Scott Benner 4/2/23 Scott Benner 4/2/23

#880 Type 2 Diabetes Pro Tip: Diabetes Technology

A series for people with pre and Type 2 diabetes.

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

00:00:20 Technology can help manage diabetes.
00:07:03 Understanding glucose monitoring for diabetes.
00:12:18 Continuous glucose monitor provides valuable information.
00:17:23 Use technology to improve diabetes management.
00:23:35 Understanding glucose monitoring is crucial.
00:29:00 Be your own advocate.
00:34:07 Advocate for your healthcare coverage.
00:41:40 Diabetes requires ongoing management.
00:47:43 Perceptions of diabetes and insulin.
00:54:17 Know your blood sugar's impact.
00:54:57 Support podcast by supporting sponsors.

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends and welcome to episode 880 of the Juicebox Podcast

well just like that we're up to our sixth installment of the type two Pro Tip series today Jenny Smith and I are going to be speaking about technology, diabetes technology and how I N Jenny believe it will help you immensely with pre diabetes and type two. Please remember today while you're listening, 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. Couple quick things cozy earth.com use the offer code juice box at checkout to save 35% on everything, clothing, bedding towels 35% off cozy earth.com with the offer code juicebox. Speaking of saving money, if you're looking for therapy at better help.com You will save 10% off your first month of therapy by using my link better help.com forward slash juicebox. And of course if you have type one diabetes and are a US resident go take the survey AT T one D exchange.org. Forward slash juicebox.

This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by Dexcom. Now Dexcom makes a G six and G seven sensor. They're both terrific. Check them out@dexcom.com forward slash juice box continuous glucose monitoring that's being able to see your blood sugar like right on your phone or our receiver the the direction it's moving in the number it is and how fast it's moving. Very very important information we're going to talk about it actually in this episode. Not to be confused with CGM BGM blood glucose monitor when you you know, check with a blood drop on your finger. If that's what you're looking for, you want easy to use an accurate you want the contour next gen blood glucose meter contour next.com forward slash juicebox links in the show notes to Dexcom cozy Earth BetterHelp contour all the sponsors, and those links also exist at juicebox podcast.com.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 2:34
Because when that turning it off, I'm just turning the sound down because I've been Today's my birthday. So I've been getting texts all day.

Unknown Speaker 2:42
Happy birthday. Why do I not know that?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 2:45
I don't know.

Scott Benner 2:46
It's three days after my son's really cold just turned 23 I'm assuming you're 25. So

Jennifer Smith, CDE 2:54
my stay at age always, I think would be 37. If I had to pick an age, it would be 37.

Scott Benner 3:01
Do you know the about the number 37?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 3:04
No. What about it

Scott Benner 3:05
when asked to randomly choose a number between one and 137 is the number most often chosen? That's absolutely true. Wow. Hmm. So it would be my favorite age. Anyway, I love that thing. I love that. That. I don't know what yeah. Oh, even it's just so interesting. That's it. Yeah, I

Unknown Speaker 3:27
like little factoids. Oh,

Scott Benner 3:28
happy birthday. We're recording so everyone you're getting Jenny on her birthday. She's gonna be all jacked up from whatever granola cake she's gonna have.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 3:38
I don't know. I asked my husband if he was going to bake me a cake. And he's like, was I suppose

Scott Benner 3:44
that is not written on my list.

Unknown Speaker 3:48
On my to do list for her birthday. Did you request this? I'm like, No, I

Scott Benner 3:52
didn't my Christmas time Kelly said something. Like, did you send a link? I said, if you didn't send a link, I don't see how this is gonna happen. Like I write, I want to be a person who it's a weird time, isn't it, Jenny? Well, you just you don't go shopping the same way anymore? No, you know, not really used to wander around like this looks nice. I bet you they'd like this, you know. And so anyway, I'm well, happy birthday. Well, thank you. Thank you for joining me on your birthday to talk about diabetes technology as it applies to people with type two. Yay. I'm going to I'm going to say that I'm going to start like this. I googled it. I put myself in the position of people listening and I thought okay, someone's just told me I have type two diabetes, what would I do? I would go to Google, or your favorite search engine and I would type in type two diabetes. And now we start seeing what people Google type two diabetes symptoms, diet medications, treatment causes, risk factors. You know what I don't see in the top 10 technology. Nobody's looking for that idea. And okay, so Scott will type in the word technology. I'll bring it along technology for type two, yes, type two diabetes technology is the goo. Right? And we come back to, you know, an NIH article that if you look at is a lot of words, and probably confusing for people. There's a diabetes.org. So the American diabetes Association article, which shows me a picture of a meter and a lance, and then I scroll down, I see an in pen and they talk about a smart insulin pen. And then I see another meter. And then I get to the word CGM, but I don't see an actual CGM anywhere and then an insulin pump at all. I don't see a photo of it is what I'm saying. Wow. Yeah. And so I'm like, Okay, what is this page meant to do? This is a brief overview. That doesn't really. I'm trying to put myself in that position again, like, Okay, well, here's a bunch of words. I don't know CGM don't know what that means. Blood glucose meter. Sounds scary. I don't know what I need an insulin pen for the guy just told me I have diabetes. I probably like it. So I want to go over wind

Jennifer Smith, CDE 6:13
or it sounds scary because insulin? Well, it sounds like that's not what you want. Right?

Scott Benner 6:20
And what I it's funny, we're putting together a list for a different series, about myths about diabetes. And over and over again, people say, I wish people would realize that using insulin doesn't make your body give up. And so, so I realized that people must think that like, Oh, if I assist with insulin, then my body's gonna think I don't have to do this anymore. Which by the way, that's not how things work. But, but apparently, it's kind of colloquially how people think about it.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 6:53
And honestly, you're right, it is and or that it's, it's a failure, right? They've clearly done something incorrect. And this is now Gosh, I'm now on insulin, right? But honestly, to clear up, the first myth is that if you actually start to help your body by supplying some insulin, those beta cells that make it in your own pancreas, are not overtaxed. And so it helps in an in a preservation way to actually use insulin. And sometimes it again, you know, when we'll talk about medications as well, sometimes insulin might get going. And you may actually, depending on lifestyle changes and other meds that might be added as well, you may be able to come off of the insulin, because now your body is at a glucose level. That's better. Yeah. Right.

Scott Benner 7:46
So let's, let's start at the beginning, because I think everyone would type who's gonna get a meter shoved at them in the office, right? They're gonna give them a glucose meter,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 7:55
one would hope that that's what's prescribed at diagnosis, yes, at least a glucose monitor to be able to check with a finger stick. And it was some of in terms of questions as well, in technology, there are glucose meters as well that you can use alternative sites. So I think that's important for people to know when they're considering this, that while they might know they have to poke their finger, let's say you don't want to do that, or you use your fingers for many other things in terms of your job. And you're worried about the impact on that. There are meters that are approved for alternate site testing, palm, like the forearm, the base of the thumb, all of those kinds of places can also be used.

Scott Benner 8:38
So thanks. So it's interesting to talk about. So what my daughter has had type one diabetes for so long, I've been around diabetes for so long. Like I'm trying really hard to put myself in the position of somebody who would be listening to this. And you're right, the first thing I'm going to think is, I don't want to poke a hole in my finger and make it bleed. Right, right. And then the next thing I'm gonna do if I do that, is I'm gonna start having that realization of like, well, okay, well, I tested my blood sugar at 8am. And I tested it again at noon. Now, I just know what my blood sugar was at 8am and noon, and what do I do with that information? Correct? Yes.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 9:15
And so that's where as you said, Well, somebody in the office, they're diagnosed with type two, they're going to get a prescription for glucose meter of some type. An important thing to know is sometimes that that brand might need to be adjusted and something new might need to be prescribed based on what your insurance may or may not cover. But along with that, the doctor might also give you some information about what glucose targets to aim for. When you check your blood sugar. We're looking for numbers between this number on the low end and this number on the high end. So you go home and like you said, you check your blood sugar breakfast, you check it again at lunchtime, you're like great. It's in this range that the doctor told me so. Is it always going to be in that range, because whenever I check it at breakfast, it always looks like it's somewhere in here. And when I check at lunchtime, some days it is and some days it's not. But what does that mean? Yeah. What do I do with this?

Scott Benner 10:13
What you don't know is what's happening in between those times to what happens between those in those four hours? Is your blood sugar staying reasonably stable? Is it shooting way up? Are you using a medication and it's going too low? Like, these are the things you you need to know. So okay, I have a meter. I need to know what I need to know the price, I think the problem is going to be as the doctor is going to tell you to test a certain couple of times now it's going to be at so I think it would be important for people to know why they're testing. It's not just to come up with a number to show somebody, you're trying to see it starting with food, you're trying to see what impact does this food have on my body? Right? Yes. And so maybe you're beginning with no medications at all. You're not even on Metformin yet. Who knows? Doctor says you have pre diabetes, here's a meter. Okay, well, I might learn that eggs and bacon don't seem to move my blood sugar very far. But pancakes do, right, or pancakes by themselves move at one. But it's weird. When I put the bacon with the pancakes, it seems though it's different, lasts longer, it's different. My high blood sugar lasts longer for some reason. So the gold standard here would be pairing your meter with a continuous glucose monitor. So that's jargon for people who don't know, but it's a wearable device that will show you your blood sugar in real time on a receiver or your smartphone. Now, it's not just the number, but the speed and direction that the blood sugar is moving. Correct?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 11:45
Absolutely. And so that in terms of coverage for someone with type two, is something that needs to be evaluated, right? Because depending on what kind of medication you're using, what kind of insurance plan you have. Many times sensors are covered under two different options, either durable medical equipment, or for some people, they may have what's called pharmacy benefit. So it may depend and you may have to look into your insurance plan and see what they cover for you. And if in fact, it's coverable, I would absolutely get your hands on a continuous glucose monitor.

Scott Benner 12:24
No, I think that I can't say enough about what that information brings you. Because, you know, it's charting your glucose constantly. And if you you know, think about one fix, if I don't know, if you just, you know, draw a timeline out in your head on the left is midnight, and on the right at midnight, again, we put 24 hours in between, I could test my blood sugar a couple of times along the day and have a couple of data points. But what if you had data points every five minutes for 24 hours? When you connect them what you get as a graph, and you get to see rises and falls and the harshness of? What do I mean by harshness? Does my blood sugar shoot straight up when I eat? Yes, does it rise slowly. And this information, you're hearing it right now and you're thinking I don't know why I need this. Jenny and I are telling you, it's going to help you so much.

Whether you have a Dexcom or not, you still want and need an accurate easy to use blood glucose meter, you're looking for the contour line of blood glucose meters, contour next.com forward slash juicebox. Head over there, check out the contour next gen the Contour Next One, that test trip program they have my gosh, it may be cheaper for you to buy this stuff in cash than it is for you to buy the meter you have now through your insurance and the meter you have now probably doesn't work half as good as the contours. It really is it's just worth checking out. Contour next.com forward slash juicebox. My daughter loves these meters. I love them. Easy to hold easy to see great screens great lighting. Second Chance test strips. You cannot go wrong super accurate contour next one.com forward slash juicebox. All right, you've got a great meter. Now you want a great continuous glucose monitor a CGM, the Dexcom G seven. My daughter is wearing one right this second. I'm actually texting with her right now about it. dexcom.com Ford slash juice box so tiny, easy to put on. She inserted her first g7 When I was with her last week, and she goes that it and I said Yep, she goes it's on and I said Uh huh. She was I didn't feel just like that dexcom.com forward slash juice box. And now guess what? Arden can see her blood sugars in real time. You can do that to the speed and direction understand what I mean now Not just is my blood sugar 85? Is it 120? But is it rising? Is it falling? And if so, how quickly these are important, important distinctions, decks com.com, forward slash juicebox. There are links in the show notes of the podcast player you're listening in right now like say you're listening to in Apple podcast, there's a link in there, Amazon Music link. What's the other one Spotify link anywhere links, links, links, click on them support the podcast and get yourself some great gear at the same time. If you can't, or you're not listening in a podcast app, juice by juicebox podcast.com. You'll find the links there as well, to contour Dexcom cozy Earth where you'll get 35% off of everything that's on their website. Oh, gosh, betterhelp.com 10% off your first week of therapy@betterhelp.com. Forward slash juice box need the forward slash juice box to get the 10% off? It's all right there. All right, thank you very much. Let's get back to the show.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 16:22
You're right. And if, if you're if your desire is to do as much lifestyle change as you can, right? Like you've told the doc, no, I don't want to take any medications. Okay, then get information to show what lifestyle changes you're putting effort into. Because it is effort, you're trying to make a change a habit that you've not had before. Stick. So if you can go back to the doctor and prove and say, Well, if I do this, and I do this, look at look at the results that I can achieve. Right? I can do this. The other thing that it also is helpful in is if you've done all of this lifestyle shift, and it's worked for two years, or four years or five years, and now your numbers are looking different, and you haven't changed anything. In fact, you find that you're actually working harder, because you started to notice things were shifting, and you didn't know why. So you're like, Okay, I'm going to do a little bit more of this, or I'm going to cut a little bit more of this out, and it's not working. That's your first insight to then go back to your provider and say, Okay, you were talking about this years ago, or a couple months ago, I've put all my effort in. And I don't know what to change anymore. I'm eating lettuce, and still, I'm sitting at a high blood sugar. So clearly, the technology can show you more information, and help you to be the one to then go to your providers. With that

Scott Benner 17:52
it also occurs to me that you could make big changes for yourself. And I mean, it's it sucks to say, but you can be eating food for an example that you really believe is the right thing, and maybe it's not. And then you go back to the doctor and say, Hey, listen, I've really improved my diet, and I don't have any change. The doctor believes you Well, you did improve your diet, and they keep thinking it through. Meanwhile, you chose, I don't know, you thought mashed potatoes were a vegetable. And you're like, you're like, I don't know, I am eating so many vegetables now. And if you had, if you were testing your blood sugar, if you had a glucose monitor, you would see, even though I think this is something this is still impacting me harshly, and I and then you would know, to eliminate that thing or, you know, come back, he would also see how exercise would help your blood sugar. You know, and maybe even that, like, think about putting a bunch of effort into something. And you're still expending the effort, but you're putting the effort in the wrong direction. That's right. You don't want to get so frustrating. Yeah, it is. Yeah,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 18:56
yes. I mean, you know, in all of the technology, I think, and I've said before, if somebody was going to take technology away from me, I, I would not let somebody take my continuous monitor. Yeah, I would not very happily give up by pump. But I would give it up before I would give up my continuous monitor. I would. And I think for some, some people, maybe it's not in the mix. So then what do they do with the numbers that are just coming from a glucose meter years ago? The accucheck meters used to come with sort of a plan of action, specifically in type two education, and we called it testing in pairs. And so if you can test around a meal as we're talking about mashed potatoes, right, this is your vegetable of choice that you're like him eating more vegetables. Let's see what that's doing. If you test before the meal, and you test about an hour to two hours after the meal, that paired testing gives you a visual of where was I? What effect did this meal have. So even if you don't have or can't, for some reason, get a continuous monitor, you can use your glucose testing supplies more accurately to get information. And you may, maybe you only get two test strips a day, maybe you do testing and pears at breakfast, and the next time you do it at lunch, and the next day, you do it around dinnertime, and you get a rotation over two weeks. Again, you've at least got more information for you to use. And for you to go back to your, you know, physician with and say, I do really well at these points, but this part of the day, I can't, I can't do anything the right way or I can't figure it out, right

Scott Benner 20:40
visually. It's just it's going to feel like a lot like something has, first of all, something happened to you. You have a an illness that you're now dealing with. It's not something you expected or want. And it's an extra effort. And then what I love about having the data in front of me is that it's very visual. You don't really need to understand everything to look at a midline and go okay, well, this is where I'm shooting for. And here's where I am. Right, and here's an eight here. Wow, I ate at nine and at 10 o'clock, my blood sugar was high and it stayed high for two hours before it came down. That's easy to interpret. You know, for anybody you don't even need to understand the who's in the wise to see this is what's going on around companies that make these things Dexcom makes the g7 libre will make at this point. The libre three. Abbott Yeah, that makes the libre and that's from Abbott. And then there's a Medtronic sensor. Do they sell it separate of their?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 21:42
They do? Okay, yep. You can get just their sensor system. Absolutely. Yeah.

Scott Benner 21:46
And so I mean, if you

Jennifer Smith, CDE 21:49
there's one more you missed

Scott Benner 21:51
Sen. Sonic.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 21:52
Yeah. Sounds Jana. Yeah.

Scott Benner 21:54
It's implantable.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 21:56
Ever since Yes, ever since makes

Scott Benner 21:58
it right. And that's an they actually implant something under your skin and you hold a reader up to it.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 22:03
You do. So the there's is an implantable. It's tiny, tiny, you know. And it gets implanted in a doctor's visit. So it's not something you do in your own home, right. And then there's a little device, if you will, that pops on top of the patch on your arm that goes over the area where the sensor is implanted in your skin, and then the app if they do have an app, and it allows you to see all of the continuous data in that as well.

Scott Benner 22:40
And how long do you wear it for six months? Something

Jennifer Smith, CDE 22:43
I don't think then I believe the newest one is six months, it used to only be three months. It used to be 90 days. I believe the newest is six months. And I had I had somebody who loved it. The only reason he changed to using Dexcom was because the change in his pump technology required use of only Dexcom. So

Scott Benner 23:03
yeah, and it's ever since but I think a sense he owns it. That's some backroom stuff. But I think the people who make the Contour Next One blood glucose meter actually purchased the small company. I think so. Oh, you know what, here? This is amazing. It's a phone call I've been waiting for for three days it comes now. Great.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 23:26
That's not a good thing. I

Scott Benner 23:27
don't know. We'll get it later. I'll call back. But yeah, okay. So the point is there, there are things that are called continuous glucose monitors. You'll hear people say CGM, and these things are giving you like we're saying the data all the time. There's also a BGM, or a blood glucose meter, which is the finger stick. And I know that all sounds you know it confusing. In the end, you can't have I don't think you can have too much data. Access to see it like you'll figure out what parts of it you need eventually. But just going in blindly like, well, I changed my thing. And then they check they check me once see in a few months, and it didn't go up or didn't go down. Like it doesn't tell you much.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 24:11
It doesn't. I think the other thing with all of that information is that for for someone to start to understand, you have to also know that the variables that life puts in to your day to day are a piece of that glucose graph that you're looking at, right. And unless somebody really gets some good information about what they're looking at, sometimes that CGM data can become frustrating. Right? If they have nobody to go back to and ask about how to read it, or what does it mean when this happens? And that's where education is. It's definitely a second piece to the information

Scott Benner 25:00
because you you see the rise in your glucose. And if you really don't know, you don't know, it just, you know, I, you could have eaten a meal where you had three items on your plate and two of them have nothing to do with it. The third one you don't think of as being impactful, but it is sometimes a mix of foods, you know, impacts differently. So you have to be able to and that's another great thing that this data does, especially with a CGM where you can say, hey, look, this is what happened. I ate this, this and this here. And this happened. Can you tell me why that might have happened? Or do I need a medication? Like is it is my body just not going to handle this? I'm like you said I'm down to salad lady. I need a cucumber, my blood sugar went up. I need help. You know, I need right. Yeah. And that's also going to be a good way to tell you like do I need insulin? Do I need one of these injectables, things we're going to talk about in other episodes? If you do end up using insulin, am I going to use it? Am I going to inject it with a syringe? Am I going to get an insulin pen? Am I going to get a an insulin pump? You know, right. And and I would assume with type two, that has a lot to do with lifestyle and the emphasis the impact that your that your diabetes is having on your blood sugar's are no, I mean, if you have very, I mean, if you're a one sees like a six and a half, can you still wear an insulin pump?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 26:27
Could you? Sure you could. But the biggest evaluation is that if you're keeping a 6.5 right now, with effort on your part and lifestyle and medication that you're using, it's very unlikely that you're going to get prescribed and may not even get covered by insurance because of where you are. That's not a bad thing, right? I mean, you're doing a really lovely job and great right now, you don't need insulin. At some point. If you do and you've been doing everything you can and your glucose continues to creep up and the agency keeps creeping up. At that point, could insulin be being considered? Certainly. And if the variables in your life dictate, you would do better with a continuous insulin infusion? Then yes, an insulin pump could be considered. Absolutely, I mean, it's, it certainly allows a lot more flexibility in terms of dosage. And the decrease in the amount of stuff in a way that you have to carry around. You don't have to keep, you know, insulin vials or insulin pens with you or syringes around with you. The pump is connected to you. So hopefully you don't forget, when you walk out the door.

