Scott Benner 10/3/24 Scott Benner 10/3/24

#1322 After Dark: Borderline

"Phoebe", a 50-year-old mother of five, discusses her family's experiences with type 1 diabetes and her husband's mental health issues.

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Scott Benner 0:00
Welcome back, my friends, to the diabetes show that never ends.

We're back today with an after dark episode. Gonna be speaking with a person we're calling Phoebe. She is 50 years old, has five children, two of them have type one diabetes. Her 12 year old daughter was diagnosed at six, her other daughter at eight. We're going to talk about diabetes, some problems she's having within her family structure, and so much more. 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. If you're newly diagnosed, check out the bold beginnings series. Find it at juicebox podcast.com, up in the menu in the feature tab of the private Facebook group, or go into the audio app you're listening in right now and search for juicebox podcast. Bold beginnings, juicebox is one word. Juicebox podcast, bold beginnings. This series is perfect for newly diagnosed people. Don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order@cozyearth.com All you have to do is use the offer code juicebox at checkout. That's juicebox at checkout to save 40 percent@cozyearth.com you OmniPod.

Your kids mean everything to you, and you do anything for them, especially if they're at risk. So when it comes to type one diabetes screen, it like you mean it, because if even just one person in your family has type one, your child is up to 15 times more likely to get it, but just one blood test can help you spot it early, so don't wait. Talk to your doctor about screening tap now or visit screenfortypeone.com to get more info and screen it like you mean it. This episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by the contour next gen blood glucose meter. Learn more and get started today at contour. Next.com/juicebox okay, I call you Phoebes. Or do you like Phoebe better?

Unknown Speaker 2:14
I like Phoebe's better.

Scott Benner 2:16
All right, Phoebe's, let's do it. You are just about 50 years old. You have two kids with type one diabetes. Let's get their ages rough, ages like teens, younger. Where are they at?

"Pheobe" 2:27
Of the diabetic children? Yeah, all of them. Now

Scott Benner 2:31
worry about those other kids. Let's talk about the kids with diabetes. Oh,

Speaker 1 2:35
the oldest one is 12, a girl since 2018

Scott Benner 2:40
2018, so diagnosed around nine years old. And what? No,

Speaker 1 2:43
no, six, 2018 she was diagnosed, wait,

Scott Benner 2:49
oh, my god, I forgot what year it was. Excuse me, that's 2024 pretty embarrassing. I was like, Oh, my time is slipping away. I'm sorry, at six years old, and then the other,

Speaker 1 2:59
the other is now eight, and she was diagnosed 2021 at age five, right? Right, before she turned five, right? I believe. And

Scott Benner 3:09
you have other children. Are they older or younger, or mixed?

Speaker 1 3:13
They are older. We have three teenagers, and our oldest, she's 19. She is diagnosed in with celiac in 2020 right before the covid shutdown, right within about two weeks of the covid shutdowns,

Scott Benner 3:27
what about other autoimmune in your family? Anything else besides the celiac?

Speaker 1 3:31
Well, we did not figure this out until our first diagnosis. I have a cousin with type one. I have two cousins was Hashimotos, and then on my husband's side, they didn't even know there's type one. And his mom didn't know that her dad had type one, and her sister has type one. She's still living but they were both diagnosed in their late like 30s and 40s. No kidding.

Scott Benner 3:57
Well, that's quite a pile, actually.

Speaker 1 4:01
It is yeah, and we I knew I had a cousin that had type one diabetes, but no one explained to me that our kids were at risk for it as just clueless. No idea took you by surprise. Yes, her diagnosis did. It was summer, very hot, humid, summer, and she just seemed sleepy and she didn't want to play so much, which was unusual. And we had just done a well visit about six weeks before, you know, everything showed fine at the well visit, and they actually said she needs to lose a few pounds. They told me, you know, she's six years old, and after a few weeks, I thought, wow, she's starting to lose some weight. That was easy. Yeah, he looks thinner. And then I was starting to put it together. I even made a Facebook post about our kids, because our son that's two years older than her, he was always hungry, wanting to eat, and I was kind of joking in the post, because. You got hungry and thirsty, because she's always thirsty. She's thirsty all the time. And it still did not click, until one evening, she drank a whole bottle of water. It was a 16 ounce bottle of water, and she looked at me and she said, Mom, I'm still thirsty. And then it was before bedtime, but you know how you start. I went on one of my mom groups. I said, I've got a kid, she's kind of tired, she's been thirsty, and everyone said, you have to get her to the emergency room right now. It's type one diabetes, and I we've got five kids, so I don't like to go into the hospital unless I have to. So my husband had chronic migraines, so we spent a lot of time in emergency rooms for all of that. So I hate, absolutely hate, but you have to be dying for me to take you to the hospital. So the pediatrician, I had a late afternoon appointment, and I packed up the car thinking we're going to go the beach after this appointment, because it's not going to be anything. I'm just being paranoid. So we see the pediatrician, they did a finger stick, and we knew nothing about diabetes. And the nurse that came in, she's, she said, it's 500 like, oh, okay,

Scott Benner 6:11
I didn't know what that meant. I gotta go. We're going to the beach, see, yeah,

Speaker 1 6:15
yes. And she said, Let me do another one. Like, okay. And she did another one, and in the five hundreds, and it, you know, it still did not occur to me. I had no idea what was going on. So the pediatrician, he comes in, he said, Are you here today? Because you thought maybe your daughter could have type one diabetes? And I said, Well, I don't think she really has it, but I just thought we better be safe and rule it. Yeah,

Scott Benner 6:38
these people on Facebook told me. And I was like, Oh, whatever. Yeah, yeah.

Speaker 1 6:42
Like, they're just overly concerned, because we would never have this in our family. And he looks at me, he said, You need to get her in the car right now, and you're going to the hospital, and you're not going to stop and you're not going to let her fall asleep in the car. And I said, Well, we were going to go to the beach and get something to eat. He says, No, you're not going to the beach, you're not stopping for food, you're going directly to the emergency room. I'm calling you get her there as soon as possible. So that's when I started to freak out. Because yeah, people me, my kid had diabetes, and my oldest kid, she had went in with me and her daughter for the appointment. Others, they're waiting out in the car, you know, for us to go to the beach, and I come in the car, all crying, and, you know, don't let her fall asleep. And she didn't have any idea what was going on. My oldest daughter did. She knew she was very calm. She's very level. She's not like me. She was very calm. But we got to the hospital, and this little girl of ours, she always hated needles. She was afraid of needles and everything. Up until that day we got her in the hospital, she did not cry at all, not for any of the IVs, the finger sticks, the shots, nothing. She just took it. It was amazing. She I think she knew she had been sick, because later I've talked to her about it, and she said she remembers laying on the floor being tingly and not feeling well, but she didn't know how to tell she. She didn't know what it was, yeah,

Scott Benner 8:17
how to communicate all that, right? Wow. She's probably just happy to feel better. Needles, needles or not, from the very beginning, your kids mean everything to you. That means you do anything for them, especially if they're at risk. So when it comes to type one diabetes screen, it like you mean it now up to 90% of type one diagnosis have no family history, but if you have a family history, you are up to 15 times more likely to develop type one. Screen it like you mean it, because type one diabetes can develop at any age, and once you get results, you can get prepared for your child's future. So screen it like you mean it type one starts long before there are symptoms, but one blood test could help you spot it early, before they need insulin, and could lower the risk of serious complications like diabetic ketoacidosis or DKA. Talk to your doctor about how to screen for type one diabetes, because the more you know, the more you can do. So don't wait, tap now or visit screened for type one.com to learn more. Again, that's screened for type one.com and screen it like you mean it the contour next gen blood glucose meter is sponsoring this episode of The juicebox podcast, and it's entirely possible that it is less expensive in cash than you're paying right now for your meter through your insurance company. That's right. If you go to my link, contour, next.com/juicebox, you're going to find links to Walmart, Amazon, Walgreens, CVS, Rite, aid, Kroger. And Meyer, you could be paying more right now through your insurance for your test strips and meter than you would pay through my link for the contour next gen and contour next test strips in cash. What am I saying? My link may be cheaper out of your pocket than you're paying right now, even with your insurance, and I don't know what meter you have right now, I can't say that, but what I can say for sure is that the contour next gen meter is accurate. It is reliable, and it is the meter that we've been using for years. Contour next.com/juice box. And if you already have a contour meter and you're buying test strips, doing so through the juicebox podcast link will help to support the show,

Speaker 1 10:45
yeah, because someone is actually telling her what is going on. But she did get very sick by the time they were going to put her in the ICU, because she started vomiting, and they gave her the anti nausea medication, and she was vomiting for a long time, but that we've, you know, we got under control eventually. But where we live, there is, is not an endocrinologist at the hospital. Hasn't been since the we've had to go the hospital for some other things. So we did not have see an endocrinologist at all for hospital stay. Yeah, they sent us a diabetes educator and a nurse practitioner to get us set up for our training.

Scott Benner 11:29
How long after this diagnosis, does the next one happen? Well,

Speaker 1 11:33
that was August 24 2018 and then 2020 in late February. Our oldest was diagnosed with celiac

Scott Benner 11:45
about a year and a half later. And then, yeah, yeah,

Speaker 1 11:51
September of 2021 was the other type one. Wow. So it's within three years, three years all that happened, yes, and then the second one, because I was on high alert with the first one. We got five kids. I just knew, in my mind, I can't explain, I knew that she was going to get diabetes. I don't it sounds crazy, but I just knew she was going to get it. We did the trial net the two oldest, they did not want to do the trial net tests? Or yeah, the two oldest did not. The third oldest, he did it. He tested negative for trial net. Our youngest that was diagnosed in 2021 I think she tested for only two of the auto antibodies. But we switched. We went from our area. We traveled two hours away for all of our endocrinology now, they do a really good job where we're at now that was the first time we did not see an endocrinologist until two years after diagnosis. If that tells you anything about the area we live in,

Scott Benner 12:56
who were you seeing? Just the general practitioner. Yes, it

Speaker 1 13:00
was not a doctor, it was a nurse practitioner, nurse practitioner and a diabetes educator. Yes, and we had the first diagnosis. I didn't know they were a very bad fit for our family, because they put us on such a restricted diet for this child, who we now know also has Oppositional Defiant Disorder, so to put them on such a restricted diet, you know, five carbs or less for any snack, we had a huge Food Battle for probably three years of hers taking food without insulin. You know, I'd go out in the yard, there'd be wrappers everywhere, and then I'd go to the appointment. And her numbers were always her. ANC was always like, 7.6 and under. But they would pull up her chart, and he would say, what did she eat here? Why did she eat that I got so stressed out over the micromanaging us, and they would shame me. It was a personality conflict between me and the person, nurse practitioner, for some reason, she just didn't care for me. So anyway, we switched, and then we saw an endocrinologist for the first time, and he does a lot of research and a lot of medical studies. So when I went to him, I brought the trial, net study results, and he said, This child has a like, I think, of 80% chance of getting type one diabetes. She's going to have it in three years. And I think that was in like 2020 back to the youngest. I would do random finger sticks on her after because we took her out of the pool one day, and she was so angry and grumpy, I did a finger stick, and she was, I think, 44 and I thought, well, she's been playing in the pool, swimming, and then, you know, a few months later, she was out at church, and she had a pee accident. She was five at the time. She had never had that happen before, so I did a finger stick, and she was in the 200 So we kind of knew,

Scott Benner 15:02
yeah, just take her to your endo at that point, or to did you call?

Speaker 1 15:06
I call them, and I just let them know that we were watching for it, and they were okay with that. And we got five kids. Life is very busy. That's one good thing. I don't get to sit and worry too much about certain things, because it's just crazy.

Scott Benner 15:22
Too busy going, Yeah, well, yeah. So let's talk a little bit about management. So the first one has it for a couple years prior to the next one. How are you managing? Pumping needles? Do you have a CGM? What? What are you doing there?

Speaker 1 15:36
I think we did three months with only finger six. They did not put us on a Dexcom right away, so we she's diagnosed in August, and I think it was right around Thanksgiving, we got the Dexcom for her, and then I wanted to move to the insulin pump, because she's the one that takes food without insulin. And I wanted her on an insulin pump. I wanted the tea slim, because we tried different phones, people gave us phones and then the receiver, and it was always getting lost all the time. So I wanted the tea slim pump so it'd be connected to her. We could not lose that pump. And our provider, that's why we switched providers, actually, is she kept saying, No, you cannot have it until you get this child's diabetes under control, because she could see, you know, we were giving corrections during the day. I think we were doing they wanted what they wanted, only six boluses a day for her. So that means why that's just the way she wanted. The lady wanted it done was you've got too many boluses. I think we're around like eight to 12, because she would take food or not boluses, because they had me enter in every time I gave her an injection that was before the pump. I'm sorry. So they, they'd have me enter in on the receiver every time I gave her insulin. And they said, This is too much. You need to stop once you get down to six boluses a day you can get the insulin pump. So I finally left the practice because I just felt you would do better on an insulin pump. Okay,

Scott Benner 17:11
man, you kind of had to go find the the guidance that you were looking for.

Speaker 1 17:16
Yes, yeah, yes. And they never where I'm at. They've never shamed us or scolded us one time. They've been really good. Because the endocrinologist, he also has type one. He's on the same insulin pump, you know, in like, you know, I'll be in the appointment with him, and they'll say, Aren't you high right now? And he's like, Oh yes, I'm 200 and it's just very nice to have, you know, to be able to see he's an endocrinologist. He does research, and he does get high. He said he gets kind of stressed out during the day sometimes. And so it's, I think it's relatable for our kids to see he has the pump on him. Got it? Okay?

Scott Benner 17:54
I have two questions here. How do you find the podcast?

Speaker 1 17:57
I found it very quickly. Actually, I think I was still in the hospital, because for our first diagnosis, we homeschool our kids, and I was in a very large homeschooling group, and they were kind of following my story. That's where I got the information to go to the hospital. Yeah, and then someone, I don't know who it was that someone I knew, they told me about your podcast. Nice.

Scott Benner 18:19
Did it help you? And if so, how like, did you find it more of like a community support information like mix

Speaker 1 18:28
both. I'm a I'm a researcher, information person, any health issue we have going on. I've got a little ADHD brain. I, you know, the hyper focus on new things. So I was at that time with all the kids I have. I used to read all the time, but it's hard. I don't have the time to read. So I do listen to podcasts, so that fit perfectly. Gotcha to listen. And I listen. Mostly. I listen to the educational ones, and here and there I'll listen to the stories of people, but usually I like the parenting ones with the therapist. Oh, you like Erica, yes, yes, right? With our situation we're in. I love therapists and psychologists right now, so I'll listen to those and the parenting ones, and then I the Pro Tip series. I've listened to a lot of those. And the beginnings every listen to some of those on bolusing and that type of thing. It's

Scott Benner 19:26
been valuable for you. Yes, very

Speaker 1 19:28
I've, I've learned way more that way than any of our appointments we go to. And when we go with the two of them, we're there for two hours every three months. You know, between all the educators and everything, I think that has been the most helpful for me. Gotcha?

Scott Benner 19:44
Okay, great. It's just nice to know how it helps. Okay, let's pick through your the stuff that you sent me. You basically listed four ideas about things you might want to cover while we're talking caretaking for the caretaker, when there are multiple to caretake, that's. So tell me what you meant by that.

Speaker 1 20:01
Well, I know for health issues, we started out when we were first married and having kids, my husband has chronic migraines, so it kind of puts you in a single parenting mode of taking care of that person and then running the household.

Scott Benner 20:17
Tell me for a second, like, use a month as an example, a full 30 days. What do chronic migraines look like? Chronic

Speaker 1 20:24
migraine is, if you have more than 14 migraines a month, if you're taking aspirin or pain reliever for headache more than two days a week, you should see a neurologist, is basically the guideline. But if it's 14 or more that's considered chronic migraine. And

Scott Benner 20:43
these are crippling, I imagine, but How so, like, what? What's the impact on him? For

Speaker 1 20:48
him, they are not everyone is crippling, but we have done well before 2018 they did not have this specific medication. It's the CGRP antibody. It's a shot once a month shot. So before 2018 we were going to the emergency room at least once a month for his migraines, and it's crippling that he would get extreme vomiting, nausea, dehydration, so they would put him on a cocktail what

Scott Benner 21:22
is just an anti nausea and like other things?

Speaker 1 21:26
Yeah, yeah, it's reglan Benadryl and toradol, some type of it's a narcotic cocktail.

Scott Benner 21:35
So he's not really valuable during these episodes as a character,

Speaker 1 21:38
yeah? No. And usually back then, he would be sick for days, and I would just get to a point when he started saying he wanted to die, I would pack him up and go to the hospital. And you know, when we're waiting in the waiting room, a lot of times he would be in his underwear, he couldn't get his shoes on, or, you know, he would be laying on the floor in the waiting room. So it was not like for him, it's not like you got a headache and you're, you know, the commercials they show the lady with their she looks all pretty, and her hand is on her head.

Scott Benner 22:08
Do you have migraines? Like, this pretty woman, like, yeah, it doesn't look like that. No Phoebe.

Speaker 1 22:14
No people. I'd bring him in and everyone would look horrified, and they move out of his way because,

Scott Benner 22:19
yeah, because they thought, they thought you were bringing a crackhead in there. That's why, yes,

Speaker 1 22:23
they had no idea. But my two boys also got them as children and their abdominal migraines, where they would just vomit for a couple of days and then they'd be fine. So we had a lot going on back then. The boys have grown out of it. My husband, I think it was about two weeks before our first diabetes diagnosis, he started taking this shot, the AMO VIG shot, okay, and that has helped a lot, so they're a lot less violent. I think since then, we've only been to the hospital once or twice for a migraine. I see that's

Scott Benner 22:58
crazy. That's it. And how long has he been living like

Speaker 1 23:02
that, but since I met him in 1998 so when I first met him and we were dating, I and went to see my parents, and his dad called me one day. He said, We just wanted to let you know that has a migraine. And I'm like, Okay, I just thought it was a bad headache, and they said we called the ambulance to take him to the hospital. So I had no idea when we first met what all that entailed. Yeah,

Scott Benner 23:31
wow, and you still married him. Look at you. I

Speaker 1 23:35
know. Well, you know, back then I'm a eternal optimist and happy, positive person. I just figured you could work through anything. If you work hard enough, you can work through everything. And I, as you get older, you realize that that's not always the case. You're like,

Scott Benner 23:51
you're like, back then, I had optimism. Scott, what? What do you have today?

Speaker 1 23:56
Oh, I'm a little bit of a cynic. Now,

Scott Benner 23:59
just because things have been hard.

Speaker 1 24:03
Yes, we have had very hard road to home. I guess you could stay Yes, because that was like the end of the world. We thought the migraines as I stay at home with our children. We've moved all over the United States for his job. So I think from 2004 to 2012 we've had maybe nine different homes that we've lived in with all these kids moving around. Yeah, we've been in the same place since 2012

Scott Benner 24:33
How does he make out working? When, when the migraines come?

Speaker 1 24:38
Well, his job, where he works, is very good. It's a very odd schedule. It's not nine to five. Their clients come in around the clock, so he might be working weekends, nights or days. So since it kind of checkerboards the time, because most of the migraines are early morning, where the worst ones are like, you know, he'll wake up with it. But. With him sometimes going in later in the day, it helped him. You'd give him time to recover. And he's worked the same job since 2007 different locations, and there's a high need for what his work is. So I think that helps.

Scott Benner 25:14
And obviously you don't get a migraine while you're having sex, because you have five kids. So I assume that's his damn part.

Speaker 1 25:21
Although I have said after he does get them, there is such a thing as there are migraines triggered after sexual activity. So there is some people who get it afterwards, but he does not see any correlation. Oh, good, because

Scott Benner 25:35
that would be scary, because if you're like, you know what I mean, like, so then this part's gonna happen, and then I'm getting an addict. That's not usually how I usually how I like to think about this part. You know what

Speaker 1 25:44
I mean? Yes, and I just thought we were ordinary people, but people probably think we do a lot of that. Since we have five children, I just think we're very fertile. One of us is very fertile. I

Scott Benner 25:56
see I say you've had sex five times in the last 10 years, and every time you got a baby, I got

Speaker 1 26:01
you, yeah, that sounds right. You

Scott Benner 26:05
said one of the kids has odd what is that? Is it one of the kids with type one? Or no?

Speaker 1 26:10
Yes, the first one with type one, we did not know what it was, because before we found out about the diabetes, she'd get real angry, particularly with me, like kissing and just kind of off the wall. Did you say? Kissing? Kissing. Yes, you kiss me. Kiss.

Scott Benner 26:31
Oh my god, I left her at a grocery store. Okay, all right. So hold on, hey, honey, one of them hisses at me. We got four others. What do you think you just want to go to buckies and leave this one in the beef jerky section and get out of here. No, seriously hissing. Like, like, make me understand. Like, there's a an inconvenience, there's an argument. Like, how does what leads to that?

Speaker 1 26:53
Yes, I'd say stop doing that. And the response would be his scene, if she had hit, you know, so she was, she was just, I always called her a fireball from a toddler age, because she would get up on the table and when, you know, she'd hit her brother in the head with a troquey ball, she hit me in the head with a Trojan ball. She was just, she was very sweet. But she's also just off the chain sometimes. And then I was ready to talk to our pediatrician about a behavior issue, and my husband has always been very anti therapy, and he said, No, don't do it. They'll take her away or something. So that well, visit before her type one diagnosis. I didn't bring it up. And then we got the diabetes diagnosis, and I thought, Well, maybe it's her blood sugar. Maybe her blood sugar has been right causing her to behave that way for a long time, but we've kind of since then. We figured out it does not matter what her blood sugar is, and we've since then, we have done so much therapy. So for her, they say oppositional defiance disorder, odd ago, agoraphobia, selective mutism, is another one that she is dealing with anxiety, so

Scott Benner 28:09
hold on one second, odd, irritable moods, argumentative, defiant behavior, aggression, vindictiveness. That all sounds like that. Okay, and then what were the other two things? I'm sorry, selective

Speaker 1 28:20
mutism. What is that? Because when we are out in public, she does not talk to people. She hardly talks to anybody. She speaks to our neighbor, friends. You know people she's known for a long time, but if I take her out somewhere, she will just sit by my side, not speaking to anybody who are responding to most people unless she knows who

Scott Benner 28:47
they are, and that's an anxiety disorder.

Speaker 1 28:49
Yes, well, we're still, we're Yeah, we're still picking through it. We are waiting for her to have a psychological evaluation. A behavioral pediatrician told us these things, but there's a 14 month waiting list for a psychological exam for a child right now. Jesus,

Scott Benner 29:07
how many kids speak parcel tongue. I didn't realize all this. I don't know if I'm joking or not joking, but like, the hissing is like, must have scared the living crap out of you, right? It

Speaker 1 29:16
did. We had a lot of and after her diagnosis, I mean, I think she has a lot of anger. She does not know how to communicate her feelings. Is the same thing her dad. I think she's on track with her dad. He cannot communicate his emotions very well either. But sometimes she would say she wanted to kill me. She wanted to kill herself. This after the diabetes diagnosis, and it was we had a I had a very difficult time because I was the one dealing with her all the time. Sure, I'm the I Am the diabetes manager for both of them. I do 99% of it. Are

Scott Benner 29:50
you okay? What do you do for yourself?

