#1908 Every Day Without Diabetes Is a Gift
Every Day Without Diabetes Is a Gift
Three of her four kids have type 1 diabetes. A Montana mom on antibody testing, TZield, and the family motto — every day without diabetes is a gift.
Jump to a moment
- Alarms are a heads-up, not a rule — Scott’s phone alerts at 120 and Arden’s alarm is set at 130 so a small, early correction can turn a rising 130 back into a 90 with less insulin. It was never about “staying under 120.”
- Natalie’s daughter was diagnosed at 11, days after COVID — her instinct to drive an hour to the bigger hospital in Billings, arriving with a 600 blood sugar and severe dehydration, likely saved her daughter’s life.
- Antibody screening found markers in two more of Natalie’s kids. “They say knowledge is power, but knowledge can be a burden” — she wishes the counseling had come before the test, not after.
- TZield (teplizumab) can push off stage 3 type 1 — about two years on average, sometimes far longer after one 14-infusion course — but insurance required her daughter to “fail” an oral glucose test to very specific numbers before covering it.
- The family motto: “Every day without diabetes is a gift.” Natalie’s daughter, the one already on insulin, put it simply — if treatment buys even one more day without diabetes, it’s worth it.
- TZield (teplizumab) — The therapy Natalie's kids are pursuing to delay stage 3 type 1 diabetes
- TrialNet — Free antibody screening for relatives of people with type 1 — how Natalie learned about her other kids
- Friends for Life — The family diabetes conference where Natalie and Scott crossed paths at the fireworks
- Juicebox Podcast Facebook Group — The 83,000-member community discussed throughout this episode (verify URL)
Every word of the conversation
Welcome — Meet Natalie0:00
Welcome back, friends. You are listening to the Juice Box podcast.
My name is Natalie, and I am a type one diabetes mom to three kids with type one diabetes.
Nothing you hear on the Juice Box podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise. Always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan. The episode you're about to enjoy was brought to you by Dexcom, the Dexcom g seven, the same CGM that my daughter wears. You can learn more and get started today at my link, dexcom.com/juicebox. The episode you're about to listen to is sponsored by Tandem Moby, the impressively small insulin pump.
Tandem Moby features Tandem's newest algorithm, Control IQ Plus technology. It's designed for greater discretion, more freedom, and improved time and range. Learn more and get started today at tandemdiabetes.com/juicebox. Natalie, is nice to have you on the program today.
Thanks for having me.
Oh, it's a pleasure. Are you kidding me? What brings you here? What made you reach out?
You know, honestly, just trying something new, putting myself out there, I guess.
Cool. Well, that's a good reason to do this. And you're you said you're you're up for the ride today. Right?
I am. Yeah. I mean, I'm a little nervous, but, you know, it's it's you. You're easy to talk to.
So Well, no. You you don't understand. You need to go look at social media. I'm a horrible, horrible person. I don't understand what you're saying.
I have read a few things about you lately, but I do try to defend you.
You don't need to, but that's very kind of you. When you defend me, you will just be seen as a cult member.
It is true. And you know what? Honestly, call me a cult member. Mhmm. I'm in.
I you know what's so, Natalie, we'll we'll reveal this in reverse. But I've had an interesting week where I was out in public a couple times meeting people, giving little talks and saying hello and stuff like that. Yeah. And when the first person walks up and says, hey. You know, I just wanna thank you for everything.
You think, that's very nice. And then you look and there's someone standing behind them waiting to talk to you, and you go find that person. And then there's a person behind you and off to the side. People who show up and say, I just want to come out and say thanks. You know, I've I I'm pretty sure I know what you're gonna say on stage, but I wanted to be supportive.
Like, all those things for what you've, you know, what you've done and like, you're standing there trying to, for me, contextualize what what you've done means. This just means that I I bought a microphone and learned how to record myself and said, these are the things I've been noticing and, you know, it kinda grew from there. Anyway, I I think I I I don't even know how I gosh. How do you say this exactly? Because I don't wanna be I feel badly for anybody who's struggling with anything.
Right?
Yes.
But with anxiety or mental illness or or things that, you know, are are just super serious like that that I don't always know that the person struggling realizes they're struggling. And Sure. You know, it sounds kind of probably sounds pompous. Have no idea. But, you know, the the Facebook page, the group takes in people constantly, about a 150, about every 72, we think.
Wow.
And you will pretty quickly see that a lot of people just lurk in the background. Some people speak. Some people are there trying to pimp their businesses. We have to weed those out. There's some people who are trying to take advantage of people.
You weed those out. Luckily, that's few and far between, especially when now I think the group just hit 83,000 members this morning. Right?
Wow.
But once in a while, people pop up and you think, oh, they're struggling with sort some sort of I don't know. We wanna call it mental illness, but they're really struggling. You know? Yeah. You see it.
Like, it's pretty easy to spot, and we try really hard to be even extra supportive of those people, especially when they make posts that are a little rambly or a little Yep. You you know, like like that kind of thing. There's this person that, I don't know, a year ago, a year and a half ago, fit the bill. You know what I mean? And you're like, oh gosh.
I hope I hope this person's okay. We tried so many different ways to support them. And then as always seems to happen, eventually, once once you're not their answer, they turn on you. Does that make sense? Mhmm.
Managing an 83,000-Member Community4:26
Yeah. And then we still try to be supportive. Like, we are not like quick. Not, like, people who are, said something and you're banned. Like, you're really hard.
And there's a great group of people helping with the the board, you know, that I you know, aren't me, and we all kinda have the same vibe, and we're trying really hard to make it a great place for as many people as possible. So people get banned once in a while for being unstable. Like, there's just really no other way to say it. Right? So I I was introduced to one of those people again today through something someone sent to me, and that person indicated that they have an eating disorder and are experiencing multiple mental illness issues
Oh, no.
Because of the podcast.
Oh, no.
But I was like I was like, what now? I was I was like, oh, no. Like, what are all those other tens of thousands of people saying it's good for me? I I I'm spreading mental illness. And my gosh.
Scott. Yeah. Yeah. I was like and by the way, I was not flippant when I first saw it. This is me a couple hours later.
When I first thought saw it, honest to god first reaction, I said, I I I thought the person's name out loud. And I thought, oh, you know, blank. I'm so sorry. You're this is happening to you. You know, like, genuinely because this is a thing I watched happen in the Facebook group.
People tried to be supportive. We tried from different angles. We tried different voices, male, female, like, you know, different perspectives. Really trying to help this person get to something. And by the way, on paper in front of you, they seemed that they were doing really well.
Anyway, you might be wondering how I am spreading mental illness to this person and giving them a needing disorder. Well, it would I am very curious. Yeah. Yeah. Well, no.
No. It's do it with a magic wand and spells I use. Oh, okay. And that's how I got the cult to form. But but no.
No. So it's either a purposeful misreading of something I said or it's a misunderstanding that they didn't get. But if you listen long enough, you'll hear me say that Arden's alarms are set at her high alarm's set at 01:30. Okay. And on my phone, they're set at 01:20.
That's to give you the heads up that something's going up. Yes. It's not because we're trying to stay under 01:20 all the time.
Right.
Alarm Settings, Explained — 120s, 130s, and Small Corrections6:45
Right? And so somebody will hear that then not hear the rest of it. And then Right. Think, well, I have to stay under 01:20.
And Oh, no.
That's just not obviously, it's obviously not what I've said. I've said it so many times, it would be hard to misunderstand me on, like, by mistake. But whatever.
Right.
And Right. And contextually, I'd be happy to lay out Natalie right now. By the way, you'll get to talking in a minute. But
Oh, no. I'm loving this.
Oh, good. Oh, you're having fun? Good.
Because because actually, one one of my questions for you was how do you manage the Facebook group so well?
Oh, well, we'll get to it. Oh, well, I guess I I didn't know that was one of your questions, but I guess that's where we're starting.
You're not managing it well if you're causing melt
mental illness. Well, you know, when you're spreading mental illness the way I am, it's it's more difficult. So, anyway, my the way I think about the numbers, just, you know, very simply and candidly, is I like to know at 01:20 because I like to have a heads up to know that it's possible that Arden's gonna hear about a 01:30 soon. Right? Yes.
And then and then from there, okay, at 01:30, she gets alarmed. Now why? Because it's much easier to turn a 01:30 back into a ninety with a smaller amount of insulin than it is to wait till your alarm goes off at two hundred or 02:50 or wherever else put people put alarms. Right? Because then suddenly you're using more insulin, more insulin.
It makes it, more likely that you're gonna get low later. You'll get misbalanced between the food in your system and the insulin that you've put in, whatever. Right? I just find it's like a kind of a law of small numbers thing. Like, the less you use, kind of the more stable it it seems to be.
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The more time you spend in range, the better and healthier you feel. And with the Dexcom Clarity app, you can track your glucose trends, and the app will also provide you with a projected a one c in as little as two weeks. If you're looking for clarity around your diabetes, you're looking for Dexcom. Dexcom dot com slash juice box. When you use my link, you're supporting the podcast.
Dexcom.com/juicebox. Head over there now. This episode is sponsored by Tandem Diabetes Care. And today, I'm gonna tell you about Tandem's newest pumping algorithm. The Tandem Mobi system with Control IQ plus technology features auto bolus, which can cover missed meal boluses and help prevent hyperglycemia.
It has a dedicated sleep activity setting and is controlled from your personal iPhone. Tandem will help you to check your benefits today through my link, tandemdiabetes.com/juicebox. This is going to help you to get started with Tandem's smallest pump yet that's powered by its best algorithm ever. Control IQ plus technology helps to keep blood sugars in range by predicting glucose levels thirty minutes ahead, and it adjusts insulin accordingly. You can wear the Tandem Mobi in a number of ways.
Wear it on body with a patch like adhesive sleeve that is sold separately, clip it discreetly to your clothing, or slip it into your pocket. Head now to my link, tandemdiabetes.com/juicebox, to check out your benefits and get started today. Now I will also say that I've said in the past and will say again, if after a meal, I see a blood sugar hit one sixty and it's going up, I think, uh-oh, we might have missed this bolus.
Yeah.
And at one eighty, I consider that a high blood sugar. Right? And so Yep. That's it. Now is it a rule?
Do you have to live your life that way? Is every meal or every excursion a do or die situation? No. But that's unless you have a mental illness, and then maybe you you say, oh, these are the hard and fast numbers. And if I miss these numbers, I'm blah blah blah.
Anyway, that happened. That's how I gave the person, apparently an eating disorder and multiple by the way, I wanna I I don't wanna quote them because I don't wanna out anybody, but multiple mental illnesses are are are from the podcast. Now, like like you said, there are nice people that jump in and go, that podcast saved my life. I don't know what you're talking about or blah blah blah. Right.
You know? But it's just really interesting because the minute it happens about a hand so to to kinda pivot back to, like, managing a large, community. Yeah. I don't know most people's names. Right?
Like, I just it's it's impossible. You don't know sometimes you, like, see an avatar that, like, catches your eye and it sticks with you or something like that. But there are a handful of people, I would say fewer than 30, who if you said their name out loud, I will I will immediately know who they are. And it is nine times out of 10 because they are patently out of their minds. Okay?
And that we You
can't forget their name.
Well, it's because nice people trying to help you for free spend their time Yes. Trying to navigate your mental illness. And, like, so you stick with them a little bit. Yep. And I don't use the mental I don't use the phrasing mental illness lightly.
I'm I'm not saying, like, everybody with a, you know, like, feels a little anxiety. I'm I'm talking about, like I mean, I don't you you know what, Natalie? I see where you live in the country. You get what I'm saying. Right?
I I get what you're saying a 100%.
Sometimes, I feel you. You're not okay, and that's okay, by the way. I'm I'm by the way, I've also done hundreds of episodes with people who actually have mental illness where I think you would see that I'm incredibly supportive of them. And and yeah. It's and I think thoughtful even about it.
And I've tried hard to learn about it, and I've tried hard to spread people's stories out about them. But when you get into this situation where you're just like, look. You are we're gonna try to help you. And you can see that the group is also trying to be helpful, but there's a point. There's a moment, right, when you're singing on the sidewalk turns into into the the the mailbox where we gotta go, okay.
I'm sorry, but you can't put your tent up on my sidewalk. You know? Like, do you know I mean? Like, we're done now. And so I don't know what how to help you, but, apparently, I'm not gonna be able to do it.
So
Well, don't you think the ones that are harder to help are the ones that don't even recognize they have a mental illness?
It has to be. I mean, when I Because Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. Mean, at least if someone says, hey. I know I have anxiety or I know I'm what I'm saying is crazy, they acknowledge it. You know?
We we can work with that.
It it also gives it it gives you the sense that there's some self awareness about it.
Yes.
Right? And and and and being super serious, and I don't mean to be cavalier about it. Like, if you if you genuinely have mental illness, you're probably the last person who's gonna know about it. And Yes. And that's even well and good.
Right? But you can't online, everybody seems, I don't know, everybody seems to find their group because it's funny because this person's comment was under another post of a person who also did not seem, from my perspective, incredibly stable. Yes. And so, you know, I I think people find each other a lot. Like, there's people who don't like me, like, really, I would say, like, people who come off very angry, they seem to find each other.
There are people who come off crazy. They seem to find each other. There are like, which is nice, by the way. It's go find your people. You you know what I mean?
Yep. But I'm not an entity. I'm a person. Like like, I know I put myself out here with the podcast, so it's on me. You know?
So I'm I'm not arguing. I understand I understand the game, and I understand the world that I've put myself into. But, you know, also, you should understand that I didn't put myself into this
Right. Purposely. I think the online world is just so wild. It's like I and I'm always constantly fighting myself because I wanna be part of it, and I wanna make a difference. And, you know, I wanna do all the good things for the type one community.
Mhmm.
And then you see the negative sides, and you're like, woah. I'm out. I don't like this.
Well, it's not even see, it's funny. I don't even think of it as negativity. I think of it as just a a few people who are a little off center. Yes. All got together somewhere, which again Yes.
God bless them. But, like, they need to understand that they're talking to themselves.
Yes.
Thirty Hours of Driving to Atlanta — and a Nonprofit Born From the Podcast15:32
Right? Like, I have you know, listen. One of the things I did this weekend was I went to this event. It's funny as I'm being chastised online. I I drove my ass from New Jersey to Atlanta and back again to appear at an event for a few hours.
I drove thirty hours in three days. Now, Scott, you could have flown. I could have. I had something to do in Tennessee. I made a stop.
I decided to drive. That's not the point though. Had had this thing in Atlanta not existed, I just wouldn't have done the thing in Tennessee. Okay? Right.
I just I never would have gone. Someone called me and said, can you come out and speak for one hour at an event across the country? We will not be paying you. And I said, wouldn't miss it. Oh.
And right? And showed up and room of people, 100 people, maybe hundred hundred and twenty, a few more than that. Beautiful group of people. Right? In this lovely setting.
And I looked out on that crowd, and these were people who were looking for community. Some of them were lost. Some of them were found, and I'm not a religious person, but some of them got through some you know what I mean? Yeah. Came out the other side and were showing up to either celebrate what happened to them or to be supportive of other people.
That's what I was there trying to do. And, you know, I spent I was supposed to be there for an hour talking to the to them, and then I was supposed to spend an hour talking to the kids. And it was a group between they were, like, between seven and 15, the group of kids. Right? And so I really, I had two scheduled hours of speaking.
I was there for six hours. The other four hours were standing there just talking to people. People who approached me, I wasn't running up to them, and and and that took four hours. A young man who came up to tell me that he started a nonprofit who just translates type one diabetes content into another language so people in the Ethiopian and Eritrean community can have access to it. He's telling me all about this thing, and then he says, I started this because of your podcast.
Wow. I should have said to him, no. You misunderstood the whole thing. I'm just spreading mental illness on people. And, like but but anyway, like, there there's that what a wonderful moment.
I almost cried standing in front of him. Right? Like, he he said to me, he's a young guy, right, in in his twenties, and I'm standing there. I'm 54 years old. I've been making this podcast for twelve years now, writing a blog before that.
I've been trying to help people with diabetes since 2007. 2007, I started writing the blog. Never took an ad or dollar from anybody for years and years and years and years. They would offer it to me. I said, no.
A pump company came to me one time and said, we will give you free pumps for your daughter.
Oh my goodness.
And I said, we have insurance.
Oh my goodness.
I don't need free pumps. I said in return, could you find a way to gift them to somebody else? We spent nine months trying to get through the legal process to do that. It wouldn't work.
That's amazing.
Couldn't do it. We couldn't give them away. So when that they we got done, they said, listen. We tried our hardest. Like, I've tried with legal 10 different times.
We can't give the pumps that we wanna give to you to somebody else.
Wow.
Do you want them? And I said, no. I have insurance. I don't need them. Thank you, though.
Why the Podcast Has Never Charged Listeners19:00
And then eventually, I started writing for Omnipod's blog. Okay? I would write six pieces a year, and I think I made a thousand dollars for each piece. I think I made $6,000 a year. That that was the after making the blog my blog for 02/1450 nine years of writing a blog, and I was I was tearing down a fat $6 a year writing for someone's blog other blog.
Okay? Oh, wow. You're rich. I'm I'm just yeah. Let's do the math.
Okay? My yearly income could be in the tens of dollars. Now so now so I'm doing this I I would never take an ad. I wouldn't put an ad on anything. I started making the podcast.
The podcast is hard to make. So it's not easy, and it's time consuming in a massive way. I mean, the editor alone is a grown man who makes an income that I pay. You you know I mean? Like, so there's there's so I gotta start I'm like, look.
If I'm gonna make this work, I gotta find a way to make money off of this somehow. Like right?
Yeah. Absolutely.
So when I start doing it, you know what everybody's advice was. Right?
What was that?
Charge people.
Oh, lordy.
$10 a month, $5 a month. You've got a thousand people listening to you. Charge $5 a month. You make $5,000. Like, do this.
Like, that. Right? And I kept having the same feeling over and over again. I don't wanna take money from people. Yeah.
If I just don't want to. And
And that's and that's what I love about you is and it's it's you know, in this in the space you have, you I mean, I think all of I I would want you to make money in a way, but it is nice that as a type one parent or, you know, if you have type one yourself to not have to pay for that is huge because you're allowing us to have free access, basically. But I think it's okay to make money off of ads or other in other ways that aren't taking from us. Know?
Yeah. And let me be clear. I do. Right? But I'm not taking I'm not gonna reach into your pocket and take $5 for you to learn how to pre bolus.
Yes. It's ridiculous. I love that about you. Yeah. It's just I love that.
Also, the things we're talking about aren't even that deep, like, to be perfectly honest with you. Right? Like and and then and I'm I'm candid, and I say that out loud. Yeah. I've watched other people take my words and turn them into coaching services
Wow.
And charge, like, crazy money off for people. And and, again, if you wanna pay somebody $3 to be coached for a few months
Oh, yikes. But god
bless you. Like, if that's what you want to do, then go do that. I'm also not telling you you shouldn't do that. I'm not telling you the person who's doing it, they shouldn't have a business. It's fine.
It's fine. I don't give shit. It's fine with me. I'm just telling you it's not a I I don't wanna be involved in it.
Yes. I agree.
So I found a different way to pay my bills and to make and to make this a living. Now why is that important? It's important because, I don't know, did you enjoy the conversation with doctor Wachowski about the, Eladon trials?
Yes.
Okay. Yeah. Took me six months to set that up.
Which is so crazy.
Yeah. And and and to, like, and to get him scheduled and rescheduled because the man's busy. He's, you know, transplanting things for people. So we had to reschedule a number of times. I had to work with his admin.
We had to go back and forth. I got, questions for him that I wanted to like, I had to get together, like, questions I wanted to ask. I had to ask those questions, had to record it with electricity and the Internet and all the things that it takes to make a podcast, and then it has to go out to the editor. And the editor has to do what he does to it, and then it has to then it has to go online. It has to be supported by social media and a website and a group online.
It my job is not hard, but it is constant. Yep. Okay? And if you don't if you don't incentivize me to do that, meaning Yes. You don't make it possible for my house to stay warm and for my tree monitor that I see running around right now to have little frozen pinky mice to eat once in a while as a treat.
I can't do that then because I have a family and I need to live too. Right? Yes. When you and and you'll and I've seen people try to do it and and it's gonna sound strange, try to do it without it being a business, but eventually they get bored.
Yeah. And I think you get burnt out.
Well, yeah. Because you you do because you have a regular life and you're trying to do this thing. Like, if you asked me to do this and go to my job, you wouldn't have the podcast. And Yes. And if you're out there thinking right now, well, Scott, I didn't ask you for the podcast.
Okay. I can't argue with that. But my argument would be that I am doing a thing that no one else is doing. Yes. Right?
Like, I'm recording with Natalie today, who is not a person who would normally find herself on a podcast or have a voice to say the things that I eventually match up we're gonna let her say. And so
I mean, basically, I'm a nobody, and you've invited me on here.
Well, yeah. I don't mean it that way, but yeah. Right? Like like Yeah. You're giving a voice to the voiceless.
Like like Well yeah.
And and, also, you haven't done all of this work for, you know, what you say, twelve years, and then suddenly come to the type one community and say, now you guys owe me. Here's a GoFundMe. Give me some money.
Well, you're bringing up a specific thing, and I don't like to out people. So that won't be things that I will talk about directly. But, don't do that. As a No.
And that's and that's what I appreciate about you. Thank you. You know, I'm not coming on this podcast. I mean, I did have to take off an hour or two of work, but I, you know, I'm not gonna record this podcast and then say, now you guys owe me.
It's just such a strange idea to ask people to pay for like, yeah. I'm I'm making a thing. I think it helps people based on my historical experience. And based on the fact that somebody asked me to come to Atlanta when I got there, there were a 100 people there who were like, oh my god. It's you.
Like like so I assume that that, like, means something. By the way, it's also very strange for me, and it's not a thing you're ever gonna get accustomed to is to have somebody come up to you as if they've seen you in a movie or something like that. It's
a weird thing. I don't know if you remember, but, last year at Friends For Life, we were up in the bar watching the fireworks, and you were
You guys were on the other side of the glass? My wife and I were out on the patio. Oh my god. I do remember that.
And we were pretending to take your photo like you were a movie star.
Yes. Well, I am not. And if you would have taken that photo, when you looked at it, you would have thought, oh, yeah. No. He's not that that doesn't work.
Well, I I think you
are a movie star to some people. Fair enough. You you it's you're lovely. But the the the the point is is that there are not an unending line of people in the world trying to make content for people specifically with type one diabetes who are not asking you to pay them.
Yes.
Right? And so and who are putting a professional level of effort into it seven days a week, three hundred and sixty five days a year. Yep. So you so as as I like to say in my personal life, I hear you complaining, but I'd prefer if you just said thank you. So or don't say thank you.
No. No. No. Or don't or don't say thank you. You know what I mean, Natalie?
Like, just just don't listen. I don't care. Like like, great like, I mean, if it helps you, that's great. If it doesn't, I don't understand why you would spend your time with
it. Yes.
And and by the way, if something I'm saying is making you feel unstable, I don't mean to be overly simplistic, but stop
listening. Don't listen.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. That's a like, listen. Maybe people need to understand this.
If It Hurts, Stop Listening26:42
If you take a pin and you stick it in your leg and it hurts, and you pull it out, you stick it in again and it hurts, I'm gonna tell you, stop sticking your leg with the pin. Okay? That's the problem. It's not the guy that made the pin. Correct.
It's your dumbass sticking it into your leg. Now if you're can't help yourself, I it's also not my fault. Do you know do you know what I mean?
You have lots of great advice on the and, you know, your guests have lots of great advice, but, you know, you kinda have to pick and choose what works for you and what doesn't.
Oh my god. You I
mean, you have to make that choice yourself.
I I don't think that every like, I don't think that everything I'm saying needs to be applied by every person nor would I assume that you would do that.
Right.
But if you find yourself in that position of feeling like everything was said to me today has to be done, again, this is a great time for you to stop and say to yourself, I need to find a person who loves me to help me because I might not be okay. Yep. Right? And and I don't know how to help a person with that. I hope my sincerity is coming out in this last couple of moments here.
You're you're not okay. You need help.
Yeah. And I'm I'm just realizing there's there's not a lot of self awareness out there sometimes. You know, a lot of that requires someone to really truly self reflect.