Scott Benner 27:41
Well, it just seems that with the feedback I'm hearing and conversations I have with people that, you know, there's a hesitancy to bring things into your life, whether they're technology or insulin. And I understand that, like, I get the idea of like, I don't want to do this, or I don't understand what this is. But and then there's that leap right when you you get to the doctor's office, and maybe the doctor's office doesn't understand that well, either we talked about this a lot with type one, you know that you can go to the doctor. And I mean, how was it put most kind of generally speaking, if you have type one diabetes for six months, you likely know as much about it, as your doctor does. If you had it for a year and a half, you now could probably go teach a class somewhere and the doctor would be like, Wow, that's interesting. You know, and so having it is the best teacher. But what happens when you have type two, and you left the office and the guy didn't even give you a meter? Right? You know, and wouldn't and if you said to him, I'd like to have a continuous glucose monitor there, you don't need that. Or your insurance is gonna cover that, or whatever the and then that's the thing you remember forever, right? And

Jennifer Smith, CDE 29:00
so you may need to, as we've talked already, you may need to be your best advocate, you may need to be the one that you do the research, okay, you've gotten this new diagnosis, this new condition that will be there 24/7. And you need to learn more about sometimes some of the best places to learn are going to be asking your questions, and doing your own research. And even if you don't understand then at least you have more information to go back to your doctor and say, but I read this and you didn't tell me about this, or I read about this and this looks like it would fit with my lifestyle. Hey, do you think I could give this a try. And if you don't feel like you're if you're seeing a general, you know, medical practitioner or just a PCP don't expect that they're going to be an expert in type two diabetes. So if you feel like you're just getting the baseline, but you have much more in depth questions about things, there's no reason that you couldn't request even one consul rotation with an endocrine doctor. Yeah,

Scott Benner 30:03
I'm passionate about it. Because there's a person in my life that I want. I want for them to wear a CGM. I think it would greatly improve their situation. And this person, generally speaking, listens to me, I'm a trusted person in their life plus all of this on top of it, I can't get them to do it. Yeah, you know, and I even said, I was like, just, I think back then I was like, just grab a libre for cash, it won't even be very much, and just wear for 10 days. And I think you're gonna see, I will, I'll talk to my doctor. Yeah.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 30:39
You know, outside of this person, that does bring up something, I think that's important to understand, too. Let's say you have a physician who is willing to write you a prescription for a continuous glucose monitor. But your insurance is not covering it. Right. And maybe there's red tape and stuff that you have to kind of navigate yourself through in order to get one but you want it now, right? You know that it's important for you to learn from, you can, it would be out of pocket. So again, you'd have to have the means to be able to buy it yourself. But Costco if you have one of those, and it has a pharmacy, you can have your doctor write a script that goes right into Costco as pharmacy, and you can actually pay out of pocket without it going through insurance at Costco. So those are options that again, you're paying yourself out of your own wallet. But in the meantime, what are you learning from that? If you've got the means to do that, right,

Scott Benner 31:36
a couple of $100. And right now you have enough data to eat also to take that data back to the doctor go, Hey, chucklehead what I learned, I figured something out. I wasn't gonna figure it out without you. Now I'm on talking to my insurance company. Show them this. And there are, listen, it's a rabbit hole about insurance, right. But But insurance companies are set up to say no. And then it doesn't mean that's the answer. You have to prove your case. Right, right. Yeah. And it's just, I mean, it's tough because one of the CGM companies does a sponsor the show, so I would understand if somebody was like, Yeah, this guy is trying to sell a CGM. I would just tell you this. Like don't get a Dexcom fine. Go get a libre, it doesn't matter. Doesn't matter to me. What matters to me is that you have this like information if you if all things being equal, I take a Dexcom over libre, that's fine. That's me. Right? But just get the information any way you can. I can't, I can't. I just can't stress it enough like a meter is going to be like turning on the first. I don't know the first click of a four step light bulb. You're like, oh, well, the rooms a little brighter. But you get to that CGM, the lights all the way up every there's no shadows. Nothing can hide and you know what's going on now and then you can make a decision? You know?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 32:58
Absolutely. I mean, when I when I first started using a CGM, thankfully, I had really good insurance up to that point. And my doctor had written a script for test strips for my blood glucose meter for up to 15 times a day. And I was checking 12 to 15 times a day, because I wanted all of the in between data, but I was still missing so many data points. I mean, without a CGM, and using insulin, which some people with type two will use insulin, so you can take a fear factor out of the picture. If you have the ability to see what's going on. And prior to my CGM, I had an alarm set for two o'clock every morning. Yeah, I got I got up, I checked my blood sugar if it was in a place that was okay, I went back to sleep. And if not, or it was lower than where I went to bed. I was eating something, right. So now with a CGM, I was like, Oh my gosh, I can turn these alarms off. It was lovely. But again, somebody with type two, maybe you are using insulin or you're using some of the meds that can create hypoglycemia or low blood sugar, a CGM would be a huge benefit.

Scott Benner 34:11
So that's sort of a backdoor into getting one if your insurance company is being tough. If the doctor puts you on the medication, you can say, well, I'm scared of hypoglycemia. So I need a CGM, because a beater won't help me at two o'clock in the morning when I'm asleep. You have to it's what I'm saying about the insurance like you have to just kind of thoughtfully work your way through it. Sometimes. You do. Yeah.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 34:33
And there are letters of medical necessity essentially, are statements of medical necessity that a good doctor will be very happy to write for you to further the potential that an insurance company is going to look at and say, Okay, I see these checkpoints, hypoglycemia, risk medications that could, you know, cause hypoglycemia or job risk, right, where you actually really aren't more risk of hypose or the They may be pieces that your doctor adds to the letter in order to get you coverage.

Scott Benner 35:05
And there's a way there's a way to get covered without, I'm not even saying I'm not saying like fudge the truth, like there's no real reasons for it get like a ton of them. I know you said earlier, find people like do your own research, I'm going to put a plug in here for the Facebook group for the podcast. So yeah, it's called Juicebox Podcast, type one diabetes. But the truth is, there's a lot of type twos in there as well. It's, it's basically people who have diabetes. And I would say, it's funny, here's a little back room, I would change the name. But people with type one are more. There, they generally speaking, seem to be more involved in their own advocacy. And so I'm trying to draw people to the page. And if I put the word diabetes in it, and I don't say type one, or I say type one and type two, you'd be surprised. Like, I mean, even this series, Jenny, like to be completely honest, I'm making it hoping that people with type one diabetes, who have family members or loved ones with type two will say, hey, yeah, has helped me with type one. And now they have some information about type two, you should check it out. And so but go there, if you have a question about a CGM, or a meter, or you know how a foods hitting, no one's going to know better than a person with type one diabetes, like if you have type two, I mean, honestly, right. If you have type two, either you're making insulin, and it's not being used correctly. Right? And or sometimes you have also a decrease in insulin production like this is happening. A person with type one diabetes just is not making any insulin, there's none. You know, if you think I couldn't believe when I hit an avocado, I have type two diabetes, that my blood sugar went to 140 for two hours. Just if a person with type one diabetes ate an avocado without insulin, their blood sugar would be like, you know, 400 to five higher? Yeah. And so these people really understand how does food impact me? How did the medications impact me? Like how does insulin work? This is these are people's minds, you can you can pick their brains, and really come away with something. And I

Jennifer Smith, CDE 37:10
would also say in terms of talking a lot around the coverage piece of this technology. I think people with type one have also really learned a lot about advocating within insurance companies and advocating with their practitioners to get things covered the right way. They know who to ask to speak with when they do call their insurance company, who are who can I speak to this is the person to ask to talk to not the general person who answers the phone, right? You need somebody higher up, you need somebody who's going to listen, who's going to actually see, Oh, I see you sent a letter in two months ago. Well, it's sitting on the desk. So

Scott Benner 37:53
there's a person in my group who helps people all the time, and she writes letters to insurance companies that the insurance companies, she's so good at it, they just read it and I go, Hannah, she checked all the boxes, we can argue with this. That's awesome. Are you very good at it? Very good at it. And so, and that's it's Jenny's point is that, you know, you don't know I, you know, I used I say I used to say this all the time about type one diabetes, like, instead of suffering, and saying, Well, I don't know how to do this, or my doctor didn't help me. Go find someone who knows how, and look at them and think, What are they doing? I'm gonna I'm gonna copy them. You know, like, if they're having success, let me figure out what they know that I don't know. And type two. But I know a lot of people with type two diabetes. And I wouldn't think I'm going to try to be fair, but I think if we collected them all in a room and asked them a bunch of questions about their type two diabetes, and how to take care of it, you'd be surprised at how little they know about it.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 38:52
How little and also, I think how different the thoughts about navigating and managing are.

Scott Benner 39:01
Yeah, no, I listen, I have a I have a family member who passed away the other day, at and at 65 years old. And you're going to all you want, you can say, Well, you had this problem, we have that problem. You have this problem. What do you had was type two diabetes. What I don't know what we'll end up with, they'll end up saying, God, him. But his blood sugar has been elevated for 25 years. Right? That's why he died when he was 65. And they might end up saying it was an infection. Or he I don't know, I haven't heard that he had

Jennifer Smith, CDE 39:30
a heart attack or right that

Scott Benner 39:33
he died because his blood sugar was elevated for a long amount of time. And so this is why I'm talking to you all about it. Because it seems like every third person I bumped into says they have diabetes. And then I watched them a little bit and I'm like, they don't act like they have it. You know, and I and I and then I talked to them and I realized like they don't know what to do. Right? Yeah, every time like everyone's Listen, some people I talked to a gentleman recently. He was just very I think I told you this privately. I don't think I said this on the podcast. But I said, Oh, you know what happened? He said, Oh, they gave me an injectable medication. And I said, how the work goes, oh are great. I was like, Oh, good. He goes, I stopped taking. Oh, yes, you did. I do. Remember. I'm like, what now? And he goes, Yeah, he's like, I made my hunger go away. I lost 25 pounds, he says, but my hunger went away. And I was like, so now I'm just, I'm standing there. I interview people with diabetes for a living. I don't know what my next question is, like, what am I supposed to say next? And I went, right. Why did you stop?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 40:36
Right? And I think I remember you saying that he was, he was used to be used to being seen as the bigger like, he was like, a big guy, right? Like, he's the big guy. And like, everybody saw him as like this strength, right? I

Scott Benner 40:50
like to eat. And I was like, fair enough. He said it. I was like, fair enough. And so, um, but my brain couldn't process any of it. I was like, I don't understand. But I but what I recognized when I walked away is I bet you a lot of people feel this way. Like, like, I don't you know what I mean?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 41:08
Like, right? Or they think that it was similar to all the quote unquote, diets, right. And the reason that diets don't work is because you, you make the changes, let's say you really study it, you do it, like this gentleman, he took the medication, it worked. I mean, it worked like it was supposed to work, and he lost weight, a fair amount of weight. And then you're like, Well, it worked. Okay, great. I just, I can stop it. Now. It's over, it fixed me. But fix isn't the right thing. When you have diabetes, you have to continually navigate choices and management and strategies, and you, you may need different medications at different times, different technology at different times. But it will, it will always be something there in the picture for you to consider.

Scott Benner 42:00
It makes me what you just said makes me think of if you ask any doctor, what's the biggest problem when you put somebody on an antidepressant? When it works for them, the biggest problem is they're depressed, you give them the medication one day, they're not depressed any longer. And the first decision they make is, well, I'm not depressed, I don't need the anti depression medication anymore. And they stopped taking it. And then sometimes the depression comes back. And it's just, it made me feel like that when you were talking about that, like, he's like, I have diabetes, the doctor said, This is not a person who's this is not a person who said to themselves, like I need to do something, a doctor told him, he needed to do something, right. And so he did the thing he was told to do. And then he got to a point where it's like, Hey, I lost 25 pounds, but I really would like to eat more. So I'm gonna start taking this now. And the 25 pounds will come back, by the way, for reasons he doesn't understand. But he doesn't understand about insulin resistance, and his body's pumping out insulin like a fire hydrant, but it's not working. And so he's storing more fat and like, you know, that stuff?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 43:02
No, not at all. And at some point, you know, many of these injectable meds also have other beneficial pieces to them, which we'll talk about when we do the medications, but he was not only getting the benefit of weight loss, but that weight loss on the rest of his body, and the long term effect that that has, and all the other organs in the body that could be impacted. He may have had he continued taking it decreased or maybe eliminated the need for insulin someday.

Scott Benner 43:35
Yeah, he couldn't return back to a different place. And the right part of me that thought I didn't say this, because it felt like it wasn't. It didn't feel like it was the right thing to say. Right. But there was part of me that wanted to go, let me just, let's skip over. What what makes sense here and just go to what he wants, like, let's just treat him like a person who's like, look, I don't care. This is what I want to do. I thought get an insulin pump. If you're going to eat at least cover it with insulin like so. You know, because it's

Jennifer Smith, CDE 44:04
more precise. Yeah, absolutely. It's more precise. Absolutely. And so if I mean and those are, those are the big discussions that a practitioner then a clinician then has to have that stepped up conversation, okay, you had this result you had this benefit, it was working, you don't want to do this anymore. You tell me you want to eat okay? The best way to cover the food then is your blood sugar's are going up. No other medication is really going to hit as well to cover what you lifestyle wise are choosing to do. So now we have to add insulin. Yeah.

Scott Benner 44:39
Here's the part that I think gets lost is that a lot of times, you know, a doctor is gonna tell you what, like, well, here are the steps you do these steps this will work. But it doesn't take into account the human part of it. The willingness, the desire, the understanding, like all that it doesn't matter and so if so if I am a person who Who finds myself in the situation, but I've been eating, I don't know, like, like a sweet every day with my lunch, I might go out, I'm not that sick. And I'm okay being 25 pounds heavier, I want to have whatever this is at lunchtime. And it's just, I don't know, like, this is not as easy of a situation as get the right technology. And it'll just work. But you'll be shocked at how much better things will be with the right technology.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 45:32
And well, I think as you bring it in, in terms of the consideration of this friend of yours is the fact that I'm assuming he was not using a continuous glucose monitor, and maybe wasn't even doing finger sticks often enough to make any kind of information or informed decision about what his changes were doing. Had he at least then using finger sticks, you know, testing in pairs or a continuous monitor, he could have seen the very big shift in use of this medication to non use of it. And okay, I can eat more again, but look at what the difference in my blood sugar. Look at this difference. And the aha

Scott Benner 46:14
moment that a lot of people are gonna get out of it. Like, really? Yeah, I don't have diabetes, I've worn a Dexcom there are things that I was like, Well, I'm not gonna eat that anymore. You know, like, like that. I don't like the way that

Jennifer Smith, CDE 46:25
or I'm gonna take a bite. And that's going to be my taste, right? Yeah,

Scott Benner 46:29
I can have a like, I'll tell you I during wearing a glucose monitor, I eat a slice of pizza, no diabetes, my blood sugar doesn't change. And I'm like, I wonder how much of this pizza I'd have to gorge on. Right? But I found the number and it was like three slices. And then my blood sugar went into the 160s and sat there for a long time. All the fat? Yeah. And I was like, oh, goodness, like, okay,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 46:53
so your experience is what? You can do this much. But I shouldn't.

Scott Benner 46:58
I could have had two slices without it hitting me. Three slices was it. And so like, that's, listen, forget the How many slices of pizza is the information and forget that it's pizza. Like maybe you'll say like, Hey, a handful of grapes, I'm okay. A bowl full of grapes, I'm in trouble.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 47:15
For a gentleman like your friend, that information would have been able to show him, hey, I really liked the food that I liked to eat. And I haven't had an appetite for it. But now that my appetite is back, I can eat this much of my favorite. Yeah, but when I eat this much, it doesn't work out so well. So for him bringing in a little bit of change, but not major shift in what he was choosing, in terms of his preferences may have been the big thing that helped.

Scott Benner 47:42
Yeah, I also think that it, it shines a light on what's possible. And I do think that a lot of people could get stuck in the feeling of like, this is my lot in life. Like, I'm not getting out of this. And and it doesn't matter what I do, it's not going to work. I mean, colloquially in the south, right? Like people say like, I have the sugars. Like it's that it's it's that common, like, Oh, does

Jennifer Smith, CDE 48:05
she have sugar, sugar, sugar, diabetes, I hear that a lot.

Scott Benner 48:09
And it's almost like they think it's a, like, it's a family thing they were gonna get like, it's like it's like a it's like an old sofa being passed down to my goal. It's finally my turn to have the sugars and right what am I going to do killed my, my grandmother and it killed this lady in my aunt's gone and like it's gonna, I guess it's here for me. And then you just sort of go with it, you know.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 48:30
And sometimes that's an association too, with what they saw them doing in terms of medication, that the lifestyle pieces weren't considered as, what was creating a bigger piece. It was once grandma was started on insulin, she had her legs amputated, or she started on dialysis, or she had a heart attack, or she had her vision, you know, go down considerably. So it's the insolence fault. And so then there's a fear piece in, oh my gosh, my doctor is now telling me I have to use insulin. That means that all of these things are going to happen just like they happen to grandma. And that's, it's an unfortunate entire myth.

Scott Benner 49:13
Right? Right. It's just it's exactly right. It's people see it happen in that order. And they assume instead of saying which would listen, which would be the common sense thing is that my grandmother has not been doing anything for her diabetes for 40 years. It's gotten so bad now she's in a doctor's office being told take this insulin because we don't know what else to do for you. And then then five seconds later, her head pops off and you go or head popped off because she used insulin. That's not why it's it's a that's not what might be because 40 years ago, this didn't happen. This didn't happen or maybe somebody could have just given her insulin 40 years ago when she would have been okay, like right.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 49:51
And another one too. Oftentimes when insulin is initiated another piece that with higher blood sugars for a sustained time, some But he might have had some shifts that were slow and progressing, especially in their vision. And sometimes when insulin gets added, and you have a very quick shift in response in the body and your glucose level starts to come down again, a negative might be that your vision changes severely. Yeah. And you think, oh, oh, again, here, it's the insulin, I started taking insulin. Now I can't see anymore. My glasses don't work and right. It's not really the insulins fault. It's now your blood sugars are where they were supposed to be. But they were corrected too quickly. And

Scott Benner 50:36
now we have a shift. And, look, I'm just gonna say this at the end. i You said something earlier that freaked me out. You're like, what if their prescription only gives them two test strips for their blood glucose meter a day. And I'm like, Oh, God, that could happen, couldn't it? And then I'm like, okay, so you do the two things to try to give yourself a little point a point B. But I was thinking even with a meter, like just go crazy for a couple of days and test once an hour, and use 50 strips up in two days. But then you can actually I did this with a lady with type one lunch, she couldn't afford a CGM so fine. But she didn't want to like give up. So I'd had her do the thing. I said, draw a timeline out 24 hours, test yourself every hour, and then just sort of take the dots and connect them a little bit. And at least you'll get a feeling of a graph, right a little bit like I was unsure, there's gonna be gaps. And we won't know if you dropped quickly or rose quickly, and we didn't see it. But it'll give you an it actually helped him.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 51:33
Sure. And as long as she was doing the majority of her typical things in the day, cotton, most common meals for coffee every 9am, the drive into work, which was an hour in horrible bumper to bumper traffic, if all of those were the standard of her day, then her 24 or 48 hours of finger sticks was very worthwhile. Yeah.

Scott Benner 51:54
And maybe it's, I don't know, maybe you go to the pharmacy, and it cost you 50 bucks. It's just I can't tell you, I listen, I don't want to be like hamfisted. But then people don't have 50 bucks. So it doesn't matter, like so if you can scrape it together, save yourself, you know, you can pull a couple 100 bucks together and grab a CGM and wear for 10 days. It sucks and all and I'm not saying $200 isn't a lot of money. I'm saying again, you know, what you

Jennifer Smith, CDE 52:23
may learn from it could help you so much farther in to the future.

Scott Benner 52:28
One another way to think about it, is that when I was raising my kids, and people would give them a birthday card, and they'd put money in it $25 Like, you know, some people were like, You take that from them, tell them to put it in the bank, so they can see what it is to save it. And what I thought was, well, I'm gonna tell them that's important. But I want to let them use the money. Because the feeling that comes from wasting $100 You don't forget that. You don't forget, I had $100. And now every day I walk past this thing on a shelf in my room that I don't touch. And that's the $100 right there. Like that shows you value sometimes my point is, is that there's value beyond the money. Do you mean like, and both of my kids now are like, you take them shopping and they pick like I've seen Arden all the time, she picks up three pieces of clothing. She's like, I like these three. And then she puts two of them back. Yes, for my son's moved out on his own now. I made a budget that I'm being careful about this. I'm doing that. Because one day he had 50 bucks when he was eight years old. And then he suddenly didn't have it anymore. And that $50 was worth a lot more than $50. It informs a lifetime of decisions. I'm telling you scrape the money together, beg, borrow steal, throw a CGM on for a couple of days. And man, it'll just it'll it'll put you into a different level of understanding all this. So anyway, did we miss any technology?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 53:58
I don't think I think it because we're going to talk about medications at some point. I think that yeah, I think there's technology within the insulin realm. I assume we'll just talk about it then.

Scott Benner 54:09
Yeah, I think I'm going to start saying at the end of every one of these episodes, know what your blood sugar is, and know what's impacting it. And yeah, that's where you're gonna make great decisions. Okay, Jenny, thank you. Happy birthday again.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 54:20
Thank you. You're welcome.