Unknown Speaker 29:58
Oh, um, the. Give me a second.

Scott Benner 30:00
No, you're fine. Take your time.

Speaker 1 30:05
I will say, I appears to be okay, you know, because we were pretty active in the community. A lot of people know we're a family, because not many people have five kids anymore. So we were involved in a church I started running a few years ago. I go to the gym, do therapy. Now, I got a dog a couple years ago, a golden retriever. I walk her every day. I have a friend in the neighborhood. They have a golden retriever too. They have a play date almost every day. So I do get out. I do things. I'm not gonna lie. We are in a very difficult place. It's not just her situation. What my husband is dealing with is a very kind of dark to me, mental health disorder I did not know existed until two, almost two years ago.

Scott Benner 30:53
I'm sorry your husband has something going on that you have not mentioned so far. Yes, are you willing? Yes, you want to skip it, or you want to say it,

Speaker 1 31:01
I'll say it. That's why I am on here, because I don't Well younger people probably know, because my 19 year old says everyone younger than me knows mental health, but us older people don't know anything about it. So he way back, he would kind of get angry over what I thought were small things, and we just thought he had a bad temper, or he was very organized and didn't like things out of place, because I'm kind of ADHD. I tend to lose things, forget things. So we saw that early in our marriage, some but it would kind of blow over pretty quickly, and it was far and few between, right? Probably when our oldest was about 10, they started to have a little bit of a power struggle, struggle that she did not seem respectful to him, and he was have a hard time with her, because she should just be obedient all the time. And the fifth child, she was actually a surprise. We were not planning on having a fifth child, and after she was born, she was a baby. He just casually mentioned to me one day that he was thinking of killing himself, and that really freaked me out. I talked to a friend of mine that was a nurse practitioner, and she said, Well, do you want to inpatient him? And I said no, because he's very anti therapy, mental health treatment. So we did not, I didn't do anything. We just kind of wrote it out. And then it happened another time where he I saw him leave the house with a some things in hand, and he just acted strangely, but nothing happened from that. And then he started, if he'd get upset, he would just leave, like, drive off, and I would try to beg him to come back. You know, I need you home. We'll do better, that kind of thing. I'll be a better wife, better mom. Just come back home because I state I've been home, not working since 2004 he's our sole source of income. And then it started. More and more he would talk about he's been thinking of leaving, just leaving the family. And

Scott Benner 33:11
you said he left the house with stuff in hand, like, You mean, like, like a gun or something that hurt himself with or,

Speaker 1 33:17
yes, okay, yes. I didn't know what it was his work bag, and it was not usually he, if he's going, he was wearing shorts and sandals. He had hurt his back. We were waiting for him to have a back surgery. At that time, I followed him out to the car, and you know, he he's not a very emotional, like crying type, and he's like, I'm sorry. I love you. Tell the kids, I love them, then you drove off. And I and I knew in my heart, I knew he wasn't going to do anything that day, and he did not. But you know it was, it was concerning, but I didn't know what it was. And I think it was 2022 like that summer, I started seeing a therapist for me, because I just felt like I was doing everything wrong, like I wasn't a good enough wife, I wasn't a good enough mom. And someone recommended I read the book stop walking on eggshells. And when I read that book, the first part, there's my talks about borderline personality order disorder and narcissistic personality disorder. And there's nine traits that someone will have for I think it's border, borderline and narcissistic personality order. And I cried through that whole list because I picked out at least five or six for him. And then the book says, Don't tell them that they have it, because it's such a difficult thing for them to deal with. They don't know how to deal with emotions. Basically, it's a big fear of abandonment. So when he was saying he was going to leave, you know he feels he's worried that we're going to leave him so he's going to leave us before we can leave him. If that makes sense, that's where a lot of that abandonment is. Thing comes from, I did not tell him, but you're supposed to stop caretaking. I'm a big caretaker. I will make you nice meals and do everything for you and set up all your doctor appointments and completely make you feel good and well taken care of. But that is what I needed to stop doing. That's what. You can't do it all. They have to do things for themselves and their own mental health. So I, I don't know what made it come to a head, but one night he he woke me up. We have firearms in our house, and he had loaded a weapon in our bedroom, and was, you know, ready to, you know, take his life. So I said, Well, I think you have this. I read about this, and, you know, he kind of calmed down because he's was saying that he just cannot get all these things out of his head that he's thinking, yeah. And so I said, I think you've got this. I read the list to him, and he said this, yes, this does sound kind of right. And this is about, almost. It'll be two years in October. So we went through the list, and I was thinking in my mind that remember earlier I said, if you work hard enough, you can get through everything. I figured that he now he knew this little bit that he would just be like me and pick it up and run with it, but he didn't, he want, doesn't want therapy and all of that stuff. So that's kind of where we have been almost two years, of him going in this circle again, of not this stuff happens over and over again, and I'm doing more for myself without

Scott Benner 36:35
getting help. It's not going to end obviously, no. And

Speaker 1 36:38
if you if you were to read up on it, it's not a medication thing. Bipolar Disorder, my understanding, is more of a chemical imbalance, and they can give medication the personality disorders. It's your personality that needs to change. So what they want is it's something called dialectical behavior therapy, DBT therapy. And if you were to aggressively go at it, you would be at a therapy, doing therapy twice a week, taking DBT classes and always working on this. I think it's a two year course of once to twice a week therapy classes for two years. He knows this exists. Yeah, he told I've talked to them since then, we visited a couple different therapists for this. You want someone that is older, you know, that's been in practice for a long time, does the DBT therapy? And he's had a couple tell him. They just tell him he has the traits. They'll call it a spectrum. And I think the narcissistic personality disorder, they don't think they like to tell people they have that.

Scott Benner 37:47
So you think that the that therapy would help him, but he doesn't. He's not willing to do it.

Speaker 1 37:53
It can help him. I mean, you can go to therapy, but you have to put work into it, you know,

Scott Benner 37:58
yeah. I mean, I'm assuming he goes and does what he needs to do. You think it would help him, but he's not interested. In doing it. Is that correct?

Speaker 1 38:04
Yes, he's gone a handful of times since we figured it out, and we've had a lot of things go down in our house since that one night I told you about have to draw a line in the sand, as we have to do this therapy, you know, for us to stay together. So he, he did have one appointment a couple weeks ago, and then he said he couldn't get in until the middle of June, but he only scheduled two more appointments. You know, he would really need to be getting, you know, let's fill up her calendar the year, yeah, and knock it all out. So I don't know if I'm not really sure that. And when I set up to be on the podcast, I picked the farthest date possible, which is now, because I was hoping I'd have more of a better idea what direction we're going, but nothing I don't know. No, it is a little more definitive, because we're at the kind of the point whether we have to figure out if we're going to stay together. Stay together or not, because it's strongly affecting our all of our children, sure, not just the diabetic children, because they see things and hear things that they should not be seeing and hearing, but because I am a root Christian homeschool family, you know, we're supposed to be all

Scott Benner 39:18
good, not going the way you expected.

Speaker 1 39:20
No, it is not at all how I expected. I'm actually looking into perhaps working full time in the fall and putting my children all in public school, but the ones that are still in school

Scott Benner 39:32
because you're trying to become more self sufficient, because you think this can't go on. Yeah,

Speaker 1 39:38
yes, yes. And sadly, I mean, our home environment is not pleasant with all this going on. My two older boys said that they actually I thought I just last night, I talked to them about maybe going to public school, and they seem okay with it. The one said, I'd rather be there than at home all the time. And I mean, we do. Things. He works with both my my oldest son is 17, so he has a job, a part time job, and they have friends, and they have activities, but he just, you know, he's ready. I think he wants to try something different. And the the older boys are fine. My eight and 12 year old are not. But we're working on that?

Scott Benner 40:21
No, of course. I mean, it's obviously encompassing and difficult and a lot to consider, but I think you're thinking about it correctly, about separating the kids from it

Unknown Speaker 40:31
honestly.

Scott Benner 40:32
You know what? I mean? Like, it's just, it's, I mean, it's too much to to go through as a kid, and the repercussions from that are going to be. Have you heard of the aces, the 10 aces of trauma? I have not okay, so they're going to come up in a NEP in a series about resilience with Erica that's going to come out pretty soon, but, but basically, there's these 10 childhood experiences that have the potential to change like the course of your life, right? And they are physical abuse, sexual abuse, verbal abuse, physical neglect, emotional neglect, mental illness. And what that means is a household member with a mental illness that impacts their ability to provide proper care for the child. This has a profound impact on the child. The experience could be depression, a household member attempting suicide, or other mental illness. The seventh thing on the list is substance abuse. So alcohol or drinking in the household,

Speaker 1 41:30
we don't have that. That's the one thing we got going for us,

Scott Benner 41:34
imprisonment. Somebody in the household has been incarcerated, witnessing abuse, and then, has somebody witnessed abuse?

Speaker 1 41:43
We don't have any physical abuse, but it, from what I have read, we've got emotional, verbal, financial and spiritual. I know I don't think you are a Christian, but you know, if I'm told I'm not being a biblical wife for certain things.

Scott Benner 42:01
Oh, you, you get shamed through religion, yeah,

Speaker 1 42:05
yes, and I am a Christian. I Jesus died on the cross for my sins. I know that, but that does not mean I need to be perfect in all things. Because, you know, things will happen. You know, he said he's, you know, pulls the attic door down, we can hear it, and gets his bags and throws him down. I'm packing up, I'm leaving. They'll hear that in my little one, the teenagers, they can I know they care, but they act like they don't care, like he's just trying to get attention. But my eight year old, she will cry her little heart out because her daddy is

Scott Benner 42:39
well. So my bigger point here is not that that's not horrifying. I'm sorry, the 10 thing on the list is losing a parent to separation, divorce or death. But you know, how many of these Did you? Can you count on your fingers when I read physical abuse,

Speaker 1 42:52
not physical we've got a verbal, emotional, mental health disorder, attempted suicide. We've had several times. I did have to call the authorities in December The kids also, I'm leaving the house for that, but he was not arrested, and the separation, that is a big topic in our family right now that we're trying to I'm trying to decide which way to go, because, like I said, I've been at home with the children. I have a college degree, but when you don't work for 18 or 19 years, that does not mean very much. Yes,

Scott Benner 43:24
listen, Phoebe, if it makes you feel any better, I I have a fairly successful business, and a lot of people listen to my podcast. I don't think I could get a job. So, like, I think I if I went out the working world, they'd be like, you're a what now? And I'd be like, yeah, no, I've been a podcaster and a stay at home dad. They'd like, yeah, no. Thank you. Listen. The reason I bring up the ACE is because these adverse childhood experiences are indicators for problems your kids are going to have in the future. But it's not a set in stone thing, and so while I have never once advocated for the disillusion of somebody's like family, I do think that if you remove your kids from that situation, that gives them a better chance to not find themselves in that situation as adults. And then it makes me wonder, of that list that I read to you, do you think, how many of those things do you think your husband grew

Speaker 1 44:13
up with? He had both parents growing up? So I don't really unders. I don't know, but I think there is parts of it. I think the difference is, I think his mom just went in and line and kept him happy, and that kept the home better for the kids. I think that it was, it was there, the same, the mental.

Scott Benner 44:34
Think the father in law has it too, and the mother in law just put her head down and made it all go away as best you could.

Speaker 1 44:41
Yes, codependency, because that's what I would do. I would just try to keep the peace. I don't like conflict, so I just tried to appease him. And then at some point there was like a switch, you know, because he he called, he was out driving around, and he says, I'm gonna take this job in another state and start over. And I. Okay, because I was at home and our all of our kids were little, and I wanted to be home with our babies, I would beg for him to come back. And then I one day, I'm like, why am i This is so humiliating. I should not have to I'm not that bad of a person that I need to beg my husband. Well,

Scott Benner 45:15
first of all, let's say this. You're not a bad person at all like so it's probably hard, from your perspective to see it, but you're describing like a show in 17 different directions, and not a thing that you or anybody else should have to deal with and listen respect to the fact that he has obvious issues, and we'd like to see him get helped, if it's not possible for him to be helped, and hope for a resolution, then you have to ask yourself, like, Well, how long do I let my kids sit around this fire burning at their feet when he's not trying to put it out and you can't, maybe you can't blame him for that, which is fine. Like, maybe it's, maybe he's so far down, you know, a direction that it's not something he can break free on his own. Like, also, no, there's, you know, no disrespect about that. If you have a mental illness, you're probably not the best one to help yourself out of it. But no, at some point, like you're not, you're not describing anything joyful, you're not describing anything fulfilling. You know, it's a one way relationship. It basically feels like you've described, there's this guy that lives in my house, and he puts money in a pile. And so here's all the things he does when we just try to ignore him the best we can, because there's money coming. Is that right at this point? I'm sorry,

Speaker 1 46:40
it is. And he, I think he can tell somehow he is able to keep working. And I did. I mean, we, I'm not gonna, I mean, we had a very enjoy. Obviously, he was not like this when I married. Of course, you know, we had a lot of good times. We've lived in a lot of neat places, and I think my understanding is with a disorder, especially as the kids get older, you know, they feel like they you know, for me, I could keep, kind of keep the peace by doing things the way he liked it. But you have more kids, they start getting older, they talk back a little, they get their own mindset, and they don't agree with everything he does. And then we have a kid, one kid was type one diabetes, and then all of a sudden, my attention is pretty much off of him, you know, because I'm trying to figure out diabetes, yeah, and manage this. And then then 18 months later, there's celiac okay? We have to learn how to do all the gluten free right stuff, and we're doing diabetes. It just took all the attention off of

Scott Benner 47:38
him. Oh, no, yeah, you were basically your job was to throw the dragon meat so it didn't burn everybody. And then you got distracted with other more important things, and now suddenly you can really see what happens to him if you're not placating his and basically petting him and telling him to stay calm. Yes, yeah. No, no, listen, this is obviously difficult, but I mean, so tell me something like, Do you have a plan?

Speaker 1 48:05
I'm working on, on a plan, and it's kind of, it's not funny, but it is. You know, we lived here long enough I've known I've gotten to know enough ladies, and that's another reason why I wanted to talk about this, because there are so many people I know, three or four personal friends, that I've had a long time living very similar situations, and I had no idea until about two years ago. I just, I don't tell everybody. A lot of people know what I am dealing with now our church knows I've talked to them. My neighbors know I've got safe places to go, like three different houses in the neighborhood to go to, and my kids know where to go. I'm working with a domestic abuse advocate right now. Yeah, that kind of pushes me to do more than what I would want to do. At my church, I have some friends that are law enforcement. He's former US Marshal and SWAT team, so he you know, so I have people I can talk to. And the thing I'm really battling is with myself, because I know I'm going to have to make a decision, and I've kind of kicked the can down the road because I don't want to make the decision. I don't, I understand he's not going to be the one who can think clearly and do it. So I, you know, right, if it comes that we need to separate, it'll be me having to make the call, and I will look like the bad person to the children and everybody. Well, you

Scott Benner 49:38
know, listen, that sounds like it might be inevitable, because your luck is terrible. Like, I mean, honestly, like, as you described this whole life, people, here's something people don't know you went to your church to find quiet to record, because you like, my house is going to be too loud. And then I and then then a smoke. Detector and like, a fire alarm went off while you were there. Like, does it must? You must be like, God, nothing goes right for me. Like, like, that's exactly what I thought when that went off. I'm like, this poor lady. I mean, Jesus Christ.

Speaker 1 50:15
No, that. That is my life in a nutshell. And I look, I left my keys inside. I hope I'll be able to find them. Yes, no, my life. People that hear my life, they just, yeah,

Scott Benner 50:27
no. It's that old adage. It feels like, it feels like, if I wrote this as a movie, people would be like, Oh, it's too over the top. I can't believe all this. Yeah.

Speaker 1 50:36
You know it is. We have dealt with a lot. Yes, they got me locked out of the building, but smoke detector went off. But I'll just hang out by my car. I'll go back later and get my car keys. You're gonna be able to get in. Are you sure? Yes, they have a they have a doorbell. I was gonna

Scott Benner 50:54
say, we've just ringed the bell like Jesus opens the door or something like that. Is that how it works? There's our guy that works there. I guess maybe. Secretary, yes, Secretary, I'm sorry. Don't be sorry. You don't mean to what.

Unknown Speaker 51:11
I don't cause trouble.

Scott Benner 51:13
Please. First of all, don't apologize to me. You didn't do anything wrong, to be perfectly honest with you, I think it's I think it's good. I think it puts a an exclamation point on your story. Honestly, like just everything at this moment seems hard. You know what I mean?

Speaker 1 51:30
Yes, everything, everything is hard. So and I will, I The other thing, I want to encourage people, because I did not have any friends in our neighborhood until covid He hit because we started walking. The kids were older. I started walking. I started running and meeting people. And for a while, there were actually a group of people that would come in our front yard every afternoon we put out the chairs, and there'd be a bunch of people sitting in our neighbors coming to talk to us, because there's nothing to do during covid, right? So I met a friend in our neighborhood that was like, 18 years older than me, married, has a dog. The kids like playing with his dog, and just by talking to, I hate to use the word normal people, but emotionally healthy people, it really showed what was going on in my life. And I don't if that hadn't happened, I don't know if I would have seen it. I think it would have taken me longer to see it, because I don't know how to describe it here. You know, just a healthy, emotional person that, you know, I didn't get upset over little things all the time. And,

Scott Benner 52:49
yeah, normal. The word, the word you're looking for, is normal. Like, like, I think it's possible you have been in this for so long, I don't think you recognize how strange it is no

Speaker 1 53:04
no, because my parents would come from across the country that we'd see them once a year, and they would buy things for the house, and my husband would get really upset and disrespected and make me return stuff. I you know, if they the only way they could get gifts for us was, you know, they come visit, and we'd go shopping while he was at work, and he might not notice that they bought the kids a bunch of underwear and shoes and things. Yeah, it's because I'd have to kind of keep it on the down low that someone's buying stuff for for us. I'm

Scott Benner 53:34
gonna say something that I can't be sure of. But if you pack those kids up right now and left, and I don't know what your situation is, financially or, like, I know there's a lot to consider, right? But you've, you've also, you know, you've just, you've talked about a lot of disorder in the house. There's firearms, there people threatening to kill themselves, you know, these power moves on you about, I'm leaving, like, that's just to keep you in line. You know what? I mean, that stuff and like all this is going on, and I can't be certain of this. There's a large part of me that thinks that if you broke free of this and got yourself reestablished somewhere else and got some time away from it, that a year or two from now, you'd look back on this story and think, I can't believe I didn't see this completely for what it was like, because this is horrifying, and you're laughing through it like, and I know probably laughing to not cry, but like, but I genuinely don't know that you know how bad this is. Now

Speaker 1 54:35
the description, because I I read, I listen to a lot of podcasts and things. And the description is, like, you are, you know, you put the frog in the cold water and you slowly heat it up, and you don't even know. You don't

Scott Benner 54:47
know you're boiling alive, yeah, you have no idea right now. Like, like, there's your description makes me feel like a SWAT team should drop in that house and extricate you. Like, like, I'm not, I'm not even joking. I'm worried what happens. If you tell him you're leaving, or if you ask him to leave, yes,

Speaker 1 55:03
I just had that conversation with a friend last night, because this is all it's been kind of coming, yeah, to a head What? What he does now is he just stays away as much as possible and come to him after we are sleeping, and I wanted to talk, we're gonna say, you know, you need. We're actually meeting with our church pastor tomorrow. My husband called him to talk about this. I don't know what he wants to accomplish, but it's kind of coming to a head right now. And my friend, she said, Well, you need. Where were you gonna go? And I was gonna go the ponds across our road, you know. And she's like, No, no, you need to go somewhere public. And I was trying to set up a meeting with him, and he says, No, I'm not doing that. I'm just gonna come home after you guys are asleep tonight. Yeah.

Scott Benner 55:53
I mean, listen, you might need, you might need a cop, a priest and three other like armed guards, to have this conversation. Let me ask you a question. What does better look like to you? Like? What has to happen for you to stay with him and be happy and fulfilled

Speaker 1 56:14
like you said? I don't even know. It's possible what my plan was, or what my hope was when we figured it out was he would do all this treatment. I we've had a in the last month. He I've finally gotten to go to a psychiatrist, and they wanted medication for the depression. He was not doing that. I wanted regular therapy sessions. He's not doing that. He has an appointment in June 15. I don't know if they're going to put it all in the books, but I don't think he can do it. So I would just need to see that he is being proactive in the all this wild stuff to simmer down, because we just, we had a horrible weekend, just, just all kinds of things going on, but I don't think we can get packed in. Yeah,

Scott Benner 57:01
none of that's going to change. Like, your life is like, living you're living inside of a tornado, inside of a hailstorm, and so, like, like, the oh, this weekend was tough. Or that's always going to be like that. And I'm not even telling you, like your kids have some issues too. You might move away and be like, This is not good. It's just better and more possible for you to focus on what's happening. Listen, you're 50. How long have you been married?

Speaker 1 57:28
We just had our 23rd wedding anniversary,

Scott Benner 57:31
a couple. So you got married. You were what, 27 when you got married?

Speaker 1 57:36
Yes, we met. I think I was 23 when we met just right out of college. Okay,

Scott Benner 57:43
that's my point. How many serious adult relationships did you have before this person?

Unknown Speaker 57:47
The very this

Scott Benner 57:48
was the very first one. You do not even know how you're supposed to be treated.

Speaker 1 57:53
No, I cannot even fathom what a good I mean, my parents were together. My dad is just he's our friends. Everyone just loves him. He's so good to my mom, and that's what blows me away, is how I even got,

Scott Benner 58:08
yeah, well, that ship sailed, but like, but listen, I'm just going to tell you that if, if I did one of the things that you listed, my wife would beat me up, bounce the head, throw me right out the front door and lock the door. If I did all of them, she'd shoot me and then tell the judge what I did and go, I thought it was okay. Seriously, like there's no world where you should be treated like this. No, and

Speaker 1 58:30
it doesn't start. All this radical stuff was not going on early. Early on, it was, hey, you lost the remote control. I need it right now. You know,

Scott Benner 58:43
he's right. His thing's gotten worse, and it's ramped up, but it's always been there to some degree or a level, right? Like you've like, when you stop and look back, like, has there ever been a time where if you did something quote, unquote wrong, you weren't told you weren't being a good Christian? Or some, I'm sorry to say this, but some like that, some controlling decision, like, I'll make a power move, I'll leave. You're begging him, like, like, really think about how he's treating you. You're the one begging him not to go. Well, you know what I mean? Yes,

Speaker 1 59:13
good, right? Yes, I, I will say, you know, I had, you know, pretty low confidence. I had not been in a relationship before. So and then, when you have a bunch of small children, you know, babies at home, not, you know, not working, it is scary to think you know he's going to leave. I've got all you know, these four. It didn't get like that until we had four at home, and I think we had just had, is after the last one. So we had five kids within 11 years time. So we had five kids, 11 years old and under, yeah, with me seeing no real way for me to support them. And that's the other thing. You know, he. You will sometimes say, if you leave, I will quit my job, you know, so you won't have the, you know, even there's the fear you might not even have child support.

