Scott Benner 12/5/22 Scott Benner 12/5/22

#802 Diagnosed at 8 Months Old

Krystal's baby was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at 8 months old.

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

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends and welcome to episode 802 of the Juicebox Podcast.

Welcome to the show on today's episode we'll be speaking with Krystal, whose child was diagnosed at eight months old and has had type one diabetes for six years. And she's here today to share that story. While you're listening to it, please remember that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan or becoming bold with insulin. If you're a US resident who has type one diabetes, or is the caregiver of someone with type one, the T one D exchange would love it if you could spend fewer than 10 minutes filling out their survey. It exists at T one D exchange.org. Forward slash juice box when you complete the survey, which by the way is completely HIPAA compliant and anonymous. You'll be helping people living with type one diabetes, and you'll be moving diabetes research forward without ever leaving the comfort of your home. T one D exchange.org forward slash juice box

this show is sponsored today by the glucagon that my daughter carries G voc hypo penne Find out more at G voc glucagon.com. Forward slash Juicebox Podcast is also sponsored today by touched by type one, head over to touched by type one.org. Or find them on Facebook or Instagram to see what they're up to. I'll give you a hint whether up to was helping people with type one diabetes, it's pretty great. They're not asking you for anything, they just want you to come and take a look touched by type one.org. Last but not least, this episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by us med you can get your diabetes supplies the same way my daughter does from us med all you have to do to get started is go to us med.com forward slash juicebox. Or if you prefer, call 888721151. For get your free benefits check today from us med us met.com forward slash juicebox. If you have trouble remembering the sponsors links there at juicebox podcast.com, or in the show notes of the podcast player you're listening in right now, when you click on the links, you're keeping the production of the podcast going and making sure that it remains free for the listeners.

Krystal 2:47
My name is Crystal and I'm the mother of a type one diabetic. And I reached out to you today because I heard your story of Arden. And though my story isn't exactly similar to yours, it just really hit me in the heart because I've been through it. And I know exactly how you feel. So I just kind of wanted to talk about my story today and maybe help other mothers or other parents who are going through it because at the beginning it's really really hard and really, really scary. And right now we're six years in and so far everything's okay. Sugars could be a little bit better, but I mean, we're still healthy. So yeah,

Scott Benner 3:28
tell me tell me I mean something about a something that I've shared struck you what was it?

Krystal 3:37
i You started because it's really like, personal information that you shared. And it might really trigger you actually.

Scott Benner 3:42
Did I say it on the podcast?

Krystal 3:44
Yes, you did. Don't

Scott Benner 3:45
worry. I'm not triggered person. I'll be okay. Okay. Yep.

Krystal 3:49
Okay, because it really like it triggered me and I was like, Oh my God.

Scott Benner 3:53
What do you not want to say? That's okay. Oh, no, no, no,

Krystal 3:56
no, it's okay. It's for you. It's just I don't want to bring back like your memories. You know,

Scott Benner 3:59
don't worry. I've been married for 25 years. Crystal, you can't hurt me.

Krystal 4:04
Okay. So it was a with the episode where you're talking about art. And when she had her seizure at two years old, or two, I think it was right. And she was talking about how she like couldn't see and stuff like that. And like, it just really like struck me like my son has said things like that before, and he was diagnosed So Young as well. And I just really like I was like, Oh my God, you know what I mean? And I heard your story and I listened to a lot of your podcasts. Not all I'm not gonna lie and listen to every single one you have a lot. But I have listened to a lot of them. And I just felt maybe like, you know, I heard you doing interviews with other people with diabetes with people living with people with diabetes and so on and so forth. And I figured, you know, maybe I could share my story, like I said, and just try and reach out to other people. But yeah, that episode were like, you were talking about art and the Having her seizure and you even put the video clip I was a mess. I was crying. I was so emotional and it really hit me deep.

Scott Benner 5:08
Did I put the audio in the episode? Or did I like post the video online for you to find?

Krystal 5:13
I can't. I can't remember exactly. I'm pretty sure you put the audio in your in the episode because I don't think I did any further searching other than just playing like the next episode on my podcast.

Scott Benner 5:24
Okay. Okay, then. Yeah, so for people who are listening now. We were, what were we doing? We're videotaping Arden for something. Yeah. And it wasn't about that. It was about something completely different. Or no, that's not even true. We did we have video cameras up. I know this is people are like, Why do you need a video camera? Because my phone has but back then there was no video? Yeah, first of all, there were no cell phones. But that's not the point. I had a video camera that was set up already. And it wasn't on and on. and I were talking about something. And she began to talk about what it was like to have a seizure. And I just pushed record on the camera and just let it run. And she didn't really know for a while that it was running. And it was interesting because she was so young. She described things. Gosh, this is going back in my memory. I saw exactly I saw colors, which I took I took them in like she was she wasn't seeing anything blocked. Like she was blind. She wasn't seeing she thought she sounded like a monster. And that's because she was grunting it like she had not lost the ability to speak during it. And she thought the colors were pretty Am I remember in this right? That she was saying?

Krystal 6:46
I don't remember exactly. Because it was a while ago that I had listened to the to the podcast. Yeah. But it was just it was genuinely about that. And I know you had also posted, I think a video or you were talking about posting a video or something of that, about where you were fighting a scary low, like, on the camera. Yeah. And he decided to post it. And that one really hit me deep too. And that was really the one that really made me like, reach out to you because those I've had.

Scott Benner 7:14
You've had you've had so tell me a little bit you have type one?

Krystal 7:17
Yes. No, my son is a type one. Okay. Yeah.

Scott Benner 7:20
How old was he, when he was diagnosed?

Krystal 7:23
He was eight months old. So he was the youngest child ever to be diagnosed in the hospital that he's followed up. And he was really like an anomaly. And we were seeing, I mean, he still has his whole diabetes team and everything. But at the beginning of his diagnosis, like everybody in the hospital was interested in him. And for the first good like, year, we weren't left alone because everyone wants to know when see this like special case, because it had only happened like once before that a child that young had the diagnosis in his in his hospital, you know? And so, yeah, we've we've been doing this for about six years. And well, he was really really hard in the beginning. Sorry, go what?

Scott Benner 8:05
I was gonna say being the youngest ever did they have trouble helping him? Did they not know quite what to do? Or did it seem like they had it under control?

Krystal 8:33
No, they kind of sent us away from the house we spent. So he was diagnosed, he was brought to the hospital because he was in really, really bad DKA. And he was in a coma for about two, two and a half days. And when we when we were told his diagnosis, they basically just told me it was a waiting game to see if he ever woke up again. Oh my god. Yeah. It was really scary. And I'll never forget the feeling of watching my son, my infant son just crying and screaming because he was terrified. And then he just passed out in my arms. And he, they were like, well, we're gonna see if he wakes up and I was like, Excuse me What? You know. So yeah, it was really, really, really traumatizing.

Scott Benner 9:18
Can you tell me do you remember what his blood sugar was?

Krystal 9:21
33 Mm. Oh, well, I don't know what that is in America.

Scott Benner 9:25
Version chart on my website. I'll go look real quick. Okay. juicebox podcast.com. Like glucose calculator. So many animals. It was 3305 94.

Krystal 9:39
Yeah, yeah. Thanks for an eight months old. You know what I mean? Of course. Yeah. And I know that his agency was around 11 or 12 when he first got diagnosed. And so he was he was really I

Scott Benner 9:57
you mind picking through it a little bit. So is he your No, no, go ahead. You're first second, third child.

Krystal 10:01
Yeah, he's my only child. Okay. And

Scott Benner 10:05
yeah, go so healthy up until you noticed what?

Krystal 10:11
Well, so when he was born, they told me that his sugars were high, but not high enough to be concerned. So I was like, Okay, well, that's weird. And we were, we were kept in the hospital for five days because he was really, really badly jaundice. He was, like, premature by like one day. So like, technically a full term is 38 weeks. And he was born at 37 weeks and six days. So he's technically premature, but one day, so I have no idea. But that is like anything for account like to, you know what I mean? And so when he was born, they told me that he sugars were really high. And they kept us there for five days because he was jaundice. And they monitors his levels constantly. And then by the time we were released from the hospital, they told us that it was okay, but just maybe to come back and check every now and then because after where I live, six weeks after we have a checkup, the nurse comes to our house and checks on the baby checks on us and stuff like that. And they checked his his blood gas levels and they were okay. She said, so, so left it at that,

Scott Benner 11:14
at the time of his birth. Did anyone mention diabetes or use? No,

Krystal 11:18
not at all? No, not at all even. Okay, so then when he was around two, three months old, he started having seizures. And I couldn't figure out why. They weren't normal seizures like you see in a TV, his arm would start shaking while he was nursing. And then his other arm arm would start shaking and then his whole body would be like convulsing, but just lightly, you know what I mean? So at first I figured maybe it was just like weird. Babies spasms, you know how babies don't have control of their muscles. And I was like, that's a little weird, but it's okay. So I didn't really do anything about it for a couple of weeks, until I was nursing him one day, and he had like a full on convulsion. And so I recorded it. Because his his seizures were so few and far in between. There was never any consistency. And so I recorded that like really bad convulsion because his whole body was trembling, and he was shaking while he was nursing. And so when I brought him to the hospital, they put on a hemorrhage, the ECG or EKG, the one that goes on the head to map to map the brainwaves. So they do watch his brainwaves. His brainwaves were normal. And then so they sent me home and never called me back. And that really makes me angry. Because we have a three month old having a seizure. And because it's brainwave is normal, they didn't offer to check anything else. And so I went home with this child who is seething and yeah, that was pretty much it. I was told that he was okay, there was nothing wrong. And so I kind of lived with him until he was about seven, eight months old. Having these seizures every now and then. And he was a really, like, he would cry a lot as a baby, which I kind of just chalked up to being colicky. You know, that's like a normal thing. But in hindsight, I realized that he was uncomfortable because he was literally starving to death because the sugars were too high. Because he would nurse all the time, all day, all day, all day, like all day, long all night. And when he started eating food, he would eat, eat, eat and chug water like I've never seen, right. And so I realized now in hindsight, that it was because he was a diabetic, you know what I mean? How old were

Scott Benner 13:22
you when you had him?

Krystal 13:24
I was 21.

Scott Benner 13:25
Okay, on your own or with somebody?

Krystal 13:31
Well, I was with someone, but I was essentially on my own. Okay. That's what I mean.

Scott Benner 13:36
Well, because the only reason I asked you you said something that made it sound like you were by yourself. And I don't remember what it was. And I, and what I what I was gonna say is that it's sometimes in those really confusing situations, it's very helpful to be able to bounce it off of somebody and be like, this seems weird, right? You know, looking back, how old is he now?

Krystal 13:55
Now? He's seven. No, sorry, six. He'll be seven soon.

Scott Benner 13:58
Okay. Looking back now, do you think he had diabetes his whole life? Do you think he was born yet? Yep.

Krystal 14:04
Entirely. I not. When I was pregnant with him, I got really, really, really huge. And I was insanely swollen, like record levels swollen. I didn't have gestational diabetes, but I was like, on the brink of that and preeclampsia. And I believe that those conditions in me kind of maybe triggered it and him. Yeah, if you understand what I mean, because he was born.

Scott Benner 14:30
I don't know. I mean, that goes beyond my understanding. But I but it just sounds to me like if his blood sugar was elevated when he was born, and then there's this constant, being uncomfortable. CO some seizures, constant nursing. I mean, it sounds like it sounds like diabetes, you know? Yeah. diagnosed.

Krystal 14:52
Yeah. And makes me feel like a terrible person. And I know that I shouldn't feel like a terrible person because I'm like, you know, I'm not going to judge myself for mistakes. I made you know, but the worst part is I was raised with diabetic parents. And I was raised to recognize the signs and symptoms, but I didn't think it was possible in the baby. I knew as possible in a child, but I didn't know it was possible in infants. So every single time he came up with a new symptom, I just dismissed it. Like when he used to wet through his diapers that night, I would put him to super heavy like, reusable diapers. So they were like, big, thick cloth. Yeah. And he would pee right through them in like two hours. And I was like, Well, maybe he just went to bed super heavy. You know what I mean? And everything that he came up with, I just blew it off. And now I look in hindsight, and I realized how many symptoms you have for so long. until they finally like was on death's door. You know what I mean?

Scott Benner 15:40
Yeah, Crystal, it's a little hard to hear you with the voice behind me one

Krystal 15:44
second. Sure. I'm gonna mute the sound for one second. I'm gonna move somewhere else.

Scott Benner 15:54
That's fine. Thank you

while crystal finds a quieter place, I have time to do this. G voc hypo pan has no visible needle, and is a premixed auto injector of glucagon for treatment of very low blood sugar. In adults and kids with diabetes ages two and above. Find out more go to Jeeva glucagon.com forward slash juicebox. G voc shouldn't be used in patients with insulinoma or pheochromocytoma. Visit G voc glucagon.com/risk. So the fact is, we all need medical supplies, but it's not a fact that getting them needs to be difficult. And instead of doing a classic us med add, today, I'm going to tell you a story. Arden's home from school and she's sick. Turns out she may have a sinus infection, and she's pretty wrecked. So we got out Arden's blood ketone meter to make sure that she doesn't develop ketones while she's fighting this illness. And she doesn't feel well. I mean, she's beat up, she's feverish and has a headache and her nose is full, she can't breathe. And I say to her, Listen, let's check your ketones to make sure. Well, after about the fourth or fifth time that the test trip wouldn't work, she was getting sick and tired of it. We had poked our finger like five times. And each time, nothing happened. And I was irritated. And I felt like an idiot. I was like what's going wrong here. But you know what was going wrong. Our old supplier sent us the wrong test strips. And they were in a box that was so similar to the correct test strips, none of us noticed. Now, when you think of why you might want to use us Med, you know, they've asked me to tell you about always having fast and free shipping, they always provide 90 days worth of supplies. They accept Medicare nationwide, and over 800 private insurers you know, I tell you about their A plus rating with the Better Business Bureau, etc, etc. They've got FreeStyle Libre three and Dexcom G six, and you can get Omni pod from there in tandem and blah, blah, I tell you that stuff all the time, right? Here's what I don't tell you is that when your kid is sick, and everybody is just on edge, it's nice to reach into a drawer and pull out the thing you expected to have. That's it. Us med.com forward slash juice box. We've been using them for quite some time now. It's a lovely experience. I hope you give them a try. You can also call 888-721-1514. Call today or go online, get your free benefits check and get started with us, man. I know it sounds like Oh, I gotta switch everything over and it's gonna suck and everything. But doesn't it suck now with whoever you're using it? Maybe it doesn't. And if it doesn't, you know what, fine, don't switch. But if you're fighting constantly with your diabetes supply distributor, do yourself a favor and check out us met. I'm gonna get you back to Crystal. Now she does find a quieter spot. But I first want to remind you that if you need any of the things that were mentioned today by the advertisers using my link supports the show. That's it. I don't make money every time you buy something or anything like that. It's as easy as if the advertisers see people coming through the podcast. They buy more ads, when they buy more ads. I can spend my whole life sitting here in front of this microphone, making a podcast for you. So if you have the need, please use my legs. Thank you very much

Krystal 20:01
Okay, I don't know if this is any better. Oh. I found a quiet hallway. But there's there's resents on a second.

Scott Benner 20:15
Is it still too loud for you? No, that's good. Okay, so I'm gonna stay here, then it's isolated. Not much is going on here. Cool. Tell people you're running from the law. Is that correct? Yeah,

Krystal 20:28
no. No, just trying to find a quiet area and a really big industrial office building.

Scott Benner 20:35
Well, that sounds good. Thank you. Well, I was gonna ask you, what do you mean, you grew up with parents with diabetes?

Krystal 20:45
So my mom was a type one diabetic, and my father was a type one diabetic. Wow. And yeah.

Scott Benner 20:52
each other and a type one diabetes mixture or something like that?

Krystal 20:55
No, no, no. My My father was diagnosed as a child and my mother gotten diagnosed in her 20s

Scott Benner 21:03
I think were they together when that happened? Yeah, that's crazy. Yeah, that really is crazy. Okay, so you. Alright, so let's take a little bit of a detour. What was it like growing up with two type ones as parents?

Krystal 21:19
I mean, that's a really loaded question. My mother was always sick, her diabetes really wasn't controlled, like, at all. So I was 10 when my mother died. So I don't really know exactly the truth of what happened, and so on and so forth. Like, I can't give you that much information. Because I was a kid, you know what I mean, but I know I grew up with her always, always sick, always in the hospital always vomiting. I know that she died in 2003. And before that, she was she had a pancreas transplant, and she had all kinds of organ transplants. And basically, just over time, her body was shutting down because it was poorly managed. Now, I don't know what happened to make it that way. Because like I said, I was a kid, you know, I didn't exactly ask questions, right. And as for my father, he was he took good care of himself. And he's still alive.

Scott Benner 22:16
Do you think like, with hindsight, I don't know if you have you had conversations with your father? Was it just mismanagement for your mom?

Krystal 22:24
No, I don't really speak to my father. Oh, okay. All right.

Scott Benner 22:27
Well, that's even something so Does your father know your your son has type one? Yep,

Krystal 22:33
he does. He was there when he got diagnosed. Okay, all right.

Scott Benner 22:37
Gotcha. Wow, Crystal, you're a little, you're a little puzzle. Okay, well see if we can put the pieces together. So you talked about feeling badly. And I would, you know, probably not be the first person to tell you that that's not really a reasonable thing to, you know, to feel 20 You're 21 Sounds like you're pretty much on your own. Just because you knew some of the signs of diabetes doesn't. I mean, who would think of it?

Krystal 23:10
Even? Well, it's because when I was a kid, every time I went to the washroom a lot or something like that, or if I was excessively certain my parents would check my shoulders as I can to make sure that I didn't get it. You know, my brother also has has diabetes, as well as my uncle. So it's all of my family. Hey,

Scott Benner 23:27
tell me again. Your mom was How old was she got

Krystal 23:29
it? She was in her 20s I believe I'm not sure. If I understood correctly. I think she got it as gestational diabetes, and it just never went away. Or something like that. And then it turned into type one. I honestly don't know. Like I said I was 10 when she died. So I didn't really get the whole story.

Scott Benner 23:45
It was just Do you have any autoimmune issues yourself? No, not that I know of. Okay. Hashimotos. No, thyroid, nothing. Okay. gluten allergy? No, no. Okay. All right. Interesting. Very interesting. Actually, Crystal, you really are something here. Hold on a second. So. And you're French Canadian? Yes. Yeah. Okay. Are you around Toronto?

Krystal 24:13
No, but um, the next big metropolitan city. Gotcha. And the French speaking one.

Scott Benner 24:17
Gotcha. I think I know, I you know, this podcast teaches me a lot about Canada. Sometimes not all accurate stuff, but I still learn things. Okay, so babies diagnosed. Okay, I guess we're at the point where they took him from you and said, Let's see if he wakes up. Obviously he did. But how long did that take?

Krystal 24:38
It took about two days, two and a half days. I can't really remember. All I know is that I was walking around his crib at the emergency room just bawling my eyes out. I didn't sleep for days. And we stayed we stayed in the ICU for about two or three days until he woke up and then we were transferred to a regular room where we stayed there for five days while they got his shirt because I'm the controls So sorry.

Scott Benner 25:00
And then how do you manage an eight month old? Is it with injections?

Krystal 25:06
Yeah, he's still on an injection. Now he's too scared to get the pump. So I mean, it's his disease. I'm gonna let him wait until he's ready. We finally got him on a Dexcom this year, thank Jesus, because that made my life so much easier.

Scott Benner 25:17
So So for six years, almost he was just doing shots and using the meter. Yeah. And how was that going?

Krystal 25:28
To be honest, I really liked the meter better than the Dexcom. Okay, because, I guess because I'm used to it. And usually when I see on the Dexcom, that he is going high, or that he's going low. I really, really overcompensate. So I'll give him too much insulin and he'll drop down too fast or give me too much food. He shoots up way too high, because I'm scared watching it beep and go down and go up. You know what I mean? So with the meter, I never had that fear. You know what I mean? I just waited till the next time I print them. And we'll see where it is. Numbers are. But at the same time, I do love the fact that I can watch him in the night with my Dexcom because I used to get up every night. You're breaking

Unknown Speaker 26:06
up. And Crystal. Yeah. Can

Scott Benner 26:10
you hear me? You're breaking up a little bit.

Krystal 26:14
Good now,

Scott Benner 26:15
I don't know you're talking and disappearing and then coming back.

Krystal 26:19
Hold on a second. Is it good enough?

Scott Benner 26:24
I can't say that was good, though. It sounded like a week. By the time this is over, you're gonna I'm gonna I'm gonna be on the roof.

Krystal 26:36
I'm gonna unplug. My thing is like I'm back in Hold on a second. Okay. Is it okay now?

Scott Benner 26:45
I think so. You were in the middle of you're in the middle of explain to me why you don't like the Dexcom as much as the meter. But it sounded like you're just overreacting to what you're seeing.