Scott Benner 54:26
Huge thanks to Dexcom for sponsoring this episode of the podcast dexcom.com Ford slash juice box check out the Dexcom G seven or the Dexcom G six, and of course contour next.com forward slash juice box where you're going to find the entire line of contour products betterhelp.com forward slash juice box 10% off your first month of therapy. use the offer code juice box at checkout at cozy earth.com to save 35% sitewide support the podcast by so According to sponsors, there's links in your show notes and links at juicebox podcast.com. If you're enjoying this type two diabetes Pro Tip series, please share it with someone who you think might also enjoy it. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast.

#879 Danger Noodle

Melissa is a pre school teacher and the parent of a child with type 1 diabetes.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends, and welcome to episode 879 of the Juicebox Podcast.

Today, I'll be speaking with Melissa, who is a preschool teacher and the mother of a child with type one diabetes. We talk about many things. We laugh, we sing. Well, we don't sing, but we laugh, and we talk, you're going to love it. While you're listening. Please remember that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise. Please Always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care 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 is very interested in your answers to simple survey questions. You can take that survey AT T one D exchange.org. Forward slash juicebox and will not take long 10 minutes ish. And it helps type one diabetes research move forward. You can do all that right there from your house. T one D exchange.org. Forward slash juicebox. If you'd like to get 35% off of some cozy sheets and joggers and other stuff, check out cozy earth.com and use juicebox at checkout to save 35% Speaking of saving money, Oh, hold on. If you use my link, better help.com forward slash juice box you will save 10% off your first month of therapy. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by Omni pod. Omni pod of course makes the Omni pod dash and that wonderful Omni pod five. Check it out at Omni pod.com You too can wear the same tubeless insulin pump that my daughter has been wearing since she was four years old. There are links in the show notes of the podcast player you're listening in right now. And links at juicebox podcast.com to Omni pod BetterHelp cozy Earth Dexcom all the sponsors, check them out.

Melissa 2:17
My name is Melissa. I live in a town in Wisconsin. Which side note I've heard you've never been to Wisconsin Scott. Even though your brother lives in this state.

Scott Benner 2:29
I knew you lived in Wisconsin, because already pronounce some words very oddly. So I was

Melissa 2:36
Oh no. Oh, I was hoping my accent wouldn't come out.

Scott Benner 2:39
I could have said Wisconsin when you started. I was I was I almost stepped on you and said Wisconsin I think so.

Melissa 2:46
And so my town has about 27,000 people in it. And we are like I'm right on the tip of Lake Superior. Like the lake is eight blocks from my house. So and right across the bridge, which takes about five minutes. I'm in Minnesota. So that's how close I am. And that's probably why you will hear the Wisconsin slash Minnesota accent come out. Especially being just a little nervous. But yeah, so I am a preschool teacher in. And I'm going to be starting my 12th year doing this. So I work with four and five year olds. I have some kids at the beginning of the year that literally were three a couple of days before I meet them. And I have kids that start with me that are already five because families have chosen to maybe wait a little bit keep them at home for an extra year. Things like that.

Scott Benner 3:43
Gotcha. That's the those are the people who think their kids are going to play football in the NFL one day, right?

Melissa 3:49
Yeah, usually that is the case. They could only hope right? I have a 12 year old son named Riker and I have a nine year old daughter named Reese. And Reese is our type one warrior.

Scott Benner 4:02
You know, making me wonder what Rikers Island is named after.

Melissa 4:06
I know, I didn't even know. The only correlation I had before we named him was. I can't it wasn't Rikers Island. It was something else. Oh, we were on vacation in Mexico. And there was this kid. And he was like super brave and jumping in the water. And, you know, like two years old and not a fear in the world. And we were like, what's his name? And it's the first time my husband and I had ever heard that name. So we're like, oh, we like that. And it went it flowed well with our last name. So that's why we went with that.

Scott Benner 4:37
Are you German? Do German

Melissa 4:40
My husband has some German but it had nothing to do that. I didn't even know that was a German name.

Scott Benner 4:47
Listen, I'm not I don't want to put it out there but nobody google it because

Melissa 4:54
I do know what Rikers Island is. afterwards.

Scott Benner 4:57
Yeah. Anyway,

Melissa 5:01
And we do have a golden doodle named Riggs, which also was not named after Mel Gibson's character in that movie. So

Scott Benner 5:08
we're because that's what I thought when you said it. So, what was that name from then?

Melissa 5:13
Ironically, we knew we were getting. You're talking about the dog, right? Yeah. I

Scott Benner 5:17
don't care about your kids. Mr. Riggs? Yeah. Okay, that's

Melissa 5:19
fine. Yes, we sometimes I don't care about the kids, either. The dog is my priority. He's the only one that listens really well. So he we knew we were getting a puppy. And we knew we wanted to be an R to go along with our kids names. And my husband actually had a dream. But the night before we went to get the dog that our son went up to him and said, Dad, I think his name should be Riggs. And my husband woke me up to tell me that and I was like, well, there you have it. So that's where we went with with that

Scott Benner 5:49
good enough. Yeah, I I dreamt last night about subway. So this sandwich, you got to go to Subway. No, I don't want to go my my daughter's friend is going away to college. This kid lives off of subway. And she likes it as if it was good. I don't know how to explain it the way she thinks it's like cuisine. Right? And not fast food. Right? And then she goes, she's going to college in England. Oh, wow. And I said, What, uh, you know, you have everything worked out and she's like, she just doesn't even skip a beat. She's like MR. BENNER. There's a subway five minute walk from where my dorm is gonna be. And then she goes, I mean, my flat and I went, Okay,

Melissa 6:27
so Oh, that was the deciding factor. I

Scott Benner 6:30
think it might have been all she cared about if I'm being perfectly honest. So

Melissa 6:34
yeah, my son loves subway. And it's all he gets his Turkey pickles, red onions and ranch. And that's it.

Scott Benner 6:42
I don't want to say something that I'm wrong about. But I think all of subways meats are the same, like, the same conglomeration and they just like, this one's turkey. This one's chicken. But it all starts the same. I know. You'd have to look that up. I could be wrong. So let's hope

Melissa 6:57
because I feed my kid that everyone's

Scott Benner 7:02
Turkey flavoring in that one in the ham flavoring in that one. And let's get I don't know, maybe I'm wrong. Maybe it's the thing I heard on the internet. The internet's not right. I reserve the right to not know anything,

Melissa 7:11
which is what the internet the internet's not always right. Is that what you're saying? Listen,

Scott Benner 7:16
I hear things, you know. So okay, so I'm sorry. So your kid that has diabetes is how old?

Melissa 7:23
She is nine, nine. She turned Well, nine and a half now.

Scott Benner 7:27
And it was, you know, I find myself just randomly wanting to guess a name that starts with our Did you say Riley? No, Reese Reese. Okay. Was that after the Arnold Schwarzenegger movie or No? No. Because I don't know what people are doing over there. You know, it gets it gets cold there. People get confused.

Melissa 7:47
Very, very. Yes. It's a beautiful day out today, though, thankfully.

Scott Benner 7:51
Is it? It's not like sweltering hot the way it gets there in the summertime for no reason.

Melissa 7:55
No, it's there's a nice breeze. It's probably about 65 or so right now. Wow. Yeah.

Scott Benner 8:00
My son came up to me the other day. And he goes, Hey, seriously, people in Wisconsin. They go ice fishing. And I was like, yeah, and he goes like, really? Like, it's not just the thing that happened one time, like people do it. And I was like, yeah, and he looked really confused and washed away from it. I was like, alright.

Melissa 8:16
He needed a moment to process. He's just like,

Scott Benner 8:18
so they go out onto the NIT, we talked about it for a second. And I said, this is one of these deals, they have to be incredibly bored. So boring. For the packers to play leave their bits. We're trying to pass the time. Alright, so Reese is how old I'm sorry. She's nine and a half. Okay, nine and a half and how far how long ago was she diagnosed?

Melissa 8:41
Actually sunwell she has two different diagnosis days, which I can explain that later. But it'll be three years on on Sunday slash Monday, three

Scott Benner 8:51
years. Okay. So six and a half years old. She was just in first grade when it happened.

Melissa 8:57
She, we were going into first grade. Yes. Well, we as in her, well, kind of weak because we I work in the same building as the school that she goes to so yep. So she was and then we did seven months of first grade. And then this thing called COVID happened. And we were back at home. So we had seven months of management and getting ready to go into first grade trying to get all of our ducks in a row with this new diagnosis.

Scott Benner 9:29
So it's education week here on the podcast. So yeah, awesome. Well, I just had a teacher on who was also the child of a student that goes to the same school. Um, yeah,

Melissa 9:42
I listened yesterday. It's a good one.

Scott Benner 9:44
So that was that one's up. What you don't know is that in between there I recorded with a principal from Alaska whose child has type one diabetes today I'm recording with you. If tomorrow is another teacher, I'm going to lose because I don't plan any of this like so it's I I'm assuming People aren't like, people aren't like surprised anymore. And they hear I don't plan things, but like I didn't do this on purpose.

Melissa 10:06
Oh, that's just things happen for a reason.

Scott Benner 10:09
I don't know. We'll find out. I can tell you one thing, that after I was done recording with the principal, she told me a story that I can't repeat. That was amazing. It was so good. It was so good. And interesting and bizarre and all the things that you want out of a story that I cursed that are afterwards I said, I was like, damn you for not for not selling this on the podcast. She's like, I can't tell this on the podcast. I was like, Well, no, obviously you can't. But I was like, it's amazing. So oh, it all wander forever when she told me but I can't tell you. Terrific, though. You'll never guess. So don't bother Melissa, don't bother conjuring something up in your head. You're not even going to be close. So

Melissa 10:51
I already got my brain gears going here. So like, so you're telling me that I'm never going to know the story. I can guess the story. But it's an awesome story.

Scott Benner 10:59
And you will and you Yeah, that's 100%. Right. There's no if I if you and I just spent the rest of this hour. And you said to me, I'm just gonna guess broad themes of the story. I don't think you come close to it. So anyway, DM her

Melissa 11:17
principles,

Scott Benner 11:18
she could have just come on. And honestly, I told the story would have been amazing. But no, it's okay. It's still very good episode, then the less you are so you teach. So you teach preschool? Yes. Do you teach it in a public system? Or you teach it in a private facility?

Melissa 11:34
It's a public system. Yes. So like my elementary all the elementary schools in my city, we have six of them are all pre K through five.

Scott Benner 11:44
Okay, so you're like a, like a certified? Teacher? Oh,

Melissa 11:49
yes. I, I have a bachelor's in elementary education with a minor in early childhood. And I'm nationally board certified as of December of 2019. And I actually just finished and got my master's of education through a university in Wisconsin. And I finished that in November. So when

Scott Benner 12:11
you say preschool around here, my expectation is baby sitting with letters and numbers. Oh, if only Yeah, that's so but this is like a structured? Like I know, they pretend that they're gonna be bad mouthing people. I love everyone. No one get upset. Okay. But, but I felt like, preschool in my area was like parking your kid like it was a candle. I thought it was just a

Melissa 12:37
doggy drop off.

Scott Benner 12:38
You're like, Where can I leave this living thing? Where when I come back, it'll still be alive. That's like how I looked at it. And then whatever happens to it while it's there? Like, let's just hope the cops don't have to come. You don't? I mean? Yeah, yes, cross your fingers. That is not your job?

Melissa 12:53
Not at all. Actually, no, I would say like, you're describing kind of like a childcare facility. But even our childcare facilities in our city, have some structure and you know, guidelines and things that they have to adhere to. And then we actually just recently started a 3k program in my school district. So those are, like, you know, three year olds that it is primarily to support families with child care, but it's also in a school building, structured, licensed teachers, that kind of thing. And then when we get to my position, which is also called the Community preschool, and then, but we call it 4k, for short. It's like four year old kindergarten. But yeah, I'm in the school building. You know, my kiddos, get to see the building, that they're going to be in kindergarten. And it's so exciting. And my kids come for just a half day. But so I have a group of 18 kids that come in the morning, then I have my lunch and my prep time. And then I have a different group of 18 kids that come in the afternoon, and then I do the same thing with those kids that I did with the morning kids.

Scott Benner 14:07
Oh, wow. You should just record yourself in the morning, then play it for the kids in the afternoon.

Melissa 14:11
Wouldn't that be amazing? I could just sit back and drink some coffee. But that's the thing. You can plan the best you can but different kids have different needs. And so, you know thing happens and they have to adjust. Yeah.

Scott Benner 14:26
Well, I would imagine that two halves of the same day, even with the same plan, very infrequently go the same.

Melissa 14:33
I agree. Yes. Interesting.

Scott Benner 14:35
So did you teach your own children?

Melissa 14:39
I did not. When, when my son was at when he was in 4k when he was age eligible for that. I did my first five years I actually taught for K at our local YMCA it was this I had to do the exact same thing that the district teachers had to do. I was just working in our YMCA building. And then he was passed for K. I believe it was his kindergarten year actually as when I applied for the district. And then and then Reese came along and when she came along, it was like her and I are like, no, she cannot be in my classroom, we would fight all the time.

Scott Benner 15:24
You're painting a lovely picture of motherhood.

Melissa 15:28
You know, there has to be the line that you draw the whole, you know, but I just I don't I just don't think it would have been what's best for me professionally for her personally for her girl. How is that better?

Scott Benner 15:40
Sure, you would have gotten fired and she would have ended up with a broken arm? I understand. So before we ask about Reese's diagnosis and get into that, I need you to explain to me why people from your part of the country, talk about those lakes as if they're an ocean. And they're the same thing when they're clearly not. And I don't know what you're talking about. Why does that happen? Is it because it's all you have? Is the lake? Is that why? What do you see what I'm saying?

Melissa 16:07
I think I get what you're asking. Just like it's just something that is like literally in my backyard. And a lot of things that happen to us are depicted sometimes by this big body of water. And when you stand and look at it, it looks as though it's as far as an ocean because I'm near the largest of the Great Lakes so but you know, people joke and call it old, the giant air conditioner turned on because we could have an 85 degree day and within a second the wind switches and then it drops to like 55 And you're like well, we're not going to the beach now. So

Scott Benner 16:48
kind of like one of the one of those redneck air conditioners with the cooler in it where you just fill it with ice and and blow air. Exactly. The wind blows over top of the of the lake. Yes. cools everything.

Melissa 17:00
Yes, yes. But well, it depends on the day and it depends how many days in a row.

Scott Benner 17:07
Have you ever been to the ocean? Yes. Okay. So you have context because sometimes I hear people have never seen an ocean like it's just like the ocean like he ever saw that. Okay, so is it just like the ocean?

Melissa 17:20
I don't think so at all. I was actually just in Mexico in March and it's not even close. I know being on vacation without my children made me probably appreciate the ocean a lot more. But, but no, like, the field is different. The swimming is different. The fear of sharks totally different. So

Scott Benner 17:40
yeah, they ought to put like a big like a fish in that lake that doesn't belong there. We'll see what happens. Oh, that would be fun. Like in 50 years, if they'll just take over. I don't think like by the way, no one do that. That's a bad idea. But it ruined Florida. There's snakes everywhere. And you know, just people buying these little like boa constrictors like Oh, they're so cute. And then one day they're like, I don't know what to do with this. They just throw it in the ground and they're everywhere.

Melissa 18:05
Oh, my gosh, danger noodles.

Scott Benner 18:10
Are you trying to do the podcast? You're you're trying to try? Because if you're trying to name the episode, you're winning so far.

Melissa 18:21
I don't count myself my sister and I've my sister calls them Nope. ropes. And I say danger noodles.

Scott Benner 18:27
Are you talking about penises or snakes? What are you doing?

Melissa 18:31
Snakes? For sure.

Scott Benner 18:32
That's when you said your sister said No probs. I was like our sisters gay. I get it.

Melissa 18:38
She is not. She's very afraid of snakes.

Scott Benner 18:43
I don't like a snake either. And I mean, the kind that they crawl on the ground. I guess. I mean, the other kind to, but I wasn't talking about that. Because just for clarity. But none of that matters one way or the other. My my Yeah. You wouldn't care. Mostly you wouldn't care about this podcast if I was gay, right? Like it'd be fine. Still? No, not at all. Yeah, I don't think that

Melissa 19:06
accepting of all people who do love all people

Scott Benner 19:08
from the middle of the country, you pull that off. So it's pretty amazing. Because yeah, right. Because you've ever been to a museum. All right. It was one of the you know, one of the things when my wife and I were thinking about where to live. I can't bless young people like in our 20s. We thought well, one of the reasons we want to stay here is because of the culture. And it's so readily available and accessible and varied. And then you start raising a kid and I don't care how hard you try, like you can't. I think I got my kids to a museum like twice when they were little. You know what I mean? Yeah, and Sam, that's it like Monet paintings came through and we're like, alright, well, let's go see these. They walked around and a half an hour into it. They're like, can we go?

Melissa 19:57
Totally over it.

Scott Benner 19:58
I'm like we bought a house. was here so that you'd have access to the never yell Let's go. Bunch of stuff. We're gonna be important that wasn't

Melissa 20:09
that didn't work out very well. At least you tried though you made the effort. That's good.

Scott Benner 20:13
I do have an amazing Monet cutting board though from from that.

Melissa 20:19
See? Totally worth it right

Scott Benner 20:20
there. Think of Claude Monet new his, his art was put on cutting boards. Do you think he'd be like, Wow, that's cool. They remember me all these years later, or do you think you'd be like this sacrilege? Like what are you doing?

Melissa 20:33
I think he would be like, let's put it on everything. mousepads like, let's just roll with it.

Scott Benner 20:38
You just be a big pimp. It'd be like, can we get these on flip flops? All right. Okay. All right. That's enough. You've got me. You're catching me. I just had an iron infusion in my irons coming back up again. So I'm in a weird spot between tired and enter chest. Oh, no. That's uncomfortable. Right? Don't make sense. Which is fantastic. Probably great for the podcast. But for me personally, it's

Melissa 21:03
Hey, I teach preschool. Lots of nonsense stories that are fun.

Scott Benner 21:09
Are you comparing me to a four year? Not at all. You probably should. Alright, so how old is a recent six and a half but she's diagnosed? How does it present

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Melissa 24:23
So she It was summertime. We were really busy. We she loves water. I wouldn't I still can't say that. Oh, she was drinking excessively the biggest thing for us was the bedwetting which she was potty trained. You know, during obviously she's six and a half over during the day but consistently, like she still needed a pull up at night. And then it got to the point that she was soaking through it and sheets and I you know, and it was actually I had two days of I'm Steph development training and I dropped my kids off with my mom for the first day, didn't see them in between. And then they went with my sister the second day. So then fast forward, it's a Wednesday. And my mom, my mother in law, and I were painting my bedroom. And, you know, they said, you know, Reese is just not her usual, bright and wonderful self. She was a little lethargic. You know, and like, we love her. She's a very free spirit cut, we lovingly call her our little gypsy girl, like, she's just happy go lucky. So it was very clear that something was off. And so I remember sitting down with her and being like, what's going on, and she really, she was six and a half, she couldn't really articulate her feeling. And she didn't see specifically like, Oh, I feel really crummy. And she had just gone to Hayward with my in laws. They do that every summer. And, you know, I'm a teacher, and I know, these warning signs that you look for when something traumatic has happened. So that crossed my mind, I was like, you know, did anything happen? In that you were uncomfortable when you went camping? And she said, No, not at all. And so it was time for their wellchild checks. So I emailed their pediatrician and kind of said the same things I just said to you, and, and her response was, you your email, literally is like, I could be reading it out of a textbook about juvenile diabetes. And she said, You need to take her in now. And I was like, Oh, okay. I remember getting the or I got the email from her went to Menards. Because I was had to pick out curtains for my new walls in my bedroom. And she called me and said the same thing she goes, You need to go in. And this is this part of the story, why she has a little kind of two different diagnosis days, because I went home, got her daughter to the local hospital that's in my, my town. And they did some blood work. And you know, everything came back that that's what it was. And I remember taking the moment that every parent needs when you're presented with something like this. And I turned and I faced the wall. And I cried for about 30 seconds. And then I turned around and I was like, Alright, let's do this. And so, you know, me knowing nothing about the disease we have we neither side of the family have anything. No. Autoimmune, no Hashimotos nothing on either side. So I'm like, I don't know, what do I do now? And they're like, Well, we have to call an ambulance. And I'm like, Well, what. And she loved it. By the way. She had the black, she had a blast on her hospital stage. She loved the ambulance ride. She reminisces about it quite often.

Scott Benner 27:55
If only I can be diagnosed with something else and get back to that hospital.