Scott Benner 1:00:11
I don't know how to say this, like, like, politely, so let me just talk right around it. I mean, are you wealthy?

Speaker 1 1:00:18
No, we're not wealthy. We've got five kids, you know, high medical needs. We're middle class, okay, maybe lower ish, middle class. You

Scott Benner 1:00:27
don't have to tell me this, but you told me so much else, I can't imagine. You'll say, No, well, how much the money is he bringing in a year?

Speaker 1 1:00:33
Probably about 160 about 100,000 about 150 150 $160,000

Scott Benner 1:00:40
okay, well, listen, if you get divorced, he gets to keep some of it too. So you're looking at like existing off of, you know, I'm gonna guess, about $80,000 you and those five kids. And, you know, you can get a job, certainly, and take some of that money. And you might have to you might have to lean on social services of some kind to help make the rest of it up, but I think that gives your kids the best possible chance at a reasonable adult life. Because I hate to say this if you be like and I'm sure you can pull yourself around and have some happiness in your life, but I think your main focus has got to be on trying to save the kids from this happening to them, like, I don't, I mean, because you're not fixing this relationship, like, it's not like he didn't make a conscious decision to act like this. This is, I mean, this has crossed wires in his head. You know what? I mean, yes, like, and you're not gonna, you're not gonna rewire that today. And even if he pulls himself together, it could take him a decade or more to help to get that together, and by then, you're gonna have five kids who look more like Him or you, meaning either they're gonna come off like he does, or they're gonna be getting taken advantage of like you do. You're only gonna create one or two different kinds of people in this relationship right now. It's going to be people who get taken advantage of and are told they're not any good like, you have maybe a half a dozen times in the last hour referred to yourself as not a good person. Somehow, like, I don't, I can't even understand that. And so, like, think about your daughter. Do you want your daughter to be with a guy that treats her like this? No, no, but she's seeing you treated like this, and she's gonna think that's what's normal, yes,

Speaker 1 1:02:26
yeah, and I, I had therapy last week, and she it's a secular organization, and she told me at the end, she said, I prayed before seeing you, she said, before I asked her a question, and she said, You need to think about your kids. Your first job right now is to protect your children. Yeah, I agree. So this morning, we live right there's a elementary school right in our neighborhood. My youngest, she's going into third grade. So this morning, I did apply for three different jobs to work in the school system that, you know, it has benefits. Summer's off, school breaks off, and then I'm gonna, I don't know if I can say the company names, but I'm also gonna apply for, you know, Dexcom and tandem diabetes to see if I can do it, customer support work. I know a lot of them work from home, because you call them and you can hear kids and animals in the back, and you can

Scott Benner 1:03:25
hear the prices right while they're telling you about your stuff. Yeah, yeah, that's a great idea. Listen, those are great ideas you have to and I listen, I shudder to give somebody advice, like I really people are probably laughing, but I don't, I don't want you to do something that I think is right. I've only known you for an hour, but I mean, from what you've described, I don't see the downside of you extricating yourself and your kids from this situation. Like, I mean, you, it's not like you've once said, Listen, I have a deep, like, love affair with this man, and it's breaking my heart that this is how he is, like you're saying, like, you know, we're already talking about getting separated, like, you know, like it's not even that, like you're just, from my perspective, you are so beaten down I don't even think you know where you are supposed to be, and I Don't. And I wonder if getting away from it, like, I mean, it's not going to be easy. I don't want to, like joke with you and say, oh, you know, just getting away is going to fix it. That's going to be a step. And there's probably going to be a moment in the first six months afterwards where you feel completely alone and you think, I did the wrong thing. I got to go back. I need help. But those are the moments when you have to realize he is not actually helping you with anything except for money, and this, then the state you live in can compel him to do that. So you know what? I mean,

Speaker 1 1:04:50
it's a lot of here. Well, I know it's not enough to support the the two families. So that is my step ahead. I've I'm starting to save a little. Money. I've got my advocate I'm working with. I'm I'm the type of person I need some type of plan. So that's why I'm applying for some jobs. You know, we've got summer talking about getting the kids in school. So if you look at the domestic abuse side of it, the advocate I'm working with, and I'm in some support groups. There's a lot of people that live with this. Have no idea. No,

Scott Benner 1:05:25
that's the thing that's making me the saddest is I'm thinking, I'm having this conversation with you, and I'm like, Oh, my God, this is crazy. And a lot of people are probably like, this is Tuesday for me. So you know, like, I believe that there's people who are going to be able to help you get through it. They could also probably, I don't know if you have as a family, if you have savings, I they could probably talk to you about how to make sure that you know when you tell him you're leaving or he's getting out, that he can't go empty your accounts and things like that. Like there's ways to get ahead of that stuff too. Yes,

Speaker 1 1:05:56
yeah. Well, that's the part I'm working on. So it looks, it looks kind of small, but the people who know where I've started, they've said it in the last year, I've made huge progress. You know, it's kind of a small way to go. I'm

Scott Benner 1:06:12
very impressed. I'm very, very impressed with with how you're handling this. If you, if you want to know the truth, I can't, seriously, I can't imagine you didn't just like, like, he's like, I'm leaving. I would have been like, Oh yeah, you buddy, I'm leaving. How about I'll brace you to the car. How's that sound? But like you're not doing that. You're not you got your eye on your kids. You're making smart decisions. You're talking to people to make sure you're not making rash decisions. I'm very impressed with how you're handling this seriously. Well, I

Speaker 1 1:06:41
think you need to exhaust all of the avenues, and that is what I'm trying to do, because it is a thing. Feels like you've done it, by the way. Yes, well, we have the sense of, I'll be back here tomorrow with this appointment. I don't know what the purpose of it is, but we'll go through it, and then we'll go from there. I'm just not ready to take the jump yet, but I have people that are willing to help, and I'd like to stay here. We've lived here for 12 years. Our kids know this is their home. They work here. They've got friends here. Yeah, amazing neighborhood. So that's what I'm trying to work out, is if I there's a way we can stay. Also,

Scott Benner 1:07:22
have you considered, what would any of the kids say? I'm staying with dad? Well,

Speaker 1 1:07:27
that is my concern, because the two youngest are the ones with type one diabetes, and he lavishes attention on them, taking them out to eat and buying them things and doing fun things, because he'll say mom and the teenagers, they don't like me and stuff like that, so they are very attached to him, and that is part of the

Scott Benner 1:07:49
oh, he's doing to them. What he's did to you?

Speaker 1 1:07:53
Yeah, he's good. He's very good to the those two girls, and he's

Scott Benner 1:07:56
grooming them, yeah, to be his fans, yes.

Speaker 1 1:07:59
But they also have the diabetes, which he does not manage, and that was kind of the tipping point we had a few weeks ago. They I was I just left home a few minutes ago, and our 12 year old, her infusion set fell off, and I was driving out of the neighborhood, and he's called, and I said, Can you do it? I will come back if you cannot do it, because he does, you know, if the alarms are going off in the night and he's awake, he'll wake me up to go do this stuff. So he says, Yes, I can do it. But then they got in an argument. She didn't like her attitude or something. She called me. The other kids got into it that they're two teenagers at home, they started arguing with him because they didn't like how he was treating the 12 year old. I got the two teenagers to leave and come to me. She wanted to stay with him because she loves daddy, and then she calls me, and she's never put an infusion set on all by herself. She's 12. You're going to start teaching her this year to do it right? I had to FaceTime her how to put it on, because he would not put it on for her. He was so upset. And while I'm putting that set on her, she's on FaceTime, and I can hear him in the background talking about how he's leaving. He's done, he's packing. He's leaving

Scott Benner 1:09:14
because of her attitude around an infusion set change.

Unknown Speaker 1:09:19
Yes, I think she was rough.

Scott Benner 1:09:23
Let me jump in here. I'm sorry. This is indelicate for people listening, and I am not I am not unfeeling for people with mental health disorders, but he's out of his mind, and you have to get away from him.

Speaker 1 1:09:35
That's what I'm thinking. This isn't her first time doing this by herself, and I don't know if she'll remember it, but this is what she has in the background. Is her dad talking about leaving her over something that started over the set.

Scott Benner 1:09:48
Oh yeah, this is, this is the beginning of a of a backslide for her that you won't even recognize till she's in her 30s. Like I'm saying, like the small things that happen to us day by day. Take forever to build up and turn into a good thing or a bad thing, and you'll never know what they were when you look back on them, but they are, for certain, the reason you get where you're going. And so, you know, you just buy 1000 paper cuts. Yeah, exactly. And so, like, maybe this won't be the thing, but all she's gonna have the memory of my dad was unstable, or how about my diabetes is the reason he left? Are you kidding me? You know what I mean. And see people do see stuff like that all the time. Yes,

Speaker 1 1:10:30
I know it happens, but that was the big mental shift for me. And he knows that he knew that he knew he messed up big time for me to hear that and that we've just been extra crazy the last few weeks because he I treat him completely different. He says, You look at me like I'm a cashier at Walmart, and I like I'm friendlier with a cashier at Walmart. Yeah, that

Scott Benner 1:10:53
guy's never yelled at me. But Okay, listen my father. My father left when I was, like, 13, and he told my mom, he put this on her. He told my mom, I'm leaving because I can't take the kids. And then he specifically highlighted me, because I was less willing to to just take his shit and, like, bow my head, right? And so I grew up. I had to, like, I had to get through that, like, at 13 years old, like, Oh, my dad, like, abandoned our family, and it was my fault, you know. And I know it's not. And I even knew then it wasn't. But it didn't mean that him just saying it out loud, didn't hang it on me for 20 years to figure out, you know what I mean. So you

Unknown Speaker 1:11:39
still have it inside a little. Of course, you heard that.

Scott Benner 1:11:42
Yeah, of course, I still have and listen, I've been able to, like, fight through most of this crap. But it's, I can't tell you, it doesn't impact you. We're planning right now, I'm planning to announce, I think next week, that I'm gonna put on a cruise that goes out of Texas, for people who listen to the podcast, right? And we're genuinely not sure, like, by the time this goes up, maybe we'll have a little better of an idea, but we're generally not sure how many people are actually going to want to do this. And there's a business side of it. I have to basically fill 200 state rooms for this thing to just break even, right? And then there has to be even more if I want to be able to afford to bring speakers along, or I'm otherwise, it's just going to be me speaking. It's going to be more of a vacation, right? And so I'm talking to the person who's setting this up, and she's like, Oh, we you'll get that many people. And I'm like, I don't know if I will you, but I don't, but I'm telling you, Phoebe, I don't know that. Like, I can't everyone around me is like, oh my god, this is going to be really popular. I have a friend of mine who used to work at JDRF and some other places. She's like, you're this will be bigger than something the JDRF puts on. And I'm like, I don't think 10 people are going to do it. No, you'll fill it up. Listen, the line I'm trying to draw here is, why do I feel that way, in the face of everything that would seem to say the opposite. And I think it's because of little things that happened to me over the years growing up that leave me incapable of actually feeling about myself, even being able to see myself the way I actually am, or my surroundings the way they actually are. And I I agree, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm just saying, like, if you have any way to safely get out of this, I hope you take that opportunity.

Speaker 1 1:13:29
Well, that's what we're working on. That's why I said we did the farthest. Thought I'd have a better resolution, resolution, but we're getting, I think we're getting close to it. I just need to get some details. I've worked out you're doing great.

Scott Benner 1:13:42
Listen, I'm gonna let you go. This is a lot to talk about. You must be exhausted emotionally from having this conversation. Let me just throw this in here at the end for all you ladies, if you were my daughters, I would tell you the same thing I told my daughter. Every boy who's talking to you wants to have sex with you. You have to know that when it starts. And then look at every one of their thoughts from that angle, is this a loving thing to say? I thought it was when I sent my daughter off to college, I said you're going to meet some lovely people, some really kind people, nice people, but in general, you have to wonder what people's motivations are, and you really need to know them before you start giving yourself over to them, emotionally or sexually or in any other way that you give of yourself to a person, because for every great person there is out in the world, there's one who isn't they all look the same at first, you know. So you really have to like you just, I'm sorry, I know it's 20 some years ago for you, but like, there were probably signs in there where you could have been like, Why do you say that? Or how come I'm being treated this way, or like that kind of or if you had more self confidence, maybe you would have been like, I'm not going to let him talk to me like that. And again, those 1000 paper cuts, right? And now look at where it leads all these years. Later. And like you said, this happens the way more people than you think. Also it happens in reverse. There are plenty of guys who are lovely, who are out there, yes, you know, married to horror, horrifying women who are treating them poorly, too. This is not a a male, you know, specific

Speaker 1 1:15:15
trait. No, I know men loving. It's the same thing. Yeah, no, 100%

Scott Benner 1:15:21
Anyway, take care of yourselves. Do your research before you give away your Hulu. And good luck to you, Phoebe. I love that we called you Phoebe. That was like, I love that name. That's good name, yes.

Speaker 1 1:15:31
And maybe someday I'll have an update for you so I will let you know. Oh, I

Scott Benner 1:15:36
would love that you you keep me in mind for a couple of years down the road, I think people would like to know what happened, you know, and what you were able to figure out. Because I have a lot of confidence that you're going to figure this out. Do

Speaker 1 1:15:47
you? Yes, I think so. It will just be a pain, very painful thing, but we'll figure it out. Oh, it's

Scott Benner 1:15:54
going to be horrifying. I don't want to lie to you. There'll be a retrospect moment where you'll be far enough away from this horrifying part to look back on both of the horrifying parts and go. It was worth going through that to get away from that. You know what? I mean? Yeah, I think there's a, there's a Somewhere over the rainbow for you. It just might take you a little longer to get there than you hope. Yes, sir. Yeah, good for you. Okay, all right, I'm gonna let you go. Hold on one second for me. Okay?

Did you know if just one person in your family has type one diabetes, you're up to 15 times more likely to get it too. So screen it like you mean it one blood test can spot type one diabetes early, tap now talk to a doctor or visit screened for type one.com for more info. A huge thanks to the contour next gen blood glucose meter for sponsoring this episode of The juicebox podcast. Learn more and get started today at contour, next.com/juicebox if you're living with type one diabetes, the after dark collection from the juicebox podcast is the only place to hear the stories that no one else talks about, from drugs to depression, self harm, trauma, addiction and so much more. Go to juicebox podcast.com up in the menu and click on after dark there, you'll see a full list of all of the after dark episodes. Okay, well, here we are at the end of the episode. You're still with me. Thank you. I really do appreciate that. What else could you do for me? Uh, why don't you tell a friend about the show or leave a five star review? Maybe you could make sure you're following or subscribed in your podcast app, go to YouTube and follow me or Instagram. Tiktok. Oh gosh, here's one. Make sure you're following the podcast in the private Facebook group as well as the public Facebook page you don't want to miss. Please do not know about the private group. You have to join the private group as of this recording, it has 51,000 members in it. They're active, talking about diabetes, whatever you need to know. There's a conversation happening in there right now, and I'm there all the time. Tag me. I'll say, hi, hey. What's up everybody? If you've noticed that the podcast sounds better, and you're thinking like, how does that happen? What you're hearing is Rob at wrong way recording, doing his magic to these files. So if you want him to do his magic to you, wrongway recording.com, you got a podcast. You want somebody to edit it. You want rob you.

#1321 IDU: Financial Literacy

Scott and Arden discuss financial literacy, focusing on topics like taxes, retirement savings, and budgeting.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Scott Benner 0:00
OmniPod, welcome back, friends to another episode of The juicebox podcast.

Arden and I are back today with another episode of I don't understand. Today. We're going to talk about money, interest, savings accounts, taxes, stuff like that that Arden doesn't understand. 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. T 1d, exchange.org/juice, box. Go there. Now, join the registry. Take the survey. Takes about 10 minutes. They're going to ask you questions. You know the answers to they're looking for people who have type one diabetes. They're looking for people who are the caregivers of someone with type one diabetes, and you have to be a US resident if you fit the bill, take the survey. T 1d exchange.org/juice, box. They take your questions, they take your answers, they smush them all together, and then they use that information to move type one diabetes research forward. You want things to get better, go take the survey. T, 1d exchange.org/juice, box. All right. All right. You ready for the main event? Here comes

this episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by cozy Earth. Cozy earth.com use the offer code juicebox at checkout to save 40% off of the clothing, towels, sheets, off of everything they have at cozy earth.com today's podcast is sponsored by us med. US med.com/juice box. You can get your diabetes supplies from the same place that we do. And I'm talking about Dexcom, libre, OmniPod, tandem and so much more us, med.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, okay, so you tell me that it's my decision what we're going to talk about today. Yeah. Okay, so I'm looking at the list this

Arden Benner 2:18
whole conversation. I'm blind too. I can't see anything. I took my glasses off because my headphones squeeze them so, so everything is blurry. Yeah, and if you're making any, like, facial movements or I can't see them, just so, you know,

Scott Benner 2:30
do it? Should I turn my camera off? Or no,

Arden Benner 2:32
no, I'm just letting you know. Okay, so

Scott Benner 2:34
I have two. I'm down to two. I'm gonna let you pick between two. Should I? No, that

Arden Benner 2:40
is not what I just said.

Scott Benner 2:43
All right. Well, the one is like a thing you said you don't understand, and I don't know if you have the energy to really dig into it. Do you have the energy to dig in?

Arden Benner 2:51
I'll never have the energy to dig in. So pick one of them. Okay,

Scott Benner 2:55
I have to be honest with you, I never understand what you mean when you say, I don't understand money, what

Arden Benner 3:03
does that mean? It means I don't understand money.

Scott Benner 3:07
I don't I don't understand what you mean when you say, I don't understand money. What about money? Don't you understand everything? Okay?

Unknown Speaker 3:18
I don't.

Arden Benner 3:20
I don't understand how you're not picking up what I'm putting down right now. Okay, so

Scott Benner 3:25
I'm not, like, you can't possibly mean I don't understand the the relationship between giving someone money for goods or services, or, do you mean that?

Arden Benner 3:36
Like, I don't understand, like, how, like, realistically, how you're supposed to get a job and save enough money for everything that you need. I don't understand all of the different accounts that money is supposed to go into. I don't understand retirement funds. I don't understand how to pay your taxes. I don't understand literally anything about money. So I've decided I will be marrying someone, and they will, in fact, have to take care

Scott Benner 4:01
of that. Okay, so let's go over this, because I think these are things you can understand

Arden Benner 4:05
when I'm when I'm at a point in my life where I'm making enough money that I, like, really need to figure my out. Like, I just want you to know that if I'm not in a relationship with another person, you will be getting a call, and you're gonna have to figure out my money for me.

Scott Benner 4:23
Well, what if you What if you lose money because you're not paying attention to it, or you let somebody help you and turns out to be a jerk and takes all your money? That's all we're talking about right now. We're

Arden Benner 4:32
talking about the fact that I don't even understand it. I probably wouldn't know.

Scott Benner 4:35
Okay, so I'm making a list here, taxes, accounts, retirement savings bills. What else? Yeah,

Arden Benner 4:44
I'm, I'm not doing multiple podcast episodes on this. No, this is we're talking about it right now. Yeah, all right, I'm

Scott Benner 4:50
just putting that out there. Okay, what else? Say that again. I don't even know. I

Arden Benner 4:57
did say it, Dad, what

Scott Benner 4:58
about like? Like? Loans. You understand a loan?

Arden Benner 5:02
Yeah, you get some money. They pay it back to you. Like, interest, loans, I don't really get, okay,

Scott Benner 5:09
interest, um, even how to get a job, how much money you need? Yeah,

Arden Benner 5:17
just like, that doesn't make sense. Like, how are people making enough money to live?

Scott Benner 5:21
Okay, how do people make enough money to live? Well, people make, obviously, all different kinds of money, but I think, yeah, but still, I think that big picture, people who live without going into debt just tailor their lives to the amount of income that they have. Like, most people do that. But like, Do you know how people

Arden Benner 5:47
will say you should make little charts or whatever, and like, like you're spending and how much you're spending, you know, a month in like, kind of whatever, that whole thing,

Scott Benner 5:57
what would that little chart be called? You know, starts with a B, starts with a B. Sounds like budget. Like, yeah, people, people make a budget to, like, see how much money they have coming in, what all their bills are. The chart, I know what

Arden Benner 6:11
about I know what a budget is, okay. What do you mean? It sounds like a budget? Well,

Scott Benner 6:15
no, I thought you were trying to get to budget, but you didn't know the word no. I was

Arden Benner 6:19
trying to get to the point that I've never actually met a human being who does that.

Scott Benner 6:23
Okay, well, and, like,

Arden Benner 6:27
not just because I'm, like, 20, like, it's not like, oh, like, my 20 year old friends don't do it. Like, I've met their families. I've met other like, I don't know a single person who actually does that. And if you're not doing that, how you actually know also, how about this? How about people who say they don't have money and then they whip out, like, $400 and buy stuff.

Scott Benner 6:47
Diabetes comes with a lot of things to remember, so it's nice when someone takes something off of your plate. Us, med has done that for us. When it's time for Arden's supplies to be refreshed, we get an email rolls up and in your inbox says, Hi, Arden, this is your friendly reorder email from us. Med. You open up the email. It's a big button that says, Click here to reorder, and you're done. Finally, somebody taking away a responsibility instead of adding one us. Med has done that for us. An email arrives, we click on a link, and the next thing you know, your products are at the front door. That simple, us, med.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, I never have to wonder if Arden has enough supplies. I click on one link, I open up a box, I put this stuff in the drawer, and we're done. Us. Med carries everything from insulin pumps and diabetes testing supplies to the latest CGMS like the libre three and the Dexcom g7 they accept Medicare nationwide over 800 private insurers, and all you have to do to get started is call 888-721-1514. Or go to my link, usmed.com/juicebox, using that number or my link helps to support the production of the juicebox podcast. This is from a listener. Thank you for introducing me to cozy Earth. For my birthday, I bought stuff to update my bed sheets, comforter and a blanket. It honestly made our lives better. My husband and I used to have a conversation in quotes every single morning about who pulled the covers so far to their side, or how we were too hot or too cold. That never happens. Now, both of us sleep better and more comfortably, and don't get me started on the clothes you all should just try one piece. Take this as a sign to go to cozy earth.com and use the offer code juice box at checkout. When you do, you'll save 40% off of your entire order. Doesn't matter how many sheets or towels or clothing pieces, items, whatever you call clothing, however many you put in your cart, you're going to save 40% when you use the offer code juice box at checkout. Okay, so you've known people, Oh, I know this story. You know people who are always like, I don't have money, I don't have they cry poor right at every turn. We're getting into an Uber I can't help we're at dinner. I can't pay like that. And then suddenly, when they want something, there's plenty of money for it. Yeah, it's crazy. Maybe that's how they're saving the money by not paying for the little incidentals. And then they, they, you know, these 510, $20 add up for them.

Arden Benner 9:28
That's a different story.

Scott Benner 9:29
I'm just saying that is a different story. Okay, so let's start with this, because you're going to get a job at some point in your life, right? God, I hope so. Okay, let's hope that happens, and then they're gonna pay you. We don't know how much, not really important for the conversation. Do you understand how that's gonna happen?