It's also it's not a it that that's a a a failure of every person. Yes. I am not I'm not good at self reflecting all the time. Like, the healthiest person you can find in the world struggles with that. If you're also having sincere mental health issues, those things are going to get even more difficult.
Yep. Right? And I get the only thing I can tell you for sure, I don't know how to fix it, but the only thing I can tell you for sure is that it's not my fault, and I am not in charge of how you feel. Yes. I'm making a podcast.
Like like, it's if you walked outside to your neighbor and your neighbor said something that made you uncomfortable or made you think, oh, I'm not doing something or whatever, And then it makes you upset later and you and that upsetness manifests in some sort of a mental health issue. Did your neighbor do it to you? Like, why is it because it's on a podcast that's different?
I think someone people just wanna blame somebody else. I don't know.
I don't know either. I don't I don't don't I I I I mean,
it's easier to blame someone else than to truly look at your own self and say, maybe something's wrong with me.
I I'm a I'm a person who, I consume a fair amount of content. As a matter of fact, I'm a if I'm not with my family, I'm a headphones on person. Like, this morning, I mean, I was up for two hours before you and I recorded this morning.
Oh my goodness.
So this I know. Well, you live on a different coast. Trust me. It wasn't that early. Yes.
And so I I got up and I managed the Facebook group first. Looked at incoming hold on a second. Arden is bothering me. There. Oh, nice.
I at I looked at incoming requests to be members. You pick out there's a couple of spammy ones. You can find them real quick. Don't let them in. Yeah.
Let the other 30 or 40 people in accumulated overnight. Done. I checked the board real quick for my mentions. Some nice people are out there, you know, saying that the podcast was helpful to them. I try to thumbs up that kind of stuff or respond.
I search the group real quick for what people are talking about today because part of how I make content is, you know, what's in the zeitgeist? What are people struggling with right now? Or what are they, you know, what are they excited about? Get that together. I gotta go feed the dogs.
Now while I'm feeding the dogs, I am listening to a person whose political opinion I don't particularly agree with most of the time talk about the war in Iran because I wanna understand a different perspective than my own. I listened to that for twenty minutes. Then I listened to two videos about how to use Claude code better. Then I listened to a video about, apparently, Tesla's have improved something they call smart summon. Do you know about this?
No. I guess, there's a function they have that doesn't work really great. It that is starting to work better. But when it gets done, the idea is going to be that you walk out of a store, open up your app, tell the app where you're standing, and the car comes to you.
It's like valet parking?
Yes. But the car just unparks itself and comes to you.
Wow.
And then eventually, that will lead to something called I I forgot what it was called. But you'll eventually, you'll be able to pull up at a door and then dismiss your car, and your car will go park itself somewhere.
Oh my goodness.
Right? And and I was was, like, a ten minute video. I thought that was really interesting about how that that all works. I thought that was interesting. I moved on.
I have a couple of more videos that I wanna listen to later today. I'd like to listen to a little bit of my own podcast today just to check for audio quality and stuff like that. Yeah. Like, I'm always trying to take in information best I can to try to just make make my day easier, the things that I do more valuable. I I'm a person who believes that, like, we have a lot of access to a lot of technology, but in the end, we don't really do much with it.
That's so true.
You know? And I think that's kind of a shame. And if you're gonna spend time with it, I don't I'd like my time to be as productive as possible.
Yeah. Now I love that.
Why did I tell you all that, Natalie? Because in the course of a day of listening to sometimes ten, twelve pieces of information made by other people, I hear stuff that I think is interesting, stuff I disagree with, things I think are wrong. I have all kinds of different reactions to them. The only reaction I never have is to say, oh, that person's an idiot or a moron or trying to hurt me, or I just think it's a person with a microphone or a camera who's saying, this is the thing I think. Yep.
And and I go, okay. And then I decide what I think of that, and I move on. What world do I'm trying to imagine a world where I pick my phone back up, go search out other people who don't like the guy who made the video about the about the Claude code, and then get together and spend my day talking him in comments. Get a It's job.
I mean, she's a say, Claude sounds like they need more to do during more productive things to do.
Take a walk. Get a job. Make a friend. Hey. Not for nothing.
Go jerk off. Okay? But leave me alone. Seriously. Oh my gosh.
Maybe if you what? Is it make a friend. Make a make a pretend friend. I don't care. Draw a picture.
Picture nose. Leave me alone. I didn't ask it's for the weird assumption that by by by the mere fact that somebody put something out in the world that they're inviting you to to to critique them is strange. You know what's funny? And this is a supposition on my part.
Let me take a drink. The people I saw complaining in this latest thing, they all had a way about them. They seem to fit together visually. I don't know what dress, hair color, stuff like this. It it's again, they feel like they're a group of people who found each other, which, by the way, I'm very supportive Now now the the my point in saying is they seem like a very liberal group.
Okay? Also, would tell you, I'm a very liberal person, but the not but maybe not in the ear expander blue hair way. Okay? But I'm a but I'm a very liberal person. Come talk to me personally about my politics, about the world.
I think you will find that I am a very live and let live, people should succeed kind of person like the like, anyway, this is not the point. The point is is that these this group of people seem like the kind of people, the group of people who would see a video of paparazzi chasing Ben Affleck and say, that's not fair. Leave Ben Affleck alone. Okay? It's not Ben's got his own problems.
He's he's an alcoholic. Stop pointing a camera at him. These seem like people who would defend Ben Affleck, not the paparazzi. Okay? Yeah.
Maybe I'm wrong, but, I mean, if you listen to the podcast long enough, Natalie, you should know that my generalizations are spot on. I'm very, very good at picking people. And, like, I'm telling you these
You are.
These people would be very defensive of people's rights. Ironically, when it comes to me, they're the paparazzi.
Oh my gosh.
Right? Look what he's doing. Everyone look. It's wrong. He's bad.
He made a cult. You're out of your
double standard.
Well, it's just fascinating. It's fascinating. Wait. Wait. Wait.
You see in politics all the time. Right? No matter what side you're on Yep. We point and go, look what they're doing, and then we do the very same thing. Yep.
But then we say, no. It's okay because it's righteous when I do it. See, when they're when they're doing it what you don't understand, Natalie, is they're taking the time to make sure that people know that I'm a cult leader, okay, who spreads mental illness. And when when when, the paparazzi do it, they're just terrible people.
Yes.
Yeah. So I hope you heard all this, whoever you are. Go find a therapist. Okay? And pay them.
And when they tell you what's wrong, don't ignore them because Yeah. You're the last person who understands what's wrong with you right now. Also, I'm the last person who understands what's wrong with me, just so you know. Okay? Alright.
Now
Oh my gosh. I
love it. Are you saying you have a kid with diabetes 30 later? What's going on?
Harper Turns 17 — and Honey the Service Dog Turns 236:42
Yeah. How old? I was she is actually, today is her birthday. She's 17.
Get out of here. Happy birthday. Yeah. Oh, what a wonderful age. She must treat you terribly.
Go ahead. I'm sorry.
You know, she's a pretty I mean, there there's definitely rough days, but for the most part, she's a pretty good kid.
Awesome. That's awesome news. Well, how old was she when she was diagnosed?
So she was 11 years old.
Oh my gosh. Okay. Yep. I you know, it's funny. I try not to say rough time because I think all times are rough times, but that might be a rough time.
Yes. Yeah. So so really quick too, it's not only her birthday, it's also her service dog's birthday today as well. So her service dog is Honey, and she's two today.
So How you work that out?
You know, I think I I guess it was fate. I don't know.
That's crazy. Honey honey. That's fair.
Honey honey. Honey honey honey from
What? Like what? Honey what?
Like from Winnie the Pooh, h u n n y.
What's that? That's that song lyric. Honey honey come rad d k n what's that from?
I don't think that's from my generation.
No. I don't think so either. I I don't know. It's not important. I'm not gonna find it in my generation.
By the way, very insulting. That's fine.
Sorry. I'm sorry, Scott.
It's okay. Well, that's so when she was diagnosed you have other kids. Right?
Yeah. So she got diagnosed in 2020, you know, great year. We had all just had COVID, and it was in we actually all got tested positive for COVID on Halloween.
Okay. I guess you had trick treating.
Yeah. They were devastated. And, you know, of course, this was when nobody knew what was truly going on. So we were like, we can't go trick or treating. We're gonna, you know, spread this to everybody.
So we actually did reverse trick or treating that year. We put a bowl out and said, we're under quarantine. Leave take or leave a candy if you want.
That's a great by the way, that's a great idea. Do people leave you candy?
People brought bags of candy.
Aw. See how nice that is? That by by the way, in certain circles, that would be seen as spreading illness. They brought you candy. It's bad.
They were probably cult leaders for the Mars company. Oh my gosh. It's
and, you know, it's ironic. It you know, some people would be like, that's what caused her diabetes.
You know? For sure, there's gonna be 20 people who's gonna say that. Oh, well oh, so that what an what a nice thing, though. And what a smart you know, you're a good mom. You think of that?
You know, I I try I do the best I can.
No. That's very that's very thoughtful.
I'm I'm not a perfect mom, but I try to be a mom.
Oh, yeah. No. No. No. I'm not perfect at all as you heard.
Yeah. Yeah. We know Scott. Oh my So
Go ahead. By the way, I'm sorry that we started with your thing, with my thing and then got to your thing. Usually, I try to do your thing than my thing when I these break out this way, but this will be interesting to see if this works because
It's all good.
Yeah. Yeah.
Yeah. I'm I'm just yeah. Like I said in the beginning, I'm here for whatever.
Alright. Well, you're lovely. So so tell me about the diagnosis a little bit and how how she got started, where we're at today.
Diagnosis During COVID — the Drive That Saved Her Life39:57
Yeah. So, you know, the day she got out of quarantine, it was a it was either Wednesday or Thursday. She went back to school, and then the next day she came home and was still tired and not feeling the best. And, you know, again, nobody really knew much about COVID or what, you know, the protocol is and what the symptoms are, the lingering symptoms. So I just thought, you know, this is, you know, just she's still recovering from having COVID.
And then by Saturday night, she was vomiting in the middle of the night. And, again, I thought, this is weird. This is some after COVID thing. By Sunday morning, which fun fact, my husband was a pastor at the time, She was standing at the toilet, threw up everywhere, totally missed the toilet. And I'm, like, you know, upset.
I'm, like, you're 11 years old. How did you do that? And I still feel guilty about feeling that way. But she so I put her in the shower to rinse her off, and she just was not something was off. She wasn't very coherent.
And we live in a rural town, and so our hospital here is not the best. And so I called my husband at he was at church at work, and I said, I think something's really wrong. Let's this must be an after COVID thing. Let's drive her to Billings, which is an hour away. And, you know, they'll be able if she needs a special medicine, they'll be able to treat her there.
So honestly, it's it's crazy, but I'm like, I think that's what saved her life was my fear of the or the unknown of COVID. Mhmm. That's what made me drive her to a hospital an hour away. And, you know, she was throwing up on the way there. And by the time we got to the her tongue was, like, shriveled up.
And I told the nurse at the triage desk, I said I mean, this was how much I didn't know. I said, I think she just is really dehydrated and needs an IV.
Well, she might have been.
She was very dehydrated. Her tongue was just shriveled up. I mean, it was I've never seen anything like it.
Wow.
So they took us right back, and a doctor came in immediately, and he said, we're gonna check her for diabetes. And I'm like, what? No. This is a COVID thing. Like
Mhmm.
You know, do you just there must be some medicine you can give her, and she's gonna be fine. He poked her finger, and it was 600. And he said, I'm sorry, but she has type oh, I don't even know if he said type one. I think he just said diabetes. And I just said, oh, wow.
Okay. And from there, you know, we got transferred to the PICU, and that was the start of our
That's it.
Crazy journey.
Shriveled tongue and a PICU. Yep. Yep. And see, what you're tell just so I make sure I I understand, you think that if you would have waited long enough that you would have actually ended up at a local hospital, you're not sure how able they would have been to be helpful to her?
Yeah. So we've had other people in our town that have been diagnosed, and they were life flighted. And some of them, I mean, they didn't even they'd really didn't know that they had diabetes.
They were just like, this person's so sick. We don't know how to help
them. Yes. Okay. Yes. And so I I really think if we would have waited any longer, I don't know that she would have been with us.
Well, good instincts. Good for you.
Yeah. Look at you. Well and and I'm the type of mom that's like, you know, you're sick. We'll wait it out. Like, I'm not I don't like to rush to the doctor.
Mhmm. And so, yeah, I do I I think a lot about that because I I did I did have a medical background. And so I don't know. I've just I don't like to go to the doctor. I feel like they're always judging me.
Why?
Well, okay. So for instance, I just which I guess we'll get into this. So I have two other kids that will also have type one diabetes. Technically, they do have type one diabetes. They're just not on insulin.
But I took my daughter is supposed to start TZLD two or three weeks ago now.
Mhmm.
So on a Sunday, Easter Sunday, she had a stuffy nose, and I knew she was supposed to start treatment that Wednesday. So I said, I'm just gonna take you to the doctor just to be sure, like, this is you've had a stuffy nose for ten days. And I want her to be well. She has to be well to get t zealed. So I took her to the doctor, and the doctor's like, oh, this is just allergies.
And so you feel kinda dumb. You're like, wow. I brought you to the doctor for allergies. Well so she gives us this regimen of Claritin and all a neti pot and all of this. So Wednesday, we show up for TZealed, and they're like, we just really quick need to do a COVID and RSV swab.
They swab her nose, come back in, they're like, yeah. She's positive for both. I'm like, okay. Great.
But how does that make you feel judged? Why doesn't it make you feel like I was right?
That's true. That's true. But I just I feel like it's like you take them in first. So, again, when I took my daughter in for COVID, I'm like, she's just dehydrated. And then they're like, actually, she was almost dying.
And then I take my daughter in for, you know, a stuffy nose, and then turns out she I don't know. Maybe I just have PTSD.
Well, I would say you've you've exhibited a couple of really thoughtful responses medically. I would trust yourself a little bit.
I I think I should by now.
How old are your other So
I have, my oldest son is almost 19, and then Harper is 17, Ben is 14, and then Maddie is 13.
Oh my god. You've been making these kids forever. How old are
you? Yeah. Yeah. I'm 43.
No kidding. Hold on second. Gonna do some quick math. Twenty four twenty four. You were 24 when you had the first one?
Yep. Mhmm.
See what I did there? Yeah. Would a cult leader be able to do math in his head like that?
Absolutely not.
No. I don't know. Maybe they would be. Because you gotta keep track of all the all the people's wives that you're having sex with. Right?
Yeah. Exactly.
And the days that you're doing it and everything. So it probably did some math. Wouldn't that be insane if at the end of this, it all just ended up that I was just trying to get all your wives to come here? And what a great story that'll be one day.
I'll start a Facebook page of conspiracy theories about you.
You know what? I would appreciate that. It really helps. I'll tell you the what the what the people don't realize is that listen, I'm I'm gonna talk about them instead of to them for a second. What they don't realize is is that the social media only it only appreciates negativity
Yes.
And and crazy. So it draws eyes to them that they wouldn't normally get. They think they're drawing eyes in that are going like, oh, I agree with you. But what they do is they draw in sane people who go, oh, look. A crazy person.
And Yeah. While that's happening, you say something bad. Forget me for a second. You say something bad about the widget you bought online. This thing sucks.
They ripped me off. Blah blah blah. And 43 other people go, no. I have that thing and it works great. And then all the same people that the algorithm draws in go, all they learn from it is the thing you were trying to tell people not to do.
They go, no. I think that's the thing I'm gonna try. You are what they call an anti what's the word there? That you whatever it is you're trying to do, you're doing the opposite. Yep.
Yeah. So thank you because the more people who complain about me, the bigger the podcast gets.
Perfect.
Yeah.
Yeah.
Yeah. I I have you ever heard me tell you about when I wrote the book? And then wrote a book in 2013. This is not really important. It was on the Katie Couric show, Pimping It.
She did some stuff online with me in the book. And then one day, I was the 50 I was in the top 50 of all authors on Amazon.
Oh, wow.
I did not know how that happened because I'm not famous. I wasn't with a giant publishing company. There wasn't a lot of media behind it. Nothing like that. But there I was on the bestseller list on Amazon.
And I'm like, what is happening? So I spent days trying to figure out what happened. Right? And then turned out eventually that, Katie Kirk had put up a story about me being on her show wherever, like I forget if it was, like, AOL. This is how long ago it was.
It was, like, al.com or Yahoo News or something like whatever was really popular back in the day. Yep. And I at first thought the article blew up the book, but it wasn't what was happening. What was happening was is in the comment section of the article, people were arguing about whether or not I was gay.
Oh my god.
Right? Because one faction of people said that straight men aren't stay at home dads.
Oh my gosh.
So you're you're closeted. It's impressive that you've tricked your wife into believing that you're not gay. It's like this whole thing. Then other people would come in and argue and be like, I I think it's possible for straight people to take good care of their children. And like and then they would fight.
Oh my gosh. Right? So while those people and by the way, I appreciate the people that stuck up for me in that scenario, but you're as crazy as the other person because why in the Yeah. Were you having this conversation with this person who said something Yeah. Ridiculous.
Okay? So anyway, while these well meaning and not well meaning crazy people were fighting with each other, they were drawing in eyes from reasonable people who were buying my book. So if you wanna say, like, it really is hard for me to put into words, but every time a person tries to denigrate me online, you really are just making the thing grow. Yeah. And you hear that and you think that that's me trying to, like I don't know.
You're you probably think I'm trying to, like, double cross you into not saying bad stuff about me anymore, but I really don't care what you say. So go out there and say the craziest you can think about, and that'll just make more people listen. Yep. Because they're gonna look at your crazy ass and think, well, that crazy person thinks that. I probably should think the opposite.
You don't understand. You're the best marketing tool I have.
Yes. Yes. Oh my goodness.
So I start know
I Yeah.
Go ahead. Do the whole thing. Anyway, sorry. Back to your kid. I Good.
You have something to say. Sorry.
Oh, I was just gonna say, I you know, last I don't know. A few six months ago, Facebook decided to tell me they were I could be monetized. And Okay. And, you know, I share I'm I share what I share no matter what. So whatever.
I'm like, okay. Whatever. I don't know what this means, but we'll give it a try. And it's you start to realize you have to create if you want to actually make money on that platform, you have to create drama and things that bring people in, and that's just not me. Like, I just wanna post genuine things, and that's that doesn't sell.
You have no idea how difficult it is to run a positive thing on Facebook and make it successful. Yeah. It's All day long, we work we think about different ways to try to, like because, basically, you're trying to you're it's counterintuitive to what the algorithm wants. Yeah. Yeah.
They don't
I mean and
Go ahead.
And I don't wanna brag, but, in December, I made $20. So I'm really Oh. I'm really doing good.
Look at you. Knocking it down.
Did you wanna know why I made $20?
Are you thinking of getting a second house?
You know what? I'm considering it.
How'd you make $20?
The the video that I made that did the best was a video about our town had had this crazy wind, like, 96 miles per hour, and all these trees around town fell down.
Mhmm.
And I made a video of all these trees. I I mean, I made the video just to show people in our town, like, this is crazy. Sure. And it went viral.
What does that mean? How many views?
I like, I I think it was, like, 800,000 views.
Really?
So yeah. But it's still that many views and I made $20.
Oh, yeah. No. No. There are some people with millions and millions. I love the creators who do that.
Like, here here's my thing on TikTok, how much money I made. And they have millions of views. They made, like, a thousand bucks. And I was like, oh my god. You could have panhandled a thousand dollars if you tried hard enough.
Like, it's just really it it's very, interesting.
Yeah. I I think I'll keep my day job. Mhmm.
You yeah. Also, by the way, people might be bored by this, but it's a big part of my life. Facebook is only gonna pump out stuff like that that's upsetting. Right? Yes.
Also, they don't want you to leave Facebook. Your video was not asking them to leave Facebook. Right. So they promote that. So you kinda think, like, wow.
800,000 people found my tree video interesting. What the truth of it is is that 800,000 people were shown the tree video because Facebook knows that Yes. They like when people are like, weather scared is, like, its own industry. And then on top of that, your video doesn't ask for them to do something or leave. My problem is is that I'm like, hey.
Look. I've got this interview here today with doctor Wachowski. I don't know why I'm bringing this up twice. Go go go look at it. Yeah.
And that link takes you out of Facebook. They want you in Facebook.
Yes. Right?
The mall doesn't want you leaving the mall.
So true.
Right. So like So true. So that's what how it's that's how you're being manipulated by Facebook. Yeah. Yeah.
They're just trying to keep you there long enough to serve you another ad. That's all. Yep. Yeah. Yeah.
Anyway, and then they and then they so they use the content creators to bring in people.
Yes.
And then they show your stuff to people for a while to get you excited about it. Then they take away your they take away that. And then they send you notes telling you that if you pay them, they'll make sure people see your posts.
Yep. What
a scam.
It is.
It's similar to how my wife got me to marry her when you stop and think about it. That was a scam too. Now that I'm thinking about that. Was. Whatever.
So anyway, when you get out of the hospital, it's, you know, six years ago. CGM Yeah. Get that right away?
So, yeah, they gave us a CGM about a month. It took us about a month to get one Okay. Which, I mean, looking back, I don't know why. I feel like now with my, you know, my next two kids, their diagnosis, I'm gonna be a little more pushy.
Well, yeah, when do you so what'd you do? You did, like, I don't know. What did do? Trial net or something like that? How do you know about your kids' markers?
Testing the Other Kids — Antibodies, Times Two55:05
Yeah. So I guess I should go back a little. So, you know, our daughter got out of the hospital, and I I don't know if the doctor told us about it, but they were like, hey. There's this test that you can do to test your other kids to see if they also have the markers for type one. And so my daughter was diagnosed October 15.
And so in December, I'm like, oh, okay. Yeah. We should do that just to be sure. And in my mind, they were there was just no way that that was gonna come back positive. Mhmm.
I mean, I don't I don't know why I went into it so naively. So we tested them and got the results, and our one child had two antibodies at the time and our other child had three antibodies at the time. So to find to hear that info only two months after our daughter's diagnosis, it was I mean, it really threw me into a downward spiral. Because, you know, we barely even had had a hold on our daughter's diagnosis, let alone realizing, oh, now we're gonna have three kids with type one diabetes. So for a long time, I regretted testing them.
It was it it took me honestly four years to accept that I was gonna have three kids with type one diabetes.
Talk about the regret part. What made you regret it? Just that you have to think about it all the time now?
Yeah. So I just don't think I was prepared. I think when they told me to test, it was just so neutral. It's like, yeah. Just test them and it's a great thing to know.
And you find that out and it's not a great thing to know.
It would have been a great thing to know if you found out they didn't have any antibodies. Yes. Exactly.
Exactly. So I just think I wasn't prepared. I wish that there had been more counseling before we tested. I wish they would have said, you know, you just had a daughter diagnosed two months ago. Why don't you wait a few months?
This might be more than a human being is supposed to deal with?
Yes. Mhmm. Yes. So I think it just it was you know, they say knowledge is power, but I think knowledge can be a burden. And I think for me, it was a burden for a long time.
Do you can you see that there might be people that would've felt good about knowing and it's just not your personality, or do you think it was just so overwhelming getting the, basically, the news of three three diagnosis in in, you know, different stages of it happening that was just more than one person can handle?
I think it was too much too soon. Because I do think it's important to test, and I'm not I'm definitely not anti testing. I do think I just I wished at the time, and I think they're getting better about it now too and just saying realizing there is a mental aspect to knowing.
Mhmm.
And, you know, just I think it's important to discuss that first. And I do I have had other moms ask me, you know, should I test my child? And I just I try to give them all the info. You know? Here's here's where it was hard for me, but I I mean, now it so that was five years ago that we tested them, and we're just now you know, our daughter is gonna start t z old on Monday now, hopefully.
TZield and Delaying Type 158:44
Yeah.
Hopefully, no more COVID and RSV. So that was five years ago, you know, five years of knowing this was coming. And I am I am very glad now to know that info. I just think it was a lot at one time. Mhmm.
T cell just yesterday announced something. Yes. They changed the ages. Do you know what it was?
Yes. It said age one and up.
Oh oh, wow. So now Which That's so and a one year old now could could get antibodies and and receive T cell to put it off. How long did they tell you what's the hope? How long are they hoping to push off the the diabetes?
You know, they won't say for sure, but they said what they've seen is it's it's pushed it out, you know, anywhere two years seems to be the average.