Melissa 28:00
CRC. She's like, I got food. I got to watch TV and lay around all day. So that it's kind of like we were at my town's hospital. And the ambulance came and got us, you know, somewhere around 1145 at night. So by the time we got over to the Minnesota hospital that's across the bridge five minutes away, and got, you know, her admitted and everything like that. And in the PICCHIO. She, it had crossed to the next day. So to me taking her to our hospital in our city. It was July 31. But like when we go to her endocrinologist in the other city, they always say August 1 was her diagnosis day.

Scott Benner 28:47
I say, Well, I figured out what Menards is while you were talking.

Melissa 28:52
Oh, save big money.

Scott Benner 28:54
Everything's 11% off for the next three days, actually.

Melissa 28:57
Oh, if I had a nickel every time I did a rebate, I wouldn't need the rebate, but it's pretty nice.

Scott Benner 29:02
So it's like a home store.

Melissa 29:05
Like yeah, your paint and lumber and build like pretty much anything that you ever could want for your house. You just go to Menards

Scott Benner 29:14
Do you have a home? Do you have Home Depot near you?

Melissa 29:17
In that other city? That's right across the bridge? Yes, we have a home for

Scott Benner 29:20
those are similar kinds of businesses. Yes, gotcha. Yes. Do you think people right now are like wow, she told that really amazing story about her child's diagnosis and he asked about Home Depot Menards as a follow up, they're just like, what now? Just listen, trust me. Okay, you need a second. It's a sad story. And and it's, I mean, it's nice that the kid was upbeat, but really it's a bummer like you know Yeah, it's crazy that she even remembers it. I mean, I'm glad she doesn't have a bad memory about it but it's interesting that that how she recalls it so was she not I guess not in decay obviously when you guys Yeah, no, she was she was she she was just still love that every men love it.

Melissa 30:01
Yeah, she was like, that's I told you she's my free spirit gypsy happy go lucky kind of gal except when she wants to argue with me. And then like, there's a little switch that flips, but that's okay.

Scott Benner 30:11
I was really fascinated when you said that the way she looked made you ask her if she had been assaulted?

Melissa 30:18
Yeah, well, and yes, or, you know, like just something uncomfortable that could have happened to her. Because, you know, as a teacher, you are trained to look for those types of things. And regression of toileting is actually a sign of something traumatic that has happened, you know, and I, you know, there's probably hundreds of people at the campground that she was with, and, you know, and when you're with somebody 24/7 Like, I have that mom guilt every once in a while, especially right now, when all these pictures come up on time, hop from that time, and I'm just like, what, how did I not see, you know, I've forgiven myself for that, very quickly. I forgive myself, because when you don't know about something, and even if it's right in your backyard, if you don't know what to look for, there's nothing that you can do to, you know, feel. Be mad at yourself about it. Yeah, you know, she was really thin. I remember her playing soccer that year, and she would get so tired. And she is I laugh because it's something she would do normally, like she would in the middle of a soccer game, she would run over to me at the on the sidelines and be like, Mom, I'm thirsty. But she was doing that so much. And there was one that she she actually threw up during her soccer game. And I was like, Oh my gosh, like, what did we get? I was like, mortified. And looking back, I'm like that poor little honey. Like what was actually going on with her little body at the time. But she was so positive all the time and didn't complain about anything that I had no idea.

Scott Benner 31:52
No. Well, it's I think it's great that you were able to just say, look, how would I can't hold myself accountable for something I didn't know about? So

Melissa 32:00
yeah, I and I had, I had to make myself do that. You know, I'm, like I said, I look at those pictures. And I'm like, uh, because she was she was very thin. But also she was growing. She's really tall for her age. Like I wrote down her stats, she's actually four foot six and a half. She's in like, like 94th percentile for height and stuff like that. So I was like, oh, growth spurt. She's thirsty, because it's been a hot summer, that kind of thing. So

Scott Benner 32:27
you know what I just heard for people who write me still and complain that I make fun of soccer. A child can leave a soccer game to get a drink while it's happening. And it doesn't impact the game at all. So

Melissa 32:40
yes, I am a witness of that.

Scott Benner 32:42
Literally take a player off the field and doesn't even matter. Especially at age six. Yes. Yeah. So you keep defending keep defending your soccer. It's okay.

Melissa 32:50
Yes. I did play soccer in high school.

Scott Benner 32:54
I love Ted lasso. But you know, it doesn't doesn't change the story you just told. I'm telling you. If the catcher runs off the field during a baseball game, you got to stop playing.

Melissa 33:03
Yeah, there's things that won't happen if the catcher has gone for sure.

Scott Benner 33:08
All right. Anyway, so I'm sure she wasn't. was give me one second. For disclaimer. I wrote. Please don't write me about soccer being great. Please, please. I just don't care. You just listen if you love it, I love it. My nephew plays in college. He seems very happy. Good for you

Melissa 33:32
will actually get mad at you. Oh

Scott Benner 33:33
my god. Nobody likes it. We can make fun of soccer. I've tried I sat and watched it. I've gone to live games. I see. It looks like pinball with people running after the pinball to me. Yeah, giant Tea Parties just they're just like, there's the ball and they run over there and then nothing happens. Then they run over there and then nothing happens. And then they kick the ball and eight. Listen, I I've never kicked the soccer ball with the intention of putting it somewhere. I imagine it's incredibly difficult. But the goal is so big.

Melissa 34:05
It's harder than you think. So

Scott Benner 34:07
I believe I believe all that Melissa but as an onlooker, it looks like you're trying to drive a truck through a bridge and you ran into a tree How did you miss that? It's so big. And anyway, I don't like to

Melissa 34:23
get into I have to ask you did you get into trouble making fun of curling in that one episode?

Scott Benner 34:28
I listen, I secretly love curling. I hope that came through. Oh,

Melissa 34:32
I did it did but um, well, I have to tell you the the captain of the USA team is like an acquaintance of mine. He's really Yeah, his son and Reese actually have been in class together every year since kindergarten except for this last year. So

Scott Benner 34:50
I'm, I'm fascinated by anything where some of the participants look like they're, you know, they're in CrossFit all day long and some of them look like they have hypertension. And it's all Oh, yeah, there's still just like, they're all just equally good at it. And I don't know, I want them. I want a version of curling where you have to like, balance a kitten on the thing while it slides like I want to see something, try to like, ride it like a surfboard. You know what I mean? Maybe not. Oh, yeah. Who knows? A Guana? That might work, right? Because they don't Yes, that would work. No, not they're too fast. What's the one that goes really slow? Chameleon? Oh, yes. They wouldn't be good with

Melissa 35:26
a cold though. All right, or like a bearded dragon.

Scott Benner 35:30
Again, I think you're just making payments references. But we're gonna we're going to I'm going to workshop this I think there's a way to spruce up curling?

Melissa 35:39
Oh, well, let me know. And I can I can let

Scott Benner 35:41
pass that on. Yeah, yes, absolutely. I don't know. They should just put some What if a hologram was on the stone? It would just be there's something there. I don't know. We don't have time right now. But no, I have not gotten crap about like, even as you say, like, I don't remember making fun. Listen, it might be hard for you to believe Melissa. I don't remember anything I've said on these buckets. Nothing whatsoever I get. I'll get like people come online and ask a question. And like, Thank God for Isabelle helping me now with the Facebook group so much, because I'll send her a text. And I'll be like, Did I did I say that? Like, did you know? And she she said, Well, you know, you don't remember that. And I was like, I don't I think I record like four of these a week. And then I don't hear them for six months. And then I you know, I put an edit on them. And I put them up again. I was like, I just I'm like, while you're listening to the podcast. I'm six months ahead of you. And so I just I don't and then you see what happened? Because we weren't recording it when you brought it up where you like this got messed up episode where where I re edited a really traumatic after dark episode. Like it got messed up in my filing system. So I had, I had had this incredible conversation with this woman. It was really it, she went through a lot of trauma, I mean stuff that like stuck with me really, sincerely. And then I put it up. And then I don't know, five months went by, and somehow the unedited RAW file ended up in the queue still. And when it and when I got to it, I just sat down and re edited it. And as I was listening to it, I was like, Oh my God, this story is incredible.

Melissa 37:28
Even when you listen to it a second time, it didn't spark that, like you had already done it. And listen,

Scott Benner 37:31
my iron was very low when it happened. So I'm gonna little blame that. But ya know, I mean, I remember I had all the same beats and all the same feelings, listening to it. And then I got it all done. I put it up and it was up for maybe two hours. And I got a note. I think from Isabel, she's like, I'm pretty sure you ran this episode already.

Melissa 37:53
Well, you can't be expected to remember everything you talk about with everybody. So

Scott Benner 37:57
but mostly I take your point. But that's why I'm using this as an example because this this was a grown woman who had been sexually assaulted by her own parents. Yeah. And that's how much content I hear is what I'm trying to say to you. Yeah, cuz I'm like, I could retell her story. Right now, if you needed me to. It just it stuck with me so much. And yet, when I was in, I was head down working like you guys don't know, like, there's some days, I'll get up in the morning. And I look at everybody and I go, I will see you at midnight. I edit like four or five episodes in a row. And so I just I'm head down powering through them. And I just got caught in a day like that. And I don't know if I got tired or what happened. Maybe I was just in one of those real weird worlds where I was just listening for noises and clicks and stuff that didn't make sense. And I wasn't really hearing it. I don't know. But

Melissa 38:48
you never know though. In that situation. I always like to think that what if somebody listened to it? In those two hours, you accidentally had it up, and you change their life and help them in some way?

Scott Benner 38:59
I did get a couple of notes. Nice notes about it. So hopefully, yeah, hopefully something like that happen. But anyway, my point is just that I don't know what the hell I say on this podcast. So when you're at home, like hammering away on your keyboard, you're like, dear Scott, soccer is uh, I don't I don't I don't even know if I mean, I don't like soccer. I can't tell anymore.

Melissa 39:20
The hate mail from the Trolls I soccer.

Scott Benner 39:23
Listen, it doesn't make sense to me. And I'm sure they feel the same way about things I like and it's fine. Go live your life. Just don't email me please. I don't care. I don't care. I'm gonna read your email. I'm gonna laugh then I'm gonna delete it. So. Anyway,

Melissa 39:38
so you did sound surprised that you didn't think Reese was in decay when she was diagnosed?

Scott Benner 39:43
Because she was so like, upbeat and like, This is amazing. You don't I mean? Yeah,

Melissa 39:48
well, and I almost almost don't want to tell you her stats. But the one the one blood sugar I remember is 786 And she her agency was 14.1. Yep, so that was July 31. And then, like I said, we hit the ground running. And when she had her November 11, a one see she was six, eight. So Wow. Yeah, we brought her down. She's fluctuated quite a bit, for various reasons. But one thing I am extremely pumped about is so sorry. So she diagnosed, you know, August 1 of 19. We had the Dexcom G six on her by September 14 of 2019. Omnipod dash went on October 1 of 2019. And we actually just started on the OP five and June 8, actually, the day after she finished school, you're done with school, and I'm like, That's it. Okay. We've been on the dash. I did the online training just myself. I didn't need to meet with anybody. It was really easy. Really simple. Got her on. We're on pod probably 13 right now. And so June eighth is when we put the first Omnipod five pod on. She had her next endo payment was June 13. And they're like, How's it go? And then I'm like, Well, it's been about a hot minute so I don't know yet. But she is the very first in our it's we have an area of because our our town in that Minnesota town are so close together that it's kind of we're kind of like a, you know, how they call the twin cities were something similar to that. And so she's the very first patient to be on the Omnipod five in our area. Oh, yeah.

Scott Benner 41:47
So we're interested. Yeah, trying to figure out what's going on. How are you exactly? How are you finding it to be?

Melissa 41:54
I absolutely love it. Like, I can't see it. I get it that like it might not work for everybody. Some people are seeing these wonderful numbers already with the dash. But even when it was almost coming out her endo is like she is a great candidate for this. And it's because she had so many unexplainable rises like early morning rises that Dawn phenomenon stuff. And it's it's like I've slept through the night. It's crazy. Like no low alarms. It's it's very It's very weird. I almost feel it like I wake up in a panic every once awhile like wait a second, I didn't wake up at all what's going on? But yeah, like her a one see at that appointment was actually eight four and I looked at how you know how sugar mate gives you like an estimated at the same time. That estimated that same day said eight, five, but now the sugar mate estimation, she's down to seven, seven, in just over a month.

Scott Benner 42:56
Okay. So where you would you can consider yourself struggling over the first couple of years? Or would you just how do you how would you how would you quantify how it's been going?

Melissa 43:09
Um, I don't I would say we would have struggling days struggling situations. You know, there's just there's so many variables and things to figure out and I feel her endos very cautious with where her ratios were at, you know, we run into the problem sometimes that she'll eat breakfast and we Pre-Bolus We have been since you know, I would say maybe even three months in we're like, okay, Pre-Bolus time, and like, she'll eat her breakfast, even if she wakes up at Sorry, I'm skipping around for you. But let's say the end of the school year, she wakes up and she's floating really nicely right around 110 120 somewhere around that area. Getting up by the time we are walking out the door for school. She's like 196 I'm like without eating anything. You know, that's that feed on the floor thing. Yeah. And then we get to school and we Pre-Bolus For what she's going to have for her breakfast, which is she eats at school for breakfast and and then so we correct that 196 Where she's sitting at plus eat, then she starts climbing up, then she doesn't have enough time to come down before her 1140 lunch or lunch. So So then it's like, Oh, good. She's starting to come down from breakfast here. But now lunch is making her go right back up. So that's the struggle that we had had maybe the last three, four months of school. And since the Omnipod five like I were having some of the meal spikes and but she's not going above like To 50 to 70, somewhere around there after eating, and then I just hit her with a correction and try to teach the system like, Nope, no, no, no, we don't like her there. Get her down, please. So

Scott Benner 45:11
it's just it's so interesting to hear different people's definitions of good. Just as a basic example, like, you know, if you I'm not even talking about all the part five at this point, like, like, it's just, it's interesting, like you said, you know, she's gotten a one C in the sevens, you're really happy with that? I think that's terrific. And I think there are people would hear that and think, wow, seven, how did you do that? I can't get out of the nines. And I can't get out the eights. And there are people who have a five and a six, seven. Why is it you're not getting it lower? Like I think I think it would be heard by people in different situations differently. And that's why I asked like, so. Is your expectation? Meet meeting your results right now? Or do you have more? Like, do you feel like you want more? And you're getting to it? Or are you happy with where you are?

Melissa 46:05
I guess no, my mentality is if I can get her from an eight, five to a SEVEN, SEVEN in a month, that I will be able to get her down in the fives.

Scott Benner 46:15
Okay, excellent. It's just really, I mean, the whole thing's I mean, diabetes is just a it's a giant pain in the ass. Like, I don't know if it really is. I don't know if I've ever just said that out loud or not before, but it's not great. And I just assumed everyone knew. But at the same time, it's so she gets out of bed and she sees 190 Before food. Yeah. And does that happen every day like clockwork?

Melissa 46:41
It was and we, that's a that's one of the reasons why our endo was like this, when this Omnipod five rolls out, it's going to be great for that situation, along with many others. But then, and there was some adjustments to basil too. But then when the basil adjusted, like, you know, it's always like, turn this turn this little dial this way, but then bump this, this switch up, and you know, all those little tweaks and things that you have to do and then test out and I was one that, you know, let them make the decisions. And I change all of the information in her PDM. And, and then we have to write it out and see if it works. Because some days with the specific settings, it wouldn't happen. But it was getting to the point, the majority of the time it was happening, where when I I emailed and I said we need to adjust her her morning, basil. And I can't remember offhand, like if we actually tried it to see if it would work. And then she kept crashing. So we just we weren't winning that battle. But now Now it's now it's great.

Scott Benner 47:48
So what is when she wakes up in the morning now and her blood sugar tries to go up on Omnipod? Five, where's it making it to?

Melissa 47:55
For instance, this morning, I woke up. It was my husband would get up for work. And about quarter after five. And I looked at her number. And I was like, Oh, I think she was like 165. And I went in and did a correction. And even like, I was doing some corrections where it was like 1.8 units, but this was a point one, five. And sometimes it'll say like, Nope, you're not doing a correction. And I'm like, but she's not where I want her to be. So I'll put one in manually too. Okay.

Scott Benner 48:28
I just heard you say getting out of bed at five o'clock. And I thought you guys gotta get a podcast. That's terrible. Like getting up better.

Melissa 48:34
Just Oh, I went right back to bed. Don't worry. Like my husband. My husband is he has insomnia. And like one little thing will wake them up. That's I had to get a smartwatch so that if her alarms go off, my watch buzzes to wake me up. And so I I'm the primary caregiver, which is probably a good thing. My husband is a brilliant man. He's like, he's like, I will do it. Anytime you need help. You need to just ask me, but you know that you're going to be like, you do it, but not like that. I'm like, Yeah, you're probably right.

Scott Benner 49:12
I just I don't I oh my god, I'm baffled by getting up at five o'clock in the morning for work. I would I would change my entire life to make that stop. Oh, yes.

Melissa 49:21
See what I can do. He says craft beer. Really? Yeah.

Scott Benner 49:29
drinkers are up that early. Making business?

Melissa 49:32
Oh, yeah. Well, because he's he his accounts consist of liquor stores and bars and our town and some surrounding areas as well. Yeah, but I always joke that we're our jobs are on completely opposite ends of the spectrum. Craft beer preschool teacher.

Scott Benner 49:51
I just, my brother was saying something the other day about his job. I was like, you gotta get a podcast. I was like, That's horrible. And everyone knows I'm kidding. He's laughing and he's like, Yeah, that's what I'll do. He's Like, I'll get a podcast and I was like, that'll pay my bills. And I was like, it's working for me. And he's like, Yeah, sure. He also works for you and a handful of other people. He's like, if I started a podcast, no one's gonna listen to it. I was like, I'm just kidding. You shouldn't, you should do it. Really. It's all I was really running this printing press and you know, Wisconsin, and I'm like, you know, if your back hurts, have you thought of podcasting

Melissa 50:23
about running a printing press? People would be interested,

Scott Benner 50:27
I can't the only thing he listened. My brother told me a story once about a guy he worked with, that ended with two drunk men drunk driving an RV that didn't have a seat for the driver. So they were sitting on stacks of beer, have cases of beer as a seat, and then they crashed into a restaurant. Oh, my God, the cops came in one of them got shot in the leg. And my brother's like, so this guy's telling me this story at work yesterday. And all I could think was like, where did I move to? Like, what happened?

Melissa 51:00
A great episode of a podcast right there.

Scott Benner 51:02
Oh, if I thought that guy could tell that story. I'd find him tell him. Look, I know you don't have diabetes, but I just need your for a half an hour, please. It's just and then my brother's like, I just use it the whole time. He's telling me sir, I'm thinking like, this guy is just full of it, you know? And he's like, and then sure enough in the paper, like two days later, the whole story was in the paper.

Melissa 51:21
It's like, Oh, my goodness, amazing.

Scott Benner 51:25
Anyway, that's why you have all these fish is what I'm thinking.

Melissa 51:29
I don't we don't have to oarfish and we actually we were Minnesota Viking fans and not Packer fans.

Scott Benner 51:37
Are you even allowed to say that? I don't think No,

Melissa 51:39
I don't know. Maybe not. Maybe you can edit that part out.

Scott Benner 51:43
Though. People will find you and they'll be like, listen, a lot of stupid stuff was said in that podcast. But then you said the Vikings and we have to come burn your garage down at the very least. I hope not. How bad is the cold? In your? Are you born there? Yes. Spartan Race in the in the in the middle of winter when it really hits? Do you think I gotta get out of here?

Melissa 52:07
I don't. My husband says it every year. Every year. He's like, Why? Why do we live here? And I say well, because I don't know. It's negative 50 degrees right now with the wind chill, and I just cracked an egg on her recycling bin. And in 10 minutes, it froze. And that's a great science project for my preschoolers to see. So that no, but a big thing is like our entire family is here. Like, you know, my dad actually passed away March 19. Here. Thank you. But you know, we have both sets of grandparents are here. Both of our sisters are here. You know, our entire family is here. And I was like, we moved to Florida and we'd love the weather. But then we'd be like, we have nobody to watch her kids for us. So

Scott Benner 52:54
yeah, I'm not saying Florida. I don't think I actually don't know where I'm staying anymore. Because it was 115 degrees in Texas the other day. So I don't know that there's anywhere to run to all of a sudden Yeah, that's that's no fun either. No, but it gets oddly hot where you are to?

Melissa 53:10
It does like for one day a year. Yeah, like I always say that our summers should be like July, August, September, or even, you know, even August, September, October, because we sometimes will have days in October where it's still 80 degrees. Yeah.

Scott Benner 53:29
It's really something it really is.

Melissa 53:30
And then, and then June, we jokingly call it January, because sometimes it's that cold out that you think it's actually January, but it's January.

Scott Benner 53:40
I don't understand what you're doing. My brother's still like, are you ever going to come here? Like, I

Melissa 53:45
don't think so. No, just come for that 180 degree day, you'll have a great time.