Arden Benner 9:51
Yeah, I'll get this degree. And pray I understand. I

Scott Benner 9:55
meant when you physically have a job and it's time for payday. Do you know what happens? They pay me like. What are you talking about? I'm saying, Do you real? Do you know how that like, if somebody said to you, okay, like, you know, it's time you work here now, you know they're probably going to want to direct deposit into your account, or they're going to hand you a physical check. There's only, like, one of two ways it's going to happen. Yeah, I understand that. Okay, all right, so you have to have a bank account. Wait, let

Arden Benner 10:17
me. Let me rephrase my question. I understand how life works. Dad, I don't understand how money works. I know that you have to hand someone a check. Don't need to help me with that. I don't understand retirement funds, how that money adds up, like, that whole thing, like, I don't get it. Okay,

Scott Benner 10:36
perfect. So first, let's go over this. When you get paid as a US citizen, as the taxpayer. Here's what's going to come out of your check. You are going to pay federal income tax. You're going to pay a state income tax in most states, there are some states where they don't have that you're going to pay a tax to Social Security, a tax to Medicare, a local tax, sometimes Employee Benefit deductions, like if you have a 401 K and you're funding it, the money will come out of your check before you get paid. That's called pre tax money. So you're able to save $10 if you put $10 into a 401 k, the entire $10 goes into it. You're not taxed until you close out the 401 K and take the money out. If you take it out sooner than before you're retired, then they'll tax more of it. If you wait till you're retired, they'll tax less of it. If you have life insurance, health insurance, that all will come out. If your health insurance is through, the company will come out there. If you work in a union situation, that you may pay union dues from your taxes too. Now I'm going to just say here at the 2024, rate, uh, let's, let's like, what's the what's an amount of money? Like, what's what do most people make? Like, what's an average amount of income for people? I just want to pick an average Hold on a second also,

Arden Benner 11:53
like, I don't understand

Scott Benner 11:56
how people can buy houses anymore, okay? Because where do you get all that money from? Where

Arden Benner 12:02
do you get all that money from? The market's only going up, and all the people who are starting to buy houses now are probably people who are, like, in their 30s, right? Starting a family. At the rate we're going, they probably don't have enough money to buy houses. So is that going to change? Like, our house is not going to be a thing as frequently as they used to be. Is it going to be more apartment living? Like what homeownership

Scott Benner 12:27
will be down is what you're wondering? Yeah, is that true? We're going to get to that because that's probably happening already. So I put in $63,000 as an income. Because I asked, you know, what's the average US salary? It gave me $63,000 so for the 2024, brackets, for a single filer, you'd pay 10% on income, up to $11,000 12% on income up to between 11,040 4000 these are like, I'm not saying the exact numbers, 22,000 on income, between 44 and 95 so for a person making $63,000 a year, The first 11,000 is taxed at 10% you pay $1,100 to the federal income tax. Payment from the first 11,000 the next portion is taxed at 12% or $4,047 so those, the remaining portion is taxed at 22% that's the amount over 44,000 which is $4,025 so a person who makes $63,000 a year will pay $9,172 in federal income tax. So take your 63k and subtract nine grand right off the top. You don't have that anymore. Okay, so hold on a second. So we're gonna say your job is $63,000

Arden Benner 13:40
and you lost. I get this. So then what do you do? Oh,

Scott Benner 13:46
I see. All right, hold on a second. I'm gonna keep going. So we have the number. You're gonna lose about $4,000 in Social Security tax. You're gonna lose about $1,000 for Medicare, excuse me, Medic, yeah, Medicare and, and and there's going to be a state income tax like, here's an example. Like, Texas has a zero state, Florida has 10% so it could be anywhere in there. So we're just, we'll, we'll ignore that for now. But you make $63,000 you live in Texas, you really only have 50 grand. Now, are you going to put money into your 401, K to try to save for the future? Maybe you are. I don't know how much that's going to be. That comes out of the 49 as well. You know, what would people say normally, is, you put in as much as you can. Some people put in 2% people put in some companies match up to a certain percentage. So like, some companies will tell you, like, hey, put in up to 6% we'll match up to 6% so if you put in 6% of your income pre tax, which over here would be, I don't know how much, like 3600 a year. Then they'll put in 3600 as well. And we'll get to how that, like adds up over time. So now you got $50,000 and what you're saying is, I'm out of college. I got 50 grand. I'm making a year. I don't have any money saved. How am I supposed to save up? Enough money while I'm renting somewhere to put a down payment on a house, right? Because, if you're like, what the Yeah, I'm hearing you. Because you have 50, say, you have 50 grand apartments at this point, rank, like small apartments range anywhere from, you know, a few $100 a month, depending on where you are, all the way up to, I've seen 1600 $1,900 a month in some like metropolitan areas, right? Yeah, around here in New Jersey, I think you're gonna easily pay $1,500 a month for a one bedroom apartment, yeah? So then the idea is maybe you'd go to a two bedroom apartment and pay $2,000 a month and then split that with somebody, and then now for a roommate. Now you got 1000 gone, but it doesn't matter. Let's say you're paying, let's just say you're paying $1,000 a month, which would be cheap for rent. So I got your 49 so good.

Arden Benner 15:49
I don't understand how, like, how 10 prices go up for things, but the wage doesn't go up. How is that allowed?

Scott Benner 15:58
Why don't incomes rise at the rate of inflation. You

Arden Benner 16:04
know, I understand inflation. I'm just saying, like,

Scott Benner 16:06
how come, that's allowed. How come? How come? Yeah, allowed. It's a free market. I took $12,000 off for rent. You're down to $37,000 now. You planning on driving a car? Yeah, okay, if you were to buy a car, like a new car that costs $50,000 that's a lot, but let's so let's say less, but let's just say 40,000 let's say you have a $40,000 car, $40,000 car loan. Right now rates are at like, 6%

Arden Benner 16:38
Oh, like, rates and like, Oh, someone else take care of it. When I was you can get, like a financial advisor, right to help you with this stuff, and they'll help you figure this out, right? Then you got to pay them. Yeah, but you have to pay them. It's so ridiculous. What about the fact that I learned, like a couple years ago that when you have a child, when you go to the hospital, have a child, you have to pay, like, an outrageous amount of money to make

Scott Benner 17:04
the because the hospital's a private organization. It's a company, yeah, what the like? So a $40,000 car loan at 6% and I spread it over seven years to make the payment as low as you could is. It says 84 months. So they're going to charge you a VIG interest on the money to lend you the 40 grand, right? Also, they're not going to just give you 40 grand. If the car is worth $40,000 they're going to expect you to put down a down payment of about $4,000 probably. So let's say you go to buy this $40,000 car after your first year. Now you got to give them four grand. So your 37,000 goes down to 32 33,000 and let's see what the payments are on this. So you're gonna pay on $40,000 I should have said 36,000 but on $40,000 you're gonna pay $584 a month for 84 months, and pay back 49,000 total dollars on the $40,000 you borrowed to buy a $40,000 car at today's interest rate of 6% from a bank, you're actually going to pay $50,000 for the car, 40,000 to the car company, 10,000 to the bank. They'll lend you the money. It's going to cost you about $584 a month. Yeah, see, I'm not following, okay, what part all of it? So it's just like, I Oh, okay, what part didn't you follow? Yeah, I

Arden Benner 18:32
just told you all of it.

Scott Benner 18:33
There's a company that makes a car Ford, okay? They tell you, it's cost you $40,000 you walk in, then you go, I want that $40,000 car, please. They say, Okay, you're gonna think of us $4,000 they say, Okay, fine, give us $40,000 and you say, I don't have $40,000 and they might say to you, well, go to a bank and try to borrow $40,000 from them. So let's say you go to your bank and they agree to give you $40,000 first of all, you don't own the car. The bank does. The bank buys the car and lets you drive it while you're paying them for it. See, I

Arden Benner 19:07
hate that. It's not great. Just give me the car.

Scott Benner 19:12
It's your car. You'll drive it every day, trust me, if you crash it into somebody that's on you, not the bank.

Arden Benner 19:17
Sometimes you ever just think about all this stuff, and you're just like, literally, we're on a floating rock, and we're all gonna die pretty soon. So just, honestly, just,

Scott Benner 19:27
that's all. It's just stop, drive a car.

Arden Benner 19:30
Yeah. Like, what are we doing?

Scott Benner 19:32
So you would like it if the people at Ford Motors showed up didn't, like, ask you for any money for their car, and maybe in in exchange, you could work in a town where the people at Ford work, and if they needed food, you'd give them food, and if you needed a car, they'd give you a car. Vice versa, the people who made the seats would give the like we'd all trade for everything. I mean, then your whole life would be making the the seats for the cars to give to Ford so that some. Anybody else would give you food so that, like, you know, I mean, like, it would be,

Arden Benner 20:03
I understand we need money, you know, because we aren't great at everything. We know how to do everything. Other people know how to do things that we can't do, and we need their help, and therefore we need something that is going to force them to help us. And, you know, whatever, I

Scott Benner 20:16
get that under something to get people out of bed in the morning. So, yeah, money,

Arden Benner 20:21
right? But sometimes I'm just like, guys come on. Like, if someone needs to go to the hospital and they can't go because they can't afford it, it's just like, guys come on. Like,

Scott Benner 20:32
that sucks, right? So you think maybe it would be nice if healthcare was somehow subsidized by the government, that's a whole different problem. Okay, so let's go back to your car. Now, it's $584 a month, every month, but you only make So let's kind of go backwards a little bit. You only make $63,000 a year. Yes, okay, now what if I have children? Yeah, you shouldn't do that, probably. So you have children like, what? What am I going to do? So keep in mind that this $63,000 you you're gonna lose, we gave like the full number that you'll lose every year in taxes, which is 9000 for the Fed, 4000 for Social Security. So 910, 1112, 1314, probably about 15 grand, right? But you gotta split that up over 12 months. So if I take 15,000 divided by 12, it's 1250 so I take the 63,000, divided by 12, you're going to make about $5,200.50 cent, $5,250 a month. Then we're going to, like, take out, like, let's just say 1200 for taxes. So you're really going to bring home $4,000 a month, or $1,000 a week. Of that you're going to pay. This is why you're not going to end up with a $40,000 car. But of that, you're going to pay $584 for the car. Now you're down to $3,400 and we said maybe $1,000 for rent. Now you're down to $2,400 you're gonna a car is gonna need gas. Gas is expensive. Let's say you gotta drive to work. Let's take out $400 for gas and auto insurance. Now you're down to $2,000 now, were you planning on eating? No.

Arden Benner 22:15
Not anymore, not so like,

Scott Benner 22:20
also, you have a fair amount of medical needs, you know, you're gonna absolutely have to get your health insurance from the company. I assume that's gonna cost, I don't know about, probably three or $4,000 a year. So hold on a second. Um, let me just take 3000 divided by no but also

Arden Benner 22:40
to get like, good insurance, you need a good job. Yes,

Scott Benner 22:44
there are a lot of companies that give you crappy insurance, and that's so then,

Arden Benner 22:49
let's say I can't get a job like that. Great right away. Then you have to, you have to pay more, even though you're making less. Basically, yes, I just

Scott Benner 22:57
took out $250 for health insurance payments a month, but that's just to have the insurance that took you down to 1800 then you're actually gonna have to spend the money to get this stuff. So, but let's skip that for now. We'll go back to the medical stuff. How much do you think you're gonna need for food a month?

Arden Benner 23:12
God, I don't know. Wait, so off topic. But like, say you have a kid, right? And that kid wants a toy, yeah? But I want a pair of shoes, I have to give him the toy. He

Scott Benner 23:23
teach the kid to shoplift the shoes because the toy is cheaper. Okay, I don't know what you're gonna do there. We're down to $1,816 a month. We have to take out your food.

Arden Benner 23:32
Wait, why are you skipping past the real question?

Scott Benner 23:34
I think you have

Arden Benner 23:35
to buy the kid a toy. It's a choking hazard. I would never do that.

Scott Benner 23:39
How much do you think food costs for one person a month? How much does How much do not? Does do groceries cost for an American, adult monthly? $200 200 Oh, honey, I don't think that's gonna even get you a bag of beans. 300 a low cost plan is 250 to 300 a moderate cost plan 350 to 450 a liberal, like a liberal, like you're spending more is 500 to 600 let's say we put you in the middle and we take out $350 a month for groceries. Now you're down to $1,466 you've got leftover. I don't know what your medical stuff is going to cost. I know what we put out every year for it. It's a lot, but let's just take a number. Let's take $5,000 and divide that by 12 and say that your medical costs are $416 a month. This is round. I'm going to now remove that. Okay, so now we got the car, the gas, the car insurance, the rent, the food, the medical insurance, the taxes and the medical supplies. You have $1,000 left. How much are the shoes? Probably $1,000 now let me ask you, go ahead. Are you gonna have a pet by any chance?

Arden Benner 24:59
Chance? Oh, that's what I was gonna say. I was gonna say, what if I have three chameleons? Then you gotta buy crickets. I actually don't want that was a joke. Go ahead. Well, no, I'm not gonna have a pet because of this. You're

Scott Benner 25:12
definitely not gonna have a pet. A bag of dog food that we buy is like 40 bucks, and when Indy was alive, we needed two a month. Now we're using less, because basil's tiny. I mean, do you get your nails done? How about how about your eyebrow threading? What's that

Arden Benner 25:28
cost? So serious,

Scott Benner 25:30
I need to do that. So personal care, hygiene, makeup, it's like 12 bucks for Eyebrow threading. I'm taking that off minus 12. Are you planning on getting your hair cut?

Arden Benner 25:39
Yeah, I'm I'll be broke by the time this is over, I'll be in debt. Well,

Scott Benner 25:44
then that's what ends up happening, is that, is that eventually people use a credit card for something, and then,

Arden Benner 25:51
yeah, let's throw in there a Mrs. Degree. You're

Scott Benner 25:55
gonna get an Mrs. Degree. Yeah, that's, this is how it's going. Keep in mind, we have not gone over household goods, like cleaning supplies, kitchenware, furnishings you don't have. Yeah, I

Arden Benner 26:08
know. So, okay, so you're proving my point. I don't understand. I don't get it. How is it? How does that work? Well,

Scott Benner 26:13
I think what most people do is, when they start off, people give them furniture to get started if they have, like, friends or family, like, usually, sometimes your mom will be like, oh, yeah, I was thinking of getting a new sofa, which is code for, if I give you my sofa, will you take it? Because I don't really want a new sofa, but I don't want to offer to buy you a sofa. So, like, maybe you'll get stuff from people to get started with, but you're missing, like, we still haven't hit like, internet. Do you want to watch television? Yeah, I

Arden Benner 26:39
understand. I don't.

Scott Benner 26:40
I'm gonna take out.

Arden Benner 26:41
I get it. I don't need this interview. I'm just saying, right? It's ridiculous. Yes,

Scott Benner 26:47
you're gonna be, I don't under, yeah, I

Arden Benner 26:48
don't understand how you're supposed to do all this, and then how you're supposed to retirement fund. You're also supposed to have an emergency fund.

Scott Benner 26:56
Like, yes, what do they say your emergency fund should be? This people probably laugh out, I think they say the equivalent of two months of your pay. Hold on, how much money do they? Whoever they is, suggest you have

Arden Benner 27:14
people who are going to steal it from you. Emergency Fund,

Scott Benner 27:17
yeah. Then on top of that, you got to deal with the rest of the world trying to take your money. Everyone's going to try to take your money. Every phone call you get that you don't know of it's somebody who thinks that they is trying to get your money. Emergency Fund guidelines, three to six months of expenses. Oh my. So if you with what we just did here, three months of your expenses would be $12,000.06 months would be 24,000 and that's, you know, in case you lose your job, in case there's something like that happens, if you have, yeah, it's ridiculous. Yeah. So your questions are, what Go ahead.

Arden Benner 27:51
I guess my questions are to men between the ages of 20 to 24 if

Scott Benner 27:59
you're looking for a girl who needs insulin, you've got good health care. I

Arden Benner 28:05
don't know what question. I just don't get it. I just don't understand you're supposed to do. It just makes sense to me. So I will

Scott Benner 28:10
say this, when mom and I were first together, we did not make very much money, but it was a different time. Obviously, I'm old now. I'm 53 when mom and I got married, I was like, Are you sure you're 53 I'm 100% sure there that right now I'm 53 and if I was born in 71 and married in 96 so 8190 I was 25 when I got married, and back then, I think I made $20,000 a year and mom, but

Arden Benner 28:39
Is that, like, a different amount of money now, like, what would Yeah,

Scott Benner 28:43
let's see, what is $20,000 income in 1996 equivalent to it's gonna go through, like, the inflation cycle. Give you like a reasonable answer here, $40,000 that's crazy. Yeah, so if mom and I both made 20, which is about what we were like doing back then, then that would be the same as two people living together right now, making 80. And then we were married for a handful of years, before mom got pregnant with coal, and then it all started. Now we when we were first married, we lived in an apartment. It was a one bedroom apartment at a fireplace. It was the last fireplace I've ever had in a place I lived. Oddly, we paid just under $1,000 a month for it. It was very expensive. Back then we were probably, I don't remember how much we were making, but if we were making 40 and then we were paying taxes, and maybe we had, maybe we had, like, 35 after taxes. We did have health insurance. We were paying for that. We did try to put money in our 401, K, it wasn't a lot. Then we paid for the the apartment, food we you know, we had some, like, we'd go out some. Times, and, you know, to dinner or to a movie or something like that, that money was going but back then, a movie cost like $5 for a ticket, maybe, I mean, like, popcorn was a couple bucks. And

Arden Benner 30:10
so it's like, what 16, $17 for a ticket and go to a movie. Yeah, sometimes

Scott Benner 30:15
it's 20. They're like, do you want the screen to be bright 20? You know what? I mean, like, you want to, do you want us to project it through a tinfoil? Well, for that, we can do it for 15 So, yeah, so that's the problem. Is that everything is going to cost money, and kids are exponentially expensive, like they get more and more expensive the longer they're alive. That's tough. And healthcare is tough. People sometimes don't take their kids to the doctor because they can't afford it. People are rationing insulin because they can't afford it. Like, there's all kinds of stuff going on. So your question is, how am I going to get by? Is that right? And forget, get and almost forgetting, like, how do I save money and have extra and maybe try to succeed? But like, how am I going to live? That's everybody's question. So is that what you mean when you mean when you say I don't understand money? No, not really, but like, you know, you want to go understand

Arden Benner 31:08
I don't understand anything. So I couldn't even ask the questions, because I don't get it.

Scott Benner 31:12
Okay, here's one for you. Let's say that you put $2,000 Am I gonna have to add and subtract? I'm gonna do it for you, $200 a month in a 401 K, and let's like, be generous and say it makes 5% a year, which would be crazy if it did that. But okay, makes 5% a year. So I put in $200 a month into my 401 K and it makes 5% a year. How much would it make in the first year, first decade, and in 25 years? Sometimes chat GPT messes this stuff up, but let's take a look, see what it gives you. Puts out the formulas like it's doing something. So there's an interest rate, okay? And that interest compounds, which compound interest is something I have to admit, I understand about enough to say that I know how it's piling up, but to describe it would not be within my purview. So it looks like, right now, it's just explaining to me what it's doing. So here are the amounts you're good.

Arden Benner 32:23
This is not, this is completely like, off topic, but continue what you're talking about.

Scott Benner 32:28
After the first year, if you put $200 a month in, you might you'd approximately have $2,466 it says after 10 years, you'd have about $31,000 and after 25 years, you'd have approximately $119,000

Arden Benner 32:46
so okay, but then what that's 20 years later? So $119,000 is equivalent to, what $80,000

Scott Benner 32:52
you'll still be able to go to a movie,

Arden Benner 32:56
maybe one movie with popcorn.

Scott Benner 32:58
Oh, wait, yeah, with inflation, what is 119,000 worth in 25 years? By the way, anybody who's not using chat GP is he like this? Chat GPT like this. It really is valuable for stuff like this. It makes mistakes, but you just kind of have to run your eyes over

Arden Benner 33:17
it and hope for the best. But it's great for dating Chad. GTP, I'm

Scott Benner 33:21
saying to the point of the conversation to have $119,000 in accumulative savings 25 years from now. It says the approximate worth of it in today's dollars is $56,000 that's crazy. So you'll have to save $119,000 to have the buying power of $56,000 in 25 years.

Arden Benner 33:42
Yeah. So it's, yeah, there's no point. All right, I got it.

Scott Benner 33:45
You think what that teaches you is, don't save money? No,

Arden Benner 33:48
it just teaches me to, I don't know, jump off a bridge or something. Now, here's my question. Go ahead. This is what money and like all that makes me think of, like the 1% and like all that, whatever, how is now, this sounds kind of insane, but I'm actually kind of surprised that our world isn't like The Hunger Games, or like divergent or like those dystopian sort of things, because, like, I feel like at some point we're gonna all be like, I don't know. You know what I'm saying. Well, I want to make sure, are you looking up what the Hunger Games is right now? No,

Scott Benner 34:23
I'm what I'm asking is, is the poorest person in the United States is equivalent to the richest person where? So the point of it is, is that the poorest person here probably is living significantly better than most people on the planet?

Arden Benner 34:35
No, I understand that, yeah. But I'm just saying, like, I think it's interesting that our world isn't split up, like, I don't know, like, I feel like that's like, such a thing that could happen

Scott Benner 34:46
is that people would say, what's the point of this? Like, why am I trying so hard if I'm gonna be poor at the end, or if I'm gonna be poor the whole time? Like, that feeling,

Arden Benner 34:56
no, you didn't listen to a thing. I just said, Say it again. Well, do you. Know what the Hunger Games and Divergent series are?

Scott Benner 35:02
Yeah? There's like, all right, I got her, so it's that girl from the Okay? And they got different towns, right? They have different districts. And those people have different, like, jobs within the society,

Arden Benner 35:16
yeah? So like, district one is like luxury or something. District 12 is like coal mining. There's like, district eight is textiles, like that whole thing. But each district goes in, like, the number of, like, how much money they make, basically, okay. And then in divergent it's like they're split up into factions. So there's like, erudite Amity, Abnegation, candor, like all that. They kind of, like split the world up. And I think it's so interesting that our world isn't really split up like that, but like,

Scott Benner 35:45
what is it not just sort of differently

Arden Benner 35:48
it? I mean, it is, but it's not inhumane. I guess the way that

Scott Benner 35:54
we it depends on what group you're in. I guess how you feel about it. Well, yeah. I

Arden Benner 35:57
Well, yeah. But I hear, you know what? I

Scott Benner 35:59
mean, yeah, an example. It just says here, I'm

Arden Benner 36:02
just saying this because I'm saying, like, I feel like, as the years go on, money gets so, like, you either have it or you don't have it, and at some point isn't that gonna just, like, divide the world in half?

Scott Benner 36:14
Probably already has. It says here that a person making $14,000 a year, annually in the United States. So that's making $1,000 before taxes, and they're probably taxed at a fairly low rate, but that makes them wealthier than people living in places like Sub Saharan Africa and Southeast Asia, where incomes can actually be significantly lower than that, and poor people in the United States still often have, not always, of course, but often have basic amenities, some sort of healthcare, some sort of education, etc. And that's not true in other places. All right, so what's a poor college student like you supposed to do? You take any comfort from the fact that most people end up okay. Think they work it out.

Arden Benner 37:03
There's a difference between they end up okay, and they end up happy.