Krystal 26:54
Yes, exactly. But however, I really do like the fact that with the Dexcom in the night I can I can check him I can check his sugar's without having to get out of my bed and stuff like that, without pricking him. I like the fact that I don't have to hurt him every time I want to check him, you know. And before that, every single night, I will get up to three times and like to check your sugar just to make sure he wasn't dropping or anything like that. And so now with the Dexcom it's really saved me, it's just me, I have to get used to the patterns and the roller coaster rides. You know what I mean?

Scott Benner 27:25
Yeah, just trying to, you know, just don't overcompensate or under compensate. Well, so, can I ask you like a management question? Are there a lot of ups and ups and downs?

Krystal 27:35
Yeah, there are I still don't have good control. Okay.

Scott Benner 27:39
So, you know, I mean, I think if you're looking for my opinion, you would start by making sure that his Basal insulin is good, how much does he why he weighs

Krystal 27:49
about 50 pounds. And he takes seven units of basil, which apparently is like a lot. And his, his nutritionist hates me because of the way I run, not because of the way I run sugar, but the way I deal with services. She can't stand it but doesn't like every time I tried to her way his sugar like sky high to the point that his Dexcom doesn't even read it. So I just keep doing my way and do the best that I can. So

Scott Benner 28:12
yeah, I mean, listen, I'm not there. Obviously, I have no first hand knowledge of what's been happening. But I mean, if his Basal was more like, point three an hour, that would make more sense to me. So but yeah, but wait, wait, hold on a second. That's where you're at now, seven divided by 24 is point three.

Unknown Speaker 28:38
But if we did see Actually, wait a minute.

Scott Benner 28:45
It is 50 pounds.

Krystal 28:47
Yeah, around there. 50 or 53.

Scott Benner 28:53
Okay, let me ask you some questions over overnight this he said stable? Yeah.

Krystal 28:59
What doesn't? What number depends on when he goes to bed.

Scott Benner 29:03
So if he goes to bed at it, it stays at it. Yeah,

Krystal 29:07
if he goes to bed at like, say I'll put him to bed at seven whatever. It will stay at seven he'll drop down to maybe five and then they'll start going back up around after the dawn phenomenon. He goes back up. Okay, which is usually around three four in the morning for

Scott Benner 29:18
us. So a sevens like a 126 here in the States. What if you put him to bed at a six? Would he stay the six? Yeah, okay. Yeah, usually, but same thing if you put him to bed at a 10 He'd stay at a 10 Yeah. All right. So you think his Basil is probably pretty good. Yeah. And so then just Where are you falling short?

Krystal 29:42
Are you issues with that? It's was eating because he's so difficult to get to eat. And he really loves to do this thing where he asks for the food, and I'm making the food. And then as soon as I give him the insulin, he doesn't want it.

Scott Benner 29:58
Kids. Alright, See ya. See, there's a spot where if you had a pump, you could like Bolus Bolus a little bit. And then once you knew he was eating, give him the rest.

Krystal 30:11
Yeah, that's why I want to. That's why I want the pump. And like I said, it's his body. He's afraid he doesn't want and I'm not going to force it on him. You know,

Scott Benner 30:18
is there any amount of intake that you can always count on? Like, even if the meals 50 carbs? Can you count on at least 10 of

Unknown Speaker 30:27
them going in? No, not not consistently. Okay. So

Scott Benner 30:31
you're not Pre-Bolus eating meals. So you're spiking? Hi, do you

Krystal 30:35
and then dropping down after I used to Pre-Bolus meals last year, he was really good at eating. And so last year, I had really fantastic control, right is a onesie from the year before was at No, not even year before the the month before. was, I think nine or 10. And then I had gotten it down to seven. And which is

Scott Benner 30:57
that's, that's a nice reduction to from nine to 10 to seven. Really wonderful.

Krystal 31:02
Yeah. And so last year was fantastic. And then this year, he started this whole eating phase and then now he only wants like to eat sugar and stuff like that, because he knows that if I give him the answer, that's what he's getting guaranteed.

Scott Benner 31:15
So right now he's spiking up, crashing down, you're overcome your overtreating the low, and send them back. So you're just jumping up and down all day long. Yeah, pretty much. So the first meal is the end of the day. It just ruins everything until you get all the food out of him. Get him stay at home, put him to bed.

Krystal 31:34
Yeah, gotcha. And also the physical activity. Some days he's running around and climbing my walls. Other days. He's just sitting there watching TV. So yeah, it's hard. It's hard to have a six year old.

Scott Benner 31:45
No, I don't disagree. It is. It's not easy. And I guess it gives me like I said, with a pump, you could at least put a little bit in and stop the big spike. But, you know, in order to do that with MDI, you have to shoot him twice. Does he mind the shots?

Krystal 32:05
Yes, I know. He says. He says no, but I heard him sometimes, like when I give him the injections, I can see that there hurts him. But I know that he says no, just because he's afraid.

Scott Benner 32:17
You think he doesn't want to make you feel bad? Yeah. Well, I mean, you know the answer. So the rest of it's him wanting to eat more, you know, consistently, I guess. I'm sorry that that's a struggle. I do think he'll get a little older and it'll stop. I was gonna say, I wonder if he didn't. I mean, he's so young, though. Like, I don't know how easy it is to like, explain big ideas to a six year old. I don't remember anymore. But, you know, like, what if you said to him, Look, it's fine if you don't need everything, but you know, we're just going to, we're going to inject twice then to be sure I don't get you too high or too low. I wonder if eventually he wouldn't just i Sounds kind of I don't know how that sounds, actually. But I wonder if to avoid the second shot. If he wouldn't just eat his lunch eggs, for example. Now, he wouldn't. He wouldn't care. So he's the not hungry, or is he distracted?

Krystal 33:15
Sure. Justice as good as mine.

Scott Benner 33:19
I gotcha. Well, good luck. Thank you. No trouble? Is there a lot of I'm trying to figure out what made you so emotional hearing about Ardennes? Well,

Krystal 33:33
it was like I said, it was really just hearing about the lowest and the like, the scary low because I've had those so many times. I've luckily avoided seizures after his diagnosis. But like, it just brought back my own memories of the times that I've had to shove everything I could find in his mouth while he's, like half conscious. And it just it really like it really just made me want to reach out and just kind of say, you know, I feel you and to let others hear my story about how many times I've shoved things in his mouth while he was dropping down to the floor. And, you know, let's just basically I want to let other parents know that it's normal to be scared, and that it's gonna take time to get used to it because I see on all these Facebook groups and stuff like that the support groups, all these parents saying like, Oh, is it ever gonna get better and it doesn't, but you learn to adjust, you know what I mean? And I was actually recommended your podcast in one of those Facebook groups. And I'd say for me, personally, it took about two years to feel comfortable, like okay, and four years to feel confident. Now I changed his his ratios and his doses and stuff like that myself. I don't call his team anymore, because I know what I'm doing. You know what I mean? But it just, it was just really like, emotional for me to live. Cindy, you, when you were talking about with the video, and you caught the low while you were feeding, you were like feeding her and you decided to post on your website or whatever. And like I've been there, done that. And

Scott Benner 35:11
it's so much more difficult when they're that small to right. I mean, at eight months old at eight months old, what did he weigh?

Krystal 35:19
Got 17 to 20 pounds, maybe

Scott Benner 35:23
right? And then probably didn't gain that much weight over the next year or so

Krystal 35:28
even? No. I mean, now it's 60 is only 50 pounds.

Scott Benner 35:31
Right? Very small to begin with. Do you ever have his thyroid

Krystal 35:33
checked? Yep. Every year at his annual checkup?

Scott Benner 35:37
Would you tell me what his TSH is? Do you know?

Krystal 35:40
I don't know. Sorry. Everything's normal, though. She told me Yeah, he told me the number but last time, but I can't remember.

Scott Benner 35:45
Do me a favor. The next time you dig out that number? If it's over two, but they're calling it normal? Why don't you press them to medicate him? I know they want to call that normal. But over to like over 2.1 There's a thyroid episode you could listen to that would tell you, but over about 2.1 2.2 If he could be having symptoms, and you would know and and I'll tell you that Arden was the tiniest person in her school. And then we figured out she had thyroid issue she got on the thyroid replacement. And that she's like, Ardens, five, seven now. But at 1011 12 years old, Arden was like five, three, she had like 75 pounds. Okay, and so I just know that a lot of doctors will say no, that's in range. Like they'll call a four TSH is in range. Because I guess technically it is in it's in the it's in the it's in range. There are some hospitals that won't medicate it to like an eight. Which is which is insane. But, you know, who knows? Like, I wonder if I don't know, I could be completely wrong. But I would check if I were to show.

Unknown Speaker 37:06
Okay, that's all all last time I go. Yeah. And

Scott Benner 37:10
if it comes back higher than two or so and you like write me out. I'll I'll point you to the right stuff and, and let you make a decision for yourself. But you know, I mean, is the lethargic. Does he lose his hair? Does he have trouble? Is he constipated? No, none of that. No. Okay, good. Well, that's good. May I? Maybe I'm 100%. Wrong. That'd be great. If I was. Yeah, right. You need some of that go? Good. Do you worry about getting diabetes?

Krystal 37:40
Yeah, I do. I mean, it's all in my family. And I'm not gonna lie. I don't have the best eating habits. So I know. I'm not helping myself. So I am worried. But at least if ever I do get it, I'll have him by my side with me. You know?

Scott Benner 37:53
Well, yeah, you can definitely do it together, that's for sure. But with both of your parents having it, and your mom having the end that she had, and your son and your son getting I just wondered like if you, you know, if it was something you worried about? Would you call it a constant concern or just something you're aware of?

Krystal 38:10
No, just something I'm aware of. Okay. I don't really live my life worrying like that. If it comes to comes and I'll live with it when I have to.

Scott Benner 38:17
Gotcha. Well, you'll definitely know when it happens. If it happens. Excuse me. You've got enough. You've got enough practice. Thanks for your wishful thinking, Oh, well, I'm sorry. I just misspoke. I don't necessarily think you're getting diabetes. Is it difficult? How are you finding school? He just must have started school recently. Right? Well, you are gone. Your voice disappeared. Crystal, you're not there right now.

Krystal 38:47
Can you hear me? Okay. It's it was difficult, but they take really good care of his diabetes. The only thing that's kind of enraging for me is that we don't really have any like train staff. There's no nurse, there's no nothing like that. I know in the States, you guys have like your 504 plans or whatever it is. But we don't really have that here, at least not that I know of. We have our Canadian equivalent, but it doesn't really do. Much like in the states that is really a lot more severe. And, I mean, the staff that are there, they do the best that they can, but I just really wish we could have someone like on him 24/7 So that way, it's not.

Scott Benner 39:26
How does it work then? Because he's six, I mean, he he's given himself shots.

Krystal 39:30
Yes, at the moment, he gives it to himself.

Scott Benner 39:33
Do you guys go back and forth, like through text or something?

Krystal 39:36
No, we call his school at lunchtime. And he goes actually his father's calling right now because I'm on issue as far as calling right now, and he's going to tell the nurse to put him on the phone, not nurse. Sorry, the Secretary put him on the phone. Right. And then he gives it himself. And that's it. That's it.

Scott Benner 39:55
If this is too personal, don't answer me but are you and his father together? No, no. Okay. Do you split time with him? Does he go to? Is the management? Does the management change? from one home to the other? Yeah. How? So? If you're able to say,

Krystal 40:16
yes, the sugars, His Father's house are much more out of control than my house, because I don't really allow snacking in my house. And he does. And also, I don't really give a lot of junk food. And he kind of just looks like, whatever and deal with the consequences later. So

Scott Benner 40:38
there's nothing There's, is that a conversation? Have you ever had a conversation with them? And

Unknown Speaker 40:43
oh, yeah, okay. Yeah.

Scott Benner 40:46
doesn't help much. No, no. It's a very common issue. I know that for sure.

Krystal 40:56
However, my wife takes better control of his sugars, and I do. It's like she was born to be his mother. I don't understand. She's phenomenal with the sugars.

Scott Benner 41:05
Okay. Oh, so there is somebody who is she mostly who's mostly involved when when he's with you? Okay,

Krystal 41:15
yeah, his father just calls the school because he has the time.

Scott Benner 41:21
That sounds that statement sounds like there's a half an hour worth of complaining you could do afterwards. He has the time. That's not why we're here. So we'll skip over that. But you made me laugh some other story. Yeah. You made me laugh when you said that. I was like, Oh, I think I know what she means by that. Sorry, hold on. You took me by surprise. Give me a ticket. You took me by surprise. That was great. Okay, that's funny. So do you think he'll go for a pump? Or like, what's his, what's his what's holding him back at this point?

Krystal 42:09
I don't know. I hope he will, eventually, one day because he has the Dexcom. And I know that he's happier that we don't prick him as often, I still do check them sometimes just to make sure that it's accurate. And sometimes if his Dexcom is having a sensor fail, I'll use a thing until it comes back online or until I change it, whatever. So I know he's happier that he has to be pricked less. And I'm trying to get him to understand that, you know, my son is like, really, really sensitive to carbs. And if I give him like 10 carbs, he's gonna jump up, which isn't much, you know what I mean? Yeah. So for every time I feed him, I have to give him insulin and then give them insulin again, to correct after and, you know, I mean, it's definitely that so

Scott Benner 42:52
have you told him that, like, have you gone through it and said, Hey, if we had a pump, we wouldn't do the shots and you tell him it would be easier to snack?

Krystal 43:02
You know what, I might bring that up? I might help actually, there's always hungry. This kid is like a 16 year old and a six year old body? I don't understand.

Scott Benner 43:10
Well, yeah, maybe maybe that would help him like, just kind of, I don't know, just get a clear, like big picture understanding of the whole thing. I mean, you just have to find a way to say it to him, that he understands. Yeah, that matters to him. You know, forget understanding. He's probably understanding what you're saying he doesn't care. You know, you get a fine, get a fight. Like, I'd be like, hey, you know, when this happens, and we don't, we don't do this. It's because we have to inject and but I don't know what you could do to get them moving in that direction? Because the truth is, I mean, listen, if you put a pump on him, and he hated it, I don't imagine you'd make him stay on it. But no, of course not. Yeah. I think that my expectation would be that once he gets on it, you know, a week or two later, he's not going to remember not wanting it.

Krystal 43:58
Yeah, that's true. That's kind of what we did with Dexcom kind of just forced him on and I said, Listen, just try it for a week. Yeah, he don't like it. We can take it off on he's he likes it. Now. It doesn't even hurt him to put her on his crazy, big needle in this tiny little body. And I'm like, wow, you just take it like a champ.

Scott Benner 44:12
Yeah, no, I hear what you're saying. I have to tell you, like, you know, what I usually say on the podcast is I you know, I'm not into letting kids make medical decisions. I mean, I don't want to do something they absolutely don't want to do but a lot of times, you know, kids just you know, listen, I'm saying kids people in general, forget. You know, everybody's resistant to change. I mean, if you want to make people like you know, make an adult upset change the way Facebook looks people like lose their minds. Oh my god, right. They

Unknown Speaker 44:43
moved them Yeah. Why

Scott Benner 44:45
did they change the color? Where's this that like, it's good think that you think it was the end of the world? And, and I think that everyone's like that. I think change is hard for people. But the truth is, I don't know. You know, I've been through a lot of bad things in my life. And in this moment, I don't remember any of them. So, yeah, right. So, you know, here's the pump, we're wearing it. What what makes this right for your kid? I start dealing dollar bills into his hand or not dollar for putting out loonies up there or something like that. I just start ripping those loonies into his hands. He looked happy. He was like, Are you go where? You're fine. We'll go out and spend this money afterwards. Get yourself something nice kid. It's a good idea. Yeah. I'm, I'm I'm okay with bribing children, certain situations. I mean, not for everything. But any, because if he could put him in a position where he didn't understand it, you know, maybe a week or two later and say, Hey, isn't this great? We haven't stuck you with a needle and you know, forever. Yeah, he might be, he might be thrilled by it. And then all of a sudden, you can Pre-Bolus your meals better, then all of a sudden, you can you know, it just changes everything. Yeah.

Krystal 45:57
So I've heard, yeah, I'm also going to, I'm also not going to lie. I'm a little afraid of the pump, too, just because I'm afraid of pump failures. But I know what the Dexcom I don't have to like, worry about that. Because I'll see if there's a pump failure. I'll see his sugar's rising. Yeah. But that was always a fear of mine, too. So I understand his fear. But I also think that it would be better if he did you know, I mean, at least try.

Scott Benner 46:19
It's so interesting, because that is everyone's

Unknown Speaker 46:24
fear. Yeah, because it's terrifying.

Scott Benner 46:27
Except Did you ever see it? Like, like, when's the last time you like, pop them to like a Facebook group? And you heard about the scores and scores of people whose pumps failed all the time? You don't? I mean, like, it doesn't really happen with any great frequent. I mean, I listen, I oversee a Facebook group with like, 25,000 people in it. Well, I don't know the last time I saw somebody say, hey, my pump stopped working. And I didn't get insulin, and I went into DKA. I haven't, like I get the concern. But to your point, you're always aware of was blood sugar is with the Dexcom you're not gonna get too far away from not having insulin before you know it. Sure. Yeah. That's all I mean, I get the concern. But I don't think it's gonna really rear its head in your life,

Krystal 47:11
though. Yeah, it's like a one in a million chance.

Scott Benner 47:13
I don't know that. I don't know the odds, Crystal, but I think it's uncommon. I mean, yeah, at least in my experience. I mean, art has been using an omni pod. So that's the one I want. Okay. Well, there you go. She's been using it on the pod since she's four. She's almost 18. So that's 14 years. And we once had a bent cannula where she wasn't getting enough insulin. And her blood sugar was rising. We saw that it was rising. I'd happen overnight. We did sleep through it for a little bit. We got we got her up. We over hydrated her got her ketones back down again, and you know, put a new pump on her. And but my point is, is that I mean, what is my point Hold on, I'm gonna pull up. I'm gonna pull up a calculator here to make my point. Arden has been using it basically for 14 years, right? There was 365 days in a year. You put a pod on about every three days. So divided by three were 121 pods a year, times 14 years Ardennes were about 1700 pods, and one of them had a bent cannula.

Krystal 48:24
You know, I'm saying when you put it that way, it's a lot less scary.

Scott Benner 48:26
You mean you mean when you think about it realistically? I think I mean, to me, that's that. I don't know. I get the pump. I don't look

Unknown Speaker 48:34
back, but we'll see. I'll bring it up to him tonight. Yeah.

Scott Benner 48:39
Listen, tell him the guy on the podcast. He don't know. It's,

Krystal 48:43
I guess I'll have to show him the podcast as proof.

Scott Benner 48:45
2022 people on Tik Tok look famous to him. You know what I'm saying? I was I saw something the other day this girl? I don't know. Crystal. Listen, it seems to me that girls on Tiktok are making money bouncing up and down. That seems to be what's happening. And I saw a video somewhere I don't. And my daughter's like, what is that? I'm like, I don't know. I'm like, What is this girl doing? And she goes, Oh, I think she's trying to make money. And I was like, gotcha. And then she goes is that and then she says the girl's name. And I'm like, you know that person? And she's like, I don't know or know her. But I know her name. I'm like, you know, you know someone's name because they wear a loose shirt and bounce up and down on Tik Tok. And she's like, Yeah, like the world's very strange. You know how hard George Clooney had to work to be George Clooney. You know what I mean? Yeah, turns out now,

Krystal 49:39
nowadays, the internet blows up with the most random things possible. Super easy. I'm

Scott Benner 49:43
just saying you let my voice come out of a speaker. That kid will think oh, I have to listen to him. It's ridiculous. But what the heck.

Krystal 49:54
If it works, it works.

Scott Benner 49:55
Listen, there I go with what works. Crystal tell me Is there is there any Anything that we haven't talked about that you want to?

Unknown Speaker 50:03
I'm

Krystal 50:06
not I can think of I spoke about his diagnosis. I spoke about his scary lows.

Scott Benner 50:16
I do want to dig a little more into that if you feel comfortable that we've gone. Okay, so from eight months, Josh Jesus and this crazy eight months old to six or seven years, almost seven year saying, Yeah, okay, so basically six ish years a little more the kids had diabetes. But you've been through so many different versions of type one, like with an infant, with a toddler, with a young child like it's just, it probably feels like you've started over a half a dozen times.

Krystal 50:48
Yeah, it's, it's really hard, every growth spurt that he goes to, it's like, I'm back at the beginning. And I have no idea what to do. Because the insulin, the hormones, change the insulin so much, and sometimes it gets used up like crazy. And I can give him no one's live and he'll be dropping most fast. Other days I can give him like so much insulin and it goes nowhere.

Scott Benner 51:11
It's it really is like, I'm just thinking about it. You really have. You've raised like, three or four different people with diabetes already. Like seriously, you don't I mean, like, and it's going to keep changing.

Krystal 51:24
Like it was so scary for when he's a teenager.