Mhmm.
But they've seen people, you know, at seven years and some that still are, you know, no onset.
After after one treatment, which is thirteen infusions. Right?
14 infusions. 14.
Sorry. Okay.
Yep. So, you know, you know, the last five years, we've come. I tell people our family motto, which I made this up, so it's not really I just decided the family is gonna take it on as our motto.
Okay.
But every day without diabetes is a gift. And so, you know, with TZeal because I've had people ask, you know, why delay the inevitable? And I I had those same exact thoughts, but when I talked to my daughter who is on insulin, you know, she said, if I could have one day less without diabetes, it's worth it to me. And so we've taken on that motto, like, we're gonna try TZEAL, then if it gives us one extra day without being on insulin, then we're gonna take it.
Okay. So Hate your insurance covers it. So,
Insurance Hurdles on the Way to Treatment1:00:38
yes, that was quite the process. And that's that's another frustrating thing about tZealed and your insurance. They all wanna want you to meet specific parameters. And so I've actually felt like she's been in stage two for quite some time, but according to insurance, you know, they wanted her to fail an oral glucose test, and your ending number has to be at a specific number. Even if it's still considered high, if it doesn't meet that number that they want, then they tell you it's a normal like, you pass the test.
So That's not a thing that the the drug manufacturer says. It's a thing the insurance company says.
I I think so. I'm at least in my experience with our insurance, that was they wanted her to fail an oral glucose test, but the ending two hour number had to be a specific had to be, like, one forty four or higher. And then you also have to had a fasting glucose of one ten or higher. And then they wanted an elevated a one c, but our doctor kind of she was able to bypass that a little bit because her a one c was, like, right on the cusp of, like, being abnormal. I think it was, like, 5.7.
Okay. Did you have to talk your kids into this, or was it a thing they wanted immediately?
So, you know, originally, when we tested them, we just poked their finger and they did the, you know, trial net. I don't think any of us knew what pursuing TZLD meant. So, no, I didn't really have to talk them into it. They've kinda just rolled with the punches, and they're like, okay.
Like so yeah. I don't You talked about, like, psychologically how you felt realizing this about your three kids. Right? Yeah. But can you tell me how the the the kids felt?
Like, so I wanna know, did the kid with type one feel guilt? Did the two that have markers, are they nervous, or are they comforted by knowing? And the fourth one who doesn't have anything, are they just like deer in headlights, or what what's going on over there?
Well, it's funny. The fourth one that doesn't have anything, he was actually born with what's called Hirschsprung's disease. So he had his whole own medical journey before all of this even happened.
And
that his medical journey, I thought, was the worst thing in the world and difficult. And then type one came into our life, and it was like, woah. You know? Totally different ballgame there.
So so that one doesn't feel like he got away with something because something's happened to him as well.
Right. I got it. Yeah. He yeah. Absolutely.
Well,
that's fair. You could probably probably prior to the diabetes, was like, oh, it's all on me. Like, something yeah. Yeah. It's it's Yeah.
He's like, finally, someone else.
You guys got reslotted. You know what I mean? Yep. Yeah. Oh my gosh.
Well, my god. Isn't it I I mean, I know this is a big idea that's really not that deep, but it's it's so crazy to think of how few people actually make it through life without, like, a major medical thing. Like, because I
think Right.
I think we all believe, like, the idea is, like, you're gonna be born and then something dire happens at the end, probably just old age, and it's over. And, you know, then you realize at some point along the line, like, I am gonna get sick. Right? I'm gonna sneeze and cough and probably get the flu once or twice. Like, okay.
Well, that's not too bad about you know, it's modern times. That doesn't kill anybody until it does. And then, you know, and then things get you know, if you're lucky, nothing else happens. But people's if you you really stop and look at people, there are there are there are not many people who are just getting through life without medical concerns.
Right.
And, you know, it's I don't know. It's one of those I feel like it's one of those odd things we think we're promised that just ends up not being the situation.
Well, and I you know, when I was choosing when my husband and I were choosing to have kids, you know, you hear mom say, you know, they go for their ultrasound and they say as long as they're healthy. And it's like, I've actually tried to to to not push that narrative because it's like, no. As long as your kids are loved and wanted because nobody is promised a healthy life. And I when I chose to have four kids, never in my mind did I ever think they would each have a chronic lifelong illness. You
know? Yeah.
So you can sit there and say, oh, as long as they're healthy, well, what if they're not? What are you gonna do?
Well, then we're done with them.
Yeah. Just see you kids.
Throw that one in the pile. I I yeah. I've Yeah. Did you have do you have any health issues, your husband?
So no. Not really.
Okay. I mean, I Autoimmune in your extended families?
Yeah. So my mom does have Hashimoto's and, but really, that's it. I think someone on my husband's side might have had Crohn's.
Mhmm. I was gonna ask, anybody pooping after Thanksgiving?
Yeah.
Yeah. Right? Where does uncle Bill go after after the turkey? Possibly. Yeah.
Thought he was getting high, but he was just he was just shitting upstairs. So I hear you. Okay. Wow. And then you got three is the Hirschsprung's autoimmune?
No.
So no. It's a congenital defect
Mhmm.
Which they I mean, they don't really know. Usually, it's, like, spontaneous when that happens, I think. But it also can be genetically linked, which I feel like they say that about type one. You know, it's like, oh, it can be random, but then I'm like, well, I have three kids with it. So there's gotta be some genetically.
No. It's random. Randomly, all three of your kids got to talk about that basically.
Oh my god. That's terrible odds.
Yeah. Did you buy a lottery ticket after this happened? You thought maybe I just like, things that are really uncommon happened to me or no?
Yeah. You know, I I've thought about it. I have.
Should Scott Move to Montana?1:06:58
Should I move to Montana? This is the other question. I can't handle the winters. Is that correct?
Yeah. Okay. But have have I heard that you lived in Montana before?
No. No. I thought of guy I I I got invited to the speaking thing out there. I was so excited about it then it fell apart.
Oh, why?
I don't well, because coordinating big things like this is hard.
Well okay. So which brings me to this point. I feel like Montana is so weird for type one diabetes support. Like, it's very few it's few and far between. Like, we need more stuff out here.
Yeah. I mean, that that's the way in a lot of places though. Yeah. Like, it's just if you're not it's funny. If you're not in a major, like, metropolitan hub, then Yes.
The idea of putting it together something where people have to travel to it Yep. Sounds good in theory. And you'll even get people to say, like, don't worry. We're gonna come. But then on the day of the everyone wakes up in the morning and goes, are we gonna drive forty five minutes to talk about?
I don't think so. And then Yeah. My ass is standing in Montana and nobody shows up. You know what I mean?
Like Well, and, know, in Montana, the weather is unpredictable. So, you know, yesterday, it was 80 degrees and today, it's supposed to snow. So if you want me to drive 80 miles to hear you speak, but it snows, I'm probably gonna skip it.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, then that's exactly the point. So then these institutions don't do stuff like this.
Right.
Because it's also I mean, it's I spoke at Hofstra a week or two ago, last week, and, you know, I think there are about a 100 people in the room. It's a really nice turnout, And they were thrilled with the turnout. I was standing there going like seeing some empty seats. And so, you know, it's it's a tough feeling when you when you travel somewhere. Yeah.
I spent six hours traveling that day. By the way, did not charge anybody any money. I drove three hours out and three hours back and spent a few hours while I was there. I left my house at one in the afternoon and returned home at 9PM to talk to these people because I thought it was a I thought it was a a nice thing to do, and I was excited to be you know, I was happy that the that the hospital was, you know, inviting me because, you know, I've talked about this before, but I've probably been invited to talk at a dozen hospitals over the handful of years recent handful of years. They never follow through.
That's crazy.
Eventually, you get the invite from, like, a lower level person who loves the podcast and thinks, this would be really great. And then eventually, it gets high enough up the ladder where someone goes, so what's his degree in? And they go, he's got a podcast. And then someone goes, we're not letting a guy with a podcast come here and speak. And then this one was great because the person, Maggie, who is an endo and I think will be on the podcast at some point, she persisted.
And she went to her, you know, leadership and said, no. Listen. Like, pay attention to this. Like, I think you're gonna like this. And then they got together with me on a Zoom, and we talked, and it worked out.
And I'll tell you what, it was great. And I said some things that I bet you the staff was slightly uncomfortable about. I bet you there were people on the staff that were probably like, oh god. Thank god someone's saying this. I can't say this at work.
Yeah. You you know what mean? Like, there's a lot of that going on, but what I saw were the people in the room were genuinely thrilled and and and had a great time. And, you know, hopefully heard a thing or two that might make their life easier. Yeah.
I mean, which is really the only goal. But it's that that thing is it's gotta be put together. It's gotta be run. It takes months to plan. There's food.
It's expensive. Like, it ain't easy. The thing I just did with Touched by Type one, like a small army of dedicated people put something like that together. It is Yeah. You don't just all show up at a Popeyes.
You know what I mean? Nope. Although, gotta tell you, that would work for me. You know what I mean?
We don't have a Popeyes in Montana.
So I'll have a little mashed potatoes with gravy before I go. Oh, they're delicious. Anyway, I just, I know that Yellowstone ruined your state, but you know, it's hard not to watch it on TV and just be romantic about standing outside and looking at a few 100 acres.
I know. I know. So You yeah. I mean, is there anything we can do to try to talk you to coming back here?
Well, somebody's just gotta do the thing. Like but and then I'll come because I wanted to see we were gonna I was gonna do I was gonna bring my family, and we were gonna do a national park while we were out
there. See?
The whole thing just fell apart.
So I'm, like, an hour away from Yellowstone. That's what could be your personal tour guide. I would drive you through Yellowstone.
Oh, I don't wanna get sick, and it sounds like everybody around you is ill, so I'm not doing that. But, no. No. But you're very nice. I just wanted to come in.
It was supposed to be a couple days too. Like, it was an event. Yeah. I just don't know what happened to it. It just died on the vine.
So anyway, actually, it makes my point not to throw shade on the people that couldn't pull that together because I don't mean that. But Yeah. It makes the point I I I kinda started with earlier. Like, you think that, like, making this podcast is easy? No.
No. Making these things are not easy. And when you try to get somebody to volunteer to put together a podcast or Yeah. A newsletter or get together, their life's gonna get in the way. It has to be tied to their I don't know if you all understand why, you know, why why a system of money works so well, but it it motivates your ass to do something.
Okay? So
I mean, I was trying to make content just for fun, and it was exhausting. And I made $10.
No. Oh, exhausting is not the word. It's just and and wait till you make something that you really love and you put it out there and no one sees it.
Yes. You're
like, oh my god. I'm not doing that twice. Yep. So you need somebody that's either crazy enough to keep doing it or being motivated in the right way. And for me, like Yeah.
Clarity is I'm sitting in my house. My wife has a job, and her and I make money and put it into a pile, and then we pay for the house. And Yep. For our our insurance, our car insurance, and our the gas that makes my stove cook the food and the food itself, like, you know, how this all works. Right?
Yep. Yeah. Yeah. So we
you can't just ask somebody to put this level of, like so if I guess the point is if you're out there going, like, Scott, you do it wrong or I don't like what you do or whatever, I would say to you, you go do it. That's a good idea. I'm not being flippant about it either. Seriously, you're probably right. Maybe I maybe you'll do it better or different or in a way that'll help a different you go ahead and get out there and do it.
And until then, until you're willing to put in twenty years of effort to have this conversation with Natalie, I my message to you would be, shut the fuck up. Okay? Like like, either what what what's what's that phrase? Or get off the pot? Is that the one?
Yeah. Yeah. I don't know. That's an old one now. That's the thing I can hear my
I do know that phrase.
Do you know that one? You know why it's like that? They used to shit a pot. Oh
my gosh.
That's right. Imagine being alive then with diabetes. Oh, man. In a pot and then throwing the pot out the window. Like, it's so, like, on the side you know, it's on the side of the house.
Is that why vines grow up? Oh god. I hope
Oh, my gosh. I don't have vines on my house, so we're safe.
No no poo on your house. Oh, my gosh. Very recently, I told a story on the podcast and I got done, I was like, why did I do that? And it was about how I once or maybe more than once peed out the window of my house because I didn't feel like going down. I feel like cars.
But I feel like a lot of guys can, like Also,
I I mean, you're you're lucky you can do that.
Natalie, also, there's no there was no screen in the window. I just wanna be clear about that.
Okay. Oh, good.
This is a straight shot. Good. There's do you watch shrinking on Apple TV? No. And one of the characters pees off his roof a lot, and I'm just like, right on.
It's free. That's Scott. I would I would do. I don't think I would now, by the way, but back then, I was on the I was in the attic of a house growing up. Like, it was like, had to go down, like, two sets of flight like, floors to go to the bathroom.
Oh my goodness.
That's awesome. A lot. Yeah. I never I never pooped out the window. Just wanna say that.
Oh, that's good. Okay. Yeah. But, anyway, if you if you have a a complaint, forget me about anything, you go do it. Yeah.
If you're so smart, go do it.
You know? I think, you know, when like, on social media, that's my I feel like you just have to have, like, whatever your goal is and stick to it. And my goal has been to support other moms.
Very
nice. It's not you know, yes, I'm monetized, but like I said, I'm making $10. But if I've helped one mom feel supported or, you know, whatever, not alone, That's my goal. Yeah. And so I'm gonna stick to that, and it is what it is.
And it it listen. And you don't get involved in all the rest of it. Yes. Like, I the person I saw another person say, like, you know, Scott just bans you if you don't agree with him, which by the way is is patently untrue. We have a shockingly low number of banned accounts in a group that has 83,000 people in it.
And Yep. And what I when I saw that person say that, I'm like, I didn't first of all, I didn't ban you. Another person admitting the page got sick of you and banned you. Like and you weren't banned for disagreeing. You were banned Which for being out of your mind too many times.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So
Which, by the way, I love your admin team. They're all wonderful.
Aren't they wonderful people? Yeah.
They are.
Yeah. Seriously.
They don't just they don't get enough credit.
No. Or and they're not getting paid. So there you go.
Yeah. Weird.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. They're just lovely people.
By the way, there you go. Lovely people who had a good experience with the podcast. Saw that it was valuable for others and thought, I wonder how I could facilitate helping more people the way I was helped. And then I've gotta wake up to see that this has been characterized as me building a cult and spreading mental illness. Thanks a lot.
Jesus Christ. Gosh. What's the saying?
You guys cut cut Scott some slack.
They don't have to cut me slack. Again, if they argue and say crazy things, it really does help. So I think I'm complaining on a human level. Yeah. But on the thing level, it's just part of it.
Yep. It really is.
It's it's like having to have a gas station, you know, near the place where you're fixing cars. That's just it's the cost of doing business. The cost of doing business is that crazy people are gonna say crazy things. Yep. So nothing you can really do about that.
But, anyway, no good deed goes unpunished is Great. Not a saying that just came out of nowhere. There there must have the very first person who tried to help another person must have thought of that.
Oh my goodness.
The 'Content Creator' Rant1:17:26
Oh, you know, it's funny you said you you you you monetized the thing and you were like, oh, I might make content and everything. While I'm being, you know, course towards crazy people, let me let me make this point too. You're not a content creator. I'm a content creator, and I wouldn't call myself a content creator because it's embarrassing. Okay?
Like like, if you're not embarrassed by it, I really I I wish for you a time machine to see if you could go back to the seventies for ten minutes and live there. Where where you would realize that you having an account on a social media thing and saying something about something over and over again does not make you a content creator. I don't care if a thousand people see it. That's a thousand of how many billions? It's it's statistically in it just it's insignificant.
And not that you should maybe you're helping those thousand people and right on go ahead and go and you should do that, and I mean that. But you can't consider yourself a content creator with that.
Correct.
I'm barely a content creator. Yep. I'm in a niche inside of a niche inside of a niche. I'm not health care. I'm not diabetes.
I'm type one diabetes. I'm in I'm inside the six different bubbles inside of a bubble. You are talking to 10 people. Yes. Stop putting content creator in your bio.
It's embarrassing. Okay? Oh, god. If your parents saw that, they'd get in a time machine and go figure out when they then made you and they'd stop. Because they'd be like, didn't realize I was gonna raise a 40 year old person who would think that their TikTok is a business because it isn't.
Oh my god. Don't it's is this really that hard to understand? I feel like I'm losing my mind. Okay.
It's like, you know, if you wanted to be an author, you used to have to, like, have a publisher and you had to go through the process. Now anyone can even be an author. And
I I don't wanna I don't wanna I don't wanna sound snobby, but when people tell me they wrote a book and it's self published, I think, no. You didn't. Yeah. Yeah. You made a PDF, but congratulations.
Good job. Also, not a small undertaking. And I imagine that a lot of self published books are really awesome, but but that's a hobby. Yes. You didn't write a book.
You write a book when a publisher comes to you and says, will pay you an amount of money to hand us a transcript. Yep. And if we turn that transcript into a book, then you have written a book. And and, like and does that sound snobby or old school or, like, I don't know. Maybe it does, but that's how my brain works.
You're if you're talking to 10 people, you're not a content creator. You're Yeah. You're I used to have a Facebook that talked to more people like that before I had any of this because I had 25 friends. Right. But anyway, that's the joking aside about it, that that, like, feeling that that's what you're doing is insane.
Yeah. If if everyone was a content creator, then what would the rest of us be doing? We already have an economy that's just based on passing the same money back and forth to people for goods and services. Like Yeah. Somebody get out there and do something for Christ's sake.
I'm already taking up the the stupid job. Like, you go go take a piece of wood and turn it into something. Like, they my god. Ugh. And your colorful glasses and they're like, stop it.
Like, stop crying poor. You're wearing $9,000 worth of clothing in your picture.
Oh my goodness. Yeah.
I could go on. I bitch about people forever if you want me to. Seriously, I should stop making a diabetes podcast and just make a podcast where I complain about people. I really do think it would be more fun.
Oh my goodness. It probably would be.
Then they could yell at me, and I would be like, yeah. Right on. You should. I'm gonna ask. Alright.
Wrapping Up — Hard-Won Common Sense1:21:11
Natalie, listen. Oh my goodness. I know I've I've I'm ruining people's lives, but I have to actually go eat then come back and record again today. So Okay. I gotta roll.
But would you say that I'm sorry I talked a lot? I'm gonna say that first. But because
Hey. It's your podcast. You can do what you want.
Natalie, why are you so mentally, stable? What happened to you? Were you raised by Republicans, Democrats? I wanna know the whole thing. Oh my gosh.
Give me five minutes. How did your how did your family make you a reasonable person?
You I I can probably say it's not my family that made me it was my hard work and working on myself because I was not raised
Well?
The easiest way.
Oh, okay. Alright. Well, then look. Then that's even a better story. Somebody Yeah.
Somebody didn't hand you this common sense. You went it's hard fought.
Yep.
Yeah. Please, everyone, take a minute. Be quiet. Put your phone down and try to try to think through things a little bit. Like Yeah.
It's not that hard. A person making a podcast is not making you feel a certain way. Yeah. That that's that's you. Yep.
Okay? Oh my god. Alright. I I've done enough here. I can't I can't be this smart for too long.
It makes my brain tired. I gotta go. Alright.
Go eat go eat some food.
Yeah. I'm gonna have I might have a Cheerio today. I'm in a very lazy mood.
Oh my goodness.
Have you ever been lazy and not wanna cook, but you're hungry?
Absolutely. This is my day.
I might have a Cheerio. That's why
I had kids. Some of my kids actually like to cook. I'm like, hey. Yeah. Go make me something.
Arden cleaned the the kitchen the other day because she was like, I wanna do my homework down here, and it's messy. So she cleaned it all up, and I got home. Oh my gosh. I was like, kitchen was so clean. I said, wow.
The kitchen's really clean. And, and Kelly goes, yeah, Arden cleaned it. And, we were like, sucker. And she's like, yeah. Oh my gosh.
Yeah. You had to get them to do back in the day, you could just force your kids to do anything, but there's rules now.
Yeah. Yeah. Now they there's you're supposed to give them a choice now.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And it's and then by the way, find it to be a mistake.
Yeah. Oh my child labor laws. You're just asking them to cut the lawn.
Yeah. Exactly.
Natalie, I'm gonna go because I my gosh. I find you very lovely and, this could just go on forever. Dexcom sponsored this episode of the Juice Box podcast. Learn more about the Dexcom g seven at my link, dexcom.com/juicebox. The podcast you just enjoyed was sponsored by Tandem Diabetes Care.
Learn more about Tandem's newest automated insulin delivery system, Tandem Mobi with Control IQ plus technology at tandemdiabetes.com/juicebox. There are links in the show notes and links at juiceboxpodcast.com. I can't thank you enough for listening. Please make sure you're subscribed or following in your audio app. I'll be back tomorrow with another episode of the juice box podcast.
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#1907 Come On Over, Valerie
Come On Over, Valerie
Valerie’s daughter was diagnosed at 12 in full DKA. A year later, a newly-diagnosed mom on California’s Central Coast has become a confident, bold advocate — and shares how she got there.
Jump to a moment
- Type 1 can hide until it’s an emergency. Reagan’s slide — fatigue, stomachaches, weight loss, crying over homework she loved — was easy to chalk up to a stressful season, until a friend noticed her clothes hanging off her. She arrived at the hospital in full DKA with a blood sugar of 860. Trust the “mom gut.”
- You’re allowed to be the one who adjusts. Told the pump “should do it all” and to stop touching it, Valerie kept going once she understood why — and dialing in the correction factor is what finally got her daughter where she needed to be. Scott’s long-held view: feeling autonomously able to make meaningful setting changes is one of the biggest predictors of success.
- Adjust in small, deliberate steps — not by guessing. Valerie changes a couple of points at a time, waits a day or two, then keeps or reverts. She used a large-language model as a starting-point estimate (weight, age, puberty) and then refined from there — not blindly following it.
- Community and format matter. A podcast during chores, a mom spotted at a horse show, one friend on call day and night — Valerie assembled her knowledge from an ecosystem, not a single source. Her A1C went from 11.5 at diagnosis to 5.9, with her daughter running track, playing soccer and basketball, and barrel racing.
- Management first, then the rest. Reagan hasn’t fully “digested” the diagnosis, and that’s okay — Valerie is comfortable carrying it for now. Scott’s note: get the management buttoned up so it buffers the mental-health and burnout challenges that come later. (Reagan also has Hashimoto’s, currently untreated.)
- Touched by Type One — episode sponsor; programs and support for people with type 1 (Facebook, Instagram, touchedbytype1.org)
- Pro Tip Series — starts with “Newly Diagnosed / Starting Over”; the fats-and-protein and correction-factor concepts Valerie leaned on (verify slug)
- Small Sips Series — short, listener-voted takeaways (verify slug)
- Juicebox setting estimators & series menu — correction-factor/settings estimators and every series, up in the menu
- T1D Exchange Registry — a ~10-minute survey that moves type 1 research; US adults with T1D or caregivers
- Tandem Mobi (Control IQ+) — the pump Reagan uses; sponsor link
- Eversense 365 — one-year CGM; sponsor link
Every word of the conversation
Meet Valerie0:00
Friends, we're all back together for the next episode of the Juice Box podcast. Welcome. Please don't forget that nothing you hear on the Juice Box podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise. Always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan or becoming bold with insulin. Are you an adult living with type one or the caregiver of someone who is and a US resident?
If you are, I'd love it if you would go to t1dexchange.org/juicebox and take the survey. When you complete that survey, your answers are used to move type one diabetes research of all kinds. If you'd like to help with type one research but don't have time to go to a doctor or an investigation and you wanna do something right there from your sofa, this is the way. T1dexchange.org/juicebox. It should not take you more than about ten minutes.
Have you tried the small sip series? They're curated takeaways from the juice box podcast voted on by listeners as the most helpful insights for managing their diabetes. These bite sized pieces of wisdom cover essential topics like insulin timing, carb management, and balancing highs and lows, making it easier for you to incorporate real life strategies into your daily routine. Dive deep, take a sip, and discover what our community finds most valuable on the journey to better diabetes management. For more information on small sips, go to juiceboxpodcast.com.
Click on the word series in the menu. The episode you're about to listen to was sponsored by Touched by Type One. Go check them out right now on Facebook, Instagram, and, of course, at touchedbytype1.org. Check out that programs tab when you get to the website to see all the great things that they're doing for people living with type one diabetes. Touched by type1.org.
This episode is sponsored by the Tandem MOBI system, which is powered by Tandem's newest algorithm, Control IQ Plus Technology. Tandem MOBI 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 tandemdiabetes.com/juicebox. Today's episode of the Juice Box podcast is sponsored by the Eversense three sixty five. You can experience the Eversense three sixty five CGM system for as low as $199 for a full year.
Visit eversensecgm.com/juicebox for more details and eligibility.
Hi. I am Valerie, and I have I'm a mother to a type one diabetic daughter who is 12 and going straight through puberty.
Fun times. Is this is she is she your only child?
No. I have a nine year old son.
Okay. 12 year old daughter, nine year old son. 12 year old daughter has type one. How long has she had it?
She was diagnosed 03/01/2025.
03/01/2020. Oh, wow. March, April, May. Just a year and a couple of months there.
Yes.
Okay. Okay. Pretty new to the whole thing. How old are you?
Absolutely. I am 42.
42. And married?
Yep.
Married. Married. Okay. 42, married, two kids, diabetes. What brings you here today?
Like, what made you say I I should add my voice to this whole thing?
Because of the complete unawareness of it all, I would like to maybe start with her diagnosis because that is what is so strong with me. And the fact that even sitting in a hospital telling me them telling me that she has type one diabetes, I had no idea what they were talking about. Mhmm.
So what gets you to the hospital? What did you see? Was she ill? Did somebody say something to you? How did that whole work?
Go through that part.
From Mexico to the Bathroom Floor3:52
Yeah. Absolutely. Okay. I start with Mexico. We went to Mexico in January.
Everything was fine, normal. When we got back, she was acting very tired. My stomach hurts here and there. I have a headache here and there. She has always been very bright with school and no problem with homework.
Towards the closer to the diagnosis, I was seeing her crying over, like, math homework, which she loves Mhmm. Any type of thing like that. And I was like, I am so confused. Yeah. And we I didn't have my husband in my life at the time because we were separated, and it was just me.
And I was chopping that all up to our family is going through a stressful time. These are just normal kid things that happen. Maybe she just got overrun that day, and feeling a little off.
Of all the things that threw you off about or the the yeah. I guess shone a light on her, the stomach pain, the the not being able to deal with things that she's usually good at, was there one thing that, like, hit you harder than the rest as something that really made you worry?
Yeah. So that went on for, like, a month, two months, and then she went she she had she's rode horses since she was five. She went to a horse show early in the morning, rode all day long. I was at my son's baseball game working the Snack Shack. I had a friend drop her off.
And prior to that, my friends had kinda said, oh, look at her little pants. They're so big on her. And I remember looking like, oh, that's weird because I don't remember that. But, your mind plays tricks with you. Mhmm.
When you see your kid every day, you don't notice the weight loss.
Sure.
So she came to me, and she was very embarrassed because she couldn't at that time, she was having trouble holding her her pee. You know, she had go pee all the time.
Mhmm.
I did not notice a lot of water. I I know in a lot of episodes I hear that they were just drinking, you know, eight glasses or more, but I didn't it was just the norm. So that day is the diagnosis day. And so she comes to the snack shack. I'm busy.
I'm like, okay. Here. Have some french fries. Have some Sprite. Have some peach rings.
Those were our favorites to share together. Mhmm. So then we go home, and she just kinda gets worse. And I'm like, okay. Just take a shower.
Maybe you're just tired from riding your horse all day. She didn't have a towel in the bathroom, and she, at that time, was in a lot of pain with her stomach and just her whole body. So she was in the fetal position on the mat in the bathroom. And at that point, I came and gave her a towel, and all I saw was a skeleton and her all her ribs. And I was like, oh my god.
I don't know what's going on. This was a Saturday, of course. I do have a friend down the street, and she was in nursing school, and that's the only thing I could think of. I called her, and I said, I don't know what's going on. Something's wrong.
Yeah. But in my mind, it was like starvation. I said, what do you wanna eat? She said, Chipotle. I took her.
We went in the drive through. When I tried to give her food because I was like, just eat just eat. Her mouth was then so dry. She could not swallow, could not eat. Again, keep in mind, I know nothing about the type one and what I should look for.
So I'm it's not making sense to me. So then we get home. My friend comes by. She checks her out. She does all of her her stuff.
She says she looks alright, but something's kind of off. She's kind of thinking the worst, more cancer like, but then she's like, can you smell her breath? And I did. It did not smell fruity. She's like, I'm gonna go home and get my glucometer.
So she goes and gets it, and it just didn't work. And she's like, that's weird. I maybe it's broken. Maybe my glucometer's broken. And she said, don't wanna send you to the hospital because I feel bad.
I was like, it's okay. Like, just keep my son. I will take her. I would rather go to bed knowing what was wrong or if something's going on.
And that's how worried you were. You were beyond, like, we can't ignore this any longer.
Yeah. But still not knowing what it was. And how knowing, like, really what a finger stick meant.
Sure. Valerie, give me a half a second, though. Like, Mexico, which, by the way, I can't believe you brought that up so earlier. I could've called this one south of the border disorder. But but it's too early it's too early in the episode.
But but so from Mexico to this, you know, skeleton on the floor Chipotle ride, how what how much time is there?
That was the middle of January. So, like, the end of January to, basically, the end of February,
March 1. Maybe about four, five weeks time?
Yeah.
That whole space okay. Go ahead. I'm sorry. So you you leave your son with your friend, and you head to the hospital?
860 and Full DKA8:34
Yes. And so we we live where there's, a smaller hospital. So it's just, like, the general hospital, and she said, just to ask them to check her finger, and I just wanna know if mine is broken. So I got in there, and I told them exactly that. Like, just wanna check her finger.
And for some reason, there was other people in the waiting room, but they just knew. Mhmm. They took her back. And sure enough, I still, again, didn't know what it meant, all it read was high on the hospital one, and their faces turned white. Nurses started running, and I'm just like, I don't know what's going on.
Later, come to find out, yeah, her her blood sugar was 860. Wow. Full DKA. They said we have to get her in and start her on IVs right away, but then we had to get an ambulance and be transferred an hour down south to go to the children's hospital.
You had to get to a different hospital. So did they stabilize her at the first hospital, or did they move her right away?
They they only started fluids. They didn't have any type of pediatric diabetes anywhere at all there. So, no, she was not. She wasn't anything
long at all. They got you got they got you out of there fast.
Yeah. So we had an hour ride. They did not wanna start insulin at all until she was at the pediatric hospital.
How long was she in that pediatric hospital?
She went into the ICU. That was the scariest thing in my life. I did not sleep for forty two hours. Talk about trauma. And she stayed there for a week.
Just she actually got stable pretty quick, and then we stayed in the pediatric just unit for about three days for education.
Okay. And was she did she come back to life? Did her her body fill out while she when she got back on the insulin? Like, how did you how did you notice all that stuff?
Absolutely. Absolutely.
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“I Want Bacon”12:33
That first day, yeah, she was, completely out of it. She did not go into a coma, but she was just obviously tired. She slept for a long time. When she woke up, she said, I want bacon.
I have that feeling when I wake up some days. So And
she's just a little girl. Like, she's always been small, but it was just so funny. And I'm like, oh, yeah. She's feeling better. She wants bacon, and she wants all this off of her right now.
Yeah. That's awesome. Well, so she popped back pretty quickly. Now at this point, somebody's told you type one diabetes. Yeah.
Do you have any context for it? Or is New. It all comes from those couple days in the hospital that your initial context?
Absolutely. It does not like, we've had a little bit of type two in the family because of lifestyle. Never had never thought I of being a medical parent. Nothing in my life as far as family and all that was never a thing.
Okay.
So it was so far in my mind. So, yeah, this was all a shock. The ER doctor had to take me out and just sit me down and explain little by little. But at that point, it's so much information, and I was not sleeping for days. It was a lot.
Yeah. And it's taken me a long time to really digest it.
How how do you mean?
Just all of the information that goes with it, it took me a a little bit.
Okay.
And I and I just don't I was don't I think I was ready for it. When when you have something that changes your life in a moment, it it really takes a while.
Yeah. No. Sure. Yeah. You're not gonna just immediately be like, oh, I completely understand.
I got it. Thanks a lot. But Yeah. But so we you're what are you now? Fourteen, fifteen months removed from this thing.
Right? Are you still absorbing it? Like, would you say that it's still a learning process? And if so, where are you learning from?
Learning From the Podcast14:33
That's a great question. That's what I wanted to talk about. I'm learning from you, Scott. I'm learning from you and your listeners and your and your guests. So she does have a great doctor, but she's very conservative.
We had to wait the six months for the pump, which, yes, that just confuses me. She did have a Dexcom from the hospital, which I don't know how I could have ever lived without that. And just listening because, like, her doctor would love for us to take it super slow and not do what I'm doing. Like, in the beginning, yes, I was that mom of, like, I feel comfortable with her being at 200 and above because, you know, in the hospital, they are talking about lows and all of that. Not really the highs as much.
Yeah.
So when I'm coming home, you do feel like you're coming home with a newborn of, like, oh my god. I don't know what I'm doing. So that was me for a bit. And my daughter, she did not let this stop her one bit. I'm gonna cry because she was just like that.
She went to school the first day she could, never stayed home, never stopped her sports, nothing. She has taken this and ran. I don't think she has fully digested it herself because I am the full caretaker of
it. Mhmm.
But she's not letting it stop her.
What do you mean you don't think she's completely digested it?
Like, if I ask her, what is your number? I don't know. I don't know.
You feel like she hasn't taken it on completely?
Yes.
Absolutely. She she's aware she has type one. She knows it's not gonna go away, like, that kind of stuff. Does she feel accepting of that part of it?
I don't know. I don't know. She is a little bit hard to talk to. I do we do need to get her hooked up with someone. She is going to camp next month, so I'm kind of waiting for that, to see what else needs to come after that.
But it's it's it's odd because she wears her Dexcom. She she's on the tandem Moby. She'll wear it on her arm here and there, and if it's out, it's out. She's not trying to cover it.
Mhmm.
But she is just very, no. I'm just normal. I'm just doing my thing.
It's a slow process. Also, she's some would you how did you put it? She's sometimes hard to talk to. That describes every human being I've ever met in my entire life, including me. So Yes.
Yes. Yes. It nobody credit. Yeah. Nobody wants to sit down and chat about all the things that are bothering them.
That's not a it it it's not it just doesn't feel I mean, not that you shouldn't, but it doesn't feel natural. When someone approaches you and says, how do you feel about this? You may not know how you feel about it. You may know and not wanna tell somebody. I mean, there's a a lot to this.
Talk about a a marathon. You you know what I mean? Like Yes. Getting to the end of that. But she's Yeah.
But she's taking care of herself, like, well. Right? Like, she wears her gear. She's not scared to Yeah. Show it to somebody, but she doesn't have the level of connection to it that you want or a level connection that you have.
I think that I have. I think that I am totally okay with completely overseeing all of this. I want her to take it as it comes and as she can digest it. I think, you know, she's 12. She has plenty of time that she's gonna have to deal and live with this, and I am completely willing and wanting to do this for her at this time.
Mhmm. So I'm not too worried about that right now.
Yeah. I I wouldn't be either. I I don't I don't subscribe to the idea of, like, you know, it's their disease. Give it to them now. They need to know.
Like, yeah, they need to know, and that's all true, but it doesn't have to happen all today. Right. And
she's absolutely so smart. Like, if she had to do a site change right now, she could do it herself, and and a DexCom, all of that. She she does know. She just simply just doesn't wanna have to take care of it right now.
You're proud of her.
I am so proud of her. I'm so incredibly proud of her. What she's taken on is amazing, and these type one diabetics are so incredibly strong.
No kidding. Okay. So you're saying you were told you're given more conservative marching orders from your doctor. Not not bad necessarily, but what it was, it not moving quickly enough for you? Or
Conservative Orders, and Fighting for the Pump18:45
I didn't I didn't know it all. I had no idea. So in the beginning, you know, she's going to school, and I'm, like, telling the nurses, no. I want her to stay in the two hundreds. Like because in the beginning, she was dipping really quick.
Mhmm. You know? Her body was getting used to trying to stabilize that healthy blood sugar. So when she would see a 100, it was like it was going down fast. So in those times, in those beginning when I think back, it was like, okay.
200 made me feel safe. And the doctors never really, like, pushed me further. And then we got on the pump, and I had to ask for that and keep on track with it. And another thing I have on my list is the insurance. So I had to be the one to, like, make sure that I get it within that year so I could actually get it covered.
You know what I mean?
Did you not have medical insurance at that point?
No. No. We do.
Oh, you do? Okay. Okay. What did you mean you had to get you had to get what in that year? Tell me I'm not pump.
Oh. Oh. Oh, I see.
Sorry. Like, all of the deductibles and everything was covered. So we knew at that point everything, her prescriptions and all that, were getting covered up by a 100%.
I see. Okay. Actually, that's completely my fault if I'm being honest. There's this is gonna sound ridiculous to some people, but there's a lizard in a cage that just leapt across it, and it took my attention for half a second. And then you said that, and I thought, I just did I miss what she just said just there?
So sorry.
Are you in your new office?
No. I'm so close to being in my new office. No. The the the cruise is this month in June, and I'm going to ADA in June. So in the I don't know how many days there are in June 30 or 31.
I know there's, like, a there's supposed to be isn't there a hymn, like, you can, like, sing to get to it? But, how many days there are in each month? But however many days there are in June 2026, I'm only gonna be home for half of them. And so I I'm up to the, we're waiting for the carpeting to be installed, and then, I've gotta get furniture. And I think I'm gonna move my office side first and the recording side second, because I have to get up the sound dampening on the wall still on the recording side.
So yeah.
I've been following
all Thank you. Yeah. I'm I'm trying to get to I my hope is that end of the summer, by August, for sure, I'll be working out of there. So there's still a lot of stuff to do. Then I gotta move all these guys with me to where they're gonna live.
And so anyway, and I'm doing it by myself. So it's and I'm working. So it's not Yeah. Absolutely. It's not going quickly is what I'm saying.
Yeah. We should probably
Take it slow.
Yeah. I I I think I have some people related to me looking for work. I should probably just start being like, hey. Can you move a desk? Can you do this?
Yeah. You
know? Absolutely.
But but, okay. So when you say when you say, you know, they're they're going slowly, the and the reason I wanna know about this is, you know, anybody who's ever tried to market something, you know, like, when you I don't know. If you sell a widget, right, you does how does somebody in Peoria, Illinois end up with your widget? You have no idea. Like, you'd like to think you do.
Right? Like, oh, I bought an ad or I you know, it was in a magazine or in the end, you don't know how you don't know how information travels. It's it's really difficult to, like, conceptualize how it does. Like so, like, I don't know what even what part of the country you're in if you're comfortable saying that.
Finding It From the Central Coast22:16
But Yeah. I'm on the Central Coast Of California.
Okay. Okay. How does someone in California, while their 11 year old is being diagnosed with type one diabetes, end up finding out about a podcast made by a guy in New Jersey watching a lizard jump across the tank? And and, like and and and how do you know to look for it? Like like, what's the trigger that makes you go, what I'm being told here, it's good, but it's not enough.
I need more. Where do I go look for more? How do you find out which way to go once you turn that way? It's just it's such a web of un unknown for me. I
don't Absolutely. Yeah. So I do not remember how I found yours. I I am on TikTok. I am on all the socials.
You know? So I'm sure something popped up. And then I do like to listen to podcasts when doing house chores and at work. I do have a little bit of ADD. So, like, when things are going in the background, I tend to work better.
So I I don't remember how I found it, but it was a little while after diagnosis. It was close to her getting the pump, so I would say, six months
Okay.
After her diagnosis.
And you Yeah.
In the hospital, I didn't have any any
Bandwidth.
Outlet, any nothing.
Yeah. You probably didn't even think to look. I I didn't think to I just thought whatever they're telling me is the whole thing. You know, it has to be. Right?
You don't know. Absolutely.
Okay.
So I just started listening, and I started from one. I started from one, but then I started seeing because then I started following your page and on your page, and I started seeing newer things. And I'm like, oh, I should probably kinda go backwards again and see where we are now currently. Mhmm. But I did listen to quite a bit of, you know, Arden's very first in the beginning and and and just kind of all of that.
Yeah.
She graduated from college the other day. That's gotta freak you out if you started listening from the beginning. Yeah. Yes.
And that's why I just think it's amazing because you've been through it all. What I'm gonna go through now with all of it. See, I have questions about that too.
Yeah. Well, I mean and the stuff I haven't been through, somebody I've talked to probably has been.
Absolutely.
Yeah. That that's why I like this this format so much.
So I so I right now, I'm into the pro series, and that is so helpful.
Good.
But I wanna tell you one thing about your podcast, and you're gonna laugh because
I hope so.
Yes. I found out in the beginning, yes, it was, you know, don't don't be afraid of insulin that stuck with me vague. So the doctors had to kind of stop me. At one point, it was the nurse and the social worker got getting on the phone with me saying, do not touch the pump in a very nice way, but I was like, woah. What is going on?
I'm touching it because it's just simply not getting her. But I understood what they were trying to say. They wanted to see the baseline. I tried that.
Oh, so they they set something up, and then they wanted to see a return on what they set up, but you were giving more insulin. And Absolutely. And they and they well, well, couldn't they just see that as the example that maybe it wasn't using enough insulin? Like, why do you have to swipe?
What I was trying to
say too. And yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. So, I was cleaning toilets in my house, listening to your podcast, and it was the podcast with someone from Tandem itself talking. And she was saying that the correction factor is gonna be the key to the pump, and I'm like, what the hell is correction factor?
What the Hell Is Correction Factor?25:31
Laurel, I'm sorry. I coughed in your in your ear. Laurel Laurel, this is pretty recently. Yeah. I you should know I just recorded, like, five or six short episodes with her.
Oh, awesome. Awesome.
I like her a lot. I I I I really do. Okay. So she she mentions correction factor, and you're like, what's that mean?
Yes. So I'm like she and she's telling me, you know, in my ear while I'm cleaning your toilet Mhmm. This is gonna be the key to to the pump. And I'm like because at first, everyone's telling me how great the Moby is, and I'm like, yeah. But it's not getting my daughter where she needs to be.
Mhmm. And when I find this information, I'm like, hello. So I I look it up. I research it. And sure enough, I do make changes to her correction factor, and it worked.
Yeah. Amazing. And and so it just made me super frustrated that why do I have to be, you know, listening to find this information out? Is it not
the doctors didn't tell you?
Yes. And and, like, maybe they told me at the pump, training, but it is a lot to take in.
Mhmm.
But, yeah, I guess, why why was that not being tweaked?
The thing I try to
You know what I mean?
Yeah. Yeah. The thing I try to think about is that you're you're buying an insulin pump. Right? Like, I don't know what the there's no through line here.
But, like, say you buy a coffee maker, and you plug it in and and you put in the four scoops in this amount of water like it says, and the coffee doesn't come out right. And you're like, people say this coffee is good. It's not it's not bad. It's not great. And then you you learn later online that the real key to it is taking the electric cord, wrapping the electric cord once around the base, then plugging it in.
And then you wanna have the handle on the right and use a quarter of a scoop more per scoop than it says, and only use RO water. And then you're gonna get great you know? Then And you go, oh my god. This thing makes perfect coffee. Why would no one tell me this?
Exactly. That's the feeling I think about the insulin pumps. Like, you're you're I think your understanding is I I would throw CGMs in with this as well. Is that is that the thing does what it does, and it does it perfectly. It doesn't need adjusting.
And then to realize that, you know, for a pump, its settings, carb ratio, sensitivity factor, blah blah blah blah, like, all that stuff, Those have to be dialed in really well, or it's not gonna work as well as it could. And then with the CGM, I've gotta be hydrated. It's gotta be in a good spot on my body. Like, but, you know, all the little, like, the little finicky parts of these things, no one speaks about that.
Exactly. And then here we are so dependent on these things for our children's lives. We're tired. We are running around crazy trying to figure these things out. So, yes, it it did feel very frustrating to have to find a a key point to all of this
in a very
odd way.
Let me ask you a question. Also, then you're given the thing. You're told the thing does a thing, then it doesn't, and you're left with thinking, well, it doesn't work then.
Yes. And that's what the doctor said. She said that, you know, this pump should be able to do it all. There are other ones that I would tell you to please, you know, interact with it and touch it more, but this is one that you shouldn't. And I'm like, okay.
Well then and then you flip on a podcast from some dipshit in New Jersey and listen to a lady from Tandem talk, and you're like, well, the lady that works at the company doesn't seem to agree with what the doctor said. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Whoopsie.
Yeah.
So so I, yeah, I I I change it. I've never been a big chat GP tier. I can never say that.
Mhmm.
But I did look into it, and I did put her weight. I put her age and, you know, the fact that she's going through puberty. And they did give me a little bit of a a guide. And I'm not I am very in tune with her pump. I am very I watch her stuff all all the time.
I'm very in tune with her diabetes. So it's like, I'm not going to just take exactly what chat GPT says, but it was very close. And I did tweak it a little by little, and and we're we're definitely getting there.
Tell so tell me, Valerie, when you is it do you like Val or Valerie? Do you prefer?
Either one. I've gotten both my whole life. I it's totally up to
you. Well, because the Valerie makes me wanna sing. Is there a song called Valerie?
Yes. Amy Winehouse.
Oh, that's another That's what's in the back of my head. Yeah. I okay. Come on
there, Valerie.
Yeah. Yeah. So okay. You are you're a little lost. The doctor's like, don't touch it, but you're like, I'm gonna be touching it anyway just in case you're wondering.
Yeah. And then so and then you're like, well, I don't know what to do. So you go to ChatGPT, and you're like, this is how much she weighs. Like, where'd you even get that idea from? Is that from me?
No. I think so. There so okay. I have to tell you another part of this story too. In this type one diabetes world, I am I am shown that it is very small.
And so there was this mom at a horse show, and her little son walked by, and I saw Dexcom. And if you get to know me, you're gonna know me now. I ran after this kid. My daughter's name is Reagan. I said, Reagan, that kid's wearing a Dexcom.
The Horse Show Mom and ChatGPT30:48
Get him. No, mom. Don't do it. Don't do it. Does she have a lasso?
Could she get him with a no. I guess not. Go Right? I'm sorry. I've watching Dutton Ranch.
So Oh, yeah. Yeah. I love that.
So it was so funny. So, yeah, I totally ran after, but the mom was amazing. And so then she told me her diagnosis story, and she was like, I asked Chatbeti I
love that you can't say that because that trips me up sometimes. So you gotta roll Oh my god. You gotta roll through it. Chatbeti. Like that.
Do it like that.
There you go. Yeah. Chatbeti. Same. She asked because the the hospital had kind of, like, shunned her.
Like, no. You don't know what you're talking about, lady. You know? Mhmm. So she actually put in there, what do I say to them to, like, have them listen to me?
And so I guess that that just stuck with me, so I just kind of went from there.
Yeah. So I have those I have those estimators on my website, but I have the I have
the I have looked. Yeah.
I have the damnedest time, like, getting information like that out to people. Like, it is really you have no idea. I'm I'm not gonna sit here and complain about it, but, like, you know, any link I share on Facebook, Facebook doesn't want you leaving Facebook. So it kinda quells it. It doesn't show it to as many people.
If I complain about something or show you a picture of my daughter's graduation, then, you know, 50,000 people say it. But if I'm like, hey. Here's a you know, here's a thing you might go use that might help you, that won't show it to five people. So Oh, no. Yes.
It's lovely. But so okay. You she mentioned chat GPT about something else. You think, hell, I'll try it. You go in there, say, hey.
Here's some details about my kid. This is the pump she's using. Here's the outcomes we're having. What should I do maybe to make this better? And it put you comfortably enough being what it told you, you felt comfortable with enough to start with, and then you adjusted off of that.
Absolutely. Yes. And she would she's never been super bad. Like, she her a one c diagnosis was eleven point five. Mhmm.
And our first checkup, it was we got it down into the sixes, but I didn't really even know honestly about an a one c until a couple months. You know, I got used to what it was and what it meant.
Yeah. Yeah.
And now she is I mean, she is I'm still having to change things a lot, basal rates and all of that, because of her her puberty. Like, you just never know a day, but she is sometimes 90% in range to 88 to 85 on a bad time.
So is it fair to say that your motivation is more about getting those you don't want those spikes?