Scott Benner 53:49
My mom wants to go live there. And we're talking about it now. And just because Brian moved so long ago, and she's older. So she's like, let me like, let me ride this out where I see Brian more often. I was like, yeah, that's, that's fine, mom. So we're talking about how to get over there. Right now we're somewhere between here's our ideas, because my mom's at, she just beat cancer. And we don't think she can sit too long. We don't think putting on a plane is a great idea. Like we're trying to figure out what to do. So we're down to pulling her in a trailer just laying around some hay. That seems like a reasonable idea. And, and we want to, you know, part of us were like, well, we'll drive because then we're at least a little more in control. But still, if my 80 year old mom's like, I need the bathroom, like we still might have to drive miles to get to it. And you know, then she's gonna have to get out and walk and I'm like, I still don't think it's like, I don't think it's a great thing. And you just think wow, like how hard is it to move an older person like a great distance? I never thought about this before. So as we were joking about putting her on a trailer full of hay. I said, What if we rented like, a small RV, though? Yeah. And I was like, then we'd have a bathroom with us in a place where she could lay down And that's it. I'm like, I think that's the answer.

Melissa 55:03
Oh, that's a great idea. And you could stop and you know, see anything along the way that might spark your interest. And

Scott Benner 55:10
I've never slept in a Walmart parking lot. I would love to do that one time. You know, just to

Melissa 55:15
give it a rough salutely. It's fun. I've never done it either. So well, apparently,

Scott Benner 55:19
if you have an RV you're allowed to. So they allow RV parking overnight. I'm excited. I'm totally going to sleep in a Walmart parking lot, at least one time during this bucket list check. Yeah, just so I can say I did it. And because my bar is raised, obviously really high, as you can tell, and Oh, yeah. But I really think that might be the answer. And then my brother's like, we're going to drive it back then. Because my other brother lives out here. And I was like, Nah, man, let's find a place where we can run it one way and then we'll just fly back for like, he's like, Alright, I think I could do

Melissa 55:51
Yeah, like a U haul. Like the U haul. You drive it there and you leave it there. So gotta be something like that for Arby's. But there are other cities in Wisconsin that aren't that are farther away from the lake that are beautiful. A lot of the time my husband even like, he drives an hour out of town on a few days for his job. And he'll be he'll be like, it was 90 where I was, and I come into town and I watch it go to 70 and then to 55. And that's when he says the why do we live here kind of thing.

Scott Benner 56:21
Yeah, I agree with him. Tom. I agree. I would get the hell out of there very quickly. And I'd tell your family look, you come if you want. But that's it. I'm gone. I'm not putting on a one of those rabbit lined hats ever again. My wife got me one for Christmas once as a joke. I put it on in the living room, like on Christmas morning. And in 10 minutes. My body was so hot. I thought it was gonna pass out. And I was like, Oh, it does its job. God, I was like, what are those? Rabbits must be so warm.

Melissa 56:55
Yes, they are.

Scott Benner 56:58
So so now I you know, this thing that I looked at? And I was like, Well, who do I give this to? And that was taken out of the box. Now like, keep it in. If I'm working outside in the cold. I don't care how stupid I look. And I look very stupid in it. I put the keeps my whole body warm. It's amazing. Yes. Oh, that's awesome. Like putting a heater on your head. Alright, listen, let's let's so let's tell the people, let's let them in on it. Right? You panicked a little bit the other day because you were supposed to come on and talk about being a teacher in a place where your kid works. Or kid goes to school. And then you turn on the podcast and there's a woman on talking about it. And you were just like, I should probably not even come in.

Melissa 57:37
Well, I was like, Oh, crap. It was like the first thing I saw. And I was like, Oh, no. And to be honest, I didn't know. Like, what your turnaround time was or anything like that. So I was like, let's just check in to make sure. So

Scott Benner 57:52
the tone of your email was like, I thought, ooh, Melissa's backing out. That's what I thought when I saw it first, then I was like, No, she's just worried. So

Melissa 58:00
I was just looking for reassurance that it was all going to be okay. So

Scott Benner 58:02
is there anything that that you really want people to know that you've learned by being in that situation where your kid is in an education sense, but you're there? Like I guess you get the Seymour's my expectation?

Melissa 58:17
Well, um, yeah, so like, the overarching thing I think of is the quote from Maya Angelou, which is do the best you can until you know better than when you know better do better. And that kind of has encompassed the last three years. You know, with initial diagnosis, I'm like, I need to be there, I need to make sure everything is going the way it needs to be. We had a brand new school nurse coming in, and when you live in a small town, you know, you're connected to everybody. And our nurse that had just retired was actually the wife of my, I'm gonna say soccer again. Sorry. My soccer coach from high school. It was his wife. And they have a type one daughter, who was in her 30s at the time. So before I found out, she was retiring, I was like, Oh, that puts me in a mind so much at ease. She knows probably more than I do. About the care even though maybe not the technology piece, but and then I find out she's retiring and I was like, oh, no, so that just added to okay, what is this new nurse going to look like? And let's, I'll be honest, I feel very lucky in how everything works out with my job. I know. I've read and heard horror stories of school nurses that make decisions without asking and things like that. And that is absolutely not the case with our nurse. She She texts me like the littlest thing and then I'm going to be honest, like, you know, you know, I don't think you waited long enough to see if if that little bump like gets her going in the right direction. You You know, let's do it different this time. And she like I've, I collect the box that stays in the nurse's office at the end of the year. And I find notes that she takes because she's wanting to learn more and do better as well with her care. So you know, those first seven months after diagnosis, it was all hands on deck, my principal was whatever you need. Her kindergarten and first grade teacher, we we have something that's called looping. So kids get the same teacher for kindergarten and first grade. Studies have shown that it's like six weeks extra of you know, you don't lose six weeks of learning time because you already know your kids and where they're at right when you jump into first grade, so, but her kindergarten teacher is awesome. And ironically, my first date with my husband was in her childhood home. That's like, oh, wait, wait. Why? Yeah. So my husband and I met in 1997. Okay. And his buddy was on the basketball team with him. And his little sister is my daughter's kindergarten first grade teacher. Oh, so like, yeah, this first time that my husband and I hung out, was at their house. So like, that's just my point of house. How everybody knows everybody in my town.

Scott Benner 1:01:22
Well, let's say you've been filled up at the home of your child's teacher. Is that right?

Melissa 1:01:32
I said, we hung out Scott, we hung out.

Scott Benner 1:01:35
Okay. Well, you're, you're married now. So

Melissa 1:01:38
it was 15. And I was 17. We were

Scott Benner 1:01:41
listening. You took advantage of a young boy and you're teaching your kids teach yourself?

Melissa 1:01:51
No, come on. But so again, like everybody at our school is like, you just let us know what you need from us. You know, and with the help of the podcast and the Facebook group and support in our community, it's just I learned more. I learned, like, almost hate to admit this, but it was just last year that I learned that once you hit the button on the PDM, you can walk away for her entire second grade year.

Unknown Speaker 1:02:25
There holding her next to it. Yes.

Melissa 1:02:30
And I was like, Wait, hold on a minute, like so once I gave the instructions. What did

Scott Benner 1:02:34
you think the controller was doing? Do you think it was secretly talking to the pod going, keep going keep going a little farther, a little more?

Melissa 1:02:41
Exactly. With each tick of the bar. I was like, I was like, Alright, we gotta make sure everything goes in. And as you go.

Scott Benner 1:02:48
So you said your husband is smart. Now I don't know if I can even believe confrontation.

Melissa 1:02:53
He's, he's brilliant. He's brilliant. But, and, and then, you know, we all agreed in her 504 That we would make kind of like gametime decisions like with what's going on. Is this a nurse visit? Or is this a mom visit? What and her kindergarten classroom, literally 20 feet from my classroom, if her doors open, and my doors open, I could see her in her classroom. Then her second grade one was one over, so 20 feet, but a little bit more diagonal from my room. And it was, there's a moment in second grade when she walked in my door. And she goes mom, to the hairbrush. And I'm like, This is not diabetes related, you're missing instruction time, go back to class.

Scott Benner 1:03:45
Or you just stick a gum in a brush. Don't do it.

Melissa 1:03:48
And so I was noticing, you know, not that she was taking advantage. But again, that free spirit happy go lucky gal would maybe manipulate the system every once in a while and come over and she was like, but we're having a cupcake. And I'm like, You know what to do. So the biggest change when she went into third grade was she was now upstairs. At first I was like, Oh, I don't want her upstairs. But I'm like, no, no, I'm after the hairbrush incident. I was like, you're upstairs, it's fine. And just, you know, in the reality of it after these next two years, she's going to be at the middle school in a whole different building than I'm at and we have to get her prepared and ready. And the more independent she becomes with her care. You know, that I think the better both of us are going to feel. So when when my dad passed, I had two weeks where I was home. And as a family. We discussed that it was best for the kids to get back after just a couple of days. And so she was at school I was at home and I'm like well I'm not in any shape right now to go into that building and you know, I wasn't ready for that to get all those condolences and things from colleagues. So we came up with a system that I would put what her carb count was for her lunch in with her PDM. And my alarm would go off, I would text her teacher, and they would just, she would watch her putt just to make sure she doesn't transpose any numbers, you know, like 20 carbs and 82 carbs is a big difference. So, and then, so she started doing more of that independent care. And once I went back to work, I said, Do you want to keep doing that? And she was like, Yeah, I do. So it's she's got to feel comfortable, the more we know, you know, really great communication between everybody involved is so important and really being open and honest with when something is going wrong. Or you can do better than the conversations need to happen.

Scott Benner 1:06:00
Okay, well, I mean, I think that a plan is the best thing to have. So absolutely, yeah, I think that's amazing. Do you? Can I can I talk to you about numbers for a second? Check? Because I admit, I'm going to ask your opinion, too. So I've recorded you haven't heard them yet. But you will. And by the time this comes out, they will have been up for months. But I recorded a three part series about on the pod five in conjunction with Omni pod, the company. And they provided a CDE for me to speak with. Ah, that's so exciting. And she was from the Barbara Davis Center. Oh, really terrific. And I got to know her, you know, in the lead up to this. So this was, this was my idea. I've been floating this idea on the pod for two years. And like when all the pod five comes out, like let's do a short series that explains to the people and they were like, Yeah, that's a great idea. So it actually kind of happened, which was amazing. And, and this this woman, carry carry carry is how she's pronounced her name. I think it's my fault. Like I hear, probably I know, I mispronounce word carry up or get really lovely girl. And, and great at what she does. But what I noticed as I was getting to know her in a couple of meetings we had leading up to it that she was very knowledgeable, and easy to talk to, and could explain things well, but her greater focus was kind of the masses, like she wants everybody to do. Good. She's not looking to drill down people's a one season to the fives. Right? Like that's not her focus. Her focus is, you know, let's not have people running around with eight and nine and 1011 12 A onesies like let's get everybody, you know, into a reasonable place, you know, and I was thinking about her one night, and I was thinking about Jenny and I was like, like, what's the difference between these two people, and the difference between them is like Jenny's professional life is focused at really helping you dial in, like, get it really into into the fives. Right. And Karis focus isn't like that. And I thought, I wonder if I shouldn't do a series with Carrie, about management when you're not shooting for a 5.2. And if that wouldn't be valuable for people, and I wonder what you thought of it, like you're the first person I'm asking, so don't tell anybody, please.

Melissa 1:08:32
I'll take it to the grave. So

Scott Benner 1:08:34
just till it comes out if we do it, but you know.

Melissa 1:08:38
So my so from what I'm understanding you're saying is, is carry more in tune with making sure people don't feel so defeated all of the time, and being discouraged and things like that.

Scott Benner 1:08:52
It's interesting that you hear it that way. So I think that's telling about you, but no, that wasn't my question. My my thought is, is that some people have your, your, your kind of feeling about this, like for right now, a seven point whatever you said, is, is great, which I don't disagree with, but you're not you don't feel pressured to me to get it down. Like like, let me just say, like, if art and say once see this last three weeks with 7.5 I would, I'd be like, Oh my god, what have I done? Like like that? Like, I would be like I have to get this together. And I and that's because my perspective is an AE one C and the fives and yours isn't so you're not panicked by it, but you do you know it exists and you do think I can get to this exactly what you don't but you're not pressured by it.

Melissa 1:09:45
I'm not pressured by it because I do understand that it's gonna take some time. And you know, three years sounds like a really long time but, but to me, but go ahead. Yeah, yeah, but but when when you say it in that way of Like, like, Yes, I'm, I guess I don't have the urgency to get her down to a five. But like, I know, we will get there with what I am seeing with her numbers with the Omnipod. Five. And it's been like it, I don't know, I feel some days that it's some sort of sorcery or something like, because there are things that I have done the same for the last three years on the dash. And it kind of became like, well, this is what happens, she goes up after a meal, then she comes down and then floats kind of fine. We got to watch for the dips and the lows, but I bet you I've maybe have had to treat like an unexplainable low, maybe twice, twice or three times in the last month and a half. You know, when she wasn't bouncing on the trampoline, or swimming or something like that. And but I know with what I'm seeing and how often she's in range now compared to what we were seeing prior. It is an improvement. But again, I still know I can do better, we can do better and ASQ.

Scott Benner 1:11:04
Somebody Have you listened to the Pro Tip series? Yes. Okay. And so but you still slipped into that, like, well, this is just diabetes thing. Like you, you're accepting of the idea that like blood sugars are going to spike after meals.

Melissa 1:11:20
And I know that there's a way that they won't, but I just I haven't figured it out. tweaked it to figure it out. Yeah, yes. Because the problem is guys, I'm sorry. Not saying it depends on what she eats, too. She's very picky eater. So you'd think I'd be able to dial it in and figure it out. But we're also

Scott Benner 1:11:37
working, you have a full time job, right? Yes, yeah. And you're keeping that story quiet about the way you've took advantage of a 15 year old Jr 17. That's probably a lot of work. And you know, he's happy about it. Hey, listen, I'm not questioning you. I think you were out there doing the Lord's work. What do you think of it? So

I just think, you know, men die before women near like, let me get a younger one. And maybe I can get him to help me in my later years with more stuff. Oh, boy, I

Melissa 1:12:08
hope so. It was his stress level.

Scott Benner 1:12:12
He's got stressed selling craft beer to people.

Melissa 1:12:14
I know. Isn't that the most ironic thing you've ever said in your life?

Scott Benner 1:12:19
I don't want to get away from my original thought too much. But that took me by surprise more than anything so far.

Melissa 1:12:24
Oh, yeah. Well, when you have 90 accounts that are very demanding, and you're the kind of guy that never tells them no. And you know, his name is Clint. So I always say like, oh, well, Clint, I'll do it. Clint will do it as that's what I envision all of his account saying because he does he's he just bends over backwards and works really, really hard. And he doesn't sleep well, because he'll wake up in the middle of the night being like, Okay, wait, I have to do this, this, this, this and then his brain gets going. And then he's one of those people that like, when he can't sleep well, he'll go for a run,

Scott Benner 1:12:57
like, mattered a mental patient. That's all I can tell you. That's ridiculous.

Melissa 1:13:02
Like, four miles in the morning at like five in the morning. And I'm proud of him like, Hey, I was how were you? While you while you go down the driveway, babe. Good job.

Scott Benner 1:13:13
I'd rather have hypertension, but I'm kidding. I would not but but so it's where's my thought? How did you get me off on that? Oh, by saying that it was stressful selling beer selling craft. That's not an easy job, that nobody has any hope. Just really.

Melissa 1:13:33
It is far, far from an easy job,

Scott Benner 1:13:35
though. Listen, I don't know that there are many easy jobs. This one's stressful. And I mean, I was joking. I half an hour ago about like, just getting a podcast if you want to take it easy, but it's really hard. And there's a lot of stuff that goes into it. But yeah, but nevertheless. So okay, so you have so you really you have the like you you got into that thing where you were like, Listen, this is going to happen, and I don't know how to stop it. But But you believe that you will one day? Yes. So what are you? So my point is, I guess is the reason you're probably enjoying Omnipod. Five is because as her blood sugar is going up, it's trying to stop it where you weren't doing that. Is that right?

Melissa 1:14:14
And to an extent Yes. Like I didn't if she was if she was trending up, I'm like, Okay, we're doing something I would like near this before the switch. I bet you I was doing like a Temp Basal Temp Basal increase three times a day.

Scott Benner 1:14:33
Well, then did you ever think that maybe her Basal wasn't strong enough?

Melissa 1:14:36
Oh, yeah. Yes. But again, like I said, Before, I was the one that trusted and still do trust what my her endo has told us to do. And you know, like days would go by and I'd be like, Oh, I should send an email so they can look at the gluco report so that this can happen and we can figure out how to switch and change and then we'd go on Christmas vacation. For two weeks, where she would be sleeping until 10, and not eat so then like, certain ratios were off and then summertime cut, you know, so they sound like excuses. Yes, but I was absolutely correcting and doing everything I could to get her. I was being very aggressive, actually, in my opinion, at the end,

Scott Benner 1:15:19
yeah, they don't sound like excuses to me they sound like life. And that's why I was asking you so that you can kind of articulate it. And I wouldn't be I wouldn't be the one making the point, which is that? It's, it's all well and good, right to say like, well, you just have to do this, you just have to do that. But when when he supposed to find the time to do that? Exactly. You know, I mean, like, I know, it's of the utmost importance. But at the same time, like you, you still have to be at work on time. And you still have to say a certain amount of time, your husband's got to get up and be crazy and go for his run and go sell his beer and come home and you have another child. Right. So yes, you know, that that just what you said there a minute ago about like, I know, I should call contact the doctor. But you know, but I didn't right away. And I think that's the part. I think that's the part that's, that's the hardest to fix. And all this is is how do you help people be to feel autonomous enough, I guess, to make those changes on their own without having to reach to somebody that to do it on the fly. Like I don't sit down and like pour over Ardens numbers for an hour before I change something. I'm just sort of time for them. Just try this and see what happens. And so I think that's what people need more than anything is and then you went into on the pod five, with settings that were really only giving you an A one C of what?

Melissa 1:16:45
Well, she was at 884, I think at her last appointment, and we did change some things like he dropped her. What's it called the insulin sensitivity factor. She was at I think 100 or 90 and we dropped that to 70. And they explained to me okay, that means that when you do a correction, she might come down real fast. So you got to watch. Did

Scott Benner 1:17:08
that happen?

Melissa 1:17:10
No, it hasn't.

Scott Benner 1:17:11
Because listen, Mary spent the last couple of minutes helping a little bit here. Please. I would love that. What is she way?

Melissa 1:17:19
She is 76 pounds. What was your Basal

Scott Benner 1:17:21
rate when you left? DASCH ah,

Melissa 1:17:25
well then I had a feeling you're gonna ask me that. So I have to go into her stuff. So her Oh, you know, I think I took pictures on my phone. Just a minute. Please.

Scott Benner 1:17:36
Your phone call please try to figure out a way to call your episodes. Thanks looks like penises.

Melissa 1:17:40
Without without not not danger noodle. noodle is really good, though. It's no butthole adjacent. But you know, yeah,

Scott Benner 1:17:47
nothing's gonna beat that for a while. But now what is your sister saying? No. Nope, no prob. Well, that's pretty good.

Melissa 1:17:58
Alright, so um, yeah, we kept most of her settings the same. So she was, well, let's see, she was points. She's a point three from 12am to 7am. Then seven to one, she's point four or five. One to five. She's point six, five. And then five to midnight. She's also point six, five.

Scott Benner 1:18:25
Yeah, I mean, your problem is that I don't understand where point threes are coming from.

Melissa 1:18:32
Yeah, and that's it was down and he changed that it was a point three, five. And he changed that at the last appointment. Because and I I feel like his reasoning was she was she would dip low earlier in the night, but I wasn't treating. And then she would just slowly climb those last few hours. So

Scott Benner 1:18:55
these lower Basal is were for overnights,

Melissa 1:18:59
yes. 12am To 7am 12am

Scott Benner 1:19:01
to 7am. But then she'd wake up in the morning. So you're probably just I had a Basal deficit five, six o'clock in the morning. And then she wakes up feet on the floor, whatever else happens to her adrenaline etc. And it overwhelms her blood sugar because she doesn't have enough basil to help it because what she needs when she's awake is more like point six five like you're talking about. Right? Yeah.

Melissa 1:19:24
Because like are they always or all the way from 1pm to midnight? She's at point six five for basil.

Scott Benner 1:19:31
Then why not just Jakob it's too late now because using something else, but I mean, in that situation? I would think if you see those early rises in the morning, then just start bringing her basil up earlier than when she wakes up.

Melissa 1:19:43
Yeah, but she's still like, these are still the settings that I did put into the OP five.

Scott Benner 1:19:48
Yeah, no, I know. But trust me five minutes after you put in those Basal settings and on the pod five, it's making decisions on its own. It's never gonna think about that number you put in ever again. So that's true. Yeah, that's true. But it's interesting. I mean, anyway, it's so I can't I mean, I can't wait to see what happens for people. I'm watching online. People having, I think, two very distinct experiences with the algorithm so far. And yeah, it feels like people are either like, Oh my God, look how great this works. And it's just, it just does. Or they're like, No, we're struggling around this time or this time. And I'm wondering, based on I don't know, based on a lot like how much of it is bad settings, when you started on the day you started? Like, just like, because people oftentimes have low Basal rates, then make up for it with big bonuses.