Scott Benner 51:27
Yeah, when you're 40 you're gonna have the wisdom of like, 100 year old person.

Krystal 51:33
That's just on my life experiences alone, not including him.

Scott Benner 51:36
Well, we haven't gotten into that yet. But but I just like, I mean, how many lows Do you think you saw in the first couple years that were frightening to you?

Krystal 51:46
Frightening ones, the ones I really burned into my memory. Do you mean?

Unknown Speaker 51:49
Yeah. Good question. Hold on.

Krystal 51:55
I'd say at least a good handful, maybe 123? I'd say about four or five. Other really scary scary ones. How much ones where I'm narrowly avoided hospitals? How much

Scott Benner 52:11
of them? How many of those do you think were made more frightening by your age?

Krystal 52:20
By my age, or his age,

Scott Benner 52:21
yours, I mean, his is obvious. But like, I don't know that you you sound like you might have had a tough life. Like I'm I'm guessing. So like, maybe you're a little more grown up than then some people are when they're 21, and 22 years old, but my son is 22 If I put him in charge of a hamster, I'm not sure it would be alive. So um, you know, you're you're 2122 years old with an eight month old, a one year old who has diabetes, working just with a meter and shots? Like, are you like some kind of, like, super mature person? Are you freaking out?

Krystal 52:54
Oh, I mean, I was freaking out. But I was ready to have a child and whether they were healthy or disabled or whatever. So I was ready for whatever came my way. And I just kind of took it in stride did what I had to do, did it all again the next day, and manage it as best as I could. Thank you. Were we gonna say? I

Scott Benner 53:18
said, that's wonderful. Why do you doubt yourself? You're so confident otherwise?

Krystal 53:23
I don't really doubt myself. To be honest. It's No, I don't really doubt myself that his diabetes, it's just it's just hard to like, you know, I try as much as I can to get his sugar's under control. And like, I just don't see results. And it's frustrating. It's frustrating, especially when I'm looking at Dexcom. And it's a frickin roller coaster ride. It's like, Man, I'm giving it my all and it's just like, doing what it wants. You know,

Scott Benner 53:48
I understand I use the wrong word. I said, doubt. I meant before, like, you felt like you were punishing yourself a little bit like,

Krystal 53:56
Well, I mean, you know, mom guilt. Yeah,

Scott Benner 53:58
I guess so. Right? That thing is very, very real. Yeah. You can't get away from it. I don't know what happens. The minute the baby comes out, you just lose your mind.

Krystal 54:09
Nothing I can do is ever good enough.

Scott Benner 54:12
It never goes away, apparently. So good luck. Oh, great. My children are like, you know, pretty grown. At this point. I still look at my wife. I'm like, What are you beating yourself up about right now? Like?

Krystal 54:24
I hope one day I'll be able to let it go. Because I know. Like I know, logically speaking that. It's normal that a 21 year old would miss a diagnosis of a child. Like the day that I brought him to the hospital. I didn't even notice anything was wrong with him. I just thought he Okay. Hold on. Let me explain my story a little better. So the day that he was brought to the hospital, I was out at breakfast with my friends. And he was really like, lethargic and I this will forever be burned into my brain and it's a huge trauma for me. We were at the table and the waitress brought us water to drink. And he took my huge, amazing glass and he chugged it all. And he was eight months old. You know, they're not supposed to drink that much water. And I was like, Oh, my God, that's really weird. But it was like 40 something degrees Celsius. And I figured, you know, we're just in the middle of a heatwave. He just really hot. And he was lethargic. And he wasn't really like getting up at the table like he normally was. And I just kind of attributed to like a heatwave. He's just tired. Maybe he's cranky. They didn't sleep well, the night before. He was nursing all night long that night. And my friend picked him up because he was crying. After he drank all the water. And she was like, something's wrong with him. I'm like, really, really sure. Like, you know, and so she just kind of consult him. And later on, I went about my day as normal. And then I realized later on in the day, after my friend had told me that something was wrong. And after witnessing an eight month old drinking an entire mason jar of water. Later on, I had brought him home, and I realized that he was breathing as if he was running a marathon. Yeah. And his whole chest was sucking in. And I was like, Oh, my God, something really is wrong here. But it took me like the whole day, to really realize that something was wrong with my friggin baby, like my own baby, you know what I mean? And that's the one thing that I really can't forgive myself about. Especially sometimes I will design the diabetes,

Scott Benner 56:32
Crystal art and look like a zombie for a number of days before we figured it out. Like she just turned around with a she was only two. And she wandered around. Like she weighed 17 pounds. She was two years old, and she had a dead like a death stare just a like 1000 yards there. You couldn't interact with her really? She couldn't stand up for too long. And it still took days to figure out like, what was that girl? I know how you feel? I'm sorry?

Krystal 56:59
No, no, it's okay. It's, I mean, it is what it is. Right? It's already happened. There's no point in stressing over. But when I think about it, it really like tears me apart. Thinking about the fact that someone else noticed before his own mother did. And then I went about my day, just like kind of keeping an eye on him. And like not really realizing there was something actually seriously wrong until I went to the hospital. And then we were in the hospital for all of maybe 20 minutes. And then the way it works at my hospital is that you have to go in and they triage you. And then you go to the waiting room when they're going to call you to see the doctor. And they have one specific room that you're supposed to go back into if your condition worsens or changes, whatever. So we had been triaged, and then we were sent to the waiting room. And I went back in because he just kind of like, collapsed in my arms. And he was I want to say conscious, because he wasn't really conscious, but his eyes are open. And I was like, something's really wrong, my baby like you guys got to help me. And then so they did a quick urine test. I think we're blood tests. And they told me that he has type one diabetes, and after that they were trying to get him like, set up with insulin drips, and sugar drips and whatever. And she was just like, screaming and crying in my arms. And then he passed out. And then they told me that they would let me know they ever woke up. And I was like, wow, that's cool. Yeah, I feel so guilty.

Scott Benner 58:25
I know. But I'm gonna say something completely obvious to you. That it's not obviously, it's easier said than done. But you're gonna have to get past that, you know, you don't want to keep beating yourself up about that. Because look where you are now, you did a good, you're doing a good job bringing as a one seat down, you're aware of why you're having the issues that you're having. So it's not like you're just lost, you know what's going on. And you know how to fix it. And you and you have a pathway to maybe figuring it out with a pump, it sounds like, and he's, and he's gonna get older and it's going to be easier for him to get, it's gonna be easier for you to say, look, you know, I listen, I don't care. Just eat this, you know. And he'll listen. And I mean, you've been through something that's so terrible and so difficult. The rest of it might end up seeming easy. You might be one of those people just laughs like, oh, yeah, this isn't hardly anything compared to when he was two years old or three years.

Krystal 59:18
Yeah, that's pretty much where I'm at. Yeah.

Scott Benner 59:20
Wow. All right, Crystal. I'm going to ask you one more question before I let you go. Where I cannot figure out your accent completely. See, you're obviously French Canadian. But at the end of your words, you sound Spanish for a second.

Unknown Speaker 59:33
Spanish? No, but no, but you're not right.

Krystal 59:37
I'm just French Canadian. Yeah, I'm just, I'm an Anglophone and a French say it again. I'm an Anglophone and a French province. I'm English speaking. But I guess I just pick up some of their mannerisms. Because I've been here my entire life. Yeah,

Scott Benner 59:49
there's just a little at the end of your word. Sometimes. I'm like, I know she's not but it sounds like a little. So I was trying to figure out what the rest of it was. You're born where you live. Yep, yeah. Born and raised. Are you Cool. That's excellent. I love people's accents. I think they're, they're super. Yeah, I think I find them incredibly interesting. My must seem very boyish to you, but

Krystal 1:00:09
you just sound American.

Scott Benner 1:00:11
Oh, Oh, perfect. I'll take it. Alright, hold on one second for me. Yeah. Okay, thank you

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#801 How We Eat: How Jenny Eats

How Jenny Eats

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Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends and welcome to episode 801 of the Juicebox Podcast

today, I'm going to add to the how we eat series. Now, so far in this series we've covered vegan, carnivore plant based gluten free low carb, Bernstein FODMAP keto flexitarian intermittent fasting and today, I thought it would be interesting to find out how Jenny eats. Now you know, Jenny, she's from all the management episodes, diabetes, pro tip, defining diabetes, bold beginnings Jenny, it's Jenny. Today I'm going to talk to Jenny about how she eats. I thought you might find it interesting. She is a person with an astonishing amount of control over blood sugar, and I thought it would be valuable for you to hear about. So while you're listening, please remember that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan, or becoming bold with insulin. If you'd like to find the other how we eat episodes, just go to juicebox podcast.com and scroll to the bottom there's a whole cascading list of them there. You can also find them in the private Facebook group in the feature tab. That's Juicebox Podcast type one diabetes on Facebook. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by Ian pen from Medtronic diabetes, if you don't want an insulin pump, but you want some of that functionality that comes with insulin pumps, you might want the ink pen. Learn more and get started today at ink pen today.com. You may pay as little as $35 for the implant. Listen for more about that in the ad. Today's episode of Juicebox Podcast is also sponsored by Omni pod. The new Omni pod five automated insulin delivery system is here. Go get it at Omni pod.com forward slash juicebox tubeless and automated oh my goodness, what else could you possibly want? Start the recording. Cool and say hello, Jenny. How are you? I'm great. How are you? Good. You look casual today. Like I like cash. Like maybe you have plans this afternoon where you're not going to be working or something like

Unknown Speaker 2:26
that. Um, no

Scott Benner 2:30
relaxed. You're not relaxed today. I don't know you have a certain sound maybe you're happy. It's Friday. I have no idea.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 2:36
It's Friday. It's Yes. It's it's Friday. It's actually should I was colder today. Our temperature has changed like 40 degrees overnight.

Scott Benner 2:47
Oh my god. Seriously,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 2:48
yesterday, it was 72 degrees. It was beautiful last night when I got home from taekwondo with my kids. And then I woke up this morning and the thermometer was like 34 degrees. Like, kidding me.

Scott Benner 3:04
You live in a hellscape. It's terrible. I mean, it was like 80 here for a couple of days. And I mean, it's November, and you're like what is happening? But then very quickly, overnight, it's getting cooler and cooler. And it's gonna happen really fast. Yes. Anyway, it's

Jennifer Smith, CDE 3:20
coming to you. Well, it's spreading. Let us

Scott Benner 3:23
let us let us do this today with the people and then we will go on our way. Oh, freeze your butt off this weekend. And I don't know what I will do. It's supposed to

Jennifer Smith, CDE 3:30
be in the 40s this afternoon. So better.

Scott Benner 3:33
That's a Wisconsin answer. Better. I just had, I just had a an organization invite me to come to Montana to speak in March. And I was like March in Montana. I'm not sure about that. I guess. Yeah. Well, I need snow shoes and, and I said, Look, I started saying, Look, I really would like to do it. The event sounds great. I say Can I fly straight in? And they're like, No, you'll probably have to get on like three different planes. I was like, I yeah, I don't know if I'm okay with that. Can we? Virtually. So they weren't sure that the last plane would be a jet. And that's that threw me off for some reason. You get the puddle jumper. Oh, it was like I'm not doing that. I'd love to see Montana, but not that badly. Anyway, Jenny, I thought today would be a great day for you and I to talk about how you eat. We've been talking about this for a number of years. Actually. I always say to Jenny, like at the end of the year, I'll do an episode with you. And we'll talk about how you eat because I have a whole series where people come on and they're like, I'm keto. I'm a flexitarian. Actually, I think I learned the word flexitarian on this podcast, you know, and all that stuff. So today, I just wanted to go I wanted to go through that. Are you comfortable with that?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 4:47
Yeah. Basket way.

Scott Benner 4:51
So I guess my first thing I should do just for people who may be, you know, come in and out of the podcast and don't know you as well. If at diabetes for let's test my memory, are you up to 33 years now or 3234

Jennifer Smith, CDE 5:06
and a half 34. My gosh, Jimmy,

Scott Benner 5:09
and that made you how old when you were diagnosed? I was 1313. All right, we won't do the math 34 plus 13. That's no one's business, but yours. It's 47. But so you've had diabetes, since you were 13 years old, you were diagnosed a very long time ago, we've talked over and over again, about your you know, how your management was when you were coming up. But we don't talk as much about how you've eaten through different segments of your life. So I'm gonna go back all the way to you being 13. And ask, did your mom adjust eating when you were diagnosed? That you know of a long time ago?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 5:51
No, I and I was old enough to know or recognize the change or the difference, right? Did she change how she cooked? Not really, because, I mean, my mom grew up with four siblings. She was the oldest, they lived on a farm. So she ended up doing a heck of a lot of the cooking. Yeah. So they she always was a cook. I mean, the amount of times that we went out to eat, or even fast food or something were very minimal. So she was used to already cooking, the biggest change, I think, was that I don't think I ever remembered measuring cups outside of making cookies at Christmas and cakes. And you know, where you have to use the measuring tools to obviously get it all right. But man, we got more measuring tool, tools and the bouncy like scale that we put the meat on to weigh the perfect portion. And all of that kind of stuff. My mom did change all of the desserty types of things. I mean, they all became sugar free pudding and sugar free jello, and, you know, that kind of stuff. But she didn't. She didn't make that specific just to me, it was if we're going to have putting it sugar free for everybody. Okay, if we're gonna do this, it's this way for everybody.

Scott Benner 7:16
But your management at that point is two shots a day.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 7:20
I did two shots a day I did the really old school because there was not what we now have as long acting insulin a 24 hour, we had intermediate which was the cloudy and or NPH. I actually use Lily's, which was called Al or lenti. And so that had to be mixed in the syringe with our insulin or regular insulin wasn't even rapid. And I only dosed it twice a day breakfast. So the regular covered breakfast and then the law, the intermediate acting peaked at lunchtime. So I didn't take insulin at lunch. Okay, I did get a snack in the afternoon as well, which was an uncovered snack, kind of curving the downside shift of that intermediate acting insulin. And then dinnertime I did the regular and the lead day mixed in the same syringe again, and that regular covered dinner. And then I always had to have a bedtime snack because it covered the peak in the intermediate acting overnight. So for

Scott Benner 8:23
people who have a Dexcom now and are operating with you know, I don't know modern insulin, excuse me once with modern insulin, even if they see a peak at dinner and everything goes well, their their their bell curve probably goes over like two or three hours, right? I mean, they might spike up a little bit. But you were basically running two bell curves a day morning. So you were mixing make sure I understand this right because I'm I'm Arden comes into diabetes long after this. You're mixing two different insolence into a syringe, shooting it in the morning. One of them is handling breakfast, and the other one's going to come online in time for lunch. Then you shoot for dinner the same mix, one of them handles dinner but then you have to come around at the end of the bell and eat again to stop yourself from getting a little before bed

Jennifer Smith, CDE 9:13
are into the midnight hour. Yeah, because intermediate acting was really like a peak of about five to seven hours. So again, breakfast time I'd eat somewhere between six and 7am. So the regular insulin covered that and then the intermediate acting was peaking by lunchtime at about that same five to six hour mark. So lunch would get covered or that in that intermediate would cover lunch and the same thing for the evening. There is no way to cover in all over over the night basil need because there wasn't anything besides intermediate at that point. So in order to hit the the kind of insulin the way that it needed to at its peak without getting low overnight, I had to have a snack before I went to bed.

Scott Benner 9:58
I see and I No, I remember this from our previous conversations your mom was the one thing she was a stickler about is the time you ate. Is that right? Yes. Yeah.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 10:08
I think the reason that I literally cannot sleep beyond like I will wake up even before my alarm clock goes off at like, six 615. Because it was, that was the time it was breakfast. It was time Jenny had to have her like first dose of insulin because that was a 12 hour window. until dinnertime, when I got my next dose of insulin. Yeah. And they had to be spaced apart enough. So I think the reason I wake up so early. Like, I was just wired that way. Yeah. So So

Scott Benner 10:39
she, she, your mom was looking and saying, If she eats at 6am, than the way this shot works, we'll be good for whatever lunchtime is at school. And then it'll be out of her in time that we can shoot it again for dinner, or dinner. That's why your later snack almost. So were you up late at night as a child?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 10:58
I wasn't I mean, again, child wise, I was 13. So I was probably going to bed. In fact, I know I wasn't going into bed until maybe like 10 o'clock, and I'd have my snack around like 930 ish.

Scott Benner 11:12
And then after that, carry that off to bed. No one tested you overnight or anything like that.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 11:18
Nobody tested. Oh, no. Oh, my goodness. No, that wasn't even like a thought unless I woke up and didn't feel good. Which did happen. Or for some random reason my mom was up overnight and wanted to check on me. But outside of that, no, there were no checks overnight, it was bedtime. fingerstick wake up in the morning, do it again. And

Scott Benner 11:39
the way you ate during that time was more about almost kind of food pyramid thinking. Like a little bit of this, a little bit of that a little bit of this at certain weights more than anything else.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 11:50
It was and you know, I think I think there's some practices that do okay with this with kids. And other times I've talked to people and they've said, you know, nobody focused on what my kid needs nutritionally. They just told us that we can eat whatever we want to eat. As long as we cover it with insulin and your blood sugar stays here, then that's fine. Were when I was first educated, the dietitian and educator I worked with looked at what are my nutritional needs based on where I am in life and what my activity level is like. And then they planned out sort of a caloric plan and fit the macronutrients in a certain percentage into that plan. Okay. Yeah. So, you know, I got certain portions of food that got covered with what's called a standard amount of insulin just for the food at that mealtime. I mean, I can still remember like lunch and dinner, I got two starches, two vegetables, a fruit, two to three proteins, one or two fats and a milk. And you did you that was lunch and dinner every single day?

Scott Benner 12:55
And did you have to finish it all every time? Did you have that pressure? Like I need to eat all this or no, you know,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 13:01
in a way, yes. And you know, being as active as I was, I was probably hungry enough for it all anyway, but I also wasn't, I wasn't nibbling on anything in between, because that just wasn't there wasn't additional insulin, at least not in the first I guess two years after I was diagnosed. And still I until I was taught carb counting, and dosing with insulin to cover a certain amount, then things shifted and became a little bit more flexible in terms of portion.

Scott Benner 13:29
So when that happened when they taught you carb counting? How old were you then do you think? Um,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 13:35
I was in high school? So probably six to finish, I would estimate.

Scott Benner 13:42
All right, so you did that the one you did the first play for three years or so? Did did having access to the idea of carb counting covering meals for how many carbs at work? Did it change how you ate at all? Or did they just sort of eat the same way?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 13:59
I don't think that it changed. What my food choices were because I still had certain preferences, obviously. But it gave me more flexibility in terms of how much okay, right? So if I didn't want to eat all of that food at a mealtime now we had wiggle room to play with, you know, I only really want the peas and grilled salmon for dinner. Great. We could adjust for that a little bit better than saying well, you always have to take three units of regular insulin. So you have to eat this much because this is what your insulin is covering.

Scott Benner 14:36
Yes, that was the big shift is that you had more autonomy over the amounts of food and I could drop I don't want to bake potatoes or something like that. Right? Right. Okay. How long do you think you and what insulin I'm sorry, what insulin was that at that time?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 14:51
That was still regular insulin. Okay. I did not have rapid in getting real excuse me rapid acting insulin. until I was in college.

Scott Benner 15:04
Okay. So so so this first step that you took basically took away the cloudy and you were just counting carbs for and using regular for it. Is that right or no, the first

Jennifer Smith, CDE 15:16
step I took was switching from intermediate acting. And if I had to estimate, when did I switch to Lantus? I think it was 1999. Actually, it was right around the time that Lantus came to market. I was switched from using my intermediate acting insulin to Lantus insulin. And then and I had been switched to rapid acting before the change to Lantus. Okay, so I was using intermediate acting the cloudy along with rapid acting.

Scott Benner 15:55
Okay. I don't know, what was

Jennifer Smith, CDE 15:57
the first change? Oh,

Scott Benner 15:57
how old are you?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 16:00
We just said, I'm 47. I

Scott Benner 16:02
know. But why do I think of you as being? I think of you as being so much younger than me? I don't know why that is. But the data is because I've got younger

Jennifer Smith, CDE 16:10
kids. Maybe. Maybe that is it. You know, I mean, my husband and I just we did a lot of other things before we had kids. And a lot of people do it the opposite way. They get married, and they're like, let's have kids and we just didn't do it that way.

Scott Benner 16:24
I don't know why, like, if you're telling me the times, and you're like, you know, in 1999 I'm thinking 1999. Kelly was pregnant. Like, Cole, I'm like, This is crazy, but I look at you and I'm like, but she definitely said she was 47. So I'm like I

Jennifer Smith, CDE 16:38
did. Yes. In fact, 99 is Gosh, 99 is when my husband and I got married. Oh, wow.

