have to be first, second and third. Like you have to make sure your health's in order. And it sucks. My. To have something like this. You know, do you have other autoimmune issues? Or did you figure out, like, where in your extended family is there type one?

Danny 25:07
I'm the only one. Thankfully, I'm the only one in my family that's got type one. I've ended up, in the last couple of years, as well, developing Graves disease thyroid I've had no end of laser surgery on my eyes to the point now where it's it's now my blood sugars and my HBA 1c have come down. The eyes are getting better. They're never going to be perfect again. I still wear glasses for driving and stuff like that, but I can notice the difference when, when my blood sugars were higher. I don't get these floaters in the eyes, where you get the little black dots and stuff like that. I bet that was all due to poor control. Yeah.

Scott Benner 25:53
Well, it's amazing that they can do that surgery now to help you kind of clear up those problems too, and now that, yeah, what are your goals for your diabetes nowadays? Like, what do you shoot for as far as range?

Danny 26:05
And I've literally just started on the T slim two days ago. So you done a week in the UK. You do a week on saline first. Still carried on in dia but I'm on that at the moment, and I've had telephone consultation with the hospital the last yesterday, and they said, like the first two days, your blood glucose readings have stayed around between the six and eight marks. So that's what,

Scott Benner 26:37
808 to 144

Danny 26:41
Yeah, so I

Scott Benner 26:42
was Danny. I haven't done this in a while, but Juicebox podcast.com, forward slash conversion. And there's a nice little little thing there where I just clicked on millimoles type six, and it told me that's a 108, it's a nice little Yeah,

Danny 26:57
I normally just use the calculator and try and spine by 18, or if I want to work your USA one out, it's divide by 18. But I only learned that on Tiktok for a goal called Titan. She told me that once, so I'd like to take credit for that. So yeah, I do quite a bit on Tiktok. Now. I've met some really, I made some great connections in the States and the UK, but it was the states where I was trying to get the connections from a trip really, yeah, and that, that was the whole reason I started my tick tock. But it's, it's turned into something different from what I expected.

Scott Benner 27:30
Getting a lot of good community there, yeah, massively, that's awesome. What's your expectation when you make it to the US? Where are you going to start and where do you want to finish? I want

Danny 27:41
to start in New York and finish in San Francisco

Scott Benner 27:45
and drive across the country. Yeah,

Danny 27:48
so it works out about, I've got about I've got a notepad full of ideas, and I can't sleep. I have these crazy ideas. So I've got about three or four different routes south, but now they're going to be changing because of the people I've met. I was like, oh, we'd love you to pass through and ask to meet, yeah. So it's like, right? I need to work it out a little bit where everyone is, but not to extend it where I'm not seeing part of the country and doing some talks as well as meeting up people as well. Yeah, you know, I've sort of done it over four hours driving a day, so it's gonna take me about 23 days to cross.

Scott Benner 28:26
That'd be nothing wrong with that, that it sounds nice. You can make stops, talk to people, you know?

Danny 28:31
Yeah, and that's, that's what I want to do. I just want, I want people to learn from my mistakes. I don't want people going through what I've had to do 20 odd years later, try and fix that problem earlier. And you know, it is easier now with CGM and pumps and stuff, and CGM is in my eyes, at a massive game changer. Oh, was, was the biggest game changer in my life?

Scott Benner 28:57
Oh, my gosh. I don't think I could possibly agree more. We used to say a lot, and I'd be happy to say now, like if you gave me, you know, and if you said, Look, you have, you have a chance here to keep either your pump or your CGM for your daughter. I'd hate to lose either of them. I certainly would, especially with a ID systems, which you're about to learn. Danny about how great that tandem pump is going to be for you, yeah? But if you had to give one away, putting that, oh, the pump, you'd have to give the pump away, the seats them, yeah, the CGM is just what it brings to you. As far as the your understanding, it's unmatched, really, yeah, if someone would have slapped, listen, I know they didn't exist, but if someone would have slapped a CGM on 25 year old you even for a week, you would have been like, Oh, this is not going nearly the way I think it is. You were probably walking around. You were probably walking around with what, 300 blood sugars your whole life. Which would be, what were you probably like? Do you think you were in the 30s? Your blood sugar the 20s? 20s? Yeah. I mean, that's, that's how you get to where you are, yeah.

Danny 30:09
I mean, in the last five years, I've managed to get my HPA 1c from, like, I think it was 11.1 or something around 11.1 between 11 and 13.1 in the last five years, down to about 7.1

Scott Benner 30:25
look at you. That's awesome. And people in America that are listening like a 20 blood sugar in Europe is like a high 300 into the into the low four hundreds. It's a significant blood sugar and and you, I mean, besides the damage that was being done to your body, like you'll never really know about how cloudy you were in your mind, or maybe, you know, were you kind of snappy with people? Maybe sometimes, like

Danny 30:51
all that, I used to have such a short fuse. Yeah, such a short fuse. And now I'm probably one of the most laid back people you'll ever meet in your life. I just don't care about certain things, you know, but this is one thing I'm really passionate about now, is spreading awareness.

Scott Benner 31:13
Yeah, yeah, you've gotten pretty far from having a handful of pills to where you are now in a short time.

Danny 31:20
Yeah, and that's the thing for me. I just, I genuinely just want to help others now, and I've never, really, never really sort of thought about diabetes, about raising awareness, where I could have been doing it a long time ago, and even raising money for, like, what I'm going to do now, you know, my just giving page is up to about 600 pounds at the moment, and that's going to go between Diabetes UK and break through T 1d in the States. Yeah. So I

Scott Benner 31:52
hope somebody steps up and hears this and supports you, because, I mean, what an awesome thing it would be for you to drive across the country and stop at different clinics, or, you know, have have events along the way where you could, you know, tell your story to 50 100 people, or tell it at hospitals, to clinicians, you know, anything like anybody who would benefit from it. I can't tell you how, how lucky I feel that I found a way to fund this thing that I'm doing, because it really does take that money like, you know, look, look, nobody's working because they love working for the most part, right? You were working to make money for your family, and you can hear like a loving father in there trying to make money for his kids and provide but now you you have this new perspective. And if somebody would come along and offer you that money that you made before you'd get up every day and go out there and try to help other people avoid this problem, and you'd be really successful at it too. But that's not a thing we pay people for. And not It's not Yeah, and it should be, because in the end, Danny, I don't get paid to help you tell your story, or to give a place to people you know. Like, let's be honest with how all this works. Like, I get paid to bring in ears to hear ads. Like, that's how, that's how I make money. Now, what I do with it is I try to, I try to shine a light on people and their and their stories. But nobody you know if I, if I said today, like, I just want to make this podcast, and I'm not going to worry anymore about saying the ads that nobody would, nobody sending me money to do that. Yeah, you know, you know, so, and I wish somebody would, because, especially for something like you, I mean, I'm trying to imagine you in a, you know, in a conversion van that says, you know, tandem diabetes on the side of it, and you're driving around the country, stopping at hospitals and telling your story like, I think that'd be awesome. You know

Danny 33:48
what I mean? I've put charity proposals out to several of the big firms. You know, your tandems, because obviously I'm on a tandem pump, Novo Nordisk Abbott, because I'm on the labor sensor Dexcom.