Scott Benner 37:06
You think happy is money?

Arden Benner 37:09
I mean, like, comfortable is money, right? I mean, there's a lot of people aren't comfortable. They're just, like, making it well,

Scott Benner 37:17
there are plenty of people who wake up, make money, give it away. It's gone by the end of the week and they start over again. There's some people who don't make it to the end of the week

Arden Benner 37:24
with the money that they have. Yeah, that's not comfortable. Are you what? Yeah, no,

Scott Benner 37:28
I'm saying, I don't think that's I think that definitely means not comfortable. But are you joking? Like, does it make you think about marrying somebody when you don't want to? No, I would never do that.

Arden Benner 37:39
I'm just saying, making jokes. I

Scott Benner 37:41
know I know I just didn't want, I didn't know if it, if it felt pressuring like that. Do you think people pick the thing they study at school based on how much money they're trying to make? I mean, some people, yeah, that's a shame. It's probably how we end up with people who don't like, like their job, what they're doing, knowing they're doing, care, just trying to keep their job. Well, chat,

Arden Benner 38:01
whatever you're using right now. Let me. Let me put it down, because it's like, helping, like, med students cheat through school. Oh,

Scott Benner 38:11
so you're telling me, five years from now, I'm gonna get a doctor who's like, let me just ask my phone real quick. Yeah, yeah. How do you know that's happening?

Arden Benner 38:18
Because I see videos of it online everywhere. Kids in like, lecture halls, like, supposed to be learning, like, biology and this and that, and they're just using chatgtp to do, like, do their quizzes and stuff.

Scott Benner 38:28
Do you think that's going to matter? Do you think it's gonna have a big impact? Yeah. I mean, I imagine it will, too. I'm just wondering what you

Arden Benner 38:37
think. Yeah, you know, I most of the world is just idiots. So yeah, I do think that. And then if idiots feel like they have the right to do something intelligent, like become a doctor,

Scott Benner 38:48
so you're saying, What if someone who does not have the capacity? I

Arden Benner 38:53
think that we live in a world where people think they can do anything now, and I don't like that. I don't like that. You want everybody to know their limits. Yeah, they I know my limits. Get me a lane like, Listen, I'm not. I'm not trying to go to school for finance to help you guys out. Because, look at me, I don't know. You get it. I don't know. I don't get it. Not my thing. So, so you would like people stay in

Scott Benner 39:20
their lane, yeah? But you think people have a feeling like I could get anything accomplished now because I can, I've help in my pocket. Oh, 100% Wow. Interesting. You're seeing that right now at school.

Arden Benner 39:32
I mean, I've been seeing it since I was, like, in high school, and of kids I went to high school with who are doing stuff, and I'm like, Oh, my God, that person would probably pull on a push door, like I can't believe that they're gonna slice someone open one day. Is that a thing you often say? Because that's hilarious. That's how I feel. Oh, okay, pull on a push door is just how I feel. They're just that type of person. Okay, let's

Scott Benner 39:58
go back. Do you. So you understand taxes now. No, but listen,

Arden Benner 40:04
it's a great conversation we had. What

Scott Benner 40:06
about like you understand about how you save for retirement? Or like through a 401, k, for example.

Arden Benner 40:10
No, I know that. I just, you know what I think I'm learning. I don't want to do all of this. Okay,

Scott Benner 40:15
so you would like to not be involved in these things. Yeah,

Arden Benner 40:20
I might need someone to take care of this, from anyone who enjoys money. You know, all those fun I don't believe

Scott Benner 40:25
most people enjoy talking about this stuff. I think it's just the people that do. I take care of the money here, and I don't enjoy it. Well, yeah, but you have a podcast. Some people go to school for like, finance and Oh, economic. Oh, I see people who, like, love, like talking about numbers and money, will probably enjoy it. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 40:44
so let's let them do it. Is

Scott Benner 40:46
that a tinder question? Do you enjoy money, not making it? I mean paying the bills, like physically writing out checks and going online and sending payments? Do you see, do you understand?

Arden Benner 40:58
Like to ask, I just like to ask people about their health insurance, honestly?

Scott Benner 41:01
Do you ask them that? Yeah, of course, I do. Do you understand how like credit ratings work? Oh, no,

Arden Benner 41:08
let's not do that. Okay?

Scott Benner 41:11
Because if you have poor credit, it decreases your borrowing power. Yeah. And then, instead of paying 6% which would be a good rate for a car loan, as of today, you could end up paying much more where we have that whole thing is so confusing, I don't understand it at all. Know how much credit card rates are right now?

Arden Benner 41:28
Oh, I actually just learned about this. Go ahead.

Scott Benner 41:32
Doesn't mean I know. Let's go with I feel

Arden Benner 41:35
like it's like between like seven to 12%

Scott Benner 41:37
18 to 25% APR. Oh, damn, which is nuts, right? So if I bought a $2,000 item on a credit card and could only afford to pay $40 a month in payments on an account with a 25% APR. How

Arden Benner 42:14
long? Oh, my God, could you do this any slower would

Scott Benner 42:18
it take to pay off the 2000 I'm asleep. This is gonna flatten your brain, by the way. So it's not you go out and you're like, I need a bed and a dresser and this and that, and I spend two by the way, good luck in a bed and a dresser and a mattress and everything for $2,000 but let's just say

Arden Benner 42:37
that happens. Good luck. It's gonna be ugly too. Well that might be true and ugly now, so

Scott Benner 42:44
also this thing told me there's an error, because the monthly payment of $40 is too low to even cover the monthly interest charge. So if you paid $40 a month on $2,000 to 25% you would never pay it off. You'd have to pay at least 4167 so let's say I pay 50 a month. Pardon, credit cards are maybe the worst decision you could make. You'd rather not have something than buy it on credit like this. Trust me, it will and

Arden Benner 43:16
could honestly, really you're supposed to start building your credit score though.

Scott Benner 43:19
Yeah, so you borrow money and pay it back immediately, like, I wouldn't put anything on a credit card. I couldn't pay off at the end of

Arden Benner 43:27
the month. You have to have that. So then how am I supposed to?

Scott Benner 43:30
Yeah, well, you're gonna, you're screwed. I haven't. I'm an adult, but like, you know you're, you're and a lot of people still can't. I'm just lucky that, like, we have two incomes, and we can do that, you know what I mean. But there are plenty of people who do this, and it is crazy. With a monthly payment of $50 it would take approximately, do you want to guess in

Arden Benner 43:50
years or months? Because, no, because I don't know what we're saying right now,

Scott Benner 43:53
if you paid $50 a month to try to pay back a $2,000 purchase on a credit card that was at 25% interest you would pay for seven years and three months to pay off the $2,000 that's 87 months And already 87 times 50 is $4,350 on 25% interest, you're gonna pay back the 2000 once over plus 350 you're gonna pay more than double the amount that you that you and where do you find out what happens when you buy a house? How much do you think a house car? You

Arden Benner 44:35
see what I'm saying when I'm like, oh my god, like, what am I supposed to do with my life?

Scott Benner 44:39
Yes, but doesn't this just tell you that the way society works is that you jump into the pool, you get a job, you buy a house and a car on credit. You make your payments every month, you try not to get cancer and you die at the end. Yeah, but for a young girl like me, Dad, it kills you. What about a How much do you think a house cost? Let's just say a $200,000 house. I just say $200,000 mortgage.

Arden Benner 45:04
I think that's, I think that's way below the average house price.

Scott Benner 45:08
It very well, maybe. But I'm saying, what about a $200,000 mortgage? I would

Arden Benner 45:12
say the average house price is probably $600,000

Scott Benner 45:16
what if I know average home cost in America. Google says median prices are Wow. It gives it state by state, but 354 30, Arkansas, 250 so I'm low, even for Arkansas. No, no disrespect to Arkansas. So let's go. Oh,

Arden Benner 45:37
I'm in a little disrespect. I'll

Scott Benner 45:38
put a lot of people listen from Arkansas. They're lovely people. $400,000 I'm sorry, mortgage at and let's see what the average interest rate is, average

Arden Benner 45:48
where, even, honestly, where is Arkansas on a map? I'm going to be so honest. All right,

Scott Benner 45:52
it's down to the left of Texas Near as I can, or of Tennessee. I think you

Arden Benner 45:57
know what? That's unfair to them, because you know Texas, that whole area, like, when you're looking at a map, you're only really looking at Texas. All right, hold on. So I'm

Scott Benner 46:06
doing $400,000 mortgage at 7% and meanwhile, I'm gonna look at a US map. No, I'm looking at the map. Yeah, it's right. It's to the west of Tennessee, is it not? I don't know. My phone won't load. All right, let's see, did you Did we say Arkansas? Yeah, yeah, I got it right. Well, I cursed. I didn't mean to curse. I knew it. I knew where Arkansas Wait Are we not supposed to curse on here. You can curse if you want, but now Rob has to cut it out. Oh, I've done it a lot. Arkansas, yeah. Oh, interesting, yeah, that whole

Arden Benner 46:39
little area right there. I've never thought about before, how

Scott Benner 46:43
much do I have to put down on a $400,000 mortgage? I mean, I think it's 20% like, is that what they want? Generally, 20% if you bought a $400,000 house, they'd ask you to put about $80,000 down just to get the loan. So then you're going to be financing $320,000 Does

Arden Benner 47:10
anyone live in New Mexico? Yeah,

Scott Benner 47:14
who I there's people listening that live in New Mexico and Arizona. And have you ever

Arden Benner 47:19
actually met someone who lives in New Mexico. I've met people who live in Arizona, but what about New Mexico? No never met them. I've

Scott Benner 47:25
interviewed people from New Mexico. How do you know that's true? Because they'd say, I live in New Mexico. They say that they do All right, ready? So you have a $400,000 house. You want to buy it, you have to hand them $80,000 in cash. So this is back to your question about, are people going to be able to buy houses? So if you make $63,000 a year, if you make $63,000 a year and live on a shoestring budget that, like we discussed earlier, and are able to save $500 a month, then it will take you about 160 months to save $80,000 and that is 13 years. So yeah, yeah, I guess that isn't gonna work out. So if in 13 years, saving $500 a month, you could save up $80,000 then you could give that $80,000 to a bank to buy a $400,000 house, which 13 years from now will probably cost more like $3 million then the 80,000 won't be enough

Arden Benner 48:27
and feel like I'm listening to a car commercial. Yeah.

Scott Benner 48:31
Well, you asked if you could buy a house, the question so the answer is, no, no.

Arden Benner 48:35
I didn't ask. I said, I can't I

Scott Benner 48:37
would think then the way this is happening is that people, young

Arden Benner 48:40
people are either inheriting their parents homes. They're either getting

Scott Benner 48:44
homes from family members. Maybe parents are giving them money as down payments. Maybe people are are co signing on loans and helping. I don't know. I mean, listen, like I said, we made 20 and 20, which apparently now is like 40 and 40. I couldn't buy a house back then. So the way we were able to buy a house, I'm happy to share this with people, is that mom and I bought a condominium, right? So we found a condo that was basically about the same amount of money every month as our apartment. We bought that thing. I think it was worth, I don't remember how much, not a lot. And somehow there was a was like a housing boom in the first two years that we lived there, and the value of the condo went up so much that we sold it took the money that we made from the sale and put it down on the house like so we couldn't afford a down payment. We just got lucky. We buy a condo. The value of the condo went way up. We sold the condo, took the extra money from the sale, put it down on a house, started over again. That house was a box, like it was terrible house, and I mean literally terrible, but it had a little bit of land. And we thought, okay, so now we have some land. And one day, maybe we can just build another house there. And that is what we ended up doing. But it took us the better part of 15 years to do that. Took a long time. I don't know, 15 years? Yeah, you don't, but you do gotta live, no. So what are you saying? You don't. You'd like to skip all that stuff in the beginning.

Arden Benner 50:20
Someone just make me famous. Like, honestly,

Scott Benner 50:24
but even that, like, fame nowadays, I

Arden Benner 50:26
know you have to be, like, a list celebrities, yeah, yeah.

Scott Benner 50:30
Fame's not the same as it used to be. I have a measure of fame, and that's meaningful. You don't get out of here. I do, but like, so some, some other people do too. Like, they just, they have, like, low level, like, you know, bubble fame, like, inside of it, to ruin the world. It has, yeah, do you know who said this would happen? Oprah Howard Stern,

Arden Benner 50:53
I almost got it honestly.

Scott Benner 50:55
Yep, I remember him saying, everybody can't be famous. I had to work really hard to be

Arden Benner 51:00
this famous. It's a terrible, terrible idea. Yeah,

Scott Benner 51:03
everyone has some measure of fame. Now, not everybody, but a lot of people

Arden Benner 51:07
do. Some people have to be above other people. It's just how it has to go. Why does it have to be like that? It just does. Has to be like that. Unless, Listen, I'm not one of the people who's above other people, and I wish I was, but I'm not, and I accept it, and I see how it is. And you know, even

Scott Benner 51:23
those people, it doesn't last for like, here, I'll name some people for you. Do you know who Hillary Swank is? I know her name, yeah. But that's it. She was incredibly famous at one point. Not, not anymore, even fame. The Fame is very fleeting. There are people right now that all of you are listening to and you flip by on your Instagram, or you're talking and ticking or whatever, and you go, I know that person. Oh my god. They're so famous. And six months from now, you won't see them anymore. They're famous so fleeting. It goes so quickly.

Arden Benner 51:53
I can't relate to that, because my whole like, Tiktok is like edits of like, terrible television shows.

Scott Benner 52:00
So I just like, I don't even know terrible television show edits. I

Arden Benner 52:04
don't actually know what's going on in the world. I just know what was going on in the world, like 10 years ago when the TV show came out.

Scott Benner 52:10
Gotcha All right? Well, you understand money any better now? No, you understand how you're gonna make your way in the world today with everything you've got, taking a break from all your worries sure would help a lot. This is the opening theme song to cheers. Wouldn't you like to get away? Do you know this one at all? I wish it would stop. Okay, you don't know the song at all. Gotcha, you're gonna leave school in a couple of years. Probably have to go to grad school, right? You can have all that cost of going to school. No, not grad school. No, oh, you're gonna go to, you think you might go to law trying to go to law school? Yeah. Okay, so you're gonna get your your undergrad, then

Arden Benner 52:51
maybe go to how long is grad school? Do you know how long grad school is? Can be

Scott Benner 52:55
one to two years, and sometimes longer, depending on what you're going for, because law school is three to four How long is law school? I just said, Hold on a second. I'm doing so no, I'm,

Arden Benner 53:07
you know, I'm about the same. You know, you can trust me and chat you to trust

Scott Benner 53:11
you. I'm building to an idea. What does it cost? All right,

Arden Benner 53:17
I'll just sit here and let it happen. I guess

Scott Benner 53:20
so a public law school with in state tuition could cost you between 20 and $40,000 a year. A public law school out of state could cost 30 to 60,000 a year, and a private law school is going to cost between 40 and $70,000 a year. So you're going to pay somewhere between 90,200 $1,000 to go to law school, then you're going to get out of law school. Owe somebody that money, and if you're lucky, get a job, but probably not say that. It'll probably take a year to get a job, at least get it at some point, but you have to pay the loan while you're waiting for the job. You don't know about this. Oh, we're gonna Arby's or something. I don't we've got the meats. I know what you're saying. You didn't have to do that. Why not? I'm trying to get a job. I'm trying to get a job getting an Arby's commercial gig. You think I could be the voice of the Arby's people?

Arden Benner 54:09
No, my God, I would turn the television off anyway.

Scott Benner 54:13
So now you're gonna get out right and you're gonna but now listen, what's happening right now is that

Arden Benner 54:18
just start a small business where I, like organize my fridge. It's what people do. Yes, we've also like a thing now, like, you can just do that. Wait,

Scott Benner 54:27
you're gonna start a small business to organize your refrigerator. Yeah, you see

Arden Benner 54:30
those women online who just wear, like Pilates clothes and organize food in their fridge and clean their countertops and put like little beads for like laundry into like jars, and they make money. Wait.

Scott Benner 54:42
They go to like, other people's homes and do this. No, they do it in their own home. They

Arden Benner 54:47
take a video of it, they put it online, and they make money. They don't make that much money. And in the background, they're like, Okay, guys, so today we're going to I'm like, oh my god, shut up.

Scott Benner 54:57
I happen to know how much money some people. Will make for doing influencer stuff, and it is a shockingly low amount of money. I know what they still make in I think it's ridiculous. I don't think it's enough to pay for law school, is what I'm saying. Now. I'm just trying to also, if you think about this, you're gonna have this undergrad degree when, when you're about, like, what? 2220

Arden Benner 55:18
Oh, don't. Don't tell people that I well, they that I've ruined my life. So

Scott Benner 55:22
you're gonna be 22 or 23 you're gonna still have three years of school. You're not gonna be like, you're gonna be like 27 when you take the bar. Yeah, I

Arden Benner 55:30
know I've thought about it. I don't want to talk about it to be fair, from 27 is it that much different from being 26 No, it's not. No, I

Scott Benner 55:37
don't think that's not what I was gonna say. What I was gonna say is, what if, at the same time you're like, spidey senses. Tell you you should make a baby. That happens to ladies?

Arden Benner 55:45
I don't think I'm gonna make a baby. Yeah, I don't know what happened. So many problems. It's gonna be like a mutant. Well, what'll

Scott Benner 55:51
be wrong with it?

Arden Benner 55:52
I don't know. There's just a lot wrong with

Scott Benner 55:54
me. You won't understand money. For certain, it'll be like, What is this? And

Arden Benner 55:58
everyone's got, like, depression and anxiety nowadays, so just whatever, throw my problems at someone else's problems. Oh, god, you're

Scott Benner 56:04
afraid that if it's gonna come out, you're gonna meet a boy with depression and anxiety, and then you're gonna have type one diabetes and like, Hashimotos. I don't have Hashimoto I'm sorry, hypothyroidism. And then that all gets mixed together, and then the baby comes out, and it's got all those problems. Yeah,

Arden Benner 56:20
it's like, Jack Jack from The Incredibles, but it's not cool.

Scott Benner 56:24
It's the other version of Jack Jack. Also Jack Jack's not really the cool version, isn't he, like a monster.

Arden Benner 56:29
He can, like, turn into, like, the devil and all this. But, you know, he's a superhero. My kids just gonna, like, have a lot of medical issues.

Scott Benner 56:37
I think they're gonna make another Incredibles movie. I mean, they should. It's

Arden Benner 56:41
the best Pixar movie. Is it? What's the most overrated Pixar movie? I have my answer.

Scott Benner 56:47
Wally, no, okay,

Arden Benner 56:50
everyone's gonna hate my answer.

Scott Benner 56:52
Hold on. Oh, you don't like it. No, I

Arden Benner 56:54
don't dislike it. It's just overplayed.

Scott Benner 56:58
Finding Nemo No, ratatouille. Ratatouille. Ratatouille is good, solid.

Arden Benner 57:05
It's a good movie, and it's been ruined for me.

Scott Benner 57:08
They pushed a down your throat too much.

Unknown Speaker 57:10
Yeah,

Scott Benner 57:11
they do. I will never forget watching Bugs Life first run in a movie theater and sitting there and thinking, Oh, my god, is this what animation looks like now, this is amazing. That was that long ago. What do you think of that? I don't have a lot to think about on that one. What's your favorite Pixar movie? It just told you the incredible. It's not inside out. I

Arden Benner 57:33
do like inside out. Wait, actually, let me look at the Pixar movies real quick. I'll

Scott Benner 57:37
tell you what's this. Is how we're going to end this episode by ranking the Pixar movies list all Pixar

Arden Benner 57:43
films. My God, can you stop with that thing over there? Just google them yourself. Hey,

Scott Benner 57:49
I mean, I could just Google Pixar films. I'm gonna go through them and I'll tell you how I feel about them. Okay, I have them in order. I don't have them in that order. Go ahead. All right, first,

Arden Benner 57:59
let's talk about, we said The Incredibles. That's the best picture. If y'all say that just right away, cars I've never cared for the cars movies you don't like the cars, I've just never cared for them. No, okay. Oh, another great movie, right? I would say right behind the Incredibles, Monsters, Inc. Monsters Inc, is a great movie, all right,

Scott Benner 58:24
no one talked that way about it. Um,

Arden Benner 58:27
the Toy Story movies, you know, I would say if there was like, a list, they'd be right in like, the middle, which I guess is a low for some people, but it's like, Ah, God, was there, like, five of them. Now, like,

Scott Benner 58:37
I've had enough, there's three. Hasn't been there's not there's four, wait, there's Oh, there's four. My God, there is Toy Story four. Have I seen Toy Story four?

Arden Benner 58:45
Yeah, I had, like, the shits really bad that day we were at the movie theater. How you remember Toy Story four? I do. It was in the summer, and I just remember like, oh, I had my period, and I had the shits, and I also drank a slushie, and everything was going terribly, and I missed, like, kind of the end of the movie. And I came back and Little Bo Peep was like, kissing Woody. And then we went home, and I, all I could think was, like, what just happened?

Scott Benner 59:12
Little Bo Peep was kissing Woody, huh? All right. Oh, what? What else you got there? Um,

Arden Benner 59:17
Finding Nemo. Great movie. Probably more so the top of the list. Oh, I don't know what I'm clicking on over here. Oh,

Scott Benner 59:26
can I go through them in like, year order?

Arden Benner 59:30
Yeah, you know what I'll give you like a thumbs up, thumbs down, neutral.

Scott Benner 59:33
Toy Story, neutral. 1995 Bugs Life, 1998 neutral, I like bugs, life, Toy Story, 299 I'm neutral about all the toy stories, Monsters, Inc, 2000 Oh, one thumbs up. Finding Nemo thumbs up. Incredibles, double thumbs up. Cars, thumbs down. Ratatouille, neutral. OmniPod Wally. Wally

Arden Benner 1:00:02
is also overplayed. So I'll just do like, but it's a, it's a great movie, but overplay. So I'll do a neutral

Scott Benner 1:00:07
for that one. Up. Up is great. Thumbs up. People met Sanj in the first episode of this. With you for a moment. She loves. She on the phone in it. She is on the phone in it. Yeah. My god, she's she's like, she's just, like, she's like, just, she's like, she's like, Yo all I heard you say was, No, you shouldn't plug your Instagram because I couldn't hear her. And then then she's like, I just wanted to let you know that I just messaged you a tick tock. You should check out my comment because you're gonna love it. And that's it. And she's gone up is really good. But Sanj cries

Arden Benner 1:00:40
a lot. Sanj cries every single time she watches up every single time. Toy Story,

Scott Benner 1:00:44
three neutral cars, two thumbs down, brave. Okay, you know what

Arden Benner 1:00:52
very controversial, Merida is one of my favorite princesses. Okay, so, but I really don't love the movie, but I love when she's like, I'll be shitting for my own hand. I'm like, yeah, yeah, Merida. And then she like, turns her mom into a bear. And I'm like, well, why'd you do that? But so that's neutral for

Scott Benner 1:01:15
me. Monsters University, thumbs up. Inside Out, thumbs up. The Good Dinosaur I've never seen that. Yeah, I have to tell you, I took hold of that I remember, and it wasn't a favorite for mine. Finding Dory. Thumbs up. I do like Finding Dory cars three,

Speaker 1 1:01:34
but I just, I don't care for these cars, movies, cocaine.

Scott Benner 1:01:41
I don't like Coco. Okay, everyone likes Coco, and I don't like Coco. The art and it's awesome. It looks awesome. I know I just don't like it Incredibles two better or worse than Incredibles,

Arden Benner 1:01:54
one worse, but not bad at all. Still, a thumbs up. Then Toy Story four is next. My experience for toy. Story four was a thumbs down, but I give the movie a

Scott Benner 1:02:03
neutral. Okay. Now here, this is going to be interesting. Movie, not good, but Tom Holland said it on, oh, onward. I didn't like that movie. Yeah, it wasn't good. Uh, soul, remember soul? Oh, I'd

Arden Benner 1:02:19
love soul. Thumbs up for soul. Here's

Scott Benner 1:02:20
what I don't know about soul. I really loved it too, but it came out during covid, right? So we were all just like, please. Something happened. And then Pixar was like, Here, we'll give you a brand new movie you can watch in your home. And we were like, thank I

Arden Benner 1:02:33
think, I think soul has one of the best quotes from a Pixar movie. Really find it. Okay, yeah, I'll find it. Keep going. Okay. Uh,

Scott Benner 1:02:40
Luca. I didn't like Luca. Is Luca, the one where the boy is the fish and everybody's Italian, yeah, I love that.

Arden Benner 1:02:49
But also, I watched Luca the day after we put Indy down. So I, you know, maybe that wasn't a good idea. I

Scott Benner 1:02:54
really enjoyed Luca. Try watching it again. We're gonna get a lot of smoke for this next one. Have you? Have you seen turning red? Oh, I've

Arden Benner 1:03:03
seen that. Oh, I hated that. You didn't like it. No, she has diabetes. I don't care. It was terrible.

Scott Benner 1:03:09
I didn't see. Oh, wait, I may be. I've seen bits and pieces of it. So something about hockey, right? Like the girl plays ice hockey, that's,

Arden Benner 1:03:15
that's an inside out. She plays hockey.

Scott Benner 1:03:18
Oh, then turning red. I've

Arden Benner 1:03:19
never seen, guess you have, I've seen it. God, you know what? It was so bad. I forget what it's about. Okay,

Scott Benner 1:03:25
I do love the little short where they eat the dumplings. That's good. I don't know what that's called either light year. I've never seen Have you seen light year? I don't know what that is. It's a Buzz Lightyear film. Oh, with Chris Evans.

Arden Benner 1:03:38
No, never seen it. I

Scott Benner 1:03:39
haven't seen that. I realized um, recently that Chris Evans is much shorter than I thought he was. He's beautiful, elemental, Elementals. Oh, terrible, is it? I've never seen it, yeah. And then there's one called Elio that's not out yet. I don't

Arden Benner 1:03:59
know. Okay, okay, ready? This? This is the um, yeah, go ahead. This is the quote from um, from Seoul. So he's talking outside to like an older woman. I think that she might like work at the place that he's, I don't know something like that. And she says, I heard this story about a fish. He swims up to this older fish and says, I'm trying to find this thing they call the ocean. The ocean says the older fish, that's what you're in right now. This says the younger fish. This is water, but I want is the ocean. But the way that she says it in the movie, and like with the conversation they're having, is probably, I want to say one of the best Pixar scenes ever. You probably just

Scott Benner 1:04:37
freaked out everybody who's listening, who really pays attention to the podcast, because I very frequently try to get them to read a college commencement speech called, this is water. It starts with that parable. Was it actually? Yeah, oh, I

Arden Benner 1:04:54
didn't know that. Yeah. That's like my favorite Pixar scene. Yeah, I was, I remember I was watching, I put on soul. Last year at school, when I was I just wanted to die, honestly, there never go to SCAD. But I was sitting in my bed thinking about how much better life could be, and I put so long because I was like, this is, like, one of those sad but uplifting, but like, whatever movies I put it on. I'm sitting in bed, I'm writing something, and she said that, and I just started crying. And I was like, OmniPod, get me out of here.

Scott Benner 1:05:23
I have you never seen me give a little book to people as a graduation gift. Give the book to everyone but me, yes, because I can give it to you when you

Arden Benner 1:05:30
graduated from college, yeah, but now I've set that back 17 years, so Well, I'm gonna

Scott Benner 1:05:34
give it to you when you get your undergrad. But it's called, this is water. It starts with that parable. Oh, wow, that time my frontal lobe will be developed too. Yeah, you're gonna understand interest and compound interest and everything. Yeah, all right, this was good. I love you. I'm glad we got to see each other for an hour. Okay, I'm

Arden Benner 1:05:50
not going anywhere, and we could still talk after this. Yeah, I

Scott Benner 1:05:52
know, but I've got other things going. I've got texts here from clients, and I gotta, I gotta work, I gotta be I got a life here.

Arden Benner 1:05:59
Oh, okay, I guess I'll just go. Then

Scott Benner 1:06:03
the hell. Oh, that's just what it is. Plus we, I mean, how much of this do you want people to listen to you talking about? I'm not saying that they have to listen to this. No, I'm saying it's an hour and eight minutes long. We gotta, like, it's time to end. Yeah, I

Arden Benner 1:06:14
know I thought we were done. Are we not done? We've been recording the whole time? No, yeah. But I thought, like, oh, it was over. Now just say talking.

Scott Benner 1:06:20
No, no, we're done. But I do want to say this real quickly before I stop the recording, so we're not done. Oh, my God, right. The short, some of the short movies by Pixar are excellent. And the one that sticks out my head as just enjoying it the most, Jerry's game for the birds. And there's one is

Arden Benner 1:06:39
Jerry's game, the little chess match. Yes,

Scott Benner 1:06:41
I really, let me look I also really like one man one man band is

Arden Benner 1:06:46
that? I That's like they, they don't speak in that one, right? They don't speak in a lot of them.

Scott Benner 1:06:56
Like when they took the Luxo Jr out of the beginning of the Pixar movies, I was disappointed, like, the lamp that comes bouncing in, I

Unknown Speaker 1:07:03
take care.

Scott Benner 1:07:05
Yeah, I don't. I didn't like, oh,

Arden Benner 1:07:07
I have, no, I don't have any pitch. So that was terrible.

Scott Benner 1:07:10
And BA, oh, I think was the one where they make, Oh, I like lava, lava, yeah, where the island, like falls in love, right?

Arden Benner 1:07:18
Oh, the one man band, yeah, I like that one.

Scott Benner 1:07:22
Did you say Jerry's game? Yeah, yeah, I like that one. There's this one short, but I can never remember the name of it. I

Arden Benner 1:07:30
really don't know what it's called. I don't know if it was Pixar, but it's about, like, this man and this woman, and they're like, sitting on a bench, okay? And like, I remember, like, he has a briefcase or something, and his papers fly everywhere. Okay? I saw it when I was, like, nine years old. I can I'll never be able to, like, I don't remember what it was. It's

Scott Benner 1:07:53
called Paperman. Paperman, it was released in 2012 and premiered before the movie wreck. It Ralph. Oh, maybe it did. Yes, it was paper man, yeah, I've never, I don't know if I know it. How did you chat? GPT, oh, my god. How

Arden Benner 1:08:10
did you find that

Scott Benner 1:08:11
I chat GPT, the following man and woman on bench, papers fly Pixar. Paper man was released in 2012 and premiered

Arden Benner 1:08:20
before meeting the girl of his dreams on a commuter train. Office worker uses a fleet of paper airplanes to get her attention after spying her again in a skyscraper window.

Scott Benner 1:08:29
Have I ever seen that one? I don't think I've seen I don't know,

Arden Benner 1:08:32
but I was like, nine, and I was like, Oh my God, that's adorable. You

Scott Benner 1:08:36
like that one? Well, you can watch it on the on the YouTube if you want Disney plus YouTube. All right, I don't know if you can YouTube it or if you can YouTube people's reviews of it. Why would I want to do that in what world I know? Yeah, I'm gonna have to, like, I'll go to Disney plus. I'm gonna watch it today. That's what I'm gonna do when I'm all done. All right, say goodbye. Okay, goodbye.

Huge thanks to cozy Earth for sponsoring this episode of The juicebox podcast. Cozy earth.com use the offer code juicebox at checkout to save 40% off of your entire order. The conversation you just enjoyed was brought to you by us. Med, us. Med.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, get started today and get your supplies from us. Med, if you're living with type one diabetes, the after dark collection from the juicebox podcast is the only place to hear the stories that no one else talks about, from drugs to depression, self harm, trauma, addiction and so much more, go to juicebox podcast.com up in the menu and click on after dark there, you'll see a full list of all of the after dark episodes. You can also search. Search your podcast or audio player for juicebox podcast after dark. All right, kids, we're done. We're at the end. Just do me one last favor if you can, if you could, please, if you have the need or the desire for something that one of the sponsors is providing, please use my links or my offer codes. They help the show so much, and that means me, you're helping me to make this podcast every day. You're helping me to support the private Facebook group do all the things that I'm doing. I'm not asking you to buy something you don't want or something you don't need, but if you're going to get one of these items, use my links or my offer codes. They help me a ton. Thank you so much for listening and for supporting. I really do genuinely appreciate it. I'll be back very soon with another episode. The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording. Wrongwayrecording.com. If you have a podcast or you're making an album or have some other audio needs, check out. Rob you.

#1320 Good Puddin'

Barb, diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at 44, shares her family's extensive history of autoimmune diseases.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends, welcome back to another episode of The juicebox podcast.

Look at this. Barb is 64 she was diagnosed at 44 that's 20 years since she was diagnosed. She also has OmniPods. Has type one. Interesting. He was diagnosed and he was 10. Sorry, I just read this to you. I don't know if you realize it or not. She's with she's a twin. Look at that. It's interesting. Celiac and hypothyroidism the family, other autoimmune stuff runs rampant through her family history. Well, I guess we're gonna find out all about it now, aren't we? 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. 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 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. Of course, if you have type one, or your child has type one, and you're a US resident completing the survey AT T 1d, exchange.org/juice box would be greatly appreciated. This show is sponsored today by the glucagon that my daughter carries. G vo hypo pen. Find out more at gvoke, glucagon.com. Forward slash juice box. 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. Usmed.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 this episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes, and later in this episode, we're going to be speaking with Heather, who will talk about the importance of education and understanding the impacts of hyperglycemia. Medtronic diabetes.com/hyper diabetes.com/hyper.

Unknown Speaker 2:24
Hi. My name is Barb.

Scott Benner 2:26
Barb. How are you?

Barb 2:27
I'm well, thanks. Good morning.

Scott Benner 2:29
Good morning. And you're an audio engineer. Is that correct? You're

Barb 2:35
not quite remember, fake it till you make it. Tech person here, yeah,

Scott Benner 2:40
you're doing you're doing well now where you sound terrific. So let's see what we want to know. How old are you? How old were you when you were diagnosed? All that stuff.

Barb 2:50
I'm 64 years old. I was 44 when I was diagnosed. So 20 years you have to tell me if you want the story, because it's that will take a while in and of itself. I have a two boys. One is type one. I'm one of 12 kids, large, large, extended family. Wow.

Scott Benner 3:13
How many kids do you have?

Barb 3:16
I have two. They're now 27 and 25 and the 27 year old was diagnosed with type one when he was 10. When he was

Scott Benner 3:25
10. Are there other autoimmunities in your family? Did your husband have anything or on his side or

Barb 3:30
Well, Scott, my whole story is around the fact that I'm one of 12 kids. I'm a twin, right in the middle of the pack. It's it's kind of fun and games. When I go to the doctor and they ask, what, tell us your family history, and I say, how many days do you have lots of autoimmune issues within my family? I'm the only sibling with type one, but we have a niece with celiacs. We have several hypothyroidisms. We have showjourns. We have what else, an aunt with lupus, so it's been kind of somewhat rampant, and Barbie makes your Irish Catholic close German, Catholic German. Okay, all right. You know, when I was small, Scott and my older brothers and sisters friends would make that comment. You know, Catholic, right? I had no idea what they were talking about. And now I do,

Scott Benner 4:27
yeah, you didn't know that they thought your parents were building an army for the Lord.

Barb 4:34
Exactly. I

Scott Benner 4:35
don't even know. I don't even know if it's that sinister. I think, I think the Catholic Church is just like, make more babies. We need people donating. So, hey,

Barb 4:43
yeah, that's, that's another podcast, T, 1d, in the Catholic Church. So my mother was type one. She was diagnosed at exactly the same age I was. Well, we think 44 she was one of nine children, and on her side. The family, there are at least 14 known type one diagnosis. Geez, really, really.

Scott Benner 5:07
And she said to herself, you know what I should do? I should make 12 babies.

Barb 5:11
You know, Scott, I don't.

Scott Benner 5:14
They didn't see it that way, did they? No, no, I

Barb 5:17
don't. I don't know that she knew. Because, you know, that's part of one of my messages to the world today is talk within your families about your type one diagnosis. You know, I was figured out that I was 12 when my mom was diagnosed. I don't remember her diagnosis. I put a call out to my living siblings to say, who remembers mom's diagnosis? Nobody. Nobody remembers how it happened. We think she was pregnant, or soon to be pregnant with her last child at 44 and she spent, you know, the rest of her life taking one dose of insulin a day, testing with urine strips the entire time. She died in 1998 At what age she died at age 69 pancreatic cancer. Okay,

Scott Benner 6:11
so unless you can get type one diabetes from a intercourse injury, I don't know how to guess what happened to your mom, but that seems most likely to me, that lady was probably having sex or cooking. You know what? I mean,

Barb 6:25
exactly, exactly, a lot of cooking. Oh,

Scott Benner 6:29
my God, there's so many kids, but that's really your it's a great message, honestly, because even modern day, the times I say like, oh, like, some I'll say, is it in your family? And they'll go, No, my cousin has it. I'm like, is that not in your family? Like, what are we talking about? Like, that's, that's in your family. But people still don't think about it that way all the time. It's interesting, right?

Barb 6:51
Yeah, and I wasn't diagnosed till after she passed, so I never, ever had a conversation with her about it, yeah, unfortunately, right, you

Scott Benner 7:01
know, but that's part of what, how she did it, right? Like, she went to a doctor and somebody said to her, this is what happens. You take this shot now, and she's like, just show me how to do it, because I got to get back to make him, you know, like, I'm busy and so, like, and it was not, never even spoken about. So you went back to your siblings, by the way. You said, living siblings. How many of them aren't

Barb 7:20
a brother and a sister have passed away. My brother passed away first of undiagnosed source of kidney disease at the age of what was Jim, 6263 and my younger sister passed away in 21 of stomach cancer, oh my gosh, yeah, it's not a, it's not a pretty picture, genetically in our family. But so we, we, there's 10, there's only 10 left. Yeah,

Scott Benner 7:52
you guys can only, you guys can only play basketball against each other now,

Barb 7:55
oh my gosh, yes. I

Scott Benner 7:57
do want to hear a little more about that remembrance you have of realizing, like we grew up with mom who had diabetes, and it was never spoken about.

Barb 8:04
All I remember, and my childhood memories are fairly scant as it is, but all I remember is we lived on a small dairy farm, kind of in the well, small dairy farm, and she would go out into a little anti way back door area to take her shot every day. I mean, when I think about what she did and didn't do, and she, you know, she, she had a ringer washer so she would, you know, on laundry days. And I learned this because I now have her medical notes, but only as far back. It wasn't to diagnosis, but the since, like 79 I think I have, but on her notes, it will say, you know, took 31 units of humologue. First. It was NPH, then Humalog, but only 29 on laundry days. You know, fascinating, right?

Scott Benner 9:02
Figure that out. Yeah, I get lower on laundry days, so I'll take less insulin. Yeah,

Barb 9:07
yeah, yeah, long periods of time between when she would see the doctor, between pregnancies, of course, you know, and she was done being pregnant when she had the diabetes. But, you know, I read some notes. You know, it was three years since she had been into the doctor. So, you know, she was self managing and living unbelievably, I remember a couple episodes of low blood sugar. It was never a thing, you know, nothing to get too excited about. Go take mom some juice, or it was very when I think back, you know, I'd give anything to just have a conversation with her of and to empathize. Boy, that must have really sucked. Yeah,

Scott Benner 9:51
she's in another level of alone because all those people around you, but you're not sharing it with them. The medical community is not real valuable at that point about it. This episode is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes. Learn more about hyperglycemia at Medtronic diabetes.com/hyper

Speaker 1 10:09
Well, Hi, I'm Heather lackey. I am a wife and mom. I have two children that are seniors in high school, and I've had type one diabetes for 34 years. And I'm a dietitian and a diabetes educator. You know, I'm the Director of Global Medical Education. I lead a team of clinicians that are developing content.

Scott Benner 10:31
How do you feel when your blood sugar's high? Irritable,

Speaker 1 10:34
thirsty, hungry.

Scott Benner 10:37
What do you enjoy most about your job? See

Speaker 1 10:40
education working. See people thriving. That's kind of the fuel that feeds, you know, my fire.

Scott Benner 10:48
What would you like to see community members talk about more hyperglycemia

Speaker 1 10:51
is the critical thing, right? That leads to short term and long term complications. Hyperglycemia is the greatest unmet need in the treatment of diabetes currently, and I think that that's where technology can help if

Scott Benner 11:07
you're having trouble with hyperglycemia and would like to talk to other people in the diabetes community. Check out the Medtronic champions hashtag, or go to Medtronic diabetes.com/hyper if you take insulin or sofony ureas, you are at risk for your blood sugar going too low. You need a safety net when it matters most, be ready with G VO, kypo pen. My daughter carries G vo kypo Pen everywhere she goes, because it's a ready to use rescue pen for treating very low blood sugar in people with diabetes ages two and above that, I trust low blood sugar. Emergencies can happen unexpectedly and they demand quick action. Luckily, jivo kypopen can be administered in two simple steps, even by yourself in certain situations. Show those around you where you store jivo kypo pen and how to use it. They need to know how to use GVO kypopen before an emergency situation happens. Learn more about why GEVO kypo Pen is in Arden's diabetes toolkit at gvoke, glucagon.com/juicebox, gvoke shouldn't be used if you have a tumor in the gland on the top of your kidneys called a pheochromocytoma, or if you have a tumor in your pancreas called an insulinoma, visit gvoke, glucagon.com/risk, for safety information. That's a lot to take on by yourself. But I mean, honestly, it sounds like she was, I mean, it sounds like she was more than capable of doing that, because, I mean, Jesus, like she was doing everything except, I mean, I don't know, I was going to say milking the cows, but she might have been doing that too, right?

Barb 12:43
She did some milking of the cows, bailed hay. She worked at a supper club on the weekends. She was, we call her small but mighty, you know, she was a force. She

Scott Benner 12:54
worked at a supper club on the weekends, like cooking or serving or something.

Barb 12:57
Server loved it, yeah? Well, we, we think she loved it because it, you know, got her out of the house. She

Scott Benner 13:03
loved it because your dad wasn't there with his pants off. That's why she was like, I need a break. I'd rather bring strangers food.

Barb 13:17
All right, I'm sorry and so but part of the challenge of kind of weaving together family history is the long span between the oldest and the youngest, and the fact that, you know, my oldest sister was a you'll love this was a nun for a while, ended up leaving before she took her final vows, but so she was out for A couple years of high school at a nunnery. And, you know, the older siblings as they left, everybody left home after high school, you know, there was no hanging around. There was no space. I would imagine somebody needed that bed. Yeah, so we all have different memories of what home was like and what, to be honest, we all grew up very independent, you know, we, we were all into kind of our own self care, and kind of still are. I mean, we're kind of, so

Scott Benner 14:10
it's a function of having that many kids, right? You just can't, like, you can't take care of all them. You can't make sure every one of them's doing, you know, exactly. Well, it's almost like, look, you're alive and you're competent. You got to get out of here. Like, I need the space I need, the time I need. I have two kids, and I feel overwhelmed by making sure they're okay. It's so I don't I get that I really do, like, it makes sense, did it feel like you were ignored? Or is that just how it was?

Barb 14:36
You know, it was, it was a matter of reality. I think that, you know, I always joke with friends that we just, we don't have a Hallmark card family, you know, I go look, you know, I'd look at Father's Day cards. Well, no, he didn't really teach me to ride a bike. Or, you know, I didn't have that kind of personal relationship with my parents. What? Is it bad? I don't, you know, it's just what it was. It was, what it was. We were, you know, we grew up to be very independent. We're amazed that we all turned out fairly okay. You know, all went to, you know, pretty much have all been to some type of post secondary, myself on down. Everybody went to college. I mean, it's pretty remarkable, advanced degrees, you know, the whole nine yards, so they did something, right? No, no,

Scott Benner 15:29
yeah, I'm not, it's funny. I hope that doesn't sound like this. I'm not saying anything's wrong with it. I'm just, it's, I'm interested in the human part of it, beyond that, like, obviously, they did the things they were supposed to do. And beyond, if you guys all went to school and, you know, etc, took, you know, know how to take care of yourselves. But I'm saying like, on a personal human, like little girl inside of you level, was it lonely, or was there no ability to be lonely because of the people? But there's a difference. Absolutely

Barb 15:54
it was lonely, absolutely okay,

Scott Benner 15:58
because you don't have contact and time with your parents, really, right? Yeah, right. So which one of your like when I say to you, oh, they cared more about there's a name that pops in your head, right? Well, here's

Barb 16:12
the deal. I was a twin. Right in the middle of the 12 there were six boys and six girls. Dad's joke was six of one half a dozen of the other. And so the twins got a lot of attention, right? Because we were an anomaly, kind of unusual. They take us places, right? Because we were the twins. I think at different times, we all had some shining moments. I, you know, I see these great photos. The three oldest were, were girls, my three oldest sisters, moms sewed clothes for all of them, and they're dolls, and they just look adorable. And then two boys showed up, and, you know, again, not as

Scott Benner 16:51
much fun with the clothes.

Barb 16:55
And then the, you know, two more of us showed up. So I think it, I don't think of any one of us as as really, but being twins, I think just because we were different, right? Like we got to hold the Merry Christmas and the family photo at the front of the gang, which I'm sure you're going to want to

Scott Benner 17:14
see. But you, you were the FA you, you guys were famous for being twins in the family, basically,

Barb 17:18
right? Yeah, right. I think we got a little more attention because of that, nothing we did.

Scott Benner 17:24
Who's a better story than that's number seven? Yeah?

Barb 17:29
Well, and you'll love this, because at my when you say number seven at my dad's funeral, we all wore numbers, I bet, yeah, simply because, you know, again, many of us had moved out of town, and so people knew which one we were.

Scott Benner 17:44
Do you have closer relationships with siblings that are closer age to you, and then the people on the ends feel like they're not as related?