Scott Benner 16:45
Okay. Yeah. This is my fault. Forgive i for getting married too early. I'm throwing off the balance of this conversation. Not you. We were still young, we got married. Really? Okay, so you see, you're covering carbs. It doesn't change doesn't change what you're eating. You're still eating. But what I'm what I'm going to call like a very like 1950s through 1980s Like American kind of blend of foods. Just blade some vegetables and starches, some protein chicken beef. Probably all that stuff was happening.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 17:21
Okay. Yes, absolutely. It was all and you know, growing up in the Midwest. I mean, our starchy things were typically typically potatoes, some noodles, rice occasionally. I wasn't really a big fan of rice as a kid anyway. But I would say more of my like, grainy kind of carby stuff was probably bread. We didn't have cereal was just not something my mom made or purchased. I mean, it was either oatmeal for breakfast or something like toast with peanut butter toast with eggs or you know, something like that for breakfast time. So yeah, I think what really changed was once I went to college, I didn't have to eat what my mom cooked anymore. And I am, I personally am not a meat eater outside of fish, okay, I don't enjoy me. I never did even as a kid. I would, I would have sat at the table for four hours trying to like choke down a burger. That was just not a preference of mine.

Scott Benner 18:35
Did they still give them to you.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 18:36
Of course. This is what you're eating.

Scott Benner 18:41
I want to gently set for an entire evening, five o'clock, six o'clock, seven o'clock, eight o'clock, nine o'clock in front of a plate of French cut green beans that I did not want to eat. And the colder they got, the more good. They were. And you know, I'd be like every 15 minutes. I could get one of these. I couldn't do it. And I remember waking up on a Saturday morning after that. And my mom bringing the green paints back to the tea.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 19:09
Oh, my parents never do that.

Scott Benner 19:11
I was like, Oh God, I'm never gonna eat again. Because like these green beans and and I think I just went into like full on like, I don't know how old I was a tantrum. Probably. I'm thinking I was just probably child abuse, you know, but as far as like a young, young teen, I was like crying. I was like, I can't eat these like you have no idea. I have such trouble with how some things feel in my mouth. Like I'm just not okay with how some things feel. So I wouldn't even know how they tasted like I couldn't get past the part where it's like It's touching. And so, but that's interesting that you didn't particularly like red meat.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 19:52
And as you say like a texture thing. I mean other other textures really. They don't bother me so much and fat I have textures that I really actually prefer in food. But maybe that was it. I mean, even just like thinking about eating meat, and I don't know why fish is so different. Maybe there's a moisture to fish or it's just a very it's definitely different, right? I've never had a problem with fish. But other meats I just saw I got to college

Scott Benner 20:21
last night. Oh, no, no, no, I'm dying to know because I now have some context for what it means to send a person with type one to college and it's not terrific. So

Jennifer Smith, CDE 20:29
yeah, for one, I learned that mom's home cooking with all of the measurement and the skill that my mom put into what literally went on my plate was very different once I was choosing things in the cafeteria.

Scott Benner 20:47
Freezy did you start like,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 20:49
I don't, I wouldn't say I went crazy. Because I was conscious of what I needed to do. Again, I had no CGM. I had no pomp. I went to college on MDI, and, and finger sticks, essentially, while I was doing a heck of a lot more finger sticks. To get more information, I still really kind of had to stick with what I knew about what my experience with food at home did to my blood sugar. And so I use that in terms of figuring out what to choose from the school cafeteria. I often in fact, by the end of my freshman year, I realized that the salad bar was probably my best friend. Okay. Because it was the easiest place to find things that were good in terms of what I saw happening in my blood sugar. And actually tasted like food.

Scott Benner 21:44
Type raise everyone, everyone who now is looking $14,000 a year in the face for room, board and food at a college. It's like great. So my son my son's senior year. He's he just he called us one day. He's like, I'm so sorry, I can't do this anymore. Can I start buying food outside of the cafeteria, but we had to pay for the food. Like you couldn't regardless. Yeah, you couldn't not pay for it. So I'm like, okay, like you don't even like you know, there's a few 1000 more dollars. I'm like, sure. Yeah, go ahead. He's like that. It's horrible. He's like, it's absolutely terrible. So when we took Oregon to college, and the cafeteria was so much nicer Arden's college than it was at Kohl's. We were so excited, like, Oh, she's gonna get real food. But the truth is, it's like she's eating at a cut rate restaurant. As far as blood sugars go every day. You know how people say like, oh, it's tough to go to a restaurant because you need so much more insulin for this food. Three times a day. That's the situation Arden has been in, like so much. So Jenny, that she contacted me a month ago and said, I'm gonna run out of insulin. And she's only there for a quarter. It was it was 10 weeks. And I sent her enough insulin to be like, plus to be off to be fine. Yeah. And she's like that we got to do something, I'm gonna run out of insulin. And I was like, okay. So I called the doctor. And I'm like, you know, I think this is what's going on. But how long did it take you to adjust to bolusing for that food? Because for the first five weeks Arden was there, I would get a lot of text that said, I'm working on it. I'm trying, you know what I mean? Like, and I'm like, No, I know. You are like I could see, you know, because isn't it interesting Nightscout. Like I can see she's Bolus thing. I can see what's happening and everything like that. But she was not having a lot of luck in the beginning. It took her a number of weeks to figure it out. She's finally starting to get it in her like last three weeks of this 10 weeks. And she's doing a good job now. But it took her a month and a half to learn how to Bolus for that food.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 23:52
It's definitely adjustment. I mean, while they're not, by any means the healthy choice, I figured out, or at least I think I did, you know, again, only having finger sticks. I figured out french fries, like at school. So when we would go and you know, food is one of those things that becomes very visibly a social piece of your life in college. If it wasn't in high school. It it definitely is there in college, and especially with the later evenings and like whatever else you're doing. Like who wants to eat carrot sticks when you're sitting around with your friends like studying, right? And so I guess those were some of the things in terms of I wouldn't have gotten that at home as much as I probably ate them at school. But the other things just ended up I figured out they they just weren't even worth it.

Scott Benner 24:47
I just I'm I think I'm watching art and follow the same path to work. There have been a couple of times that I'm like, Look, if you just tell me what you ate, I can help you adjust this and she's like, I don't want to tell you what I ate I'm okay. And I'm telling you, french fries are at the core of that. She's like, you know, you get there late at night all the food's not there anymore, but there's always french fries. Yeah, you know, and then I think you're right. Like, it's the end of a day they get around. They're her roommates, and they sit there and they've got friends. They're chatting and talking about boys and girls and whatever else. Yeah, and, and they're eating french fries. So. Alright, so you. I mean, you obviously made it through and you ate a pretty classic college cuisine. When do you become the Jenny I see before you before. When you become a woman who just says quinoa? Like it's just nothing like like it's a thing we all know about.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 25:50
It's a yummy grain for those of you who don't know. Although I think it's pretty mainstream at this point.

Scott Benner 25:57
I'm not saying that I'm saying that you say keen, while the way other people say chicken nuggets. Just flows. So do you get Do you meet your husband? Do you do like what shifts your eating style?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 26:13
I think? Well, certainly learning to cook for two. And be aware of another person's desires and like preferences in food makes a difference overall to especially when you're trying to follow a budget. I mean, my husband and I did not live together before we were married. So again, it's a, although we knew each other, you know, enough, obviously. Clearly, I wish together for a long time before we actually got married. But in terms of cooking for two people, again, that does shift some things, I think the biggest thing that I learned is that men can eat a heck of a lot of food. So when I'd sit down, I'm like eating, you know, the portion that I had gotten used to eating. I was like, I you're still hungry. Seriously, like what I don't understand, like, where are you putting all this food, you know, so from a visual or just a perspective of of, like my own management, that's something to kind of overcome is seeing what somebody else can eat compared to what you know, is works for you, as well as for your blood sugar control, and that kind of stuff. So I think in terms of what you what you see today, in what I choose, and what I talk about eating is definitely been like an evolution, right, right over our marriage in life with kids and all of that kind of stuff. And I think, while for a good portion of years before we had kids, I had made a lot of the changes that I currently, you know, still use in terms of food, I think it became even more important for me to improve. For the majority of the time once we had kids.

Scott Benner 28:07
Why do you think has to start thinking like, I want to teach these kids how to eat? Well?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 28:12
Yeah, yeah, really. And because, again, with all of the knowledge that I have, about what is in food, and not meaning bad stuff, but like, what's the value in food? Food is fuel, it's like putting gas in a car, right? So if you put in quality stuff, you're gonna get quality health out of it. Well, you know, yeah,

Scott Benner 28:38
so we'll mention that here. Because so when you're in college, what is it you're learning to do? Survive what you do for a living after?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 28:48
All right? And that, that, I guess, that's another big difference. You know, I went to college, knowing where I was going, I had a very clear, I thought it was a clear career path. I was going to go to school to be a dietitian. And then I knew that I wanted to move on and become a diabetes educator. And, you know, the road there, kind of windy and whatever happens, but I learned all those things along the way in college too. Whereas other tracks, I would have never been exposed to the information about nutrition and food and what it does in the body and human biology and physiology. I mean, all those things I would have never known about.

Scott Benner 29:31
Yeah, but it's still even though you learned it in college, it becomes a slower transition as an adult, right, you just start applying what you know, as you go. And correct. And so now

Jennifer Smith, CDE 29:42
well, and to put one more point to that in terms of saying, you know, I think it became more important to me and to really do that after we had kids was because I know what kids aren't taught in school, especially where I really think that needs to begin in terms of overall healthy lifestyle. Some of that information in science alone could easily be taught in terms of this is why you eat an apple, or these are the main food groups and then expanding kind of every year so that children grow into well rounded lifestyle

Scott Benner 30:21
and health consumers really

Jennifer Smith, CDE 30:23
consumer. Yeah, exactly.

Scott Benner 30:27
So, so you're trying to it's interesting, isn't it? Like most of the people I talked to on this podcast, when they make big life leaps? It's almost always for somebody else. Almost always, they almost always say, Well, you know, I was getting by with my agency in the 80s. But I got married, and I started thinking, like, I want to be healthy for our relationship, or I'm gonna have kids, so I gotta lower my UNC or, like, that kind of stuff. Right? It's interesting.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 30:53
And I think something there too, in terms of asked, you know, well, we ended up bigger shift to like what I'm doing now kind of happen, it actually happened right before we were planning to, like, try to have kids, I started to see a naturopathic doctor. And which they're amazing. If you find the right person, I mean, the amount of time that they spend with you, and the really in depth that they look at your life and kind of everything that works together. It's, it's really amazing. But just some of the things that I brought to the table in terms of concerns. I mean, besides type one diabetes, I also have rheumatoid arthritis, which is really well managed. And but some of the things that I learned from this practitioner changed some of the ways and some of the things that I ended up, including in my diet, okay, because we did some allergy testing, and we did some sensitivity, you know, evaluation and kind of, like, how do you feel when you eat this food, like a gut health kind of analysis and all that sort of stuff? So I did, I made some really good transitions from that into kind of where I currently am and I've stuck with, you know, 99% of those shifts and changes do you think

Scott Benner 32:05
because your your, I mean, I think of your diabetes, as well managed throughout your life, for whatever the management style was at the time, right, your your returns, your agencies, and that kind of stuff fit in a healthy a healthy level for whatever the management was at the time. So how much of your eating is about the RA? Is is like are there things you're trying to avoid for that?

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Jennifer Smith, CDE 37:09
The biggest thing, honestly, that I I find affects how I manage it. And when I know I've had more than what I can kind of tolerate is cow's milk dairy.

Scott Benner 37:25
Okay, that's,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 37:26
that's the biggest thing. I mean, I went through all of the different like, sort of you you take foods out of your diet, you evaluate you add some things back to see how you react to some things. I mean, many times RAs are also very sensitive to what are called the nightshade vegetables, things like peppers and tomatoes and eggplant and that kind of stuff. And I ate a heck of a lot of tomatoes. And I see no difference whatsoever. When I did my food kind of elimination sort of plan. The biggest shift was definitely around dairy specifically, again, cow's milk based, because I can do like the cheeses that I will buy or either sheep's milk or goat's milk again. I don't eat them every day. They don't bother me if and when I do eat them. But I can tell like, if we go out for pizza. There's like real cheese on the pizza. I mean, even though I don't eat the whole pizza, I can tell the next day that I'm stiff. Okay. I can tell in my joints quickly that I've had dairy.

Scott Benner 38:30
Yeah, that's really interesting. So so so Okay, so let's let's go into the homestretch with, let's kind of go through one of your weeks and really find out how you eat so Okay, let's just start today because you've, you've woken up today already what you have for breakfast.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 38:46
So I had raspberries from my mom, my mom's garden. So they were frozen raspberries. Obviously. It's freezing outside right now. There are no raspberries left on the bushes.

Scott Benner 38:59
I want to be clear, you met your mom pick the raspberries earlier froze them and you ate them that they froze overnight with the temperature.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 39:06
Correct? Yes, absolutely. So frozen raspberries. And then I had a it's a sheep's milk yogurt with it. And then there is a really awesome grain free granola that I like it's made by nature's path. And that's literally what it's called is grain free granola. So I mix that all together and I had that this morning. I mean other breakfasts are typically like old fashioned oats, a small amount and then I use things like chia and hemp seed and ground flax, some coconut oil and cinnamon. spoonful of like nut butter in it, mix it all together.

Scott Benner 39:47
How many carbs do you think your average breakfast is?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 39:51
Yeah, I can absolutely tell you so for my breakfast I had this morning. I count 18 grams for it. For my typical oatmeal Well, I count 26 grams for that.

Scott Benner 40:03
Okay, do you see spikes?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 40:07
Not unless I have a bad site. Or sometimes when I know it's a couple of days before I get my site, my period, I'm more prone to potentially having more of a rise up after the oatmeal. It doesn't typically happen with the the granola and the berries. So,

Scott Benner 40:32
yeah. Do you ever get up in the morning on a Saturday and go crazy? Do you ever make a stack of pancakes or french toast or bacon or something like that?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 40:42
I I wouldn't have bacon, but I get what you mean. Yeah, we we do pancakes. But again, the pancakes that I make are tend to do much lower carb, lower glycemic pancake. And my kids don't. They don't complain about them. They eat them. So does my husband. So I'm like, Well, I'm gonna cook them the way that I cook them because they're good for me. And so clearly, they're good for them too. I mean, I usually use like an almond flour and a coconut flour. I've got a couple of good recipes that I follow. I might put some pumpkin puree in them or some of what's the lily brand like the low sugar like mini chocolate chips kind of in maple syrup. I just don't I don't even eat. I don't eat honey. real maple syrup. I figure why. And that's just my choice. You know? Do you like your maple syrup, have it but I usually use the Lecanto maple syrup, which works really nice and it doesn't affect my blood sugar. So I have to say,

Scott Benner 41:47
I don't love maple syrup either. If I'm not we use like a low carb syrup on the house. I think we use Karis most of the time.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 41:56
Yeah, that's a that's a common one. Yeah.

Scott Benner 41:58
And, but if I, I'm, I'm perfectly happy with it. Like, it doesn't bother me at all. If I'm gonna go crazy with syrup, which might happen once or twice a year, I want like, I don't know, I want something that could also be like motor oil or something like that. Like, when you're when you're eating it, you're like, This isn't even a natural flavor at all. Like I'm in a diner where we're all going to die. When was the? And even at that, it's like, wow, it's a lot. I can't really do a lot of that. And I'm saying, We haven't made a ton of adjustments to I mean, you know, I guess I'll do an episode one day about how I eat. But I grew up very badly around food. Like nobody understood food around me. And my wife and I took us years to our 20s to like even make sense of like, fire we I still joke my wife is like, I shouldn't say this here. But my wife like is like, the sheets like she's homeless. And she's happy about it. Like, like, we have, like we have 10 cents in the bank is how she eats and that's when she's happiest. But she grew up broke. And eating that way. And I don't know, it just it's what occurs to her, you know. But anyway, my question and the reason I brought that up is your kids have your palate, do you think you taught it to them? Or do you think that it was theirs all along? And you just met them there?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 43:23
That's a really as a good question, because I I don't know, I think some of it might have transitioned from what I ate while I was pregnant. Because, you know, broccoli for a really good example. Broccoli is both of my kids will always eat broccoli, they will eat it steamed, they will eat it raw, they will always eat broccoli out of any of the vegetables. And I think it's because whether this is true or not, I think it's because it was one of the few vegetables in both pregnancies in my first trimester that I could actually stomach. Okay. And I eat a lot of steamed broccoli with Dijon mustard. That's what that very well for me. Why I know that's very bizarre, but that's what worked. And as soon as they introduced it, you know, once they started doing like table foods and that kind of stuff. They had no complaints. It didn't come out of their mouth. So maybe some of it is but I think some of its learned Yeah,

Scott Benner 44:25
I don't want to make you feel sad. But Kelly was pregnant with call and she had a very her palate while she was pregnant with Cole was very clean and healthy. And Cole is it's more like a boy. You know what I mean? But with Arden Kelly a crap like a lot of like for some of it and art and eats very, very well. Like like art and art is the one who's like, well, I'll sit and eat carrots or I'll do this right. You

Jennifer Smith, CDE 44:52
know, like, do you think some of that though for Arden is relative to such an early diagnosis.

Scott Benner 44:57
But I will gently I didn't Oh, like the the person who you're talking to now is not the person who grabbed that two year old baby was like diabetes, okay? Like, I mean, we were, you know,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 45:08
I was theater carrot.

Scott Benner 45:10
We didn't go that way, like I spent two years going like why can't I figure out how to Bolus for cereal, you know, like, like, like what you see online people are just like, I didn't adjust at all. And it didn't occur to me at first. Because like I said, we didn't grow up well around food that some of these foods were better than others or whatever. I mean, I know now and excuse me, we made you know, adjustments. My first big adjustment as a parent was not buying frozen chicken nuggets. That was the that was my first lightbulb moment. I thought like if I'm gonna give these kids chicken nuggets, why the Hold on I go get some chicken and bread in the oven and give it to them. Right and, and I did that, like if it wasn't easy, because by then they knew what um, like a nugget was from McDonald's or from a frozen bag and it was cut like a dinosaur or something like that. So at first they're like, this isn't chicken. I was like, oh, god, look what I've done to you. You know what I mean? Like, like, you don't think chicken is chicken. You think whatever that crap is this chicken. Okay, so, alright, so you will have a splurge. But your sport stays more in a clean lane.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 46:20
For the most part, yes. And a splurge really, like we're talking about breakfast foods. And again, we don't we don't eat out very often. But there's this place here. It's called short stack. It is if I'm gonna get pancakes out that are not by any means. anywhere close to being low carb or low glycemic or anything at all. I mean, it's it's served with like this sweet mascarpone sort of like yumminess on the side with strawberries. They're probably the healthiest thing on this plane. But they're super they're they're like these Oat. They're oat pumpkin. Pancakes. Sweet potato pancakes. They are. They are the best pancake I have ever had. Honestly. In fact, after my my second son was born, the next morning they came in and they asked they're like, Well, what do you want? I'm like, oh, no, my husband's gone out. And he's

Scott Benner 47:21
so the guys bringing it in? Yeah.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 47:26
So, you know, splurge? Absolutely. I will.

Scott Benner 47:30
But, but but I like you telling the story because you splurge on pancakes. You're not at IHOP you're not like Yeah, right. Jenny made a face that you guys can see that said Oh god, no. So okay, so

Jennifer Smith, CDE 47:44
for people who are like I have I just Yeah, I wouldn't choose it.

Scott Benner 47:48
So So lunch today, what are you going to do?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 47:51
So lunch today is typically vegetables. I mean, I usually have some type of raw vegetables, cucumbers, bell peppers, tomatoes, carrots, and cabbage chopped up hummus. This time of the year I really like sauerkraut. Usually an apple or again some berries.

Scott Benner 48:20
What do you think? Carbs? I mean, I can try guessing.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 48:25
Yeah, my vegetables in the portion that I eat I count 10 grams for my portion of vegetables raw vegetable, they have about a cup and a half ish of raw vegetables. And the hummus I know because the labels right on the container with 11 grams of carb. And then my apple I weigh it because the apples we have are still from the orchard and we picked and so I mean the Apple could be really teeny tiny or could be like the ginormous huge. You could like softball sides, right? So I weigh it. But on on average my lunch is with the with the apple, probably somewhere between 28 and 35 grams of carb. Okay.

Scott Benner 49:12
Yeah. You don't consider yourself low carb at all right?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 49:15
I don't know. No, in fact, I'm not. I am not worried about I don't aim for a certain amount under carb amount to certainly eat. I also am not, you know, the opposite end high high carb either. I would say I'm more consistently my daily intake is probably somewhere between 80 grams, 7580 grams on the low end to maybe 110 to 120 grams on the high end. That's crazy.