Melissa 1:20:45
Yeah, right. And then that'd be interesting to collect that data.

Scott Benner 1:20:48
Yeah, it's just it's, it's, you know, Omnipod says the kind of the farther off your settings are, when you start, the longer it might take the algorithm to figure you out. So and how so how long have you been doing it now?

Melissa 1:21:04
June 8, was our first pod you're like,

Scott Benner 1:21:07
seven weeks? Maybe? Yeah,

Melissa 1:21:09
I think we're on like, our CERT teams pod somewhere around there, you still see

Scott Benner 1:21:12
it improving? Or has it plateaued for you?

Melissa 1:21:15
The last couple of days actually, has been that, that early morning rise that I was like, Wait, why are we seeing this again. But I still am, I'm happy so far with the results. And it's given me the confidence to not be so afraid of the loaves is really what it had done. And, and maybe it's just a mental thing of I think that oh, she's going to low it's going to suspend the insulin and not give her her basil and then I'll we'll be able to catch it or, or, you know, and I just listened to your 15th 15th episode, where, like, I figured that out maybe a year ago. And I'm like, No, she doesn't need that much. You know, how about, we'll give her three fruit snacks and see if that just bumps her up? Like just a little bit enough and doesn't have a rebound low. So for two and

Scott Benner 1:22:08
a half years, you follow that rule? I did. Yeah. And you didn't didn't need it?

Melissa 1:22:14
No, and there were days where it worked well, but again, it's like, well, but then did she go to gym class? You know, like, or was she going outside for recess after she treated a low? Or was it you know, she, we Pre-Bolus too far in advance of lunch and she hasn't started eating yet. You know, all those questions that you're like, alright, but there's simply not enough time or energy to, to record and remember everything in order to make it so it doesn't happen again. Because even if you change it and remember it, it's probably not gonna happen the same way. Anyway.

Scott Benner 1:22:47
It's interesting. I enjoy your perspective. Thank you very much for sharing it with me. I really do.

Melissa 1:22:52
It's I have to tell you a cute story though the other day

Scott Benner 1:22:55
about you like dating little boys.

Melissa 1:22:59
Hi, Scott. I'm a preschool teacher.

Scott Benner 1:23:03
Well, I'm just saying,

Melissa 1:23:05
I do not date little boy.

Scott Benner 1:23:09
I am fat. I am trying to imagine when I was 15 for 17 year old girl would have went out with me. How amazing that would have been.

Melissa 1:23:18
Oh, it was no it was like every scene you imagine from like an 80s movie, where like I was crouched at my locker and he walked by and smiled at me and like the monster ballad song started playing and, and I remember saying to myself, like, I am going to marry that guy. And we dated actually, for 10 years.

Scott Benner 1:23:36
We had to wait for him to come of age.

Melissa 1:23:41
Absolutely. Well, yeah, we dated for Well, we did it for six years, broke up for a year got back together. And then we had been kind of, you know, 10 years. We got married seven, seven or seven. That's why I actually was I was like, oh, maybe my podcast number would be 777. But I don't know how it's gonna fly.

Scott Benner 1:24:02
Don't worry. I'm not I'm not putting any effort into that. Just know. Dr. Perez is episode went up on his birthday. Yeah, that's crazy. He sent me a note. He's like, I'm he's like, I was really thrilled to see my episode go up. He goes, you know, coincidentally, yesterday was my birthday. And I was like, I took credit for it. I went oh, I did that on purpose.

Melissa 1:24:23
Well, that was very kind of you. I don't know what his

Scott Benner 1:24:24
birthday is. I just talked to you on Facebook now.

Melissa 1:24:29
Oh, that's fine. Yeah. Yeah, cuz I think we're friends anyway. So

Scott Benner 1:24:33
all right. Don't tell people I sometimes say yes to friend requests on Facebook. You're killing

Melissa 1:24:38
Oh, it was it was a very long time ago. I think you answered a question for me and it had to happen.

Scott Benner 1:24:42
I haven't done that in a long time. Look at this. This is something Yeah, this doesn't look illegal. Everything seems fine. You're fine. You're fine, because my husband? Yes. How old are you now?

Melissa 1:24:56

Well, I'll Yeah, well, I'll be 42 in August.

Scott Benner 1:24:59
Oh, And he just turned 40 Or it's about to be,

Melissa 1:25:02
he turned 40 in January. Okay?

Scott Benner 1:25:05
This is a sexy story.

Melissa 1:25:10
But no, my story is not sexy. It's super cute. So I was trying to figure out one of these morning rises out of nowhere, you know, and she's really good at not sneaking food, she has done it. And we always tell her like, you're not going to get in trouble for diabetes stuff. I'm like, if you want 10 pieces of candy, just Bolus for it. I don't care. You know, you're a kid. We always like safe and happy and healthy is like our goal. We try to adhere to that as best we can. But so I asked her when she had this crazy climb up out of nowhere in the morning and she's like, I didn't I didn't eat anything mom. She was but I did have a dream that it was a kid in my classes birthday. And he brought cupcakes and cookies and doughnuts. So maybe that's why my my number went up.

Scott Benner 1:26:03
She thinks it's possible that her dream ID or budget could have, by the way been adrenaline from the dream that

Melissa 1:26:08
True? True. But nope, she said it was so she got all the snacks all the sweets for her friend's birthday in her dream and that's probably what made her blood sugar guys

Scott Benner 1:26:18
really sweet. That it seriously, it's now 11 years from now. I don't know what she's gonna do when she's 17. But right now, she seems adorable. So Oh, sure. Your friends make fun of you.

Melissa 1:26:31
Do my friends make fun of me? Like in general?

Scott Benner 1:26:33
No. When you were 17 You're not sticking on what I'm concerned most about. When you were 17. And you dated a 15 year old boy. Does your friends mock you or do they? know he was a stud still? Oh, I see. Oh, I see what you did. Oh, I'm seeing it now. He is a handsome man. Yes, yeah. You got him before he knew. I see.

Melissa 1:26:55
And he's sweet as pie you like,

Scott Benner 1:26:58
away from girls? Well,

Melissa 1:27:01
I kept him away but not always kept them away.

Scott Benner 1:27:05
I'm seeing that that could be possible. So here's the I would let this man Hold my hand. I see what's going on here. Okay, I got the vibe here. What's the I know what's happening? Now? I figured the whole thing out. I'm good. Wonderful. I was like, Yeah, you basically you were like, that kid is gonna be draftable one day I'm getting them now before anybody else figures it out.

Melissa 1:27:27
I say Hey, I am smart, Scott.

Scott Benner 1:27:29
Now I'm figured out now I figured out what happened. I just it first the reason I had to go stocky. I was like was this like some sad girl that could only get a 15 year old boy when she was 17. And now I'm seeing what you did. You're like, I'm just gonna get this one before you ripens?

Melissa 1:27:44
Not just to hit wreck.

Scott Benner 1:27:47
All right, Melissa, this was good. Thank you very much. I appreciate your time. Absolutely. I

Melissa 1:27:51
appreciate yours as well. Cool.

Scott Benner 1:27:53
Thanks. Hold on one second. Okay. Okay. hit record again. Okay. Okay. Okay. Can you tell that story on we are you comfortable with that? Yes, yeah. Okay. So it doesn't have to be very specific. But we were just talking about how my daughter had hand foot mouth before she was diagnosed. And then you told me what about your daughter?

Melissa 1:28:14
So my daughter had a couple of different sicknesses. When you always try to pinpoint what where this started, especially if there's no hereditary and my daughter did have hand foot and mouth. And but she was like four? I think so

Scott Benner 1:28:31
of yours between the hand foot and mouth and her diagnosis. Yes, sir.

Melissa 1:28:35
Maybe she was even three at the time, I would think and then she did have strep in 2018, which was closer to to her diagnosis. And, you know, I always think like, does it really matter? Do I really need to know that kind of thing. But the, the curveball that was just thrown is that my daughter, it was it was that summer when she had hand Foot Mouth, we had gone to a friend's house. And we were playing with like, they had a big blow up, like waterslide type of thing. And then a couple days later, both there's three families total. And kids from all three families had hand foot and mouth and I would have to double check with a mom to be honest with you if her child had it specifically, but her son actually was diagnosed yesterday morning. That's type one. And this

Scott Benner 1:29:28
is hold on five and a half years after the time that kids had it. Yes, boy. Yeah, I have no idea if those would be connected. But that is I thought that was so interesting when you were saying that.

Melissa 1:29:40
Yeah, it's very weird. Very, very odd. But again, it's like, does it really matter? Do I really need to know that? Yeah.

Scott Benner 1:29:48
Yeah, yeah. for your purposes. She's got it and, you know, yeah, knowing how it's not exactly going to change anything. Exactly. Okay. All right. I appreciate you jumping back on to say that so thanks. No problem. Yeah, yeah.

First let's thank Melissa for sharing her story. And then we're going to thank Omni pod makers of the AMI pod dash and Omni pod five Omni pod.com forward slash juice box. Check it out Get started today. Better help.com If you're looking for talk therapy betterhelp.com forward slash juice box will get you 10% off your first month of therapy. Use my offer code juice box at cozy earth.com to save 35% off sitewide that's pretty much it. I hope you enjoyed this episode. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast

#878 After Dark: Lots of Auto Immune and Lots of Weed

ADULT TOPIC WARNING. Brittani has type 1 diabetes, a lot of auto immune issues and a lot of weed!

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends and welcome to episode 878 of the Juicebox Podcast

today Brittany is on the show she is an adult living with type one diabetes has a really cool story. And she enjoys the Mary Jane, the dope, the grass, the reefer, the pot, the weed, the Bambi the blanket, you know what I'm talking about? Brittany is going to talk about smoking weed. She's going to tell us where the term DAB came from. And I'm going to tell you something high was surprised. To be serious. Brittany is here to tell us about all of her autoimmune issues and how marijuana helps her. Please remember while you're listening, that nothing you hear the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan. Becoming bold with insulin, or smoking until your face melts off. Very quickly. T one D exchange.org. Forward slash juicebox. Go if you're a US resident who has type one, go if you're a US resident who is the caregiver of someone with type one, when you get there, fill out the survey completely. And once you're done, you've helped. That's it. See how easy it was to help T one do research. All you had to do was go to T one D exchange.org. Forward slash juicebox and complete the survey

this show is sponsored today by the glucagon that my daughter carries G voc hypo Penn Find out more at G voc glucagon.com. Forward slash juicebox. There are so many more afterdark episodes, and you can check them out at juicebox podcast.com. Or by going into your audio app and searching Juicebox Podcast or just juice box one word. Do it like this juice box after dark. Three words juice box after dark. They should all just pop up in front of you. If you're not listening to the podcast in a podcast app or an audio app like Amazon Music, Spotify, Apple podcasts, you probably should. It's a simple and free way to listen to this podcast and any other podcast that you enjoy. Last thing if you're looking for community around diabetes, please check out the Facebook page for the group 35,000 members and growing every day Juicebox Podcast type one diabetes on Facebook. Hey, real quick before we start, I just pulled out my Spotify app and I I searched juice box after dark because you know I wasn't 100% sure what I told you was actually right. But I mean it felt right. And it really is it popped up right in front of me. Episode 274 Drinking edition 283 was about weed. This is God three years ago. Kate bipolar psychedelics eating disorder, depression and self harm Emily mama wants her happy I wonder what that's about sex worker John? diabetes heroine sex with type one diabetes from a male's perspective that was heroin addiction I'm sorry. After dark when in Rome after dark male disordered eating after dark gaming after dark life struggles after dark Nolan's story trauma and addiction bulimia and depression sexual assault and PTSD, divorce and co parenting. Childhood Trauma California sober that was a good one. Actually, these were all great ADHD, cocaine and abandonment, striving and grateful. On and on. One thing after there's so many here, like you could do this with anything you could type in juicebox. And then pro tip if you want to see the Pro Tip series, for example, boom, they're all right in front of me. Why does so many people come to me online? They're like, I don't know how to find that episode. Just that. I mean, that works in Spotify. I mean, half of you use Spotify and half of you use Apple podcasts. Hello, sorry, Apple podcast, search. juice box. After Dark. didn't spell right. Now I did search. Scroll either. All right here. I never want to hear from you guys. Again. You can't find something just searching your app. Alright, sorry, that got off the rails. Here's Brittany.

Brittany 4:28
My name is Brittany. And I have been a type one diabetic for 24 and a half years and I am 32 Now

Scott Benner 4:40
24 and a half years. Wow, that seems like a long time to me. What were you ate when you were diagnosed?

Brittany 4:50
I was two months before I turned eight right before I was diagnosed in June of 98. And I turned my workdays in August so

Unknown Speaker 4:59
yeah

Scott Benner 5:01
I know you have a sister. But do you have any other siblings?

Brittany 5:05
Yes. So my parents were teen parents, and they didn't have any other children together. So I have. Well, from from both of my parents, they both had a child at the same time. So my sister, the one that I'm living with now, and my other, my brother that came from my mom, they are three months apart. And then my mom much later had a child. She just turned 14. So we are 18 years apart.

Scott Benner 5:35
Your mom is the ridin ridin it right to the end? Hmm. I didn't mean oh, I meant, I meant life. Sorry. Sorry.

Brittany 5:46
Me at 15. So that was a month before she turned 16. And my dad was 17 at the time, so they were babies.

Scott Benner 5:55
So your mom's about 47? Right now.

Brittany 6:00
She was born. She was born in 74. So she's 4848?

Scott Benner 6:05
Okay, I think is that? Is that something you get accustomed to after a while and you don't notice it, that you're so close in age?

Brittany 6:13
Yes. People think that. You know, my parents were like, my mom would be my sister. And somebody may think that like my dad's my boyfriend. Because my parents were so young. And then with me and my brother, being 18 and 15, when our younger sister was born, people always always thought that she was our child, because I'm closer in age to my mom. So we're 15, almost 16 years apart. And my sister and I are 18 years apart.

Scott Benner 6:42
Okay, so like when your youngest sister was born, people would look at you and think, oh, Brittany had a baby.

Brittany 6:48
Yes, if I would, I would have had her we were 18 years apart. Yeah. So when like, I was involved a lot in her life. And she was like firstborn. And the following years after Todd moved away, and you know, so we would be out doing things and people would think she was mine. Like Nassif, my sister,

Scott Benner 7:07
how would you describe your relationship with her? Is it more parental or more sibling?

Brittany 7:13
Um, it can it's kind of both way she there was definitely like when she was, I would say, definitely under five. Like in that toddler stage, she would almost like try to, you know, almost like, fight with me with a sister like with her stuff, or, you know, take my food and phone and just stuff that the kids do. Right. So she, it was, it was interesting, but we're like best friends. I'm really close with all of my siblings.

Scott Benner 7:41
So when you see now when you guys are together, or you hear a story, and it's a little like, I don't know, racy for the kid, you think? Do you think like a sister? Do you think like a mom when you hear it?

Brittany 7:55
I though, so it just it just depends on what it is. But, you know,

Scott Benner 8:02
happens. That's why I was wondering, like, I can't, I don't firmly have a parental or a sibling relationship with my brothers. You know, it's just and it's not because of our ages, as much as it is, you know, the situation where I just sort of raised them, you know, in a certain time of their life. But it's, it's super hard. It was difficult for me to never know really where to draw the line when something happens. Like, you know what I mean? Like something cool happens to them that your parents wouldn't like, but your brother would love and you're like, I don't know what to say. Yeah, yeah. So I know what you mean. Yeah. Yeah. So you've had diabetes. Since you were eight. Does anyone else in the family have it? No, nobody else. Does anybody else have any autoimmune stuff that a Lago, celiac, Hashimotos, anything like that.

Brittany 8:54
We do have some arthritis, and thyroid. There's nothing else that I can really think of. Or I know off off, offhand, but I know like, I've listened to every one of your podcasts. So, uh, does run like I know, you've talked about it running and a lot of the female members in the family or at least in New York, that's how it is. So it's kind of that way in mine as well. Like my mom and grandmothers and things like that, than ants

Scott Benner 9:31
is the is the arthritis. Rheumatoid arthritis. Like autoimmune arthritis. Who has it the worst? You don't have to tell me. Someone pop into your mind when you think that

Brittany 9:42
both of like I know on one one grandmother does. And I'm pretty sure the other one does I just the one that comes to mind. She kind of talks about it more, I guess you could say

Scott Benner 9:56
is it limiting for them?

Brittany 9:58
No, she still works. She's I don't know how she was 39 when I was born, so how she was born in 51. I know people, years sometimes I forget how old they actually are. But she she still works.

Scott Benner 10:15
Okay. It's just such a I'm gonna curse. It's such a mind. You talking about people's ages? Like my grandmother, she was 39 when this happened, I'm like, wait, what?

Brittany 10:28
Yeah, I just remember she was, how old she was, whenever I was born and what year they're born so that I go on my calculator and do it if I forget their actual age at the moment.

Scott Benner 10:41
It's interesting. Okay, so do you have just type one or do you have anything else?

Brittany 10:46
Oh, yes, I have a lot of stuff. I've had. Well, I have currently I guess you could say fibromyalgia. I have dysautonomia. I have some gastroparesis. But it's really mild. It's really triggered by certain things, which are honestly things you shouldn't do anyway, like certain like, fast food or like fried foods or different things like that. And what else do I have? I have a little bit of neuropathy as well. But that, thankfully to you, you know, since my agency is now in the fives, I don't really have a lot of the symptoms of the neuropathy, like I did, when it first started. For a while, I would even have like, just like the pain in the feet, whenever like my blood sugar would be high. But now if it does shoot up, I haven't felt it. Probably since my linseeds and, quote unquote, normal.

Scott Benner 12:00
Brittany, you caught me like, we're, you're the only recording I'm doing around Christmas. And my family's here and my kids are getting ready to leave and you just made me cry. I don't know, like you just said like, thanks to you. And they you started talking about not having nerve pain. And I got really emotional. I'm sorry. Yes,

Brittany 12:18
yes. Like I know, you ask people if they would name their children after you and I do not have any living children. But I all of my baby names I have on my list for in the next few years are like hippie name. I don't know how yours would fit in. But I've literally thought about how like, You've changed so much like I was like, I would love to like one day if I had the money like by the span of vacation, like for his family to go on. Because like the like I talk about your podcast all the time. I tell people if I ever, like find out that you know they have it, I tell them or anything, anybody uses insulin. So even if they're type two, and I'm like to use insulin, and I tried to tell I have a friend who's fiancee recently, who has type two who recently asked me about things and I told them things, you know, like hydration and and other things that I could think of but you know, that would help them without using insulin. But yeah, quite amazing.

Scott Benner 13:19
Oh, that's really kind of you. And you just gave me a great idea. I think we should send me to Bora Bora. I think everyone should get together. I know nothing about the place. I just think of those, those huts up on stilts that are in the water. That would be amazing.

Brittany 13:36
That's what I want to do for like a honeymoon. That's where I want to go like one of those places where it's just like I call it a hut in the middle of the ocean. Yeah. Well, I mean, I don't

Scott Benner 13:44
have a good name. You don't I mean, I don't have a good name like Adele or something. So I don't expect anybody to actually call their child's got even a boat or a motorcycle. It'd be nice. You know?

Brittany 13:55
Well, I have pets are my thing. So I made maybe a dog one day. Oh,

Scott Benner 14:00
I would take that gleefully. But I'm just happy that you're well, how long have you been listening to the show?

Brittany 14:09
I discovered your podcast. And I started listening because that when I learned about it, I probably started within like a week or two actually listening but it was at the end of August and 2020. And I had listened to all the podcasts by Thanksgiving that you had at that time. So I started at the beginning at number one, and I listened to about 50 And by that time I'm I guess I was part of the Facebook group and I heard about the pro tip. So then I went and listened to the pro tips. And then I started back going through all the others from like I said it was about 50 were started those prototypes. Oh,

Scott Benner 14:52
that's amazing. I'm so happy. I just saw a note the other day like there are people's names that I know I don't even know why To how to tell you why, like, it's probably just like spellings that hit my brain differently. You don't I mean, like, then some people's names stick out. Yours is spelled a little differently. And so your name sticks out to me. No, and it's but there was this, um, there was this post the other day, I'm gonna find it for you. If my was it,

Brittany 15:24
maybe the one about was it the Spotify. Right, I'd said, I wish, I wish I listened to it on Spotify.

