#1289 Shot in the Dark

Travis was diagnosed at five. He’s using the iLet pump now with a 6.5 A1c, but through most of his life his A1c‘s were in the 19s.

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

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends, and welcome back to the juicebox Podcast.

I'm speaking with Travis today. He's 40 years old. He has two kids, and he was diagnosed with type one diabetes when he was five. For much of his life, his a one Cs were in the nineteens, but today he's been using the eyelet insulin pump for over six months. Please don't forget that nothing you hear on the juicebox podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan or becoming bold with insulin. When you place your first order for ag one, with my link, you'll get five free travel packs and a free year supply of vitamin D drink. Ag one.com/juicebox, don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com All you have to do is use the offer code juice box at checkout. That's juicebox at checkout to save 40% at cozy earth.com How would you like to make a difference for people living with type one diabetes, including maybe you or someone in your family, all you have to do is go to T 1d exchange.org/juice box and complete the survey you need to be a US resident who has type one diabetes or is the caregiver of someone with type 1t 1d exchange.org/juice box. This episode of the juice box podcast is sponsored by OmniPod five, and you can learn more right now at my special link, omnipod.com/juicebox, today's podcast is sponsored by touched by type one. Check them out on Facebook, Instagram and at touched by type one.org. If you're looking for an organization who's helping people with type one diabetes, you're looking for touch by type one. This episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by the Eversense CGM, an implantable six month sensor. Is what you get with Eversense, but you get so much more exceptional and consistent accuracy over six months and distinct on body vibe alerts when you're high or low on body vibe alerts. You don't even know what that means. Do you ever sense cgm.com/juicebox, go find out.

Travis 2:25
I'm Travis. I'm 40 years old. I was diagnosed with diabetes at the age of five. I'm married, I have two kids, and that's about it, all right? I diabetes for 35 years been a roller coaster ride, has it? Oh, it has, yeah.

Scott Benner 2:46
How did it start?

Travis 2:47
So at five I got diagnosed. Walked in to the doctor's office or Children's Hospital on the North Shore, my blood sugar was 896

so I was in the record book for being the highest awake patient to walk in, I should say. And then it's just been kind of figure it out from there, because that was the good old 80s of here's here's some insulin. Check your sugar, and here's a sliding scale, and have fun. Do you remember doing this while you were in school?

I do. I use diabetes to get out of school a lot. I would fake not feeling good, and then they would call my grandfather, and my grandfather would come and pick me up, and we would go to Denny's and have some lunch. And then I would have the rest of the school off until my mother figured that one out and gave the school a glucose meter, and then they would make me check my blood sugar to

Scott Benner 3:51
wow, it was that easy charge. You said you just kind of showed up in an office doing diabetes. Got to go, and then he just let you go home.

Travis 4:00
Pretty, pretty much. I said I didn't feel good. They said it was because my or I'd say it was because my diabetes. And they would call my grandfather yeah and let me go. Wouldn't check nothing, just ship me home.

Scott Benner 4:11
Hey, Mary the bee's got me I gotta get Yeah, no

Travis 4:15
problem. That's fantastic. Yeah. Then my mom caught on, and so they gave the school a glucose meter, and then they would make me check it, so that that that scheme, Scott stopped.

Scott Benner 4:28
I bet you she kicked your grandfather. And they asked once or twice too after that, no,

Travis 4:32
no, they just they, if they called my grandfather was to tell the school to check my blood sugar.

Scott Benner 4:39
Did he not know that you were being slick. No, he

Travis 4:43
did not catch dawn. Okay.

Scott Benner 4:45
How did you talk him into the Denny's? It

Travis 4:48
was, it was his idea. Oh, I

Scott Benner 4:50
see you were just shooting once or twice a day at that point.

Travis 4:56
Yeah, it was, I believe that. I don't. I lent us. It was the cloudy in the in the regular clear, yeah. So you would mix both of them at whatever you know, meal time,

Scott Benner 5:10
stick them in on your way about every 12 hours, like before breakfast, before dinner. Yeah, like breakfast,

Travis 5:15
breakfast and dinner time. Okay, so when I woke up, we would check my sugar, check the sliding scale, draw up insulin, and then off to school I would go. Then I'd get out of school, and it would be dinner time, and we'd check my sugar again.

Scott Benner 5:29
Do you know what your blood sugars were back then? Were they like, stable, low, high. I

Travis 5:35
don't remember they were. I know my a 1c, was a seven for the longest time, because I remember going into Jocelyn clinic and telling my mom numbers off of my machine, and then, like, faking some of them, she'd be like, Wow, these all really high. You're gonna, you know, you're gonna have to explain to the doctor why your your a 1c is out of whack. And then I would get my a 1c back, and it would say seven. So I figured I was doing pretty good, whatever I was doing.

Scott Benner 6:03
How old were you at that point when your mom's telling you, this is on you? You better figure it out.

Travis 6:07
Probably nine or 10, because this is when we were I couldn't drive so I was going to appointments with my parents still. Well, yeah, you How old are your kids? My oldest son is 21 and my youngest daughter is 1121.

Scott Benner 6:26
And 11 cars, you had a baby and you're 19 on purpose.

Travis 6:30
That was not on purpose. Okay, did they know that? My my son? Yes, he knows, yeah. I

Scott Benner 6:39
was gonna say he's kind of hard to hide, right? Yeah, no, no, I really wanted to start a family.

Speaker 1 6:47
So okay, your kids with two different people are the same person, two different people. Yeah, it makes sense. My point in asking how old your kids were is that you had two children at nine years old. Would you put them in charge of anything? Yes, and no, okay. Would you put them in charge of the health and welfare of a nine year old? No? Oh, okay,

Travis 7:09
no. So like my daughter is is pretty, I mean, both, both my kids were pretty self sufficient, yeah, but I Yeah, no, I wouldn't. I wouldn't. I mean, my daughter has ADHD, and she has to take her medicine at eight o'clock at night, and we have to have an alarm set because she wouldn't remember if the ball the pill bottle hit her in the head, so we have a reminder set for but, yeah, no, I get,

Scott Benner 7:34
you know, I had a number of conversation I've had a number of conversations recently with Parents, and this is off Mike, and I get the idea of they need to understand it. It's going to be it's their diabetes, like we want them to be autonomous. I don't just understand it. I agree with all that, but you can't just make the announcement and then expect they're going to do it, and then when it doesn't get done, ignore that. That means poor health, and just go, Oh, you better figure it out. That part of thinking eludes me. It's a very like black and white way of considering things. Like, you know, they have to understand this. Yes, true, but that doesn't mean that they're going to randomly figure it out on their own. It's, it's such an interesting I don't know, interesting is the wrong word, because I'm trying to be polite, but I don't get it if you're doing that is what I'm saying. And so, you know, I don't know. How did that work out for you? Though, today's podcast is sponsored by the ever since CGM boasting a six month sensor. The Eversense CGM offers you these key advantages, distinct on body vibe alerts when high or low, a consistent and exceptional accuracy over a six month period, and you only need two sensors per year. No longer will you have to carry your CGM supplies with you. You won't have to be concerned about your adhesive not lasting, accidentally knocking off a sensor or wasting a sensor when you have to replace your transmitter. That's right, there's no more weekly or bi weekly hassles of sensor changes. Not the Eversense CGM. It's implantable and it's accurate. Ever since cgm.com/juicebox, the ever since CGM is the first and only long term CGM, ever since sits comfortably right under the skin in your upper arm, and it lasts way longer than any other CGM sensor. Never again will you have to worry about your sensor falling off before the end of its life. So if you want an incredibly accurate CGM that can't get knocked off and won't fall off, you're looking for the ever since CGM, ever since cgm.com/juicebox, cgm.com/juicebox, my daughter is 20 years old. I can't even believe it. She was diagnosed with type one diabetes when she was two, and she put her first insulin pump on when she was four. That insulin pump was an OmniPod, and it's been an OmniPod every day since then. That's six. 16 straight years of wearing OmniPod, it's been a friend to us, and I believe it could be a friend to you. Omnipod.com/juicebox, whether you get the OmniPod dash or the automation that's available with the OmniPod five, you are going to enjoy tubeless insulin pumping. You're going to be able to jump into a shower or a pool or a bathtub without taking off your pump. That's right, you will not have to disconnect to bathe with an OmniPod. You also won't have to disconnect to play a sport or to do anything where a regular tube pump has to come off. Arden has been wearing an OmniPod for 16 years. She knows other people that wear different pumps, and she has never once asked the question, should I be trying a different pump? Never once, omnipod.com/juicebox, get a pump that you'll be happy with forever.

Travis 10:52
It worked out fairly well. I would say I did what I needed to do. And then at 1819, I moved out,

Scott Benner 11:02
then you really did what you needed to

Travis 11:03
do. And then I

Scott Benner 11:07
Yeah, Travis.

Travis 11:10
And then once I was on my own, and I was doing my, you know, working, and had my own health insurance, I finally realized how expensive everything was, and that's kind of where the roller coaster really hit for diabetes. Well, did

Scott Benner 11:23
you ignore some of your care for costs? So

Travis 11:27
I definitely backed off of taking insulin as much as I should have for for costs. I was doing that. You know, I'll take a shot when my blood sugar is through the roof, and if I can maintain a good sugar level, like, keep it around 150 then I won't need to, you know, inject. I was super busy at work. I was running around so active to kind of help keep the my blood sugar a little bit stable, but then, you know, just out of control, not

Scott Benner 11:57
enough, without the right amount of insulin. Yeah, exercise is nice, and it'll make your insulin more sensitive, but yeah, not if you're not taking it. Did your parents know that you were making that concession?

Travis 12:07
They didn't until I split up with my son's mother and moved back in with my mother, and she was like, You are what are you doing? And I told her I couldn't afford everything, and, you know, I had other bills that were more important to pay, and I couldn't I don't think I saw an endocrinologist. I want to say when I was 19 was the last time I saw an endocrinologist, and then I the next time I saw one was when I was like, 23

Scott Benner 12:38
Travis. Can I? Can I get a little context here. Did you move out because your girlfriend was pregnant? You were trying to put a nuclear family together? Yes, okay, okay. And then that doesn't go well. I mean, surprise. And trying to imagine, if that happened to me when I was 19, how long I'd be able to hold that together, that doesn't go well, then you've got to move home because now you're paying for the baby, and you're, you're still very young, and that's how your mom sees. I mean, she probably was, you know, I'm not going to lie to you, she probably thought the whole thing was a train wreck. But, you know, like, that's when she finally see, yeah. Definitely did, yeah. And then she's, then she sees the health aspect of it. Does she step back in at that point,

Travis 13:21
yes and no, she stepped in to make sure that I could get all my bills straight straightened out, and then kind of get my life back in order. I got a job. Well, first thing I did is I, I've got a found a doctor, okay, endocrinologist, I'll say she put me on Lantis and Humalog, and she basically was like, this is the poor man's pump, because you can't afford a pump right now and your your sugars are so out of whack, we're not going to put you on a pump, so we're going to put you on what they call the poor man's pump. I ended up doing what she was saying and ended up having a low blood sugar behind the wheel of a work pickup truck. So I lost my license for I want to say it was like 15 days until I could prove that it was, you know, a fluke in the system, yeah,

Scott Benner 14:13
that's a lot at a young age, Travis, yeah, what was the poor man's pump?

Travis 14:18
So it was Lantis, which is the the long acting and then Humalog. I would take multiple times a day, like four or five times a day. I would take Humalog insulin to well, but through a pump, no, no, no. Just through, through MDI, yeah. Okay,

Scott Benner 14:39
I see so. So this is kind of a, almost a cultural thing at that point, like this is kind of the time where they were moving from regular and mph to faster acting insulins. They didn't really even know what to call some of this stuff at the at that point, I guess, yeah,

Travis 14:55
and this is when I leave the first kind of insulin pump. Was starting to just coming out. Yeah, all right,

Scott Benner 15:02
I see I get it now. So yeah, it's just kind of like colloquial, the way they put it, I guess, yeah, wow. You

Travis 15:10
able to get your license back. I got my license back. I do have to say the paramedics and the police officers were very surprised that I was conscious and talking to them when they pulled up, because I was able to I had no accident. I had no crashes. I pulled into a parking lot. I was on the wrong side of the road, so the cops were following me, and when the paramedics came and did a sugar I was 14, they were both like, you should be dead right now. And I was like, Ah, it's all right, yeah,

Scott Benner 15:41
I got to get back to work. Yeah, I

Travis 15:43
have lunch here. I'll take 20 minutes to eat my lunch and then continue on. I promise I won't move from here. But they made me take the ambulance ride, and I had to pay that one off. Yeah, everything's

Scott Benner 15:54
when, when you're broke, it seems like everything is out to get you. And you know what I mean? Oh yeah, yeah. I lived through it for sure. I used to tell people, there's a time in my life that if you asked me for $50 you might as well have asked me for a million dollars. I didn't have the, you know, I couldn't have come up with 50 any easier than I couldn't come up with a million. It was just, just what it was. All right, so, okay, so you have some chowder or a lobster roll and a beer, and you get back to work, I understand. And then, like, from there, how do, how do things progress? Because your intake form is very interesting. You like, I just want to talk about, like, how things have changed. And so,

Travis 16:34
yeah, you know, because, yeah, so I, I progressed. I went from, you know, the old school knowing, in the 80s, very, I would say very little. It was a, you know, shot in the dark, you know, to do this, and hopefully you'll stay alive. Yeah, to, I ended up getting a job at the state and was able to finally switch over and get a pump. So that was the newer pump. I don't know if the the Medtronic mini Med, maybe, or Yeah, it was the mini med. You could get, like, a clear body of a black or a blue fan. I want to say, did someone

Scott Benner 17:12
try to make that feel important during a doctor? So I was like, you could choose your color. You'd be like, oh, I

Travis 17:17
want to say, I want to say it was the Medtronic rep, right? It was like, What color do you want? Like, this is. And I was like, I don't care. As long as it keeps as long as it keeps me alive, that's all that matters.