Scott Benner 49:49
I mean, that's a lot more than than then I was imagining how long it's like. Yeah, sorry. That was more than I was imagining. So you got So close, I have a word written down here. As I started today, I'm like, I'm gonna get, I'm gonna see if Jenny says this word, right? You have not said it yet, but you got so close, I'm gonna go, I'll tell you what the end. Okay, I got so close, it's still might happen. So we'll say, okay, so middle of the day, your is kind of your lighter meal

Jennifer Smith, CDE 50:21
of middle of the day tends to be my lighter meal. Now that's on a week, day, weekends, especially Sundays will tend to be a little bit heavier probably on lunch. Mainly because, and I again, it's not necessarily a conscious effort, I just know from experience what I can get away with at certain times, right? So my weekday is tend to be you like lower impact type of meal mid day, because I'm most often while I have a desk treadmill, which is awesome. It's still real low pace. And otherwise, I'm just sitting or standing here. And some by mid day, even though I exercise in the morning, and still been sitting or standing around. Right and so I also I usually have a couple of hours of work to still do after my lunch. So I tend to do something that I know is going to be easier.

Scott Benner 51:22
So it's it's fair to say that you match where some people would match a meet with a wine you're matching a meal with your activity level.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 51:32
Yes, exactly. Like for Sunday's then these are usually my long run days. I go for a long run in the morning. And so the whole rest of the day I can kind of quote unquote get away with a little bit more because I've got just a much heightened much more heightened sensitive. kind of stay.

Scott Benner 51:54
Okay, all right. So what's for dinner tonight?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 51:59
Oh, you know dinner tonight. I haven't planned yet.

Scott Benner 52:02
That's dinner last night. I'll make it easier for

Jennifer Smith, CDE 52:05
ya. So dinner last night was a corn squash and like a mixed green vegetable kind of salad. I made a Caesar dressing to go on top of it. And then we had salmon.

Scott Benner 52:18
Okay. And the kids boom. Or you have young boys. Acorns their acorn squash cut in half in the oven. Little bit of olive oil, salt and pepper. That's that idea for that.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 52:29
Yeah, my boys like them. I do it with a little bit of like more savory seasoning on like a sage and kind of like a mixed season. My husband I like it that way. My boys really like it with cinnamon and a little bit of coconut oil on because it gives it a little bit of its a sweeter kind of flavor to it. So they like it that way but yeah, they they love they love the acorn squash the delicata my littlest. He really loves spaghetti squash. He thinks it's so fun that when you scrape it out that it looks like new Italy.

Scott Benner 53:04
Do you guys need any pasta?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 53:06
Yeah, we do. And the pasta that we typically eat is like the bonza type of pasta, the lentil or the chickpea type of pasta. The one that I really like, because it's the lowest impact is the Explore Asia brand. It's made either black bean or edamame a or I think they've got a green bean one. But I mean a really good like cup cup and a half cooked portion. It comes out once you kind of reduce it by the fiber amount. It's only like 10 or 11 grams of carb for a really big plate of pasta. So I will often do something like that on a weekday type of dinner where I'll give my kids the bonza Prost pasta, which got some good protein quality to it. I'll do the other one and just good marinara and a salad on the side. It's really nice complete meal.

Scott Benner 53:58
Okay, yeah, I was gonna say cuz you don't do any cream sauces, right?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 54:02
I don't do any cream sauces unless I make them myself more from like a vegan kind of approach. Like if I have a really good recipe that's got like a cashew nut, you sort of soak it in blended and puree it and make it into like a creamy kind of sauce. It's very tasty. You wouldn't couldn't imagine there's no dairy in it. But

Scott Benner 54:21
as you're talking, I'm thinking I am going to get notes where people say Jenny should write a cookbook with all of her recipes in it.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 54:28
I have been asked that. So why don't you put all the things that you eat together into this really nice cookbook and as like, if somebody could just keep notes for me? Sure.

Scott Benner 54:40
Let me ask you a question. If we're driving the Jenny families in the car, we're going to another state we're visiting people whatever we pull over on the side of the road everyone's hungry. Do you bring food with you? Or are you in a gas station going I guess I can eat this ring thing.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 54:58
I know I have to credit my Mom with this, whether it's made my life busier or not, I am definitely the parent that will pack. They pack things that I know, not only snackable depending on how long the trip is, but also if we're going to be on the road over a meal time. Because usually one I know that by the time you end up stopping someplace, you're usually over hungry. Yeah. Right. And then you're more likely going to make the Ring ding choice than something else. And so I packed I packed not only from my only my benefit in terms of driving and the sedentary nature and what that does to blood sugar. I know what the foods that I've packed do for me. And I can also we don't actually have to stop. I mean, not as much as

Scott Benner 55:55
we used to get a bathroom. That sounds like a great, that'd be fabulous. Yeah. It sounds like it would be fabulous. right until you realize that one of the people in the car was going number two while you were driving. Thank you. Maybe this isn't fabulous.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 56:09
Not a good idea.

Scott Benner 56:10
You have a couple more minutes or do you have to go? Oh, of course. Yes. Okay, so, snacks. I mean, I've we've said on here before it's funny. We kind of said when Arden was looking for different ice cream. You You pointed her towards oat milk ice cream, but she she loves now. Which is fascinating because before she tried, she didn't love real sweet stuff. Like if you know Arden she's Arden's not about like real sugary stuff. So she was like using the lenti at some point, like a brand and she's like, this is still too much. Like she's not the kind of kid who's gonna eat like Ben and Jerry's. You know, she might have a spoonful of it, but she's not going to go crazy. But when she when you told her about the oat milk ice cream, like that was a big deal for her. Oh, yeah, she loved it. So when you're snacking, this is kind of the lane you're in. I'm imagining. So I want you to just kind of throw out a few snacky things that you have around the house for yourself.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 57:07
nuts, nuts. That sound weird nuts.

Scott Benner 57:12
Nuts in your mouth. Jenny is your business.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 57:16
Yes, no, I like mix nuts. I think they're, they're great. Boiled eggs are really awesome. Some of the mug like sort of the mug cake or mug muffin kinds of recipes are pretty good. Actually found one the other day that's really super yummy. It's like a, it's like pumpkin pie in a mug without the crossed. Okay,

Scott Benner 57:38
it is brand thing or you made it yourself.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 57:41
Oh, you make it yourself. It's like pumpkin pumpkin puree, like out of a can not up not the pie stuff, the stuff without sugar added to it. And it's an egg, some baking powder, some vanilla extract, and a no sugar sweetener of your choice. Like I just use the vanilla stevia to sweeten it. A pinch of salt. And I think that's it and then you literally like mix it all up in the mug and you put it in the microwave for three minutes. It is it's so yummy. It's like it all the carb that's in there is the portion of pumpkin pie that you put in comes to eight grams of carb.

Scott Benner 58:19
All right, I'm gonna ask you to send me that when I'm gonna try that. I want to try. Okay, good for ya. Because, like, for instance, if we've just got past Halloween here, there's no bowl of candy corn in your house. Is that right?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 58:34
There's no bowl of candy corn, there's no bowl of candy. We just don't. Not from my perspective, because I I'm an adult decisionwise I can choose or not choose right. But I just don't think it's necessary to have that as a potential option. I mean, if you really want to go into also why we don't have any Halloween candy despite it not being very long ago and our kids having come home with like four buckets full of of Halloween candy. Our children got to pick five pieces that were chocolate. Not the like sugar, you know, sugar stuff. I mean, not that the chocolate doesn't have sugar but and then I paid them to give me their candy, which they were all excited. I was like these are your options. You're not eating all this candy. That's just how it is. It's going out of the house but if you willingly give us then I will pay you each this amount of money and you can use it as you like for something you want. Where did the candy go? Oh, the candy went. My husband plays soccer. So he took it to the soccer field for one of his games and he just left it there. Okay. We brought like the Rubbermaid just like plastic things and we put it in a couple of them and we left them on the tables there and they're adults, they can make a choice right

Scott Benner 1:00:00
sec. Okay, so a lot of this really is then about options in front of you. Yes, like you, there's no way for you to have a bad day, I'm making quotes and put my fingers in your house. Like you can't you couldn't get up today and just be like, I'm gonna go find some sugary candy that doesn't exist in the house. I'm gonna like, that stuff's just not there. Right? I could

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:00:23
choose to over eat some of the things that are here. Absolutely. I mean, if I chose to eight, chose to eat, you know, eight apples in a row. Clearly that bad day

Scott Benner 1:00:34
impact. So let me ask you this question. If I picked you up, and took you to someone else's life, where today you got up in the morning, and had a bowl of cereal, and at lunch, you had a sandwich on bread, and there were potato chips with it. And it dinner? I don't know what you have like that. Could you Bolus for all that for your body? Do you think?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:00:55
Having enough experience? I could? Yes. Yeah. I mean, I could, I could figure it out. Obviously, just having hindsight from having stuff like that in the past. I mean, we've had, you know, family gatherings and whatnot, which I haven't obviously put all of the work into all of the food that comes to something like that. So I do have to make choices. And certainly will I indulge? Absolutely. At certain points in time? I don't make it regular though, right. It's like, what's in our house and what I choose to eat, and what I choose to kind of prepare and what not for our family is like 80 to 90% of that is its fuel, it's what should be going in to my body. And I can tell a difference in how I feel, depending on what I eat not only blood sugar wise, just in general, you know?

Scott Benner 1:01:46
I'm guessing on to the in between meals, you're not overly hungry, right? No, no. Okay, I'm not weird carved desires and stuff like that, because you haven't been eating that stuff to begin with that kind of sugary stuff that wires your brain to say, like, go get more

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:02:02
true. I mean, at times when I do want something like chocolate again, I do more like real dark chocolate is absolutely like my favorite. So but I don't eat again, it might be here, but I'm not eating the whole entire bar or 20 pieces of it. I just don't need that. And the one little piece that I do eat might have, for me, you know, something like three or four grams of carb. I don't even have to Bolus for that. I mean, it is what it is. Somebody else may have to obviously cover and considerate, but

Scott Benner 1:02:35
sound work that way. So two more questions for you. My first one is that through your life, you haven't, I'm assuming had to worry much about your weight, like your body style stayed fairly consistent.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:02:47
It has, I would say that the time period that I probably gained the most, which is not odd, I'm quite sure you can guess it was in college. I mean, it just was right. My activity level change even though as we're walking around campus and playing like rec volleyball, it still was just very different. I think that this shift in your sleep schedule, and I'm sure the french fries didn't help me.

Scott Benner 1:03:14
Tries just tape them right on your thighs, don't even yourself. But I

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:03:18
think outside of that, no. And that's certainly while I work to stay healthy. I haven't thankfully been somebody who has struggled with weight, right? And whether it's because I've just paid attention to what my body wants, and I feed it. And I do good things with what I'm feeding it. I also learned pretty early on because of because the manner of instruction that I started with when I was first diagnosed was very tied to portion. Yeah, it was this amount is this much. This is why you need it. And again, today, not a lot of portion is really taught outside of just how many grams of carbs in the portion, right?

Scott Benner 1:04:04
I can't tell you like I clearly don't eat as well as you do. But how often I see things people are eating. And I think it's like how do you eat all that? Like, I don't understand how you can like, like, physically the amount, even with liquids. One of the reasons I don't think I drink is because when I see somebody drink three or four beers and like, I couldn't drink three or four cups of water like that, like how are you doing that? You know, I'm impressed by it. Honestly, I'm like, how do you get that in? I can't do it. So yeah, so my last question to you is, obviously with what you do for a living. You're helping people who eat in all varied ways. Even though you and I don't really ever talk about it. I assume we're like minded and as much as that I just want people to know how to use the insulin for what they're eating. Like I'm not I'm I'm not here telling anybody how to eat like I know. I don't imagine that's the thing you could do for A for a stranger through a podcast one way or the other. So. So then, do you feel like, like, are you almost like a video game character with your, your understanding of diabetes like these are like, I'm imagining a spinning dial on you and I hit D and the dial pops up. And I spin it around to like high carb, low carb, vegetarian, like, and you're like, Oh, I know how to think like this. Do you think of it that way? Like, when you get a person on the phone, you don't I'm saying?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:05:30
Yeah, no, that's absolutely, because I think I've worked with so many different fueling plans, if you will, right. And it's great that you bring in, you know, we're not really about talking, you should always be eating this one way, the idea is really just navigating management. And that's how I approach any new person that I work with, right? You have these options, this is likely to potentially be a little bit easier if we swip swap do this versus this or a little bit more of this a little bit less of that kind of thing. But everybody has an eating style. And it's my job to help you. If that's really what you want to keep doing great, then we need to figure out how to navigate that and make sure you know your glucose is staying where you want it to stay and your insulin is well managed or your other meds are well managed. So that's, I guess that's an interesting like, spin the dial and it comes up this person wants to be vegan. So then my brain sort of Yes, absolutely. It sort of navigates into like my vegan train of thought like, what, what do I have to consider? Where are you getting your nutrients from? Are you getting enough of these vitamins and whatnot? Absolutely.

Scott Benner 1:06:39
I mean, I think that a lot of my skill comes from the fact that we mix and match so many different kinds of food styles at the same time. Like Like, that's where my that's when I see a food I'm like, well, that's a slow impacting carbon. That's a quick impact the I think that's why I'm good at Chinese food and things like that, because I don't look at it as I don't know I don't look at general, the general chicken and think Oh, general chicken, I think sauce. Deep fried breading you you're breaking it down. Yeah, in my mind. I break it down into different thoughts. So it's, I mean, in my mind, if you're eating generals chicken as an example, you're eating four different things. 3d, you're eating protein breading fat, and sugar. Like that's, that's how it seems to me. I don't think of it as chicken. I know that if you put like rice on top of it, I think okay, well, if this is white rice, it's one thing if it's fried rice, it's different. You know, like, I don't know, like, it just that just makes sense to me. But if Arden ate more like you, like say Arden just came out of the womb, like I'm gonna say the word that you didn't say, Jenny, I'm so let down. You didn't say this word. Oh, that was a quinoa.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:07:50
Do you want me to say quinoa? I

Scott Benner 1:07:52
was just say kimchi.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:07:54
Kimchi. Oh my gosh, I love kimchi. I can't show you when I commented about sauerkraut before I'm

Scott Benner 1:08:02
that's I haven't written right here. So I wrote down kimchi when we started. And when you said sauerkraut, I wrote down sauerkraut. She got so close.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:08:11
Oh, I'm so sorry. Yeah, we have. It's funny because we've got friends around the corner from us. That are our little boys are the same age and are in school together. And they make kimchi and it's it's so good. Like, so so good. My mom who makes sauerkraut, which is probably the reason that we've got a lot of it right now because we just

Scott Benner 1:08:32
that sounds good. I love sauerkraut. I've never had kimchi. Although I was in a store the other day, I saw a jar. And I thought if I didn't know, Jenny, it would look to me like somebody threw a handful of grass and weeds in this jar. But instead I know what.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:08:48
Oh, good. I'm so glad that I provided some education.

Scott Benner 1:08:50
Well, not only that, you know, I'll tell you this before I let you go. I saw someone online the other day, who said I had a banana but it was overripe. So I had to Bolus more for it. And I thought she knows that from the podcast. And she knows that from Jenny. And I was very proud of that. Like I really was I was like oh, this is wonderful. So that's super awesome. I appreciate you sharing with us with all this how you eat this is gonna go into the how we eat category.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:09:18
Fantastic. I'm sure there are things that I don't even know if I missed saying anything. I don't know. I

Scott Benner 1:09:23
mean, no, but I think the important thing about the conversation is it's a vibe, right like here's what I didn't hear you say I didn't hear you telling me that you eat anything deep fried. I didn't hear you very rare. Yeah right. I didn't hear you tell me that you have processed sugar. I didn't hear like you know that kind of stuff like that's the you know, I didn't hear you telling me I eat like this unless I ended up you know at the store and then all bets are off or something like that. You know you I heard you tell me how you eat when you get away from your house. I heard you told me that you don't go to a lot of restaurants. See, that's how I mean, this is how you eat. You know what I mean? Like, it doesn't fit into a category. You're not low carb, you're not flexitarian you're not, you know,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:10:10
I don't write i, this is like Jenny's fuel plan. follow you, right? I don't fall into a category. I mean, if we go out to eat, we've we've picked some places that both Nathan and I have decided are just, they're really good options. You know, I mean, there's a place here that it's a really good like, salad place that's got really good quality, super awesome stuff that you can that our boys even love. Like they love to make their build their own salad from the options. And so those are more the places that we will often go.

Scott Benner 1:10:47
I didn't hear a lot, a lot, a lot of white flour. Like that sounds like something you don't get.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:10:53
I don't know. In fact, I think the last time I had white flour was probably sourdough bread this past summer that we had when we were we had gone to see Nathan's dad and his stepmother, and she made some good homemade sourdough. And I was like, Can I have a piece of that? Yeah, that sounds no good. I'd like that. Yes, that sounds

Scott Benner 1:11:17
good. Yeah, I listen, I made chocolate chip cookies the other day that are just kind of sitting downstairs. And I realized that as a, as a younger person, if somebody would have made a batch of chocolate chip cookies, I probably would have eaten lunch every time I walked past that. And I don't feel like that anymore. And I don't know if that's because I'm older, or if it's because I don't eat as much of that to begin with anymore. And so I'm not drawn to it the way I was like, There's part of me that thinks that I didn't have a chance. I woke up on Monday morning, I ate a bowl of sugary cereal. And that drove my desire throughout the day. Nobody made a meal to send with me somewhere. So even as an at 19 or 20 year old out of, you know, out of high school and on my way to work, I'd stop it like a store and grab, by the way what I could afford, which was never quality either. You know, like so there's, and then you're sort of, I don't know, like, it's like you're trapped in a in a hurricane that at that point that you just kind of can't break out of the walls of anymore. Like this is the world like my body desires this sugar, and flour, because this is what I can afford to eat. Even if I get afford more because when I got older and we could afford more, I didn't know what to do. Right? You don't I mean, I wasn't like, oh, we have some money now. I'll go buy good things. I didn't know what good things were versus bad things. No one even thought about it that that? Yeah. So I don't know. It was interesting to hear your path through all this. Your parents or your body style ish?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:12:53
Um, my dad was more. He was more the exercise. person in our house. Definitely. I mean, he's the one that got me interested in biking. My mom, now older is a little issues heavier than she was growing up. But yeah, I mean, in terms of body size, I don't have tall parents. And I didn't have extremely big parents by any means.

Scott Benner 1:13:27
It was my situation where I, when I'm with my children, people don't think they're my kids. Like we were able to do the thing that you were worried about, to some degree, like we were able to take our kids and like lift them out of the swamp that we grew up in, and kind of throw them up on the shore. And we're like, I mean, they still eat things that I wish they didn't eat. And I and I know that's because we eat those things like or that they brought around the house when they were younger before we wrapped our head around completely, you know, but for the most part, I mean, on any baseball field, or softball field I've ever been on, when people come up to you and they're meeting you and they're like, is that your kid? People always like point to the I don't know how to say this. Like the fattest kid on the team know if that's your kid there. And I'm like, I'm like no, my son's that. Gizelle and centerfield. And then they're like, Oh, I know your wife slept with the mailman. I understand that Kelly said all the time, people would come up to her at a softball game and point to the catcher and say is that your daughter? And Kelly be like, No, that's my skinny girl at third base. Are you there? Yeah. And so like that, but you match like if you stood with your family you guys all look at the reason I'm bringing

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:14:43
we would look much more visibly, I guess facially much more similar than body type like my I got the short jeans in the family. I did. I mean my brother's like six to

Scott Benner 1:14:57
I'd love to like, Yeah,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:14:59
I'm like, you know Five, three, I didn't get the tall jeans.

Scott Benner 1:15:03
I just think that what I'm hearing from your story is that your mother was willing to cook and do a good job of that, and your father was active. And you kind of took those two things and blended them together. And I'm gonna guess that you ended up in nutrition or health care, which I think of being a nutritionist as healthcare, because you had diabetes, right? Like you probably grew up with people taking care of you that you I mean, I hear it all the time. So

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:15:30
I did it became an interest after after I realized what a what I thought was a really good job that my dietitian, especially diabetes educator, like, I never felt like I couldn't do something. After I was diagnosed, like I never I've never had this. Well, God, I like this has just been so horrible my whole entire life. I mean, would I give it away? If somebody was like, Here? Take this pill and you don't have to? I'd be like, Sure. Give me the pill. Tomorrow or, you know what a ring the I don't think it's like a doughnut, right?

Scott Benner 1:16:12
It's, I don't know what it is. It's chocolate with chocolate cake with like white cream and chocolate icing around the outside. Okay, there

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:16:18
you go. Yes. I'm assuming you would take a bite.