Scott Benner 34:04
Yeah, I like this. Abbott buys the van tandem. Sets up the sets up the meet and greets across the country. Let me make the pitch for you here to libre and to tandem and anybody else's devices that you're using the cost to put Danny in a van that's decorated nicely, that goes across the country, put him, you know, make sure, I don't know if you had to put a handler with him or not, because you got to make sure. I don't understand how the insurance of all this works, right? And for you guys to set up stops where he spends a month crisscross in the US, stopping at hospitals, telling his story, taking pictures, the money it would cost you would pay you back in social media alone, like the video you'd get out of that, and the and the and the images you could live off of those for a year on your socials. I mean, it's a no, it's a no brainer, really. And if anybody hears that and thinks like, look, I don't want to. A It's a guy with no legs that's not very upbeat. I think just the opposite. I think this guy's got, this guy's got perspective that that other people don't have. Like you, you want you want you out there telling that story. You know what I mean? Because, yeah,

Danny 35:14
I mean, I'll be honest, but I am a massive idiot. My sense of humor gets me through a lot of stuff. And I do laugh about and I joke about a lot of things, but when it comes to talking about diabetes and raising that awareness, that is where I am very passionate about. I talked to I talked to L it does type one Tuesdays on tick tock. I talked to her frequently.

Scott Benner 35:38
Elle's episode was today on my podcast, right? Yeah, yeah. I'm just about to watch it when I finish, yeah, shooting star. It's called,

Danny 35:46
yeah, yeah. I've seen her share it on her story, so I will be watching that tonight.

Scott Benner 35:51
Awesome. Yeah. I mean, listen, I'm not pressuring anybody, but I know what. I know what people's budgets look like. A van's not that expensive. You know,

Danny 35:59
I've priced it all up in roughly with flights, car hire. I'm not even worried about Hotel. I'll sleep in the car if I had to. I think it could cost about 5000 pounds. Oh, please. Five, 6000 pounds.

Scott Benner 36:15
I say we put you in a hotel and spend the extra money. But I mean, honestly, like, really, people have to think about it. Like he could stop at, and you guys have the connections already at all these different hospitals, like you could set up places. Imagine, like, if everybody came out at at lunchtime and and got to hear Danny's story, you know? And, and if you I don't know, like Danny's, he's met people on tick tock, right? So, like, have them, instead of him, meeting these people at their homes. Like, have it happen at a restaurant, and invite local people. Maybe 10 or 20 people will show up with diabetes. You have a nice event. Take some, you know, send a videographer along. Danny, I can't do everybody's job for them, but this is cheap and easy, and it'll, it's gonna draw a lot of good attention, which is what you're trying to do.

Danny 37:02
I think it is what these pharmaceutical companies and that lot make a year. I think it's a drop in the ocean that's that's something that they would write off in scrap. What I would cost? It would cost for me to

Scott Benner 37:18
do it. I've been at this a while. Danny, the pharma companies aren't where you're going to get the interest. It's going to be divisive. Going to be devices. It's going to be devices that that would be interested in something like this. Yeah, I think that would be amazing. I think it would be amazing if they worked it out. So you stop and saw, Oh, my God, what's her name? She's been on my podcast twice. Oh, I feel terrible. She races bicycles. She's paraplegic with type one. Oh, she's awesome. Kate. Kate, brim. Brim. Kate, hold on a second. I'm gonna, I'm gonna get this. Yeah, Kate, Episode 819, I think was her first episode. She's a quadriplegic with type one, and I think she wears a tandem pump. Like, I mean, let's find out where she is. And the two you get together, awesome. Like, you know what? I mean? Like, go out and meet people. Like, all right, Danny, listen, I've laid this out. Well, if somebody doesn't pick this up, it's their fault. But like, this is, like, you said, it's not, it's not a very expensive thing. You're not asking to be paid a ton of money. You just want the the trip covered. You're trying to, like, that's

Danny 38:26
what I mean. You know, for me to lay out that sort of money is unrealistic, and I think it's a valuable story to tell myself. You know, I'm not, I'm not a medical profession, but I'm a person that's been through diabetes for over 37 years now, probably by the time this trip comes around, could be 3038 years. Yeah, now, because realistically, you know, I had it booked in for this September. It's, it's getting closer and closer now, and it's, I'm just getting nothing back before these companies are contacted. You know, I've had a few no's from a few airlines, and even one of the enterprise rent a car when I reached out to them, asked me to remove them from their mail in this so I've had a few knockbacks. But I will, I will carry on. I will, this will happen. I mean,

Scott Benner 39:19
listen it. I mean, I'm looking at this, you're telling me that if, you know, if, if one company threw in 1015 grand, the other company threw in 1015 grand, that's, that's a lot already, you know, that rents the vehicle, gets it wrapped, you know, for the company, or for you, even, like, maybe they don't, maybe they don't want their name all over it. Maybe it's just for you and and, you know, when you get to the each event, it's, it's a little more, Listen, I'm not going to tell you. It's easy. I've had stuff planned for this year, like, I pulled off a cruise with 100 listeners this year. It was no small feat. And, yeah, I had. A four city tour setup that was supposed to start soon, that now has to get pushed off into 2026 because it's hard to put funding together for. And to your point, it's not a lot of money. And I tell you something, Danny, I'll draw a lot of people when I get where I'm at, yeah, and it's still not, it's not a slam dunk, like, it's hard to because it's not just the money. It's also, like, if I'm looking at it from their perspective, they're going to want to be involved, and they might not have the time to be involved where, you know, you're going to be in a car. So maybe there's insurance issues, like, you know, like, what happens if you have a medical issue while you're here? Who's going to take care of that? That's, that's the the adult questions that start getting asked. It's not just, yeah, yeah. It's not just about the money. If it was just about the money, then, you know, well, then hell. Like, we could probably raise, you know, I would imagine we could raise 610, $1,000 for you to pay for it, like, you know. So I don't know that that would be impossible to do. You could probably crowdfund that money?

Danny 41:02
Yeah, I've got my GoFundMe page, and it's ticking along nicely, but I've not really pushed it, you know. And the little event I've done last year that I raised 3000 pounds for that one lovely so I know, you know, whatever I raise I want. I want that GoFundMe to stay for the charities. I don't want that going on, x, y, z. I want some of these companies to step up and say, Yeah, I think this story could work. I think

Scott Benner 41:31
I'm going to give you my best piece of advice. Then, based on the last 11 years I've been doing this, you make the thing on your own and then sell them ad space on it. Don't look for them. Don't look for them to pay for it. Because the truth is, is they'd pay you more for it if it was done and they didn't have to do anything. Yeah, then, because what you're asking them to do is you're asking them to pay for it, which is you saying, like, I think I could do a thing if I had money. And that makes them nervous, I would guess, yeah, I would say, say to them, we're doing the thing. Here's the itinerary. It's paid for. This is a day It starts on. Would you like your name on this that I think you could get somebody interested in, but he but other, I think the other way probably feels to them like you're asking them to do it for you, and they don't have time to do what they're doing.