Yes. Because, you know, what you said before too is that, you know, the sugar is coarse, and it runs in their veins, and that is a motivation. And that's what got you up at night, and that's what gets me up at night.
Yeah. Well, it still makes me feel that way. Yeah. I I was talking to my neighbor the other day who's probably got prediabetes, and I I just have that feeling for him. You you you know?
Like, I actually I I I looked at my 70 year old neighbor, and I was like, I need you to do something. I can't keep worrying about you. I was like, it's making me upset. Damn it. I was like, give it me and do something.
And I think if they thought of that of it that way, they would feel maybe the same too.
Well because He's gonna think of it that way now because that's what I said to him. So I I said, listen to me. One day when you when you stand up and go, ugh, and fall over, I'm like, it's going to be because, you know, a high content of glucose in your blood system tore a little tiny hole in some artery or vein or something near your heart, and your body patched it over one too many times and blocked it. And that's how I was like, is that what you want? I was like, come on.
You you you know what I mean? Like, just for him, it's just a GLP. He just needs a GLP. He'll be fine. And and, and he's, oh, I don't know.
My wife's worried about it. I I don't wanna have problems in the bathroom. I'm like, you know who doesn't have problems in the bathroom? Dead people. So, like, you know, you know, was like, you know, let's get to it.
Anyway, so you figure out this for yourself. How long ago was this that you did this?
I think I've been really, really pushing and staying on it probably since she's got the pump. So
Last eight months?
Yeah.
Okay. Yeah. And and and where and did it work? I mean, are you I realize she's prepubescent and all that, but, like, for the most part, you're happy with where you're at now with all the decisions you made.
Yeah. Yes. We we do love the pump. It is you know? And I've gotten a lot of other people that I they actually come to me now and ask questions.
And I had a friend just recently, her daughter was on the Islet, also a teen, and just switched to the the Moby. And I said, it's going to be great. You just have to be patient with it. And once it's all tweaked and and everything's figured out, it's gonna be amazing. And she literally just texted me when we were on the phone and said that her range went from 67 to 85.
Autonomy Is the Predictor36:16
Oh, ain't that awesome?
With that.
It is. I'll say two things. First thing, tandemdiabetes.com/juicebox. If you're interested in learning more about Tandem, please use my link. And the next thing is I I I've been do I've been saying this for a decade.
Okay? It's timing, amount, settings, understanding the impacts of your food. But I'll tell you one of the biggest predictors of somebody who's gonna be successful with type one diabetes, my opinion, is someone who feels autonomously able to make changes to their settings in a meaningful way.
You There you go. Yeah. I believe that too.
Yep. Diabetes is not gonna be set up and forget it. You're gonna have to make adjustments. And if you are in a situation like you were in the beginning where you're like, I this, we're not using enough insulin. And then when you say that back to a doctor, they slap your hand and tell you, no.
Don't touch the pump. Well, if you listen to them, welcome to a lifetime of a problem. You you know what I mean? Because and you need to feel autonomous and in an educated way. I don't mean just, like, you know, you're just, like, running around Harry Carey just, like, turning knobs and being like, I wonder what this will do.
But if you understand this stuff enough to make some meaningful adjustments to your settings, you are gonna do much better. Much, much, much better. Yeah.
Yes. And and just do the research behind it. But once you do get the idea of them, yes, just tweak them. I just do a couple points at a time, wait a day or two, see how it's going, keep it or, you know, adjust it back or or do more. Yeah.
And and that's where I am right now.
You play sports in school at all?
Yes. I played basketball.
Yeah. You can't play afraid. Like, it's okay to lose, but it's not okay to lose because you didn't try.
Absolutely.
That's kinda how I think about it. Like, I'm not saying again, I you're not out there just turning knobs and be like, I wonder what this will do, but go educate yourself a little bit. And then once you feel like you have enough, just be bold. You know? Move forward.
I you know, try something. I mean, you
know Bold with the insulin and bold with the the settings for sure.
If you don't know what you're talking about, try to find somebody that does. If your doctor doesn't know, try to find a different doctor. Like but please don't just sit still and go, well, I guess this is good enough, and then you start feeling ill. You know? And and then it it it listen.
I I can't I I feel like I can't say the same thing over and over again, but then at the same time, there's always new people coming on, so here it is again. Mhmm. Health drifts away slowly such that you don't realize it's happening. So if if you're living with higher blood sugars or your kid is, they don't feel well for the first couple days, the third day, the fifth day, the tenth day. Two months later, their body gets accustomed to not being in a healthy range.
That doesn't mean it's healthy for them. It just means they're not running around anymore, you know, like, oh, my stomach hurts all the time or whatever. Like, that doesn't mean that what's happening to them is okay. You you know, like, you you you your body exists in an optimal range, and diabetes is already messing with that. But I would tell you the same thing if you if your vitamin b twelve is too low, if your vitamin d isn't right.
Like, these things, the more optimized your body is, the better it works, the better you're going to feel, the better your life is gonna be, the fresher your mind is gonna be, and all the great things that come with being, you know, in that situation. This this insulin part is is front and center. You know? Absolutely. Yeah.
You need the amount you need.
You know, yes, they have this disease, but they why can't we keep them at a healthy range? You know? We we can. With with these devices, with these monitors, it's possible. It's not like it was before where you did just kinda have to do what you could to keep you feeling good.
Yeah. No. You don't It
is possible.
You have these tools and a and a tiny bit of understanding. I mean, listen. Let's be realistic. Like, I'd love to be grandiose and tell you this podcast is awesome and blah blah blah. Maybe it is.
But at the same time, all you did was find a podcast and then and talk to a lady at a horse show and, you know, and think to yourself, I should know more. And then get the to end of your understanding and then go to somebody else. I mean, you went to chat GPT, you're like, hey. What what is it I don't know here? And then, you know, give yourself a little more information.
You weren't you weren't, like, silly. You didn't go like, oh, you know, magic box. Tell me what to do, and then just blindly do it. You were still thoughtful about the way you applied it, and it took you eight months to get into a better situation. It's not a lot of effort.
You know? Absolutely. Eight months And then Go ahead.
Just find anyone. It doesn't matter who, where, who may be in your same situation. I only had one person, and I remember her son a long time ago just asked me to get him some juice. Did not know what I was doing when I was giving him juice, I heard a beeping. But when I was sitting in the hospital, I thought it's the first person I thought of, and she has been there for me day, night, all the time, always asking questions, and answering them.
And so kind, and and that is very important too.
You're telling me that prior to your daughter's diagnosis, you, you were in a social setting where somebody asked you to get a juice for a kid, and now you realize looking backwards that kid had type one diabetes. But in that moment,
you know.
How about that?
I didn't know in that moment. I didn't know.
So what else do you want people to know? First of all, you're doing a great job on the podcast. Thank you. And Oh, thank you. Yeah.
Yeah. No. Thank hey. Really lovely. But, you know, you're you're fresh to this, but you're moving very rapidly forward.
What do you think other people should know? Like, if they're stuck and they can't move, what what do you think would help them?
I think the main thing that you need to hear first is to be bold with insulin, because, yes, hospitals, doctors do make it sound scary. It is truly not scary if you use it. Sorry. I'm getting over being sick.
So Take your time.
That's why I sound like this. And and that's what you said before too, and the the name juice box. And you had said before of, you know, if they need the insulin, it's gonna work. If they don't, grab a juice box. And that's most of the time what we are doing.
And recently in the pro series, I hear the nudge and
is it nudge? Nudge. Isn't that correct?
Bump and nudge.
Yeah. Yeah.
And I think that should be a slogan for type one diabetes because that is exactly what it is. Mhmm. You're bumping and nudging Yeah. Constantly. And and so I would tell them to to just not be afraid, to look for others, to reach out, to stand up in what you believe.
Because, yes, the doctor, I do love her. I do know that she's smart, but she did have me at one point pull me aside and said, would you like to see another doctor? And I was like, no. No. No.
I do appreciate, you know, you, but I am gonna do what's best for my daughter. So we did have to kinda have that little
Would You Like Another Doctor?43:04
Let's sit in that for a second. So Yeah. Your your doctor is giving you advice that you're not finding to be completely valuable. And you say, well, I believe this is, you know, what we need to be doing. You start doing that thing.
You're not having a scary outcome. In fact, things are getting better. And your doctor's response isn't, oh, wow. This is going better now. Tell me what you do.
It's do you wanna get away from me because you don't wanna listen to me? Like, she he or she doesn't see, like, that you're having better success on your own than you did with her? She's not interested? Yes.
I no. I just think that because it was the first time after the pump, and she saw that she I was really touching it, and she was just, you know, kind of I felt a little bit scolding me, and I was like, mhmm.
That's a passive aggressive shit, by the way, saying, like, do you wanna find another doctor? What that means is why don't you know what? That that would be like when you were eight years old if you didn't listen to your mom, and she said, would you prefer to live somewhere else? Like, woah. What?
Right. That's a lot of pressure right there. Wait. You're abandoning me because of how I feel? Maybe I should shut up and stop saying what I think now if you're gonna kick me out.
Like, what a shitty thing what is wrong with all of you? Jesus I don't know. In heaven, what is wrong with people? Well, look over at Valerie. Say, hey.
She's having some success. Maybe be a little curious instead of it doing what is oh, ew. Yeah. Yes. Yes.
And you still gave this person another chance? Look at you.
I do because I live in a small area.
Like, I had no choice, many
pediatric doctors.
I had no choice. I I I was I Yeah. Mommy drinks a little, but, like, you know, it's this or it's this or the home. So
Kinda feeling that way.
I gotcha. I gotcha. Oh, well, maybe maybe this person will eventually let down their ego guard or whatever and say, hey. Maybe I don't know all this, and and I could learn something from this person.
Yeah. So I I was I I said, no. We will work together at this. We both want the best for her. And this last appointment was better.
She did know I was still touching things, doing things. Just that and she just simply said, at this time, I'm just not gonna change her insulin because I can't see, you know, an actual outcome of just what the pump is doing. And I said, okay. That's fine.
Yeah. Don't tell her this, but I barely got out of high school, and that's an excuse. I you can still figure it out. If if she was proficient at what she was doing, she'd be able to figure it Why are you so calm? Are you you on Xanax?
No. No. What's good?
“I’ve Grown Up”45:57
Did you
is your mom was your mom a therapist? Like, why do you sound so no.
Oh my god.
There's no way. When you're responding to the doctor, why are you so measured? Like, I I'm I'm I'm proud of you, but I how do you get to it?
I've grown up. I will say, I would not react this way late at a different time in my life. I would see red. I was very hot headed. And, no, I guess I've just grown up, and I've realized that your reactions and even though you wanna change people, it's not gonna fucking change them at all.
They're gonna wanna change when they wanna change.
Right.
And so I guess I just took that.
That's like one of the more adult things that's been said to me this month. You you I I was, like, really proud of you. Yeah.
I didn't realize that. Yeah. I I yeah. I guess it's just that. Like, I'm gonna keep doing what I'm doing because I know what that is right, and I'm I can't convince anyone else.
I guess it's got it's got it's got to where it's like, you're so busy with this disease. You're so consumed. Like, I'm gonna just let other things go because I have more important things to worry about.
Mhmm. Yeah. You're not you you you're like your husband came home, and he's like, I've been cheating on you. I'm gonna go. And you're like, no.
You're not. Stay here and cut the lawn. I'm gonna pull your shit together and get out there and do a couple things. You're not abandoning me. I'm we're getting this done.
I I almost feel like that's what you did with the doctor. She's like, would you like another doctor? You're like, no. You shut up and stay. We're gonna figure this out.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
And that and that is how I feel.
That is how I feel. You're not getting rid of me. Sit here.
Nope. We're we're gonna do it. You're not getting away that easy and that fast.
I I'll tell you this summer, I've I I don't have a I I gotta get through this next I gotta get through this next month of work so that I can really, like, think again. But my my thirtieth wedding anniversary is coming up in in August.
Enjoying it.
Oh, thank you. And if I if you ask me what's the secret, I would say we're both too stubborn to leave. And so Absolutely.
Absolutely. And you know what? I'm gonna tell my husband later, like, Scott said I was so, like, calm.
He's like, what the hell? He'll be like, woah. Talking to Were you lying to him the whole time? But but no. But, seriously, like, sometimes you just you really do have to have, like, a longer view of things and and realize that every every little mistake or misstep or, you know, something you didn't like is not an excuse to just run away and start over again.
It it's yeah. I mean, I'm not saying if you get a terrible doctor, your life is short. You can go look for another one. But Mhmm. You know, I do wonder, you know, what this is gonna do.
Like, I I'm I'm interested, like, five years from now with this endocrinologist that you you allowed to stay with you, which is the way I see it. You know, will that person say one day, well, thank god that Valerie and I didn't get separated because I I, you know, I dropped my I dropped my force field and I learned something, and I've been helping more people because of it. It reminds me very much. There's an episode of the podcast called listen to the doctor, and I'm so sorry. I can't remember her name now.
But an endocrinologist reached out to me to be to come on the podcast. And it I mean, if you really wanna hear an example of somebody, like like, set their ego aside for, you know, for for other people, The doctor said that she was listening to the podcast or somebody told her about it and they were having success or something. And she started listening, and she came to the conclusion that she was not doing as good of a job for her patients as she could have been. And that's a real that's a real adult thing to say. You you know?
Absolutely. And then she makes adjustments to what she's doing, really applies a lot of the stuff in the pro tip series that I talk about, sees, you know, a massive improvement for the people she's helping. And then she goes back to the rest of the the practice and says, hey. I think we should all be listening to this these episodes and and doing a better job. And she mainly got pushback from the other doctors that that whose conclusion was is that I was bashing them.
They're like, you've given us a podcast where this guy is doctor bashing, and she told them he's not if you feel like he's bashing you, you really gotta look at yourself because he's not. He's just telling you what makes sense and what these people need and how we could help them. You know?
And and I feel like the diabetes world is moving at such a fast pace that you have to, as the doctor, keep up with it.
Oh, yeah. They're gonna give up soon. If this well, I would call this, like, an AI pace at this point. Right? Like Mhmm.
Like, the the the easiest way I can explain it to anybody listening who's not been around it this long is that there was a time in Arden's early diagnosis where if every few years a meter company put out a new meter, you felt like you were getting something. Now the meter didn't work better. It looked a little different. It maybe had a couple of buttons on it. I'm telling you they just refreshed how the thing looked.
And in the diabetes space, you were like, oh gosh. Finally, we're getting something. Then Dexcom came out, and they iterated very quickly, and they still are, by the way. And now that makes people mad. Like, it doesn't do the thing it's supposed to do, or they said it was gonna do this.
I like the way the other one did it. Trust me. You much prefer this than to the, oh, it's a new meter every three years. By you know what I mean? Like like, world.
So now you're iterating faster, then these companies come out with these algorithms. Honestly, you know, the the DIY community was ahead of all of them. And so that forces them to wanna catch up. Like, you know, think about it. You make an insulin pump.
You really wanna look up and find out that you somebody could download the algorithm to do a better job than the thing you they have now with you? No. So you gotta go out there and come up with something too. They come up with something and they go, oh, we did it. And instead of being able to rest on their laurels, which is what would have happened in the past, you know, oh, you got a meter.
We'll make you another meter one day. We'll change the color of it or something. Instead of that, well, Tandem is making you you know, they start with what did they start with? Basal IQ, then they went to Control IQ, and then they're trying other stuff in Omnipod, Omnipod five, Omnipod 5.2. I don't know what they're gonna call the next version of it that's coming out soon.
Medtronic was like, hey. Here's another algorithm. You know, Beta Bionics is like, try this islet thing. Here comes Twist with a a version of the loop. You gotta love this now.
But but if you're one of those doctors who already didn't understand, this is just gonna blank their brains. It's just gonna make them stare it along and go, I don't know. I don't know how that one works. You figure it out.
Yes. So they send the nurses out to go to training and stuff like that.
Yeah. And then they come back and tell you three things, and then you, you know, six weeks later, turn on a podcast with some lady from one of the companies who says something and goes, why? How come no one told me that? You you know? Like, so so when this is gonna be the world from now on, you're if you have a doctor who really is in the know and is keeping up at this breakneck speed, you've got gem.
Like, I say, if I was you, I'd send a bottle of wine to the house once a month. You you know? Just say, don't forget us. We love you. But moreover, that's probably not who you're gonna get.
No. And I and I feel pretty comfortable where I am now. You know, I've heard in other episodes that the insulin dealers, Dexcom dealers, I feel strongly that way. I feel I feel confident. Sorry.
Excuse me. In myself and my daughter of how we're we're doing this. Her last a one c, I was surprised, is 5.9.
Look at you.
Doing great. She runs track. She plays soccer. She plays basketball. She rides horses, barrel races.
All of these things, we're doing it. We're we're we are. As long as we can have someone there to do the the medical prescriptions, I think we're gonna be okay.
Caught in the Orbit54:03
Yeah. Hey. You know that that little meme as the chubby kid making the fist? No.
I haven't seen the movie.
Oh, he never had this. You know what's funny. He's, like, in a green shirt or something. Right? And everybody uses it for, like, you can do it kinda thing.
Yeah.
There's a a group expert in my in my Facebook group, and she made a meme that says, you can do it. Juice Box can help. Something like that. And Yay. Listening to you talk really like, I've always thought that was nice that she did, but, like, you you're the first person to contextualize it for me because I can get lost in the, just listen to this series.
This will help you feeling. Right? But now I'm I'm seeing maybe it's gotten much bigger than all that now. Like, maybe it really is just an ecosystem that has a chance to capture you and and show you itself in maybe eight or 10 different ways across this new Internet. Right?
And Mhmm. You'll bump into it one way or the other and get in there. Like, I I used to feel like it was my job to get you and then tell you, listen. First of all, you've gotta know this, and you've gotta feel this way, and this is the, you the the perspective you're gonna need, and this is the the the motivation that it'll require to get it done. You gotta be bold.
You have to do this. It's a ridiculous notion that I am gonna be able to capture a person and tell them everything I want to tell them. Now I realize, and I've been coming to this for a long time, but, really, your conversation today has really helped me kinda crystallize it a little more, is that I'm just sort of trying to catch you in maybe, like, the the gravity of the podcast and its surrounding community in the hopes that it holds you in orbit long enough that some of those, you know, floating meteor rocks that you need come stick to you, and you build up your own little cache of knowledge. That's a lot
of And I believe that's what happened to me.
Yeah. You know? I think so too. It's almost like I magnetized you and then spun you around in an ecosystem, and eventually enough stuck to you that you were like, I'm a whole person now. I have all the I have what I need.
I do. I do feel like I got all the tools from here, and and I'm good. I don't feel really scared much with it at all.
Yeah. I got the worst business model in the world. Every other company pulls you in and tries to keep you there. My goal is to get rid of you. I want you to feel like you feel so you go away.
But then I gotta go find 10 more people to make up for your downloads because you're out there watching the whole podcast, which, by way, thank you. I appreciate
Yes. Yes. I listen to it all the time. But there's always something new with each one, and I you know, then I'm here sharing my experience, and things are just gonna keep growing within this. So there's always gonna be something new to talk about
Yeah.
And always be something new to listen to. And one thing I wanted to bring up too is that the doctor before I know it's getting to an hour.
You're fine.
The doctors never taught us about fats and proteins, and that's what I'm really my brain hasn't quite wrapped its claws around it yet. That is huge.
Yeah. Just think of it this The fat slows digestion, and it stretches out the timeline of how the food is impacting the blood sugar so much so that you have to adjust how the insulin is hitting the timeline so you can overlap with its impacts. Does that make sense?
Right.
Yeah. Yeah. It's all
And I'm listening to those, and I'm chat GPTing and all of that. Like, she had a pretzel, a soft pretzel at baseball game. I thought I was doing so good. Mhmm. She was this perfect eighties, you know, kinda dipping a little bit.
I said, oh, where'd I got it? Oh, no. Hours later. You know? You're good.
Just throwing it on it at in the two hundreds, trying to keep her under the two hundreds. Just
Yeah. And listen. I here's my real hope. I I mean this, like, sincerely. I'm old.
Like, I in the next six to ten years, you guys gotta figure this out because Scottie gonna get tired at some point. So Yeah. But I think the algorithms will eventually get you to a point where you maybe you don't have to announce a meal, or at the very least, you can announce a meal, and it'll handle the the ebbs and flows that come afterwards. I think I think we can get there with with all this.
I do too.
I too. That exists now. But in the meantime, I don't want people living like that. You you know? And I I really feel like it it your conversation's really been helpful for me, Valerie, because, like, there are times where I can feel like, I don't Is there anything left for me to do?
You know what I mean? Like but I what I realized talking to you today is I just need to continue doing this conversational part of it. We gotta keep bringing people in, some from companies, some from people, some from users, some from doctors, blah blah blah, and let people keep talking to keep throwing more of those little meteorites into the into the, you know, the atmosphere so that when people come in, hopefully, they'll intersect one of those conversations in a way that'll help them.
Absolutely. Yeah.
Yeah. Yeah. I I that is definitely my marching orders for myself moving forward. Like, I just I need to keep filling the space with the conversation because most people by the way, for every person who might go to a large language model and ask a question, there's 10 people that just heard that that thought. I'm not letting that thing tell me what to do with my insulin.
Trust me. Like, I've and I don't know that you should or you shouldn't. I'm certainly not making a a, you know, a proclamation one way or the other. I'm just saying most people aren't willing to try new stuff and or to go out on a limb or to break free of what the doctor told them. I mean, I would suggest that they listen to your story and try to come to grips with where you'd be if you didn't question what was told to you.
But fair enough. That's not gonna happen for everybody. So maybe they'll bump into enough ideas that it'll change their mind or get them thinking in a different direction or something. You you know, like, that's really can be my only hope. And I think
Yeah. And my only hope would be, you know, just think about your child and that I've heard things on here being said too of, you know, they're sitting in school, and, you know, at 200, can they truly be their best?
Yeah. I don't think so.
No. And and then at a low, can they truly be their best? No. So as a parent, you know, we want to to give our kids all of those opportunities to be their best.
Yeah. No. I mean, it just I I get lost in it all the time because there there are a lot of factors, and I can imagine it's overwhelming. And then sometimes people add thyroid issues or celiac or other problems.
Oh, yes. Regan is, has Hashimoto's.
Oh, when did you find that out?
With her diagnosis. But she is not having any signs and symptoms, so they are not treating it right now.
Okay. But her TSH is elevated or no? Not right now.
I don't know. Not right now. No. It just had, like, markers for it. Mhmm.
My husband has Hashimoto's. I believe his parents have some autoimmune. My mom has alopecia.
Oh. That'd be my radio name if it was the fifties. I'd be like, it's alopecia coming at you. Like, that'd be like, wouldn't that be a great radio name in the fifties? Yes.
Alopecia. That's how I would do it. Alopecia. But oh, so there's a little bit of a a cocktail in the family history. How about you?
Would you have anything? No.
Nothing.
No no anxiety?
Yeah. Well, I think that's just life. Right. I think that's life. I think that's with you.
I'm at a low level of yeah. Yeah. No.
Definitely anxiety. Definitely, yeah, just hyper fixation on on things. And and I think and I will say for doctors, will give them this, that, you know, they are worried about getting overwhelmed with it all. And I believe that there are a lot of people out there that will and will just get tired and the burnout.
Management Now, Mental Health Later1:02:06
Yeah. Val, our conversation stayed a lot with management today, but the truth is and and I don't wanna scare you all. But once you get through this part of it, then the mental health and the life stuff comes. Like, because you're right. There's no reason with all this technology and knowledge available everywhere that you can't have a a lower stable a one c and and and and low variability and have great outcomes.
You absolutely can. But you're still a person, and at some point, that, you know, that feeling of burnout is gonna hit some people, overwhelmed and call whatever you wanna call it. Like, you know, like, at some point, you just you don't wanna get up and think about this stuff all the time, or you just you get so background that you forget to or it drifts away. Again, everything kinda drifts slowly, so slowly you can't tell. You know?
Like, oh, the shoreline's disappearing an eighth of an inch a year, and everybody's like, that's no big deal. Well, come back and find me in two thousand years. You're gonna think it's a big deal then. You you know, like, so, you know, same kinds of ideas. Right?
Things happen so slowly. We can't see them, so we don't react to them. We don't think they're important. We don't prioritize them, etcetera. Mental health is it.
So my my best advice is to get this management side, you know, buttoned up as best you can so that it can hopefully alleviate a lot of that mental health stuff and maybe give you a bigger buffer between where you are now and, I can't handle this anymore. And so that maybe, yes, you'll vacillate, you know, a little closer to that line, a little farther away from that line, but, hopefully, you won't fall on the other side of it too frequently where you really can't handle it. You're not paying attention to things. Your health is slipping quickly. You you know?
But you can't ignore that part. I you know? It's it's a it's a valid conversation. I I would think that, you know, an adult living with type one diabetes for forty years would probably listen to you and be like, ugh. She doesn't even know the half of it.
Wait till she sees. And you know?
And I can agree with that.
Yeah. You know, for sure. Right? But I would just say to them, you don't know the part she knows, which is if, you know, you're doing a good job of understanding insulin and timing and the impacts of the food and the fat and the protein and those things, that maybe the mental health side of it's not as impactful in that situation, and go put some effort back in that side. That's why the first episode of the pro tip series is called newly diagnosed or starting over.
Right.
Yeah. It's on purpose. You know? So, anyway. Alright.
Well, you were really awesome. What am I not talking about with you? What have we not brought up? I don't wanna miss anything.
No. I think I just had written down pretty much what we had covered, awareness.
Yeah.
I mean, up the correction factor. I mean, there's insurance stuff, but that was a whole another hour of talk. That is so frustrating.
Yeah. Just go run your head through a different brick wall. Yeah. Yeah. No.
For sure. For sure. Well, I I really appreciate you doing this with me. This was fantastic. How did I find having me.
Did you reach out, or did I find you, or how how did we get there?
I reached out.
Yeah. I
reached out. I don't again, I don't remember how I was, like I think just listening to your podcast, it said, you know, if you want Beyond, go on to Juice Fox podcast, go to the link or whatever. And I did, and I sent, and I did not expect anything back, and I did.
Well, listen. Here's the truth. Can I tell one of my secrets? Yeah. Think people believe that there's, like, this vetting process, and there's no way I'm gonna make it through and blah blah blah.
I don't turn anybody away, really. Like, I know who
And that's what's great about it because people learn from other people's experiences. Yeah. That's how we learn.
100%. Even when I get an email and I read it and I think, oh, this person's out of their fucking mind. I still wanna have you on the podcast because you know what? There's other people out there, they're out of their mind too. And then they would and they would like to hear your story, and I would like to hear it.
Like, you know what I mean? Or maybe or maybe people are so overwhelmed, think, well, what could they possibly add to it? How about just the knowledge that other people are overwhelmed? You know? You know, like, so I've had I've had people tell me, like, I didn't say anything valuable.
I said, the struggle you're having, hearing it is valuable. And and I said, and I said a couple things to you today that might help you. So it was valuable to you. It'll be valuable to somebody else because nobody has to feel like they need to be perfect. Nobody has to feel like, oh, that well, sure sure they're doing well.
They have it all together. That's how I feel. Every time I interview a professional athlete who tells me that they have, like, a nutritionist that's helping them, and then you ask them about their their management. They don't know the first thing about it. Like, yeah.
Well, it's easy for you because that guy's helping you. Or because, you know, this company that's, you know, that's called a team has a a $40,000,000 investment either. They're not gonna let anything bad happen to you. You're an investment. You you know, like, I don't have that.
Your daughter doesn't have that. Like, I don't have somebody running around after me going, well, Valerie's kids gotta be okay. Like, we gotta make sure we obviously, you don't have that. So I don't like hearing from people who have I I just wanna hear from regular people. You know?
Like, that's where the good that's where this good stuff comes at. And, yeah, you gotta have a long form conversation to get it out because you're not a practiced, you know, interviewee. You're not gonna jump on with your six bullet points. Like, I listen. I like some podcasts that are, like, preset up.
I mentioned one recently that I've been I've been listening to. Guy does a great job, but he clearly has a production staff. Every question's researched out till the end. They know exactly what order they're gonna ask them, and so it builds, you know, a storyline while they're talking. And the person he's interviewing knows what's gonna be asked and has probably answered that question 35,000 times already, so it seems so, like, natural when they say it.
Yeah. We don't have that here, but I don't know how valuable that is.
No. I don't either. And it was so funny because last night, my husband was like, you haven't gotten something with, like, what how it's gonna go and how it's gonna run. I was like, no. That's not
how That's not how this
works. Does it?
I the it's set up like that on purpose. I, I also think when I turn this on, like, every I'll tell you about four times a year, I come on and the person's just not there. And I think, good. That wasn't meant to be then. Like, I I want it to be hard for you to get on the podcast.
Like, easy for you to get the link and the and the and the the offer, but then hard for you to get to the day. Because if you're here, you really have something you wanna share.
Yeah.
Yeah. Absolutely. You had to fight a little bit to get to this spot to get your voice recorded. And, I think that's sort of part of how I come up with this stuff. And I'm not saying to you I couldn't boy, I'll tell you, I could put together 15 rock solid questions and make one of those, like, shiny YouTube podcasts in two seconds.
I just don't know how valuable it would be to people.
No. I I find this very valuable, and I think there's so many others that that do too. It's just it's just people going through the same thing in life having conversations and that we we can relate to and find things in that, you know, we need.
A 100%. No. I agree. I also think that everybody's repetitive. Like, I don't pay a lot of attention to people who compete with me.
I don't know that I have a direct competitor. Like, do you know what I mean? But if people who do do do a similar thing oh, I'm sorry. I didn't mean to step on you while you're saying something nice. You don't think I have a direct competitor?
No. I don't.
Yeah. Okay. Thanks. I just I just liked it when you said that out loud. And and so but but I see people out there doing a good job, doing a pre what I would consider, like, a prepackaged job.
To me, I find that stuff boring. Like, you sound like a, you know, you sound like a local newscaster. You sound like, you know you know what I mean? Like, hey. The weather today.
I'm like, oh, okay. Or I see people out there doing that. Like, I'm gonna lean really hard into the technology cure thing and yell into the camera. Like, I I can't stand that yelling into the camera thing. Like, I I don't have anything against the people.
It's the format that makes me, makes me nauseous. You know? Like, today, we're here to talk. I'm like, oh my god. Shut up.
Just like and I get it. Like, I get how TikTok works and that, you know, even YouTube videos. Nobody's watching a thirty five minute YouTube video about, like, you know, the new how do you put your Dexcom on? Like, nobody's you know what I mean? Like, you you know, like but I get that they scream to get your attention, so you stop so the algorithm thinks that they watched it, and then, hopefully, you'll scrub through it enough that YouTube will believe that you're a viewer and give them a view.
Like, I I know the game. Like, I I get all that. But for me, long conversation. Let the stuff come out where it comes out with regular people sharing regular stories, not preprogrammed content. And if you've got the tenacity to listen through for an hour, then you deserve what you get out of it.
And if you don't Absolutely. You then maybe it's not for you or maybe you'll have to come back another time, but this is the only way I know how to deliver it. So and I it's the way I think is the best. Well, thank you. And I think I I think my my experience tells me this is the way to do it.
So, anyway, Valerie, you were fantastic. What are some of the lines from that song? Any of it gonna work for a title for us? Is that one of her sad I'm drinking myself to death songs, or is it an upbeat song? No?
Come On Over, Valerie1:11:02
Come on over. What do you think? Lyrics. Yeah. Is it she basically just wants to hang out and come on over.
Is it? Well, that's what we did. I know. We hung out. Hold on a second.
Anyone else? Valerie lyrics. Well, sometimes I go out by myself. Over, Valerie. Yeah.
And I look across the water, and I think of all the things that you're doing in my head, and I paint a picture. Come on, Valerie. Get to the thing. But, by the way, what a sad life. I know.
Poor girl.
So sad.
I missed your ginger hair. This is getting sexual. Hold on a second. Put your house up for sale. Did you get a good lawyer?
I hope you catch a tan. Is this the worst of this song?
I guess
so. Since I since I've come on home alright. I'm just gonna call it come on home, Valerie. Okay. Let's not read too far into the rest of this song or we're gonna have trouble.
I think it just says come on over, Valerie.
Wait. It say come on sometimes I go out by myself and I look across the water. Since I've come on home while my body's been a mess, and I've missed your ginger. Yeah. This is we're gonna get HR involved if I keep reading this.
Hold on a second. Alright. Come on. You think it's come on no. It's since I've come on home.
Valerie. Why don't you come on over? You're right. Alright. Alright.
Let's just we're we're gonna call this one come on over, Valerie. Okay. Alright? Got you. Because we can't call it south of the border disorder.
No matter how much I would have loved that. Alright. Hold on one second, Valerie. Really do appreciate you spending the time with me. Okay.
The conversation you just heard was sponsored by Touched by Type One. Check them out please at touchedbytype1.org on Instagram and Facebook. You're gonna love them. I love them. They're helping so many people at touchedbytype1.org.
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#1906 In Memoriam: Kent Schnakenberg
In Memoriam: Kent Schnakenberg
Remembering Kent Schnakenberg, founder of Team Schneck Strong, whose logoed truck, 26,000 t-shirts, and one-man mission to spread type 1 diabetes awareness saved lives across the country.
Jump to a moment
- Kent Schnakenberg turned a single JDRF ride for his newly diagnosed niece into Team Schneck Strong — a decade-long mission that raised roughly $1.2 million and put the symptoms of type 1 diabetes on the backs of 26,000 t-shirts.
- His core belief was simple: awareness saves lives. Printing the signs of type 1 where people will actually read them — a shirt, a truck, a school assembly — can be the difference between a diagnosis and a senseless death from being undiagnosed or misdiagnosed.
- The school-visit model worked because it handed kids with type 1 the microphone — like the sixth-grader who stood up unprompted to tell her class why she wears her devices, and earned a standing ovation.
- Team Schneck Strong was built to outlast one person: 175+ camp scholarships to Camp Discovery, direct financial aid to families, and a legacy fund through the Emporia Community Foundation designed to keep giving after Kent was gone.
- Kent’s throughline, from a stranger in a wheelchair to 400 riders in Tucson: “Your moment in life comes — don’t miss it.”
- Skin Grip — This episode's sponsor — skin-safe adhesive patches that keep CGMs and pumps secure. Juicebox listeners get 20% off a first order.
- Breakthrough T1D (formerly JDRF) — The organization whose cross-country rides launched Kent's mission; rebranded from JDRF in 2024.
- ADA Camp Discovery — The American Diabetes Association diabetes camp in Kansas where Team Schneck Strong sends dozens of kids on scholarship each year.
- Camp Sweeney — The Texas diabetes camp Scott mentions; the podcast helped send several kids there in 2025.
- Emporia Community Foundation — Home of the Team Schneck Strong fund, which provides family financial aid and camp scholarships across a seven-county area of Kansas.
Every word of the conversation
Remembering Kent0:00
Before we begin today, I'd like to take a moment to remember Kent Schneckenberg who passed away sadly on June 11 at the age of 71. Kent appeared on this podcast twice, most recently in 2025. I think that you'll find that his story and the work he did through Team Schneck to support children and families living with type one diabetes were beyond laudable. My deepest condolences to Ken's family and the people who loved him. Friends, we're all back together for the next episode of the Juice Box podcast.
Welcome.
Hi. This is Kent Snackenburg. I started team snacks strong, you know, back in 2014, and I'm very, very excited to be back on your podcast. It's amazing to me how you've grown this thing, and I'm so proud of you and how many people continue each year to say they listen to that podcast and reach out to me. So I'm excited to be back on, Scott.
This episode of the juice box podcast is sponsored by Skin Grip, durable, skin safe adhesive that lasts. Your diabetes devices, they can fall off easily sometimes, especially when you're bathing or very active. When those devices fall off, your life is disrupted, and it costs you money. But Skin Grip patches, they keep your devices secure. Skin Grip was founded by a family directly impacted by type one, and it's trusted by hundreds of thousands of individuals living with diabetes.
Juice Box podcast listeners are gonna get 20% off of their first order by visiting skingrip.com/juicebox. While you're listening, please remember that nothing you hear on the juice box podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise. Always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan or becoming bold with insulin. This episode of the Juice Box podcast is sponsored by US Med, usmed.com/juicebox, or call (888) 721-1514. Get your supplies the same way we do from US Med.
This episode of the Juice Box podcast is sponsored by Omnipod five. Omnipod five is a tube free automated insulin delivery system that's been shown to significantly improve a one c and time and range for people with type one diabetes when they've switched from daily injections. Learn more and get started today at omnipod.com/juicebox. At my link, you can get a free starter kit right now. Terms and conditions apply.
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Hi. This is Kent Snackenberg. I started Team Snack Strong, you know, back in 2014, and I'm very, very excited to be back on your podcast. It's amazing to me how you've grown this thing, and I'm so proud of you and how many people continue each year to say they listen that podcast and reach out to me. So I'm excited to be back on, Scott.
Is that true, Kent? You were on episode 76, which, I mean, maybe is the second year with would that have been 2016 maybe?
Well, I just thought it was ten years ago. So it's probably 2015 or 2016, and that first year just was I started getting messages and emails and stuff on Facebook for people all over the country. And when I was doing, you know, the rides all over the country that year, that's how I started meeting people and going to their houses and taking out these. So you obviously have a big following, and that's why I'm excited to get another chance to kinda give you a ten year a ten year recap of what's gone on since then.
Yeah. No. That's awesome. I'm I'm trying to look up the episode right now.
I think it was '76.
Yeah. Yeah. I'm just seeing that now. So but I'm trying to figure out what year it was. See if I can't find it.
Like, it's it's been so long ago. Oh, I know what the problem is. When I search for '76
Mhmm.
There's been 41 other episodes with the number '76 in them. That's why I'm getting so that's why I'm getting so many returns. I
really think it was 2016 for some reason.
2016. Okay. Well, that's really great. Oh, I appreciate. I do wanna kinda start from the beginning even though, you know, it's gonna be something you said in the past.
Tell me again how this all started, what your connection was to it, and then we'll we'll pick through.
A niece, a diagnosis, and a ride around Lake Tahoe4:18
Okay. Well, I mean, in 2014, my connection is, you know, my niece, Michelle. And she was diagnosed when she was 14, and obviously that's quite a while ago. And she's doing amazing. She's now a pediatric nurse.
She went through Texas A and M with full collars. Now she's helping kids and giving back that way. I just decided, my brothers and I decided to go to Lake Tahoe, for a JDRF ride, which I had no idea what JDRF was or nothing about type one diabetes at the time, but my brother said that'd be fine. So my twin brother and my younger brother Mike, who's Michelle's father, we went to Lake Tahoe and rode 73 miles around that lake. Met a lot of people and really did enjoy it.
And I got back on my shuttle bus to go back to the airport. I sat by a young lady. Her name was there. CGM on her arms.
Ken, tell me again. I I you dropped out there. Her name was what?
Her name was Erin.
Erin. You know what, Ken? I'm gonna stop you for half a second. I think I figured something out because
Okay.
You remarked to me that the first time we did this, we had audio trouble.
Right.
And just now, I don't I think I think there's something about the resonance. I I know this is gonna sound crazy for a second, but I think it's something about the deepness and the resonance of your voice. Uh-huh. When you're talking and you don't modulate, you start to I don't know how to describe it, but your voice starts to disappear. And then the minute you modulate, your voice can get a little higher, a little lower, it comes right back again.
I wonder if you're speaking at a at a frequency that the phone gets confused by.
Do you know? It's pretty low. Yeah.
Tell me, when you're on the phone with people regularly, do they ever ask you to repeat yourself?
Oh, you know, I talk so fast most of the time. I think they just let me go. But do you want me to try the speakerphone? Would that maybe help?
I'm fascinated by this because you got right to the part where you you'd gone on the ride and you were on the bus coming back. And as you were talking, your voice just disappeared. And I realized now it's not the headset you have.
Last set that last that happened in the last time we did this too when you relistened to it.
Yeah. Yeah. That's really interesting. So I don't know if the speakerphone would change anything. Actually, I'm gonna tell you something.
What?
Slow down a little bit. Okay. And I wonder what that's gonna change. And lee and and Okay. Guy that's editing this, Rob, leave this all in.
I think it's really interesting. I'm gonna recap just to make sure.
Okay.
Your niece gets type one. She's, like, 14 years old. She's a full on adult now. Right. You got you and your brother wanna support, you know, your family.
Right.
You head out. You do this JDRF ride together. On the way back from the ride, you meet somebody on a bus. Start there.
Erin on the bus — and a calling6:52
Right. So after the ride, I got on the bus to go back to the airport, and I sat next to a young lady named Erin, and I noticed a CGM on her arm. And so we started talking, and I asked her when she was diagnosed. I expect her to say, you know, like six or eight or 10, because at that point I thought all people just it was all kids that got, you know, type one diabetes.
Right.
And she said she was 42. And so it just amazed me, and she started talking, and then I she said, you know, real realistically, half the people that get this disease every day are kids and half of them are young adults or adults. And so that led to a lot of interest and a great talk all the way back, and that's when I decided I wanted to do another ride. There's something inside of me. He told me to do another ride.
Tucson, the Spirit Jersey, and a blue candle7:38
And so I signed up for the last ride of the year, which was in Tucson, Arizona. And I flew out there by myself. I didn't know anybody at all. I just got to meeting some people and stuff, and I think it was a 104 mile ride. And that night, on a Saturday night at the awards banquet, I was awarded the spirit jersey.
And I really didn't even know what it meant at that point. And so they asked me to come up and talk and I was up there speaking. And to all these people, there's like 400 people in the room. Right. I noticed everybody's eyes were right on me.
And I just I just at the end of the at the end of my speech, I said, okay. I'm doing all seven rides next year. It was like something came over me at that moment. I don't know if God came into me or what. And just it was just a big deal at that point, and I decided just to go full bore on this thing.
I got back to my room that night and somebody had sent me a message on Facebook that showed a picture of a blue candle. And I didn't really know what a blue candle meant, but I've come to realize it's never good. And there was a 12 year old boy that had passed away that day, the same day I won this award for misdiagnosis of this disease. And that's when I decided I didn't know anything about the disease. And I thought, well, it's time to start spreading awareness.
Building the T1 Destroyer8:49
So that's when all of this started coming to me, like, on the plane ride home, you know, if I'm gonna go to all the rides next year, I wanna try to visit all 48 lower states, get a truck, and logo it out, and have the symptoms on it, and all our information on it. And so I got that done, and the same girl named Erin that I'd met, I contacted her and she hooked me up with this man named Matt Fisher who had lived with type one his whole life and he was a graphic art artist, very talented guy. And so he, without even meeting him, helped me design the truck just through emails and stuff and a guy at the local bike shop. And, you know, that's that's kinda what started the truck, that's when we decided to try to do you know, go to all the 50 states and visit all 50 states for over. Had this, you know, this idea about trying to do 50 rides someday.
It's kinda went from there.
Kent, I wanna stop you. First of all, the talking speaking more slowly thing is the perfect fix for this. So Okay. Yeah. So per keep going the way you're going.
You're doing great. I think it it would be helpful for people to understand, like, you just got this motivation. It's not like you I mean, yes, your niece is a connection, but still, like, I think for most of us, like, I went and did the ride. I supported my niece. Like, I'm good.
I'm going home now. Something motivated you. And you said you don't know what you know, if it's god that put it in your ear or but, I mean, I wanna understand more about you. Like, because how old were you when that happened? When you when you go on that first ride with your niece, how old are you?
60 years old. 60. Okay. And you're were you retired or you were working?
No. I'm still working part time. And to this day, you know, it's still the whole Northeast Kansas thing where my territory is, I'm a salesman. Mhmm. You know, I'm just doing it part time now, but that's where, you know, I started raising all the money, and that's where I learned about going yes.
When I started my going to school program, That's when I started learning about Camp Discovery and all. Everything kinda ties into that, I guess.
So what I'm saying is you're sixty years old. You're still working. It's not like you're looking for something to do. Right? You're not at home, like, bored.
Right? Would you call this just a calling?
No. I do. It it was my mission. It was my moment moment in life, and I that's why the last story I'll tell kinda explains that. But it was just that moment in life when God came into my soul or whatever and just said, you know, this is your deal.
You can help these people.
You can't really explain the motivation that you found for. Just you really got struck by something.
Yeah. Yeah. I mean, I've always been a, you know, a generous person. I've always been a person that looked out to help other people, but this was just something that happened. Looking in those 400 eyes sets of eyes Mhmm.
And knowing all these people who had a connection to type one diabetes, and they were, like, looking at me like, we need your help, I guess, is the way I would put it, I guess. So
because you're kind of an outsider that just showed up. And, I mean, you got the award because you have I'm assuming you had so much enthusiasm. They were like, who is this guy? And why is he so excited about all this? Right.
And especially without a direct connection. You have your own children?
Yeah. I got, two children and five grandchildren.
Okay. So you you have your own family. My point is you have things you could be doing, you know, and you and you're giving a lot of time to something else. So along the way, over the last I mean, what year was this?
It was 2014. It's when I, did the first ride that I did the two rides. Then then when I committed to do the seven, that started in 2015.
Okay. So you started doing this literally the year before I started making this pod I started making the podcast in 2035. Okay. So our timelines kind of match up that way. So at first, you say there's well, I guess the idea was there were seven JDRF rides around the country the next year?
Correct. Yes. Did you actually make it to all of them?
Yeah. I did. But one time, my point didn't did 25 in a row. I just, finished my forty ninth, and I'll do number 50 on Florida in December.
Oh my gosh. You started oh, sorry. My phone's not muted. Had pancakes a little while ago. That's what that is.
Okay.
I guess you mentioned the truck earlier, but for people who don't know, you decided, like, I'm gonna take a pickup truck and deck it out. And what did you end up calling your your ride team?
You mean the truck?
Yeah. The truck.
Truck's called the t one destroyer. We had a national contest, and, people sent in names. And the person that wanted said you are the t one destroyer, so that's what you need to call your truck.
Awesome. And so I can picture it in my head. Black with, like, yellow graphics. Right?
Correct.
Yep. Yep. As a matter of fact, growing up, Arden slept in a t shirt that it was yours for years. Like, it was one of her sleeping t shirts. And That's great.
That's amazing. It's funny. I don't know if she knows what it is, but it's one of her she has a Dexcom sleeping t shirt, that one, and another one, and they they just went through the like, she was constantly using them. Nevertheless, like so you've got the truck because you're gonna go to your idea is I'm gonna go to all these different places and Correct. Raise awareness.
Like, that's really just your goal. Right? Like, I just wanna try to find people and teach them about type one diabetes?
The mission: stopping senseless deaths13:31
Yeah. I mean, to stop senseless deaths from these kids that have passed away from being undiagnosed or misdiagnosed. You know, I've been in several homes. It's the worst thing I've done in all these years is homes that have lost their kids and listened to them and Yeah. Say, I wish I had known it.
Somebody would have told me.
Mhmm.
Just I wanna stop that. And, you know, raising awareness has obviously helped me raise so much money. It's been incredible how much easier it is if you let people know what you're trying to raise money for.
Well, was my next question is, like, now you you're saying you're about to go on your fiftieth ride. Like, how does this like, how do you fund it? Like, are you you independently wealthy, or is there like, I mean, because you're yeah.
You know I mean? I work, you know, I worked a long time and made a nice living, but, we've raised a lot of money. I mean, since we started all this, I mean, we probably raised between what we've given a JDRF, which is now called breakthrough t one d. They just rebranded last year. Yeah.
And, you know, our team snack strong fund, we can talk about. Hopefully, we've raised, like, $1,200,000 since we started.
That's insane, Kent. That's really wonderful. And so some of that money gets donated off, and some of it funds your traveling and your awareness raising. Today's episode is brought to you by Omnipod. It might sound crazy to say, but summertime is right around the corner.
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No. The funny travel and everything. My wife and I found ourselves.
Oh.
I mean, it's all we've always just paid for all that ourselves now.
Oh my gosh.
You know, we yeah. And the T shirts, obviously, we've given out a lot of T shirts over the years. I mean, we just celebrated with the company that does our T shirts. They've just printed their 26,000 t shirts. So we've given out over 26,000 t shirts since we started it.
And we funded most of that for a long time, but the last few years, we've had some people step up and say, hey. We wanna help you pay for the t shirts when you come to our school, that type of thing. So
26,000 t shirts?
Yeah. And all of them have our team sacks over on the front, and they have the symptoms of type one on the back. And they're the key to this whole thing about creating this whole army of kids, you know, to help us all over the country. Actually, we've sent these shirts all over the world, and people wear them. They love to wear them.
And, you know, that's my theory is if they're standing there at McDonald's in line or on vacation or whatever, because you see these shirts everywhere all over Northeast Kansas and around the country, you know, people are gonna read some of those symptoms, and hopefully they'll remember the top four or five of them. Then they'll remember that if somebody in their family says something or you know, about their kids or their granddaughter or whatever and, you know, help them say and help them know to say you need to get to the hospital right now and do your blood check. You just need to get to the hospital right now. You can't wait.
So the simplicity of your motivation really is that you have that experience in front of those 400 people, and then that evening, someone tells you about a young child who passed away from not getting diagnosed.
Yeah. Somebody sent me the message. Yeah. You know, since then, it's just that's I've just always been very driven. You know, I'm a salesman by trade.
Right. You know, selling and fundraising and all this is kinda all the same thing. You just you have to let people know what you're fundraising for. You let have to let people know that you're serious. You know, when they see my truck and they, you know, they they see me go into a school, you know, people just they realize this guy is serious.
I mean, nothing is more exciting to me than walking into a school of 400 kids or 600 kids or 800 kids, whatever it is. I mean, I've done, like, 75 of these school visits and assemblies over these years, and they all have a bright yellow teak snack shirt on. And right away, they're bought in because they know this guy's serious. He's given us a t shirt. We need to listen.
Yeah. You know, I just That's simple. You're not just wandering and talking. You're saying there there's clearly a structure around what you're doing. And when you show that to people, they think, oh, this is a real thing.
And let me take a minute here to find out. How did you start that? The so you have a school awareness program where you you go around and speak. Even how does that begin? Like, how do you where does that idea come from, and then how do you grow it?
Into the schools — an army of kids in yellow shirts19:19
Well, I mean, through my territory, which is Northeast Kansas, you know, that's where I've done a lot of these. I've done them obviously here in I've done them all over the country now as I'm traveling and stuff. But I just decided one day, like I said, that if I'm gonna have, you know, kids to help me, I could create an army of people out there spreading awareness because you don't see anything on TV about type one diabetes except now some CGM commercials. Yeah. You don't ever see anybody talking about symptoms.
It's not national organizations don't talk as much about awareness as I wish they did. I mean, they're they're great at raising money and doing the research, but I just thought, I'm just gonna try to do this on a grassroots level, and and it it's worked and it continues to work and it's the proven, you know, it's a proven mission, it's a proven theory that by doing that it's helped us raise all this money and this money has done so much good. But, know, I just when I started going to the schools, the first thing I ever did, it was in two thousand and fifteen. I one of the I was reading a book to the second graders up in Nemo Central Elementary School because the teachers had asked me to come in and read, I'd given all the kids a t shirt Mhmm. Because they knew they'd seen my truck.
And I saw the teachers in the back room, you know, talking back of the room talking, and they came up to me said, we've got an idea for a fundraiser. And so before I knew it, we were gonna do a bike ride with the second graders from that school and a Catholic school. So if you've ever done anything crazy in your life, try taking seventy five second graders on a four mile bike ride. And it was just the coolest thing. We got there in the morning at the elementary school, and everybody was wearing their shirts, they all had their bikes.
I think four or five kids didn't have bikes. And then around the corner, here comes the kids from the other school, they're just, you know, pedaling their little bikes. The priest from the school came and rode with us, and it was four laps around, you know, this school, and each lap was about a mile. The first lap, I said, okay, everybody behind the big guy. Everybody stay behind me.
Line up. And then we had the teachers. We had people staggered through there. Yeah. Went all around the first time and it worked out pretty good.
Then all of sudden, kids started going faster and faster. They wanted to pass me. We got back around halfway the second time. I heard man down in the back and I looked back and there was a pile of them back there. The teachers got to them real quick and they I went back there.
Was all worried. They said, can't hurt a second grader. You're fine. So we rode one more lap and then by the fourth lap, was so nervous. There were some kids that were running the whole time.
I said, let's just all park our bikes and walk. I said, nothing can go wrong. You know? So we all held hands, and we started around this big one mile block area. And I looked over in the tree, there's two kids in the tree, two kids in the street.
And, I mean, it was That's one of the craziest things I've ever done. But at the end of it, they gave me a check for, like, $3,300 they had raised just through that school that day within what a huge surprise. And that's when I decided to start going to schools. And I just every chance I get, I go to schools to talk. It's amazing.
Yeah. So when you speak to them, what do you give them, like, signs and symptoms to look for, or is it more about the opportunity to make their parents aware and the teachers aware? What is it what's your goal when you're doing that?
You know, it's about a thirty to forty five minute thing depending on, you know, how big the school is and stuff. But we just start talking about team snack and why I started it. Then we get into what is type one diabetes. I explain to them that it's an autoimmune disease and anybody can get it. And your classmates that have this disease didn't do anything wrong.
It's not what they eat, it's not how much they exercise, and it's not contagious. You know, just try to make everybody feel more comfortable. Yeah. And then, you know, we talk a little bit about bike safety, but the highlight of the whole thing is when I give the kids that live with Taekwon a chance to come up and speak. And, you know, in some schools there might be one kid, in schools, there might be 12 kids.
And, you know, the smallest school I've ever done is, a 178 kids, k through 12, and the largest I've ever done was 1,100 high school kids in Painesville, Kentucky. Mhmm. Everyone is different, and, you know, they just it's amazing how brave these kids are when they get up and talk. And it just empowers them for the first time in their life. They could go up there and we could talk about the CGMs and insulin pumps and why they're wearing these things on their body and why they get to go to the school nurse more often.
The girl who took the microphone23:23
It's just very empowering. And some of the things they say and some of the things that come out of that are things, you know, I'll always remember. There was this one little girl at a very small school I went to, and it's Casey twelve, and there was a third grader there that had been just diagnosed and her parents got ahold of me and asked me if I'd come do a school assembly, which I always say yes if I can. And we got there and the principal said, This is great what you're here for, but I wanted to let you know that we have a sixth grade girl that has type one also, but she never wants to be recognized. She doesn't wanna talk about it.
Right. And don't ask if there's anybody else. I mean, and I would never do that. If kids don't wanna come up, I never I never make them. But we got the you know, through the through this thing and towards the end of the assembly, and this little girl and her parents were up there speaking, and they were just so so great.
And she went to sit down, and all of a sudden, I see this girl stand up. And she just walks right out of her out of the stands and right up to me, and she says, I really need to say something. And right then, I thought, well, this is that other girl. Yeah. And she took that microphone from me, and she walked over in front of the sixth graders.
And she just said, you know, I want you to know the reason I don't wear a two piece swimming suit or tank tops is because I'm embarrassed with all the spots in my body and all the bruises from having to give myself shots, but I have to have those shots to live every day. Wow. She walked back over to me and handed me the microphone, and she said, thank you. And as she was going to sit down, you know, I'll never forget the whole place stood up and gave her a standing ovation. Mhmm.
And the next day, her mom called me and said, you know, I don't know what you did or who you are, but you changed my life. She went to school that day and took her bag and showed everybody what was going on. Oh, jeez. And there's just so many things that happened like that. You know, over the years, these kids, they're just it gives them a chance to not have to hide not to have to hide it anymore.
Right. That's the whole gist of the school program, and it just continues to grow.
No. I mean, if you didn't do anything else, just that story alone is is probably worth the whole thing. Right?
Yeah. Yeah. I just yeah. And even with even when we're traveling across the country and I'm speaking at rhetoric clubs or, you know, I get to stay in some people's houses now because I've met in my rides and stuff. Know, they're just we became I became good friends with so many people through JDRF, and it's pretty it's pretty amazing.
The Rose Jersey and a promise kept25:39
You know, when the JDRF rides, I've done all these rides now, and I've won that Spirit Jersey, and then I won two Green jerseys, which is man, I've raised the most of that particular ride. And last year, in December, Bellevue Island, I think it was my forty seventh ride. But I was awarded the Rose jersey, and the Rose jersey is something that I always wanted to win. It's the jersey that's given out to a person that doesn't have type one diabetes but has done so much to help people that live with type one diabetes spread awareness and raising money. Rose was a lady that passed away from a horrible disease that was riding for her daughter.
The Rose jersey was just because she made everybody promise to keep the journey going after she was gone. Wow. You know, last year in Amelia Island, this is how this whole thing kinda keeps coming back around. I was in the morning, was dressing. I walked downstairs and I had my Rose jersey on.
This young man walks up to me and he goes, mister Snakenberg, you're not gonna remember this. But in 2015, you had a booth set up in Wichita, Kansas at the JDRF Walk, and you had your bike there and your truck. And I came up, and I was just so small. And I just looked at you and I said, someday, I wanna do a JDRF ride like you. But if you ever do one, I promise I'll be there.
And he was he was there at Amelia Island, you know, ten years later. And he said, you know, you just you kept your promise. Things like that that just know, I get tired, you know, I'm 70 years old now. I'll be 71 in January, but things like that just motivate me to continue on.
And Yeah.
I can't keep doing it at the same pace. I just never wanna stop. I never wanna quit on these kids because I know today, tomorrow, the next day, there's gonna be another two hundred, two fifty people that are gonna be diagnosed, and most of them don't know the symptoms, and they need to know that. They just need to know that. Just walking into people's homes, speaking at the couple of funerals I have, it's just no fun, and they're just senseless deaths.
And I try to get national organizations to buy more into it and talk about awareness, put the symptoms on the back of their shirts and stuff, but at this point, I still haven't been successful with that. So I'll just keep doing it myself and with my family and my wife who is an unbelievable partner in all this. She's she's just so great and has let me do so many things. I mean, you gotta realize that I've probably been gone two hundred and fifty more nights away from home traveling just doing this, and she's just all about it. And she knows I'm doing good things, and she loves helping people like I do.
Yeah. Well, Kent, how long you've been married?
Forty five years.
Yeah. She'd probably thrilled when you leave. I gotta be honest with you. Well,
I mean, can you imagine what's like being married to me? It's not always fun, but but she's just you know, and our kids and our grandkids Yeah. Yeah. They love it. And, it's it takes some you know, not very many people would be able to do that.
It takes somebody strong like that. And, you know, she's done, like, six or seven rides herself, and she actually did her first 100 mile ride a few years ago on LaCrosse, and I'm so proud of her. She's always there to support me.
Do you ever have the feeling that you've given something away in your own life for these other for these strangers and that it's a thing you can't get back? I mean, have you ever missed time with your own family over this? Or and how do you handle that?
I mean, I've obviously missed some things I probably shouldn't have, but I think my family I don't think that I've ever given anything away, and I think my family understands how important this is. It'd be one thing if I was just out there golfing or traveling, know, going to football games with guys. You know, they have a lot of connections now with these families and stuff, and they know that this is my mission and they're part of this mission. We call it Team Snack Strong and we're all Team Snack. It's part of our family name and it's our nickname and it's just something we continue to do.
I wouldn't say that I regret anything at this point in my life. I may look back on it someday, but we've made life long friends all over The United States. And we connect we stay connected with these people. And, you know, it's just it's very seldom that know, within a week or I'm not getting two or three messages, you know, would you please send us a T shirt? And I always try to send a note with it.
I'm always at the post office sending out shirts and Yeah. You know, just continue to go to school. So I have five schools up in Northeast Kansas that their eighth grade classes every year is part of their class. Mhmm. And I do this at Emporia State University too with a class that I go in and talk, I hand out T shirts, and I go back several times a year.
And, you know, that's culminated into we have our own Northeast Kansas team snack diabetes awareness walk for the last several years. And each year, that thing raises 10 to $15,000, and we have three or 400 people show up.
Scott's ASL project: a day well spent30:00
I asked you, Kent, because yesterday I mean, it's a it's a good example. Like, I'm gonna go back maybe nine months ago. I interviewed this person. She's type one. She was a young girl.
And as we were talking, I realized that she was an American sign language interpreter.
Uh-huh.
And I said, wouldn't it be interesting if I took one of the series from the podcast, you know, the one for newly diagnosed people, Bold Beginnings? And what if I got it translated into into American Sign Language? I paid somebody to stand in front of a camera and translate the entire thing, which is a huge undertaking. Right? And I first thought, like, well, maybe I could get a a sponsor to pay for that.
Then I realized this is gonna help a handful of people, and it's gonna be really valuable for the people it finds. But it's not gonna find, I don't imagine, thousands of people. Right? It's gonna find tens of people or maybe a 100 people. It's gonna be really helpful for those people, but nobody's gonna wanna put money down.
So I didn't even bother asking it. I said to the girl afterwards, I was like, Mikayla, what would it cost me to have you do that? And she gave me a very fair number, and I reached into my pocket, and I paid her. Right? And it took probably months and months and months for us to get it together and for her to, like, figure out how best to do it.
And and also, there's 26 episodes of this thing. And just recently, she finished. It's awesome. Right? And as I was paying her account, I thought, this is not enough money.
For the amount of work she put into this, I'm not paying her enough. And I felt bad about that. And then I had the videos, but I didn't have the time to put them together. I had to make a website for them. I had to get them onto YouTube.
Like, it's a lot of back end work that's kinda boring. But then if maybe four or five days ago, someone on the Facebook group asked, does anyone know where somebody who, you know, needs ASL can get diabetes information? And I thought, I have that on my hard drive. Wow. And what a great opportunity.
So I spent the last few days making a website, uploading stuff, like, you know, making sure everything on the back end was done. I got up yesterday. I recorded at 9AM. At 10AM, I thought to make myself breakfast, but started to work on the ASL stuff instead. And then I finished it last night at 11:30.
And I put it online, and I put a post up, and I was like, hey. Here you guys go. It's you know, I was really giving it to this one person. I was like, here. This is for you or for your brother.
Wow. And I don't feel like I wasted my day. But there are a lot of things I meant to do yesterday, and one of them would have been, like, exercising. And, you know, on the very simple and basic level, there's I skipped my workout yesterday. I didn't do a lot of things yesterday, and instead, I worked on this thing for the entire time.
I was wondering what your answer was because if somebody asked me, hey. You feel like you gave your whole day away yesterday for for nothing? I would say, no. I I I don't think so at all. Like, it it feels really valuable to me.
I don't know a lot of people who get to go to work and feel that way, I guess, is my point.
No. Every day is a new opportunity, you know, to help somebody, whether it's with type one diabetes or anything. And what you did there was so commendable because, you know, you didn't just help one person. You helped the family. You helped other families.
And you really can't waste your day. I mean, you can exercise later today. You can exercise tomorrow. I mean, I could ride my bike. When you give something to somebody that needs you and doesn't have what you have to give, then it's well worth it.
And, that's that's kinda the way I feel.
I've heard you. It's it was really hard because your voice is very deep. But, like, I've heard you be emotional twice while we're talking. Right? And the little girl saying to you, like, can I have the microphone?
I have something I need to say. Like, that made me cry. I got emotional when you said that. Her words, it is because it's the bigger picture. It's like she's there.
She's she's got some energy, and she's like, I've been holding this thing inside. I'm miserable holding this thing inside. Yeah. And I need to get rid of it. If you can be a a little part of helping somebody do something like that, I really think it reverberates around the world.
I'm sitting here thinking about these kids who sat through your program at school and will ten years later be in college, and some kid's gonna get sick. And they're gonna think, like, oh, that's probably diabetes, and maybe help that person. And and that thing, like, that on that first night that you wanted to do Yeah. You'll do it so many times in your life and beyond your life, you won't even you'll never know how many people you touched, don't believe.
Well, you know, I got a card once a few years ago from a second grade teacher that I had been at their school two years before, and she said, you know, I listened to what you had to say. Normally, during assemblies, you know, I'm grading papers or whatever. But she said, you know, you gave us all these shirts, and you were very interesting to listen to. And I listened to everything you said. She said, two years later, my son started showing the symptoms of type one.
And so right away, we got him, you know, to the hospital, and his blood sugar was, like, six or 700. And she goes, I know in my heart, you saved my son's life.
Well, I mean, at the very least, saved him from, like, a a terrible bout with DKA and all the things that might have come with it and her having to feel like she missed it. Like, I talk to people every day who, you know, carry a a terrible burden around with themselves, like, because Right. Because they missed something. And and their children didn't pass even. They went through a thing that they just wished terribly they would have understood better so that they didn't have to have this experience.
Yeah. No. I mean, Ken, it's it's it really is awesome what you're doing.
Camp scholarships and the Team Schneck fund35:10
Well, you know, when when, like, when I was at diabetes camp last year and, you know, I'd wanna talk a little bit more about that maybe in a minute. Please. You know, they have they have doctors and nurses there, obviously, from this one is close to Wichita, Kansas You know, I walked I went in there and they just said, you just need to know that you have you're making it possible now for kids to just walk into the room and just say with their parents, say, I need a blood sugar test. She goes, the worst thing is when we get a type one child that's, you know, in an ambulance or worse yet on a helicopter. She said there's just so many kids that could benefit from these programs.
And so that's another reason to keep motivated because just think of all the kids all over the world that hold this inside, like you said, and don't wanna talk about it or scared to talk about it. It's only because nobody's given them a chance. Yeah. You know, that's I just wanna give them a chance to open up and let the other kids around them know, you know, it's not weird for them to be wearing these things on their arms, at their legs. They're they're things that keep them alive.
They have to have them to keep alive every day. There's a reason they carry Skittles. It's not because they love candy. It keeps it's a chance to keep them alive every day. And that's why we'll continue to do even if I can't do the rides and travel around the country as much, I'll continue to talk to groups, I'll continue to help people in this area and all over the state of Kansas and go to as many schools as I can.
I mean, you know, we have a team snack strong fund. We actually started right after I talked to you. I think even I mentioned that we were getting ready to start it, and it's under the Emporia Committee Foundation. And so for any child that lives, you know, in the 7 County area with type one diabetes, you know, each year they can get $1,500 a year from us, you know, for scholarships and for me, $1,500 a year from us to help pay expenses of the disease. And there's another foundation for you that's tacked on another thousand dollars to that for the same kid.
You know, also, plus that, if they wanna go to Camp Discovery, you know, we're gonna send them on a full ride scholarship. And I think the average price now to camp is, like, a thousand dollars. And since we started, I think the first year we did ten ten kids. It was in Junction City, Kansas at that point, and it was 73 miles from here. I'd ride my bike up there with a friend early in the morning to get there, you know, around noon, the kids would be waiting for me.
And so now every year when we go to camp, they have a team snack day, and it's on Wednesday, usually, and we can you know, there's a 100 kids there. It's an unbelievable experience. I don't know if your daughter's ever gone, but we give all the kids a shirt, and I get to go down there and talk. And think we've given now now a 175 scholarships since we started. And last year, we sent 36 kids, and this year, we're gonna send 40 more.
And it's just the camps are one of the best thing that I ever hooked up with. I mean, it's just so empowering. They get lifelong friends. They get to talk. And, you know, when they have their meals, they're all together in this big room, and they get up at each cabin, talks about who changed their pump and who did this.
And it's just it's so cool. And they come out of there, their lives are changed forever. We wanna definitely continue that program.
Yeah. For sure. So this year, I had the director of Camp Sweeney on the podcast. Mhmm. And while he was on, he said, I'd like to give away, you know, to the listeners, I'd like to give away a spot at Camp Sweeney.
And Camp Sweeney's, it's pricey. I think it's over I I literally think it's, $4,000. Right? And it's a Wow. Three week camp.
They go for three weeks.
Oh, wow.
And I said, oh, that that'd be great. You know, I'll I'll give it away. We got off got off the call, and I said, let me let me reach out to a sponsor and see if I can get somebody to, like you give one away, and, we can get a sponsor to give one away. Right? And I think I'm pretty sure US Med did it.
So it's one of my sponsors. So we get we gave way too. And then, you know, they were so excited about it, and it it did good buzz for the for the the camps. They said, listen. We have benefactor who would like to give away another one.
I said, let me go ask another sponsor. And I got I got Omnipod to give away another one. And before I knew it, the 2025 was, you know, camp time was coming up. And I think we sent, like, I I've lost count. Think we it was six or eight kids we sent to to camp.
Wow. Just random drawings. Like, people just sent in, like, here's why I want my kid to come. I randomly picked names, and the kids went off. And I got a video a month or two ago, and I was like, what is this?
Like, it was I was tagged on Instagram, and I jumped and looked at it. And it's just this giant group of children and this one little kid up front. And he's like, hey. You know, thank you so much to Juice Box podcast for sending me to camp. I'm having such a great time.
And, like, just countless kids behind him, like, screaming thank you. And I sat there and I thought, my whole life should be sending kids to camp. Like, I should, you know, I should I should quit everything else I'm doing and try to find a way to send more kid. What a lovely experience. It was new for me.
Yeah. Yeah. And then I just recently had one of the kids on to talk about it, and and he had such a great time and experience just like you you described. So I can't imagine how it must feel to send 40 kids. That's
Well just
this Amazing.
It's empowering. And, you know, it's we we try to obviously, we pick kids from Emporia area first, and then we pick kids in Northeast Kansas because that's where we still continue to raise so much of our money in so many of the schools I go to and stuff. And then we but we've sent kids from all over Kansas. And Yeah. The camp at ADA has been great to work with us.
I mean, Camp Discovery is great and, you know, gave us an opportunity to do the scholarship program. And I think it's helped fill all their beds, now they have a waiting list. And it's I promote that camp anytime I get a chance to because and I'm sure the we sent a girl in Arizona to camp out in Arizona. I sent a girl in Colorado to camp at Colorado just I mean, I walk in a bike store last year in Green Valley, Arizona. We go out there and visit friends.
You know, the guy out in the under the bike store saw my truck. He goes, you know, my daughter was just diagnosed. And I said, well, can I meet her? And he called her home. She came down there, and before I knew it, gave her t shirts and talked to her about what we did.
I said, have you ever been to camp? And she goes, no. Said, well, if you wanna go, well, you know, I'll help pay for it. And so a few days later, they got ahold of me, and I she just got back from camp, and she had an unbelievable experience. It's only because I needed to fix a flat on my tire and my bike.
I mean, it's
just Yeah.
It's not very many days go by where something cool doesn't happen to me, but I try to reach out all the time. You know, I've got my shirts. I got the trucks, so I'm always visible. But I just don't wanna miss an opportunity if I can to to meet a kid.
I'm jealous that you get to do it in person because I think I have your experiences. I and I might have them with more frequency, but mine are all virtual, you know, for the most part. Yeah. You know?
Look how many people you're reaching. I mean, you're I have no idea how many subscribers you have, but it's gotta be a lot because, like I said, that first year you were getting started, I was getting started ten years ago where just people continue. It was last year somebody reached out, and Ryan walked up, said, I remember you from the Juice Box podcast. And thank you for everything you do. I just I mean, you're doing what you know, you're doing what you were meant to do, and I think I'm doing what I was meant to do.
I mean, it takes
I agree.
All sides to do that. And we have so much support from our community and from schools in this area and from people all over the country. I mean, when we raised money for it's called match day at Emporia Community Foundation, it's in November, and we started, like, I think it's six years ago with this match day thing. And each year, we've led in a you know, each year, continued to grow. And last year, you know, we received a check for a $106,000.
Jesus. And that money, you know, that money helped so much. And I think since we started this with them, we raised over 600,000 just for our foundation and, you know, for a fund there. But each year, we're paying out, you know, 30 to 40 to $50,000, you know, to kids with the financial aid and and going to camp and stuff. So we need to continue to work hard to raise money because I really wanna have one of those legacy fund when I'm gone and to continue to do this program and, you know, not only help kids with the expenses necessary, but, you know, continue to raise awareness with what we do.
And, you know, I don't know if I told you this, but now I have two team snack trucks. And, you know, the first one is a 2014, the one you had the picture of.
Yes.
You know, it took all over the country, and now it's got 430,000 miles on it. Wow. So two years ago, three years ago, decided I better get another case system. So I bought a 2022, and the same lady that logoed out the first one had all the designs and logoed out this one just the same. So I've got two of them sitting at my house.
I've been driving the newer one to the longer rides like Wisconsin and Florida and some of those. But, otherwise, I just drive my old one Everybody at the Ford dealership here and everybody all over the I hate to say it. What's your goal? I said, I wanna get to half million miles. You know, want Ford Motor Company someday to recognize this and do a national commercial about this guy that's driving all over the country in a Ford f one fifty, you know, to raise awareness, saving lives, raising money.
And I know that Ford's a big sponsor of breakthrough t one d, and that hasn't happened yet, but I always hold out hope.
Yeah. That's really wonderful. You know, you said something a second ago that really because I I think about it too about, like, keeping it going. Like, when you're talking about all these people that you're helping and, I mean, what did you just say? Like, 30 to $50,000 of just, like, financial aid to people who are, you know, just struggling to pay for stuff.
And you think, well, when I stop doing this, like, I mean, it's not a giant organization, Ken. Right? It's you. So, like, you get too old or too sick or too tired or whatever. Like, what happens to all of it?
Like, how are you trying to I know you're planning for it, but what is it you're doing to try to keep that alive?
Well, I'll be setting up soon a legacy fund with the community foundation to where, you know, when you try and I'm trying to get it to a certain amount of money to where they manage, you know, they manage the money, and it it has a very good return on the investment through this community foundation. I think there's, 300 funds. We're very lucky and important to have that. And, you know, the legacy fund means once I'm gone, that they'll continue as their board and, you know, their directors to to manage the fund and, you know, and and still give out the money. And, you know, it probably will lessen as far as the camp thing, as far as, you know, kids from around the state that are going to camp.
But, also, I have other people now that are trying to figure ways to send more kids to camp because they didn't realize what the need was. You know, people from other places, and I've had parents that reach out and said, you know, this year, we could just pay her own way. Why don't you send another child this year? So there's a lot of people on board. We won't let it die.
It'll continue to grow in some fashion and, you know, help as many people as we can.
Somebody has to be the center of it, the beating heart, because that's you right now. So someone along the way is gonna have to pick the mantle up and decide that they wanna carry it the way you did.
Yeah. But I'm telling you, this community foundation, the two ladies there, I mean, they're all in on this. And, you know, they do these legacy funds, and they love what we do, and we love what they do. And so it'll it'll continue. But I'm also hoping that's a long time down the road too.
Mean It's like, I ain't looking to stop down. But You know,
The health scare: AFib and three stents45:30
I've I've had had some health issues the last two, obviously, but that's gonna limit me from, you know, doing as much in the future, but I can still do a lot.
I
mean, I was doing a lot a lot for a while. And this you know, two but two years ago when things were just really going strong, I was doing a ride in La Crosse, Wisconsin. You know? I had noticed that, you know, I had some issues with going up steep stairs and stuff, but I just figured that was from being 70, you know, or 68, I guess, at that time.
What ended up being the problem?
Well, anyway, I I I did 40 mile ride that day, but, you know, I felt pretty good. But I'd already I tried to go up this bluff. Everybody just kinda does it in lacrosse. It's a really cool area. It's called Grandpa's Bluff, I believe.
And we got a couple 100 yards up there, and my heart just started pounding. And I thought, this isn't right. So I came back down, and luckily, I had had a physical setup for the you know, I got back on Sunday. I had a physical on Monday, my yearly physical. And they'd already set up a stress test because it's been ten years since I've done one.
Mhmm. And, you know, I went physical, and everything was fine. I get to the stress test the next day, give me the shot to put the stuff inside my veins, they take the pictures, and I go back in there and sit down and, you know, they're getting ready to hook me up to all these you know, to the monitors and stuff and get on the treadmill, and the lady looks at me and she goes, you know, you got AFib. I said, man, I don't even know what AFib is. I've just heard it on the radio.
And she goes, well, it's not good. Then I guess the picture started coming back in and they were just staring at the screen. And when they're both looking at the screen and not talking to me, I know it's not good. And so they actually didn't even let me get on the treadmill and they called, you know, the cardiologists here in Emporia. Have Neumann Regional Health, which we're blessed to have, and they have a full time cardiologist and department in Cath Lab.
You know, within a half hour he was down there and he drew a picture of my heart and he goes, Kent, you have three blockages in, you know, your heart. One of them is 80%, one of is 90%, one of them is 95%. At that point, my wife wasn't even there. My wife was in Kansas City because I she just you know, I just told her, I'm just gonna go do the stress test. And so she he said, you might wanna call your wife.
He said, within about two hours, we're gonna have you in surgery. And I looked at him. I said, do I need to get a second opinion? Do I need to do anything else? I mean, you know, your mind is just racing at that point because this all came out of nowhere, basically.
And he said, you know, we can fix this here, Kent. And if it's something I can't fix, I'll send you on to Topeka or to Kansas City. And just the way he said it, I trusted him very much. And they got me ready. He took me up to the surgery, and the cath team was there, and they were unbelievable.
It was just a great experience for whatever an experience could be like that. But I had three stents put in. Get down to recovery, and, you know, your heart's still in AFib. And so that's something I've been dealing with and will continue to deal with. I have a double procedure in January that hopefully will take care of that, get me off some of these blood thinners and stuff because that's limited me in the riding by myself and doing a lot of things.
But but I've been able to continue on. I mean, I did three rides last year, I've done two this year. Gonna do the one in four in December before my Right. You know, before my surgery. So I'm just I was very lucky that I actually tried to ride up that bluff, which made me decide I gotta go ahead through this stress test.
People have been very understanding and, you know, sending me a lot of cards and well wishes. It just slowed me down. It hasn't stopped me, but I don't believe you'll be seeing me do any more 100 mile bike rides anywhere.
Well, can I ask a guy? Because I just had a guy on that was talking about heart issues.
But Yeah. Correct.
You're not a I'm I'm guessing you're not a smoker. Right?
No. No. Just my dad had heart issues, so it's, like, in my family.
It's familial. Okay. I was gonna say because, I mean, you're you're as active as anybody could be. Yeah. You know, you're moving constantly and and and the rides and everything else.
Right?
Yeah. It just wouldn't you know, things just happen to people. Yeah. When I was 60, I really felt 25. And now that I'm 70, kinda sometimes feel 70.
But most of the times really feel like when we get in front of kids and go to schools and talk, I'm back in the forties and fifties. But I've got a lot of good years left. I you know, ahead of me, I hope. And for as many time you know, as much as I I can do this, I wanna keep going. I wanna keep doing this.
And I'll tell these kids all the time, you know, I wake up every day trying to think of things to make your life better, and that's kinda what I try to do. And I said I won't quit as long as I'm physically able to. And they they believe that, and I believe that.
I tell people all the time when they they thank me for the podcast. I was like, I really have to thank you because the way they support it and listen to it and keep the said you you don't know how many people have heard it, and I I almost hesitated to tell you at the time, but I'm getting ready to celebrate 20,000,000 downloads, like, total downloads and a lot. You know? Yeah. Then that's because people they listen to it.
They enjoy it enough to share it with somebody else. That keeps it going. And maybe one of the unforeseen things that they don't see that I hear when I'm talking to you is that allows me to get up in the morning and think about, like, I wonder what people need. Like, you know, I've I've heard you say a couple of times, like, I can't get big organizations to put signs and symptoms on their t shirts or their stuff. And, I mean, I probably understand that it's it probably feels like a bummer to them, and that's not what how they wanna present.
They want everything to be upbeat, and we're we're working towards something, that kind of feeling all the time. But, you know, I brought that ASL thing up to you earlier. Like, no one else is doing that, Kent. Like, no one's going to put the time or the effort or the money that it takes into creating helpful start out information for people with type one diabetes who are deaf or hard of hearing. They're gonna tell you, like, there's just not enough of them.
Like, the juice isn't gonna be worth the squeeze. Like, the amount of effort they're gonna put into it, they're not gonna see the return, especially in this digital age where people wanna see tens of thousands of clicks on something. They wanna see hundreds of thousands of downloads. They're not looking for you to reach five people anymore. You try to show something to them and say, like, try to imagine this.
Like, I don't it's hard to get them to imagine it. But I think that now that I've done it, I don't think it'll be as difficult to reach out to them and say, hey. Look. Here's how much money it would take to, you know, fund this to do for this kind of information or this. Like and now there's a place and you can see people getting to it and using it.
You can get them a little more excited to to keep going. But Yeah. I hear all your frustration. Like, I mean, what a no brainer for Ford to send somebody with a camera out to talk to you for an hour and put some They
are just following. You know, send somebody with me for a day. And, you know, I would think there'd be they'd sell so many more f one fifty drugs to people that live with type one diabetes if they saw this drug going out doing all these things. And it's just sometimes the big organizations are real busy. And I you know, JDRF, which is now breakthrough and the American Diabetes Association, have been nothing but great parts of my life.
I just thought if if they would just do simply print the the T shirts, you know, with the symptoms on the back, it's gonna help them raise more money. And that's the hardest thing is to let to make them understand that the more people know about this Right. The more people are gonna donate money. And the only way to tell them to do that is by telling them. And along the way, you're gonna save lives.
I mean, you know, you said something about only reaching so many people with, you know, with the program you were on recently. But if I you know, if we could say five kids a year, two kids a year, I mean, what would be the price on that? Because you know that a lot of people are diagnosed today and most of them don't know what's coming and some of them are gonna end up in ambulances and some of them on helicopters and they just need to know. I mean, you can't stop the disease, but you can stop people from dying from senseless deaths of being undiagnosed or misdiagnosed. You gotta tell people.
Using Ford as an example, they would get great social media out of it, and it wouldn't cost them anything. And like you said, it would be a good video of a of a a 12 year old truck chugging along with 400,000 miles on it, which you would think is, you know, good for sales. I haven't done I'm not gonna ask you the number, but 26,000 t shirts, even if you're paying $34 apiece for them, means you've spent a $100,000 in t shirts. That's a lot of effort from you. Like, if that's the only thing you had ever done, that would have been really impressive.
You know what I'm saying?
Yeah. Well, I got three orders on my desk right now. One, I'm gonna speak to a girl scout troop, and then I and I just sent a ninety ninth church to a preschool that I'm gonna go speak at. Like I said, this guy, his name's Tom Wrong, and it's one eight hundred t shirts as his company in Dubuque, Iowa. I mean, it's crazy.
I was at a JDRF ride in 2016 in La Crosse, Wisconsin, sitting there in on Saturday night in a bar with a bunch of crazy people from Iowa, which are great people we met over the years. He walks up to me and goes, Hannah, I see you guys do t shirts. He said, Both my brothers are type one diabetic and I own one of the largest t shirt companies in the Midwest. I want to be your guy also. I'm too cheaper than anybody.
And since then, it's just been a it's perfect relationship. I mean, I they do such great work, their quality. Yeah. I call them. I I send them the order.
They send them right to the school. I mean, and it's just then when we went by there last week, you know, they're all wearing team Snack shirts. There's 30 some employees, and they were so excited to hit that number of T shirts. And we just I gotta talk to him a little bit and take pictures, and and nothing probably would have happened if I wouldn't have been earn a team snack shirt in that bar at that time. So Yeah.
I just feel like I've been put in certain places and certain things over all these years to make all this grow like this and come together and, you know, just have relationships with a company like that and have relationships with, you know, Matt Fisher who helped me design my truck. And now he's got his own ride team called Team Fish, and we're really close, and we ride. And he's done so much for the Breakthrough Ride program, and we're just great friends. And I just I wanna keep going for things like that because I know there's people I could still reach every day, and there's people that hopefully will hear this podcast and understand that, you know, you could do something like this in your area just to go to the schools and talk in front of people and to go to rotary clubs. You know, I can't go all over the country.
I get messages when you come to this school or that. I can't I think that, hopefully, it's what people understand how I do it that it's really simple. It's just giving somebody your time to try to help kids save lives, you know, and just give kids that empowerment that they're not different. They were they got a bad hand in court to dealt to with this disease, but they got to deal with it. And they want people you know, they're just looking for hope.
I don't know how many times I've heard parents say, You give us hope. And God, what's more powerful than that? You know, with all the medicine in the world sometimes, just knowing that somebody cares. There's a guy in Kansas that you don't even know, but look at him. He's driving a truck around the country, and he's trying to do everything not only to help kids there, but kids everywhere, including yourself.
It's another way to help people feel less alone, really.
Yeah. Yeah. It's a crappy disease. You know, it can make you feel really bad and just the stories I hear are about. But when I get a kids a chance to talk, give them a chance to just speak their mind and just see their smiles and see their kids, you know, and all their peers in the audience and the teachers.
You know, when we do this, we give shirts to the cooks and the bus drivers and everybody's there. Right. And it's just they know that they're there for them. They they're there for them to support them. And when I drive through these towns on that truck, I go by school and everybody's waving and the kids recognize the truck.
There's shirts everywhere, and there's no reason not to keep doing it. I mean, as long as I'm being able to I feel like gonna be of great support.
You're a you're a lovely person. This is this is an uplifting conversation. Do you even have a website that I could send people to? Or how do they No.
I don't have a website. I mean, I really try to do everything the old fashioned way. It seems to work for me. I mean, we've got I've got my personal Kent Snackenberg Facebook page, which I don't know. I have a lot of brands, I guess, on there, I try to post a lot on it.
I have a Team Snack page still, but, you know, it's one of those pages where they you have to give a money to Facebook to promote things. And so I don't do a lot on that, but I just try you know, I usually email a lot and people call me and stuff. But it works for me, and I think I'm too old to change much, to be honest with you.
That's okay. Think that's awesome. I think Facebook's a great way for them to find you. Right? It's just your it's just your name?
Yeah. My name, just personal name. It's Kent Snackenburg. And if you go to the TeamSnack page, I think you can get to the the other page by doing that.
You made me think. I have the same thought you just have all the time. Like, I have a private Facebook group that has 73, 74,000 people in it right now. And Bro. It's insane.
Right? And yet, if you post something, Facebook doesn't show it to most of them.
No. Yeah. No. No.
They want you to pay them to actually deliver your your posts to the people that you've gathered up who have said, I'd like to know what this guy is saying. Yeah. No. It's it's really something. And can I get a I gotta tell you now?
We're we're done, but I I I wanna tell you that I'm so impressed by what you're doing that I have not brought up the, incredible thrashing that my Eagles gave your Chiefs in the Super Bowl. I just let that go, and we don't even talk about it. Yeah. Because you're
gonna beat us in two weeks too.
Because you're a good man, Kent, and you don't deserve that. Okay? Yeah. I keep that to myself.
Well, I'd I'd like to tell you this one story
Please.
And and and see if you can fit it in towards the end.
Absolutely. This you keep going. Please.
Your moment comes — don't miss it58:12
So this was, like, in 2015 or '16, I was starting out doing my seven rides for the year, I was traveling to the Northeast part of the country. But at that point in time, I was still trying to hit all these states. I think the first day I drove all the way to Houston, Texas from Kansas, and the next day I drove to Jacksonville, Florida, then up to Hershey, Pennsylvania. And I the next day I drove into the town where the ride was. And, you know, it was early in the day.
I I didn't really know how to recognize how many days it would take to get through the way I was doing it. Because when I'm riding, I'm stop or driving, I'm stopping and talking to people and giving out information. Of course. So I got there early, and I decided to just explore the town a little bit. And I went around the town and, you know, came and got some some of their places.
They're famous landmarks and stuff, and I'm heading back to the hotel. And I come to this, you know, red light. It was a pretty busy street, and I looked over to my right, and there's this young man sitting in a wheelchair. And sitting next to it was a lady in a folding chair, and I come to find out, you know, that was his caretaker. And I know this young man had some real health issues because his neck was, like, lean weight to the right and his body was kind of leaned over.
You know, I could see in his wheelchair, was kind of custom made where he had his left hand really clenched tightly on this tray, but with his right hand, he was reaching down and put something in his mouth. But the whole time, both of them were just staring at me. So it was one of those red lights that seems like it goes on forever, you know? And it finally turned green. I didn't know what else to do.
So as I was driving away, I smiled and waved really big, and he just stared straight at me. But she waved and smiled, but, you know, it was kind of a sad smile like, you know, everybody's seen. And I got up the road two or three blocks and something and saw this, you know, inside of me just said, Kent, you need to go back. You need to go back. So I turned into Office Street, and I came up behind this building.
I think it was a church, I parked and I walked around the corner and I just said, Hey, getting snack program here to do a bike ride to help kids with type one diabetes. Tell me your story. And the lady looked at me and she said, Well, this young man was diagnosed early in life with a very severe muscle disease and he'll never be able to walk and he'll never be able to talk, and he needs twenty four hour daycare. But he likes doing nice days, and we sit out here and look at traffic. And he must have really loved your truck because he made this really loud.
And the whole time, he's still staring at traffic. And so I just looked at her and I'm set. Know, what can I do to make your day better? What do you guys like to do? And she thought for a moment, and she said, well, when his dad comes to pick him up at night, we love to go out to eat.
Nothing fancy, just different places. And she looked at me, and I was wearing a bright yellow team snack shirt, and she said, and he really likes bright colored shirts. And I said, well, just wait right here. And I ran back to my truck, I could just tell and my heart was just thumping, you know. I knew something was gonna happen special that day.
And came back around the corner, and I gave her $60. I said, here, you just go out to your favorite place to eat tonight on me, and I said, just to really enjoy yourself. And I said, here's a shirt for him to wear. And she held up that yellow shirt. And, yeah, she held up the shirt and said, look what this man gave you.
And for the very first time, you know, his head tilted up towards me, and this kind of a smile, I think, came across his face. And he lifted that left hand up that had been clenched in that fist, he opened it up, and I put three fingers in there, and he squeezed him really, really hard. And he made this really loud noise that I always think he was just saying thank you at that point, you know, and then he released my hand, and he started looking back at the traffic. And I just gave her one of my cards, and I said, just wanna tell you I loved you guys. You If you ever need me for anything else, anything, I said, please just get ahold of me.
And as I turned and walked away, she said, you already have. And I looked back at her and she goes, we've been sitting here for two years. She said, two years, and you're the first person that's ever stopped to check on us. And she said, you know, that's gonna make me that's gonna make his father so happy. And she just said, thanks for what you do.
And I left, and, you know, then her father or his father called me that night and just said, you know, I don't know who you are, but you made my family's day and you did something today nobody's ever done for us. And, you know, I like to tell that story when I'm talking to kids and because I always feel like, you know, every story should have a good message to it. And so the message to that story is, you know, your moment in life comes, you know, and you will have a moment when you have this opportunity. Just don't miss it. Right.
And I said, my moment came in 2015 and standing in front of 400 people in Tucson Tucson, Arizona. And I said, and your bubble come, and I said, just don't mess it. So
Oh, Kent. I have to tell you, that story is so lovely that I didn't make the joke I was gonna make when you said my heart was thumping that I knew something was gonna happen that day, I thought, yeah, those are the blockages, Kent.
Yeah. Well, luckily, that was ten years ago. So I it was doing pretty good then.
I think you've probably, by putting yourself out into the world like this, had more incredible experiences than a 100 people combined. And just by putting yourself in situations where you may or may not have an experience like that, but a little uncommon nowadays. Right? Like, people don't think to do that as much as you do. And I I I I hope everybody's hearing what it's given back to you, and maybe they'll they'll do a little bit of of it themselves too.
Yeah. You know, you were talking about clicks earlier and stuff, and I'm not interested in, you know, the number of clicks. I'm just interested in the amount of people I can reach, the amount of kids I can save,
Yeah.
How many kids we could send at camp, and how many kids we can help with expenses because that's that's what's really important to me in life. I know that they talk about social influencers. They talk about all these things, but I got a feeling that some of that's a pretty empty feeling. But when you, you know, can walk in a house and a family's happy to see you after they just got from home from the hospital three days ago and just start telling them what you can do for them and just let them know they're not alone. I mean, that's worth so that's worth everything to me.
No. I believe that, and I and I agree. You what you're doing, I mean, you're an angel out in the world for sure. I hope your family is as proud of you as I imagine that I am. You know, your kids are probably older now, right, and your grand they probably don't really know.
I mean, to one of your grandchildren, you've gotta be there, like, I don't know. Grandpop's got a weird truck and he goes on a lot of bike rides. Right?
Like No. They just they just say I mean, everything to them is team snack, you know. Team snack truck, team snack shirts.
Know about it.
They're you know, the oldest is 12 and the youngest is, like, I think, nine. And so there's you know, we have three in Kansas City, which is a couple hours from here, two in Denver, which is eight hours from here. So we don't get to see them as often as some people do, but we definitely make a lot of trips both places and we're really proud of our grandkids. I'm just thankful that, you know, they're proud of me and what we do and and my wife. Nobody's ever said anything like, you know, you missed this, you shouldn't have missed this.
They're just they know I'm helping kids and
Yeah.
I try to install and install in them and everybody else that, you know, that's the secret to life is helping others when you have an opportunity to.
Can I ask a last question? Sure. Prior to all this happening to you and, you know, just kind of the randomness of your, you know, of your niece being diagnosed
Right.
Were you doing stuff like this prior to that, or was this just a departure for you?
A lifetime of giving: the train, Santa, and his father1:05:03
No. No. I mean, I've always tried to help people. My dad was really big with charities and clubs. He was ran a cancer golf tournament here for years, and I took over for him then.
And he passed away when he was 80, and I ran it for several years.
So
and we, you know, we have a Saratoga Club here in town with a miniature train that runs, and it's very It's been given, I think, 1955. It started, and it holds, like, 20 kids and parents. And so it runs, like, three or four nights a week in the summer. And my wife and I pay for all the rides for all the kids and parents, you know, all summer long for that. And we just had the last ride of the summer last Sunday night, and I think they gave 253 rides out that night.
And so that's just money that those families can save, but they love the train. I mean, it reminds me when I was little when I was riding in it. Just a really special place for me, and and I want it to be special for a lot of the people. And this club is filled with, you know, men and women that are in their sixties, seventies, and eighties, and they continue to do this. And so it's a little better just for us to support them with 2,500 donation to pay for all the free rides all It's been great.
Jeez. Yeah, Kent. Yeah. You might you really might be an angel, man. I can't thank you enough.
I'm gonna call this episode Kent has something to say.
Okay.
It's a great message. Like, I don't I don't know another way to say it. Like, I I felt the same way when I I told you I had Ernie on from from Cam Sweeney, he was talking about it. And I just kept thinking, he's been doing this for decades. And he's an older man.
Like, why does he keep doing this? You know? Like like, what what what keeps him going? You know? And, there's something about the his conversation and the conversations I've had with you that I don't know.
I I hear a, a fire and a motivation inside that is not, in any way that I can tell, not ego motivated. Like, it it really is about, like, just seeing other people do better. I mean, just I mean, Ken, what's what's a ride on the train cost?
Well, it's only a dollar. But it and but if they have eight kids, that's $8. And if they wanna ride four times, that's $32, and that's money they could just save, you know, and It's a
really thoughtful approach. Like, these people's kids have a nice time and they and they have eight more dollars in their pocket. And Yeah. And your thought is they can go put that into something else and and still have had this good time
to see them an ice cream on the way home.
It's just you spreading joy around is what it is.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I was Santa Claus for eighteen years out front of our house, and we used to do it in in neighborhood, and we raised somebody, you know, toys for the Salvation Army. And so I mean, that was, like I know how many years ago that was, but and they're still doing that today forty years later in this neighborhood that we moved away from. And so that's kinda cool that they're continuing to the tradition.
I mean, we live in a very giving town. People are very nice here. Yeah. Just I mean, it's like, I almost have to have one of those hands in front of my truck waving, you know, the dashboard because so many people know the truck could wave and honk and
And you just
It's just a great feeling.
Spotting back. Well, listen. It sounds to me like you're still Santa Claus. So Well Yeah. I don't know, man.
You're you're really lovely, and this is fantastic. I appreciate you jumping back on and and sharing this with me again. I hope that, I hope you hear about people enjoying this conversation for ten more years.
Yeah. Well, yeah, I'm sure that it'll whenever you put it on, let me know, and then I can share it to him.
I will.
Yeah. It's I shared the that first episode last night, and a lot of people called me and called me and stuff, said we'd forgot about everything you're doing and stuff.
So Yeah. No. It's cool. Well, it'll be out. I'll tell you about it when we we'll finish up here.
Say goodbye, and I'll tell you about the timeline.
Okay.
So thank you so much. I really do appreciate this.
You bet.
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But everybody is welcome. Type one, type two, gestational, loved ones, it doesn't matter to me. If you're impacted by diabetes and you're looking for support, comfort, or community, check out Juice Box Podcast, type one diabetes on Facebook. The episode you just heard was professionally edited by Wrong Way Recording. Wrongwayrecording.com.
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