Scott Benner 1:16:21
You'd go. Oh my God, that's insane. And then you would never eat. I'm at the point. Now, by the way, were processed foods. Tastes plasticky to me. Yeah. But when I was growing up, I didn't know the difference between them. Sure. I thought that was sweet. And now I'm like, This isn't good. You know? Or if you get if you took me to McDonald's, for example, I understand what a McDonald's cheeseburger tastes like. But I don't match that in my I haven't had a McDonald's cheeseburger in a really long time. But if I had one, like, I know what I think it tastes like right now in my head. But if you asked me what a McDonald's cheeseburger tastes like, I would tell you that it tastes like a McDonald's cheeseburger. Not like that, like a cheeseburger. Yeah. So I didn't have that. I didn't have those measurements in my head when I was younger. I thought that's what a cheeseburger was. Sure, yeah, yeah.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:17:10
There was always a like, I can probably count on two hands. The number of times as a kid we went to like McDonald's or Hardee's was like card theme. You know, but I don't even think that I've ever had a McDonald's cheeseburger. Because I didn't I didn't like I always chose the fish was the fillet of fish. It's called fillet

Scott Benner 1:17:31
o fish, I believe fillet o fish, Diego. I would tell you that I haven't had one in years, except once. And it was like six months ago. And Arden and I were out late. She had a bit of blood sugar. That wouldn't like it just wouldn't break. And when we finally got it to break, and she had missed dinner, and everything was gone. And it was like midnight. And I was like Arden. Like we are going Yeah. And so we sat like, like to giddy children in the dry like outside the drive thru like EDA. God, this is terrible. And it was, but it was really good. And it was terrible at the same time. And so I don't know, it was just something. All right, I appreciate you doing this with me very much. Thanks for asking. Everything you need to know about Jenny was just in the inflection and her voice when I said thanks for doing this with me. And she said of course. Thanks for asking. That's who Jenny is. She's delightful. Let's thank Jenny of course and remind you that she works at integrated diabetes.com. If you'd like to hire her, you can also want to thank Omni pod makers of the Omni pod dash and the Omni pod five and remind you to go to Omni pod.com forward slash juice box Do not delay go now. Find out if you're eligible for that free 30 day supply of the Omni pod dash. I'd also like to thank my other sponsor in pen from Medtronic diabetes and remind you to head over to Impend today.com Ford slash juice box alright everybody, that's it. I am time shot. I gotta be honest with you. I haven't felt well in weeks. And this took a lot out of me. But I'm happy happy happy that you're here with me. And I will not die I promise. Even though it is trying to kill me. First the COVID then I got rid of the COVID then bronchitis then I got rid of the bronchitis. Now, I don't even know what this is. This just seems cruel at this point. But uh, I will not be I will not be thwarted. I am a little woozy. And I'm hot. But I won't I will not be third party. Sorry. I will not be the word. I will make this podcast. It will I will not be stopped. I want to feel better so badly and get this. I'm not nearly as sick as my wife. That poor girl. She's told me Stover, you know what I mean? Like, she's beat up. It's crazy. As soon as I feel better, and I mean, as soon as I feel better, I got to start doing the setups because I need somebody to take care of these kids. And you don't I mean, it's not looking good. You guys can hear the sarcasm, right? I mean, she's really sick, but I don't think she's gonna pass. But seriously, really, really sick. If you've been ill with all this. You have my you have my compassion. All right, everybody. Here I go watch this. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast. I got it when I need it.

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Scott Benner 11/30/22 Scott Benner 11/30/22

#800 Lazy Control IQ Ninja

Megan is the mother of a type 1 who uses Control IQ.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends, and welcome to a wow and welcome to episode 800 of the Juicebox Podcast. If I was the kind of person who celebrated meaningless milestones, I would definitely celebrate this

so Meghan was coming on to talk about control IQ. She said she thought she was terrific at it. That's why she booked to come on the show. Then she heard the episode called control like you, Ninja, she rethought it, but she's still here. Turns out she had a lot more to talk about. So this episode sort of broken, I mean, a little bit in half, there's a lot of her story up front, a lot of control like you on the back end. But don't miss Megan story. It's really interesting. And I think you're gonna like it. While you're listening, please remember that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plant, or becoming bold with insulin. I say that 200 more times there'll be 1000 episodes. Here, here's something I didn't think I'd be saying for this long. But I'm back to tell you that if you're a US resident, who has type one, where is the caregiver of someone with type one, I need you to go to T one D exchange.org. Forward slash juice box and fill out the survey. That's it, join the registry, fill out the survey takes like 10 minutes, you just have to complete the survey and you're done. You know the whole thing. You're going to help people living with type one diabetes, you're going to use the music, you're going to sorry, you're going to move diabetes research forward, you might help yourself. There's a lot that could happen. It's all good. Nothing bad. This, this whole thing is 100% HIPAA compliant, absolutely anonymous. I mean, I've done it. A lot of people who listen to podcasts have done it, but just not enough. They need more people. And as soon as you guys go and do it, and they get to their limit, I can stop saying this T one D exchange.org. Forward slash juicebox. And I know you think, Scott, I know you don't want to stop this. You're getting paid to say this. But it's not the truth. Really, I don't get paid to say it. I get paid when you complete the survey. So honestly, I do want to stop saying this because there's a limit. And I just want to get to it. And I don't know what I would say in this space. If you guys would just go fill out the survey and then we'd find out if you just go do it. But no, no, you don't have time for this. Oh, whatever. Sorry, that got away from me. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by Dexcom. Makers of the Dexcom G six find out if you're eligible for a free 10 day trial of the Dexcom GS six at my link dexcom.com Ford slash juice box, find out the speed, direction and number of your blood sugar right on your phone or on your Dexcom receiver dexcom.com forward slash juice box. podcast is also sponsored by us med get your diabetes supplies the same place we do at US med to get started, all you need to do is get a free benefits check by calling 888-721-1514 Or going to us med.com forward slash juicebox. Getting your diabetes supplies does not have to be a hassle. Try us med if you have trouble remembering my links, you can always go to juicebox podcast.com. Scroll down a little bit. They're all right there. Just tap tap. When you click on my links, you're supporting the podcast and keeping it free. So I appreciate it when you take that extra step.

Megan 3:39
My name is Megan. I'm married and I have three kids. My oldest is my type one. He's 12. So he was diagnosed four ish years ago. I'm really bad at math. He was diagnosed at nine. But it's he's got a summer birthday. So

Scott Benner 3:56
let's spend 45 minutes but no, I'm just kidding for three or four years. Yeah,

Megan 4:01
it's been we're coming up on our pump is going to be replaced

Scott Benner 4:04
soon. Oh, that's a nice way to keep track of it.

Megan 4:08
And then I have two others. An 11 year old boy and a nine year old girl.

Scott Benner 4:13
No diabetes there.

Megan 4:16
No, I am currently being in the process of being diagnosed with thyroid stuff. They're thinking Hashimotos I've got the marker the whatever tests they did was really high. Maybe for one of the antibodies or whatever.

Scott Benner 4:32
Okay, do you have you can you did they feel it like that?

Megan 4:36
Oh my gosh, you can see it. Oh, really? And I can feel it's right on my vote like you know, a little indent is in your neck.

Scott Benner 4:44
Let's say I do. Wait. Okay,

Megan 4:46
well, wait, what do you like that little like the front indent in the front? Yeah.

Scott Benner 4:50
It's it's there. It's my thing different than yours.

Megan 4:53
I don't know. Like, I'm like you have that little like, I don't know. It's like an indent on your neck. If you if I lean up, there's like this big bolt right there instead of an indent. I

Scott Benner 5:05
know where you mean, I found it. Yeah, yeah. Yeah. And then

Megan 5:09
I have all the classic symptoms, but I have other issues. So I was attributing them to other illness issues that I have. And it was like, Oh, no.

Scott Benner 5:17
Do you mind picking through this for a minute? Before we talk about Yeah, you're here. Okay, that's fine. What other issues,

Megan 5:23
um, I am freezing all the time, which I didn't think anything of until we had like an 80 degree, one of those random 80 degree days in the Midwest in the winter, and I was still freezing. I could sit in front of a space heater and still feel cold on the inside. But I'm sweating on the outside, like, my skin is warm, but I just can't physically feel warm. And I'd wake up in the middle of the night drenched in sweat, and have to change several times. I keep waking up drenched in sweat. I'm super fatigued. I could fall asleep at the drop of a hat. Which normally is a big problem for me. Like I can't sleep. Changes to my menstrual cycle.

Scott Benner 6:12
Hold on one second. unrested doesn't sleep 12 hours wake up.

Megan 6:16
Doesn't matter. What like I'm sleeping 12 hours but no, yeah.

Scott Benner 6:19
Well, you have kids, I've got kids.

Megan 6:24
And what else? I've been losing weight on purpose. And then suddenly, when all of these symptoms kind of started, I started gaining weight no matter what I was doing. I have like water retention stuff. I have headaches. I have vision changes. My eyes went really dry. Gosh, there's been a whole bunch of them. Like when I look at the list. It's one of those like, Yep, yeah, yep. No.

Scott Benner 6:51
Do you have any other medical issues that you thought were causing some of this stuff?

Megan 6:56
Yeah, I had really bad pregnancies with HG hyperemesis gravidarum. And they were severe. Like had a patch tube had, you know, organ failure and all that. And so when I came back from that my body hasn't worked properly and couldn't process any medications. And we didn't know that until I got scary side effects from the medications I used to take. And so I ended up with all those like really scary side effects. Hyper that you read on the side. Oh, like you're gonna take this antibiotic and it says, Hey, you don't you could end up with like nerve damage and peripheral neuropathy. tendinitis one in

Scott Benner 7:35
4 billion people think they can fly on the leg tracks Yeah,

Megan 7:38
that's me. I just made up a word or medication I take

Scott Benner 7:42
Yeah, made up a word I'm hoping isn't really a drug. Okay, I'm

Megan 7:45
probably is hyper Wyatt. hyperemesis gravidarum Whoa,

Scott Benner 7:50
whoa, whoa, I barely got through high school M S. MSS. So like throwing up I got it I got it.

Megan 7:58
So

Scott Benner 8:00
we and you have a this happened with your first pregnancy?

Megan 8:03
It didn't it got worse with each one.

Scott Benner 8:05
Do you love babies or sex or something? Why did you do it again?

Megan 8:10
They were all we wanted kids but we did not intend to have them when we

Scott Benner 8:14
did. Megan did you go to a couple of weddings happen? No,

Megan 8:19
my husband's a pastor and

Scott Benner 8:21
hold on a second we had Go ahead.

Megan 8:25
And so we had some you know, stressful times. And so we're not

Scott Benner 8:34
Oh, okay. You guys want to go on vacation or have sex? Well, we can't afford vacation everyone to the bedroom. Gotcha. Oh,

Megan 8:43
my gosh. My 12 year olds gonna listen to this and be mortified one

Scott Benner 8:46
day 12 year olds gonna be like, Oh my God, my mom is just banging all over the house there for a while until her hyper MSMS is great gravid dari I'm got it. Wow, you aren't? Well listen, mad respect. If you made three babies going through what says severe nausea vomiting weight loss possible dehydration feeling faint may also occur. It is considered more severe. The morning sickness symptoms often get better in the 20th week that that

Megan 9:12
mine did not. Like I was throwing up approximately like 30 times a day. I couldn't keep down any food or any water. I couldn't even swallow my own spit. And I lost more than 10% of my body weight in. Gosh, I want to say it was less than less than six weeks.

Scott Benner 9:32
Did you have any thyroid markers back then anything that you were aware of?

Megan 9:38
So looking back, I was mismanaged medically. And I ended up with PTSD induced medical trauma stuff from what went down in the hospital and how I was treated. I was told it was all in my head. Which really messed with me psychologically.

Unknown Speaker 9:58
I'm so sorry. That's terrible.

Megan 10:01
It is, but I'm better now we don't. We don't talk about there. Well, no, I can talk about it. Just I can't go to that medical system.

Scott Benner 10:09
Hey, did you did you see here on the Wikipedia, which I have no reason to doubt. It says other potential causes of the symptoms should be excluded, including UTIs and overactive thyroid.

Megan 10:21
Yep. So what happened afterwards is I had, I went through about one year of having the most doing blood draws multiple times a week, because my thyroid went crazy afterwards, it went super high, and then would crash and go super low, and then go super high and then crash and go super low,

Scott Benner 10:42
hyper hypo, hyper hypo bounced around. Yep, for about

Megan 10:45
a year. And I was a hot mess. But I was also hating all medical stuff. So I wasn't willing to pursue anything beyond just making sure I wasn't going to die. So they thought something was going on, and then it kind of leveled out. And by the time I got into see a specialist, they were like, I think I think we're okay. And I was like, okay, don't want to push it. If I don't have to deal with medical stuff, I'm not going to. And then once mica got diagnosed, I started, I had no choice but to be super involved in medical stuff. And now I'm much more comfortable. I listened to the thyroid series, which pushed me to talk to my doctor and pushed him to be like, like, oh, no, but your levels are fine. I know. It says you're high on this and you feel really crappy. But your levels are fine. And I'm like, but my levels are elevated compared to what they used to be. So maybe I'm just sensitive to it. And can we just treat the symptoms? And they were like, well, you can go talk to somebody else. So I'm doing that, that appointments in two weeks.

Scott Benner 11:53
Oh, what lovely, what a lovely group of doctors.

Megan 11:57
I mean, I'm, I'm a complicated case. So I'm aware that they look at my medical file and go oh,

Scott Benner 12:03
to me, though, that would make even more common sense to just say, well, you mean, why don't we just try the sense right for a couple of weeks and see what happens.

Megan 12:11
They think I might be allergic to it. So they know that I'm sensitive to hormones. Because every time of the month, my I have similar symptoms, he I get really sick, I get really tired, I get headaches, I get migraines, I get like, it's it's just a really crappy couple of days of you more so than it used to be.

Scott Benner 12:31
I'm wondering, I'm not suggesting I'm wondering, have you thought about maybe like losing your lady parts inside? Like,

Megan 12:38
um, they did. But they said no to that, because they were afraid what? What hormone therapy would do? Because, again, they're not sure if that would work or not. And if we remove it, then we're stuck having to figure it out. Instead of working with what we got. You know,

Scott Benner 12:57
Megan, you're quite a catch. Pastor Bob is very lucky. Very, very lucky. I don't know his real name. It's not important. But yeah, this the episode told him

Megan 13:06
that I was like, I hope you love me. I'm really expensive. I'm a cheap date, but I'm really expensive to be married. To have on your health insurance, now there's two of us.

Scott Benner 13:17
Oh, my gosh. Oh, I'm so sorry. It's, um, it's horrifying. I mean, a lot of what you described about the thyroid symptoms. I mean, Arden is often very cold. And and we just actually went back to managing slightly differently. It's too early for me to say whether or not it's it's having good effects or not. So I can't really say here, but we've we had added a T three supplement to her regimen. And we thought it was working really well. But then she started having this odd side effect that we attributed to the T three. Turns out it was probably the birth control pill. And so we went for months without it and then have just recently re added Saito mil which is T three. We tried. What did we try? We tried to armor the T three, I think it's that didn't know what you're talking about. Yeah, that didn't help her. So we went back to the site Omo, which we now see helped in the past, and her energy has returned. And now Now I'm waiting to see if hopefully it balances out her body temperature because she's the same thing she touches you she like, she's like, I'm so cold and she touches you and she's warmer than you are. Yep.

Megan 14:30
So that's what's been going on. And that's the thing that was most concerning to me is everything else I can attribute to other things. I mean, I'm tired. Well, I'm also getting older. I've got kids. Life is just exhausting. We just came through a pandemic, like, you know, I could just be over it.

Scott Benner 14:46
Megan, from my perspective with the experiences I've seen and had and talked about with other people, I'd say I hope that you're not going to have a weird like reaction to it. You should try it A replacement. If that replacement helps but doesn't help completely, then then get somebody to help you with the T threes, the T three side of it, too, I can't tell you that Arden Arden's energy returned in like four days on site.

Megan 15:14
I'm excited to just do something. Like I thought it was cancer for a while. So like, I'm just really grateful. It's not that. So, you know, let's just let's, let's figure this out. I just need a doctor who's willing to work with me. Yeah.

Scott Benner 15:28
Okay, so I'm

Megan 15:30
just gonna find one.

Scott Benner 15:32
Is that become problematic? Or have you been able to,

Megan 15:36
um, we live near a major metro, near in rural terms, we live an hour and a half away from major metro area. So I feel pretty confident we can find someone. It's just the process, I'd like to just find them right away, instead of having to, I would have to start with a surgeon because that's what they're having me do first. And the surgeon I've already talked with on the phone who was like, Yeah, I'm not the right person. But I will see you and we can refer you to the next person,

Scott Benner 16:07
I would try to find, although they sometimes don't take insurance, but I was gonna say more of an integrated, integrated, like situation, they're usually more willing to try things on the fly. They work through email, like there's like when ordered needs an adjustment. I don't go to an appointment, I send someone an email. And I'm like, this is happening. What do you think and the return email says, I think we should lower it to six times a week instead of seven. Go ahead and do that. Okay, that's over in five minutes, you know, because that's the thing that you would appreciate that many people wouldn't, which is the the span of time in between. First you have a problem, then the problem impacts you enough that you actually look into it, and you look into it, inevitably, someone doesn't help you, you've got to go find somebody else. Before you know it. It's nine months later, it's a year later, you're beaten down by the whole process, you're almost hostile to feeling terrible. And you start getting it in your head that no one's going to help. Right? And then that's very frustrating and off putting and makes it difficult to kind of soldier on so yeah, yeah, I say. I say that a month on T four. And you should feel much better. And if you don't, then you start looking at the T three aspect of it. And yeah, I mean, I can't tell you the again, four days of cider mill, and no more like Artem was coming home from school. And if her head went over, she'd fall asleep like she had to purposely stay sitting up after school, or because if she laid down or laid back, she just felt right asleep. And she'd sleep for four or five hours in the afternoon, then wake up and be tired. Yep. And now suddenly, everything's better, you know. So, anyway, good luck. And that, of course, 15 minutes into it. It's not why you're here. Although I would tell everybody to check out the defining thyroid series. It's helpful, right?

Megan 18:03
I feel because I have, you know, that medical anxiety that I feel better prepared to go and speak with a doctor and not take no for an answer. Because that's been my concern is the doctor says no, and I go, Oh, I really don't think so. But okay.

Scott Benner 18:19
Well, I mean, we kind of skimmed over the the point that we kind of skipped over the point that you're being treated like while you're really sick. It's a shame. That's your life. Goodbye. Let's go live with it. Right like that basically happening to you. So

Megan 18:36
yeah, I have a bald spot starting on the back of my head that hasn't been there. I have used to have really thick hair and whatnot. And all of a sudden it's really starting to fall out. And the doctor looks at me and goes, Oh, yeah, you do have a bald spot. And then like, that's a bummer.

Scott Benner 18:54
How can somebody not see that and give you a thyroid replacement hormone? It's terrible. Yeah, you know, so sorry. My God. Episode 413. thyroid disease explained is a comprehensive episode with the person who manages Ardens thyroid, so yeah, check it out. Alright, but you're here Megan, because you feel like a control IQ ninja. But then tell me tell everybody what you said

Megan 19:20
lazy ninja.

Scott Benner 19:21
Oh, lazy. Hey, that's all right. Lazy control IQ ninja. Yeah, I think that's valuable. Tell everybody what you said right before we started recording though. Arden gets her diabetes supplies from us Med and you can too. Now why would you want to do that you're probably getting your supplies from somewhere already but us med has quite the bone of P days. You know what that means? I can tell you if you want. I'll tell you at the end. For now just know this. US med is the number one distributor for FreeStyle Libre systems nationwide. They are the number one distributor for Omni pod dash. They are the number one fastest growing team am distributor. They are the place where Arden gets her on the pod supplies. They are the number one rated distributor in Dexcom customer satisfaction surveys and I haven't taken the survey but I am very satisfied with how they send art and stacks comes to us. And they've served over 1 million diabetes customers since 1996. Is that not enough, I can give you more an A plus rating with the Better Business Bureau. They accept Medicare nationwide and over 800 private insurers. US Medicare has everything from insulin pumps and diabetes testing supplies to the latest CGM like the FreeStyle Libre three and the Dexcom G six, white glove treatment is what you're going to get a US med now here's how you get started. You call 888-721-1514. Or you go to a link on the line online is another way to say that US med.com Ford slash juice box either call the number that's a special number for Juicebox Podcast listeners. That is what you are. Or you go to the link especially for us to and you get things moving. Next thing you know your stuffs just showing up. And it's easy, because that's how US med does things. They do it easy. They want you to have better service and better care. And so far that's what I found that I get from us med you can to 888-721-1514 or go to us med.com forward slash juicebox oh hell i for i promised Tiwa bone a few days means bone a few days bone fee days. It's bone the feed is bona like that with a knee bone a fee days spelled with an A sounds like a a person's honesty and sincerity of intent or documentary evidence showing a person's legitimacy or credentials. I guess maybe do you need to be a person to have bone a few days? You'd be a company couldn't you? Alright. I don't know we've gone too far down the rabbit hole. Let me get you back to my oh real quick. If you've never seen a Brother Where Art Thou the movie, there's a great scene where George Clooney his kids tell him he's not bonafide it's it's worth. It's worth your time

Megan 22:12
I said I listened to Jeremy's podcasts, the control HQ, Ninja one. And then I felt like a total imposter. I had a moment of panic long moment of panic, that, well, maybe I should cancel my thing because that was that was good. Like, that's probably better than what I could say. So I don't want to confuse anyone.

Scott Benner 22:34
Luckily, you have so little energy, you weren't able to email me.

Megan 22:37
I have anxiety. So I just didn't. Oh, interesting. So I was like, you could just say no.

Scott Benner 22:44
So your anxiety, okay. So you have that you have anxiety, generally speaking throughout your life.

Megan 22:50
No, that came from my pregnancy issues with the doctor and whatnot, that I couldn't trust myself to make decisions for myself. Because I was constantly told that I was doing it to myself, and that what I was feeling was wrong, what I was thinking was wrong, the actions I was taking were wrong, and that the doctor knew better. And I just needed to ignore myself and focus on some have somebody else make all the decisions because I couldn't be trusted. And so that really messed with my head. So like, I used to not be able to go into grocery stores because I didn't trust that I could buy the right things afterwards. Like I would have major issues and breakdowns in the store, and flashbacks and all that stuff. Because I you know, pasta was on sale, and it wasn't on my list. And I buy it and it's like, Oh, that's too much. And you know, that whole would send me spiraling and it was really humbling. Yeah, but so for that reason, it still pops its head up in some situations, but I've always been a bit of a perfectionist who likes to do everything perfectly and right. So

Scott Benner 23:59
well, I know, I've ever thought but first, let me just say this. Has it ever gotten to the point where someone actually had to help you out of a public place? Like yes, so if you heard like, there's a lady laying over top of the fresh cheese in aisle seven, please somebody go get her. Like

Megan 24:14
the pharmacist at Target got to know me really well because I had a bench

Scott Benner 24:19
company come in and have the magnets Okay, have a seat, honey, we'll get you some water about like,

Megan 24:25
you still like sit in the middle of an aisle and just be like, I'm fine. Just need to get through it.

Scott Benner 24:30
Everything's fine. Everything's not fine. Someone help. Here's what I'm gonna tell you. Don't be surprised if balancing your thyroid helps with your anxiety. That'd be great. Yeah, seriously. I don't know if I've ever said this. I probably have. It's fine. We're like 700 episodes into it. Now Megan, I don't think there's anything left to hide. Not that I was hiding anything to begin with. But my wife as people have heard was Couldn't find treatment just like you for like seven years. And and when she finally when we finally kind of badgered someone to giving her Synthroid, I told the doctor in the room, I'm like, listen, you're going to be saving her life. And he said, This is not life threatening. And I said, Oh, no, no, I'm going to kill her. I was like, that's that you're saving, I have a whole dog in the backyard already to push her into because I can't take. She is not pleasant. Like it was it was like she was very short tempered, and she'd fly off the handle about things she didn't even know she was doing. It like really starts taking that Synthroid. And everything was just ooh, she's all good. As a matter of fact, there's a lady that lives in the town I live in, who there's no way she listens to this sober, safe. She was well known as maybe one of the most unpleasant people you've ever met in your life. And we used to bump into her a lot because of something with kids. And then years went by where we didn't, and then we bumped into her again, years later, a completely different person, so much so that she was aware of it, apologized for how she may have been in the past, and then told us about how she's now medicated for her thyroid issue. So you don't sound nasty. But are you? No, no, you're not saying unreasonable.

Megan 26:24
I've worked in customer service a lot. So I have that whole thing. No, but

Scott Benner 26:28
But I mean, we can filter it to Pastor Bob, though not not to other people. My wife wasn't unpleasant to strangers, please.

Megan 26:35
No, I don't think so. I mean, I definitely have moments of being Hi strong. When I get stressed, it's amplified. More so than it used to be more so than it feels normal. So I generally try to avoid being stressed if possible. funny when people do a lot of it's avoidance. But I do I quilt when I get really stressed, I go and quilt, and that stab things, lots and lots of times at high speeds. That helps.

Scott Benner 27:09
Oh, there's a joke in there about you and your husband. We're gonna just go right past. Going back to being on the podcast to talking about control like you. When you said anxiety stopped you from like, so if you didn't have anxiety, do you think you would have canceled? No, okay, good. Excellent.

Megan 27:27
I used to be much more. I'm amazing. type personality.

Scott Benner 27:32
You? Well, let's find that. Also, do you think that people find it incredibly distasteful to joke about the sex life of a pastor? Because I think they probably

Megan 27:41
I don't know, guy, right. We're, we're people. We have children. I think for some people, it's an uncomfortable topic. Just because they like to think of their pastor one way and not as you know, he's, he's my husband. You know, that sort of thing. But people around us tend to get it. So good.

Scott Benner 28:03
Excellent. Okay, so how long is your 12 year old been on control IQ?

Megan 28:09
We got it. I actually looked back because I know I had messaged you way back in the beginning. When we first were diagnosed because I was super frustrated with our endos office. Because I just I'm a control person. I'm a data person. And I was frustrated at the pace at which they were moving was not as fast as I wanted to move. And so we got our pump pretty much right at six months. The Windows Office would not budge on that. They required six months waiting.

Scott Benner 28:41
Okay. So you've had three and a half ish years?

Megan 28:46
Yes, I believe so. Because we get a new one in. Yeah, sounds right. Three and a half years because we're right at like six months to go. Okay, so

Scott Benner 28:57
has it always been control like you or were you just using a tandem pump it were like even

Megan 29:02
it was Basal like you Okay, when we started,

Scott Benner 29:04
how long did you base like you for

Megan 29:07
until the day control IQ dropped when he got it right away that night.

Scott Benner 29:15
So that doesn't sound like a ringing endorsement for Basal IQ. So tell me just a little bit about or was it How was it?

Megan 29:22
Um, I liked Basal IQ. I, we did okay on it. We actually did correction. We did well on it. We were 5.6 ish. And so I liked it. But we were still touching the pump a lot for corrections and things mica has this. We used to have this issue because he had he went from lunch to recess to PE and how to dose for lunch because he would eat school lunch which is notoriously high carb and you know that whole trend manage that and he would go outside and running with active insulin makes him drop. But then he had like, you know, he would have one class between recess and PE and he would skyrocket during that. And then he would drop back down. Once PE started, and that was just always the bane of our existence. All throughout stuff and control IQ fix that but Basal like you did not hold on. My son is asking me if he can eat. No,

Scott Benner 30:29
he cannot eat. We're making a podcast. This is unbelievable. Tell that kid? No, just kidding. Go ahead.

Megan 30:34
Yes, Pre-Bolus.

Scott Benner 30:37
Mega, do you think we should put the ad right here? Sure. Okay, then we'll come back in

Megan 30:42
10 minutes. There we go.

Scott Benner 30:50
longtime listeners will know I haven't put ads in two different places in the years. But this just works so well. I couldn't, I couldn't say no. I'm here to tell you about the Dexcom G six. And if you're using control IQ, you already have the Dexcom. But if you're thinking about the control, like you are on the pod five, or just being able to see your blood sugars in real time, right on your iPhone or your Android device, or on your Dexcom receiver, well, then, in fact, you might want to write this down. Dex comm.com forward slash juice box, go to that link. Learn more about Dexcom find out if you're eligible for a free 10 day supply of the Dexcom G six. A lot can happen at that link in just a few short minutes. The Dexcom G six is gonna give you customizable alerts and alarms, show your glucose readings right on your smart device. And are for you a world where zero finger sticks can be your norm. It's time for you to take the next step with dexcom@dexcom.com forward slash juice box just go to the site. Scroll down a little bit, fill in a tiny bit of information and you're on your way. Everything we do with insulin at this house is predicated on the information we get back from Ardens Dexcom G six. It helps us make great decisions. It helps us to feel safe, it helps us to see Arden's blood sugar when she's not with us, you can do all of that as well dexcom.com forward slash juicebox if your glucose alerts and readings from the G six do not match symptoms or expectations use a blood glucose meter to make diabetes treatment decisions Good job pausing so I can cut it right there. That was excellent Meghan. Very well done. Yeah, no problem. I don't know if he did that on purpose but if you do, I really appreciate it. Okay, so basil like so Basal IQ helpful but not wasn't able to overcome those kind of like real intense situations at school is that right?

Megan 32:53
Yeah, and we always had an issue and we we still do but we've managed it now it's control IQ with as soon as he falls asleep he would skyrocket and so I would be constantly going in there and having to touch you know, go dig it out of his pocket and dose and then wait and then go back and dose and so I was hoping control IQ would really help with that. You know, it did a really good job of getting rid of pretty much the lows but we were having some serious issues with the highs and it's not that we weren't doing well it's that we were just touching the pump more than we wanted to

Scott Benner 33:32
Yeah, you know it's funny you just said something but it's never occurred to me once you said I digging it out of his pocket so when you have a to pump you have to sleep with it on your person. Yeah. Oh, I never considered that once it's not funny. Yeah, yeah, that

Megan 33:48
it's fun because before bed I memorize what pocket it's in that way when I go in there I know what side he needs to be on so I can get it out.

Scott Benner 33:57
You think you could go out into public and steal people's wallets with any kind of like certainty or you're not that slick? Probably like 75%

I think we should try I really think you should go out and report back it's got to be in their

Megan 34:11
front pocket though in a jersey type shorts or pants

Scott Benner 34:14
when they just got to be pretty specific mega we don't want you reaching down in people's front pockets out in public but when you when you get arrested just tell people my thyroid is very unbalanced. This is not my fault.

Megan 34:25
I thought it was an insulin pump.

Scott Benner 34:26
They made me call a surgeon first or I might have the medicine by now. A surgeon by the way. What Yeah, I don't want to go backwards but that's Miss Oh my God Who told you to go to a surgeon for art once the doctor

Megan 34:39
just thought maybe I just want it removed. Maybe because it's right on that border of size. And I'm like yeah, but I think it's gonna go down if we manage it.

Scott Benner 34:50
Very well good. Is it coming up the goiters you're not getting a goiter right. This is I have 120 You have a goiter edit enlarged thyroid. Yep. Megan you are painting a sexy picture. Okay. Okay, so back to this. So you switch to control IQ about how long ago just roughly

Megan 35:10
whenever control IQ drops, so that had to have been at least

Scott Benner 35:14
two years. It was about two years now. Okay,

Megan 35:18
I think so that feels about, right. It dropped the for the pandemic, to talk about, oh, it's gotta be. It's been two years.

Scott Benner 35:28
Has COVID been going on so long? We're measuring stuff by it.

Megan 35:31
Yeah, that's kind of how we do it. Because I have no sense of time. For that.

Scott Benner 35:36
I have. I'll tell you the one thing you know how they talk about long COVID, where some people lose their, like, smell forever, or something like that. Here's something I've lost from COVID Being clear that I've never actually had COVID. But from the experience of COVID I never know what fucking day it is, ever. I never ever ever know what day it is. And I blame, I blame the lockdown. I really do. Like, I don't even know if it matters. Now. I'm not even sure if I should be upset by it. I just don't

Megan 36:04
care. I just wish everyone looks so much older. I'm like, How long ago was was that? Three years ago? No, it was just like last year. Right?

Scott Benner 36:14
Okay. Oh, that's interesting. Okay. All right. So I'd like to ask you about when you switch from basically Basal IQ, which was just shutting off your Basal if it thought he was gonna get low, right? To control IQ, which is an algorithm and you know, for everybody listening, control IQ, do it yourself loop. Android, APS is another do it yourself, right? On the pod five. The thing that Medtronic is gonna come out with Next, all that stuff. They're all algorithms, but they're not the same algorithm. They're all proprietary in one way or another. I mean, do it yourself not proprietary, but you don't I mean, they're different programs, they work different ways. They accomplish things differently. If you're saying to yourself, I don't understand why that is, you probably don't understand patent law. Or why TiVo has a 32nd, Skip, but your DVR from other companies can't have it. It's because TiVo patented it before your other company thought about it. So you know, like theirs. They can't just copy it, it's got to be this is my guess it has to be slightly different somehow. So all this stuff? Yeah. And trust me, I don't know, I could have made that all up. But what I'm saying is that none of them are exactly the same. So you switch to control like you, what's the first hurdle going into an algorithm for you?

Megan 37:30
Um, it was, at least, gosh, I want to say six months before we started working with the algorithm. I was still trying to manage the way that I always did. And just hand over stuff to the pump instead. But then, we started getting crazy lows, because I wasn't working with the algorithm. So what was happening was the algorithm would do at 60% dose dosage correction thing, because it saw him starting to go high. And then I would go in and be like, super aggressive and be like, hit it. This is it's always a unit, not knowing that it had done the 60% like 10 minutes earlier, because my son's at school. So we're texting and whatnot. And I started to get really frustrated. Because our text conversations, instead of me just going manually, dose one unit, you know, basically override in the pump that you're just going to do a one unit, because I know that's what it needs. Instead, I was having to go when was the last time the pump, you know, do you have insulin on board? Okay, what's it doing? What's the you know, and having to go back and forth on that and really interrupt his day was bothering me. Yeah. But control IQ wasn't being aggressive enough. In my opinion at that time, so we ended up going to sleep mode 24/7 Which basically made it so I could still do all the high corrections, but it could, you know, everything was a little bit easier. But then we ran into problems when we would do. Mike is really sensitive to exercise. So on days where he's really active, he needs drastically less insulin all across the board. On days where he isn't really active, he needs a lot more insulin all across the board. I'm talking about Basal swings from 10 to 17. So it matters for a long time afterwards. We tried exercise mode that was a hot mess. And we just kind of wrote it all off and just dealt with the fact that control IQ wasn't everything we wanted and sorted the look into loop. And then I listened to Fox in the loop house and he was talking about Would ISF changes throughout the day, instead of basil changes? And how it's not the basil that's changing, it was how you react with that insulin, you know, now the insulin is doing this much more instead of this and thinking about it that way. So I immediately scrapped all the settings and started over trying to see if managing it through ISF would work. And that got us dramatically better results. But we were still in sleep mode 24/7. And then he was gonna go to diabetes camp, and they're like, he can't be in sleep mode. Like, well, shoot.

Scott Benner 40:42
Well. Okay. So first of all, I don't understand why they care how you're achieving your success. And secondly, how did it feel when you heard Jeremy say, like sleep mode all the time? I don't do that for you like,

Megan 40:55
Well, I agree with that now, but back then I would have been highly offended. I was one of the people on posts where people are like, what do you do? And I'm like, sleep mode 24/7. The way to do it, it's the only way the algorithm works. And people would comment below me and be like, you just don't understand the algorithm. And I was like, this woman doesn't know what she's talking about. Turns out who didn't know, clearly you don't understand?

Scott Benner 41:18
Hey, you know, what's interesting is that you are going to hear this in the, on this podcast for years to come. Settings, it's all settings, its settings, whether you're doing it manually, whether you're doing it with needles, or whether you're doing it with one of these algorithms, if your settings are wrong, it's just not going to work. Well, you know? Yeah. But and so settings is the

Megan 41:42
Yeah, it's a lot easier. Now, I'm a big data person. So I, I have Excel spreadsheets, I plotted everything, I tracked everything. I've done that since the very beginning, trying to find patterns trying to find this and it was such a mental burden. But at the same time, it's it's something I do like it's my personality. So it's not as big of a burden as some people would think it is. But because I needed to figure out control IQ, the regular way for camp, to not have to go through all this whole thing. I just we sat down. And we've just dedicated ourselves to figuring it out. We had a higher a one C in it was like 5.9 While we were figuring it out. But since then it's dropped back down. And I will probably not go back to sleep 24/7 ever again. Because this is so much nicer. We touched the pump so much less there are days where all we do is Bolus for food. You know, when something does go wrong, we know how to work with the algorithm instead of against it. It feels much more like the pump is helping. Instead of just being that annoying little kid like I'm helping. Don't know you're not stop it. I can as long as it's a steady rise going up, I know that I my high alarms are set for 160. Because I know that the pump can handle anything under that, you know, our settings are good enough that it adjusts. And on days where it's off. I know why it's off and we do a full settings change. And I know what it needs to go to generally, like yesterday, yesterday. Just yesterday. Yeah. We were having issues where all the sudden he was going into the three hundreds just guy rocketing after everything. And it was like, Okay. Obviously, the settings that were nailed in, you know, two days ago, are no longer. Right. And so we went back to another one that, you know, we don't make those really small changes that Jeremy does. I will least change by point five each time. Because Mike is so sensitive. I know that that's what we need. We went from 15 units of basil to 17.6. And you know, carb ratios went from nine to 5.5. Because I know that's what it needed. And today we have a nice, a nice line, assuming you know has been a little bar he just decided to eat doesn't mess it up. But we've been in range since we made those settings changes last night.

Scott Benner 44:34
That's all ballsy moves. That's really well done. Good for you. That's excellent. I just had we just switched port art and spent on like 33 Different kinds of birth control pills in a year and a half. But she just went back to one that we thought was working and it's not important anyway, there's a switch that was made. And about six days ago she started having a Lowe's and I moved her basil by point one and her in some sensitivity by by one number. So I made her I took her insulin sensitivity, maybe it was two, maybe I moved it from like 41 to 43. And her Basal from 1.2 to 1.1. During the day, it worked great for three days, and then zoom, it came back around, and suddenly I couldn't get her blood sugar below 190. And then all I did was put the point one back in the Basal and move the insulin sensitivity back to 41, or blood sugar went right back. It's crazy how like, how how, because that's not something people would think of, I think that most people hear that and go 1.2 to 1.1 That's meaningless, or 41 to 43 these seem like small adjustments, but they're just, they're just so important. You know, it's and I listened to I don't adjust things as frequently as Jeremy does, either. He's He's incredibly good at it. And you know, I mean, it's amazing. I'm gonna have him back on again to talk about it more. But I mean, it's, it's more, you use the phrase earlier, like touching the pump. That's more that's more touching the pump that I'm I might be able to do, I guess,

Megan 46:10
see, we make those changes when he's in the shower. So like when the pump is charging. So technically, it doesn't count as touching the pump to me because he's not there. To him. It's not in his Yeah. And we used to have to make settings changes multiple times a week, I was constantly chasing his insulin sensitivity. I didn't know it at the time, but that's what I was doing. And so we heavily rely on exercise mode. Exercise mode is kind of our What is it ace in the hole or pocket or whatever, whatever, it's our ace up the sleeve. There we go. It is it is one of the things we probably that has changed us the most is using exercise mode. I'm not sure we fully use it as intended, but it works for us. I know you're supposed to do it when you know hours ahead of time, which the only time we do that is he has double PE on Mondays where he has two peas right in a row. So it's always at the same time I know it, he knows it. So when he leaves for school in the morning, we switch to exercise mode. So that way, he doesn't have to eat as much. Because his insulin sensitivity, he goes from super sensitive, or no super resistant in the morning. And then somewhere around 10 3011 o'clock, he becomes super sensitive to insulin. Like he's been up and moving around for the day, he's hydrated, he's moving around. And all of a sudden, around that time, a couple hours after he wakes up, he becomes really insulin sensitive. And so the problem we were having is, how do you dose him in the morning when he's resistant, and not skyrocket the blood sugar but not crash a couple hours later, when he's now sensitive. And now that little bit of tail end of insulin that's left is now going to go further. And that insulin sensitivity catches it. So we'll go from 60 insulin sensitivity and I think at like 1030 or 11, I have like 130 to account for. If he's going low, it's going to catch it. But we generally don't have a problem with high so I'm not going to worry about it trying to correct anything right then in there. And then it drops back down into the 90s in the afternoon. And kind of stays there until bedtime when we drop it again. Because the the problem we have is using the sensitivity is what we're able to do is account for times when he's going to go low. So it catches it. Yeah, but also not be so aggressive. Because if we increase the basil, he's gonna go low when he doesn't need it, because he doesn't always need that much basil, but if we tell the algorithm, sometimes he's going to go low. And here's what it's going to take to catch it. But otherwise, this Basal is on point that then works then it works. We don't have to do a bunch of Basal rates we just have a bunch of insulin sensitivity is telling it Okay, right now it's gonna go further right now it's not going to right now it is right now it's not

Scott Benner 49:31
change the algorithms understanding of the impacts of the insulin.

Megan 49:35
Yeah. And so you know, there's some bad times where he will go crazy high and somewhere he won't Well, that's fine. We'll just have the Basal where it needs to be when he's fine. And then drop that insulin sensitivity or raise it, tighten it there we go to like 45. So that way we know if he's starting to rise. We've got to hit it hard. So we're telling it if you see that rise, you need to adjust it really hard at that point. Yeah. But otherwise, if he's fine, it's not really caring what that insulin sensitivity is doing. If you have a good blood sugar,

Scott Benner 50:10
I see what you're saying I use insulin sensitivity stop Arden from getting low overnight, because some, sometimes she'll try to get a little low around three, four o'clock in the morning. So in a while, and she has a less aggressive insulin sensitivity at that time of night that takes care of it.

Megan 50:29
Yep. So we've managed a lot through that. It's excellent.

Scott Benner 50:33
It really is. I can't tell you how exciting it is to hear someone just talking about this stuff on this level. And I'm wondering how you got to it, like, what is it? Like? What was what was it about your journey that led you to understanding this? Where did you get information from?

Megan 50:52
I have always felt that there is something like I always felt there was this like something that I was just always missing. And so that has led me I like to understand all aspects and all facets of a problem. So I started listening to Juicebox Podcast, the day of diagnosis, it was somehow in our welcome packet. And that was before the Pro Tip series. So I remember listening to it, and it'd be a completely foreign language. And just like I just got to push through. And just we'll figure it out as we go. And then ordered things like a pancreas and sugar surfing. And I think I started off with a good level of information, our endos office for as frustrated as I was with them, and the beginning, did a really good job of setting us up for success, I now understand that their job is to make sure that nobody dies, and that everyone feels supported. And then those early days you are going through it with such a large group of people in some of these larger practices that they've got to teach to the common denominator, and they can't, they can't allow me to do certain things without putting somebody else in that same class at risk. You know, because that person just isn't at a place for that.

Scott Benner 52:17
Do you feel like? Do you think that you can feel that way? Because you dug yourself out of a hole? Like what if you were still down in the hole? Wouldn't you think differently about how they managed, you

Megan 52:29
know, because they were, they were still presenting good information, just not as fast as I wanted it. And I remember other people in our class struggling with some of the same concepts where it was like, got it done. Next thing, like I had that a week ago. And you know, I know why they needed to go slower. I was just really frustrated. It took a lot of convincing me on their part, like I would call them when you when you're supposed to call and they'll give you your numbers, like you read your blood sugar numbers, and then they tell you what changes to make. I use that time as practice. And so I would come up with I think all the changes that need to be made. And then I will call on the numbers and say before you say anything, here's what I think. And here's why. What do you think, you know, and they will be like, Yeah, that sounds good.

Scott Benner 53:21
See, I may I say something? Not that, obviously, just a side note for a second. I see that as a slight negotiation. And I think that sometimes not your specific situation. But I used to do that I used to give my opinion before getting the other person's opinion. And then I started realizing that my opinion was impacting their opinion. I don't know. Anyway, that doesn't sound like it happened there for you. But I'm just always careful about that, like you can you can involve somebody in a thing and then put them in your mindset and then you don't get the benefit of what they were going to say. Had you not spoken first anyway.

Megan 53:58
Well, we had let them talk first. But what was happening, this is when I would say okay, but here's what they were like, oh, yeah, that's because you heard what I said. Like, you clearly still need our opinion, because that's where this is coming from. And so it was the Can we can I just tell you how I came up with my numbers, right? And why? And then we can have a discussion as to where the flaws are in my thinking why you think, you know, this number that you came up with is better, you know, helped me understand. And they were very willing to do that.

Scott Benner 54:31
Just generally what part of the country you're in.

Megan 54:33
Yeah, I'm we attend in Omaha. So we're in really rural Western Iowa.

Scott Benner 54:40
And you and there was something in your welcome packet about the podcast.

Megan 54:44
Yeah, we got like a JDRF. Like the blue backpack thing and somebody else had put other stuff in there, like some local parent or whatever. And there was a list of resources and think like a pancreas was on there. Juicebox Podcast was on there. And there were a couple others have Like just things you might be interested in, my husband is visually impaired. And so he stayed with my son in the hospital in Omaha, and I was the one who was driving back and forth and back and forth, and back and forth, you know, to take care of our kids. And then when they would go to school, I would drive to Omaha for education, and then stay there all day and then come back. And so during those drives, I was listening to Juicebox Podcast.

Scott Benner 55:27
Wow, that's very cool. You know, I'm unaware of what you know. But it's not like somebody calls me and says, Hey, we're gonna put your name on a thing, like, so I don't know if that's very cool.

Megan 55:37
Well, and I'm not sure how many people actually I'm one of those people that reads everything. I don't know how many people have actually read that known that that was there. But it was one of those. No, I'll take whatever help I can get. I am out of my element here.

Scott Benner 55:52
Good for you. Yeah. I mean, it's obvious that your, your, you know, how do I want to say this? After I speak to somebody privately, I can usually tell if they're going to be okay. And most of the time, it's more about their desire to be okay. And to meet things head on, I guess. And to do whatever work is coming their way than it is about anything else. Like, like, I think I really do have a very childish expectation that you get what you expect most of the time. So

Megan 56:25
Well, I remember in the very beginning, our Endo, the first indication they had that we were different. was we got in trouble for poking too much. Finger poking because we didn't have the Dexcom. At first, we were having issues with our insurance covering it, and it was a whole thing. And so we weren't on Dexcom. But you know, Miko was going to school. And I was like, Okay, well, he needs to poke when he you know, before breakfast, like half an hour after breakfast. So I can see what's happening. Is it? Is it going low? Is it going high? Did we miss and then before PE after PE before lunch by like a little bit so that way I can see if we need to Pre-Bolus or not. And then actually before, right after lunch before he goes out to play when he comes back when he and I like that's a lot. And I was like, but I need in order to manage properly. That's the information that I need. And that's why we want the Dexcom. And then I got the Dexcom. And that was overwhelming at first. Interesting because it was almost too much information.

Scott Benner 57:31
I got what she asked for. Hmm, yeah.

Megan 57:34
But that was a game changer was having all that information,

Scott Benner 57:38
we we would test 1110 1112 13 times a day when ordered. And I learned later after seeing Dexcom I actually did this with an adult through the Facebook group. She didn't have a CGM, yet she was trying to keep up with what we were talking about. So she made a plot and just kept test testing herself. You know, I'm making dots in front of me now testing yourself testing yourself testing yourself. And then she'd come by later and then connect the dots. And it would within reason give her a Dexcom graph. Not a great one, obviously. But it gave her the the better idea by just by connecting the dots.

Megan 58:17
We used to Well, we still do, we use tide pool. And so we would upload our pump, not our pump data. Our CGM, not CGM meter, there we go gonna get the right word, our meters into there from the school and from home in order to get the graph and whatnot. Before we had Dexcom. And actually, we still do it now because you can overlay the Dexcom with the finger graphs. And so it kind of when we have compression issues or like we have bad, a bad sensor that just calibration and won't hold and whatnot, we can still see what the numbers were actually doing overlaid on the Dexcom graph.

Scott Benner 58:57
Great at it when you talked about a meter. Were you talking about the contour meter available? No. Okay, that's what we got sent home with. Oh, you did? In fact, get sent home with the Contour Next One blood glucose meter?

Megan 59:08
Yes, we did. And I really liked it. And then they came back and said, Oh, whoops, your insurance doesn't cover that. You gotta go with this other one. And we are on a high deductible plan. Yeah. So we make it work with what we got. Gotcha.

Scott Benner 59:23
Well, I'll say that that sucks. But I do wish that you were able to go to contour next one.com forward slash juice box. And

Megan 59:33
actually, the thing that I loved the most about it was the size. Yeah, it was much, much smaller and the ability to do to try again,

Scott Benner 59:43
the second chance test trips. Yes, yeah.

Megan 59:46
Yes. That was a huge adjustment. Not to have and it still is super frustrating at times when you have to throw a strip away because you get an error for not enough blood.

Scott Benner 59:59
I'm really sorry that that was your experience, because it's possible that the test strips could cost less than cash than they do through your insurance for other meters.

Megan 1:00:08
Yeah, but because we're high deductible, we need everything to go through, because we hit that deductible every year. So for us, it makes more sense. And that was one area where I differ from Jeremy. I don't care about the numbers being super accurate, as much as the trends. That's one thing that makes us really lazy. If it's close enough, it's close enough. And we just,

Scott Benner 1:00:32
it's working with what you're saying is whether a blood sugar's really 110 or 115 or 120. You don't care if it's I don't care. Yeah, it's right. It's I'll tell you. That was a thing. So it's weird because there's, you know, there's before and after, right, there's before CGM, and after CGM, in my mind managing insulin. And before CGM, I had to give over to that idea. Like, one day I was just like, it can't matter. If he can't matter if she's really 80 or 90. It can't, it can't matter if she's 150 or 140. I just have to treat 80 and 90, and 70 and 100 as good and 140 and 150. And one ad is not good. And 200 to 10 is bad, like, you know, or whatever. However, I was thinking about it like simply in my head right? And move things in the direction that that indicated to me because because meters were not as good, but I'm joking aside. That Contour Next One meter is legit accurate, and the meters that I've had prior were not. And so I didn't know what was going on. And there was no CGM, and no, God knows, like, you didn't really know what your blood sugar was. I had that thought. Day four in the hospital when they brought out this. You know, this big thing that has starred in is blood sugar with and I said, are we getting one of those? And the nurse laughed and she goes, No, this thing's like $10,000 You're getting this. And she handed me that old like Gumdrop looking freestyle light meter or whatever it was, I forget exactly. So she tests Arden's blood sugar with the $10,000 meter, I test Arden's blood sugar with the freestyle meter. The tests are like 60 points different and I go, Well, how am I supposed to make a decision? She goes, just use that one. And I'm like, You just told me this one's accurate. And it's 60 points lower. And she was like, Yeah, I mean, this is the one you're getting.

Megan 1:02:27
Yeah. Okay. Yeah. So we kind of just roll with it. It's kind of a general, is he going higher? Is he lower? What are we working with and just making sure that the algorithm is taking care of it. And if it's not, we usually tweak ISF before we tweak basil. I'm not too worried if Basil is on point, more so than ISF. And every so often, I'll upload our information into T connect, and I look at the logbook report, which gives you the average basil delivered per hour. And I have an Excel spreadsheet, I input all those numbers, I average it out to kind of what it works out to be and that's my new Basal give or take how I feel.

Scott Benner 1:03:10
Wouldn't it be crazy if you started taking thyroid medication, your anxiety went away and you weren't able to pay as close attention to blood sugars.

Megan 1:03:18
I actually, um, I'm pretty chill when it comes to blood sugar really now, comparatively, having control IQ nailed down, there'll be whole days where I'll go, oh, shoot, I never looked. Is he like, Is my phone okay? Like, did did I miss something? And it's like, oh, no, no, we were good. And we've had a lot more days like that than not. Especially we were having issues with the cannula. And we switched over to the true steel sites. And that has been world's better. I'm excited to see what our a one C does, because we're not dealing with failed sites anymore. Because we were getting multiple field sites a week. And we'd catch them. And we were able to hit them hard and you know, manage it really well because of the pump. But it was still higher blood sugars than we would have liked.

Scott Benner 1:04:07
Yeah. Wow. That's really I mean, I'm generally Jen, Jesus. Oh my god, Megan, I gotta record twice today. And I gotta go get a COVID test for my pre op for my knee surgery. I'm sorry, I'm starting to feel the pressure. I can't find the words I'm looking for. But I am genuinely excited about the success you're having. It's really it's really, I mean, just It's heartwarming to hear how well you've done with all this, you know, especially while you're dealing with other stuff personally, that you're still you're still able to get to all this. What do you think the um, I don't usually ask questions like this, but I'm going to what do you think the secret is to getting through all this and kind of coming out the other side?

Megan 1:04:49
Knowing what's good enough. I was convinced the entire time for well, the long time that if I just got the numbers perfect. If I just figured out, you know, I got the data just right that everything would be okay. And it turns out just knowing the numbers isn't enough, you know, a lot of it is just guessing. And going with instinct, what feels like a good number, what doesn't, you know, the numbers will get you close. But you know, your, your kid or yourself best? You know, there are days when it's 120 at night, and you know, I'd like it lower, but like, I haven't slept in a few days. And you know, what, when 20 is good enough, I'm just, I'm just gonna leave it, it's fine. Sleep is important, you know, or he's in a test, it's okay. If he runs a little bit higher for the test, you know, he'd rather just not be interrupted. And that's, that's fine. You know, taking a longer term approach to every day isn't a test. But, you know, I look at when Jeremy was talking to him, I went looked at those same reports, we had the exact same results he was. And I was like, Okay, I guess what we're doing is work. And

Scott Benner 1:06:09
we'll see that's the other part of it is that you have to find what works for you. You know, and listen, your situation could change. I mean, your kids 12. Which are the hormones here yet? Yeah, right. How long did that start?

Megan 1:06:24
Couple months ago?

Scott Benner 1:06:25
Did things change when that happened? Yes.

Megan 1:06:30
Drastically are Ioss. tightened. We used to be like one to 10 for breakfast. We are now one to 5.5. And still, that's on days where he's active.

Scott Benner 1:06:44
So your car? Your Car? ratioed.

Megan 1:06:47
Yep. And we will basil used to be pretty steady around 10. And when he would exercise and whatnot, it would drop down. And we're now at 1718 with corrections. Still and whatnot. What's the way 8590? I don't know. He's growing like a weed and eating everything. Well, I don't know anymore.

Scott Benner 1:07:11
Interesting. What's his basil right now?

Megan 1:07:14
Seven teen, I think it's 18. Right now, for today. And it's still it's probably increasing it. So I'll have to look at it.

Scott Benner 1:07:23
Yeah, at the general theoretical point one per 10 pounds. That that at 80 pounds brings you like 19 ish pounds. Like, like 19 1819. Us. But before? How so? Just six months ago, you were getting away with 10 units of basil a day. versus 18. Now? Yep, yeah, and 10 divided by 24 is point four an hour. And now you are you more like point eight an hour. Now? Where are you? Um,

Megan 1:07:55
we are at this is gonna sound weird. We're at point six, five, okay, for most of the day, because he has PE and he does spontaneous play and all that other stuff that that is our conservative number and then our ISF will adjust it as needed. So that's kind of the midpoint between days when he's really active and days when he's not.

Scott Benner 1:08:16
So you have you have a lower Basal but a more aggressive insulin sensitivity factor?

Megan 1:08:21
Um, generally, yes. And then we kind of fudge it around. But point six five cents to be where he is he'll go sometimes. His evening Basil is 1.20 That's just overnight.

Scott Benner 1:08:39
Wow. So the insulin sensitivity then get weaker overnight.

Megan 1:08:46
It is at 45 Around eight and then at 10 it drops or raises whatever 270 And then at one o'clock it goes to 130 Well to account for any that is I'm pretty sure because we're really aggressive and that other part of night that basically that's to catch it in case we were too aggressive. And then he has we doesn't really have much Dawn phenomenon but he does have feet on the floor. I can see on his grasp the exact moment he woke up and got out

Scott Benner 1:09:25
of bed here. You described it earlier without actually calling it that. Yep.

Megan 1:09:31
So it'll it'll just rise like crazy.

Scott Benner 1:09:34
Do you think it would be cool if I call this episode lazy control IQ ninja? That's fine. I don't by the way, I did lazy I just think you found what works for you.

Megan 1:09:44
Yeah, I did want to touch on exercise mode because I mentioned it before how we use it. Besides PE we also use it Mike have on days when he's active will stay sensitive for hours later. So we keep it Going during that time to prevent those lows that happen, you know, four or five hours later after, you know swimming or after running or whatever, you know those lows that come later, we'll leave exercise mode on that. And then our endo had a great suggestion that we have started using, which is on days worth the he just goes low for no reason, you know, we just we can't seem to get him up, we will switch it to exercise mode while we figure it out. And that has saved us so many times from having to do full setting changes and whatever, we just have that one random day where they're just low, or their pancreas seems to be working. Exercise mode fixes that for us. Nice, you know, not treating it as exercise mode, but going like, no, what's 140 What you the algorithm thinks is 140 is actually 110. For us, in reality, for however his body is reacting to this insulin. So it's not that it's targeting more, it's just that we're telling it Hey, back off. And using it as a way to do that, instead of actually thinking of it as exercise.

Scott Benner 1:11:11
Yeah, interesting. I mean, there's, I kind of think of it as impacts, right, like so the exercise the exercise has an impact for him that you know, results in lower blood sugar. So if, if the impact is lower blood sugars, but it's not from exercise, who cares? You know, if the settings on the pump help from exercise, they very well may help for other reasons why blood sugar's would fall, even though they're unknown to you at the moment. Yep, that's great. I mean, calling it exercise mode is reasonable, but I mean, they could call it like, Hey, you're gonna get low mode, and

Megan 1:11:44
we treat it as a low Temp Basal mode, like a reduced Temp Basal mode is what we treat it as

Scott Benner 1:11:51
smart. That's great. Is there anything we haven't talked about that we should have?

Megan 1:11:55
Um, I don't think so. That was pretty much it.

Scott Benner 1:12:01
Do you still feel nervous about this? Are you okay with what you

Megan 1:12:03
know? I'm an extrovert. I feel comfortable once I start talking.

Scott Benner 1:12:07
I know that you were hard to shut off a couple of times. Yeah, sorry. It's okay. I'm very happy when people are excited to talk. That's excellent. I just want to make sure we don't miss anything. And I don't want to like I noticed this a little shorter of an episode that maybe you were expecting, but I literally have to get in the shower, get out of the shower and record again. No, you're fine. Yeah. Now everyone knows I'm showering in the middle of the day, although they didn't know it was the middle of the day till I just said it. So now. Now I feel silly for mentioning any of this. I want to just say one more time. I'm incredibly impressed with what you've figured out. And so many people that have come that come on here figured out I'm really grateful that you come on here and share it with other people as well. I do think these are the conversations that will lead to others finding their what works. And I think that's what's most important. Not that there's rules and we have to follow them. And if you don't follow them, then you're not going to succeed. I think there's a way for everyone to get the help they're looking for. Oh,

Megan 1:13:06
real quick, go ahead. The other difference between Jeremy and the way we manage is we do Pre-Bolus? Yeah, we have to with the way we manage, because for us, we have it set up so that way, you know even if it suspends when we're in that Pre-Bolus I know that it's going it increases the Basal on as soon as he starts to rise again. So it increases to cover that next bit. So we're not concerned with that with the way that our numbers are input in there. Okay, all right. Yeah, that makes sense. So it suspends a bit but then as it starts to see that rise, it adds that insulin back in.

Scott Benner 1:13:42
I was incredibly impressed when he said that because I don't know how to I don't know how to manage food without Pre-Bolus thing. So I

Megan 1:13:48
mean, there are times we don't, you know, sometimes we'll treat a dropping blood sugar as Pre-Bolus Or we'll add some extra because I know he's gonna want to eat right away. Yeah, well, that's my son's preference,

Scott Benner 1:13:59
word or pizza or stuff like that. I don't care if you Pre-Bolus Before you start eating. I don't even think about it's funny. I don't think so much about Pre-Bolus thing. Here's a deeper look into my mind. I don't think so much about Pre-Bolus thing about its connection to when you start eating I think about it as with the connection to when the food starts impact. Yep.

Megan 1:14:19
Yeah, so we do cereal once a week. His current kick is Reese's puffs. You know, it's been lucky charms or whatever. And that definitely needs that needs a 25 minute Pre-Bolus

Scott Benner 1:14:32
You know, you almost have to be falling when he starts to eat

Megan 1:14:35
it. Yeah, sometimes if he's falling too quickly, we will have him take up he eats a banana, too. You know, we do all the foods that are scary in the morning. He eats chocolate chip Eggo waffles and bananas and regular yogurt. You live

Scott Benner 1:14:50
in Iowa. You're nowhere near an ocean. You don't know how to live. I mean, you're landlocked. What

Megan 1:14:55
do you want? 28 pre diagnosis. We just decided we'd sit down and figure it out.

Scott Benner 1:14:58
I understand. Have you ever had a good piece of fish or you wouldn't even know. Right?

Megan 1:15:02
I grew up in Southern California. Yes. Okay.

Scott Benner 1:15:06
How do you make it to Iowa from Southern you follow that boy there?

Megan 1:15:09
Yeah, I did. I love them.

Scott Benner 1:15:12
I can tell. All right, well, I really appreciate you doing this. Thank you so much.

First, let's thank Megan for coming on the show being so honest and sharing her lazy ninja perspective with us. And of course, we want to thank Dexcom, makers of the Dexcom G six and remind you to go to dexcom.com forward slash Juicebox Podcast of course was also sponsored today by us med head to us med.com Ford slash juice box or call 888-721-1514. And don't forget to go to T one D exchange.org. Forward slash juice box and take that survey. I'd like to thank you for listening today. And if you hold on one second, I'll give you the the episode number of the control IQ ninja episode which people uniformly seem to love. Episode 662 titled control IQ ninja. Jeremy is a tandem control IQ Ninja is the description. Jeremy is the father of a boy who has type one diabetes. And I was incredibly impressed with his knowledge of control IQ. It's well worth your time. That's pretty much it. Check out the Facebook group Juicebox Podcast type one diabetes. I'm on Instagram if you care. holidays are coming up. I appreciate that you continue to listen and download the show. I hope you have a happy holiday. A merry whatever. Happy this and that. Whatever you do you know what I mean? I will be back soon. And by soon I mean tomorrow with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast. There's no holiday here, baby. We make a podcast here. All right. Every day one's supposed to come one comes quality, quality, quality, non stop. Doesn't stop doesn't stop. Here it comes again. I'm feverish a little bit from the illness. So let me just apologize and bow out of this