Scott Benner 17:29
Unless you have, I don't have diabetes in that, that wish list in there, I'm good,

Travis 17:35
exactly. Yeah, I got on the pump. Life was, you know, pretty, pretty smooth going. I want to say my a 1c went from I want to say, like a 19 down to maybe a 13 with a pump. So I was pretty impressed. And I was happy with bringing it down and kind of fighting to bring it down even more I did the Dexcom, the original Dex sensors that were like a syringe at an angle that you stabbed in yourself, and you had to keep in the fridge, yeah,

Scott Benner 18:08
oh, you had to keep in the refrigerator. Back then the sensor

Travis 18:12
piece, you had to keep in the in the refrigerator, yeah, you had to keep them

Scott Benner 18:16
cool. I don't even remember that. How What year do you think that was the very first one,

Travis 18:21
I want to say it was, they were just like, brand new. They're like, try these. See how they work. It's supposed to be, you know, you don't have to take a blood sugar as often. You have to do it, like twice a day to calibrate. I tried it, and then my insurance said, No, we're not paying for it. You'll have to pay the $1,000 a month for it. And I said, Well, I guess these can. I'll use them up, and I'll, I'll go back to what I was doing. Oh,

Scott Benner 18:47
just 1000 Sure. Can I pay for the whole year, please?

Travis 18:50
Yeah.

Scott Benner 18:51
Can I get a 10% discount for but that's crazy. Here's the thing I'm really focused on. You're diagnosed in your five we're talking about a time when you're in your early 20s and your a one season 19, in your early 20s.

Travis 19:05
Yeah, it was bad. I didn't control it at all. I went out. I would go out drinking and partying and, you know, while taking care of family, while doing everything. And, yeah, I was refusing to believe I was the diabetic. You could say, at that point,

Scott Benner 19:21
okay, how long did that park go on

Travis 19:23
for where you were? Just like, um, about five, maybe six years. And then I, you know, was like, I gotta, I gotta change. Is

Scott Benner 19:32
that when you got to the 13 with the pump? Or no,

Travis 19:35
not yet, yeah, that's when I got to the 13 with the pump. Okay, so

Scott Benner 19:39
I gotta change, grab a pump. Go from 19 to 13. Do you stay at 13 long, or do you start to figure it out and see a decrease at that point,

Travis 19:48
I started to see a decrease. I want to say. I went from 13 down to and I kind of hovered at 10 for a long time.

Scott Benner 19:58
Give me some context. What are you. C right now.

Travis 20:00
My a 1c right now is a 6.5 not good for you. Now.

Scott Benner 20:06
What's the difference between a 6.5 and a 10? What's the difference in your effort and what you were doing?

Travis 20:11
So there's a there's a lot of effort put into that. Actually found a very a new endocrinologist, because I was trying to get my CDL, so I needed to go and get all this paperwork done. And she was basically like, I'm not signing this paperwork unless you can get your a 1c down to a seven. Here's what you need to do, and I will help you. And she actually saw me for the very first time and didn't even charge me for an appointment fee. So absolutely love my endocrinologist. Now I still see her. Okay, so I, you know, she kind of kicked me in the butt, and I worked. I started, you know, checking my sugars more. I started, you know, bolusing more, because I think that's the biggest thing I never did, was bolus for meals I would always, oh, I ate. Let me just give myself a bolus later.

Scott Benner 21:02
Did you ever even do it later? Or was it just,

Travis 21:05
were you it was probably 5050, sometimes I did it later. Sometimes I was like, well, it's too late now. Let the pump, you know, let me let it, let it run its course and catch up. This

Scott Benner 21:17
is not an uncommon story from people who've had diabetes for a long time. And I think what I mean by that is for people who, at one point, were just doing regular and mph like, just shoot it. Shoot it again. Don't think about it. Don't test Don't worry. It is what it is. Are you telling me that you were doing your Atlantis and nothing else most of the time, or even that you if you had a pump on you would let it run your basal insulin, but then very frequently, or coin flip, whether you would bolus for your meals or not. So

Travis 21:48
with the pump, I would very frequently. I would, I would not frequently, bolus for meals. I would just let it run the basal, and then if my sugar, you know, if I was up in the three hundreds and it wasn't coming down with the basal, I would then kind of mess around with the bolus number and see how I could, you know where I how much I needed to get down,

Scott Benner 22:11
and what was your understanding of the impact that was having on your health.

Travis 22:15
I knew it wasn't good because I had a doctor that told me that I was going to lose my arms and my legs and body parts, and I would never see my kids grow up, but I was, you know, still in my early 20s, and I was like, whatever. I'll, you know, I've lived this long. I'll, I'll continue to live. My understanding is that it was absolutely terrible. Thankfully, I don't have any side effects, except for retinopathy in my in my eyes, which isn't bad, and they're keeping, you know, tabs on it. So,

Scott Benner 22:50
so going back to that time, hey, you're gonna lose your losing your arms, losing your legs, maybe think of a Metallica song when you said the way you said it. There's something about that, but that's being told you, and you're like, whatever? Do you mean, whatever? Like, nah, that's not gonna happen to me. Or I'm okay so far. So I won't think about, like, why would I'm trying to understand why,

Travis 23:10
when it was a whatever, you know, I'll never live to see that kind of kind of thing. Like, Oh, okay. I was told I only you know if you live to, you know, if you live to 25 you know, you you've hit a milestone. So, you know, I was, you know, Bunk. If I hit 25 that's a milestone, and I probably don't have much longer after that. But

Scott Benner 23:32
no Travis, no feeling of like, I'll beat this or I'll do better than that, like, just you took, you took what they told you to heart, like I'm not going to live a very long life.

Travis 23:41
I kind of took it to heart, but I was like, You know what? I'm we all gotta die at some point, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna live it up and have fun. I'm not gonna let the diabetes hold me back and not be able to have fun like all my other friends are doing, and do what they're doing. So especially if I'm not gonna live very long. Yeah, so if I'm gonna die, I'm going to die having fun with a smile on my face, is how I looked at it. And I made it to 40, so I'm doing pretty good. I

Scott Benner 24:06
think, I think you're doing well, let me ask you a question. If this hall happened and you were 40, you're the person you are right now. And I came in and I said to you, Travis, you're not going to live very long. Don't even bother trying. Blah, blah. Do you think you'd still accept that, or do you think now, as a more mature person, you'd be like, Well, are you sure maybe I should talk to somebody else, or are you sure,

Travis 24:25
as a more mature person, I am definitely taking way better care of it, and I have to say, listening to the juicebox podcast, I understand a lot more of what the harms I have done to myself and why I'm trying to do way better than what I used to do. How long have you been listening? So I haven't been listening that long. I want to say maybe a year. In a year, has your A once he gotten better? There's kind of a odd story in there. I have the eyelet pump now. Oh, good. I was on the trial. I was in the trial for it, and. Then once i i was able to receive it early, because I was in the trial and spoke to the creator of the islet when I was getting hooked up and doing my setup process. And he kind of mentioned, oh, have you heard about this podcast? And I was like, I so I, you know, kind of looked at him up and listened to his his podcast with you first. And then I was like, this is pretty interesting. And then started going through him, and I now listen to him every day. Oh, wow, I subscribe now too, so I get to listen to him early. Oh, thank

Scott Benner 25:35
you. Hey, that's not a thing I usually bring up, but yeah, if you pay like, a few bucks a month, you'll get the episodes a day early, and there's no ads in the Pro Tip series or the bowl beginning series. But that's neither here nor there. That's a little ad for myself, Travis, but no, but I don't want to get off track, because this is incredibly interesting. So in 35 years, you went through this process, but still, in all a year ago, you were pretty lost,

Travis 26:00
I would say so, except for my endocrinologist, who would yell at me, will not really yell at me, but just be like, listen, I can't help you if you don't help yourself, right? And you know, if you want to keep your your CDL and I have to continue to sign this paperwork, then you need to figure this out and make and show me that you actually want to keep your CDL license, oh,

Scott Benner 26:22
I was gonna say, like your first major health improvement. It was for money. You you need to keep your job and upgrade your job with a different license. That's why you really got your a one scene down to seven, right?

Yes, yeah,

that's what I thought. Okay, all right. But I mean, so you met Ed? Is it ed that you met, he was on the podcast, right? Yes, yeah. And so, well, that's interesting. So, so are you in the islet trial? Because how did they find you?

Travis 26:52
So I'm in the islet trial because my my endocrinologist knows knew the doctor that was running it, and she gave my name, and they reached out, and then I reached out, and I took I got into the trial. My a 1c when I started the trial, was at a seven. And then after three months of being on it, my a 1c came down to a 6.6 Wow. And they gave me all the, all the paperwork in, you know, basically the breakdown of what, what the islet pump was doing in, what it was giving me for breakfast, lunch and dinner, bolus, yeah, I have to say how amazing my endocrinologist is. Is that she had my pump, my Medtronic, 760 or whatever it is, set up pretty close to what the islet was doing, minus the basal rates. I mean, minus the boluses. Okay, so I basically took what I was bolusing for breakfast, lunch and dinner on average, and when I started back onto my Medtronic pump, I would, you know, that's what I would give myself as a bolus. Unless I ate a little bit more than I would kind of bump it up a little bit. If I ate a little bit less, I would bump it down. So I was basically doing what the eyelet did, but in a manual mode. Yeah. So

Scott Benner 28:16
Wow. Do you think it's possible that your doctor rep said, Hey, I think I have somebody for this study, because you fit the bill of what they were looking for, which was people who are looking to not really be involved very much.

Travis 28:28
I think so, yeah. And that is, you know, I hate to say it, but I I want to be involved, but I don't want to be involved. I have, you know, I want life to be life, and diabetes is part of my life, but I don't want it to overwhelm and take over. You

Scott Benner 28:45
know, listen, I can't tell you that I think there's anything wrong with that desire. You know, I understand it. I think this pump is going to help a lot of people who feel that way as well. Has listening to the podcast made any difference for you on eyelet? Or is there not really any kind of adjustments you can make anyway, or is it more about bolus timing, stuff like that? Have you gotten from it?

Travis 29:05
It's more about bolus timing, because you really can't make any adjustments. The biggest thing I think you need to figure out is your meals, if it's a regular, if it's a usual meal, a bigger meal or less meal, yeah, is kind of and that's where you kind of need to know your carbs. And I definitely think the podcast has helped with the the protein spikes and all that, because we do like a pizza night at the house, I'll make homemade pizzas, and I know that I can bowl us for that pizza as a as a normal meal, but in an hour, I'm gonna spike up in about a half hour or 45 minutes after my initial bolus, or Yeah, bolus, I will then give myself a usual amount, and it will keep me right where I need to be.

Scott Benner 29:56
You figured out how to tell the eyelet two different meals? For something like pizza, correct? Yeah,

Travis 30:03
the islet, the islets, great, but it doesn't it trends your, your rises in in phrases, when you're going up and you're if you're getting too low, it'll figure that out. But if you're after you eat for like, a protein, you know, Spike, it doesn't really catch it quick enough, right?

Scott Benner 30:22
So that's how you're getting under a seven with eyelet. Uh, yes. You're kind of bolusing extra, not really extra. You're bullish in what you need, but you're filling in gaps where the pump wouldn't be as aggressive. I guess I should say yes.

Travis 30:35
Okay, okay, wow. But for for people that are just getting on it and figuring things out and don't really know, yeah, don't do that. What they're doing. Well, don't be like, it would be great for somebody. It would be great, I would say it would be great for somebody that doesn't quite understand carb counting, and because you could definitely maintain a seven just, you know, bolus for what you're eating, because it will catch it. You might, you might hit 200 and sit at 200 for a little bit longer than you would like, or I would like now, but it will definitely catch it and bring you back down. I see,

Scott Benner 31:18
yeah, no, I when he explained it to me, I really did think there's a great many people actually. You're, you're the kind of numbers I was thinking about when he was talking about this thing. There are people wandering around with 13, a one, CS, all over the place. And if you're telling me, you can put this device on them, and they can say, what is it? I'm having breakfast, lunch or dinner. It's usual, less than usual, more than usual amount of food. That's it, right? Yep, it's usual, more or less usual, more less breakfast, lunch, dinner. That's it. That's it, yeah? Well, that's not a lot, so, but you're doing it too big, you know? Because there's a world where 20 year old you wouldn't push the button even Well,

Travis 31:58
see, this is where I think a 20 year old me would push this button because it's easier, okay, less consuming than having to go in and calculate, okay, I have to put in, like, the Medtronic pump. You have to put in, you know, this meal is, you know, 40 carbs. Okay, I put in 40 carbs. Okay. And, you know, I just hit a button. Bing, bang, done. Do me?

Scott Benner 32:22
Do me a favor, because I think I have a good grasp of you already, as good as I can in a half an hour. But I want to make sure everyone else does too your regular life. You're a hard working guy. You're not lazy, right?

Travis 32:32
I'm not lazy. I I drive a truck for a living, a dump truck for a local trucking company. I coach rugby on the weekends. I used to play rugby. I try to stay as active as possible. My daughter ice skates. My daughter plays rugby.

Scott Benner 32:49
My wife works with animals, so we're you're involved. Personally, going, Yeah, you're involved. Parent, the whole thing, yes, yeah, it's just this aspect for whatever reason, whether it's your personality or the time you got diabetes and how it was first explained to you, or whatever it was that put you into this mindset. This is just the mindset you you have, and you're adapting to it with different technology.

Travis 33:14
And I have to say, I love the new technology. I have a, you know, the Dexcom. I'm on a Dexcom g6 right now. And I would, you know, I'd fight you over taking it away.

Scott Benner 33:27
I used to say that about TiVo. I used to say, if you came to my door and tried to take my TiVo back, I would, I would get a bat. Now, everybody doesn't even know what that is like all media is time shifted at this point. You know what I mean Exactly, right? Uh, but But I take your point, like, Listen, man, that's fantastic. And it's actually kind of big of you to come share this story, because this is not a story of like, Hey, I found the podcast right away. My a one season the fives, and I'm doing great. Like, that's easy to share. You know what I mean? Like, this is, I lived a long time. I wasn't doing the things I needed to do. I wasn't taking steps to change that I probably wasn't going to, you know, I got pushed into it a little bit because of a job situation, and then I got lucky with a good doctor who helped me stay as focused as possible. But then this technology is where I make my leap.

Unknown Speaker 34:15
Yeah, wait, can

Scott Benner 34:16
you imagine if someone would have slapped this on five year old Travis? I

Travis 34:20
would, I don't even know what I'd be doing now. I'd

Scott Benner 34:23
be, just be so exciting. Honestly, I would, yeah, be, also your attitude would be completely different. About diabetes.

Travis 34:30
I mean, my attitude thought bad. No, no, I just Travis.

Scott Benner 34:34
Let me stop you. I don't think you have a bad attitude. I just mean, I made your perspective would be different, I

Travis 34:39
guess. Oh, probably, definitely, yeah, yeah. But, you know, I don't let diabetes. I in. Anybody that lets diabetes hold them back from doing something they want to do is, is crazy. I mean, I didn't realize that I was supposed to take off my pump going on roller coasters. When I got the eyelet, they were like, don't forget to take that off if you go on roller coasters or jump out of a plane. I was like. What do you mean? I've done both those and I've never taken my pump off. And they're like, is your pumps? Your pump still worked after? And I was like, Well, yeah, why wouldn't it like,

Scott Benner 35:09
Oh no, my daughter wears omnipot on a roller coaster. Well, I

Travis 35:12
don't know if omnipot is different than the Medtronic one, but I was like, I sure, I guess. And all right, I'm super excited for for the technology that makes you know me being able to get my CDL a possibility, and maybe having a diabetic be a airline pilot, because that was never a possibility, and now they're looking into letting that be a possibility.

Scott Benner 35:37
A guy doing it, he was on the show already. Oh, perfect. Yeah, yeah, fantastic. So that's, that's the kind of stuff you're thinking about like you're thinking about everybody being able to have more opportunities.

Travis 35:48
Yeah, and there's, actually, there's a kid in my daughter's school who's in his in her class that I came I didn't have to work one day, so I went to breakfast with her, because her school serves breakfast. I saw him pull out his phone and look at it. And I was like, so I kind of looked at her, and I was like, is he a diabetic? And she was like, yeah. I was like, Huh, okay. And my daughter is so nonchalant with everything. It's It's amazing. She she knows where my all my insulin supplies are. She knows how to change my palm. Even the new one, she knows where the on. I can't even think of the name of it now, glucagon. The glucagon, Yep, yeah. She knows where that is. She knows how to use it. I've actually spoken to the other kids parents, because they're getting ready to go to nature's classroom, which is an overnight like camp for the the kids. And I said, you know, my, my daughter knows how to take care of everything she's she's quite aware of what a low blood sugar behavior is, what high blood sugar behavior is, um, even though it can be different in that anybody she she can, you know,

Scott Benner 36:57
she's aware of this kid needed help, right? Yeah. And I was like,

Travis 37:01
you know? And I said, she knows what a glucagon pen is and how to use one. And the mother was like, well, we have the nasal spray. And I was like, well, even easier, because I'm sure she can figure that out.

Scott Benner 37:13
And okay, hey, Travis, you ever growing up end up in DK in the hospital? So

Travis 37:19
I've been in DKA once, and it was, I want to say it was probably 1110, or 11 years ago, and it was because my pump, my pump, malfunctioned, and I actually had to get a new one from Medtronic. Those

Scott Benner 37:36
years when you had a 19, A, 1c, you never ended up in the hospital. Never ended up in the hospital. My god, that's interesting. What do you do? You have any feelings about why that is? I'm lucky. Yeah, I don't know. Were you just like, waiting until you got high and then crushing blood sugars, but you didn't have a ton of lows either? Well,

Travis 37:55
no, I did have a ton of lows. I was definitely roller coasting, roller coaster. Roller coaster was crashing

Scott Benner 38:01
at the end.

Travis 38:01
Yeah, oh, okay. So definitely going from like 500 down to, you know, down to 50, and then catching it

Scott Benner 38:13
and then catching it yourself, or did you need intervention from other people?

Travis 38:17
No, I would catch it myself, except for that one time I was behind the wheel, yeah, literally.

Scott Benner 38:22
So that one time is your one really scary low blood sugar incident?

Travis 38:25
Yeah, and that one is the reason why I started running my blood sugars at like 200 behind the wheel when I was driving for a living, because I didn't want to have a low behind the wheel again. That experience actually made you keep a higher blood sugar? Yeah, yeah, that starts to make sense too. Looking back now, like if you could go back and talk to yourself, What do you think you would try to convince yourself of I would try to convince myself to maintain it better when I was running reckless and not even thinking about being a diabetic five years? You said five six years? Yeah, like five or six years running rampant. Jeez,

Scott Benner 39:08
were you with a woman at that point? No, not living with some I'm just trying to wonder if there was another person in your life who saw that happening and didn't, did or didn't say anything to you.

Travis 39:18
So my my son's mother wouldn't have really recognized it, right? My wife, now would. She's pretty on top of it, but yeah, no. The only other person that would have recognized it would have been my mother, but I was out of the house by then, and I wouldn't go home at that time. So

Scott Benner 39:37
any other type one in your family line? No,

Travis 39:39
my grandmother, later in life, became a type two. There's thyroid problems. My mother, actually, I want to believe, has her had her thyroid removed or had something done? Maybe, yeah,

Scott Benner 39:54
okay, so she, she takes a replacement. Your thyroid is okay. My

Travis 39:59
thyroid. It is okay. My cholesterol was a little elevated. They put me on a statin, and then they took me off, so I'm not taking a statin anymore.

Scott Benner 40:08
How about in the family, celiac, eczema, bipolar, or anything like that. In the family,

Travis 40:16
there's definitely bipolar in the family, maybe my aunt. Okay,

Scott Benner 40:22
so any Alzheimer's with the older ones? Um, no, no. Okay, wow, man, it's crazy. This is the kind of story that just really interests me, because to me, it has so much to do with how you started. And, you know, listening, I don't know that we can blame anybody in the 80s, right for with today's standards like that. That would be a pretty big stretch, but still, like so much of where you are is where you started.

Travis 40:50
Yes, and the other thing too. I mean, my both, my my parents are separated now, but they were both in the service. They both got into drug use. So when I became a diabetic and my mom had to do shock draw up syringes, she said it was the hardest thing for because it would bring back flashbacks of when she was using. So that's they

Scott Benner 41:14
was that they were using in the military, in the military, or when they got out,

Travis 41:18
I believe it was the end of the military. I'm not too sure. Okay, my mom's been open and you know about all drug use that's been throughout her life. And you know, it's pretty an open it's a pretty open book.

Scott Benner 41:31
So she said, What age do you become aware of that?

Travis 41:34
When we were, like, 1617, she used to tell us, you know, because she was trying to keep us on the straight and narrow,

Scott Benner 41:40
did that work, or does, did part of that partying? I've

Travis 41:44
never done drugs. I mean, I've taken pain killers that probably weren't prescribed to me, but I don't do that, you know, it was, yeah, that was in

Scott Benner 41:52
the we're gonna count, though, but not in the same way

Travis 41:55
that was what I was, you know, in in my 20s, running crazy and doing things and partying with everybody, but I, you know, I mean, I still had my job, I still kept my responsibilities,

Scott Benner 42:06
but are you drinking? Mostly,

Travis 42:07
I do. I mean, I still drink. Now, I don't drink heavily.

I'll have, you know, a few drinks on the weekend, but back then you were pounding it right back then you could consider me a binge drinker. Yeah, okay, and throwing a pill once in a while. Yes, okay, wash that down with a little whiskey, maybe something like that. Yeah, wash it down. Yeah. And then you guys, would you just hang out? Were you like, roaming the streets of Boston, causing trouble?

No chasing girls, doing we would hang out, you know, either at a hotel or in the woods. The town woods. Hang out. The woods. Was there?

Scott Benner 42:41
Was there a sofa in those woods? Travis,

Travis 42:44
there could have been a sofa in those woods.

Scott Benner 42:50
I saw one of those sofas a couple of times.

Travis 42:54
You're not You're not that much older than me. I know you. Yeah, I'm

Scott Benner 42:57
not that much older than you. Oh, my God. Did you imagine that there was a time in your life when you were like, You know what makes sense to me? We're gonna get good loaded, climb out in the woods and sit on a dirty sofa that I'm 100% sure a squirrel on.

Travis 43:10
Yeah, yes,

Scott Benner 43:12
this will be great. We'll love this. So your mom did scare you out of doing drugs. You think it wasn't scare

Travis 43:18
me out of I never even I wasn't really for you. Yeah, it wasn't for me. I wasn't really interested. I was around it all my I mean, I've had friends Sure, did everything under the sun, but it just really wasn't for me. I have

Scott Benner 43:32
to tell you, I have the same story. I've every opportunity in the world. I just never cared, never really cared for it, or thought to try it. It's interesting. I didn't drink either, but that's I'm not I'm not bragging. I'm just saying, like, the drug thing never occurred to me. It's really interesting how it strikes some people and not others. Yeah,

Travis 43:51
I mean, it's, it's strange, I don't know, like, my really good friend still smokes pot to this day, and I'm like, I don't have a ton of trouble with smoking pot, I

Scott Benner 44:01
have to be honest. But like, I'm talking about, like my friends were doing cocaine and, you know,

Travis 44:05
yeah, well, my friends were too, and they actually, now they just all smoke pot. Now they kind of grew out of everything else. So

Scott Benner 44:12
they grew out of it. I grew out of cocaine. Don't you worry?

Travis 44:15
I Yeah, it's funny to say, but it's true. Yeah, no, I

Scott Benner 44:18
know. I know it is, how did you talk to your son, or your son about all this, about drugs, alcohol and and, like, how you were, I mean, because maybe you haven't, but, like, you're running around, you made a baby pretty young. Like, did you give him the like, I sent my son to school. And I was like, listen, just don't up the things you can on. And he was like, he was like, what? I'm like, You can't kill somebody and come back from it. You can't get somebody pregnant and come back from it. I'm like, Don't up the things. You can't un and he was like, okay, and I sent him on his bike. I'm like, did you have a conversation like that? I did have

Travis 44:55
a conversation with, like, with him like that. He's a very good kid. He's got. Good head on his shoulders. I love him dearly, but he sometimes isn't the brightest he, as he would say, at least I didn't make your mistake. I'm making my mistakes. You know, he's, he'll, he'll come to me and goes, and he says, you know, listen, I'm 21 I don't have a kid yet. I'm doing better than you already. And I was like,

Scott Benner 45:19
there you go. Hard to argue with also, yeah, nice that you guys can talk about it, because with that freedom, because he is talking it must be difficult on some level for him. He's talking about himself as a mistake, and that's that can't be easy, like psychologically, you know what I mean. But it sounds like you guys have a nice, open back and forth about it, and I think that probably is what makes it easy for him, you know, yeah, I

Travis 45:42
mean, I tell him all the time, you know, yes, I if I could go back, I would still do what I did, like I, you know, I wouldn't take anything from my past. You know, it wasn't a struggle to have a kid at 19. Oh, yeah. But, you know, I made it work. I made it happen. I, you know, supported him, you know, from day one. And yeah,

Scott Benner 46:00
I'm glad you're here, but I maybe should have owned a pot and a pillow before I did this. Like, yeah, exactly,

Travis 46:08
yeah. No, we, you know. I'm like, You're not a mistake. You were an oops. And he's like, Oh, thanks. Makes it so much better. It's like, oh no,

Scott Benner 46:16
it does a little actually, there's a lot of context in the word mistake, you know what I mean? Like, not on not on purpose, and something I wish I wouldn't have done is is very much different. So it's interesting. I'm thinking of calling your episode shot in the dark. That you said that earlier, and I thought, How come there's no episode called shot in the dark? It's like such a nice like, double entendre and everything. Anyway, I'm working towards that, unless I just call it Boston, that's gonna be that. How the hell do you live through the winters? I'm not lying. When the wind comes in off the water, why don't you all just scream, die and fall over.

Travis 46:51
All honestly, I hate winter time now that I'm older. I used to love it as a kid. I would, I would love to get out of Boston and move down to Tennessee. All honestly, I have to convince the wife to do that, but she's been working for the same company for 25 years now. So that's that's where the struggle lies. Tennessee has become a very popular place for people to move. I would love to go out in my flip flops, in my shorts, and just leaf blow the snow away and

Scott Benner 47:18
the call that winter exactly. I have to be honest with you, I do not want to live in the cold, especially as I get older too. It gets it's hard sometimes even just the other day. I mean, you and I are close enough to each other. It got really windy and bitter the other day, and I had to run out for something and groceries. And I, you know, pushed the cart back to my car, and I put the stuff in, and I took the car to the return, because I'm not a piece of and if you don't take the car to the return, I'm judging you. And so I'm taking the car to the return. This me and this guy, like, make eye contact, and he looks at me, and I look at him, and I went so fucking cold. And he goes, me too. And he said, I think it's because I'm old. And I was like, I was thinking the same thing, and we ran back to our cars, and that was the end of it. I 25 years ago, I would have gone to the grocery store and shorts on that day. I wouldn't have thought twice about it. And it's just, I don't know what it is, but I don't want to. I don't want to feel like this anymore. So, yeah, no, I

Travis 48:15
don't want to. I mean, I shouldn't say too much, because I salt for the you needed the state. So I get, I get paid to be out in the cold, but I just, I don't, I don't want to do it anymore. Yeah, I

Scott Benner 48:27
don't. I'm with you, man,

Travis 48:28
I but I love the company I work for too now. So I hard to leave. You know it's hard to leave? Yeah, no, I

Scott Benner 48:35
see that. I'm watching my wife. My wife has a job offer this week, and I'm seeing how it pulls on her in both directions. It's actually kind of very interesting. All right, what else you got? Anything else you'd like to talk about, is anything we haven't talked about? I want to make sure I'm not missing anything from your perspective.

Travis 48:51
I don't think so. I just, you know, the new technology coming out, I mean, is amazing. Give it a try. Even the the g7 now, which is, is, is a plus. And

Scott Benner 49:02
how long have you been on g7

Travis 49:04
I haven't been on G I haven't switched yet because I haven't, oh, confirmed. I haven't confirmed with my doc, my insurance company, if they'll cover the g7 but islet is compatible, though, right? Eyelet is now compatible. If I open up my eyelet, it says, Please choose g6 or g7 when I switch my sensors. So nice. So you're thinking about it, that switch is definitely coming. Going to be coming to my only issue with eyelet is the length of the tubing is too short. So I think it's causing some tunneling, because when I roll around in my sleep, I think it's pulling the tube, because it's only a short tube. Have

Scott Benner 49:46
you given them that feedback? Because I imagine if that's happening to you, it's happening to others, they'd probably like to present people with more options. I would imagine I

Travis 49:54
have. There is another option. It's the steel set I'm not able to. At through my distribution yet. Okay, but they're working on it, and then I'm also in the works of maybe switching to the fast acting whether it's FIAs or the other one. They both work in that pump as well. Yeah, one of them is actually going to be pre filled cartridges. So you'll get pre filled vials all set. You just popped. Man, is it going to be loom, Jeff?

Scott Benner 50:23
I wonder if I'm trying to see I'm looking right now, hold on a second. I don't know that loom Jeff works for the island, and I don't know that it doesn't, but I don't know that it does either.

Travis 50:32
I think they did FIAs for the test.

Scott Benner 50:35
Okay, all right, you're hoping that makes a bit of a difference too, because now, yeah, I'm hoping tell me, Travis, you've you've sniffed the sixes now, now you're wondering what else you could do, right?

Travis 50:45
Well, I'm hoping just to stay in the sixes, we can get to the low sixes. So my other thing too, is I'm in discussions with my endo about maybe getting on we go V because I'm having trouble losing weight. And with everything I've heard on the podcast, it could help with my total daily dosage. Do

Scott Benner 51:06
you want to talk about it? Give me one. Yeah, let me say this first US based, diabetes focused medical technology company beta bionics has received FDA clearance, compatibility of the FIAs pump cart, pre filled insulin cartridge. So that's what you're talking about. Not, yes, not that I let providing users with a choice of three insulins, Novolog, Humalog, or the FIAs pump cart. So those are the three that'll work with it. And that's

Travis 51:30
really cool. The Novolog and the human log you have to fill yourself, yeah, but the fiasco will come pre filled, which, I mean, you might like, if it saves me a step, you know, save me five minutes. That's five minutes of my life. I

Scott Benner 51:43
get back. Yeah, you take it. Well, I'll tell you to the g7 where you're going to love that besides the size and the ease of the insertion is there's a shorter window for warm up down to 30 minutes. But there's also a, like, a grace period at the end of the sensor. So what I tell people all the time is, it's like, you put the new one on and live with the new one for an hour or two or three, or whatever, through the grace period, and then pop the old one off. And as soon as you pop the old one off, the new ones there and giving you numbers already fantastic, like, you know, so you don't have a especially with these algorithms, right? You're not gonna, you're not gonna have a gap of data at all. But tell me about, about wanting to lose weight. How

Travis 52:23
much do you think you have to lose? Probably about 50, maybe 60 pounds. I'm like 275, right now, at six one, and I just, I don't eat much anymore, yeah, but I try to maintain, you know, watch what I eat, not the greatest with, you know, nutrition, I know my lunch is like a little kid's lunch, because I'm sitting in a truck and I need to just have quick snacks that I can eat while I drive. Right? You know, me and the wife go out walking when we can with our dogs, and then, you know, we I coach rugby and run and chase the kids at Rugby. And what was your frame like in your 20s? What do you think you weighed back then? I weighed 220, back in my 20s. Did

Scott Benner 53:05
you have weight to lose then? Or were you solid?

Travis 53:08
I was, I was fairly solid. I mean, I probably should have lost weight, but it was all, you know, it was all that alcohol, yeah,

Scott Benner 53:15
because I'm telling I'm looking at the obesity chart right now. At six, one, you are considered obese. 227, to 295, so that puts you in that category. You'd have to get below 182, to get to moderate weight, which means and the reason, I think that's important is because that means that you qualify right now for a GLP medication for weight loss. If your insurance company covers it, it'll be free. Even you got to find out if your insurance company covers either we go V or zepbound. And I'll tell you, I'd try for zebound If I was you first. Okay, maybe fewer side effects and the hope of losing more weight than on we go V, but man, I thought like I'll tell you when I started this whole thing. I don't know if you've listened to my diary about losing weight, but I started at 236 and I thought I told my wife, like, boy, if I lost 20 pounds, like, I'd be great. And when I lost 20 pounds, and I looked, I was like, Oh, I'm still fat. I was like, Oh, why did I think I only had to lose 20 pounds? That's ridiculous. And then I said to her, I'm like, well, I'll just need to get under 200 that'll that'll be really great. Then I got under 200 and I was like, Nope, that's not the answer either. And now I'm this morning. Actually, this morning I am the lowest I've ever been, 187 187 is that right? 197 How much do I weigh?

Holy crap. Hold on a second. No, I

think it's 190 Oh,

Unknown Speaker 54:41
187 pause, this is embarrassing.

Scott Benner 54:47
I wait one Yeah, I think I'm 187 this morning. How about that? Isn't that crazy? The I've what I've learned over this last year Travis is the number is meaningless to me. It's about my health. How I feel and what my body is holding on to that it shouldn't be holding on to. I was 187 this morning. I've lost 46.4 pounds in total since I began this whole thing. I guess I started like two, 233, or something like that. I forget now, um, so I still have it around my my midsection. I still have what I would consider to be three handfuls of fat around my midsection. I'm trying to get rid of that. I just moved up on me. My wife

Travis 55:25
did Weight Watchers, and we lost weight on that. But I, you know, we stopped doing it, and then found the weight. Found the weight, yeah, and then I want to say right, right now my total daily dosage is like 8990 units per day, so I'd like to cut that down, because I'm, I'm burning through insulin like you wouldn't believe so have you heard some of the stories lately? The little girl, for instance, I did, yeah, and that's kind of the one that was like, Huh? I'm gonna, I'm gonna talk to the doctor about this. Now,

Scott Benner 55:55
this would not be forever. This is not gonna happen to everybody. I don't even know if it'll ever happen to anybody else but her mom texted me this morning. Her daughter hasn't had a bolus for a meal in 90 days. And impressive. Glucose average, 109 standard deviation, 23 GMI through the Dexcom is 5.9 and that's that kid has type one diabetes. So and I'll more personally, I'll tell you that we started Arden on point two five of ozempic watched her needs drop significantly. I would say six, maybe eight weeks into it, it stopped working as well. So we moved her to point five, and right back again to the the lower insulin needs. But Arden's basal went down from 1.1 an hour to point eight. So there, what is that? That's point three an hour times 24 and then her insulin sensitivity basically doubled from like one unit moves her 42 to one unit moves her 83 now I think, I think that's our setting, and then her carb ratio went from one to four to one to eight, maybe seven and a half. But still, who cares? Like, that's a lot less insulin.

Travis 57:15
Yeah,

Scott Benner 57:17
you know what I mean, and that you know nothing. I think you know me. I think everybody should take the amount of insulin they need. I'm not. I'm never advocate, advocating for people to think of insulin as too much or too little, because I really do think that runs the risk, then, of people not caring for themselves well. But these glps For Type ones, I know they're not, they're not covered at the moment, but it can't be much longer, like it's gonna have to be. They're studying it now, and these conversations are probably gonna help, you know, at some point, you know, and it's not like my daughter lost like, 50 pounds, or something like that. That's why she's using less insulin, like she lost a little bit of weight, but maybe, like, you know, 810, pounds, something like that. It's not just because of that, because now the weights down, and when her body got used to that level, at point two, five, the insulin needs started to go back up again. Yeah, so she had a little more now she's back in. I don't know where she'll settle in at man, but if you could get that, it'd be a big deal for you. I

Travis 58:13
think, yeah, that's, that's my hope. I know, I know FiOS isn't covered by my insurance. But I reached out to them, and I, you know, kind of let them know my my dilemma, and they said that they're gonna, you know, they'll look into it. So I'm hoping they change formats, and it's not a level four whatever prescription. Well, I have to play full pliers for it, so get it

Speaker 1 58:39
covered under your formulary. To give it a try. Well, listen, I mean, do you think they'd cover the weight loss medication? Because you might not matter. The insult may not matter after that. I think so. I have to call that was going to be one of the things I do today was call and see about what they cover for ozempic, or we go V or whatever the other one was, I gave a talk this weekend, and I then there are hundreds of people with diabetes there, and everybody walked up to me at some point and said, Can you explain how the GLP medication works to me, like, you know, it's and everybody had the same story. I use a lot more insulin than I used to, or that I want to, or I, I think I have PCOS or, you know, like, I can't lose this weight no matter what I do. And then, listen, there's some people like you said, like I did Weight Watchers, I could lose weight, but you didn't lose 70 pounds, right? I think I lost 15 pounds. And how long, three months. Okay, well, that's, by the way, that's great, good job, but you just couldn't keep it going. So we stopped going to Weight Watchers, and I kind of ate the same, maybe a little bit worse, here and there, but yeah, no, it. What do you think was keeping the weight down versus not doing it? You just started taking in more calories at some point,

Travis 59:55
I think so. Well, my job changed too. I started driving. Oh, so we stopped going to Weight Watchers. Then I got my CDL, so I stopped, I started driving, which means I wasn't moving as much anymore, right? Yeah, man, listen, from, from for me,

Scott Benner 20:00:11
I don't think there's no shame in it at all. Like, I'll tell you what I've learned over the last year. One of the most important things I've learned over the last year is that my life is finite, and I am not going to sit around thinking, Oh, well, maybe if I could have just worked out and ate better for a couple of years, I probably would have lost the same thing. Like I've lost 45 pounds, 46 now in in the last year, and I don't feel like I cheated. I my body clearly needed this, because as soon as I had it, I was okay. I don't eat wildly differently than I did a year ago. And the medication is not this magic stuff that if you eat a bunch of junk, you'll still lose weight. Like, that's not how it works either. So you have to make adjustments to how you eat, you know. But the medication helps you, you know, like, keeps it out of your mind. A little bit keeps it, you know, keeps you from your stomach rumbling and thinking, like, oh, maybe I got to eat something. So you got to be a little more meaningful about how you eat. And you know, I never, like, I made myself two eggs this morning. I put a piece of sausage and some mushrooms with it, and I got to the end, and there were sausage and some eggs left. And I was like, I can't finish this. Like, I just can't and so, and so I said, so I stopped. I'm not hungry now, but my wife was like, Hey, I think I'm gonna she texted me a little while ago. She's like, I think I'm gonna get a slice of pizza at um, at lunch. And I thought, Oh, I might eat a slice of pizza at lunch. That's fine, but I won't eat three of them. You know what I mean, somewhere between the hunger being tamp down and the other things that that medication is doing. I mean, it's amazing. It just, it just really is so go for it. That'd be, you know, my personal advice, but nothing you hear on the juicebox podcast should be considered advice medical otherwise. But you know, if you were you and I were standing around together, I would tell you to give it a shot. I

Travis 20:01:58
told my, one of my best friends, to do it. He just saw his dendone. We were talking. He's like, supposedly I'm pre diabetic, so they're gonna the doctor was trying to put me on ozempic, but said he couldn't get it cleared. So changed his mind. Said, we go, V Yep, and they cleared it. I was like, it's the same drug. And he goes, Yeah, that's what he said, Yeah.

Scott Benner 20:02:17
It's how it works. Man. I just have a, I just had a family member got raked over the coals. They were. They're like, point one away from having diabetes, and they will not give her the medication. Just lazy. Won't give it to her and and does she qualify for weight? She does, but her insurance won't cover it, so now she has to wait till she gets diabetes, then they're going to give it to her. No problem. America makes no sense. Actually, hey, it's not America. That's money. But you know what I mean, in Massachusetts, I

Travis 20:02:46
can, I can get disability for being a diabetic. So really, yeah, how? Where

Scott Benner 20:02:52
would that come in handy?

Travis 20:02:53
I have not a clue. I have never done it, but I know I worked with a guy whose wife was on disability because she was a diabetic. And I was like, that was like, I don't want to hear that. That's awful. Travis is like, I

Scott Benner 20:03:04
want to work. I got to keep moving trying to get to Tennessee. Yeah,

Travis 20:03:10
I need to work. I couldn't be home all day. You know, it's

Scott Benner 20:03:14
funny, I'm watching my son get older, and he's like, you know, you guys work too much. And I was like, yeah, that's how it works. Man, I don't know what to tell you. He's like, the end of the day is the end of the day. And I was like, I don't know what you're talking about. I gotta get these podcasts out. I gotta do this. I have to do that. Like I gotta, I thinks I gotta get done. I don't want to be working all the time. But in this is it, like, it's a successful entity like this, is what it takes to support it. If you don't want to have something this successful, you could probably work less and still be perfectly happy, but you're not going to do something like this. And so I can, I'm watching him figure the whole thing out right now. It's pretty interesting.

Travis 20:03:55
It is I'm watching, I'm watching my son do that. So, yeah, yeah.

Scott Benner 20:04:00
I said, One day you'll understand. Like, you know, you will. He's like, when will I understand? And I said, Oh, as soon as you have a bill to pay, and it's for another human being, you'll, you'll get it pretty quickly. And, you know, you hit you pretty hard in your life. Well, oh yeah, yeah, Travis, I can't thank you enough for doing this. We should tell people that in order to have a quiet place, you drove to a parking lot and you're doing this from your car, which I very much appreciate. I am, yeah, very cool of you to do. I'm gonna say thank you and wish you well, and thank you so much for doing this. I really appreciate

Travis 20:04:31
it. No problem. Thank you. And please keep doing what you're doing, because it's a wealth of knowledge to everybody. Well, if

Scott Benner 20:04:37
I listen to my son, I'll be taking off the afternoon and just flitting around. But don't, don't worry. I'm not listening to them. I appreciate that. I certainly will. I have great plans for the rest of this year. Like I said, I like I always say, as long as we can get people to advertise in the show that covers my financial need, and then I can put my entire effort into this. It's great to hear you. That someone told you, go check out the podcast and then to hear then how much it helped you is, uh, is very encouraging for me. Definitely gives me all the motivation I need to keep doing it. So I appreciate it, and

Travis 20:05:13
I've, I've spread the word of your your podcast too. So

Scott Benner 20:05:15
hey, everyone should be doing that, not just Travis. Don't put it on Travis. Everybody get out there. I You should be finding two new listeners a day. Can I incentivize people? How would I do that? Exactly?

Travis 20:05:28
I don't even know. Do you know

Scott Benner 20:05:30
one time I thought of having a drawing every year, every month, like, like, Amazon gift cards, and you just like, I don't know, the honor system. Tell me how many people you've like gotten to listen to the podcast, and then you get a drawing. I don't know, I don't know how to do it. I wish I could walk around and and have lunch with everybody, or say thank you personally. You know what I mean. But I just, I can't figure out how to accomplish it. So anyway, yeah, that's, that's too much. Yeah, it's a big ask. I don't know how to reach the people and like, how to do all that. But nevertheless, all right, man. Thank you so much. Hold on one second for me, a huge thanks to OmniPod, not just my longest sponsor, but my first one. Omnipod.com/juice box. If you love the podcast and you love tubeless insulin pumps, this link is for you. Omnipod.com/juicebox a huge thanks to touched by type one for sponsoring this episode of The juicebox podcast. Check them out on their website, touched by type one.org or on Facebook and Instagram. I want to thank the ever since CGM for sponsoring this episode of The juicebox podcast, and invite you to go to Eversense cgm.com/juicebox to learn more about this terrific device, you can head over now and just absorb everything that the website has to offer. And that way you'll know if ever sense feels right for you. Ever sense cgm.com/juice, box, if you're not already subscribed or following in your favorite audio app, please take the time now to do that. It really helps the show and get those automatic downloads set up so you never miss an episode. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The juicebox podcast. The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording, wrong way recording.com, you.

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#1288 Weekly News 8/19/2024

For the week of August 19, 2024

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

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

---

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

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends and welcome back to the juicebox podcast.

These are the new stories that I found interesting this week for type one diabetes and diabetes in general, this is for the week of August 19, 2024 nothing you hear on the juicebox podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan. When you place your first order for ag one with my link, you'll get five free travel packs and a free year supply of vitamin D drink, ag one.com/juice box. Don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com. All you have to do is use the offer code juicebox at checkout. That's juicebox at checkout to save 40% at cozy earth.com I know that Facebook has a bad reputation, but please give the private Facebook group for the juicebox podcast, a healthy once over juicebox podcast, type one diabetes. The group now has 47,000 members in it. It gets 150 new members a day. It is completely free, and at the very least, you can watch other people talk about diabetes. And everybody is welcome, type one, type two, gestational loved ones. Everyone is welcome. Well, we've got some news today out of Lily pharmaceuticals, Eli Lilly. This is the dues for diabetes for the week of the 19th of August. This is type two but very, very interesting. So Lily does the study on tirzepatide, which you know is a GLP. Here's the study objective assess the efficacy of the drug in reducing the progression from pre diabetes to type two diabetes. This is a large randomized placebo controlled trial with a four year duration, 938 overweight or obese adults with pre diabetes were the participants. Let's see. Uh triszepatide was administered once weekly at varying doses, five milligrams, 10 milligrams to 15 the primary outcome the endpoint was the development of type two diabetes. The primary endpoint was the development of type two diabetes. Participants on the highest dose of the drug, 15 milligrams saw a 94% reduction in risk compared to the placebo group. So the drug works by mimicking hormones involved in blood sugar regulation and appetite control, leading to significant weight loss and improved insulin sensitivity. Additional benefits. Participants also experienced substantial weight loss with an average reduction in 15 of 15% of their body weight and improvements in blood glucose levels, cholesterol and blood pressure. The study suggests that the drug could be a powerful tool in preventing type two diabetes in an at risk population. Pretty crazy, right? 94% at the 15 milligram crazy. I just, you know, they, they blew that out as a, you know, a press release, and it's everywhere in the news this week. And I just thought you might be interested. This next bit is about tandem and their mobile app. Let's see. This is March 2024. Seems like a while ago, but it's persisting. Tandem diabetes care recalled version 2.7 of their mobile app for iOS in March 2024 due to an issue causing battery drain in insulin pumps. Despite having updated to version 2.7, point one, some users continue to experience the same problem. The company is advising users to monitor their pumps Battery Level closely and to keep the device fully charged to prevent any disruption in insulin delivery. Let's see. Recall was initiated in March due to battery issues caused by version 2.7 in the mobile app for iOS. It's still happening 2.7 point one for some people, yeah, it looks like they are monitoring the situation. Uh, okay, well, that's nice. Hopefully we'll hear some more about that, or tandem will get it cleared up. Just wanted to drop that in there in case any of you were seeing the problem and weren't aware of it. So this next little bit is actually an article. It's a new article, but it's pointing to a two year old article. And let me tell you the it's in Science Alert com Alzheimer's may not actually be a brain disease. Here's the breakdown of it. In July 2022, Science Magazine revealed that a key 2006 research paper linking beta amyloid to Alzheimer's may have been based on fabricated data. June 20. First, the FDA approved oh gosh, A, D, u c, a, n u m, A, B, A treatment targeting beta amyloid despite incomplete and contradictory evidence leading to a divide among physicians. So for years, research has concentrated on preventing the formation of brain damage clumps by this beta amyloid protein, the focus has not resulted in effective drugs or therapies for Alzheimer's. Now there's some emerging theories and actual cause about actual causes, right? So there's an autoimmune theory proposed by Donald Weaver and his team at the crembill Brain Institute. Alzheimer's might be an autoimmune disorder, rather than solely a brain disease, beta amyloid. Amyloid, excuse me, is seen in a normal part of a brain's immune system, but is mistakenly it, but it mistakenly attacks brain cells due to similarities between bacterial and brain cell membranes. Other theories are mitochondrial dysfunction. Alzheimer's might result from issues within with mitochondria, the energy factories of the brain cells. There's an infection hypothesis, this disease could stem from a brain infection, potentially involving bacteria from the mouth, and a metal handling theory, abnormal processing of metals like zinc, copper or iron in the brain might contribute to Alzheimer's. It's just kind of interesting that it may come back to autoimmune not so much about the whole brew. Haha, about the the the the fabricated data. But anyway, it popped back up in the news, and I thought it was interesting enough to bring up here some people call, call it type so there's also a type three diabetes hypothesis. There are researchers who refer to Alzheimer's as type three diabetes due to the similarities with metabolic diseases. The theory suggests that insulin resistance in the brain might contribute to the development of Alzheimer's, linking to the body's ability to process sugar and manage energy anyway. Obviously, there's a lot of theories. Nobody seems to know what's going on, but thought it was worth bringing up. Last one for this week is from Medscape. This is dated August 16, out of Madrid, Spain. Neat. New research sheds light on male predominance in type one diabetes, finding that the risk between men and women diverges around 10 years of age. How about that? Data from more than 200,001st degree relatives of people with type one diabetes who were screened for type one diabetes risks in the trial net program showed that there is, this is a quote. There's a clear interaction with age and male sex being a risk factor. At the age of 10 in girls, there seems to be this tipping point where the risk of type where the risk of type of diabetes dramatically reduces. This is from the lead investigator, Richard Oram, MD, and it's interesting. It's a new data shed light on type one diabetes male predominance, if you're looking for the article on Medscape. Here's a quick breakdown. The study investigates, of course, why males are more likely to develop type one diabetes, focusing on the age when this gender disparity becomes evident. The key findings are, again, around age 10, girls risk of type one diabetes significantly drops, while boys remains consistent. Auto antibody screening, men are more likely to test positive for type one diabetes auto antibodies and are at higher risk of progression, especially with a single auto antibody. And then the connection with puberty suggests hormonal or biological changes could influence the disease risk after reaching stages one or two of diabetes, the rate of disease progression becomes similar between genders. The importance of this research, it says the study highlights the need to consider sex differences more carefully in diabetes research, as these differences can affect disease risk and progression and clinical impact implications. These insights could help refine screening practices and inform personalized monitoring strategies based on gender and age. That's pretty cool. This research will be presented at the European Association for the Study of diabetes meeting in September of 2024 go check it out. You.

I was looking for a way that we could all get nice and tanned and meet each other and spend some time talking about diabetes. How are we going to do that on a juice cruise. Juice cruise 2025 departs, Galveston, Texas on Monday, June, 23 2025 it's a five night trip through the Western Caribbean, visiting, of course, Galveston, Costa, Maya and cozmel. I'm going to be there. Erica is going to be there, and we're working on some other special guests. Now. Why do we need to be there? Because during the days at sea, we're going to be holding conferences. You can get involved in these. Talks around type one diabetes, and they're going to be Q and A's plenty of time for everyone to get to talk, ask their questions and get their questions answered. So if you're looking for a nice adult or family vacation, you want to meet your favorite podcast host, but you can't figure out where Jason Bateman lives, so you'll settle for me. If you want to talk about diabetes, or, you know what, maybe you want to meet some people living with type one, or just get a tan with a bunch of cool people. You can do that on juice cruise 2025. Space is limited. Head now to juicebox podcast.com and click on that banner, you can find out all about the different cabins that are available to you. And register today. Links the show notes, links at juicebox podcast.com I hope to see you on board. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The juicebox podcast. If you're not already subscribed or following the podcast in your favorite audio app like Spotify or Apple podcasts, please do that now. Seriously, just to hit follow or subscribe, will really help the show. If you go a little further on Apple podcast and set it up so that it downloads all new episodes, I'll be your best friend, and if you leave a five star review, ooh, I'll probably send you a Christmas card. Would you like a Christmas card? I.

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#1287 Best of Juicebox: Do Hard Things

Anne speaks to Scott about her sons Adam and Alec, living with tragedy, type 1 diabetes and so much more. First aired on Feb 6, 2020.

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

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

---

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

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends and welcome back to the juicebox Podcast. Today is a best of episode. This is, let's see Episode 303 it was called do hard things. It first aired on February 6, 2020 and it's with an this is a sad story. So ready yourself. This show is sponsored today by the glucagon that my daughter carries, gvoke hypo pen. Find out more at gvoke glucagon.com, forward slash juicebox. Today's episode is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes, a company that's bringing people together to redefine what it means to live with diabetes. Later in this episode, I'll be speaking with Jalen. He was diagnosed with type one diabetes at 14. He's 29 now he's going to tell you a little bit about his story, and then later, at the end of this episode, you can hear my entire conversation with Jalen. To hear more stories with Medtronic champions. Go to Medtronic diabetes.com/juicebox or search the hashtag Medtronic champion on your favorite social media platform. US med is sponsoring this episode of The juicebox podcast, and we've been getting our diabetes supplies from us med for years. You can as well us med.com/juice box, or call 888-721-1514, use the link or the number. Get your free benefits. Check and get started today with us. Med, hello everyone. Welcome to episode 303 of the juicebox podcast. Today's episode is titled, do hard things, and it's with Anne. You're gonna get to know Ann in a second. But today's episode is a little little different than some of the other ones, in that it will handle the idea of tragedy, and we'll be having conversations about loss. Maybe don't listen with your kids. Maybe you want to. You should probably make that decision. You

I'm not sure how long this is gonna go before you make me cry, but let's find out together. But I'm hoping, I'm hoping, no

Anne 2:12
or if I can get through it without crying.

Scott Benner 2:15
100% think we're both crying, but so just you can so that you can be aware of what I'm waiting for. I'm really I don't even know what to say about how amazed I am that you are doing this. I usually start the shows by having people just introduce themselves. Okay?

Anne 2:33
My name is Anne.

Scott Benner 2:37
Okay. Anne, listen. So and I received an email from you, probably going back to the summer of 2019, I think. And I'm, you know, your email started off so much like everyone else's. And, you know, I'm sitting somewhere, you know, doing something. I'm like, Oh, I get a note, I look at it, and I start reading it. I'm like, Oh, this is a nice note. It's going to be about a nice thing. And it was about a really nice thing right up until it sort of wasn't. And then my wife looked over at me and said, Are you okay? And I said, I just got an email. I don't know how to respond to it, so I guess let's start like this. You're married, I am okay. You have children,

Anne 3:31
three amazing boys, okay, the youngest of which was diagnosed with type one diabetes in 2013 and

Scott Benner 3:39
that's Adam. Adam, yes. So Adam was diagnosed in 2013 How old was he? Then

Anne 3:44
he was eight years old.

Scott Benner 3:47
Okay, so why don't we just talk about his diagnosis? How did it go?

Anne 3:54
Sure. Well, we looking back on it, we think that it had maybe been going on for a while. There were many, I mean, as is very commonly the story. There were signs that, in hindsight, we thought, Huh. Wonder how long this had been going on the weekend that we took him, the Monday that we took him to the doctor, followed a weekend in which he had run in a parade. The there's a community parade that we have. The Run was kind of a kick off to the parade. And we would always have the boys run. It's about a mile run. And so all the boys did it. We met them at the finish line, and when Adam got to the finish line, he did the run, bless his heart, but he couldn't. He kind of, he didn't collapse. He just sat down, and he had a really hard time getting

Scott Benner 4:49
up. More so, more so than your other two sons,

Anne 4:52
oh yes. Well, the others too were just, you know, excited. They want to go see the parade. And Adam was just, he couldn't. Get up. So my husband and I looked at each other. My husband actually hoisted him onto his shoulders and ended up carrying him to our next point. But Adam was yeah, we just it didn't we knew that it, something didn't seem right. And so that was a Saturday, Monday. My husband and I had decided that we were going to take him in just for a checkup. And our amazing pediatrician, I think, listened to some of the things that had been going on, and immediately had him did I did a urine test, detected sugar in the urine, and at that very moment, diagnosed him with type one diabetes. Prior

Scott Benner 5:42
to that, how long do you think you were seeing symptoms?

Anne 5:47
Well, it's really funny, because so this was Adam second grade year, and earlier in the year, I want to say the fall the his teacher had asked me, he said, Is Adam getting enough sleep? He seems really tired. And, you know, I thought, wow. And apparently the teacher at one point had a conversation with Adam, and Adam said, at the time, all three boys were sharing a room, or we had four bedrooms in the house. The boys shared one of the downstairs bedrooms. We had one of the downstairs bedrooms, and the upstairs we were using for a guest room in an office. And Adam told the teacher, he said, Yeah, my brothers keep me up talking at night. And as soon as So, the teacher relayed this to me, and I immediately, I mean, within a very short time following that conversation, we ended up doing away with the guest room in the office. Moved both of those things to another location, and had each of the boys had their own rooms. So, which I just thought was interesting. There was there were also a few instances of Adam having, that year, some unexplained stomach pain. And I don't know whether that was related to the type one or not, but we took him in a few times. It's the point where he was literally crying and doubling over and vomiting. He was diagnosed when we took him to the ER at one point with constipation. And I don't know whether that was a sign or not way whether that was, I don't so hard to look back and figure it out, is it, it, is it, is, but it was early on in his second grade year that, I think, you know, as far as our look back, it's when we kind of realized that huh probably was happening for a while longer.

Scott Benner 7:35
Wow, that's, that's crazy. So how did the the first couple of, you know, days and weeks ago, after you were diagnosed, how did you find the transition?

Anne 7:48
We were in shock. His diagnosis day, of course, was what we used to think of as the worst day of our lives. It was towards he was diagnosed in May, and it was towards the end of his second grade year, and so in my mind, I thought, Okay, I'm I thought I would go to his school every day, because the school wasn't going to do any of his shots. So I thought I'll go to school every day and at lunch or, you know, just be on call. I didn't live very far away, and it was, would have been easy for me to just pop up and do all the shots and so. And I, you know, we thought, okay, over the summer, we'll kind of transition him into doing this on his own. Well, we had an amazing school nurse who, at one point had bribed Adam to do his shots on his own, unbeknownst to me, he ended up actually within, I want to say, the first week back to school following the diagnosis. He ended up giving himself his own shots and learning how to do it much more quickly than I had anticipated. And you know, bless his heart, he just he stepped up and and did what he needed to do. And so you know that obviously it was a time of shock, I guess, to a little bit, but we transitioned very, fairly well, as far as you know, getting him to do the basics on its own right. It's

Scott Benner 9:21
interesting, isn't it, that a person who's a little disassociated from the whole thing is he, it's a much easier path for them to say, look, just give yourself the shot. And you're probably trying to protect him from whatever it is you're scared of in your mind, or, you know, like making him grow up too fast, or blah, blah, whatever it is we try to protect our kids from I guess it's very cool that the nurse was able to just say, Look, you know, you're probably gonna have to do this, so let's do it.

Anne 9:47
Yeah, yeah, yeah. We greatly appreciated that support, right?

Scott Benner 9:51
Did you guys have? Did you transition to a pump at any point, or glucose monitoring or anything like that? Yeah?

Anne 10:01
The glucose monitor and pump actually did not happen until after I started listening to your podcast in 2016 we had ordered a Dexcom in following the highest A, 1c that I'd ever we'd ever had with him in I want to say it was December of 2015 and we we didn't have great support from his provider. The provider's office is actually two hours away, where it was two hours away from the community that we were living in at the time, and so there wasn't a really, there wasn't great support there. They had briefly. They had mentioned to it following the the one visit that we got into where they told us that Adams a 1c December of 2015 ish, was, I think, 9.5 and I remember feeling shocked when I heard that.

Scott Benner 10:59
Was that a jump up? Had it been lower and it jumped on you? It had

Anne 11:02
jumped. It had jumped. And there were, I think, a few things that had led up to the jump, but, yeah, it had jumped. It was higher than it had ever been, and it was kind of an afterthought. It wasn't even the provider herself. It was a one of the dinners that was kind of checking us out of that appointment. She mentioned, kind of as an afterthought. She's like, well, you know, there is, you know, this continuous glucose monitor that you could try. And I just said, you know, I'm willing to do anything at this point. And so we ordered the Dexcom. They shipped it to us. And I remember thinking at the time, I wish I had read so much more. I mean, again, hindsight, but I remember thinking at the time, gosh, this is going to be something that actually sticks on him. It goes into his body. I don't want to. I didn't feel comfortable going through the process of putting it on him myself. And so I we received it in December of 2015 I waited until April of 2016 when I knew I could get an appointment and drive across the mountains without, you know, worrying about snow and bad roads. I waited until I could get an appointment at the Children's Hospital to be able to do a class to learn how to do it with someone else right there holding my hand so I had gold sitting on a shelf for five months.

Scott Benner 12:28
You know, there's been a number of people on here who have talked about their insulin pumps being in drawers or their CGM still in the boxes. I don't think that's incredibly uncommon. Yeah, but you look back and you think, Well, geez, you know, I'm interested. I'm interested in through those first number of years where you feel like you're doing it's a very common thing for people. They feel like they're doing well, right? Because people are taking their shots, they're counting their carbs and but they're not having the results they're looking for. But they don't feel like I can't. I always have trouble making sense of that feeling of, oh, we were doing great. And like, I was talking to somebody the other day who said, you know, my a one sees nine, but my doctor always tells me I'm doing great. And I wonder, like, there's a disconnect there for me. But I do think they're doing great in one respect. I don't know why the sentence isn't usually, hey, you're doing great. You're doing the things you were asking you to do, and everything. But here's what we could try to do, blah, blah, blah, to move forward. Like, I don't know why that part never comes, you know.

Anne 13:32
Yeah, the parts that always seem to come up in the visits with the Arn P would be, you know, meeting with her, looking back, okay, six weeks ago from today, at 415 Why do you think we had this spike? And I, you know, I just

Scott Benner 13:48
like, I don't know.

Anne 13:51
Yeah, yeah, I It's

Scott Benner 13:54
too retrospective. Maybe, maybe it's they just don't have enough, I don't know. They're not able to make that, that moment to moment decision, right, right. All right, all right. And have we? Have we gotten to the part where we're gonna start talking about why you're on the podcast? I think, I think we have, I think we are. So you find the you find the podcast. You I'm assuming that gives you kind of the courage to put the Dexcom on them. Can you tell me a little bit about that?

Anne 14:23
Yes. So I had taken the boys during our spring break to visit my brother in Nebraska, and my sister in law kept kept saying I heard on this podcast, and she would go in and tell me something kind of fun, and she kept saying that over and over and over. And over and over. And I was kind of like, okay, Jessica, what's the deal with your podcasts? And she showed me how to look at podcasts on my phone. And so it was that spring break trip where I'm like, hi, I wonder if there's any podcasts on type one diabetes. And I immediately found yours. Yours is the first podcast that I set up on my phone. I listened to dozens. Of hours, and this was beginning to mid April, and I knew I had the Dexcom sitting on our home. I knew that we had an appointment at the end of April to go to the Children's Hospital to take a class and help get that set up. We, yeah, I mean, we got it set up. I got him set up with the Dexcom, it continued to listen to your podcast. I guess. Sorry, I'm getting Terry already thinking about,

Scott Benner 15:32
I feel like I'm gonna vomit if it makes you feel any better. So I've never been nervous making this podcast one time. So I'll help you a little bit. So you you Adams a 1c was like, up in the nines there, and you got some you listen to podcasts for a while. You started getting his a 1c coming down. And it was really a turnaround for him. His health was was moving in the right direction. And you felt excited about it. And and and how long did did you have that feeling like, How long were you able to live in that that space

Anne 16:09
so late April of 2016 we got him set up with the Dexcom, and for the next several months we had the most success that we had ever had since the time of his diagnosis, I came to be able to figure out things that you would talk about on your podcast, like, oh, when he's playing competitive sports, his adrenaline is skyrocketing, and hence, his blood sugars would tend to go up to I'd start identifying things like that. I started playing with his basal insulin, you know, being able to just make tweaks to give him the best shot for success. We actually ordered an OmniPod as well that came in late October, and so he had been using both the Dexcom and the OmniPod for about two months, and we had his next follow up endo appointment on December 19, which was the first day of Christmas break, we lived 30 minutes away from the office where we were going to be seen by the doctor. It was actually a telemed appointment, because the doctor was in a children's hospital in Seattle. So on December 19, we got in the car. It was supposed to just be Adam and myself, but I worked in the community that the appointment was in, and so the plan was Adam was going to spend the day with his cousins. And my middle son, Alec, had begged and begged and begged to come with us. He the cousin dame. The cousins are very close. I relented. I let Adam, or let Alec, come with us as well. So I had Alec and Adam in the car with me. We were en route to his endo appointment. I was very excited. I knew that his a 1c we had had it checked in September. It had dropped. I was looking forward to seeing yet another job. Now that he was on both the Dexcom and the OmniPod, we were having great success. We did not make it to the appointment. The last thing that I remember is we were driving, and my car all of a sudden was not going straight. One of the boys asked me something. I have no memory of anything until I woke up in the hospital. I don't even know what day of the week it was, and I remember somebody telling me that we'd been in an accident and the boys had not made it,

Scott Benner 19:03
I'm sorry. How long was it between the accident when you woke

Anne 19:10
up? The accident took place on a Monday, and I don't I have no memory of being in the accident. I have no memory of being picked up by an ambulance and being taken to the hospital. I think that my family said that they had tried to tell me several times. I you know, obviously they had me pretty well medicated. I think it was the next day. I honestly don't know. I honestly don't know how long it was. That's just the first memory that I have after the boys weren't with me anymore. What

Scott Benner 19:46
were your injuries like?

Anne 19:54
The I had fractures, basically from head to toe, but they were all able to heal on. Their own. I didn't have to have surgery or anything like that. I had a brain bleed, just very sore. I was in the hospital for about a week, a little over a week, but everything, you know, everything healed up. There was some nerve damage to my face. I still, the left side of my face is still a little bit numb, but nothing in compared to, you know, I,

Scott Benner 20:32
I don't know how to talk about it with you. I, I feel like, what, what happened to you is probably, I mean, it's got to be one of the worst things that could happen to a person, right? Person, right? I don't, I can't as a person who has children, I I'm hard pressed to imagine something worse. I don't know how you sent me that email or or how you found the courage to come on and want to talk about this. I thought that it was a beautiful idea to talk about Adam and Alec a little bit. And, you know, try to try to remember and give perspective to to that sort of thing. So I'd like to do as much of that as you're comfortable with. And if you can't answer a question, just say, pass and we'll keep going. I guess it's been, it's been over three years now. Is that right?

Anne 21:27
Yes, it was three years this past December. Does

Scott Benner 21:30
it has it so far lessened in, in, in, I'm assuming, how painful it is. Does that get better.

Anne 21:43
You know, grief, I think, is just a very interesting thing. I cry just about every day, still not to the point where I can't function. I, you know, I, I'm fortunate I have a job that I really love. It's good to be able to throw my mental energies into something that I'm passionate about and that I enjoy doing. But, you know, has it lessened? In a way, it seems like it was still just yesterday that this happened. There are moments where I just feel overcome. And I think the day that I sent you that email, I just was having a moment and I but I just was overwhelmingly grateful as I was thinking about it. I thought, you know, Adam, we struggled with managing his diabetes. You know, up until April of 2016 I guess. But I was just so so, so grateful for the information that I was able to get through your podcast that I felt helped us give him the best chance at living in the best way possible for what we had no idea at the time would be his last few months of life. So does it get easier? No, has it lessened? I feel like I'm moving forward without as much shock, maybe not as much in a fog. But there are still moments where, you know, I think, and I think any parent who's lost a child would say, you know, and I anticipate this is going to be on, going on for the rest of my life, where you just you're overcome. You're overcome. How could this happen? You

Scott Benner 23:32
know, my son leaves for college, and for weeks and weeks after he leaves, my wife and I will kind of comment to each other. It's hard to put into words, right? But the The house feels different, I guess, is the way people put it. But there's, there's a palatable sometimes it feels like air pressure to me, or I don't know how to describe how being in a space where he is or has been recently feels different than being in a space where he hasn't been recently and and it's, I'm assuming, that's as close as I can come to understanding what you're saying. You know, can I ask your you have a son, a third son who's with you still?

Anne 24:23
Yes, Andy was not in the car at the time, and I think the only reason that he didn't come too is because he had basketball practice that day. He is now. He was 15 when our accident happened. He's now 18, and he's a senior in high school, and so he will be going off to college in a number of months with you tied to his belt, I'm

Scott Benner 24:44
assuming a three foot rope, right? Is that lady behind you? Andy, oh, it's my mom, and she'll be in class today. How? I guess, you know. How did it impact? Impact him.

Anne 25:03
Andy is the most even keeled child I think that exists. He obviously, you know, going from a crazy fun house full of energy to being the only one difficult for him, obviously, but he is. I used to

Scott Benner 25:29
hate ordering my daughter's diabetes supplies. I never had a good experience, and it was frustrating. But it hasn't been that way for a while, actually, for about three years now, because that's how long we've been using us Med, us, med.com/juicebox, or call 888-721-1514, us, med is the number one distributor for FreeStyle Libre systems nationwide. They are the number one specialty distributor for OmniPod, the number one fastest growing tandem distributor nationwide, the number one rated distributor in Dexcom customer satisfaction surveys. They have served over 1 million people with diabetes since 1996 and they always provide 90 days worth of supplies and fast and free shipping us. Med carries everything from insulin pumps and diabetes testing supplies to the latest CGM like the libre three and Dexcom g7 they accept Medicare nationwide and over 800 private insurers find out why us med has an A plus rating with a better business bureau at US med.com/juicebox, or just call them at 888-721-1514, get started right now, and you'll be getting your supplies the same way we do. This episode is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes. Medtronic diabetes com slash juice box, and now we're going to hear from Medtronic champion Jalen.

Speaker 1 27:01
I was going straight into high school. So it was a summer heading into high school.

Scott Benner 27:05
Was that particularly difficult?

Speaker 1 27:07
Unimaginable. You know, I missed my entire summer. So I went to I was going to a brand new school. I was around a bunch of new people that I had not been going to school with. So it was hard trying to balance that while also explaining to people what type one diabetes was. My hometown did not have an endocrinologist, so I was traveling over an hour to the nearest endocrinologist for children. So you know, outside of that, I didn't have any type of support in my hometown. Did

Scott Benner 27:35
you try to explain to people, or did you find it easier just to stay private? I honestly,

Speaker 1 27:40
I just held back. I didn't really like talking about it. It was just, it felt like it was just a repeating record where I was saying things and people weren't understanding it, and I also was still in the process of learning it, so I just kept it to myself. Didn't really talk about

Scott Benner 27:55
it. Did you eventually find people in real life that you could confide in? I

Speaker 1 27:59
never really got the experience until after getting to college, and then once I graduated college, it's all I see. You know, you can easily search Medtronic champions. You see people that pop up and you're like, wow, look at all this content. And I think that's something that motivates me started embracing more. You know, how I live with type one diabetes,

Scott Benner 28:19
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Anne 29:32
the one that I feel like gives us strength, in A way, gives me strength. You know it he's and I think I look back on it too, and I think, gosh, you know, the first couple years, especially, I was so wrapped up in my own grief. It took me a while to realize I've I need to be more present for him. I didn't. Only know how to do that. He has been nothing but gracious in dealing with my shortcomings through that whole process. But he is continuing on, and he knows that both of his brothers have left a legacy, and he is very intentional about wanting to live to honor those legacies. And so I just, I couldn't be prouder of who he is and who he's become. It's, you know, something that has happened to him, but he's written, you know, in some of his personal statements for college essays and things like that, that it's not something that defines him. It's, it's always going to be a part of his story, but it's not he's he's not victimized. He obviously is going to be living with a big gaping hole for the rest of his life, but it's not anything that defines him.

Scott Benner 30:55
So the three of you are supporting each other, because each of you has a different tragedy. Really, it's, it's as I'm sitting here thinking about it, he lost his brothers, and then contact with you for a while, probably there's just an overall change in what his life is. But then at the same time, you're dealing with losing Adam and Alec, and you're dealing with, I'm assuming surviving an accident that they were lost in, like, that's got to be has to weigh on you as well, does it not?

Anne 31:29
Yeah, yeah, it absolutely does.

Scott Benner 31:33
Yeah. I don't know if there's more to that question. It just, it's occurring to me, as you're talking that, you know, that's got to be the next thought, which is, you know? I mean, it's survivor's guilt, right? Like it's why me? Why them, not me, you know, etc, like that. Probably, yes,

Anne 31:47
that's a question that plagues me. Has plagued me every day for the last three plus years.

Scott Benner 31:52
It's just random. Do you seek, um, have you in the past, or are you now? Do you talk to somebody, or do you kind of go back to your family for that support. How do you handle that?

Anne 32:01
Yeah, I did do some counseling for the first two years. You know? I think that that kind of ran its course. I have some amazing friends who continue to be just a wonderful support.

Scott Benner 32:26
Can I interject and ask you, before you tell me about your journaling, is it just, honestly, something that no one else can really understand except someone who's been through it? Yes, is that what you found through the counseling? That's kind of what I got in your pause, like, what am I gonna talk to a therapist about that? You know what I mean? You know, because I find myself in the same situation right now. I'm like, I have nothing contextually to compare to what you're talking about, nothing. And so I would think that trying to have that conversation with people who don't have that context must feel frustrating and fruitless. And you know, it's lovely to think that everything in world, in the world can be, can be explained away or gotten through or coped with. But, I mean, I don't know, like I I follow, don't know if you've ever heard the episode with a woman named Lynda Haller, who came on years ago, and yes and her her son passed away at school from you know, and I follow her on Facebook still, and she's very proactive about remembering her son. And at the same time, I just feel like this is, this is something that fundamentally changes your perspective on life, and I don't see anything else that could bend you back to where you were before. I don't and I can't tell that that's a bad thing or not. I don't actually think it is. I think it's maybe sad right from the outside, but for you, I'm assuming you're not looking to forget your kids. And isn't that what feeling better feels like?

Anne 34:14
Yeah, and that's funny, because I I have always thought, I mean, since this happened, I don't want to feel better, you know? And it's not even anything that I can really say. I need to make I need to be able to make sense of this. There's, there's nothing to be made sense of. I, you know that that was part of what I kind of thought as I was going through the counseling is, you know what? What is the point? I mean, I just need to be able to put one foot in front of the other. I want to live well. I want to live in such a way that honors their memories, that would honor them, that would make them proud. I. But really, they're, you're absolutely right. It's impossible to for, I think, for to understand this. I mean, you think somebody that this has never happened to, you know, you think, Oh, this is the worst thing imaginable. And it is, you know, I think that sometimes, you know, people will look at me and they'll be like, Oh, you're so strong or so courageous. And I don't have a choice. I mean, I but I think it's I have come to know more parents than I would like to know who have experienced this type of thing. And I think there's just an instant bond that you have with people who have also lost a child or lost children. There's just you relate to them on a just a level that you know people other people are not going to be able to understand. So people can sympathize. Go ahead. Does it feel

Scott Benner 35:58
like you're parenting their memories?

Anne 36:03
That's a great question.

Scott Benner 36:04
You know what I mean? Like? I guess from my perspective, I feel like a really connected parent. I really enjoy having children, and so when they're with me or they're not with me, I'm always in some sort of a fluctuation of helping them or watching them for what they need next, and trying to figure out how to help that or, you know, and no matter what that means, if it's just listening or being there, saying something or actually interjecting, like whatever it ends up being, I feel like that keeps happening. And when Cole went to college. I thought maybe that would happen less, but it doesn't, and I can't imagine I'm gonna feel any differently when he moves out, or that I would feel any differently if he passed away. I can't imagine that I would feel any differently about that. And it just feels like that's what you should be doing, right, like shepherding their their legacy and and still being parents to them. I don't know what else My life is for at this point, it's a very strange thing. I enjoy the things that I enjoy very much, but I don't know how I would feel if you could somehow flip a switch, take me, take me being my kids parents away from me, but leave me the memory of my kids. I'm not sure what I would do with that. So I think that whatever gets your one foot in front of the next one is valuable. I think that you should, 100% live a really long life with as much happiness in it as you can find, and be a terrific parent to Andy and and I'm assuming you and her husband are together. Yes, we are. And be, you know, be in that love and that relationship and all that other stuff. But I mean, I would think that there'd be a way to live well even, but I don't think there'd be a way to live like, forgetting, you know what I mean, like, I I've had a lot of terrible things happen to me that I don't think about anymore, but I don't think this one could be one of them. I'm, by the way, not for nothing, but how much better this am I than your therapist was

Unknown Speaker 38:21
right? I was gonna say you should go into grief counseling or something. Swear to God, I

Scott Benner 38:25
was like, I should at least get 40 bucks for this. I just found myself thinking, and I've, by the way, and found a way to put a laugh in the middle of this episode, which really is a bigger skill.

Anne 38:36
That was, that was, and that was amazing. I'm gonna

Scott Benner 38:39
blow my nose. Now, there you go. Okay, so, so I'm gonna go back to your note for a second. I'm assuming that as the days and the weeks pass and and people feel like they want to help you, I want to ask first, before we get into what actually happened to you, you know, and how community and friends and family got around you. But for anybody in this situation, on the other side of it, what do people say that they think is helpful? That really isn't gotta be a couple sentences and stick in your crawl, right? Sure. Can I guess one everything happens for a reason, is that one of them

Anne 39:27
that would be one, God must have needed them.

Scott Benner 39:32
They're in a better place.

Anne 39:34
They're in a better place. Yeah, yeah, those, yeah, I, you know, and I that's the other thing, is that, you I probably said stupid stuff like that. I don't know other people, yeah, to other people. Before this happened to me, I don't know what I would have said or what came out of my mouth, or, you know, I think you, i. Least

Scott Benner 40:00
it's not cancer. We all say that about diabetes. So, right, right? And what is that? That's people in a moment, uncertain of what to do with really well intended, people trying to very well intended,

Anne 40:13
yeah, and that's what you just have to give grace, because people are they're trying to make you feel better. They're trying to say something as inappropriate as it might be, they don't recognize that, and that's not their intent. And you know, this has taught me to give a lot of grace throughout the last three years, but you know, I truly am appreciative of the way that our friends and our community family have just rallied around us and continue to rally around us, you know. So, yeah, there are definitely some things that you don't want to say too, grieving person.

Scott Benner 40:54
So what is the right thing to do if I were to have met you in the weeks and months after that, what would have the right thing to do have been, do you think, what's the best thing you could imagine, what what happened to you that, at least didn't make you think, Oh, don't say that, because I'm assuming nothing makes you feel better, right?

Anne 41:14
No, right now, no, there's no, nothing could be said to ease any of the pain.

Scott Benner 41:20
So it's a, it's, it's just probably the quiet, right? A hug, like a hand on a shoulder, a glance, like those kinds of things are probably the only thing people should even be and, and who are they doing it for? Are they doing it for themselves, or are they doing it for you? Right? Exactly.

Anne 41:39
You know, it was even hard to have we had so many people around us in the beginning. And I just, you know, at the very beginning, when this happened, I was just in a lot of physical pain. It was sometimes hard to have too many people around just I just, I have my memories are so foggy of those first few weeks. And I think in part because I had a bad concussion, I was on some medication. I think it was making me a little loopy. I just the whole first month was just, I have very little memory of it. Honestly, I do remember a lot of people. We had a lot of meals, we had a lot of visitors, and I I just, I was on autopilot during that time. I think that probably the most helpful thing is I, as I look back on it, the most helpful thing was hearing memories of the boys, hearing what people remembered about them. And we had a number of, you know, cards and letters and that I've saved to this day and will probably never get rid of. I think one of the most meaningful things was Alex, fourth grade teacher sent us a, I don't know, two or three pages of just memories she was she was a first year teacher, the year that she had him, and she had journaled very consistently throughout that first school year, and she sent us Two or three pages of just memories of ALEC. And, you know, I think, more than anything, you know, somebody asked me, What, what's the most helpful? Tell me what you remember about my boys? Yeah, because

Scott Benner 43:32
there's this, like, right now you're, you know, right now, everyone we know is right now, somewhere else living a different life, like, even if it's for an hour or while they're at work or while they're at school, they're having these different interactions. They're making memories with other people. And if you stop and think about it, there's probably an infinite number of those memories out in the world that you're not aware of, and so and so, for people to come tell them to you a story is, is? It sounds wonderful, like, I It's no different than when you haven't seen someone in a while, and you're like, hey, what have you been up to? You're asking, like, you know, what have you been doing? Well, I haven't been in your physical space, you know, exactly, right? I'm interested, you know. And so, so when all those people come in and offer those things, that's the comfort, but not in the beginning, right? Like, we're not looking for a heartfelt Alex story in the first week or something like that. We're looking for people need to realize that this is, if they're going to be involved in your life still, which you hope they would be, that this is a this is a long haul situation. It's not, you know, do you find that people just wanted you to feel better. And like, did you have that feeling, or could you not even feel that from other people?

Anne 44:47
Oh, no. We felt the grief and the shock and the prayers and the love and, I mean, we we felt, yeah, we felt everything, and we continue to feel that, I think sometimes, now that we're so. Removed. I think some people think, Oh, I shouldn't mention it. I'll make her sad. I'll make her cry. And that's really the complete opposite. I want to hear their names spoken. I want to hear what people remember about them. I want to hear the stories. I don't want them to go unmentioned at Christmas dinners and Thanksgiving dinners. And because

Scott Benner 45:21
even if you do cry that those tears come from like it's a happy memory, then, right? You're not thinking, you're not in that moment, thinking they're not here. You're thinking, this is a happy memory. Exactly

Anne 45:31
nobody's making me more sad.

Scott Benner 45:36
Is it fair to say? No one could do that to you. But like, add to your sadness, like it is what it is, right?

Anne 45:43
It is fair to say that yes.

Scott Benner 45:45
So I have a couple of difficult questions. Not that every one of these hasn't been difficult, but I have two difficult questions. I don't know if I'll even before we kind of move on. I want to hear about how how Adam's family at school spoke about him, but it feels to me like I don't I'm not really interested in digging into this, because I don't think it's what we're talking about. But I feel like if I don't bring it up, people listening are going to wonder, but how did this has this or how has this affected your married relationship?

Anne 46:16
Yeah, well, I there's, there's no greater trial that I think a marriage can go through. And that said, you know, my husband has been amazingly supportive. He is the rock, as has always been the rock of our family. We both it's hugely interesting to see how differently we process grief. I am very much always wanting to see pictures and videos, and it's too painful for him to see them. As far as our relationship goes, you know, it's still, I think we, we understand each other in a way that nobody else can it. You know, we're not, we have not been without our have without our trials, but we're, still hanging on. Will have been married for 20 years this March. You know, there are days when wonder how much longer it's going to be, but I

Scott Benner 47:34
will. The reason I asked is because it was happened to me early on, when, when I became a stay at home dad and I had this little baby in front of me, and I just I recognized in my wife's eyes that, you know, like I never really thought of it prior to the baby, right before the baby, like we were these two people who met each other and fell in love. We were like the most important things to each other. And then as soon as the baby came, I realized that I was a guy she met. That was her son. You know what I mean? Like, it's, you know, I'm saying and, and you see that? Like, if it I always felt like, if I really screwed something up, I don't know how she would, you know, forgive me. Now your thing was an accident, obviously, but it still takes a large amount of intellectual maturity to remember that I would think that that's that's just how it occurs to me. I think it's very it's very cool and and, and it makes me feel good that you guys are together and that you're working and that you're realizing that, like, this whole thing is just a, you know, it's another process, and you can't rush through it, just like you can't rush through grief or, you know, you can't, you know, not to be ham fisted about it. But there are people who, sometimes I get notes from all the time. They're like, I just started listening to the podcast last week, and my blood sugars aren't exactly where I want them yet. And I was like, yeah, we've only been out of only been at it for a week, you know, like, it's gonna take more time, like you have to live in it to see where it goes. I would think that that would be, you know, worth doing,

Anne 49:14
I guess. Yeah, yeah. We've people ask us that a lot, actually, because, you know, they I don't know what. You know, how many marriages survive after a tragedy like this? I don't know what the statistics are, but you know they you know people will ask say, hey, you know they don't have much of a chance now.

Scott Benner 49:36
Hey, listen, some of them do, right? You could be those people. We all live like that. Like, you know, it's so funny when, isn't it great when you watch people get married and they're all just like, so happy, and they're young, and I'm like, one and two, one and two, one in every two marriages ends in divorce. Like, yeah, you know, and so, and that's from stuff like, he wants. To watch Netflix, and I want to go dancing. A lesser, a lesser conversation, but, but it would be, it would be, um, it'd be silly to ignore it in this conversation, like you're not unaware of your life, and, you know, I'm not unaware of being married. So I was, I was interested to know, and I wish you a ton of success. I hope it, I hope it goes the right way. You know what I mean? Yeah, of course. So your note, which, with your permission, after you're not with me anymore, after you're off the recording, I'm gonna, if it's okay with you, I'm gonna read your letter. Is that all right? Sure, okay, but I can't do it while you're here, just so you know, and I don't think you'd want me to, and I just it's not, it'll be less ugly if I do it while you're not on the recording. So, but I wanted to get your, I wanted to get your, your Okay, before I did that. So a number of months ago, when this letter came, some people might remember that I sort of very cryptically mentioned that we should try to do hard things, and that came from your letter. So I'd like you to tell me about that a little bit.

Anne 51:10
Yeah, so Adam was in sixth grade when the accident happened, and he had an amazing math teacher that year, their class in November, December, had been studying, I guess, learning how to plot x and y coordinates. And the teacher had given them, I think it was intended to be kind of a fun, light hearted assignment. It was in the month of December, he asked them to plot a cartoon character on a graph with the information that they had learned from this assignment or from the from the lesson. So Adam, there were a number of choices, and the students had to go to the teacher and then get the information to plot based on the cartoon character that they wanted. So Adam was he wanted Mario. He wanted to plot Mario. And the teacher initially was reluctant to give into that. He I don't think he thought that Adam couldn't do it, but he wanted it to be kind of something fun and quick and you know, that wasn't going to be very time consuming. This one involved like quarter points or half points on the grid. So it wasn't just it wasn't a straightforward character. So Adam asked. The teacher initially, said no. He asked again. The teacher said, No. He asked a third time, and the teacher was like, wow, Adam, okay, here do Mario? So? Adam did Mario. A few months after the accident, the teacher had been reflecting on that interaction, what had happened, and he put together. They framed Adam's drawing, or the the final product that Adam had done, the Mario they framed that. They framed the instructions that were very, very detailed, much more detailed compared to the other cartoon characters that the other students had done, and they had everybody sign it. They presented an amazing wall week. It's now hanging on our front and center in our living room wall. It basically says, do hard things. That's the lesson, as the teacher reflected on all of this that, you know, he thought, Adam didn't just settle for a super easy cartoon character. He wanted the hard one. He did the hard one, and he did it well. And the teacher knew, of course, of Adam's challenges, extra challenges with type one diabetes, what that presented. And, you know, he, when he presented this to Arturo and to Andy and I, he basically said, you know, we're learning from Adam. This is going to be his legacy for our class. He didn't shy away from doing hard things, neither with his diabetes, nor with this Mario drawing. He knew what he wanted. He was determined. And the teacher just said, you know, remember that as you go through your high school years, as you go through life, don't back away from doing what's hard.

Scott Benner 54:37
It's rewarding. I'm looking at it while you're talking, and the message is rewarding. And I mean, I to take it a little farther. I feel like you have to, you have to know somewhere in the back of your mind that you know none of your time is guaranteed. Like we all sit around talking about, like, Oh, I'll make it till I'm 80. Or, you know, like, Baba, you know that every. Has that feeling. But the truth is that not everyone does, and you're not going to know who you are in that scenario ever, right? So, whether it's, you know, Adam's years that he got, even at the end, where maybe was just a few months of him feeling better because his blood sugars were were better off, right? Like, maybe that was, that was lovely, you know it, and it would have been terrific if that went on for 100 years, but it was terrific that it went on for as long as it did. And you know, with all of us either living as the parents of children with type one or or people living with type one themselves, I think you have to want for yourself for however many days between one and a and a bazillion that you get, you know you should want better for yourself, and it's not going to be easy, right? Like it's, it's not going to be easy you have, you have an extra challenge every day, and some days, they're a lot worse than others. But I mean, I mean, unless you're not paying attention and told you already one foot in front of the other one, right like you, just every day is not great. Every day is not what you want it to be. Doesn't make it not incredibly valuable. Doesn't make it not beautiful or worth doing or worth living or sharing with someone else, even if it's for your memories or for what you might accomplish today. But you have to honor people like Adam that don't have the chance anymore, right? So do it for them. Yeah, that's just how it occurs to me. It's how it occurred to me when I read your note and I didn't know what you were gonna say, like, I didn't know what I was gonna be able to say to you, I got incredibly nervous about 15 minutes before we were supposed to start talking. And I mean, you I don't, I haven't been nervous doing this podcast once, and you know, I just didn't want to. I didn't want to. I just felt like there's so much here. I wanted to make sure we unpacked it correctly, you know, because at the end of your note the I mean, not that all of it isn't absolutely uplifting and soul crushing to read on the on the other side, like, you know what I mean, like as I'm sitting and reading it, but when you got to the end, and I don't know if you still do this or not, but you still listen to the podcast

Anne 57:16
I do, all right,

Scott Benner 57:19
now I'm going To cry. Hold on a second, god damn it,

Anne 57:24
well and go ahead, you know, well, this, you know, this is very interesting. And you know, obviously, when you know, in the three and a half years that we were working with Adam and helping him to manage his type one diabetes, you know that, I mean, it's, it's undoubtable. It's, of course, hard. It's very, very difficult, you know. And there were a number of sleepless nights I can recall when I would be sitting down right outside his room when we got the pump, and I was playing with the the basal rates and trying to figure out, okay, from two to three o'clock, his sugar is going high, or from, you know, four to five, it's going low, and trying to, trying to make those adjustments and those tweaks to just to make it just perfect. And, you know, it obviously is hard. It's something you wish that was not a part of your life. But strangely enough, you know, I think after everything, i i I grieved the diabetes. I grieved not having that. And I, I, I don't know that we're completely done with it. And I, you know, we've, I've thought about, you know, maybe fostering a child with with type one diabetes. I just, I feel like I have this knowledge. I I have some tools. I obviously not perfect, but I know what to do. And, yeah, and listen,

Scott Benner 59:00
I gotta tell you something. You're killing me, okay, ripping my heart out here. I, I, I'm just gonna for a second, because I don't know another way to couch the conversation. I'm gonna, I'm gonna make it about me for a second, please. The people who think that I do that already, just shut up. We're doing something here. Okay. I thought maybe the podcast would help somebody right like I thought maybe it could. I was hopeful that it would. It started proving itself out that way. It does every day. I never thought it was going to help you with that. You know what? I mean, like, like, it just, I could not have planned for that. It just would have been no way. Do you know, try to imagine, you know, five years ago, me thinking I'm going to try to take my blog and, you know, expand it into a podcast. Because, you know, next year, some person's gonna find it, and then their son's gonna pass away, and then she's still gonna find connection to him through a podcast about diabetes. Like, like, there's no, there's no way to imagine that. And so when I was reading your note, like, that's the part that really, really got me, like, I just was like, This is how are you still listening? And then when you explained it, just now, I'm like, oh, that's how, you know, like, I couldn't, I couldn't quite understand it in the note, but I 100% understand it while you're saying it. Diabetes sucks, but it was a thing you were doing with Adam, right, like you had this connection to him through this thing. It was different than with your other two sons and with anybody else in the world. It's a it's an it's so easy to bemoan it, I guess, and for 1000 good reasons. But you have a different perspective than most of us, and I am, obviously, we don't wish that perspective on someone else, but it's still a viable perspective, and I've the closest I've ever come to it. I think I wrote about it years ago was that as much as I hate sneaking into Arden's room and testing her blood sugar when she's asleep, you know prior to CGM, for sure, I realized one day that I get to hold her hand every day, and I'm watching it get bigger and and older, and it was a very small experience that most people don't have with their kids. And so I tried to find some sort of trade off in, you know, from beauty to annoyance, right? And, and I did, I think it's one of the things I'm really grateful for. I lift her hand up. I know what it feels like, and how heavy it is and and how it's different from the day before. And you have all those connections too. I just, I couldn't imagine that. It's, it's, it's lovely, actually, wow, damn it. Hold on an I'm blowing my nose again. All right, yeah, listen, we're up against an hour. One of us is gonna have a stroke. So um, let's, let's, let's make sure. Let's make sure that, nothing's left unsaid. There's nothing that you really wanted to say, you know, before, before we start saying goodbye,

Anne 1:02:32
yeah, you know I, I just My encouragement. I mean, I, I love meeting people who have connections with type one. My biggest encouragement to everybody in the type one community is, you know, keep doing the hard things and be grateful that you still get to do them. You know, like I said, I don't, I don't know that type one. I don't know that we're completely done with it, and I don't know how, or, you know in what way we might continue to be involved. But I'm just I'm grateful, extremely grateful for the time that we had. I'm really grateful for what I learned through listening to hours and hours and hours of your podcast and how to help Adam live well and in his last few months of life, I would give anything to be able to Go through and have sleepless nights again, every night. I give anything, but I think, you know, Adam was definitely a like his teacher pointed out, you know, he had left a legacy of doing hard things. And I hold on to that, and I continue to go through as a grieving parent, and get up every day and do the hardest thing of going through life without them.

Scott Benner 1:04:11
That is the strongest thing that I've ever heard anyone say or can't imagine. So I think that, I think that's wonderful. I hope everybody heard that, and it leaves them with a meaningful feeling that they don't escape. And you know, if you want to see, you know the impact that how diabetes is always around while you're saying this beautiful thing. Arden sex team, hey, it's lunchtime. Oh, she's like, and I'm listening to you and and she's like, I'm not that hungry, so what should we do? And I was like, just like, I think maybe we should do this and this. And she's like, Okay. And then she and then I asked you to have some juice earlier, and she didn't. And so. Her blood sugar hasn't gone up the way I wanted it to, but it hasn't gone down. So she's admonishing me in the text messages while you were saying these beautiful things. She says, she says, I never had the juice, by the way, I knew I didn't need it. You should listen to me more often. And I'm gonna tell you, by the way, she did need the juice. What she just means is her blood sugar didn't get any lower than it was. And so now she's just look at her. She just, she won't stop, like I'm about to text her, just go eat and leave me alone.

Anne 1:05:38
Oh my goodness, yes, this is remind me quite a bit of my text exchanges with Adam.

Scott Benner 1:05:45
I got one from her this morning. I'm just like, like, Arden set this. You know, I'm trying to get her to set, like, a decrease in her basal, and she's just doesn't answer me for 20 minutes. Then finally I get the what back, just what. And I was like, if I didn't need to say it to her so badly. I would just say, What do you mean? What? Like, I'm always like, just scroll up a little bit. Like, couldn't you just scroll and go, Oh, look, he just said it right before I said, What? She won't do it. She makes me say it again. I think it's my punishment. Somehow. I want you to, if you see fit. First of all, please accept my my love and admiration and my good wishes and share them with Artur and Andy if you feel like that's appropriate, and don't if you don't, but I just really, I can't imagine that you said yes to this I and I want to want you to know why I asked it was because I thought maybe it would be helpful for you to just be able to tell other people about Adam, and you're going to tell a lot of people this way. So it just, it just, I thought you'll say, I think I even said my email, like, please say no, if you don't want to do this, don't feel any pressure to do it any time frame. It could be years from now, like whenever you want or don't want, and I you weren't going to do it at first, but can you tell me, as we're kind of saying goodbye, what changed your mind?

Anne 1:07:07
You know, I just thought, what a way to honor Adam. And I think, you know, any parent who has lost a child will jump at the chance to honor their child's legacy, to talk about their memories, to hear their names. And I, you know, I, I guess I came into this phone call not really knowing,

you know how it would go, or what could be said, or you know what of value that, that I would have, but, you know, I, and I don't know that there has been too much value, but I, you know, I guess I keep going back to what I wouldn't give to go through the hard times all over again, of

Scott Benner 1:07:58
I believe there is value in it, and and I, we're gonna find out very quickly, because I'm just putting this out. I can't stare at this in my folder. It'll just, I can't, I'm not going to so I just, I'm gonna, it's going out right away so that I can, I can, sort of, you know, just let it move on to somebody else and see what, you know, what they can take from it? I mean, I would, I would bet that, that there's a lot of good that comes from you sharing this in not just for you, and any cathartic feeling you might have experienced over the hour, but, um, but for people who are going to hear it, I just, I think the message is there, like, right? Like, what wouldn't you do to to have those experiences? Still, even though five minutes earlier, they weren't the best experiences of your life, you described the day you was diagnosed as the worst day of your life, right up until something else proved out to be more impactful on you. So yeah, that's really something else. Okay, you're good. You want to tell a story? Or I'm not trying to make you say anything. I just want to make sure you're good, right? How? Yes, I am. All right. Excellent. I genuinely appreciate you doing this. Thank you very, very much. Sure.

Anne 1:09:14
Thanks, Scott. You

Scott Benner 1:09:25
a huge thank you to one of today's sponsors, gevok glucagon. Find out more about G VOK hypo pen at gevok glucagon.com, forward slash, juicebox. You spell that, G, V, O, k, e, g, l, U, C, A, G, o, n.com, forward slash juicebox. Jalen is an incredible example of what so many experience living with diabetes. You show up for yourself and others every day, never letting diabetes define you, and that is what the Medtronic champion community is the. About each of us is strong, and together, we're even stronger. To hear more stories from the Medtronic champion community, or to share your own story, visit Medtronic diabetes.com/juicebox and look out online for the hashtag Medtronic champion. This episode of The juicebox podcast was sponsored by us med usmed.com/juice box, or call, 888-721-1514, get started today with us. Med, links in the show notes. Links at juicebox. Podcast, com,

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

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