Barb 17:54
There is some of that. What I found personally is because I got married older and had kids. As an older parent, I have somewhat more in common with some of my younger siblings who have kids closer to the age of my kids. Sure, you know, as you know, as a particularly as a stay at home dad, you kind of gel with those who have kids the same age as yours. So there's some of that. And so it's changed through the years, yeah, but there always seemed to be somebody, you know, if you needed something, you could go down the line and decide who you wanted to talk to that day. So

Scott Benner 18:32
Barb, my wife and I just had this experience the other day we were out. What were you doing? I think we were buying, like, hanging plants for outside. I don't know how you guys order your diabetes supplies, like CGMS, pumps and testing equipment, but at our house, we use us Med, and I'm gonna walk you through the entire process right now. I'm looking at the email from us med. It says it's time to refill your prescription, dear Arden, please click the button below to place your next order, then you click the button that was it. Two days later, I got this email, thank you for your order from us. Med. We wanted to let you know that your order, and it gives you an order number was shipped via UPS ground. You can track your package at any time using the link below, and then there was a link, and then it showed up at our house. Now I'm going to walk you through the entire chain of events. On the 29th which was the Saturday I clicked on the email on that Monday, the first, I got an email that said the order had been sent. Four days later. On the fifth, the package arrived. If you can do it easier than that. You go get it. But if you can't us. Med.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, get started today with us. Med, get your diabetes supplies the same way we do. And we bumped into this woman who we remember because. Our kid played baseball with coal and, like, as children, not not in, like, college or something, as children. And we had a nice conversation about selling our houses and moving out of town and all the stuff that you talk about when you're in your 50s, right? My wife and I remarked to each other, when we walked away, like, how valuable that was, because she's ahead of us, and she could kind of tell some stories about what she was thinking at the time, and then we realized, like, she's eight years older than we are, but we know we only know her because our kids are the same age. That's the exact same point you were just making. Like, I have nothing in common with this woman. She's lovely, and I spent a lot of time staring at her, like on a grassy field, but like, I wouldn't have known her if she didn't have a child the age of my son. That's a thing that happens to us a lot, because we were younger when we got pregnant the first time. It's very interesting. So okay, so you've got the diet, your mom's got it. We don't know about it really. It's it's an interesting story about how she lived with it, but it's not like you're not functionally understanding what's happening to or anything like that. Give me the time frame there, like, what year was it when she was diagnosed? You know, she

Barb 21:05
was diagnosed in 1972 Wow. At age she died into in 1998

Scott Benner 21:13
8292 she only she made it like 25 or so years with diabetes, maybe 27 right? Okay, right. Did she do that management style? One shot a day her whole life. Did she ever come around to something else?

Barb 21:27
Never. I'll be damned to my knowledge, she did end up in a nursing home toward the end of her life. So I don't know if they managed her differently then, but all the doctor's notes I have are that she was on this, you know, one shot of she went from animal insulin to the humulin. There's one. This made me chuckle. And I should, I should have read these notes. I read them a long time ago when I was first diagnosed, and I just pulled them out again. One of the notes say that she's recorded as saying that three of her grandparents? No, it says all four of her grandparents had diabetes

Scott Benner 22:06
of some kind. They just called it diabetes, though, right? But

Barb 22:10
you know, who? Who would have known that we I just learned in the last few years that all of was it all of my grandparents, or three of the four, have Christmas, birthdays again, you know family lore that

Scott Benner 22:23
you think somebody would have said, would think? You think somebody would have shared they were too busy. They were milk. Your dad was milking something 2020, hours a day. And then I love that you're old enough that we can joke about this. And,

Barb 22:40
oh yeah, I'm way old, so yeah, oh my

Scott Benner 22:45
God, that's fascinating. You have three grandparents that were born on Christmas Day. It's not a thing

Barb 22:48
you knew. That's correct. Never talked about, never talked about, I think everybody

Scott Benner 22:53
who feels like they're ignored by their family modern day should listen to this and be like, Oh my God. They don't even know this. And

Barb 22:59
I, and I our second son was due on Christmas, and I had known, I found this out, and I thought, Oh, he's destined, right? But I willed him out on the 22nd

Scott Benner 23:08
so your family has sex once a year. That's not possible for your parents. They had to be doing it at least a couple times,

Barb 23:16
and there was a crib in their room. Scott,

Scott Benner 23:18
wait a minute, what's the what's the nine months on that? What's nine months before Christmas?

Barb 23:23
Is it Mother's Day? It's December, January, February. So I guess it's

Scott Benner 23:27
Valentine so colder when we can't be outside as much

Barb 23:31
and farming, you know that, that, that Iowa stuff, you

Scott Benner 23:35
don't have as much light. So, oh, I see.

Unknown Speaker 23:39
I do that too.

Scott Benner 23:40
I see what's going on. No, no, yeah, no, I see what's going on. Like Mother's Day. Valentine. Hey, Mother, what would you like for Mother's Day? How about nine months of carrying a baby? I prefer a locket.

Barb 23:57
Yeah, in more ways than one, right?

Scott Benner 24:01
You hilarious. It's fantastic.

Barb 24:03
Okay, yes,

Scott Benner 24:04
oh, that's so funny. Okay, so let's, let's maybe fast forward a little bit here. So are you were diagnosed before your son? That's correct. Okay, what do you remember about your diagnosis? Oh, I've

Barb 24:17
told the story quite a few times. So my kids were eight and six years old. I was at home at the time and just started a new work gig. I woke up one day, literally, I think it was I woke up one day and I couldn't see across the room. It was, it affected my eyes first. So I took myself to my optometrist, and he examined me, and he said, Oh, this is kind of rare, but I've seen this before, and you have an infection in your eyes. And of course, my first thought is I, and I said, my mother was a type one diabetic. Is it diabetes? It's not. Diabetes, not

Scott Benner 25:00
diabetes. You have a rare infection. Okay,

Barb 25:02
so, and at the same, you know, I'm five seven, about 120 pounds at the time, and I'm, this is going to be a refrain, okay, so you don't have diabetes. So he gives me some drops. Doesn't do a thing. My eyesight is getting worse. He sends me to an ophthalmologist in town, who says that I do indeed have this eye infection. I said, Doc, my mom had type one about the same age. You're not diabetic, which made me feel good, right? Yeah,

Scott Benner 25:34
I just have a horrible eye infection. I

Barb 25:37
didn't want to be diabetic, right, of course. So my eyesight continues to get worse, to the point I had just started this job where I was doing some travel. I will never forget I had a huge bottle of water that I took in the car with me. I had gotten contacts. Had never, hadn't I had laser surgery back in 2000 hadn't worn contacts for years. Was in contacts for my distance vision, and I had reading glasses so and at the time, we were looking at maps and stuff in the car. I'm like, juggling eyeglasses and water, and I was a mess. So this goes on, and he's about ready to prescribe some pretty serious eye drops, like there could be some kind of big side effects, yeah. And I thought, okay, in the meantime, I have this. I have this. Now. Have this raging sore throat. I haul myself to my internist, and I said, you're going to do two things, you're going to test me for strep, and you're going to test my blood sugar. Guess what? She said, You're not diabetic. So they take my they do it. I had a raging throat infection, and my a 1c. Was 14, Jesus and and the nurse calls, and she said, I'm surprised you're standing up. And I said, I'm surprised too. And of course, guess what? The next thing was, well, it must be type two, right? Yeah, I'm five 700 and now I'm down. I was down. Oh, that was the other thing. I had all the classic symptoms. I had lost so much weight, I could barely find clothes to fit me. I was, look, I was wearing like, size twos, and I was not a size two, but I was, you know, I was a mess. So they first dealt with me as as type two. Metformin didn't do a thing. She kept saying, you know, you can't be type one. I said I could be so I took myself to an endocrinologist at a bigger city close by, and indeed was found to have type one. And so, you know, my family all sent me D gifts.

Scott Benner 27:56
You got a bunch of gifts? Yeah, I got a bunch

Barb 27:58
of gifts. But, you know, and to be honest, yeah, it was hard, you know, I didn't want to have diabetes. But on the other hand, my vision came back, and, you know, I started putting on weight. But it was hilarious. They were sending me to nutrition classes, and I was the only type one in the room with all these type two folks. And it was crazy stuff. So anyway, and then two years later, my my boys and I have a different story. They said that that I tested them regularly. I think they asked me to test them, you know, they'd see Mom Perkin herself. That's how I remember it. We'll get mad on the next call his test, his blood glucose was like 253, my first thought was not, it's not diabetes. My first thought was, oh, so. So the story gets better. So I take him to the pediatrician. He's not diabetic. It must be hormones. He's now 10 years old. 10 must be hormones. I said, I don't think so. So once again, he had gone to a swim camp at a college nearby, and, oh, in the meantime, I took him to my endocrinologist, who happened to be, you know, he could do pediatrics, so they did the glucose tolerance. In the meantime, he went to the swim camp, and he remembers getting this call from from us, saying that he had type one. And his only memory is the coach at the swim camp came over and said, buddy, I have diabetes, and the sugar free pudding is really good. In the meantime, he's doing okay, because he's, you know, he's active and he's swimming and he's early, right? That we've caught it early. We go down to a children's hospital. That's, that's another story, because they sent it. They wanted us to be admitted to the hospital. Well, there's no room in the hospital. We're sitting in the lobby, which was health. People in lots of ways, because we saw lots of children in much more despair than my son. My son felt pretty normal at the time, so that was a good lesson for him to look around and say, hey, I can do this. And eventually they came down, saw my log, saw that, you know, I kind of knew what I was doing, and pretty much sent me home. And so ever since then, we've, we've really kind of been the self managing type ones. How does

Scott Benner 30:26
that work for you? Barb, what are your outcomes like?

Barb 30:28
Day to day? Outcomes are pretty good. I tell my son, still tell him to do as I say and not as I do, because I tend to be less disciplined about myself and more about the parenting, end of it. But our outcomes are we? We think we're doing fine. I tend to be in the sixes. He tends to be in the mid, mid, lower sixes. So we're both on Dexcom and OmniPod. He now lives in England. No, which is very interesting. That's another story. Jolly good. Yeah, Jolly good. So it's been but to be honest, got he and I have had these stories. You know, our our experiences with endocrinologists have just been not unlike anything you haven't heard. I've heard this on many of your podcasts. All I want them to say when I go in is, how can we help you? How can we help you? Because I've been managing every day for the last 365 days, how can we, or the last, you know, whatever it is, every six months? How can we help you? Instead, they're looking at charts and numbers and come back with an they what they think of as the answer. And I'm like, You didn't ask me, like, what's going What can you didn't ask me anything. So we kind of Matt and I used to joke that we would be, like, telling them things. And I've been able to do that even more now that I've, you know, become the social media maven that I am with the juice box and other I tell you, the the things I have learned being online is heads and shoulders over anything, anything I've ever gotten in a doctor's office. Yeah, you know, we looked at the sugar, surfing stuff. We took their book. They started handing that book out to other patients. I said, you know, there are other things too. You know, they were just grabbing hold of things, the misinformation we've been given. It's just been kind of, I'm still in awe. Isn't the right word, because that has a positive connotation. But I'm just so disappointed that the medical community hasn't embraced those who live with type one diabetes in a way that would be educational and best practices with the right outcomes, right? And I know you know all this. You know they're worried about liability and they're worried about but you know to to I would often find things out through the years, and I'd be like, Well, why didn't I know that then, why didn't, why didn't somebody tell me that? And things have changed, right? You know, we were early adapters of Dexcom and had it with the big needle and the syringe and, um,

Scott Benner 33:15
I'm fascinated Barb, that you don't really need to tell people that much for them to be able to figure it out like, I think, where the where the medical community can go wrong sometimes, is thinking that they have to give you an absolute map step by step. It has to be verifiable and correct, and it'll work every time the way we wrote it down here, for every person that's ever lived. You really just need to tell people things like, hey, you know what? This is how insulin works. You should try adapting that to your life. Here's how food impacts your insulin. Here's how insulin impacts your food. Here's 10 tools that'll you know, you'll probably use over and over again, pre bolusing, for example, little if they're not big ideas, I feel like it's a thing. I hate to say a toolbox, because it sounds trite. You do. You're giving them a toolbox full of tools, and you're saying, like, Look, everything you need to live is in this toolbox. I can't tell you exactly when to use them, but I think if I told you what all these tools do, you could have an experience and think, oh, I should have used this screwdriver today. Like that would have worked here. And then eventually, a couple of months into it, you reach for the screwdriver when you need it. You don't wonder what I should have been doing. Does that make sense? Absolutely

Barb 34:26
and but don't you? You know, I was listening to a podcast earlier today, and I thought, don't you get nervous when you seek comments on the Facebook page and hear things in a podcast where people are totally like someone was asking where to find the transmitter, like, where on their body, was it? And I thought, how do people manage when there isn't even a base? Level of here are the facts. Like, here you

Scott Benner 35:03
call nine out of 10 medical supply companies. They don't even know what they're sending you, right, right? And they do it all day long with a few things. And you'll say, hey, I need, like, back with g6 you'll be like, I need sensors and then a transmitter show. So they go, Oh, no, you can only have two of them a year, or something like that. And you be like, wait, no, I use one every 10 days. No, no. It says, here. I'm like, No, you're looking at the transmitter. Oh yeah, you're right. Like, yeah, okay, so if no one knows, then they can't tell somebody. And then you get home, and all you have to go on is, this doesn't seem like it's going right, but then they take that from you sometimes by telling you, oh no, you're doing great. You're doing great. So you go home and you have all these experiences that in your gut feel like, I don't think this is what should be happening to me. But then the doctor says, no, no, you're doing terrific. Don't worry about it. And 81 See, that's great. And then you go, Oh, I'm doing great. And then when you're 64 you're in a home, you know what I mean? And then it's too late, and then no one left the blame. So I, my gosh, I, by the way, I don't want to go backwards, but your mom was in a home in her 60s.

Barb 36:08
Well, she had pancreatic cancer. That was mostly what put her there. Yes,

Scott Benner 36:13
Barb, my point was going to be, how amazing is it over the last two generations of what 60 years old looks like, oh, you know what? Tell me about

Barb 36:22
it, because I mirror her diabetic diagnosis. I'm hoping that I won't mirror her pancreatic cancer diagnosis right at 68 so I've looked very closely at the differences in our lifestyle, and there's really no markers yet for pancreatic cancer that we are aware of. So, you know, my doc, my internist, and I have a plan that at around 6667 I'm going to have some acute pain, that they're going to have to do a, you know, whole series of imaging tests for just to try to get ahead of anything that might show up.

Scott Benner 36:58
Is there a way to look before a pain comes,

Barb 37:02
that's what I mean. We're gonna make up the pain. Oh, I

Scott Benner 37:04
see I hurt. Run a scan. That's a good idea. Look at you. Barb. I just this is gonna sound self serving, but it really isn't. It's just it's apropos of the conversation I was I was in a retail situation the other day, and there's this girl working there, and she's having a conversation with me and someone else that's there about how people think she looks really young all the time, and she's in college. And I looked there, I was like, well, you really do look like you're in high school. And she's like, I know. And I said, Well, you know, it's not. And she talked about how it's not very fun for people to think you're younger than you are. And I said, Well, that's now when you get older, you're gonna think it's terrific. And she kind of got what I was saying, but not so much. And I said, let me I'll give you an example. I said, How old do I look? And I said, Be very honest, we'll never see each other again. Who cares, right? And she's like, you could see her struggling. She wanted to say one thing, but she was gonna say younger. I was like, Don't say younger, just because you think, like, I don't want to hurt anybody's feelings, I said. And she goes, you're in your late 30s. And I was like, ah, early 50s. And she was like, wait what? And then you could see, like, genuine, like she wasn't being nice anymore. She was like, What the hell are you talking about? And I said, that's what I'm talking about. Like, when you're older, it'll be great if you look younger, but at 52 I think back on my father, he looked 52 and that's not just from my perspective. I can see pictures of him. If I showed you a picture of my dad at my age, you'd think he was 20 years older than me. It's really, I mean, really something. So I don't have a lot of like, I know the cancer thing is worrisome, but as far as the diabetes stuff goes, you're not in the same world as your mom was, you know, absolutely, yeah, and your son's gonna do better, even, absolutely, he already does. So yeah, and he already does because he's got a different perspective on it than you do. Even you're probably tainted a little bit by your mom's perspective, I would imagine, you know, and you know, along

Barb 39:01
those lines, Scott, I'd like to say that, and I've said this to other parents, I have never, ever been concerned about my well being as a diabetic. Never meaning

Scott Benner 39:15
like, well being, like, Well,

Barb 39:17
okay, so you know, you you, you you see a lot of stories of parents kind of just so much living in fear for their kids, and I think I've often shared that, because I'm in control, right? I even, and I've never been a teenager or young adult, but you know, my husband traveled a lot. I never, ever felt afraid to be alone. Have you ever had a scary low? I've had, I've had two scary lows, and they were both precipitated by alcohol. Mm, hmm. So you know, didn't eat. So I know what that feels. Right? But I'll also share when my son went to college, and I was always afraid for him, because I didn't have control over him, right? You know, I've that self efficacy. But when he went to college, he went about six, seven hours away. He didn't wear a Dexcom at the time. He was a he was on a debate, speech and debate team, and competed nationally, and didn't want any one more thing to think about with buzzers and beeps and alerts and vibrations. So, you know, bides me, and I said, you know, how do you want this parent child thing to go? And he said, Mom, you're six hours away. I need to create my own village here, of people, yeah, and I will never forget that, because, and he used that village a couple times, you know, he was sick that boy, they brought him, you know, they took the reins. Not every kid is lucky to have that kind of group. But it made so much sense to me that, you know, if I got even, if I was on a follow up, six, you know, the only thing I could do was call 911, right? And I get that people do that, but I often say, you know, knowledge is power, knowledge is power. Knowledge is power. And the more we can equip ourselves and those we love with knowledge. That's that you know goes back to sharing information and being informed and talking to people and sharing the fact that you're diabetic with those closest to you. It just makes so much sense to me, because it, I don't know, it gives me a sense of control. Yeah,

Scott Benner 41:39
now I understand. I also think you've there's to some degree, some luck involved, that you haven't had a situation that sticks to you. You know what? I mean,

Barb 41:49
absolutely, yeah, I totally agree with that.

Scott Benner 41:53
I also think the way you grew up, like, even if it happened, you'd be like, Oh, I was expecting to die, so that's okay. Like, I mean, you grew up in another time. You know what I mean, yeah, yeah. Actually your parents, by virtue of what they did for a living and where they lived, you almost had an experience growing up that was a generation behind your actual generation, if that makes sense, right? Yeah? So yeah. You have like a you have, like a 1940s attitude about life. There you

Barb 42:19
go. You do, right? We did have an outhouse until we were born in 1960 Yeah, that's my point. You know? Yeah,

Scott Benner 42:25
things don't seem as bad when you're not in the in the snow. You know what I mean.

Barb 42:32
So the other thing I wanted to talk about is this study going on at the University of Chicago. You remember that precision, T, 1d, Does that ring a bell at all? I

Scott Benner 42:42
mean, I remember it from your notes that you put here that you wanted to talk about it. So is it good? Can

Barb 42:46
I talk about that? Oh, my god, yeah. Wait, do

Scott Benner 42:49
you think that I stopped people from talking? Do you think I'm over here going, Nope, move on. We'll edit that out later.

Barb 42:54
No. But you might have a you might have a plan of some. Oh, my

Scott Benner 42:58
God. What would that look like I, you know, it's funny. I got this note from somebody the other day that was really touching about how she was in the Yeah, waiting room at the endos office, and another person in the waiting room overheard her get bad advice from the medical staff. And so this woman followed her outside, stopped her and said, Hey, listen, what they just told you is not even close to being right. So if you would be willing to give me your cell phone number, I'm going to text you something that I think would help you. And she texted her the, I think the bold beginning series in the podcast, yeah, you I just read this. You saw this post? Okay, great, yeah, so, and then I put that up because, I mean, honestly, like, I wanted to thank the all the healthcare workers out there who do grab people in hallways and whisper juicebox podcast into their ear, which happens a lot. And you think, Well, Scott, how do you know about that? It's because the Facebook group asks you when you're coming in. The private group asks you when you're coming in. How you heard about this? That group collects 150 new people about every three days. And on the intake forms, someone pulled me aside in a doctor's office and told me about it comes up five to 10 times every three days. And so I wanted to, like, put a thank you out into the world to those people who are spreading, you know, good information whispering in people's ears and everything. And the responses that came back in that post from other people talking about how they found the podcast, I found myself thinking, you have to understand, like I have to think about, I have to think about the podcast from a lot of different perspectives, and one of them is from a marketing perspective, and I see people out in the world, you know, trying to pimp their diabetes coaching stuff, and they're like, look, I got a review. Look, look how good bill did on my plan. That cost him $3,000 because I charged him 600 a month, and it took him a year to get it right. And like, you know, like in there, they use it as a review. And I think you. I wonder how infrequently they get those reviews, because I only see the posts every couple months. If I were to put up a social media post with a positive response from a listener, I could probably do it every four hours. And that's not about me. That's about it's about how well the podcast seems to work for a lot of people, and then the only thing that makes me think is I'm not getting it into enough people's hands, like if it works that well, or such a large percentage of people who intersect it, how come I'm not finding a way to help more people like that? It makes me feel badly. I know that sounds weird, but like good feedback makes me feel bad, but only on one level, and like that kind of marketing level, on a personal level, or my pride about what the podcast does, etc, show on that all makes me feel amazing. I didn't expect that much feedback in that post, and as I read through of it, some of it made me cry, like I actually read something from this one guy named Ricky, I think. And he was talking about the advice they got from doctors and how his kids life was going very poorly. And then one day, because they timed some stuff badly at a birthday event, his kid had to, like, skip having a piece of cake with everybody, because he was afraid he was going to stack the insulin. And that led him to look for other advice. And now he's talked about how well his daughter was doing, and that made me cry, like I was like, Oh, my God, I think I saved that kid's life, you know. And I try not to think about it like that very often, but every once in a while, like I let myself live in it for a second, because the truth is, is I do the same thing day in and day out. Like last night was Sunday, my family, my my wife and my daughter went out around one o'clock, and they're like, do you want to come? And I'm like, I'm gonna work. And then I got done at midnight last night, and I was working on something that may or may not turn into content for this podcast. I don't even know yet, but I need, sometimes I need motivation, like, you know what I mean, so I used your success to fuel my desire, if that makes sense, to keep going. I don't know why I shared that.

Barb 47:23
Well, no, I It's, I totally get it, and I, I have to tell you. So I had two letters to the editor published in the New York Times. Those are my, you know, little stars on my nice wall, and they were around covid. I think my first one was about six feet of kindness. It's a great little read. But anyway, I had read something a couple years ago that was dissing social media and how awful it is, and so they didn't print it, unfortunately, but I had written a letter to the editor saying, Hold on. You know, here is what social media has meant to me and my son with type one diabetes is that we can connect with a worldwide community who have the same condition that we do, who have tried multiple things that we learn from each other. I mentioned the juicebox podcast, and I thought, you know, this is to me, it is what I always bring up when, you know, particularly around parent groups, dissent, social media and, oh, you know, all the crap that's out there and the metaverse. And I said, I'm telling you, my life would be, it would not be nearly as fulfilling without the and particularly around type one the community that I have found on social media. So kudos to you. You know, I followed you when you were Arden's day. So, you know, oh, you're just reading the blog. That's how I first came into it was Arden's day, and so when this juice box stuff, explode it. You know, I'm sending it to my son and all this stuff, if anything, it's kind of overwhelming to me. Now, you know, the plethora podcast, I feel like there's not enough hours in the day, and so, you know, you pick and choose and listen to what's useful. But I truly think that talk about a toolbox. Scott, you know, you have the juicebox toolbox. I can't even say that quickly, juicebox toolbox.