Scott Benner 15:32
Oh, that one's where I the last time I saw your name, but I'm gonna, I'm gonna tell you something from a different a different person I know. So this post goes up around Christmas. And this happens around the holidays, like people are very kind and they take a little extra time to say thank you about the show or something like that. But this gentleman discusses that his daughter was diagnosed, and he finds the podcast, like that evening, like just out walking, and how we, you know, he talks about devouring the content and how it brought him up to speed and, and, and where they are now. And you know, as I'm reading it, I'm floored a little bit like I really am like, even as you're talking about the show, in my mind, I think, Oh God, I wonder if it sounds like one of those like, I don't even know how to put it. But like one of those very like saccharin, like produced shows where someone comes on to say, Oh, I love this or you know what I mean? Like because it's, it's still strange to me to hear somebody's story like yours, like I believe in the podcast, and I believe in the content. And I generally think that people will have experiences like yours. But still, when it happens, and someone tells me about it, it doesn't feel like they're talking about me. And I had this experience reading this person's story, Matt story on the Facebook group the other day, right before the holiday and, and I just I read it. I was like, Oh, it's this isn't about my podcast, like it just never feels real enough. I don't know if it will one day or not. But right now, I don't think it's imposter syndrome. I'm pretty aware that what you said is true. It's just, it's hard. It's just hard to take it you know what I mean? It's a weird thing. Yeah.

Brittany 17:16
I actually know exactly what you mean, I own my own business. And all on Google, we have all five star reviews. And i i Sometimes I'm like, you know, but I put my you know, like you do I put my heart and soul into my business. I'm very passionate about it. So you just kind of get out what we're putting in?

Scott Benner 17:37
Yeah, well, it just it's, I don't know, it's, it's hard to completely. For me, it's just hard for me to completely. I don't want to say except I do accept that. Maybe I can't absorb it completely. I don't know, like, this will sound like a humble brag, but it happens so frequently that it can get overwhelming. You know, so you start reading someone's note and you're like, oh my god, this is amazing. And then it's a half an hour later and I'm tagged in something else. And it's a very similar note from a different person and you really want to read them all and give them their weight. Because this person is having an amazing you know, transformation experience for themselves. And, and I definitely want to be there to say congratulations. But I don't know it's hard to put into words. I guess I've only been at this nine years now. I guess I'll figure out how to say it eventually. But for the moment, it just feels really good. And and I don't know what to do about it. But so So okay, so fibromyalgia, let's pick through these for a minute. But this auto attack, is it this auto num How do you say it? Guess autonomia this autonomia how does that affect your life

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Brittany 19:51
Well, it currently doesn't because of the reason that I'm on for the podcast. My marijuana use such, but why I first started having symptoms, my resting heart rate was like 130. So it was hard for me to like even to stand outside in the sun. I live in the south. So there's a lot of humidity, and just being outside for like five minutes would, it would just I would be exhausted already. And, you know, miserable. In my heart racing even more, or doing anything like physical was like really exhausting for the same reason. So I saw a cardiologist they did a lot of tests. And that is what they kind of told me was my diagnosis, and I was taking, you take a beta blocker to treat it. So I was taking that. And then once I started using marijuana, like all the time, I guess you could say or daily or however you want to put it often. I noticed that I guess maybe I didn't like half my medicine or I don't maybe i i was during my transition to moving to Florida. So I may have not as went like get a new doctor hadn't went and didn't have the medicines like little I don't need it. And my resting heart rate was normal what it should be. So I didn't I didn't take it anymore. But before I was using marijuana, it wasn't just that I was probably on so many pills, because I got it for the fibromyalgia. And I was on to different pain medications and things like that.

Scott Benner 21:34
Wow. So the, what's the order of the diagnosis is type one first. Ah, yes. And then how does Fibromyalgia come into your life? And how do you know you haven't? How did they diagnose it?

Brittany 21:51
I was having a lot of pain. And they really rolled out a lot of other things. Fibromyalgia. I don't know if it does now, but then it definitely didn't have a test. So I was 20 about 23 When I got that diagnosis, and that one and the dysautonomia, and really the gash of Rhesus, like I had a kind of those all came together, I guess you could say almost within a year. Did I get those diagnosis?

Scott Benner 22:25
Wow. So it all just sort of piled on you at once.

Brittany 22:29
And actually, they didn't diagnosed me with the neuropathy, technically, until I brought it to their attention. I was losing like a bunch of weight. And the reason why was because I was getting full really fast. And they did all kinds of tests. And I've, you know, been pretty much regular my whole life, those have been different GI issues written on island.

Scott Benner 22:56
I'm so sorry, I'm gonna do something crazy. Give me a second. I just did not take a phone call. Hello, okay, no problem. It is. Brittany, I'm so sorry. No, you're okay. Yeah, just to give this a tiny bit of context, before we get back to what you were saying my son is now about eight months out of being out of college and been applying for these, you know, a ton of different jobs. And what he wanted to do was one, it's one of these situations where the entry level of what he wanted to do is still not entry level, if that makes sense. Like would they hire people for entry level. And these people already have years of experience in like other businesses and things like that. So he's, he had been, I don't need to be coy about this. He was trying to get a data analysis job with a major league baseball team. And he was trying to get these like literally like they call them internships sometimes but he was under qualified for them because they were hiring people who had been out in the workplace already for so long. And so yeah, he spread his spread himself out a little bit, and found this other job that he was interested in and applied. And they said, he got he got the job, which was really terrific. And but he needs to relocate. And very quickly, so they were basically like last Monday, you got the job. There'll be about a week of you filling things out. And he literally is just right now out proving who he is. I didn't know that businesses did this, but he had to get something they called an i nine verification. So we had to go to this location here in New Jersey, and use like his passport to prove who He was. And and then he has to start working in 14 days in in Georgia. And so we have to relocate him find them a place to live and it's an Not as easy just to find that apartment in the area that he's at. So we found one, they have one left that he can afford, you know. And, and I just lucked out if I don't answer this phone and they give us away, I'll he'll kill me. So I appreciate you letting me stop for a second. Oh, yeah, I apologize. Okay, well, you were in the middle of explaining to me about Fibro. And am I right about that?

Brittany 25:27
I think it was, I was explaining to you about the neuropathy. How.

Scott Benner 25:32
Okay, so

Brittany 25:34
I started having the GI issues, and they did a bunch of tests and everything was coming back. Okay. And I think that's actually when they diagnosed me with the gastroparesis, which I did one of those scans, whatever they do for the diagnosis, I did one of those when I was a younger kid, like, I want to say, a year or two after my diagnosis, I'm not sure why they did it. Except for just to see where I was

Scott Benner 26:02
aghast. You're like a gastric emptying study.

Brittany 26:05
Yeah. So when they did it, they gave me my diagnosis. This time, they didn't do one of those. So I do want to see how far along it is, especially since you know, I don't have a lot of symptoms itself. Ones that are triggered by food. And I do have some of like the slowed digestion, like I can see that like my insulin needs, and like where my fat and protein rises happen,

Scott Benner 26:30
right? Did you hear Arden's episode about the supplements she's taking for her digestion? Yeah. And I've

Brittany 26:37
been so busy. My work is really busy at this time of year. So and then with my move, and everything else, I haven't gotten around to go and get it into trial. But I do. I want to try that. And I did look up I guess the other one that she's on for the female issues, the one that starts equipment, oh, yes,

Scott Benner 27:00
I will talk about that.

Brittany 27:02
I, I, you know, I want to have babies, like within the next few years. So like, is that something that's just making everything better? And why not? So yeah.

Scott Benner 27:13
Oh, good. Yeah, I mean, it's, but even if you're busy right now, like, I don't want to, I'm not pimping a brand here. But I'm gonna look here and find it for you. You can just go on Amazon, or go to a health food store or anywhere I would imagine to find this. This digestive enzyme is made by pure encapsulations. And so it's pure. It says like, it's a white bottle with like, a blue little label says pure encapsulations digestive enzymes Ultra. It's not cheap. Like, I'm sure in a health food store, you could probably find like a knockoff kind that's a little cheaper. But if you're looking to just give it a try, it'd be at your house like tomorrow if you had Amazon Prime, so And she just takes them with her food. And yeah, just speeds up the it just helps the digestion. And you know, you're on your way do you have I'm so sorry to ask you, does everything come out the way you expect? Or do you get Do you not have

Brittany 28:20
regularly like I'm fine. I have no issue. I am currently on ozempic for like off using the off label for weight loss, which it's been working. So that does cause constipation and itself, which I just tried to drink more water and different things like that. But with a gastroparesis. It's it's like diarrhea and things like that, that I have like in the dumping. Yeah. and forth like the food. Like if there's any weird food items.

Scott Benner 28:53
Yes, there's some foods you just you can't process well at all. Me. Yeah, right. Yeah, I Arden went to a magnesium oxide to help her go to the bathroom more regularly. And I have to admit, I started taking it. I was like, huh, since I was taking fiber as a supplement, and now I don't have to take fiber anymore. So the magnesium oxide did the trick for me. And I've also been popping the digestive enzymes just because like my stomach would get upset with certain foods or there were things that I would say like, I can't eat that. You know what I mean? And when I look back at it now, it was probably fattier foods or fried stuff that I would have trouble with. Sometimes protein, like, sometimes chicken. I can't digest chicken very well. Interesting stuff. But I mean, these things are incredible. I mean, they're affordable in the grand scheme of things, you know what I mean? Like if you know if $100 every two months is gonna keep you going to the bathroom. Well, you find a way to make $100 and get that stuff. And it's not it's not like crazy Easy. I also don't know that if you couldn't prove it to a doctor, if they couldn't write you a prescription for it, you know what I mean? I'm not sure how people's how people's plans work all the time. Because that's the one. Yeah, that's what it sounds like you're saying, right? Is that like certain kind of junky foods you can't get through?

Brittany 30:18
Yeah, and don't get me wrong. I II, like the way of eating the last few years. A lot, you know, better and healthier than what? You know, I'm sure my parents fed me and I eat in my early 20s. But yeah, I don't really eat a lot of bad stuff. And I travel for work. I know you said if I wanted to buy Amazon, I'd do it tomorrow, but I will hopefully be home. By Thursday night or Friday morning. I'll leave after this to go to Ohio doesn't go to Virginia. So Oh,

Scott Benner 30:48
good feel you're getting back to where you mean to be there?

Brittany 30:52
Well, I travel for work.

Scott Benner 30:54
Oh, I see. Oh, I see. Yeah. What do you do?

Brittany 30:59
Um, I own my own business doing animal transportation.

Scott Benner 31:03
Oh, no kidding. So what kind of animals do you move around?

Brittany 31:07
Um, it's mainly dogs, cats, but I have transported rabbits and mini pigs. And I have another mini pig scheduled on at the end of January.

Scott Benner 31:19
So people will literally pay you to like trailer I'm assuming or transport somehow an animal like a great distance, like if they're moving or something and they can't do it.

Brittany 31:31
Yep. So I have worked with the rescues, especially refugees in my area, where dogs are either being pulled from like a shelter and go into a rescue that would then go to a foster home and be adopted, or they're being adopted by somebody. Also people that get new puppies and kittens. So sometimes they may find a breeder or find somebody that's really holding their dog from somewhere that they don't want to drive. And also, people that go on vacation and move. So I have a lot of people that they like to fly when they move and they just, you know, hire movers to take their stuff and then hire people like me to take their pets. I work with a lot of high end clientele that are like snowbirds. So I get a lot of requests to drive their luxury vehicles with their pet in it. So I recently flew to New York, gotten a car with a dog drove back. I have a few repeat clients that do that I drive their land rovers or BMWs with their their dogs in it while they go on their vacations or their snowbirds. Yeah, I have I have an issue via Honda Pilot. So I do it in my personal vehicle otherwise. And my dogs go with me if there's room so I have a trip coming up where I'm going to be going up the East Coast, we're I really won't have room for my dog. So I'm gonna leave them home.

Scott Benner 32:59
That's an interesting, that's an interesting way to see the country too. That's kind of great.

Brittany 33:03
It is. I have I saw a lot and I go from California to Maine. So all the like the snow storms that happen on the East Coast earlier this year, I drove through all of those in the snow and I had never really drawn into snow for but I'm a really good driver. So I adapted well.

Scott Benner 33:21
Wow, that's really interesting. Well, then how do you mix in this other thing? So you you said that you've been managing your one of your issues at least with with weed right? So you're How do you characterize the frequency in which you smoke?

Brittany 33:38
Um, recently, it's kind of went down honestly a little bit. And part of that is just because of cost and access. So when I first started, like, when the election I'm live in Florida, so when the election happened in 2016, and they allowed medical marijuana. I was at the time dating a guy that was a nurse, and he knew a lot of friends. He was from the area that we lived in, in Florida was where he grew up. And so he knew a lot of high end people that would buy marijuana from this person. So it was a friend of his and he got some for me to try just to see if it would help with the pain because at this point with the fibromyalgia I had started on what is Tramadol but at the time, Tramadol is now a controlled substance, where before when I started taking it, it wasn't. I was on the max dose of that. And it turns out that I was actually addicted to it and didn't realize it. I had I was taking so many pills at the time. I had a pill container with like morning and night, seven days a week. And there was a day where I knew I took my medicine that morning like it was so I was so sure that I didn't even look in the thing to double check. But I was having pain and I was having been like sweats and like chills, and I just felt nauseous. And that evening when I'm gonna go take my medicine, I realized that I had not taken it that morning like I knew that I had. And I was like I've been in withdrawals all day. And so I tapered myself off of that. And then after that I was on GABA pin. And that was the only thing that worked. I had tried other things like Lyrica and Gabapentin made me gain a lot of weight, and it made me very fatigued. So that was just that it wasn't, it wasn't great. So when I tried it, whenever he wouldn't got it, it worked. And I was speaking with my rheumatologist, he really didn't know anything about, you know, how to apply for it. And I did some research and I found a doctor. And you know, the election was in November. So by August, and the next year 2017, I had done my application for my medical card in Florida and saw the doctor and since it was so new, and there were so many people applying it took them six months to approve me. So I didn't get approved until February, we're now you may have a month turned around, if even that it may only take a few weeks. So that's how I started during that time. I was I was buying it illegally. You know, that person that source kind of fell through. But I had a friend that I had met in Florida, where his family member basically dealt with that. So I would always go to them. And they they actually didn't even get it directly. They got it from somebody else. And they were like, Well, why don't I just you know, connect you with this person. I'm right now. That's very female, I don't want to go to that neighborhoods by myself, I'll I'll go with you. Or you can go for me. So I just, you know, supplied her some first some business for a good year. So every day on pay day, I went and bought what I needed, and I made part of it into animals, and then the rest was basically smoked.

Scott Benner 37:13
Okay. Is is so let's ask let me ask you first. How would you describe the pain that you were medicating yourself for? Is it all over body pain? Was it joints muscles, like, what were you trying to escape?

Brittany 37:28
It was it was a lot of both. It was really both joint and muscle pain. But like the fatigue was another big thing that comes with fibromyalgia that's I don't even know that maybe we're still in the pain. Sometimes I feel like so like, anytime I try to do anything. It's like I really have to like, prepare myself mentally and just physically to do it. Living in Florida, I love Disneyworld. I have an annual pass and like if I go to Disney for the day, I'm like did the next day and these transports that I do I'm easily like down for a day. Whenever I get back from them. They like they really wear me out.

Scott Benner 38:11
Yeah. Okay, so you were and they gave you some fairly heavy medication which obviously you got away from was that medication though helping with the pain, the Tramadol, for example.

Brittany 38:24
It was in the beginning. But it it gets to a point where you're kind of on the max dose and you're your body's like beating more. So, I mean, it would work but it's like it, you know, it becomes an addiction that if I didn't have it, I was you know, like I explained.

Scott Benner 38:42
Yeah. Okay. So then we'd smoked or eaten both helps you the same way.

Brittany 38:50
Yes. And I was I recently discovered this has many benefits with the diabetes as well. And many of the symptoms, you know, the gastric greases, things like edibles can help so if I do know that I'll be eating something. I'll take an edible and when I say edible, it doesn't have to be a food. It could be a capsule, it could be a concentrate that comes in like a syringe that you heat up and just kind of like a like a honey or wax like substance that you would eat. So it doesn't when I say edible, it doesn't necessarily mean have to be like a candy or food. It's just something that's taken orally.

Scott Benner 39:32
Either and either way is valuable for you.

Brittany 39:36
Yeah. So like I was saying, if I know that I'm going to be you know, eating something that may bother me will take something before if I think of it and it'll help but I recently discover what I do. I do a lot of cooking with it as well, more so recently than I did in the beginning because in the beginning When I was saying I would, I would go get, you know the amount that I would get every pay day and I would use a quarter of that I would normally just like make a pan of brownies or something like that. And that's what I would eat on for, you know, when I needed it to, for that time period until I knew I was getting more. But I've recently started like making butter and olive oil and coconut oil, and avocado oil. And when I've made the butter before, and I've used that in this year, but my boyfriend's birthday was back in October, and he is a big user like me. So what I did for his birthday was for every meal we had it was infused. So for breakfast, we had pancakes that had or no apologize, we had French toast, and we had infused omelets. I'd use like the the butter and the oil that was in the pan was infused. And I had to have I think, all sorts of useful breakfast.

Scott Benner 41:04
Like doing what you were doing, does it leave you? Is it medicinal? At that level? Is it right? This would become recreational desert? Is there a point where you can't function? Or is this a functioning day?

Brittany 41:18
It depends on the person. So the people I was with that day were all heavy users. So it was my boyfriend, my brother, and one of his best friends, which is one of my current sources that I get stuff from. So we I actually did it perfectly. It's one of the things that I'm interested in doing is like doing like, I'm a really big Cook. I'm a really big foodie. So I thought about like doing catering, like meals or infused meals and different things like that for people as I need them or dinner parties. Yeah. Because knowing what I knew about us. The thing is, is when you when you make these butter edibles or whatever it is, there's no way to when it's homemade like that there's no way to measure the THC percentage. So if I was to go to a dispensary, it would say it has this much THC but I have no way of measuring it. So what I had done is knowing how much of I would use to make something and what I would you know dose myself with, that's kind of how I went about this was how much flour and last a flower that is the bud of the plant. How much I was putting in to actually make the products.

Scott Benner 42:36
Okay, wow. Well, you'll see you're learning about it as you go as well. Yes. Can you use it while you're transporting the animals with, like success?

Brittany 42:49
Um, I really don't sometimes, like at night, I may if I have pain, but I use I have a lot of with the driving has a lot of fatal physical thing. So I use this cream. And with the cream you don't get like you don't get high, it just treats the like, it's a topical. Yeah.

Scott Benner 43:06
And that you find that valuable. Because, you know, it's funny, our company just reached out to me. I said no, but they wanted me to I guess they wanted me to, you know, take on this topical CBD as a as an advertiser, and I just didn't know enough about it. So I kind of went into the group and I asked people like, does this work? Like, you know, you mean like, Is this something I want to like? Would anybody care about this or not? And and it was funny how the the answers came back people like I use it and I love it when people like I use it. I don't think it does anything and I think oh, somebody please. There was no there was no like middle ground to be found. But if it's helping you Yeah, that's amazing. So you couldn't do an edible and drive or like what's the level for somebody who's never tried wheat at all? Is it does it like for you? What's your level of functionality when you're using it for pain and it's working for the pain

Brittany 44:00
so I can do everything? Scott it just wouldn't be professional to do that locally. So you know with me, I can really do anything with it. You do get to a certain point especially I've had this experience with edibles if you take too much it can make you sick so that's what I have to watch out for. I wouldn't get necessarily too high too I couldn't do anything I would just feel miserable. edibles are intensified by fat, protein and alcohol. So if I know I'm going to be eating a meal that has a lot of fat protein or I'm going to be drinking alcohol I will take less of it just because it you can just use get sick.

Scott Benner 44:51
Okay, how much do you think it costs you a month to help yourself with the pain?

Brittany 44:57
Um, I don't spend as much now, but back when I first started, I can tell you, when I was buying every pay day, I was spending almost $600 a month. Wow. Now I know I may spend a few 100 I'm it's hard to tell because now that me and my boyfriend are living together and we're buying together, it's not the same and I had when I was buying from dispensaries, I was getting, they have a lot of deals in Denver point system. So I would stock up on stuff at different times. So I've used that kind of the last year since things my income has changed,

Scott Benner 45:38
like a punch card.

Brittany 45:41
Um, yeah, I mean, this is a digital punch card, essentially. But after so many points, you get a, you know, a reward or 10% off. And then they still had, they had their own deals that they would have daily, you know, by two things, one free and different things like that.

Scott Benner 45:57
Well, if anybody thinks retail is not hard, we dispensaries have had punch cards. Yeah. It's not easy making a small business work.

Brittany 46:08
Yeah, but one of the things that I was gonna mention about the diabetes, the day that I did that, that edibles I made that from our boyfriend and we had a meal for breakfast, lunch and dinner, I needed 50% less than one, that's

Scott Benner 46:21
what's gonna be my next question is, is does it lower your stress and change your insulin needs plus pain, adrenaline from pain, all that stuff that comes with pain as well. So tell me, tell me what you need in a day with it without it.