Danny 42:18
Yeah, I'm quite happy to do, sort out an itinerary, you know, I want to be able to sit down and work out an exact date I can do it, and at the start date and end date and the cities that I want to stop in, yeah, while I cross, you know, like I say, I've got two or three different routes. One takes me down into Florida, which is really going to be off the beaten track, if I'm honest, but I'll do it.

Scott Benner 42:47
Okay, listen, I That's my best advice. Is I'd put it together, plan it, pay for it, you know, and then contact these people. I'd start with the devices that you use, and I would get them all set. You know what I mean? They say, look, here's what's happening. Would you like to sponsor it and that? I bet you. I bet you, you could at least get your money back and maybe put a couple dollars in your pocket, you know, so that it's not costing you money too.

Danny 43:12
I'm not even interested in making money for myself. It's more whatever, whatever isn't spent, will will go straight back into the pot for the two charities I'm saying.

Scott Benner 43:21
I don't want it to cost you money when it's over. You know what I mean, I wouldn't want to see you come home and be in the hole over it. Yeah, yeah, financially. All right. Danny, I have to tell you, this is awesome. We're up on time. I'm gonna need to say goodbye, but I really appreciate you doing this with me. Can you tell people where they can follow you? On on tick tock.

Danny 43:39
So on tick tock, I am under double amputee, diabetic, and on my Facebook and Instagram. It's Danny spud Smith,

Scott Benner 43:49
okay, and are you in my Facebook group? You are, aren't you? Yes, I am. Yeah. I post them there now and again. Awesome. Okay, I really appreciate you taking the time to share this with me. It was, it was eye opening, actually. And the way you laid out your story was inspirational. Actually. I I thought this was going to be sadder, and it didn't feel that way to me. You made me sad one time. I forget when it was I think it's when they called you and they said, we want to do the amputation tomorrow. I think I got upset then, yeah, listening to you talk about it, but, uh, but otherwise, no, I think, I think this is a, you know, it's unfortunate, obviously, what had to happen for you to get to where you are. But I find it uplifting that you found that place and that you're healthy at this point now, and you're there. This is probably, oddly enough, with your amputations, the healthiest you've been in 35 years.

Danny 44:41
Oh, massively, yeah, apart from, apart from the little belly, but we won't mention that.

Scott Benner 44:48
Well, listen, that was probably going to happen one way or the other. We're all getting we're all getting older, so gravity isn't it might be all right. Danny, hold on for me one second, this was awesome. I really appreciate this. You.

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#1677 Sneaky Chocolate Bar - Part 1

You can always listen to the Juicebox Podcast here but the cool kids use: Apple Podcasts/iOS - Spotify - Amazon Music - Google Play/Android - iHeart Radio -  Radio Public, Amazon Alexa or wherever they get audio.

Danny shares his raw journey from decades of denial and neglect with type 1 diabetes to losing his leg—finding strength, purpose, and a mission to help others avoid his path.

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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.

Danny 0:13
Hi, my name is Danny. I'm a type one diabetic of 37 years I am from the UK, and I want to start raising awareness to the dangers of not looking after your diabetes.

Scott Benner 0:28
If this is your first time listening to the Juicebox podcast, and you'd like to hear more, download Apple podcasts or Spotify, really, any audio app at all, look for the Juicebox podcast and follow or subscribe, we put out new content every day that you'll enjoy. Want to learn more about your diabetes management. Go to Juicebox podcast.com up in the menu and look for bold Beginnings The Diabetes Pro Tip series and much more. This podcast is full of collections and series of information that will help you to live better with insulin while you're listening, please remember that nothing you hear on the Juicebox podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan or becoming bold with insulin you

This episode is sponsored by the tandem mobi system, which is powered by tandems, newest algorithm control iq plus technology. Tandem Moby has a predictive algorithm that helps prevent highs and lows, and is now available for ages two and up. Learn more and get started today at tandem diabetes.com/juicebox I'm having an on body vibe alert. This episode of The Juicebox podcast is sponsored by ever since 365 the only one year wear CGM that's one insertion and one CGM a year, one CGM one year, not every 10 or 14 days ever since cgm.com/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.com/juicebox, or call 888-721-1514, use the link or the number, get your free benefits. Check and get started today with us. Med, Hi,

Danny 2:36
my name is Danny. I'm a type one diabetic. For 37 years, I am from the UK, and I want to start raising awareness to the dangers of not looking after your diabetes.

Scott Benner 2:48
Danny, I appreciate you coming on and doing this with me. Thank you for having me. Oh, it's a pleasure. Did I see yesterday that you logged on a day early for our recording? I was

Danny 3:00
hoping you wasn't going to pick up on that.

Scott Benner 3:03
That normally only happens to Australians, but I think you're going to be my first person from England to have that that happened to so what the date got confusing? Or I wonder how it works always, because, like, what time is it now? Where you are, for example,

Danny 3:15
is now it's by 40 PM. But I just got my I do it quite often. Get my days mixed up. I I've turned up to hospital appointments a week early, dentist appointments a day late. It's just me if, if it's not wrote down in front of me, I'll forget.

Scott Benner 3:35
Okay, so is it August 7, where you are right now? Yes, it is. Oh, geez, Danny. I was trying to give you an excuse and an out, but you

Danny 3:43
just No, no excuses.

Scott Benner 3:46
So I guess what happens to the Australians is that it's August 7 when it's August 6 here, and we often get that confusion where, you know, I log on and there's no one there, and I send the note and I say, hey, you know you're not here for the recording. And they go, No, it's tomorrow. And I went look harder. So all right, well, yeah,

Danny 4:04
anyway, no, I've got not I'm guilty, Your Honor.

Scott Benner 4:07
So you've had type one for how long again? Tell me.

Danny 4:09
So I was diagnosed in 1988 on the fourth of April to 37 just over 37 years now,

Scott Benner 4:16
wow, 88 that's a year before I graduated from high school. How old are you?

Danny 4:20
I am 48 now. Oh, gosh, 48 years young. So what were you? I was 11 when I was diagnosed. Just started high with secondary school, but high scores, I gather the equivalent.

Scott Benner 4:32
Do you recall the those days of of being diagnosed? Do you remember how it happened?

Danny 4:38
Yeah, leading up towards my diagnosis, I was always active, playing a lot of football, tennis, played a lot of sports, and for a couple of for about a month, I was starting to lose a lot of weight, really tired. Always had a really good appetite for my food. Wouldn't eat. Of food, I was going through three liters of, like, diluted squash a day, and as soon as I was drinking that pint of squash, I'd go upstairs and I'd literally, within minutes, I'll be having having a week. And remember my step dad saying to me, to my mum, like he's diabetic, so my mum took me to the doctors the next day, within an hour, I was diagnosed as type one and admitted to my local

Scott Benner 5:28
hospital. Do you have any idea how your stepdad knew the signs? I don't know

Danny 5:32
how he knew the signs to be his his dad was diabetic, or his uncle's diabetic. I think okay, because it wasn't as common as it is to see the signs these days in the four T's, you know, it was, it was a lot different back then.

Scott Benner 5:47
Yeah, yeah. I guess just the frequent urination, high blood sugars thing, if it's a thing you've seen before, maybe it just it clicked for him, you know.

Danny 5:55
Yeah, I just don't know how, because, you know, he, he wasn't the most educated man. He was, you know, a real grafter, but he was the first one to recognize it,

Scott Benner 6:09
saying, you know, I was waiting to see where you were going to go when you started like, yeah, I

Danny 6:13
was trying not to, like, downplay his role in all of this. But yeah, you know, he, he was a hard worker, and it was him that actually see the signs.

Scott Benner 6:23
Figured it out. Wow, do you remember what your blood sugar was back then we

Danny 6:27
do it slightly different in the UK, but no, I don't even remember, okay, I don't remember much of it. I just remember it was literally a week. We spent a week in hospital being educated.

Scott Benner 6:39
And was that regular and mph, 88 what kind of insulin did you get? Do you remember

Danny 6:45
it would have been mixed hard back in 88

Scott Benner 6:48
Okay, okay. And couple times a day,

Danny 6:53
so it would have been. It was still two background insulins. And I think that was human actual frame back then interesting. And I think I remember either two, it was definitely two, maybe three, injections a day,

Scott Benner 7:10
okay, who managed it for you? Was it you? Was it your mom? How did it get handled?

Danny 7:14
To start off with it, with my mum. She was, like, amazing, like, took it all in her stride, educated herself really well on it, as did I as a kid. When you discharged from hospital, you used to be able to buy this book. Now it's all different, isn't it, it's all apps and stuff. But back then, it was a book called Countdown, and it had all your carbs in it. It was the Green was the good ones, Amber for, okay, red for stay clear, basically. Or they were the ones that, you know, the most carbs and sugars in back then we was told, you know, no chocolate, no candy, no sweets, nothing like that. It was zero tolerance. Did you grow up that way? I did. From the age of I was only allowed to have, like, a small chocolate bar if I was playing sports, and

Scott Benner 8:05
that was to help you from being dizzy. Is that how they thought

Danny 8:07
of it? Yeah, and that was to keep the sugar, sugar levels up, so used to reduce the insulin and just whack it up with a bit of chocolate or glucose tablets, right? You know, I'd have that sneaky little chocolate bar now and again. I felt like I was really naughty. After a few years of like, really being strict with it, it was like, I'll have a sneaky chocolate bar. My mum had no she knew straight away, because she'd take, like, do the finger poke when I got home, and she's like, you played football today? And I was like, yeah, yeah. She was like, Well, why your blood sugar so high? So I couldn't, I couldn't get past my mum. My mum was spot on with it. She knew if I was lying or cheating. Yeah. Oh gosh, there was a lot of sneaky chocolate bars eventually, but yeah,

Scott Benner 8:49
well, yeah, that's what we're going to get to, right? We want to dive into that. So how many years do you think until and do you see what might have caused a shift in how you managed yourself. You know where it went off the rails.

Danny 9:04
So I was diagnosed the age of 11, so I'd say late teens to early adulthood. Sort of 1617, 18. Sort of mark more, 1718. Is when I noticed I was different from everybody else. More More than ever. You know, at school, I was quite open about the diabetes, and people knew I was diabetic. But when once I hit adulthood, and everyone was going, all my friends were going out, drinking, to bars and stuff, that's when I noticed I was different from everybody

Scott Benner 9:37
else. How'd it make you feel?

Danny 9:38
It's difficult to remember back then, because, you know, up until the last five years, I've just lived my life, but back then it just, I was having to go out. Then I was having to come, you know, we'd, we'd be out downtown, in the barn. I live quite close to town, so when I'd come home, have some insulin, and I'd go back out. But at first, I wasn't drinking alcohol. I wasn't I'm. Wasn't smoking, I wasn't doing anything. And it just after a few years, these sort of things started creeping in, because I felt like, what was it? Even people peer pressure me, or just I wanted to be included. You know, I've always felt a little bit different from everybody else, okay,

Scott Benner 10:17
different like you were on the outside of something, like they were doing something you weren't doing.

Danny 10:22
It was like, right? We got into such and such, like, going to a nightclub, and it would be finishing at two, three in the morning. I blow can't, because I've got, you know, I've got to take my insulin. And obviously I started on the vials and needles back then.

Scott Benner 10:36
Yeah, so you had, like, in your mind, you're like, Well, I got to get home by a certain time because I've got to inject.

Danny 10:41
Yeah, I was, it sort of felt like I was restricted, and I was on a curfew. You know, that's when it started to plan my mind more, I think, because I knew I was different from everybody else.

Scott Benner 10:53
And then, how do you manage that? Instead of looking for a way to take your insulin at the bar or something, you just decide not to take it. Or how does it like?

Danny 11:01
So eventually I went on to the disposable pens, and that was easier, because you could put them in your coat pocket, and there was a bit more discreet, because you just had a screw on needle on the top, so it just looked like a big marker pen in your pocket. So that that was good, but then I wasn't testing my blood sugars properly, you know, I was, I was going to hospital appointments, and we used to have a diary back then there was no CGM, and used to have to write with I'd be sat outside the clinic filling in all my blood sugars, yeah, because they'd be saying, right, we need blood sugars for this day. These times, I'd write them all in this book, and I just make them up.

Scott Benner 11:41
Can I ask you, with hindsight, why did you not test

Danny 11:46
part of it was laziness, and I never really learned about diabetes, burnout. Yeah, never knew nothing about it until I started speaking to guys in the states early this year, and that's when I, you know, really learned more about diabetes burnout and thought, Geez, I have had it over the years and not really known about

Scott Benner 12:09
it. I have a hard time imagining that many people are going to go through living a life with diabetes and not experience maybe many different seasons of difficulty just doing, you know, what seem like, simple things, you know, test your blood sugar. I don't see how it can't, like, just the same way you talked about, um, you know, just slowly feeling different, you know, yeah, it kind of creeps up on you, and then you don't know how you got there, you just, you start having reactions to it and acting differently, or doing differently, and then before you know it, it's been a week and a month and you're not dead. So you're like, This must be okay. And then you kind of don't think about it anymore. It's, it's the same, I think it's the same process that people get unhealthy, and you know, a lot of different ways, gain weight, stop exercising, stop communicating with people you love, like, I think all of that kind of drifts away in a similar fashion.

Danny 13:04
Yeah, 100% and, you know, now, when I look back to how I am now, health wise, I wish I looked after it a lot better. You know, done them. Finger pokes back then. And if I'm honest, Scott, I was doing um, once a week, if he was lucky, for a number of months between the ages of 17 and 19, yeah,

Scott Benner 13:30
once. What was once a week even accomplishing? Do you know

Danny 13:33
nothing wasn't because I wasn't even changing my insulin ratio, you know, if I was high, I wasn't giving more, you know, I wasn't giving more insulin. If I was like, I was just sticking to the same regime that I was insulin wise, that I was on at the age of 16.

Scott Benner 13:50
Yeah, before you feel too bad, you know, let me tell you this, like, Arden had a pretty simple, like, medical procedure yesterday, right? So she had her tonsils out, but she's 21 so, you know, it's a bit of an ass kicking getting your tonsils out when you're 21 so she comes home, we, you know, had it set up prior, like, I'm just gonna, like, run her, her blood sugars and everything, you know, while, while she's because she's also on pain medication and stuff like that. So she was good for a while. Actually, I have to, I want to give a lot of credit to the trio app, which kept her blood sugar super stable overnight, you know, super stable in the morning, before the surgery, during the surgery, just awesome blood sugars for the lead up to the process. Then at some point, you know, the pain is going to hit her. Little bit of, you know, all the things that come with having a surgery and everything else, and I know she's gonna need more insulin. And I still, I still spent the better part of like, six or eight hours bolusing, like, I kept bolusing and bolusing before, like, before even my brain was like, dude, turn up the basal. What do you do? You don't mean, like, and if you were to come. Them on this podcast and tell me that story. I would immediately, without hesitation, tell you, like, as soon as I saw the blood sugars wanting to creep up after the surgery, I'd probably look at, like, 150 basal, 150% basal increase, you know, yeah, you're getting a unit an hour. Make it a unit and a half, that kind of vibe. And yet, for me, like, you get caught in the moment and everything's going on. And you just like, oh, higher blood sugar, Al Bolus. Higher blood sugar, Al Bolus. And I finally, like, you know, I don't know what happened to me. Like, four in the morning I woke up, I looked at her blood sugar, it was like, 180 and I'm like, what is happening? And then it just hit me. I'm like, oh, dummy. Like, what are you doing? So I went in and and I changed her basal rate, like, I literally just turned it up by 100% like, she's getting two units an hour right now instead of one. And now I haven't even looked in a while. I'm looking right now with you. Now our blood sugar is 119 or 114 Yeah. So with all that technology and all that knowledge, my point is, is there were still 12 hours in there where my brain didn't go, oh, do the thing, you know, do this. So I can't imagine when you're taking three shots a day, and you know, I mean doing a blood sugar test that probably was meaningless, right? Like you would do them, and then what? Nothing. Why would you settle for changing your CGM every few weeks when you can have 365 days of reliable glucose data. Today's episode is sponsored by the ever since 365 it is the only CGM with a tiny sensor that lasts a full year sitting comfortably under your skin with no more frequent sensor changes and essentially no compression lows. For one year, you'll get your CGM data in real time on your phone, smart watch, Android or iOS, even an Apple Watch, predictive high and low alerts let you know where your glucose is headed before it gets there. So there's no surprises, just confidence, and you can instantly share that data with your healthcare provider or your family. You're going to get one year of reliable data without all those sensor changes. That's the ever since 365 gentle on your skin, strong for your life. One sensor a year. That gives you one less thing to worry about. Head now to ever since, cgm.com/juicebox, to get started. I used to hate ordering my daughter's diabetes supplies. I never had a good experience, and it was frustrating. But it hasn't been that way for a while, actually, for about three years now, because that's how long we've been using us Med, US med.com/juicebox, or call 88872115, 888-721-1514, us. Med is the number one distributor for FreeStyle Libre systems nationwide. They are the number one specialty distributor for Omnipod dash, the number one fastest growing tandem distributor nationwide, the number one rated distributor in Dexcom customer satisfaction surveys, they have served over 1 million people with diabetes since 1996 and they always provide 90 days worth of supplies and fast and free shipping us. Med carries everything from insulin pumps and diabetes testing supplies to the latest CGM like the libre three and Dexcom g7 they accept Medicare nationwide, and over 800 private insurers find out why us med has an A plus rating with a better business bureau at us med.com/juicebox, or just call them at 888-721-1514, get started right now, and You'll be getting your supplies the same way we do, right? You just,

Danny 18:45
no, I'd be like, I'm a bit high, but I'm gonna, like, I said I was very active. I was doing a lot of love, playing a lot of football, yeah, so it was, it was quite easy to lower them sugars, right? Because I was, I was always active? Yeah, yeah. So I never worried too much about it, right? If that made sense,

Scott Benner 19:07
and did you have any expect? Did you have knowledge? I mean, 17, 1819, years old? Did you know what not taking enough insulin would do to you long term? Or do you have any feeling for what that could be

Danny 19:18
problem I have, I, you know, as a proud man, I would never admit defeat, or these things will happen to you. You'll end up having problems with your eyes gangering, losing limbs. That was told to me when I was a very young age, and I just I didn't care at that time, when I was, you know, early 20s, then I just did not care. I was like, I'll be all right. I'll be right. Because, like I said, I was doing that odd finger poke now and again, and not going to happen to me, right? Nothing, nothing was happening to me. So it's like, I'm okay, I'm okay. I'll just carry on.

Scott Benner 19:56
Feel invincible. Yeah, was. What happened after 20 Which way did it go then? So I

Danny 20:04
start when in my early 20s, I decided to go and work away for the summer in Portugal, got my big stock of insulin, went to the hospital, got signed off big prescription to take it with me. So I was over there for six months of the year, and it was a completely different culture for me. It was Drink, drink a lot, party hard, and sleep a lot. Okay, so I stuck to the same insulin regime that they give me, and I went six months of that year not testing at all, not one, not one single finger poke back, then you're right. I've done that for three summers consecutively,

Scott Benner 20:45
really, yeah, so summers, summers were, uh, were a vacation from reality.

Danny 20:53
Yeah, okay, vacation from reality, you know. And it's like always say, you know, you can go on holiday, but your diabetes doesn't. Mine did. Mine had a six months vacation. Set yours off. Yeah, so just, and I was a heavy smoker, but yeah, I was 22 years old. Cigarettes. Yeah, smoking 60 cigarettes a day, nearly, wow, between 40 and 60 cigarettes and just every night just drinking for six months, pretty much

Scott Benner 21:23
three packs, 63 packs, right? Yeah, wow. So just awake, if you were awake, you were smoking or drinking, and then you were sleeping. Otherwise, let's talk about the tandem Moby insulin pump from today's sponsor tandem diabetes care, their newest algorithm control, iq plus technology and the new tandemobi Pump offer you unique opportunities to have better control. It's the only system with auto Bolus that helps with missed meals and preventing hyperglycemia, the only system with a dedicated sleep setting, and the only system with off or on body wear options, tandemobi gives you more discretion, freedom and options for how to manage your diabetes. This is their best algorithm ever, and they'd like you to check it out at tandem diabetes.com/juicebox when you get to my link, you're going to see integrations with Dexcom sensors and a ton of other information that's going to help you learn about tandems, tiny pump that's big on control tandem diabetes.com/juicebox. The tandem Moby system is available for people ages two and up who want an automated delivery system to help them sleep better, wake up in range and address high blood sugars with auto Bolus. Yeah, taking any insulin. How are you doing?

Danny 22:43
I was doing the insulin. All the insulin, I was doing that. And it was literally just the same regime. So I wouldn't even know, because I was drinking a lot of vodka red balls. Obviously, Red Bull is full of sugar, isn't it? So, you know, I was drinking a lot of them. So, God knows what it was doing to me inside, but at the time, I didn't care. I was having a good time.

Scott Benner 23:07
You hadn't changed your settings since you were 16, no, eight.

Danny 23:11
So I changed it about 1890 No, sorry, I changed it when I was about 20, when I knew I was going to Portugal. And I thought, right, I need to sort of prepare for this a little bit. So I sort of behaved myself a little bit before I went away. Then I got over there, and it was just like, you know, by the end of the summer that that blood monitor, blood glucose monitor, had dust on it

Scott Benner 23:33
and and the amount of insulin you were taking didn't change if you gained weight, it didn't change if you ate

Danny 23:38
more. I wasn't gaining a lot of weight because I wasn't eating a great deal because I was spending all my money on going out partying.

Scott Benner 23:46
Yeah? Let me also, I would also imagine if your blood sugars were high all the time, that's another reason you weren't gaining weight, yeah, yeah, yeah. So okay, and so for six months a year, you'd be in Portugal.

Danny 23:58
I did, yeah, I'd done that from for six months of the year for the summer season, I'd come back to the UK. I think between the first and second year, I didn't even go back and see my Endo. It was just went back and done the same again. I was doing finger pokes and stuff. And I got back, and I thought, right, and back in the UK, you need to sort myself out of it. So I did then I was and not frequent, maybe twice a day, once in the morning, once in the evening, before I knew I was going to bed or falling asleep, I'd do another one. See what was like overnight.

Scott Benner 24:33
Was your mom checking in on you with diabetes? Or had she stopped at

Danny 24:37
that time, I was living on my own. I had my own place so I was able to, you know, I was living on my own. Yeah, you know, I'm 48 years old now, and she still tells me off to certain things, not so much these days, because it is pretty much, really well controlled. Still have the off day, but I'm pretty much

Scott Benner 24:59
there. Now. So you said the last five years you've been kind of on top

Danny 25:03
of it to a certain extent. Yeah, okay, you know, even when my first child was born, she's 21 this year. So I was 27 when my first daughter was born, and I ended up having a Hypo when my ex wife, now she was delivering a baby. I like to go outside and get some sweets inside me because I was having a high five, so I didn't look after it for a number of years, a long, long period. Okay?

Scott Benner 25:30
I mean, I think this is the crux of why you came on, right? Like when you first introduced yourself, you said you want to help people to not ignore their diabetes. So tell me, let's jump to your first complication. What? How old were you and what was it?

Danny 25:45
So 2018 I started losing feeling in my feet, really suffering with a lot of pain in my lower limbs. And basically I was losing all the feeling in my feet and people saying to me, you know, my father in law was a diet type one diabetic, and he was an amputee. He ended up having a leg amputated as well for different reasons, not through diabetes, but he was like, You need to stop smoking. You need and I was still smoking, not as much as I was when I was younger, but still smoking quite a lot, and I was like, you know, the same old Danny, you know, I'll be alright. You know, it's nothing. Nothing's wrong with me at the moment, but the pain I was in of a night time was incredible. They ended up giving me some amitriptyline to help me sleep at night time, because I was, I was constantly fidgeting at night.

Scott Benner 26:41
Danny, let me stop Let me stop you for a second. So your father in law had type one diet. Has type one diabetes.

Danny 26:47
He did, yeah, he passed away a couple of years ago, but yeah, he was a type one as

Scott Benner 26:53
well. But back then, when you're telling this part of the story where you're having neuropathy and leg pain, and he says to you, you got to stop smoking, does? He has he had a limb removed at that point,

Danny 27:04
it was 2018 No, he was too. He was during covid, 2020

Scott Benner 27:10
Okay, so he but he knew about neuropathy, because he was experiencing it as well.

Danny 27:15
He used to end up going to podiatry because he had a bad shark over and he could see the people in there losing limbs through their diabetes. And he's like, Danny, you really need to get control of

Scott Benner 27:28
this. Gotcha Okay? And you said, No, I was

Danny 27:32
Scott I was always the one that would be like, yeah, yeah, yeah. I will do. I will do, yeah, definitely. And I do a couple of weeks of eating better, you know, testing my blood sugar, then I'll go back to the old routine again, of now and again, testing my blood sugar, you know, just same old thing, yeah, become invincible.

Scott Benner 27:54
And even with the pain in your legs, did you connect those things? Did you say, Oh, my blood sugars, my smoking, etc. This is where the pain is coming from. Or did you not connect them? I

Danny 28:04
didn't connect them, if to, if the truth be known. You know, when I started looking up about what was going on with my feet, losing the sensation in them, my mum was like, it's your diabetes. Danny, is she diabetes? You need to sort it out. You need to sort it out. And I was like, I will, I will, you know. And I did start looking after it better. And then 2019 I was admitted to hospital in the in the August DKA, which I didn't know. I think I'd had it a couple of years beforehand, like quite a few years ago, twice, and that had misdiagnosed at the hospital, or they told me it was saying. They told me it was gastroenteritis. Okay, it was a gastro thing, so I didn't think nothing of it. But this, this one really scared me. In 2019 the dka scared you. The DKA, yeah, my ketones were like, greater than seven. They couldn't even get a reading of how high my blood sugar was. It was that high?

Scott Benner 29:03
Yeah, I want to make sure I'm right. That's 31 years after you're diagnosed, right? Yeah, yeah, okay, please tell me like if I asked you five minutes before you were in that hospital, if I would have asked you to describe to me the level of care that you provide for yourself. How would you have described it? Poor, very poor. You knew it, yeah, oh yeah.

Danny 29:27
I know. You know. To be honest, I just thought I had a stomach bug that week. I was just being sick. What I was doing, I was still giving insulin, but wasn't eating, yeah, I had, I needed re educating about diabetes.

Scott Benner 29:43
Yeah, you're not wearing a CGM at that point.

Danny 29:45
No, no, that that came in 2020 War One, I believe yes, 2021 or 2220

Scott Benner 29:54
22 Yeah, in the last 10 of the 31 years that we're talking about right there, do. Did you see an endo every year? Sometimes, sometimes

Danny 30:04
the problem I had, I was too busy. You know, the job that I'd done was very, very physical, very active, but there was a lot of money to be earned, if that makes sense. You know, you'd never turn the overtime down. If there was a shift there, you'd be like, Yeah, I'll do it, I'll do it, and never for the repercussions.

Scott Benner 30:24
Yeah, you skip them because you feel like you didn't have the time. You're making money, and things are going well that way. Okay, I'm sorry. So we have neuropathy. Your father in law says, hey, get some help. You don't do anything there. 2019, the DK comes that, let's pick it up. From there, you're in the hospital with the DK, how does that process go? So, yeah,

Danny 30:48
basically, and that my partner called an ambulance for me, and I was like, don't need the ambulance. Just got a sickness bug. Paramedics came into the bedroom. My blood glucose meter had run out of battery. We found a spare one, but the test strips were out of date, so we couldn't even get a reading like that. They tested me, and they said, you're in, you're in DKA, yeah. And I was like, What's DKA? And they explained it to me, and I was like, No, I'm not I feel fine. It's not doing my diabetes. Got a stomach bug, and they just said to me, listen, Danny, if don't get in the ambulance, now you're going to die. And I was like, I'll just pack a bag. So did you believe them? I think it took that scare factor for me to if they would have just been like, Okay, leave you. You know, you don't want to get in the ambulance. Very thankful for them paramedics, because they were like, you're gonna die if you don't get in that ambulance and got blue lighted. I've never been I've been in a car quite fast, but I've never been that far. If my partner said they were like, land speed record to get me to the

Scott Benner 31:55
hospital. Yeah, they were. They really thought you were, you're in significant trouble.

Danny 31:59
Yeah, yeah. And I remember being in the emergency ward my local hospital and just being pumped for like, doctors working all around me. It was a bit of a haze, if I'm honest, and just being hooked up to all these having all these cannulas put in, but they couldn't get the cannulas in properly at first, because I was dehydrated, real, real scary time, and ended up being in ICU for three days not really know what's going on. You know, having members of family, I remember, like, sort of being semi conscious and seeing members of family around my bed. Yeah, wow. Thinking like, why is everyone here? It's not that bad.

Scott Benner 32:45
How long? How long did it take to get through that?

Danny 32:49
It was three days, and after the third day, they let me come home. Third or fourth day. The only downside of it was I was meant to be taking my partner to Ed Sheeran on Friday, so she ended up going with her mum. So my mum got a free ticket to go and see Ed Sheeran, and I still never seen him. So, yeah, that that was the one that really, really shook me up. You know, I come home and I was really lethargic that weekend. Yeah, still feeling a little bit underwear. But I was, I was testing my glucose. I was being religious with it. Then, you know, for that, for that first week had come out of hospital, I was, I was testing everything. They were getting me in, back in to see the endo in a different hospital, really good hospital that I'm under now. And it sort of kick started my diabetes again, if that makes

Scott Benner 33:44
sense, yeah, I got you back on track. What's the next thing that happens to you after that decay?

Danny 33:50
So you know, during this time, I've had some laser surgery on my eyes as well, so that that's been sort of going on for the couple of years beforehand, I said I Doctor tame, you know, you need to fuck your ideas up, your your blood sugars, yeah, yeah, yeah. So I started doing all that, right, in 2020 I don't know if you, I don't believe you guys do it in the States. It's called a Daphne. Course,

Scott Benner 34:18
no. Daphne's specific to England. I believe, yeah,

Danny 34:21
and that opened my eyes up to a lot of things. And I had been really looking after it then. And that was, that was in the January of 2020 when I had done the Daphne

Scott Benner 34:32
course, and you got a more modern look at what it meant to manage type one diabetes.

Danny 34:36
Yeah, it sort of re educated me again. So I went to the hospital for a week to, you know, carb count again, yeah, they showed me all these apps that was available. And then obviously I was looking after it great. And we went into lockdown. And, you know, was really still. Like looking after it quite well over lockdown, still having my bad days. Like, I know a lot of diabetics do have the bad day, yeah, you know, and that even now, I still don't say on the perfect, you know, I'm far from the perfect diabetic, but I try my hardest now, yeah,

Scott Benner 35:19
not. You're not pretending to try or pretend you're just gonna make it through no matter what. None, not Absolutely. No, I have two questions. Give me a second. I have two questions. Yes. So my first one is when you say it's not going to stop me. I can do it. I'm tougher than this, but you're getting laser surgery and your feet hurt. Do you ever have like an honest moment with yourself and you go, I am not actually beating this like you don't

Danny 35:46
even mean, no, I still, at that point, I was still, so I can turn this round. Was, was my thought, even in 2020,

Scott Benner 35:57
but like, I'm talking to you. You're a bright guy, you're thoughtful, you're thinking about your life. I can tell all that, right, like, so, so you're lying to yourself. Then, yeah, pretty much, yeah, because I can turn this around, but you're not actually doing anything to turn it around. That that's, you know what I mean?

Danny 36:13
Problem I was doing, Scott, I was saying the right things to everyone else, but I wasn't actually putting these words into action, no motion. Yeah, okay. You know it was just, yeah, I'm doing it. I'm doing it, and it was getting better. But, you know, the eyes, the pain in the feet, yeah, you're right. At that point I should have been like this. This is This needs to stop.

Scott Benner 36:38
Yeah, you're on fire. And you're telling me, Don't worry, I'll put it out. But you're not, you're not turning the hose on. You're holding the hose going, I got it, I got it, I got it, I got it, I got it. And yeah, and then you just don't take the step. Do you have any any reasonable idea about why not, beyond the like, I'm gonna beat it, or I'm a guy and I think I can win. Like, do you like? I'll ask it a different way. We'll get back to that question, a different way, would you ever describe yourself as not wanting to be alive, as not feeling like you're valuable? Like, did you have any bad self esteem problems? Like, any reason? No, you wanted to live?

Danny 37:12
Yeah, yeah, yeah. Okay, no. And I had two massive reasons to live with my children, but I was so focused, my health came second after my work. Sure, I was very, you know, it wasn't even like a massive career that I was doing. It was just the money was good when you put the hours in. And I was so focused on earning money, earning money, my health came second. That was always my thought process.

Scott Benner 37:43
Do you think it's possible you're just you're a victim of being diagnosed so early that the expectation for people with diabetes was so low, and then the way management became different and different over the years, you never found out about so is the Daphne course, like almost learning, like you have a different disease than the one you had before.

Danny 38:03
You know, when I, when I was diagnosed, it was very strict. He wasn't allowed to eat, like I said, chocolate, sweets. He was not allowed. That was like, it's a big no no. And if you had a lot of diabetic chocolate, it was like a laxative, so it wasn't great for you. Yeah, so I stayed cleared of it. But then, when I had an appointment when I was about 18, it changed quite a lot diabetes management. And it was like, well, you can eat certain stuff as long as you you do you know, insulin to cover them carbs. And I was like,

Scott Benner 38:35
oh, right, so you ate the food, but didn't cover the carbs.

Danny 38:39
No, I did at first, but after a while it was like, Well, I'm doing okay. Got it? I'm doing okay, okay.

Scott Benner 38:46
And so it really is the way I describe on the podcast. Like, if you wake up the next day and you're not dead, then you just feel like, Oh, I'm what I'm doing. Must be okay, 100% right? And then the medical stuff happens so slowly that you don't necessarily, even though it sounds, I mean, you and I are talking, we know, we know it sounds ridiculous to say, but like you don't associate it with the decisions.

Danny 39:10
Oh no, yeah. Never, even before, never went through my mind that I'd be in the position I am in now.

Scott Benner 39:17
Yeah, you didn't connect that the pain was the diabetes management or the eyes, was the diabetes management? It was just these things are happening to me

Danny 39:26
because it's not visible as such. You know? Yeah, the pain was there in the feet and the legs. I just thought at some point, because my job, I was on my feet quite a lot. Yep, I'd drive to a job, then I'll get out and I'll be on the feet for a couple of hours back in the van, off to another job. I just thought it was the footwear I was wearing at first. You know, I never thought of the diabetes at one point, then, until I done that thing.

Scott Benner 39:52
And the reason I'm asking you the questions this way because you're kind enough to be here and share your story, but because I want people. To hear two things, like, if they have type one, I want them to hear that this, this slow kind of drift away from health can happen without you really knowing it. And I want them to hear that it can happen without you being malicious. Yeah, you're not consciously or even subconsciously saying to yourself, I don't want to be alive, I don't want to live. I don't want to take good care of myself. I don't want to be good health. You want all of those things. And, yeah, I don't know. I just think that's important for people to hear. I don't even know that. I want to justify what I mean by that. I just think it's important for people to hear that you're a reasonable, thoughtful guy with kids and a life, and you have desires to be alive and have fun and life and love, and you're not just ignoring your health. Because I think that it would be easy for a person to come in from the outside hear your story and say, well, here's a guy that just didn't care and didn't try hard enough. And I don't think that you would characterize yourself as either of those

Danny 40:52
things. No, I don't think it was that. It was my thought process was earn the money quickly to have a better life with the kids and stuff. You know, I hear I was very driven by money, which I'm not no

Scott Benner 41:07
more. So, okay, so we paint in the feet. What happens next?

Danny 41:13
So, you know, like I said, from I've done the Daphne course in 2020, went through lockdown, was looking after it reasonably well. I wouldn't say it was brilliant, but a lot better than I had done for the last 20 years. Maybe right at least, yeah, 20 years, and it got to 2022 and I was at work one day, and my my foot, my right foot, felt like really wet. And I was like, This doesn't feel like me. And I was working with another guy. We went back to the van to have a lunch, and my foot just felt really wet. And I was like, This isn't right. And I pulled my sock off, and basically half the bottom of my big toe was hanging off, as in, like, an ulcer, a blister on the bottom of my toe. And I was like, yeah, yeah. Panic time

Scott Benner 42:07
settled. First time you'd ever noticed it, yeah, okay. And it was like,

Danny 42:11
right, that's he went and got in his van. I drove to the local hospital. They bandaged it up, and it's a small hospital, and so they sent me home with some antibiotics. And this, this was on like the Friday, so I had a couple of days this on a Thursday, sorry, a couple of days at home. And it got to the Sunday, and I was in so much pain, so much pain in that foot. I took myself to my hospital, which is a massive Hospital in Cambridge in the UK. And sat in the emergency department for a good eight or nine hours, and they had another look, sent me back home with stronger painkillers and antibiotics, and I had hospital the next morning in the eye clinic, I had an eye checkup. Went to my eye checkup appointment, it just didn't feel right. And I just thought, I just thought I'd try my luck and poke my head into the diabetic clinic. And I spoke to one of the diabetic specialist nurses, when can we just have a look at it? They got me into because the podiatry was in the same area. It took me into podiatry, and they were like, right, we need to admit you to hospital. You could see the infection spreading up my leg. It was like, up to halfway up my shin by then. So I got hit. That was February 2022, and I was in hospital for two weeks on IV antibiotics. Told not to go put weight bear on that for a while. So signed off and working, which was the biggest at that time, the biggest killer for was me. Was like, I can't work, yeah, but still think, like, thinking everything might be okay. Went back the following week, and ever said, you know, I had a procedure when I was done in hospital called an angioplasty, where they run a line from your groin all the way down your to your feet, and they put these little balloons in to open up the veins to get the blood flow going again. And they told me that it was unsuccessful, and eventually, if these antibiotics didn't work, I was gonna have to have a bologna amputation on the right leg, and that was like, wow, yeah. You know, I was devastated. You know, some to hear something like that at the age of 40 odd.

Scott Benner 44:34
Wasn't great, no? And by then had your father in law lost his leg?

Danny 44:39
Yeah, he had been in an amputee for two years by then, sort of, sort of, you know, he was, he was on hand for advice and stuff

Scott Benner 44:49
like that. But you had real context about what life looked like after the amputation too.

Danny 44:54
Yeah. So I was like, you know, this is gonna be a minor setback. Be back at work within a year. So that they said, right, we're gonna have to do an amputation. This was in the February, and I kept going back on these. They said, if it didn't improve, so obviously, I'm still pinning my hopes on that this leg was going to stay. And it got to it would have been April, and they said that nothing's working. You know, the foot's dying. We need to do a baloney amputation. Yeah. I was like, okay, sort of got my head around it, and they phoned me up on the fifth of May and said, Oh, we want to book you in for your amputation. And I was like, All right, when's that? And they said, Tomorrow morning at nine o'clock. And I was like, I didn't know what to say. I was like, I was like, Can I phone you back? I need to speak to my partner. Yeah, spoke to my girlfriend. She was like, What you thinking about? It needs to be done. Just phone them back. Get it done. So, yeah, on the sit for May, I ended up having a right leg below knee amputation. And, you know, it completely rocked my world.

Scott Benner 46:11
This episode was too good to cut anything out of but too long to make just one episode. So this is part one. Make sure you go find part two. Right now it's going to be the next episode in your feed. A huge thanks to us, med for sponsoring this episode of The Juicebox podcast. Don't forget us, med.com/juicebox, this is where we get our diabetes supplies from. You can as well, use the link or call 888-721-1514, use the link or call the number get your free benefits check so that you can start getting your diabetes supplies the way we do from us. Med, the podcast you just enjoyed was sponsored by tandem diabetes care. Learn more about tandems, newest automated insulin delivery system, tandem mobi, with control iq plus technology at tandem diabetes.com/juicebox there are links in the show notes and links at Juicebox podcast.com. I'd like to thank the ever since 365 for sponsoring this episode of The Juicebox podcast, and remind you that if you want the only sensor that gets inserted once a year and not every 14 days you want the ever since CGM, ever since cgm.com/juicebox, one year, one CGM. 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.

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