Scott Benner 49:28
I started to make more content at first, because I had too many advertisers. And I was like, Oh, everybody wants to advertise on the show, but I only have this one episode every week. And I was like, I struggled with it. I was like, I asked my wife, I wrung my hands for six months, would people be okay with two? What if I put two up a week? Would that be too much? Would they upset? And then as two was okay, and then people during covid Were like, you could put up more, you know? And I'm like, Okay, here's three, you know. Here take three stories and a management on Thursday. I was like, you know? What? Am I doing? I'm like, do you know I have right now, I'm sitting on 70 episodes that are done and ready for you, but right right now, and that's constant for me. I constantly have a backlog of about 70 completed episodes. And I, you know, I get done interviewing, I'm going to have this experience with you 20 minutes from now. We're going to get done and I'm going to think I should just put barbs out tomorrow. Like, like that, can't sit and wait. Like, what a great story about blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, right? But then I realized, oh no, you know what? You thought that last week five times, when you recorded five times, keep going in order. Keep going in order. It's not I mean, I'm grateful that there's ads on every episode. That's nice and it's great. And I appreciate you all helping me send my kid to college and stuff like that. Like, that's all fantastic, but that internal feeling I have that this is this information, people need this information. Like, it has to get out there so they can hear these stories, so more people can have these experiences. And I can't just have one thoughtful story with Barb in May. You know what I mean? Like, there's got to be more, because the person who was lucky enough to hear you that when your episode came out, there'll be another person that comes along that needs your story, but it came out a year ago, and they're not going to go find it probably. So I need more. Like, I realized it just needs to be a faucet, and people can drink from it when they when they're thirsty, but the information needs to be flowing the whole time, and the information is episodes, and so it's a lot of work, but I think it's the best way to support people, because every because the truth is Barb, if I was in charge, I would just get you all together and I go look, listen to this series, then that series, then this series. And here's 100 stories from people with diet that have diabetes that will fill in all the gaps for you. Just go listen to those and you're done like you, and you don't need me anymore. There's no way to get people to do that. So instead, I just keep providing it and hoping that people trip into it and then get caught up in it, listen and get what they need out of it, because they don't know they need it until after they have needed Yeah. Well, well, yeah. Well, not even till they need it. They don't know they need it when they need it, they don't they didn't know they needed it till after they have it. And then they say, I wish I would have found this three years ago. I wish this would have been here when I was diagnosed, the woman who told me this morning that she found the podcast and listened to an episode and was like, Oh, that's good, and got what she needed out of it, but then didn't go back to it, and then years later, went back to it, and then had that sinking feeling of, oh, I wasted years of my life like that kind of stuff, so I just create non stop like you and I are recording today. I'm not supposed to even record on Mondays, but I'm looking at next Monday, and for some reason, I'm recording twice next Monday. So you're like, it's a draw for me. And I just, I feel very good about it, like I feel very good about putting the information out there and letting people tell their stories, finding new ways to tell the stories, finding new ways to pop the information out, because people's desire to hear things changes over time. Like there's always going to be people who like podcasts long form, but a 23 year old's not going to listen to a story with a 64 year old for an hour, right? Likely, you know what I mean. And so like, I'm designing, like, shorter form content for them and and like, I wish you could see this whiteboard here. If I was 10 people, I'd be putting out four episodes a day. I'd have so much content. And but instead, I just think, well, I'll get as much of this done before I burn out. You know what I mean this I can.

Barb 53:43
Have you ever thought about billboards on interstates? I don't. I don't know. It doesn't matter, just with your, you well, you talked about trying to reach more people, you know, just with the website or the the

Scott Benner 53:54
way you're going to reach people in this space is word of mouth. It's the only way it works, and then that person who hears about it has to hear about it either enough or be in a situation where they're so desperate that they're going to try a podcast to learn about their diabetes. That's really the truth. Yeah.

Barb 54:14
I mean, for personally, the OmniPod five podcast was was invaluable. I mean, I had no training, like, you know, and talk about insurance companies, you know, they couldn't figure out why I needed insulin and the OmniPod. It's just ridiculous. For like, you know, here we'll give you this, but we won't give you this that goes along with it. But that was the series that got me started, yeah, in my little you know, but

Scott Benner 54:44
everything comes with a trade off, so or time commitment that you don't know about, like that, OmniPod five Pro Tip series, which is just three episodes, started three years before OmniPod five was available, I started talking to the person that I worked with at Omni. Omnipodity pod. And I said, hey, when OmniPod five comes out, the biggest problem you'll have is if people don't know how to use it, like, right? They're going to need to know how to set it up. They're going to need to know how to use it because if they don't, you're going to slap it on them. My daughter uses an algorithm. I know that the algorithm, it's not magical, you know what? I mean, like, you settings have to be, right? Yeah, you need to understand some things. If they don't understand that, they're going to put on OmniPod five, their blood sugar's going to jump around. It's not going to come back like, you know, like Skynet is controlling it. And they're going to go, This thing doesn't work. And then they're going to go online and go, I tried OmniPod five and it doesn't work. I was like, so you're going to have to give people good information. Well, that's hard to get a company to do not just OmniPod, but it's not their job to as crazy as it sounds, to train you on how to use the device. That's your doctor's job. And we know the doctor isn't going to know about the pump and if they even know about it, we know they're not going to know how to set it up correctly, because if they did, they would have been able to help you with all your other stuff, which they couldn't help you with. So I have to have those conversations for years with my person about, like, I think this is important. We should actually take time and put together a thoughtful couple of episodes that'll explain things. And then in the middle of that conversation, she just went to another company, she left, and then the next guy comes in, and then I gotta start over again with, hey, you know, I know you just started this job, and you're probably overwhelmed and trying to learn your job and everything, but this is important, and I start over with him and and he's the type one. I don't know if he'd be okay with me sharing that, but I just did. He's a title. He did. He shared it. No, you don't know who I'm talking about. My content, not the person on the episode, right? Okay. And so he's like, No, I I think you're 100% right. And then he developed, he put his team on developing those episodes along with me. And then we must have spent, God, we must have spent six or eight months developing that content behind the scenes. Wow. And so the amount of time that went into it, when it all is said and done, I made about four cents an hour to make those episodes. Like, no kidding, it's, it ended up being a labor of love. Like, there was the money just, was not even, you know, it's just, it's just ad money. It's, it wasn't even, like a lot. But I was like, this is really important. Now, here's the trade off. You know, no one from, like, tandems ever been on my podcast. They don't reach out to me. They don't touch me because I look like I'm connected to OmniPod, but I say to them, I'm like, OmniPod just buys ads on this podcast, like I don't have another business relationship with them, like, you could come on and talk about your pomp. I'd love that, but doesn't happen. So then when you tell me the OmniPod five Pro Tip series was really valuable for you. I think, Oh, that's great, but I'm letting down people who are using control IQ,

Barb 57:48
yeah, you know, which is another great system. Yeah, exactly. But

Scott Benner 57:53
I but it's not my fault. They won't come to me like and I say it on the podcast once more, because I know that you listen, because they all, by the way, I know you're all listening. Most of the companies have someone tasked to listen to the podcast, actually. So it's someone's job to listen to my podcast, probably at every one of the diabetes manufacturers that exists. And so, like, they hear me saying it, I'm like, come on. Like, I'll talk about your thing. Like, let's go. And then they just never do it so, and I'm not picking on tandem, like, but like, there's other companies too who are just, they're scared to reach out because they think that I'm, like, attached to Dexcom. Like, I'm like, I finally, this year, got another CGM company to advertise. And I'm like, Well, maybe that will make them understand, oh, the

Barb 58:37
ever since, yeah, yeah, that, yeah, you're really lucky. You know, I equate what you're doing with my decision. I was in higher ed administration, so I worked for one college at a time, and a lot of times I wanted to be a high school guidance counselor so that I could work with all the colleges all of the time. Yeah, and be more useful, right? To that young woman who was a junior in high school who's having a hard time, but no, my job was to sell the one college, right? But I think the position you're in is

Scott Benner 59:09
invaluable. I hope I'm trying to do the best with it. I can, like, every once in a while I'll get crap from somebody online. It's like, you know, you take ads and I'm like, Well, I mean, I gotta, I can't. It's free, you know, I gotta eat right? And by the way, you, you know, you don't pay for it, like, you know, rock and roll, like it's free, listen to it, or don't, like, I don't know what to tell you, I actually hear people like, uh, there were two ads on that episode. I'm like, like, I wish I could leave reviews for listeners. Sometimes I'm like, It's not fair. You're allowed to leave a review for me. I'm not allowed to leave one for you, like, like, shut up. It's free. Skip past it if you don't want to listen to

Barb 59:47
it's so fun. Yeah? But hey, can I ask about your closed loop system?

Scott Benner 59:51
Yeah, but we got to do the Chicago thing. Which do you want to Yeah,

Barb 59:55
let me just ask a quick question. Have you? I've never gone that route. Out and part of it. DIY, have you ever right? Yeah, have you ever had folks? Well, no, because you're using the dash right.

Scott Benner 1:00:09
Arden uses dash pods with IEPs right now. Okay, yeah. And g7 g7 Dexcom, okay,

Barb 1:00:17
so there's no problems with warranty. You know, I get concerned about the regulations, and if I run into trouble, you know, I'm just sitting here by myself.

Scott Benner 1:00:29
What's your concern? Like say, I'm

Barb 1:00:31
used if you try something goes wrong, I guess I just go back. Goes wrong. How? You know, that's a good question, because obviously there's the online community to ask questions. But if I, if something happened to me, using that, there's nobody culpable except for me, right? I guess that's it. Maybe I don't have enough confidence in myself. Who do you okay, we can. We can

Scott Benner 1:00:56
move on. No, no, let's dig into it for a half a second. What is your concern that if something happens, there's no one to ask a question of, or if you drop dead, you can't sue somebody. What is it you're worried about?

Barb 1:01:07
Yeah, maybe the Latin a part of the latter. You know, when you just in terms of something comes, comes on, goes wrong, that, you know, there's but, yeah, it's just my, my laziness, more than anything to not look at.

Scott Benner 1:01:21
Listen, I'm not here to sell anything to anybody. A Do It Yourself algorithm is literally code that you download off the internet and build yourself into an app that controls your insulin pump and and speaks to your your CGM. That's it. You might as well have built it yourself with with popsicle sticks. It's yours. You

Barb 1:01:39
know what I mean? Yeah, and the dash pods are different from the classic OmniPod pods. Is that?

Scott Benner 1:01:46
Right? The arrows pods, the the original ones, yeah, I don't actually think they're going to be available much longer, if they even are any. So that's not

Barb 1:01:54
what you use. You use dash pods. Dash pods, yes, okay, I was going to give you my arrow spots, okay? And if

Scott Benner 1:02:01
your dash pods like, like, let's say you're using a like, a DIY system, and you fill a pod up and 12 hours later, it it errors. For example, you don't get the call OmniPod up until and have them send you another one. Yeah, right. You're in a different game. Now, if you're doing that, yeah,

Barb 1:02:19
and maybe that's more of what I think about is, you know, just having ready. I'm such a I always have backup supplies, partly because my son's on the same system. So I've always been backups. Oh, I forgot one thing Scott that I think is, again, the social media piece of this world is two situations where my son was in kind of an emergency situation, and once in England and once in Chicago, and both times it was because I reached out Online, people stepped up and it was solved. I mean, how often does that happen? He was in he was in England. Had was on business in England, they were still testing for covid. He unfortunately, it was at the end of the covid thing. He tested positive before boarding his plane home. So he had to stay for 10 days in the airport hotel, and he had not packed enough supplies. Okay, so he's in England, right? I'm like, Well, you have insulin, right? Yes, well, go get some syringes, put double mask and or get some delivered to you. They would not, because he didn't have an NH card, they he could not get syringes. So now I'm thinking, okay, eventually, you know, through reaching out online, we found someone. Did

Scott Benner 1:03:47
you do that? Where did you do that? Oh no, no, Scott,

Barb 1:03:51
I don't, I don't even remember, to be able to give you credit, but

Scott Benner 1:03:55
oh no, I don't mean that. I mean like I see it so frequently. It's fascinating how quickly somebody will step up and help somebody else. I mean, what?

Barb 1:04:03
How cool is that, even at the base level of, you know, here are the pros. That's huge. I think that's huge. Anyway, I had to share that because, you know, as the mom,

Scott Benner 1:04:15
yeah, no, let me say this, though, because I didn't say this when you were talking about the benefits of social media. Social media not different than anything else. It's just how it's wielded, right? I take the opportunities I have by having people follow on certain places, like listening to the podcast, or, you know, coming into a Facebook group that's now feel like, I think today, actually just went over 50,000 members. Like it's a responsibility, like, right? And then you can do what you want with it, like, it's almost like a gun. I can go hunting with it, you know, rob a bank with it. And so I've chosen to take this opportunity I have and try to do something good with it. And I know there's people who don't hunt. Who are, like, well, weird analogy, but I've never hunted either. I'm just saying it's all in what you do with it. Now, if, if I was a bad actor, I could look at those 50,000 people and be like, I wonder how many different ways I can get money out of these people, right? Like, instead, I just go look, here's the advertisers. If you can support them, that's great if you don't have a need for it. Like, right on, like, I'm not asking you to, like, get a Dexcom to help me. I'm saying, if you're gonna get a Dexcom, could you use my link, right? Like, that's all I'm saying, and that helps support me and keep me going. Now, there's, you know, times when you do something else, like, we're actually considering doing a cruise for listeners right now. I

Barb 1:05:38
saw that. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:05:40
I think that might happen, actually. And you would think, Oh, here it is. Now he's gonna cash in. Well, I just had a meeting with the person who's running it, and it turns out that after this whole thing's over, and I spend five or six days on a ship and two days flying in and out and everything, the likelihood that I will make eight cents is very little like, hopefully the cruise will pay for itself. And I was like, All right, whatever. It's fine. You know what I mean? Like, I, you know, it's like, that's like, it's a thing people seem to want, and I think they would like it, and so I'll do it. But if you think when it's over, I'm gonna be like, Scrooge mcducking in a pile of gold, you got that wrong, you know? Like, I don't want you think I'm not bad off, like, I make a I make more than a reasonable amount of money to do what I do, like, but it's not like, there's not like, millions of dollars falling out of every like, like, pocket when I put my jacket on or something like that. But I think people, I do think people think that sometimes,

Barb 1:06:37
no, I and I, you know, the people want to be around those you know. Look at the adult. I'm sure you're familiar with the camping camps for adults, right? The

Scott Benner 1:06:50
I forget, but yeah, and,

Barb 1:06:52
you know, I even asked my Endo, actually, the first three endos I had here, could you give my name to all of your other adult type ones to connect with me. Yeah, you don't have to give me their information. But can you give them mine? Because I really want to start a group and I don't know how to reach people. Can't do it. No,

Scott Benner 1:07:13
it's It's HIPAA, and they didn't want to do it themselves. No one wants to be involved in anything.

Barb 1:07:18
We had a great school nurse when we moved to Ohio, and my son was in eighth grade, and she took it upon herself to put together a group of T 1d, families. It was fabulous, but she was a registered school nurse. You know, now they contract with all kinds of folks, but she she she made a huge difference to us when we made the move and were able, and we still have contact with many of those families. Yeah, I think, I think people want to be around others who get it. You know, it's like sending your kids to T 1d, camp, right? No, it's,

Scott Benner 1:07:54
it's terrific. And somebody's got to, you know, make that overture, and make the and build the thing. And you have to, you have to realize, like, when you were said, you wrote, you read the blog, like I didn't have, like, I wrote that blog for absolutely for free for years, like nobody, I didn't have an ad. Like nobody gave me any money. I just thought it helped people. And I was, I had some free time, and I thought, well, this is good. I'll do this. You know, I trust me. I know plenty of people. You said something nice about the podcast earlier, and it stuck in my head like I didn't say it out loud, but if I would have listened to people back when I started the podcast, it wouldn't even exist. Like I had prominent people in the diabetes space say you cannot tell people how you manage your daughter's diabetes, like they know how to live well, but they don't tell other people about it. Instead, they write you blog articles about how scary and sad it is, and we're all here together, and I've got your back and like all that, like not unreasonable stuff, but it's all like preying on your emotions. And meanwhile, that person's running around with a five, four, a, 1c, and could exactly tell you how to do it, and won't open their mouth and say one word about it, you know? And so because they don't have the balls to talk about it out loud and and I get that like I even understand not wanting to do it, but you know, you don't realize there are some people in this space that you think of as like Mary Poppins, and they're not Mary Poppins. It's just interesting. And I'm sure there are plenty of people who don't like me, and that's all well and good. All I can tell you is that I get up every day, I make this podcast all day long, and I see how many people it helps. And it's my goal to make it bigger. It's my goal to make it bigger because I think it'll help more people. I There's no space for me. I can't get any more ads like, you know you mean like, I'm I'm capped out as as far as I think how well I can do with this like, I think it is what it is now, and now it's about keeping it going and meeting more people and helping more people and spreading the word so that I can, you know, shut this microphone off one day in the future and feel like I did as much as I could. So that's what I'm shooting for here. Well, thank you. No, please. You have to thank me. Everybody's there's people paying me. You don't have to worry about i. Yeah, it even makes me feel weird to hear you say, thank you. And I don't know why, because I genuinely, I don't want you to or need you to. I just I don't want people to feel the way I felt when my daughter was diagnosed.

Barb 1:10:13
Well, you're just a brother by another mother, Scott, because you know, we're probably related.

Scott Benner 1:10:19
You think so,

Barb 1:10:21
given my extended family. Probably, you're

Scott Benner 1:10:23
probably related to everybody. I'm related to you and Genghis Khan. I think you know so exactly, oh my gosh, is the thing in Chicago? Let's finish with that. So there's a study in Chicago. I

Barb 1:10:37
can't remember where I saw this. It was on. It may have been on your page, but someone mentioned this study. Never heard about it. See, I was a person who when my son was diagnosed, I was really put off by the fact that there was no questioning about anything. And I thought, How in the heck are we ever going to figure out where this comes from if we don't ask those newly diagnosed any questions about history or environment. You know, I just thought there could be somebody out there who could come up with something. So anyway, when I saw this study, it's called precision genetics for type one diabetes, they are looking to identify genetic mutations that drive T, 1d Okay, and they, I don't know if you've heard of these mutations, they say T 1d is a frequent feature in patients with mutations. And I don't know what these means, a, i, R, E, F, O, x, p3, and stat one. Recent studies suggest that T, 1d patients with certain mutations may be able to have their disease reversed with targeted therapy. So there's studies trying to accelerate this precision medicine. And it reminds me of cancer treatments. You know how they're doing immunotherapy? I don't know if you know, but they're trying to do more targeted treatment based on the kind of cancer you have, what it reminds me of so t1, ds apparently have certain mutations, and they're trying to identify that. What's the name of the study? It's called precision genetics, or type one diabetes. The website is precision T, 1d, all small letters. Dot, u ofchicago.edu.

Scott Benner 1:12:24
Okay. Precision genetics is an emerging field that aims to tailor medical treatment to individual genetic profiles. In the context of type one diabetes, precision genetics focuses on, hold on, too much scrolling. It's going faster than I can read. On understanding the genetic factors that contribute to the onset, progression management of disease. Here are some key points about precision genetics for type one. This is from chat GPT four. Oh, yeah, predisposition, identifying markers, genetic personalized risk assessment, tailored treatment plans, prevention strategies, research and therapeutic development, challenges and ethical considerations, etc. Yeah. I mean, it sounds like a like something that's being researched, and they're trying to figure out if they can use this precision genetic technology to help people with type one so exactly

Barb 1:13:11
and so, you know, I'm always looking for things where this huge family of mine with this obvious genetic disposition to type one could be useful. So, you know. So my son and I have done it. It's very easy to do. They send you, there's an interview, a very short interview, where they answer questions and tell you about the study and blah, blah, blah, and they send you a sample kit to collect saliva. It's done through a saliva collection that you mail back and that's it. There's nothing you do in person. I mean, I did go out to Boston to Are you familiar with the UMass program? Denise, I went out to Boston and tried to get into her stuff. That's an interesting study too. It's using a long term. It was a drug that was used to treat TB. Does this ring any bells at all? So, oh, it's fossman lab. Does that ring a bell at all?

Scott Benner 1:14:10
Yeah. So she was on the podcast years ago. And listen, she's one of a lot of different people going after a, you know, a specific idea, but right at some point, like, I can't, I'm glad people are out there doing research, but I can't have every person out there who's like, I wonder if this is the thing. I'm going to spend 25 years trying to figure it out. Like, if you figure something out, let me know. But like, I can't, I can't talk,

Barb 1:14:35
no, and she's been going at it forever. Yeah, right, right. She's a great, yeah, really. But anyway, I don't know where this position obviously, I'm hoping that any work a research group like this comes up with could help in perhaps identifying more markers, or, you know, any foresight I think is valuable. Again, knowledge is power, right? So anyway, I don't. Know if people know about this, but I thought it would be worth sharing for anybody who wanted to get in on the fun. Thank

Scott Benner 1:15:06
you. Listen. We started off with your microphone and finished well with your story. So I think this was a good use of our time. Yeah.

Barb 1:15:13
Can you hear me? Testing, hello, hello, Barb. Oh, I lost you. Oh,

Scott Benner 1:15:20
it's that. It's that Ohio internet, apparently, yeah, Dave Chappelle is using all of it up, probably,

Barb 1:15:26
yeah, they're putting fiber out in front of my house as we speak. So, oh, no kidding, very It very well could be,

Scott Benner 1:15:34
just gonna say, It's possible we're about to get cut off. But hold on one second for me, we're done. But let me say goodbye to you privately Hold on a second.

Prolonged hyperglycemia can lead to serious health problems and long term complications. Learn more at Medtronic diabetes.com/hyper, this episode of the podcast was sponsored by Medtronic diabetes. The conversation you just enjoyed was brought to you by us. Med, us. Med.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, get started today and get your supplies from us. Med, a huge thank you to one of today's sponsors, gvoke glucagon. Find out more about gvoke hypopen at gvoke glucagon.com. Forward slash juice box. You spell that, G, V, O, k, e, g, l, U, C, A, G, o, n.com, forward slash juice box. If you or a loved one was just diagnosed with type one diabetes, and you're looking for some fresh perspective. The bold beginning series from the juicebox podcast is a terrific place to start. That series is with myself and Jenny Smith. Jenny is a CD CES, a registered dietitian and a type one for over 35 years, and in the bowl beginning series, Jenny and I are going to answer the questions that most people have after a type one diabetes diagnosis. The series begins at episode 698 in your podcast player. Or you can go to juicebox podcast.com and click on bold beginnings in the menu when you support the juicebox podcast by clicking on the advertisers links, you are helping to keep the show free and plentiful. I am certainly not asking you to buy something that you don't want, but if you're going to buy something or use a device from one of the advertisers, getting your purchases set up through my links is incredibly helpful. So if you have the desire or the need, please consider using juicebox podcast links to make your purchases. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back soon with another episode of The juicebox podcast. The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording, wrongwayrecording.com. You.