Brittany 46:38
Uh, well, in that day where I had done, you know, I had eaten all day, like I said, I needed 50% less, and then also 50% less the next day. But one of the things that I learned to make from that meal was I made a homemade caesar dressing. And I'm used, I made it with the olive oil that was infused. And so every once in a while, I'll make that and we'll have like a Caesar salad at dinner. And I'll put it on and I don't feel anything from it because I have such a high tolerance. And it takes so much for me, but I would need probably 50% less insulin for the next like six hours, maybe 12 at the most. And I maybe wouldn't have to Bolus as much like for that meal if there was other items. You know, if I was eating like fat and protein like that would help out that spike later, too. But that was that was only recently in the last few months that I discovered that if I was to take like an edible randomly, like this day just for painting or whatever, I don't notice that it's only noticed that with the cooking of the oil and the butter and the food that I eat fresh food that

Scott Benner 47:40
okay, okay, so smoking, it doesn't change your insulin needs.

Brittany 47:44
Not that I've noticed, but I will say when I first started seeing the benefits of it, I would say after six months or a year just in my life in general. After I started using it, I went to my doctor and that was back when I wasn't taking care of myself the way I should have like I wasn't checking my blood sugar. I wasn't giving insulin like I should. And my agency had dropped two points. Because I knew when I started using it, and it went from like a 10 to an eight over but that makes that timeframe.

Scott Benner 48:18
How do you like when you say you infuse the oil or the butter? Can you tell me can you tell me how you do that?

Brittany 48:26
Yeah, so what I do is I use a crock pot. The method that I used I did some research on places that have labs where they can test the THC percentage, and I use a method that yields the highest THC. So you have to take the flour the bud and you grind it up and you decarb it in the oven. So you cook it at 200 degrees for like 30 minutes. You take it out you spray it with Everclear which is this very disgusting liquor. That's very bad quality, I guess you could say okay, you let it sit for 15 minutes and then I put it in a crock pot for probably like at least six hours but you can really like sometimes I'll just leave it overnight so it could end up being there for 12 and you let it cool down and then you straight it with like a cheesecloth

Scott Benner 49:24
and then what's left? That's it

Brittany 49:28
and you can say like the buzzer what you string now you could use recently when I made some coconut oil and the buds smelled it smelled delicious smelled like coconuts. And I had used that like as a topper on like a frozen pina colada that I made. I put like some whipped cream or something and then I sprinkled some of that on top. It was delicious. Do you

Scott Benner 49:53
do you? Do you feel from other people any judgement about it at all?

Brittany 50:00
Oh, yes, my mom is my worst critic she does is horrible because she's a nurse. But she thinks that like people can't do anything. And I'm like, Well, that is what helps me get out of bed. And that is what helps me be productive, especially because of my fibromyalgia and the fatigue that I have. With marijuana, there's different strains and the sativa strain is upper and gives you energy. The indica is more of a downer. And then there's a hybrid, which is a mix between both but it can lean either sativa or indica dominant. So I completely stay away from me, because I would only buy that if I had, you know, if I went somewhere, and I was like, I have $20. And they're like, well, the only thing is $20 into good. I may, that may be the only time that I would buy that. But I bike also TiVos and the strain specifically, there's a part there's different parts of THC, so the thc v, I look for stuff that has that in it. Because that actually helps with insulin resistance. And it helps the appetite suppressant. So it helps with weight loss and different things like that.

Scott Benner 51:17
Wow, is there? How long I guess my question is, how long did it take you before you? You felt comfortable that what you were doing wasn't just like random, like, when you were being more purposeful about it, I guess for your pain for an example and and do you? Do you also use it? Like recreationally?

Brittany 51:44
I mean, yeah, it's part of me feels like everyone's doing it. for medical reasons, you know that everybody's got anxiety, or you know, life, just call the stress, anything like that. So part of me feels that way. There are many people that I know that don't like it, and I wish they would try it and chill out. But, I mean, I don't do it as much. I will say I don't do it as much recreationally now, just because of cost mainly, I don't like how I space it out. Like if I know you know I only have this much until

Scott Benner 52:32
end of the week or next time you get paid or something like that. Then you make it work in that timeframe. Brittany, you're going aren't you? Hello? Hello? Hello. Hello. Hello. She is gone. Gone? Back. Are you back?

Brittany 52:53
Yes. My blood sugar alert. My Dexcom went off. So I guess it policy or

Scott Benner 53:00
the Dexcom alarm? Pause the. The audio? Yeah, wait, okay. Dexcom whatever. Pretty good. I just say something. Okay. Yeah. dexcom.com forward slash Juicebox. Podcast, just head over there now and, and get started. Sorry about that. So yeah, so, so you recreationally, you not as much for cost you spread it out so that it lasts you for your needs? Yeah. And then you mentioned tolerance before. So your weed tolerance has gone up just like your narcotic tolerance went up. But as your weed tolerance goes up, you're not withdrawing and having terrible symptoms, right? It's just It mean Can you can you talk about the difference between those two if there is?

Brittany 53:46
Yeah, it's, there's, there's definitely not, you know, I'm not obviously I'm not having any symptoms. If I you know, let's just say I left today and I went on a trip and I didn't bring my crew with me like I'm going to be pretty sore whenever I get home. And I'm going to feel it that way and you know, since I may not be smoking as much uppers and things like that I may be more fatigued so I'm going to have more just my regular symptom. But if I'm if it's just like a regular day where I'm at home and like I'm relaxing and I may be doing you know, like household chores or whatever, I could probably go really a good day or two in between without really having too much pain or too much symptoms. There may be things with our morale just sometimes there's things that will come and they'll be there for just you know, I'll have a spot that may hurt for like five minutes and then it kind of goes away it's not in that spot anymore. So it just it's not as definitely not as bad as what I was feeling before and even with me, you know not using as much as I you used to the pain just isn't as bad and it's still working. It's wonderful. spreading it out.

Scott Benner 55:10
It's really terrific. So when you talked about the cream, is that something you buy at like a local dispensary or is it a retail thing?

Brittany 55:20
Um, I make it and a dispensary. So the any of the like retail stores that have like CBD and that was one thing I was going to mention about CBD, anytime you're buying like a CBD product, whether it be from like a gas station or a drug store or wherever, like you would want to make sure that the CBD product is a full spectrum CBD product. So that way you're getting all the full benefits of the flower. But a lot of times for pain. What they've discovered is you really do need a little bit of THC with the CBD. So the one that I used to get from the dispensary, it was 5050. So it was half and how CBD and THC.

Scott Benner 56:04
And when you talk about pain relief from it, it's is it cumulative. Does that build up? Like you used it every day for a week and it felt better or you put it on? And 20 minutes later, you're like, Oh, this is great. It's helping, like how does? How's the impact for you?

Brittany 56:19
Yeah, well, you could use it that day. So like I said, I haven't you know, passengers new world. And I will put it on my feet the it helps with like inflammation. So I'll put it on my feet all day that I know I'll be walking a lot. And also I'll put it on my feet if I'm gonna like wear heels or shoes that may be more uncomfortable because it's going to help with that.

Scott Benner 56:40
So if I wanted to go get the screen for myself at a dispensary I live in New Jersey weeds legal here. Do I have to have a I don't need anything right? I can just walk in as a regular citizen and buy it.

Brittany 56:51
If you have if it's recreational there, you can buy it. If it's medical than you would have to go through like your state process of applying for a card and seeing the doctor.

Scott Benner 57:03
I wonder what it is.

Brittany 57:06
You can Google it. There's a map because whenever I go through like transports and different states, I'll look it up because I've stopped. Let me see

Scott Benner 57:21
where to buy recreational marijuana in New Jersey, six dispensaries in South Jersey and cemetery station one of the first Okay, so is recreational here. Okay,

Brittany 57:30
probably I know that like I know, like, different stuff in our area would be like New York and I know like down to DC, and things like that. But yeah, the map that I'm assuming

Scott Benner 57:43
some of these places are very oddly creative. But dad jokey were the names of their business. Mo weed, which I think is amazing. And then Holly weed again. It's silly and stupid, but thoughtful at the same time. I guess that would be most of the fun of opening up a dispensary is coming up with the fun title, or the fun name for the place.

Brittany 58:09
Maybe that's what I can do. When I get to a point where I'm growing my own weed. I could name a strain after you know,

Scott Benner 58:14
hey, now you're on to something. That's way better than a baby, don't you think?

Brittany 58:19
I mean? Yeah.

Scott Benner 58:20
Somebody named maybe after?

Brittany 58:22
Yeah, people will be asking for me or asking for you. By me, that'd be

Scott Benner 58:27
wonderful. I was gonna say someone named a baby after Arden and she didn't know how to feel about it. She's like, that's weird. And I was like, I mean, I don't think it's weird. And she's like, I do. All right.

Brittany 58:38
Yeah, sorry, was great. Um, she allows me to follow her on Instagram. And she's, she's wonderful. I love her podcasts. And I agree with her. At least some some political thinking on a lot of things.

Scott Benner 58:52
That's funny. Yeah. So you're one of the people that she refers to as your people are following me. Is that is that you?

Brittany 58:59
Well, I yeah, she you know, she makes it to where you have to improve her. Yeah. So she, she allows my, she approved me.

Scott Benner 59:09
Yeah, I know. She. She's like, I gotta make my account private. She's like, everyone's following me. I was like, Alright. What's it for them? She's like, it's just for me and my friends. I was like, Alright. Anyway. So you know, for somebody like let's just, we're, you know, we're up on an hour and but let me let me ask you a couple of questions. I have never in my life smoked. Like here. Here are the ways that the internet tells me I can take the weed and it says that I can use a bong. It says I can use a pipe, a joint edibles. vape pen, this thing called a spliff which I think I know is I think I know what that is. Then there's a blunt dabbing. That's new for me. Yeah, tinctures. Which I guess is like oil. This one's good.

Brittany 59:57
I bought a dab before this before this call. Did you okay,

Scott Benner 1:00:00
hold on, we're gonna explain what's a one hitter. We're gonna go through the whole thing. So I think, I think obviously, I know what a bong is this this person saying that this is a little more advanced, I wouldn't start with a bong, she's saying you don't agree.

Brittany 1:00:19
I mean, I don't really, I don't really know what the best thing to start with. I know the first thing. The boyfriend I was dating at the time he did not smoke then he couldn't because he was a nurse. But he had smoked earlier in his days, and he got me a pipe. And that was like, Oh, I don't like this. I didn't like the coughing but I didn't realize that the coughing was really going to come with everything. So I moved to a bong next. And then after for a while I actually had like our Urvi. So it was like a vape pen where you still put the bud in it and then you just move it around, rotate it around after a little while after taking a few hits, and then you can clean it out and put more in. So I did that for a while. But then the person that I bought from they got me using blunts and that's where you take the the cigars and you cut them open, you empty this stuff down and roll them up that way. And then joints are made out of paper. So that's what I prefer blunts has like tobacco in them, those are bad for you. All Smokings bad for you, but that's even worse. So the papers, or the cones is what I use. So that way it has a filter at the end. So you just basically stuffed the stuff in the columns.

Scott Benner 1:01:36
And later, a pipe would also be called a bowl. Is that right? Okay, so I see these cones are basically they're pre rolled papers almost that you just pack. Yep. And blunts. I know that's a mix of like, it's usually like a junky cigar that kind of you kind of split open and pack it is that right? What else do we have here? Do the tinctures work at all the THC like oils.

Brittany 1:02:09
Um, I've actually used those the least I felt like they were may have remember why I never bought them at the dispensary. I was recently going to make them but they whatever I was going to make them for it takes like a few weeks to make them you have to like let it sit for a few weeks to make it so I haven't I haven't really made them but I have heard good things from people that do use them regularly.

Scott Benner 1:02:37
And the dabbing hit you hard is that right? Like quick?

Brittany 1:02:40
Yeah, so you know the dance the damn, I do. Okay, so where that comes comes from it's because you're coughing so hard. You're coughing and your elbow. Which I'm sure a lot of parents that you know have kids recorded doing this thing don't realize what they're doing.

Unknown Speaker 1:02:58
Oh, oh, that's hilarious.

Brittany 1:03:02
For a dab you have you have a bong but you take the bowl because a bowl could also be from a bong as well from the piece that holds it there. So you take out that piece and there's another piece you have to buy that's like a quartz banger where it has a little it's a little bowl but it doesn't doesn't have a hole in it like the other one does. And you heat it up with a torch and then you take a concentrate so that could be a wax or shatter their crumble. There's all kinds of things you can get. And you put that down in there normally with a nail if it's like shatter where it's like candy you can like drop it in and then once you hit it you could have carved cap and the top

Scott Benner 1:03:52
Brittany This is the weed This is the smoking equivalent of looping people heard that and they're like it sounds good but I don't know how to get

Brittany 1:04:01
a lot of steps over to my house I can show you

Scott Benner 1:04:04
but you put on a display. Alright, so tell me this then. What are the downsides? Like if you step out of your life for a minute, are there any like to being involved with we like at the level you are like are there any things that you like I love what it does for me but I wish this didn't come with it.

Brittany 1:04:27
Um, well outside of health reasons the high costs and government being you know, keeping it from people and things like that. That's that sucks. But as far as for health reasons, like I mentioned the smoking, you know for smoking any something's bad. So like when you are using a bomb that is going to be water vapor and the dabs that's all going to be done like water vapor compared to where if you're lighting it with a, you know, a cigarette one The things that I do to help are very health conscious, is instead of lighting like if I was to light a bowl or a pipe with a lighter, you use hemp ropes. So you like the hemp rope, and then you like that, your bowl with that instead of the light of directly. Okay. So that helps cut out some of the carcinogens

Scott Benner 1:05:24
from that. What about socially does does it bother you that your mom doesn't understand?

Brittany 1:05:32
That's more so just frustrating. More than anything else.

Scott Benner 1:05:37
Okay. What about like, do you think that you fit in a profile? Like, do you think if I looked at you, like right now when I go, Oh, Brittany smokes weed?

Brittany 1:05:48
Well, because of my hair, yes. But that's probably the only giveaway. Okay, for looking at me.

Scott Benner 1:05:57
Like, I don't know what that means. Exactly. I'm just wondering if it's a culture, I guess.

Brittany 1:06:03
I mean, I do think that there are certain types of people you know, that use it. i There's a lot of I will say there's a lot of people who use it who aren't as open about it as me that hide it. Because whether it be employers, you know, they don't post about it on social media as much as I do. So it just, it just kind of depends.

Scott Benner 1:06:25
Yeah, but do you think that if we went into Manhattan, you and I, and we were walking down the street, and there are people walking by with like briefcases and like they weren't expensive suits, that there's an there's people in that group where I were, they would be able to have the same conversation you would have they just are able to like, or they're trying to visually hide that they're part of that culture. Do you think that exists?

Brittany 1:06:50
Oh, yeah. I mean, yeah,

Scott Benner 1:06:52
yeah. Like people you just couldn't sniff out? Well, I guess you'd be able to sniff them out. But people you couldn't see visually, visually.

Brittany 1:07:00
I met people that I didn't expect. You know them to be users. And then they were

Scott Benner 1:07:06
nice. And now what if I asked you, like, forget all this thing. Forget your pain for a second the things that you're trying to help medicate yourself with? If I asked you just come on and talk about weed as a fun thing, would you have spoken about it differently than you did just now? No, no. Would it sounded the same? Yeah. So you're not like getting up and just getting ripped and baking in an entire day of your life away, and not really knowing what happened or getting so high, you can't function like that kind of stuff. That's not for you.

Brittany 1:07:38
No, that was back whenever I worked. A quote unquote, real job or wasn't my own boss. That's kind of how I got it to work. I hated my job. That's why I quit my job and started my business. It was how I was able to get out of my door and, and drive to work and deal with the people that I dealt with every day.

Scott Benner 1:07:57
So you were pretty blasted at your job that you didn't like? Yes, yes. Did that slow down your performance? Do you think you weren't rocket technician or something? Well, you

Brittany 1:08:09
know, I worked in a call center for a bank. Oh, so it really made me. I mean, I don't deal with people anymore. I deal with pets, you know that for five minutes at a pickup and five minutes that are drop off. So just dealing with the people and dealing with a company that had issues that they refuse to fix. And we just had to take the heat on the phone every day or every call type of thing. It just kind of kind of

Scott Benner 1:08:40
fun, right? Just kind of sucks. Yeah. So then when when I'm on the phone with somebody trying to get my account reset or something. They're not bored. They're just a little high. I guess that makes sense. That makes more sense.

Brittany 1:08:53
It may seem definitely more like, I guess talking to those people, like I wasn't in a in those professional settings. I wasn't like I wasn't going to ask you as much. I don't know personal stuff as maybe than another person would have like I was going to be very business, you know, what do you need help with? Here's the answer, you know, kind of really straightforward. So I know that there was a certain strain that I would sometimes use for work. One of the when you buy it from a dispensary, it'll tell you the things that it helps with or the side effects that it made you talk to.

Scott Benner 1:09:28
Okay, I see. All right. Is there anything I didn't ask you about that you would want people to know before we before we start

Brittany 1:09:38
definitely be careful with edibles because they can they can make you sick. That's why some of the dispensaries have actually put limits on the milligrams so they can sell in one package. Start off with like five milligrams. I mean even even a friend of mine five meets her. She doesn't do it. hardly, hardly ever, but five makes her very, very high, especially if she's been eating or drinking or anything like that with

Scott Benner 1:10:10
just just blasts are often doing like she's not functional. Yeah.

Brittany 1:10:13
Well, we were about to go on a cruise once since she was walking in New Orleans and she had to like hold her hand and he on the street wasn't level and she like where we'd go. And it was night. So, you know, she just wasn't all there.

Scott Benner 1:10:29
I understand. Is there ever been a time that you've been too high to take care of your diabetes?

Brittany 1:10:35
No, no, not that I can think of. I mean, don't get me wrong before I started listening to your podcast, or before I started preparing my body for babies. I didn't do things as I should. And so that could be a gray area. But I wouldn't say it was, but it wasn't because of the week,

Scott Benner 1:10:56
what would you say that you took from the podcast that was most valuable for you with your management? You said you're in the fives now, right?

Brittany 1:11:04
Yes. There, there was really a lot there. Just being bold with insulin, I had a lot of trauma in my childhood related to diabetes. And we can talk about it whenever you'd like, whether it be in another podcast that after dark. Or if you have time today, whatever you want to do, but a lot of traumas that it just, you know, cause me to not do things as I should. And when the guy that I was previously dating, when you know, we thought we were going to be ready to get married and have children. I'm like, okay, and I went and got index calm. I'd had one before. But that was before it went with your phone, and I kept losing the receiver. And I kind of just kept running out of money to replace the receiver. So I said, Well, I'll get it again, when it connects with your phone, which was years later, and then it just took me I didn't get it right away when I started that. So it took me a little bit longer to actually go and get it. But I got the text column and and that's how I found your page was, I was on our Dexcom Facebook page. And somebody posted this horrible graph. And this other person said, listen to this podcast, it changes how you think about insulin. And that's when I saved it. But But yeah,

Scott Benner 1:12:35
wow, that's amazing. Well, I will have you back on sometime. And we'll talk about the rest. That sounds that sounds like a very good idea. I have to go now. So I can't do it right now. I don't You are the or you are the only person I'm recording with for like, I gave myself off for let me say 234567890 My God, I gave myself 21 days off without recording. But like Slack like but in the middle of all of it, I'm recording with you. Because this is just when we could we could find a time to do it. So I just I really appreciate you taking the time to come on and talk about all this and put context to it. It's a it's an interesting conversation, I think it would be fair to say that anybody who's pretending that weed smoking is not I would say prevalent at this point within society is, you know, is fooling themselves. But I think it's interesting to say that you don't really see it. You know what I mean? Like, you might be walking down the street one day and feel like I smell something or in a movie theater and you think somebody got hired before they came in here. Like that kind of thing. But, you know, for all the people who were like, well, they're gonna make it legal, and then everything is just gonna be Hi, people piled up on top of each other outside. I haven't noticed any difference. Honestly, the world doesn't seem any different to me. I think it's a it's worth paying attention to. And I mean, if for someone like you, who has these specific issues, can feel that kind of relief. I don't think why don't know why it matters where it comes from, honestly, you know,

Brittany 1:14:15
I definitely agree. I mean, I'm able to function and you know, do my job better than if I wouldn't have have had.

Scott Benner 1:14:24
No, I take your point I really don't. Okay, Brittany, thank you so much. Huge thank you to one of today's sponsors, G voc glucagon, find out more about Chivo Capo pen at G Vogue glucagon.com forward slash juicebox you spell that GVOKEGL You see ag o n.com. Forward slash juicebox. I also want to thank Brittany for coming on the show today and sharing her story. And of course Thank you for listening, subscribing, following sharing all that cool stuff you do with the podcast just a couple of weeks ago, we hit our 11 million downloads total for the show, which is crazy. And that's up over 10 million, which happened less than two months ago. Thank you so much for sharing the show. I'll be back soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast.