#1325 Fight the Power

Bethany talks about balancing life with diabetes.

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

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

On today's episode, I'll be speaking with Bethany. She's the mother of a child with type one diabetes who was inspired by another episode called Adam's Song to push to get what she needed for her daughter. Nothing you hear on the juicebox podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan. When you place your first order for ag one with my link, you'll get five free travel packs and a free year supply of vitamin D drink, AG, one.com/juice box. Don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com All you have to do is use the offer code juice box at checkout. That's juicebox at checkout to save 40% at cozy earth.com if you are the caregiver of someone with type one diabetes or have type one yourself, please go to T 1d exchange.org/juice, box and complete the survey. This should take you about 10 minutes, and will really help type one diabetes research. You can help right from your house at T 1d exchange.org/juice, box. If you're looking for community around type one diabetes, check out the juicebox podcast. Private Facebook group juicebox podcast, type one diabetes. Today's podcast is sponsored by touched by type one. Check them out on Facebook, Instagram and at touched by type one.org. If you're looking for an organization who's helping people with type one diabetes. You're looking for touch by type one. This episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by the continuous glucose monitor that my daughter wears, the Dexcom g7 dexcom.com/juicebox Get started today using this link, and you'll not only be doing something great for yourself. You'll be supporting the juicebox podcast. Today's episode is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes, a company that's dressing hyperglycemia head on a topic that often gets overshadowed by the focus on hypoglycemia. Learn more at Medtronic diabetes.com/hyper

Bethany 2:19
Hi. I'm Bethany, and I'm the mother of a two year old little girl with type one diabetes.

Scott Benner 2:26
Oh, two years old. How old was she when she was diagnosed? Yeah,

Bethany 2:29
she was 19 months old. Oh, gosh, okay,

Scott Benner 2:33
this is not Yeah. So

Bethany 2:35
my, my baby, I'm

Scott Benner 2:36
very and this all very new. How old is she now? In months,

Bethany 2:39
she is. She will be three in June. Oh, okay, so she was diagnosed January last year. So we're, we're a little over a year now into diagnosis, getting towards

Scott Benner 2:50
that year and a half spot. Is it any different today than it was, let's say the third month?

Bethany 2:56
Yeah, it is. It's definitely better. I would say we're still not in a great spot or the spot that we want to be, but we're we've definitely made progress from where we were this time last year. How

Scott Benner 3:10
do you score the spot you're in? How do you How would you describe where you are?

Bethany 3:14
I would say, if I were to use a scale of like zero to 10, we're probably around like a six. I would say most days,

Scott Benner 3:22
is a six a success? Is it a Is it not a success? How do you feel about that grade? I

Bethany 3:30
would say it took us a while, I guess, for context, it took us a while to get a treatment team that we really felt like aligned with the goals that we had for my daughter, and now we do have that team. And so we spent a good part of the last year kind of fighting some barriers in the healthcare system and just not feeling like we had a healthcare team that was really listening to us and the glycemic control we wanted for our daughter. So yeah, we made some changes here within the last four months, and I feel like we're on a good path, but almost just starting off that path. So we've got some we've got some room to go.

Scott Benner 4:10
What do you do for a living? Or what's your background, your education background?

Bethany 4:14
Yeah, I am. I'm a psychologist, so I actually work, and I work in the healthcare system where we were receiving care. Listen,

Scott Benner 4:23
I should have prefaced this with more backstory so that I could have taken credit. Now I'm stuck just with you having to believe I knew you had a job something like that, or your background was like that because of the way you described your transition from the team you had to the one you have now it was so iterate of how they would feel if they heard it that,

Bethany 4:44
you know that that does not surprise me. I've been given similar feedback. I have a very gentle kind way of talking about other people. Yeah,

Scott Benner 4:56
I just, I've spoken to other people who would have said like I was. Saddled with some people who didn't know what they were talking about. We got rid of them, and now we're doing better. And you were just so polite. Like, say she's like, maybe she owes the money and she doesn't want the man, like, what's going on? But then I thought, no, she's probably in mental health care somehow. Or I thought you had a very corporate job where you're just very accustomed to being overly nice to everybody. I couldn't figure out which it was

Bethany 5:24
probably a combination of both. So I'm a I'm a psychologist, I'm also a supervisor for our team. And then when Cora was diagnosed, I decided to go back to school to get my Master's in healthcare administration. So I'm also also doing that too.

Scott Benner 5:42
I think I should get a degree in generalization, because I'm amazing at it, so I don't understand why people don't like it when you generalize generally, you're right. So anyway, that's it. Was very kind of you, but what were the problems you were having that made you get away from the people you were with initially? And now we're going to hear from Medtronic champion Terry. How long have you had diabetes? June 2025,

Speaker 1 6:08
it'll be 50 years. I'm very much involved in the diabetic community in a lot of areas, and I helped start the walk here in Lincoln, Nebraska

Scott Benner 6:17
when you were first diagnosed, what was management like?

Speaker 1 6:19
I started out on beef, pork insulin. And I tell people jokingly that I used to smell like a bacon cheeseburger. Tell me about the impact of Medtronic technology. Finger stick is only a point in time, and that first 20 years for me was extremely difficult because I had high blood sugars all over the place. The CGM, to me, was the lifesaver.

Scott Benner 6:45
Prolonged hyperglycemia can lead to serious health problems and long term complications. Early, inconsistent management of hyperglycemia is critical. Learn more at Medtronic diabetes.com/hyper

Bethany 6:59
I think so. We had a really positive experience when she was initially diagnosed. The inpatient team was great. You know, when they were giving that, I know you've called it in the past on the podcast do not die advice. Like I felt like the do not die advice that we gave was really supportive, very empathic. They really listened to our concerns. I was really worried about, you know, I almost have enough knowledge of medical conditions that can be dangerous and just fuels my anxiety. I'm not medically trained, but I work in in a healthcare system, and so I knew what a Dexcom was. I knew what continuous glucose monitors were, and so when she was admitted, I wanted to get a Dexcom on her as soon as possible. And so I told their team, like, I don't think I'm going to be able to sleep until she's got a Dexcom. They were like, how do you know what that even is? But they listened to me, and they heard my concerns, and they got the prior auth started, and we got a Dexcom the day she left the hospital. Okay, so

Scott Benner 8:01
positive upfront, something happens then you I mean, is it? I mean, can I guess first of all before I guess, let me say, I love that you took my my colloquial phrase, don't die advice. And we're like, let's not conjugate, Scott, do not die advice. I do. I like you. You're very you're very proper. Thank you. But so I'm gonna guess that you wanted more stability, or you wanted lower numbers or fewer spikes, and they were telling you, oh, she's only two. You're doing great. Yep,

Bethany 8:33
that's exactly what it was, right? We were initially seeing numbers in spikes up to 400 up to, you know, readings for the Dexcom. We weren't even getting readings from the Dexcom, and, you know, settling above 200 and they were saying, you're fine. You know, you're doing so great. And my husband and I weren't satisfied with that. We wanted better glycemic control again, like I knew at first, I was like, you know, we're so far from where I want to be long term for her, but I feel like a good first goal would be, hey, the research says under a seven, A, 1c, prevents long term complications. My baby's going to have diabetes for most of her life. She's only going to have, you know, a very, a year and a half of her life where she doesn't have this problem? Yeah, I want to give her the best opportunities possible. I have, you know, financial resources, I have the mental resources to do the very best for her, and so that's what I want.

Scott Benner 9:33
And when you said that, did they just say, No, you're not that. That's okay stay here, or did you just feel like they weren't going to be supportive? So you moved on, on your own.

Bethany 9:41
Well, it got, it did get to a place where they eventually just said no, but at first it was very much like, if you want to do that, that's fine. We don't know very much about that. So, for example, we got, I wanted to get her on a pump right away, because she was very she was very tiny, um, she was only. She was less than 18 pounds when she was diagnosed, because she lost weight leading up to diagnosis. So I've got this itty bitty, tiny, 19 month old who I could barely give a half a unit of insulin to. She she left on a half a unit of long acting and even that, she was dropping through the night. So she's really insulin sensitive. So we start doing research, and we say, hey, like, if we can get a pump, we can give her much smaller doses of insulin. I want that. And they never, they didn't say no, but they didn't really support us in the Yes, it was, if you want to, that's fine, like, we'll put the script in, but there was no support helping us optimize I see the pump or use it in any way. We were kind of just on our own. They

Scott Benner 10:43
were sort of almost shadow banning you, like they were. They were like, Oh, that'll be fine. But then behind the scenes weren't doing much to help it move forward, absolutely.

Bethany 10:51
Yeah. So we started off with two months post diagnosis. We got her on OmniPod five, and they were like, we don't know a whole lot about this algorithm. If you want to try it, you can. And, you know, I not

Scott Benner 11:06
getting any help, and having to feel like, Oh, I think they're helping me, but they're but they're not. Yeah, yeah.

Bethany 11:12
It was, yeah. It was a lot. It was very confusing.

Scott Benner 11:17
Today's episode of the podcast is sponsored by Dexcom, and I'd like to take this opportunity to tell you a little bit about the continuous glucose monitor that my daughter wears, the Dexcom g7 the Dexcom g7 is small, it is accurate and it is easy to use and wear. Arden has been wearing a Dexcom g7 since almost day one of when they came out, and she's having a fantastic experience with it. We love the g6 but man, is the g7 small, the profile so much closer to your body, the weight, you can't really feel it. And that's coming from me, and I've worn one I've worn a g6 I've worn a g7 I found both of the experiences to be lovely, but my gosh, is that g7 tiny, and the accuracy has been fantastic. Arden's a 1c. Are right where we expect them to be, and we actually use the Dexcom clarity app to keep track of those things. That app is built right in to Arden's Dexcom g7 app on her iPhone. Oh, did you not know about that? You can use an iPhone or an Android device to see your Dexcom data. If you have a compatible phone, your Dexcom goes right to the Dexcom app. You don't have to carry the receiver. But if you don't want to use the phone, that's fine. Use the Dexcom receiver. It's up to you. Choice is yours with Dexcom, dexcom.com/juicebox,

Bethany 12:41
I think the way that I learn best is I ask a lot of questions and I do a lot of research, and that helps me decide on a direction moving forward. And so I almost think, you know, initially, they kind of put up with that, and then over time, I think they just got really annoyed by me in my questions and in it, you know, I think looking at I was always polite, I was always kind, I was respectful of their time, but I would ask. I would kind of push them outside of their comfort zone on questions that I feel like they should be able to but, you know, looking back, I just think they didn't have the resources to provide what we needed to support our daughter. So

Scott Benner 13:24
polite. What do you mean resources? Do you mean the clinic? Do you mean intellectual faculties, or actual people? Or what are you saying?

Bethany 13:33
I think like, like, manpower, resources, they only had one diabetes educator for the whole clinic, okay? And

Scott Benner 13:40
you think if there were more of them, they could have given to are you saying to me that you think they had more to give, but no time to give it? Go ahead. Let go. Bethany, let go. Just let go. I

Bethany 13:51
think they, I think they weren't

Scott Benner 13:56
so close. You're so close, Bethany, you're so close.

Bethany 14:01
I don't think they were upfront with the limits of what they could provide. Eventually, after I pushed enough, they were more transparent with me to say, look, we only have one or two kids chorus age per year that come through. And then by the time you know, they really get more control, they're older, and it's easier to control them. And so you're asking questions that we just don't have any experience with and so I it eventually got to that place where I feel like the diabetes educator is more upfront and transparent with me, but leading up until that, we just were kind of ignored, or like phone calls weren't returned, or we got that's a really great question. You make me feel like your questions make me feel like I haven't been doing this job for many years. Yeah, also,

Scott Benner 14:44
is that how it makes you feel? Because the way it should make you feel is that you've been doing it for a long time and you haven't bothered to figure it out yet. Yeah, no, everything becomes so paint by numbers for them that they don't they can, by the way, there plenty of people who are good at it not saying otherwise. I. But when you get stuck with someone who doesn't know how to help you, they you know, and you have to understand in their mind, they think they're doing a good job, like they do. Yeah, yeah. The ADA says seven. You're seven. It's good. I want to go back to something you alluded to didn't like right out say, but my daughter was diagnosed when she was two, and it was like, right after her second birthday just a handful of weeks, maybe. So I recall very strongly someone telling me when I asked about this, Hey, well, what about these higher blood sugars and these spikes and like, is this not going to be detrimental to her health? And someone looked me in the face and said, complications from type one diabetes don't come for like, 30 years. And they said that to be comforting, but I responded and said, but she's only two, right? Are you telling me, my daughter is going to have diabetes complications when she's 30? Yeah, because that doesn't stay with that. Yeah. That doesn't sound very comforting to me. Does it sound comforting to you? Then there's a pause and a stare. No one ever goes, Oh yeah, that was a dumb thing to say. I shouldn't have said that, you know, right,

Bethany 16:10
exactly the treatment that we got to, right? If we we'd say these things, and they're, you know, I think they would try to be comforting of but also, in my mind, I'm thinking through all of her, right, not just two year old her, but also the 12 year old who wants to try to do it on her own. And, you know, I want to be able to give her the best glycemic control I can now, so that she can have the opportunity to mess up and figure this out on her own. No, I don't want her sitting at, you know, horrible, a 1c you know, until she gets a little older and it's easier, and then go into puberty, and there's always going to be something hard. And I want her to be able to have bandwidth. You're trying

Scott Benner 16:58
to buy her a little time to figure it out by yourself. Yeah, Bethany, what makes you sleep? Why are you smart person? What happened? How did you think that far ahead?

Bethany 17:07
I don't know. I think probably has to do with my job too. You know, as a psychologist and providing therapy like I don't work with kids. I work with adults. And so often, though, when I'm working with adults I, as I'm thinking through right like my clinical impressions and my treatment plan, and how can I help this person? A big factor of that is, is their history and what, what they have coming into this now? And so I think I think about that for my own kids too, in in most areas of their life, including, you know, in diabetes for my for my youngest daughter, it felt

Scott Benner 17:41
like you were trying to put time in the bank for her, like, buy her credits, almost, so that, like, so, so you Okay, so you matched up your psychology background and said, there's obviously a good chance that when she hit 1718, 1920, she might rebel against this, and if we do really well up until then, and she has a couple of bad years, maybe that helps us not have health issues down the road even further. Yeah,

Bethany 18:09
because I know some of that rebellion again, putting my training hat on like I know that some of that is very developmentally appropriate, and so I wanted, I don't want diabetes to take that away from her like I want her to be able to do all of the things that are developmentally appropriate throughout all of the stages of her life.

Scott Benner 18:30
Bethany, take a left turn with me for a second. Tell the people listening why it's important for your kids to push back at certain ages so

Bethany 18:36
that they can they can build independence.

Scott Benner 18:40
So if you keep them under your thumb and you try to control them the whole time, all you end up with is larger infantilized adults. Yep, yep, okay, yeah, bite your tongue sometimes and they say something, and they're just clearly just testing boundaries and trying to see if they're gonna like, like, what happens if they don't listen? If they take another half step? That stuff's all very healthy, Yep, yeah. Okay.

Bethany 19:02
You know, I think when I work with adults who are going through this for their own kids, you know, one piece of education I'll often give is, you know, your teenagers telling you that they don't need you, but they do. They just need to say that they don't need you. What they need you to do is they need you to say when they say they need time by themselves, and they need to know that you're still in the hallway or in the room or downstairs. If they decide to go there, they might not do that, right? They might not come to you, but they need to know that you're still there. They need to know you have a soft they have a soft place to land with you.

Scott Benner 19:37
You know, I had as a stay at home dad for a very long time. I guess there's an argument to be made. I'm a podcaster now, but as I'm 52 it sounds embarrassing when I say that out loud, but, but I always thought that one of the most important things I was providing was a very small, almost imperceivable idea that when people came in the door, there. Somebody at home base, like I was there and that they Yeah, that they knew when they got back, there'd be somebody there, yeah, yeah, and that. And it wasn't like, right away, like, what'd you do? How do things go? You know, you weren't it was just like, Hey, what's up your presence? Yeah, yeah. Chat. Like, it's hard to say I miss it, because we still do it be. I miss how young they were. Yeah, I miss those, like, after school conversations, when they, like, blurred out everything that happened to them, you know. And I very much enjoyed that we still do it. It just looks different now. Now it's like Arden on FaceTime from college at the end of a day, or, you know, my son, you know, just talking about, like his job search, and you know what he's learning with friends as he gets older, and interesting to see him start to pay attention to how other people are treating third parties and how I don't how, you know, I don't want to be involved with a person who treats other people like that. Yeah, really, really like fun stuff. I still feel like I'm growing from them. Yeah,

Bethany 21:02
you know, I think one reason right, like, I know that for my training, that this is what's healthy and developmentally appropriate, but also I really benefited from that structure in my own family. Growing up like my parents have always been really intentional the way that you have to be that soft place to land. I remember my mom very explicitly telling me, you know, going when I went to college and graduate school, you know, telling me, honey, you know, like you know, that no matter what happens, you always have a soft place to land, here at home. And they really were present in that way. And so I think as I think through what I want for all of my kids, including, you know, my daughter with diabetes, like I want to be that for them, like I want that was such a gift that my parents and still is a gift that my parents give me. And so that's just really important to my husband and I to be able to do that for our kids too. And

Scott Benner 21:59
am I right to say that in your experience with your own parents, soft place the land doesn't mean no pressure, no stress. You don't have to try. It has it means go out there and try. And if, if you fall in your face like you can drag your ass back here and pull it back together again. Yep,

Bethany 22:17
yeah, totally. And they'll be honest with me too, when I'm, you know, when I'm off mark like that. We had a situation recently where I just, oh, you're just having, like, a horrible Diabetes Day, and my husband and I were arguing, and I just went to my mom to kind of like, vent about it, and she was like, you know, I hear you. I also think you probably need to go take a nap, and then you might feel better about this afterwards. She's like everyone. And my mom always growing up, she even had, like, a picture of it at her at her work. It's a picture of a little snowman that's melting, and it says everyone's entitled to an occasional meltdown. And she's just notorious for saying that. So in that moment, she told me she's like, you know, everyone's entitled to an occasional meltdown. I also think you need a nap right now. Mommy

Scott Benner 23:02
has hers in her walk in closet, in case you're wondering,

Bethany 23:07
I did. I took a nap and then I did feel better afterwards. But yeah,

Scott Benner 23:11
I think I've said to my wife more than a handful of times, why are you yelling at me?

Bethany 23:19
We're all entitled to an occasional moment.

Scott Benner 23:21
You should see, like, I've had some like, monumental, like, fall apart in my life, and I can even feel myself leaning into them as they're happening. Yes, it's almost like, it almost, you know, when you watch a bad TV show and you're like, are they trying to be bad actors? What's happening right here? Like, I've leaned into things too hard a time or two.

Bethany 23:41
Oh, and I think after post diagnosis, like something like diabetes in your two year old just kind of makes brings that out too, like I remember, and I think that's one thing that's been really helpful for me, listening to juicebox, knowing that Arden was diagnosed so young, and like we listened my husband, I listened to the Pro Tip series. There'll be all of those, and that's really helpful for our management. But I love hearing the stories, because there will be, like, those little moments where you'll talk about those early years with Arden, and it's so incredibly validating. Like, there was one episode where you said, like, Yeah, I mean, for a long time, I just went into the shower and cried, and I was like, Oh my gosh, someone else did that.

Scott Benner 24:20
The best place to cry your face is already wet, so it's really half handled already, you know, because it's

Bethany 24:27
just, it's always horrible when your kids diagnosed. But I think there's something particularly horrible about your baby being diagnosed with diabetes. Yeah, yeah.

Scott Benner 24:36
Also, you know, well, I don't know. I was talking to a person the other day who wanted to bring up all the kind of good things that she got out of her diagnosis, and she's like an older type one, which I love the conversation. And I want to say that I, you know, obviously you wouldn't trade, I mean, I'd give diabetes away for anything. You know, when my mom passed away, I remember being in the hospital room with her. Know the last last hours that I was going to be with her. I knew for sure, and I knew we were saying goodbye to her right there. And I turned around after I talked to her, so that she couldn't see me, and so that my other brother could kind of get and kind of come up to her and talk to her personally too. And I I'm still surprised I didn't break all my teeth trying not to throw whatever was in front of me out the window, yeah, you know. And, and I wonder how much more poorly I would have handled it if I hadn't been through all these other experiences in my life, yeah, you know. And a lot of these experiences taught me, personally, tiny modicums of self control, like, like, through the like, like, because I can remember standing in the shower and I feel like I could have punched a hole in the wall, you know, and I didn't. And I felt like I could have screamed and I didn't, because I didn't want my kids to be upset. I didn't want my wife to know that I was struggling. I didn't mind her knowing I was struggling. I didn't want her thinking that I was collapsing because I wasn't. I just needed a release after that whole day of keeping a two year old alive with diabetes, yep, and just knowing that it wasn't over. Now it's the evening and the laying down, and are we going to sleep through the night? We're probably not, and then I'm going to get up in the morning. In the morning and start over again and and do it again and again. And Saturday doesn't matter. Saturday's not Saturday anymore. Do you know what I mean? Like, Sunday's not Sunday? Saturday's not Saturday. Every day is just like, ready, set. Don't die. Don't die. Survive. Keep your kid alive. Yeah, yeah. Go, go, go over and over again. Anyway, I know that helped me. I've been mindfully trying to become more patient throughout my adult life. And I'm, I'm there now, like I'm, I'm I'm there, I still have moments and everybody is like your mom said, you know is going to but I'm there now, like I have an appreciation for slow and steady and consistent, and I apply that to my expectations too,

Bethany 27:05
you know? Yeah, I think this experience, it builds resilience, right? And I see that within my husband and I even just over this last, like, little under a year and a half. I also see it in my daughter too, and on the one hand, right? Like, it breaks my mom heart a bit, because she's resilient beyond what almost three year old should have to be. But I'm also really proud of her too, and and just how she's she's been a trooper. People ask us how we're doing, and we're like, well, she's doing great. She's doing the best out of everyone, because she's just living her life and happy as can be and doing great. I'm really proud of her. I also just like it makes me sad that she that this is the weight that she has to carry.

Scott Benner 27:55
No, of course, how do you have other children?

Bethany 27:57
I do. We have an eight year old, eight year old boy, and then a five year old daughter in the middle, and then our type one is our youngest.

Scott Benner 28:06
Gotcha. How are you like? I'll talk to you first personally. How do you feel like you're handling this new experience for yourself, and where is it getting you and where you Where are you doing well?

Bethany 28:20
I just really struggle. I've always been a more anxious person, and I feel like leading into diagnosis that was in a relatively good place for for years, leading up to kind of where we were at when Cora was when my daughter was diagnosed, and then we just had a few really hard life experiences in diabetes was the cherry on top. And so I think the most sensitive one kind of before Cora was diagnosed as my eight year old, he had a tonsillectomy and adenoidectomy. A month before my daughter was diagnosed. He did great. The surgery itself was fine, but then that night, he hemorrhaged at home to the point where he was, I mean, profusely bleeding from surgery. And so, you know, ambulance was called. They rushed him into emergency surgery. He was fine, you know, they they had to cauterize the the back of his throat again. And he stayed the night at the hospital, and he was fine, but it was wait. He was hemorrhaging out of his mouth from his tonsils. How

Unknown Speaker 29:27
old was he

Bethany 29:29
seven? Oh, did

Scott Benner 29:31
you like?

Bethany 29:32
It was horrible. Cry,

Scott Benner 29:34
fall over. Did it all happen at once? Like, what did you do?

Bethany 29:37
I mean, initially, I just went into this is what we need to do mode, right? Like, I was like, okay, he's hemorrhaging. I'm calling 911, I'm getting a bucket, right? Like, we're getting his coat on, we're getting shoes on, we're gonna wait at the curb for the ambulance. We're going and so it was just go, go, go. This is what we have to do. And then there was a moment in the ER, because I just was in go mode. And. So was all, were all of the nurses and the medical team around us. So they rushed us back, you know, they got them suctioned at some point, I don't even know how, because it was such a blur, someone asked me, like, can you hold, can you hold a suction? And I was like, Sure. And so I'm here, like, suctioning blood out of my son's mouth while they're getting him ready for surgery. And I was probably there for about 15 or 20 minutes, like, whatever, all of this was going on around me. And then I think one of the members, one on one nurse, recognized that, like, oh, that's mom. That's mom. That's not Oh, my God, that's mom standing there. And she went up to me, and she's like, your mom, right? I was like, yeah. She's like, let me take that you don't need to be doing that. I'm sure you are having a hard enough time, like you don't need to be doing that. And like, in that moment was when I just, like, broke, yeah, I just fell apart, and I said, thank you. And I just was sobbing. And he was like, he never was unstable, but he was pretty out of it at this point. And so, like, he was, I wasn't worried he was gonna see me breaking down. And then shortly after that, they got him back. And, like, it was very uncomplicated, like they know what to do at that point. They just re cauterize it. He was on the on a, you know, they admitted him to the hospital. But it was, I think, from, like a just witnessing how much blood there was and how traumatic it was. I mean, it was dramatic. He had a ton of blood in his stomach from the hemorrhage, and so, because I don't know how long he had been hemorrhaging, he was, honestly, he was just, he was playing like a Pokemon card game with my husband on the couch, and then he just turned to me and he goes, I'm bleeding. And I was like, You're bleeding. And he was like, I'm bleeding. And he like, spit blood into his hand.

Scott Benner 31:47
What are the doctors who did the procedure say after that? Sorry. What are they? They don't what happens there? I

Bethany 31:54
think it's just so normal for them that, like, this is a known complication from a tonsillectomy, right? It doesn't happen super often, but it's like one of the most common, you know, one of the most common complications that happens. That's

Scott Benner 32:06
a good example, Bethany, by the way, of anything can happen and you shouldn't. You shouldn't think that it's not going to happen to you, because what a real random ass thing to happen. Oh my god. I was

Bethany 32:16
just like, shell shocked after that, like I was terrified he was fine. He made a totally fine recovery after that, but my nerves were just shaken from, like, I was really anxious about, like, the health of my kids, and then Cora was diagnosed, like, less than a month later, and I was like, What is going on? What? What is happening to my life right now? Yeah, well, it's

Scott Benner 32:40
interesting to hear you talk about, because it's all reasonably fresh for you. Yeah. So you you transition from the care team to the new care team. Were they able to support you better, right? Yeah. What was their support in? Was it actual functional? Here's Step one, two and three. Or were they just standing behind you when you were saying, Hey, I found this guy's podcast and would be doing this stuff now. Yeah,

Bethany 33:06
no, that's a good that's a good question. So I actually one of the reasons why I wanted to come on to be interviewed was because I really went into advocacy mode after listening to another podcast episode of a dad with a kiddo just like my daughter, you know, same age, same weight, hearing the care that they received and how starkly different it was from the care we were receiving, really made me be like, Well, I'm not putting up with this anymore. I'm I'm kind of done, you know, I've been kind. I've pushed, you know, I This isn't okay. And the real kind of piece that it was hinging on was using diluted insulin in the pump. That was something so we, we used OmniPod at first. We probably shouldn't, have to be honest, she only was on like three or four units total for the day. And you know, when I said, like, Hey, should we try automated mode? They're like, sure, if you want to, you know, without really telling us, like, hey, the minimum amount is five. It might not work for her. Let this help you get a manual profile and pump until she needs more insulin. So it was a mess, and this is with me, like I'm reading books, I'm listening to all your podcast episodes. I'm reaching out and asking questions. Like, I'm doing all of this on my own with my husband too. You know, he's doing all of this as well with us. And eventually, you know, I came to them, and they're like, it just sounds like, instead of trying to troubleshoot to help OmniPod work for us, they were like, it just sounds like it's not working. You want to try a different pump? Well, I think that was the right choice at the time, ultimately, like it was really kind of their only solution that they offered. They didn't really offer much other help to try to make OmniPod

Scott Benner 34:51
work. They ended up with a good solution, but not on purpose, maybe

Bethany 34:56
no. And their reasoning wasn't really pure either. They were like, we just know. T slim better. We'll be able to help you more with T slim. But then when we switched, we slipped, switched to T slim with basal IQ. Initially, like, went under the guise of like, we know it better. We can help you better. We'll help more with settings. We switched, and it was just the same story, like we were just doing it all on our own. You know? We'd ask questions like, hey, we think we need to do basal testing. Any idea on how we should do that with like, a two year old? And you know it, it's not like they wouldn't answer or say anything. It's just what they had to say. Wasn't really helpful. They

Scott Benner 35:34
just give you a sheet of paper that that describe basal testing. Yep, pretty much, yeah. I know what they do. Don't worry. Yeah, it wasn't really helpful. I have a handout. Would you like a handout? It's a mimeograph. Do you remember? How old are you? Bethany,

Bethany 35:50
I'm 33 No,

Scott Benner 35:52
you don't know mimeograph. Nevermind. No, okay, but

Bethany 35:56
yeah. Then when it wasn't working, I, you know, was talking to lots of other people who have kids around the same age as our daughter, and how are you doing this? And a lot of them were saying, like, oh, we in order to use an automated an aid system, like, you gotta use, you have to have diluted. And so I asked our endo about that, and the response was horrible. It was just I, it made me feel like I was an unreasonable mom who was pushing for risky things for my child. I thought the looting insulin was risky using it in the pump, specifically, they said that they only used it via injection, and that it was pretty much I would say, like, can we have a conversation? Like I understand everyone needs to have limits to their past practice. But can you help me understand why that's the clinic's policy on diluted insulin in the pump, and it just wasn't even a conversation at all. Have

Scott Benner 36:51
you had a chance to listen to some of the cold wind episodes I put out this year so far? Yeah, yeah. I have listened to most of them. It helps you. It helps you in those moments. Yeah, yeah. You just go, okay, you don't know. I get it, yeah, yeah.

Bethany 37:04
They just didn't know, right? I think is what? But again, like, I would have appreciated them being like, hey, like this just, you know, it's our policy, because we don't know how to do it, but if you want to, here are some resources. Here are some other people who do do it. We can help you get set up with them. It was just, you know, if you want a second opinion, you can, you can do that without knowing very well that. You know, doing that requires them. Nothing

Scott Benner 37:30
works that way. If you went to the grocery store and you said, I would really like some Haagen dais ice cream to the owner, can you show me to your Haagen Dazs ice cream? And he didn't carry Haagen da only carried a different brand. He wouldn't say, I don't carry Haagen Dazs. He'd go, let me show you over here to what we have, absolutely. Yeah, exactly. It's just, it's, to some level, it's self preservation, because if they go telling you go over here and find that, you might leave, which, by the way, you did anyway. But like you know, you might say, Why am I here? Why am I spending my money with these people, right? You know, or my time, or my effort, or whatever it is, you're giving away to be there and not gaining returns that are valuable for you. Yeah, yeah. Well,

Bethany 38:15
so that's where we were when we listened to the episode and I had pretty much closed the door. I was like, okay, like, I guess we'll try something different. I was looking into it, and then I heard that episode, you know, really validating that, hey, I'm not a horrible mom. This is a reasonable thing that's safe for kids like my daughter. I'm gonna push for it again. And so I'm a very determined person, and so when I said I'm going to ask them about it again, it wasn't like, I'm going to send, I'm going to call them and say, Hey, can we open this door again? I, like, was doing a literature review. I I pulled academic peer reviewed papers on diluted insulin in a pump. I put together, like, bullet point lit review on, like, here's what the research says. I put together pages, you know, I reached out to all of the people I knew were usually diluted, and I said, Hey, like, what? What's your doctor's name? If you're comfortable giving it, I'm putting together a list that our care team could consult with. And so I gathered all of this, and I reached out to them, and I said, I have done a lot of research on this. Will you at least look at what I'm look at what I found. And if you're not willing to do it, can you help me get connected somewhere? Can we just have this conversation again? And they didn't even look at it. They said, No, we won't look at it. You can go somewhere else, knowing very well I have an HMO and like, there's no one else in network. And so going somewhere else meant like filing an appeal to are you trying

Scott Benner 39:39
to tell me that what they actually said to you was you professionally. You've pulled a lot of them go yourself, essentially, but I have peer reviewed literature. Oh, do you here? What are these? My middle fingers? Yeah, you were stuck, and there's nowhere to. And they don't know how to help. And, you know, my father in law ended up in the hospital last week, maybe two weeks ago now, and my wife not his medical proxy, you know, and he's married still, but they're older and, you know, so they they have struggles sometimes understanding what's happening completely, and we're contextualizing all of it as you would. And so my wife was staying out of it. She's got other brothers and sisters, and they were more, you know, involved, I guess. And the other day, I just said to Kelly, I'm like, Hey, your dad's gonna die if we don't do something. And she's like, Yeah, I know. And I said, Okay. I said, it's our turn now. So we got in the car middle of the week, drove hour and a half to where he was at the hospital, went in, said our hellos, got him, sat down, and then I said, Okay, well, that's enough of this. I'm gonna go get the nurse and get all your notes, and we're gonna read through them. And I said this on another episode, but I'm gonna repeat it here, because it really fits with what you're talking about. My mother in law looked up like, Oh my God. Like, what horrible thing are you about you're gonna go speak to the nurse, that angel out there who's clearly smarter than us and and I'm like, yeah, she's a nice lady with and I and I'm not disrespecting her. I'm like, but she's trying to keep everybody on this floor reasonably alive. She's not walking around considering dad's life. That's what we're doing. And I said, so I went up to her, I said, Hey, can you come get your you know, could you bring the computer? And we'd love to look through his notes. Went through all of his notes. Nothing was happening, by the way, like they weren't doing anything for him. They were just feeding him. And like, we'll take him off his meds and see where that goes, and in a couple more days, I'm like, You're doing nothing. He's degrading, right? So we looked through his notes, my wife and I, my wife and I came up with the three things that needed to be addressed. I went out into the the nurse's station. I said, I need a dry erase marker. We came back in. My wife wrote her phone number on the board. Our three questions after the questions are answered, If this is the answer, what happens after that? If that's the answer, what happens here? And then looked at my father in law and said, when they come in tomorrow, you call that number and put us on the phone with whoever is standing here, right? And you know he's going to be out of the hospital another day, and he's doing way better now. He was an afib. He needed to be, I don't know if you know the term cardio inverted. He needed to be shocked to get out of afib. He has a triple A that needed to be assessed to see if it needed surgery or not, and there was a medication switch that that needed to be considered. He we got him shocked. He's out of afib. He's on the new medication. They're going to watch him for two days in the hospital to make sure it's okay with him. They got a new measurement on the AAA. It doesn't need intervention right now, and he's gonna go back every six months and have an ultrasound. My father in law went from like not feeling well to looking like he was 25 years older than he was, to being okay again, because someone took five goddamn minutes to look at all the information they already had, give them an action plan and then hold them to it. Yeah,

Bethany 43:06
that was it. Yep. You know, I work in the same health system that we were getting care at, and I think what was really helpful for me, I kind of got to this like, place before the episode, before I listen to the episode of like, acceptance, of like, you know, they're not going to be helpful. I guess we're on our own, and we'll just figure this out, to being like, No, I'm going to push like, I'm going to push and I'm going to advocate within this health system. Because this is what I do for my patients. I go the extra mile, right? If someone needs something and I don't know, I say, I don't know, let me go look this up, or let me consult with this colleague. Or, you know what? I don't do that, but here's a referral to someone who does, and then I follow up and make sure that they got connected. I'm doing the right thing, and this is what we should be doing, and this is patient centered care, and I'm not going to tolerate this for my kid anymore. And so I pushed a lot very like, appropriately and very kindly, like I never yelled. I know, you know, I kind of know how to advocate in a way that is still appropriate, and I think they just didn't like it. You know, eventually we I reached out. Thankfully, my daughter did qualify for because she's so young, qualified for a program called CLTs children's long term support, and then she gets, like, a special kind of Medicaid for for kids who have disabilities. And so that opened up more options in state for us, and so we reached out to the other children's hospital nearby, and it's been like a night and day difference. And I told them, like I did the same thing. I came to them and I said, this is what we're looking for. This is what we've done in the past. In the past, it hasn't worked. You know, in order for her, I don't work in a job where I can babysit her, Dexcom. All day, my husband doesn't we need an automatic insulin delivery system so that we can sleep and so that she can be safe when she's at preschool. Right? We've tried everything. This is what we want to do. We want to do diluted in the pump and the the they were really receptive to it. They said, We've never done this before, but we're willing to figure it out with you. They looked at all of the literature. They said, Yep, I think we can do this. We also got we're working with someone from Integrated Diabetes too, who's really familiar with diluted in the pump, and then she's coordinating with our care team. And so now we're at a really good place where they're actually where we're at, like, as of today, is there. We're waiting on the dilutant to come from the manufacturer. So we're, like, in a really hopeful, positive place now, it just took a lot to get here.

Scott Benner 45:55
Yeah, how crazy is it that the extra mile means getting it done.

Bethany 46:01
It's very Yes, yeah.

Scott Benner 46:02
It's bizarre. Doggling. No, it's bizarre there. If you could step back and take a long enough view of of a life in the medical system, you're going to have your first problem. Whenever you have your first problem, mostly you're either going to live or you're going to die. There's things that happen all the time. You get the flu, that's a hit on you, right? Most of us live through that when we're younger. You have your time selected me. There's some people have, you know, a hemorrhage, but he got through it, right? Yep, that hemorrh could happen in the middle of the night. I know you thought about that, right? And, oh, totally Yeah. And so he makes it through great. We're lucky, but every time something happens, it's a ding, and we think that we're gonna go to a hospital, and the hospital's gonna is gonna shine us back up to where we were before we got dinged. But that's not their job. Their job is just to make sure you don't die and then send you back out to wait for the next time that something befalls you. Yep, it's hard to think about it that way, but that's the system. If you want something else, you gotta push for it. Yeah, we're rich or famous and be paying people and say, Look, scotty's plan here is, I don't want to go backwards. I don't just want to not die today. I'd like to live longer. Is that a possibility? I'd like to live healthier. You know, like that is not everyone's that's not the goal. Now, if you're in a catastrophic situation, then, yes, that's the goal, right? Like, if you have a car accident, or you fall off of something, you know, you know, I don't know, you cut you off your head, whatever. Like, when bad stuff happens, like, you know, then, then you're in an emergent situation, and they put your body back together in pieces. Like, right now, you're a model. But when it comes to diagnostic stuff, there's nobody. There's just, there's there's nobody whose job it is to be diagnostic about your health. And that's why you'll do it yourself, or you'll just degrade faster. That's it.

Bethany 47:55
And I think a huge piece that I don't know how to find it right. I think you just almost have to stumble upon a provider who is who has these skills. But I think a big difference between our previous care team and our current care team is that our endocrinologist now treats us like a human and is supportive and encouraging and has really wonderful interpersonal skills. We had a phone call just to kind of go over some logistics. And I think at some point I just like we were talking through just, I don't know, I don't even know what you're talking about, but I took a sigh, and she goes, You know, I don't know if you need to hear this, but I just want you to know you're doing a really great job. You're advocating for your daughter really appropriately. And you know, I'm not nervous about doing this. I'm not scared. I think that you've thought this through, we've thought it through, and I'm confident that this is the right step for her. I'm not nervous. I don't know if you are, but I'm not little bit of encouragement, yeah, and I like, teared up in that moment, because I don't think I realized until she said that, like, how much I needed or how helpful I guess I didn't need it, but I think how helpful it was for me to hear that from her doctor, to just hear that confidence and like, that reassurance and that empathy we hadn't had any any interaction with a healthcare provider for my daughter for a year and a half leading up until that moment, it

Scott Benner 49:23
felt like that. Yeah, and for you to know that this next effort you make isn't just gonna end in failure, that's a thing I don't think, I don't think we appreciate enough. You know, you hear all the time like, oh, you know, that person's non compliant. They don't try. And I'm like that. That's not what happens. They tried so many times and it didn't work out that the expectation here is this is not going to work either. This next thing you brought up is not going to help me. And so I'm I'm done not I'm not going to try like I've tried enough now it feels hopeless. It's it just. Is, it's at the core of why I talk about diabetes the way I do, because I want you to have a win. Yeah, you know what I mean, I want something to happen that you go, God damn. I meant for that to happen, and it happened like, I wonder what else I could make happen. And, you know, like, so start very basic, and give people a chance. Let them understand the basil and some how important it is. Let them understand how important it is to cover meals. You know, the so the timing of the insulin is commiserate to the impact of the food, like that. So that you can go, wow, I just ate something, and my blood sugar did not spike to 300 and I didn't get low afterwards. This is great, you know, and then, and then you build and build confidence, like learning to hit a baseball, like you just I'll tell you this my, I think my son was, God, He's 24 now, I think he was 15 or 16, and his baseball team. They were good. A lot of boys in that baseball team went on to play baseball in college. So like just to give you some context, and they were heading to Florida and to be in this tournament. And I went with him, and on the first day, like they had barely been there for 10 hours, they were already going to play baseball games hot out. And what they learned was they were, they were being matched against this team of kids who weren't just gonna go to college and play like these were the kids like, you know what I mean. And our sons were brought in like sacrificial lambs, like, and we realized very quickly that there were 20, I'm not kidding you, 20 pro scouts there to see the pitcher on the other team? Oh, no. And what? What our kids were, were good players, maybe better than good players, to put up a fight so that this kid could come out and pitch and get drafted and we could all go to hell afterwards. And so we're standing around before the game, and this kid's in the 90s, like, thrown in the 90s at 16 years old. And my son's like, what do I do? And I said, don't change who you are. Yeah. And he goes, wait what? And I said, take your swing. Like, even if it's a full second late, even if you hear the ball hit the catcher's glove, and then you swing like, like, be yourself. Like, don't change how your feet work. Don't change how your hands work. Don't try to dominate the situation that clearly you know you you don't have the ability to get in front of right now. Like, just be you. And he fouled the kid off a couple of times before he struck out, and when he came back, he looked like he hit a home run. That's awesome, yeah. And I was like, How'd that go? Like, through the fence, and he goes, I fouled him off. And I was like, yeah, exactly. And, you know, not many years later, my son could hit guys like that, no trouble. And that's kind of how I think about all of this really, you know, like, I don't know Bethany how long you've been listening, or how long the people who are listening to this episode have been listening, or what you're doing, but I really only just apply my life theories to diabetes. It's no different. Like, I don't handle diabetes differently than I handled walking my son through baseball or my daughter through high school, or any of the, you know, my my mom's illness, or I just apply common sense, stability, patience. You know, we make good decisions when we see somebody who's not on our side. We go somewhere else. You know, like these little basic life ideas. They just, they work on everything. Yeah, I want to give my secret away here. I guess everyone knows if they're listening right. Diabetes is not any different than learning how to hit a baseball. It's slow and steady, and you don't change who you are. You just, you keep doing what you're doing until it starts to work out for you. That's pretty much it.

Bethany 54:00
Well, and I, and I think the thing that the podcast does, too, is that not everyone has those skills going into that diagnosis of diabetes, right? And so it gives them, it gives them a fighting chance to be able to develop some of those skills and some of those tools.

Scott Benner 54:19
Yeah, you get to benefit from the crappy life I lived, and all the all the struggles that I went through, and the things that I had to overcome and overcome and overcome over and over and over again to get me to the point where I could look at that kid and go, doesn't matter if you strike out. Really doesn't matter at all. Just be you and and because if you would have asked 20 year old me, I would have said, You got to hit that ball. If you don't hit that ball, you're not going to college like, right? But that's not the case. Wasn't the truth, nope. But I would have felt like that without all my experiences in between. And I can thank Arden's diabetes for some of that, and, you know, and I can thank my. Mom's illness, and my parents getting divorced and injuries that I've had when I was younger, and being broke growing up, and all of the other things that put me in that situation where I had to, I had to fight, but remain hopeful. And, yeah, yeah, I just, I'll tell you right now, I am one of those people, like, I wake up every day and I'm like, this will be better. Yeah, I

Bethany 55:23
am too. I'm a pretty hopeful person, and so I think, you know, before listening to the episode, you know, I was kind of in a place where I was just, I was it was hard, the hope was still there, but it was harder to see because I was just feeling so defeated because I was using all of the tools from the Pro Tip series, and, you know, I was implementing everything that we were learning in books, but like, when you only need five units over the course of a day, and you don't have support and encouragement from the people that you think should be in Your Corner, like, so her a 1c right now is at 7.3 and like, we've worked really hard to do that and to get there, but like, we we that's not good enough still. Like we want to get it lower right, like we want, and that's why we're pursuing more of this. Because we did that with, like, no sleep. We did that with like my husband and I, dividing up the nights and being zombies at work and, you know, like doing all the things, not being able, not being as present to be as we want to be for our older kids. You know, we did. We got it there with diabetes, calling the shots and taking over a lot of parts of our life that we didn't want, we didn't want it to be taking and so that's kind of what we kept telling her former care team was like, Yeah, I see like, by all your measures of success, we're checking those boxes. But I'm telling you, we are. We are struggling. We are struggling. This isn't sustainable. It's not healthy for our family. We don't want to, you know, swap out Cora's, you know, long health for, like, the health and well being of our family. Yeah, I'm,

Scott Benner 57:09
I'm six months away from being a workplace shooter. So while you're telling me I'm doing well, I'm not, and I haven't talked to my eight year old in like, a week so and my, my husband and I haven't had sex since January, like, you know, like, there's a lot going on here. Yeah, right, yeah,

Bethany 57:23
I gotcha. But they just, like, had no solutions, like, there was no no support, there was no ideas, there was nothing. And so it was just, I was feeling really defeated, and then I heard that, and I was like, that was kind of the hope that I needed, right, that, like, there is something else that we can try there, you know, I can push, I can advocate. I'll find someone who's willing to do this. I'm not being unreasonable by asking this. I'm not a bad parent by asking these questions. And so that was one reason why I really wanted to come on to to just be able to, you know, if I could just do that for even one person listening, that's that's worth it to me.

Scott Benner 57:59
Do you happen to know the episode that helped you so much? Man,

Bethany 58:03
I'm trying to remember. I know that the I want to say the dad's name was Andrew, okay, it started with an A, oh, wait, was

Scott Benner 58:11
it an OmniPod five episode?

Bethany 58:13
No, because I think, I think his daughter is looping so on OmniPod. But he was using a combination of diluted and then they also were using like, FIAs or loom Jeb, I can't remember which one, so they had some like, I think he called it like a Frankenstein combination of insulin that was just working well for their daughter. Interesting. Yeah, I think it aired.

Scott Benner 58:40
This is my fault. I put on a lot of Con, a lot of cut. I

Bethany 58:44
mean, you do. It's my fault.

Scott Benner 58:46
I apologize. No, but it also, it's funny. It kind of doesn't matter, because, because what, what I hear, is that you heard someone else's story, and in that story somewhere, you were like, Oh, this is the thing I'm missing. Yep, right here. And each story has, I'm not going to be humble for a second. I think each story has about five or six of those. I can't expect everybody to listen to every episode, but there are times like in the Facebook group, I'll see somebody like really struggling, having a terrible struggle, and I'll think, oh gosh, if you would have just listened to this series, you'd be okay. Or if you would have just heard this interview, that would have helped you. And you know, you do your best to say, oh, try this episode. You know, that kind of stuff. But it's, I mean, the Facebook group has think it does like 125 new posts every day. It's, I can't obviously keep up with all of them.

Bethany 59:40
I looked it up. I just went to my Facebook and I searched because I went after I listened to it, I went to the Facebook group, and I said, I just listened the app the Facebook or the episode was called, called Adam's Song. And I went and I posted in the group, and I said it listening to Adam's Song and feeling so validated my daughter. Also, you know, 18 pounds when diagnosed a year ago. And we've been struggling wanting to prescribe diluted in the pump. And then I think that someone actually got us connected. And Adam and I spoke a little bit, just so I could get some resources from him too. So it was really neat. Episode 1105,

Scott Benner 1:00:17
there we go. It was in January of this year. That was only a few months ago. Well, look at Yeah, oh, wow, geez. I really hoped you. Bethany, yeah. Really have I should start. I want to. I kept asking for people to name a baby after me that's clearly going nowhere and try something else, Christmas cards or, I don't know I had this card's good idea. I live such a strange life. Seriously, I sincerely mean that because I started doing this thing in my house. My God, I started doing it when Arden was only diagnosed for a year. So that's 2007

Bethany 1:00:53
like, where we are, yeah, 2007

Scott Benner 1:00:56
and I was like, I'm gonna write a blog. And I was really doing it to bring awareness to diabetes at that point, you know, I'm sure I've said this before, but at some point, there were so many diabetes blogs not like that anymore, but there were well over 4000 diabetes blogs. It was in vogue. It was in vogue. You know, blogging was huge. And I was contacted once by a pharma company, because back then, the the pharma companies and the device manufacturers would kind of glom on to the bloggers to try to get the word out about their companies and their stuff like that. Pharma companies did these things where they'd have, like, these blogging conferences where they basically fly you somewhere and feed you for a couple days and tell you stuff that they wanted you to know about the you know, they'd say things like, yeah, you can write about this if you want, but there's no pressure. And I was like, there's no pressure. You just blew me out here. I just got to see an Indy car ride around a lot, like a track, like, privately. I mean, it feels like there's pressure, but there was, I mean, there genuinely wasn't, yeah, as a matter of fact, after that visit, I went home and I wrote about the, like, insulin pricing problems and but nevertheless, like, there were a lot of people writing, and I just one day was like, I'm not this is ridiculous. Like, how many people do you need to do this? Like, right? Like, how many goddamn blogs are there? And I stopped for a while, but I missed it a lot, and I came back. I did come back to it, but I came back to it with a with a renewed idea of what it should be and and in the beginning it was a lot of, like, raw nerve, like, this just happened. And then people would be like, Oh my God, that's happened to me. And I'm like, that's great, but it doesn't help anybody. Like, I'm like, I want to, if I'm going to spend my time doing this, like, I'd like to see people, like, elevate, not just feel like they're not alone, which is nice and valuable, but not enough. And that's when I started like, saying, like, to my wife. I'm like, I'm going to share how we actually do this, like, like, instead of just being like, like, saying, like, vanilla stuff. And I'm like, why don't we tell them how hard? And say one sees this low, you know? And so started doing that. It grew into, you know, other stuff. I wrote a book. That book got me into an interview. At that interview, this person told me I was good at talking to people. Like, a year or so later, blogging was falling apart, and I was like, Oh, I'm gonna make a podcast. And I didn't make any money doing it for years, really. And then it started to pick up steam a little bit enough that my wife wasn't, like, because in the beginning, my wife's like, this is nice and all, but are you going to make money? What's going on? Yeah, and she didn't mean with the podcast. She meant, are you going to stop with this podcast and go get a job? And because I had been a stay at home dad for so long, I was supposed to, like, transition into working again. And and instead, I was like, I'm gonna make a podcast. And I'm sure she was like, What the fuck did I marry? You know what I mean? Like, what is going on here? 100% sure. She was like, fucking loser. There were other guys, like, but it started to do okay. And I was like, I just kept saying to her. I was like, you know, if you can just wait a little longer, like, I think I can get this to, I used to say to her, like, I think I can get this to 50 downloads a day. And then I was like, I think I can get it to 100 and then eventually, I was like, I think I can get it to 10,000 and, you know, and there's, I've had days in this podcast, I've had 30,000 downloads and, and, yeah, and I, and I'm, you know, I'm like, I think I can get the month to 300,000 I think I can get this to 400,000 like. I think I get the year to 3 million like, like. And I kept doing that. And as I did that, I didn't realize I was becoming, I was becoming like a lot of things at the same time, right? And the podcast, not me, but the it turned into like a repository for information. It turned into a community for people. It turned into a thing where, you know, companies were like, hey, you've got, like, a really big listener based we'd love to buy, we'd love to buy an ad. And I was like, and my wife was like, Yes, he would like an ad. So yes, please. Please, because I had done it for so long without it, I'd written the blog. I always turned down. They used to offer you product bloggers like, you could get free pumps and CGMS and stuff like that, if you if you were like, if you had a contract with them. And I always said no to that, because we had good insurance. First of all, I don't want to seem altruistic. We had good insurance. Didn't cost us anything, really, $20 to get pumps and stuff like that. But I just said it like that, plus the, like, the $9,000 a year we paid for insurance. I could say no to that. And then when it got to be a podcast, I didn't know how much time it was gonna take. And then I was like, actively, like, I gotta get some ads. Like, this is, this is hard, but this is a lot of work. Oh, my God. Like, insane. You have no idea. Like, I don't want to complain, but I'm I have to be interviewed by the New York Times next week. And that's exciting to you. It is. But I actually mean, I have to be interviewed by the New York Times next week because I don't have enough time for that. Like, they're like, when do you want to do something? Like, when do that? Like, when do I want to do it? I was like, I make a podcast that a lot of people count on. Like, I like, I very little time, and at the same time, I'm still out there. I'm still a content creator. I'm still out there being like, hey, use my offer code at cozy earth.com to save 40% because if you do that, not only will you get amazing sweatpants, but cozy Earth will buy more ads, and then I have time, like I did yesterday afternoon, to have a one hour conversation with a gentleman named Dr Blevins from Austin, Texas, who's going to come on and do a deep dive into glps and inhalable insulin with me, because I have time to court him. He will return my call because I have a enough swagger in the space that it's like it's worth calling me back. Listen, I am able to spend an hour on the phone with him in the middle of the day, discussing with him, making him comfortable, coming up with a plan for what he wanted to talk about. I had to send him a microphone that's out of my pocket, like, you know, I'm not gonna ask him to send it back for me, you know. Like, then we're gonna record those episodes in the middle of the day and they're gonna get edited, and the editor gets paid money, and blah, and, you know, all this stuff happens. And then I, I'm on Instagram the other day, and I see somebody said, Why do you use us med for your supplies? And some person said because they pay him too silly. And I thought, god damn seriously. Oh my is that really, like, all the effort to making this thing legitimate and really being forthcoming about how we got to, you know, how I got to this spot and everything, and still that somebody's just like, hey, he's saying us med out loud because somebody's paying him to well, a yes, I am saying us med because I'm being paid to say it. But no, I didn't pick us med for money. I had my choice. Yeah, yeah. It was intentional. I chose them. And then you say that to them and you think they're not going to believe that, you know, like, but that's the truth. Like, I'm I built this thing up to where that I get to decide, Is it you, or is it Express Scripts, or is it this one, or is it like I get to decide who, who advertises with me, because they all want to, right? And so I chose, and I chose for a reason. And when you hear me in the ad say, I love the reorder process from us Med, I mean that like, you know, like, like, and I get to mean that, and feel good about that. And then all of that brush aside. The reason I went through all of that is so that your kid could be okay, Bethany, like you specifically. And it's a long way to walk to find your you and your son and your family, but like, if that's the goal, the rest of it's just the, I mean, it's basically the engine that allows me to do that. If that makes sense, I don't know how I got on this. I think I must be thinking about it, because that lady said that I took the US meds at for money piss off and made me sad at the same time anyway.

Bethany 1:09:03
Well, I mean, I think, I think it can be, I'm imagining hard to see those types of things right in the comments, but it I genuinely think that the podcast is making a difference. I think it would have been very easy for me in that, in that moment, to just be like, Okay, well, I guess we have to write it out a couple more years until she's older and, you know, we have more bandwidth, you know, and I can I it for the whole first year, I would hurt. I would hear people say, like, oh yeah. They're like, spiking. I'll just throw a half a unit at it. And I'm like, throw a half a unit at it. That'll tank my daughter, correction factors, 400 throw a half a unit at it. What do you mean?

Scott Benner 1:09:48
It's when they're little and you hear like other adults or even larger kids talk about it is difficult to wrap your brain around what other people are saying. For sure, yeah.

Bethany 1:09:57
I mean, it's just yeah. Yeah, and so, you know, I think the messaging we were getting is, this is good enough, yeah, it sucks, but you're going to have to write like, you can, you can. You don't have to stay, you know, you don't have to split the nights. You don't have to have diabetes be in the forefront, like, let her a 1c be higher, and then write it out till she's older, and then it'll be easier. Was like, the messaging we were getting and I think it would have been, I think there was a part of me at that time was that was almost like, well, I guess that's what we have to do. But then I don't think I would have stayed there, to be honest, like, I think I, at some point I would have gotten to this. But really listening to that episode was the thing that really motivated me to be like, No, I want, I want something different for my family and for my kid, like, this isn't okay. I'm not. I'm not, I'm not going to be complacent here.

Scott Benner 1:10:45
I'm so glad you found it first of all, yeah, it just, it's, it's lovely, and it makes me feel good, because there are days when I'm just like, my god, I don't have to put out this much content, or I don't need to do this, or, like, maybe I could go on vacation once, you know, like that kind of stuff. But then I wake up every day or or go to bed every night and get to see somebody, and I'm not over exaggerating. It's a, it's a content creator's, uh, bullshit move to say I hear from so many people, right? They don't, actually, but that's okay. I do. I actually do. And I get to, I think in the course of every 24 hours, I get to see about a dozen or more notes from people like you. That's great, and it keeps you going. You know what I mean? Yeah, like, because it can get repetitive, obviously, but like, it really does keep me motivated and excited to have conversations like this. And I tried to explain to somebody, like, I'm very competitive about it, like myself. And they're like, why does it matter? And I was like, I think it just gives me something to like, strive towards. Like, when you get to this level, like it you you could have the feeling like, Oh, I did it. I need something to like, fight for during the day. Yeah. I need that a little bit. So

Bethany 1:12:00
yeah, and I mean, the podcast was recommended to us when we were still in the hospital. We had a friend, my husband, I met in college and got married after college, and so we had a friend from college. You know, after I had made a post on Facebook about about our daughter's diagnosis, we had a friend reach out to say, like, hey, like, I was actually diagnosed with diabetes as an adult. You need to look into the juicebox podcast. It'll be really helpful for you, kind of when, you know, when you're ready, when you have your feet under you, like, make sure you check it out. And so, yeah, like, I think we started listening, you know, once we kind of got settled in, and we were, you know, a few weeks out from diagnosis, and we were both just listening, we really wanted to get to get to a place where we felt like diabetes wasn't running the show. Yeah? Oh,

Scott Benner 1:12:44
it's wonderful for me to hear. I really appreciate you sharing that. Seriously, I can't tell you that there's, you know, like I love making the podcast, like I genuinely do. But there is even times where, like, I'll get halfway through an episode, I'm like, I don't know if this is even about diabetes. I just, I'm having fun talking to this person. And some of the episodes need to be like that, and some of them are. I listened to one the other day. I'm not gonna lie to you, I listen to my own podcast the other day.

Unknown Speaker 1:13:10
I love it. I

Scott Benner 1:13:11
was looking for something to listen to, and all the people I listened to hadn't put out content. I was like, Well, you know, who I know puts on it out today. You did. And I went and looked, and it was an after dark episode, oh god. What was it called? It was an after dark episode called Black squirrel. And I listened to it, and I was like, this, this is funny. This is like, funny, great, thoughtful. And I learned something about mental health. And I left, and I was like, the guy making this podcast is doing a good job,

Bethany 1:13:43
pretty good right now. And

Scott Benner 1:13:44
by the way, the lady that came on was fantastic, and so so willing to share her story and be honest like you are, and that's where it all comes from. Like if I had to come on here and talk by myself, this thing would have been over years ago, and if I would have done the thing that other people have tried in the past, which is just bring on people from the community, like the known people making air quotes, those people just they're full of most of the time. You know what I mean? Like, they've got, like, relationships with companies, and they're like, Hey, I'm here to talk about the and, and don't get me wrong, like, I have sponsored episodes like, yeah, you'll turn on an episode pretty soon. It's going to be a lady talking about her ever since CGM, I'm very specific about it, like that episode I didn't charge them for I just we already do business together. And I said, I think it would be beneficial if you really want people to understand what the CGM is, to have a real user on but let me just talk to her. They did that like they didn't send me a bunch of questions. They didn't say, like, ask about this or do that. I looked at the CGM, I figured out what my questions were, and I talked to her just like, I'm talking to you and you know, and so, yes, that's a business thing, but at the same time, you'll know that up front, like, it's not, like I'm not. Going to sneak it in, and I'm going to be like, hey, these people buy ads on this podcast is a great episode where this lady's going to tell you about it, listen to it, or don't, like, I don't care. Like, you know, like, it's I don't know, right?

Bethany 1:15:11
Well, I think a big piece is community too, because it's already an incredibly or it can be a really isolating diagnosis, I think especially for us with with our daughter being diagnosed so young. Yeah, you know, I try to connect with other parents in the community, and I certainly have, and I've met very I've met a lot of really wonderful people, but at the end of the day, you know, their their experiences are just not even in the area of like, what, what we're dealing with, and I'm sure they're wrestling with problems that, you know, we don't have to wrestle with right now. So not yet,

Scott Benner 1:15:47
Bethany, but you will not yet, and then you'll be thrilled to have had a contact with them. You know, absolutely.

Bethany 1:15:53
Yeah, right. But there's just so few people it feels like, at least, who have kids diagnosed at this age and even like this weight too, like her being so small and being so insulin sensitive. Like, I've met other other parents. You know, it's kind of rare when you meet someone else who has, like a toddler, and you're kind of like, oh my gosh, you're you also have a toddler with this thing. But I think even even then, sometimes it's hard to feel like there's a lot in common, because our my daughter's so small. She was already tidy before diagnosis, she was like in the fifth percentile, and then she just completely fell off the growth curve for the months leading up to her diagnosis, and she's back on track now and growing and thriving and doing a great job, but, like, we just have some challenges with her being so petite that Sure, I just don't think a lot of other people have dealt with what did

Scott Benner 1:16:48
she weigh? Diagnosis,

Bethany 1:16:50
she was 17 and a half pounds. Wow.

Scott Benner 1:16:54
Arden was 19 pounds. Yeah,

Bethany 1:16:57
they tried that. This, actually, it makes me angry thinking about it now. But the resident put in the wrong order, when, when Cora was, when my daughter was diagnosed, and they gave her, I mean, she came in, it was like, I don't know, 10 o'clock at night, her blood sugar was like, in the four hundreds. And they were planning to give her a unit of long acting to kind of start things and see how she responded. But the the resident actually put in an order for a unit of rapid acting and so she got, like, a unit of Nova log. And she didn't go low by any means, like she she kind of went down to the 80s, but she was like, in the three hundreds. And at this point she doesn't have CGM, so we're just checking her finger. And I just remember everyone being like, oh my gosh, like, kind of flustered, because I don't think that was the response that they were anticipating would have. And then they had to look into it. And then I just remember in the morning, them talking to us about it, and being like, this is a good thing. Now we know that core is really sensitive to insulin. And I was like, I don't know what you're even talking about. I don't understand any of this. I don't understand what happened. Yeah, now I do, and it makes me angry that they weren't more transparent with us. But I don't think it would be useful to do you think

Scott Benner 1:18:10
she was really that sensitive, or do you think they just gave her the wrong stuff, or too much of it?

Bethany 1:18:14
Probably both. I mean, she was in the four hundreds, and they gave her a unit, and I think initially, like some of her sensitivity, like her insulin sensitivity, factor was, like 400 and so they checked her, like, an hour later, and she was fine. But I also, like, there's a piece of me that like knowing how sensitive she is to insulin, knowing they only did a couple finger sticks, like, how low did she get? How low did she actually get that night

Scott Benner 1:18:41
they don't know. But listen, I'm gonna say something right now, and you can be upset if you want to. Mostly no one knows anything. Okay, true society is holding on by a thread. You have no idea. It works fine for some reason, like you're not. We're not going to spin off our axis and fly into the sun or anything like that. But it's all just everything just dances back and forth on a precipice constantly, and yeah, and a lot of it's just luck or the randomness of society or life, or whatever you want to call it. It doesn't really matter. Things work out. Generally, when they when the when the fringes get taxed, that's when you see the weaknesses, yeah. Yeah. And then you go, Oh, okay, this is all much more tenuous than I think it is,

Bethany 1:19:24
yeah, and I think that my job often reiterates that to me, and that's that's often what fuels my anxiety for my kids, right? Because I think that because of the work I do, I get to see just how delicate that balance is all too I hear the worst case scenarios. Well, that's

Scott Benner 1:19:43
the what I was gonna say, but you still hearing the problems. It's like, when you get on the internet and they're like, oh my god, Dexcom sucks, OmniPods, horrible. T slim piece of garbage. Blah, blah, yeah, all you're hearing is people who are complaining, oh, I just hear the worst case scenario all the time. You're hearing from people who. Are who have spun a little bit off their axis at the moment and and you know you're trying to get them back to good I always say the same thing about a friend of mine who's a police officer everybody bumps into during the course of the day is lying to him or breaking a law. And before you know it, you think that's who everybody is, but it's not. And so I would leave you with this Bethany worry is a waste of imagination.

Bethany 1:20:21
I know, I know this is what I tell. I tell patients worries like a rocking chair, right? Lot of energy. Don't get you anywhere Exactly.

Scott Benner 1:20:28
It's if something's gonna go wrong, it's gonna go wrong, and if it's not, it's not. And worrying about it is actually making something go wrong that may never happen. Yeah, now I don't want you not to be prepared. But see you do that, you have thought ahead. And that's not from worry. That's from, I don't know, it's not your anxiety that's making you think about, like, I want to bank good health now, in case she has some trouble in during her years, where she's, you know, pushing back like, that's, that's good, common sense and thoughtfulness, not anxiety, yeah,

Bethany 1:21:01
well, and I think too, right? Like a healthy dose of anxiety, not a balanced anxiety, can be motivating, can lead to you to taking those steps, being thoughtful. When that gets unbalanced, right? Is when I think it can lead to that unhealthy place. And so I think that has been, that has been the thing that I've focused on the most for myself over this last year. Of like, where is that balance at? Is this helpful and is it going to help me do the right thing, the conscientious, you know, safe thing for my family, or is it getting me to a place that's not serving me

Scott Benner 1:21:33
good for you? Hey, I by the way, I agree. I I saw something the other day from a content creator, and it made me so mad that I was like, I'm gonna try harder. Like, I know I'm already trying hard enough, but like, I have, I've have an idea. It's on my whiteboard. I should be doing it, and I'm not. I'm like, God damn it. I'm gonna do it. I'm like, because if I don't do it, then this person's gonna half ass it and put it out there, and I can't be okay with that. And like, so there's that tiny bit of anxiety about, like, I can't let them get ahead of me, and I can't and I can't let them take this thing that I've built up so well and trash it with these. What do I want to call it? Like, social media stunts that get clicks, you know what I mean? So, like, I'm gonna, um, I'm gonna, I'll just do it instead. I was like, I'll tax myself and I'll do it so that, so that they don't mess it up. That's very vague. I won't be saying anything more about that. That's okay, yeah. Anyway, more to come. Yeah. Oh my god. What do you say? Thank you very much. I really, really do

Bethany 1:22:41
appreciate your time. Yeah, thank you, Scott. Well, it's my pleasure. It

Scott Benner 1:22:44
really is hold on for a second for me, okay, okay, sounds good.

A huge thanks to Dexcom for being longtime sponsors of the juicebox podcast, dexcom.com/juicebox, head over there. Now get started today. This episode was sponsored by touched by type one. I want you to go find them on Facebook, Instagram and give them a follow, and then head to touched by type one.org where you're going to learn all about their programs and resources for people with type one diabetes. The episode you just enjoyed was sponsored by Medtronic diabetes. Learn more about hyperglycemia and what you can do about it at Medtronic diabetes.com/hyper 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. I can't thank you enough for listening. Please make sure you're subscribed, you're following in your audio app. I'll be back tomorrow with another episode of The juicebox podcast. The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording, wrongwayrecording.com.

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#1324 Weight Loss Diary: Fourteen

Fourteenth installment of my GLP journey

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

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

I am back to talk more about my weight loss journey today is I don't know how many injections worth here, 1234567, about eight injections worth of content. My thoughts over these past two months, it's been a bit of a slog. I'm not gonna lie. 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@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 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. If you are the caregiver of someone with type one diabetes or have type one yourself, please go to T 1d exchange.org/juice box and complete the survey. This should take you about 10 minutes, and will really help type one diabetes research. You can help right from your house at T 1d exchange.org/juicebox, this episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by the Eversense CGM, an implantable six month sensor. Is what you get with Eversense, but you get so much more exceptional and consistent accuracy over six months and distinct on body vibe alerts when you're high or low on body vibe alerts, you don't even know what that means. Do you ever sense cgm.com/juicebox, go find out. Hey guys, listen up. It's Wednesday, August 14. You missed me. Take my last shot because I was on vacation. I'm taking this one now. All I can tell you is I'm already a day late. I took it on Tuesday last week. It's Wednesday this week, I went on my first family vacation in like six years. Did not, I think I gained like a pound the whole time I was there, which is awesome. So a lot of food, but I felt really good. Came back, put a couple pounds on last couple days. I couldn't figure out why, what was happening, and now I realize I'm eating more, and I'm eating more because my injection got moved from Saturday to Tuesday, and so the last couple days, I was waning with the medication, and needed to inject yesterday, and didn't even realize that I just lost track of my days. So I think I was just without the Med, and it led to everything. I was 186 this morning. Let me give you a tiny bit of context for that. If I can hold on one second, I was as low as 182 four on the 20 God, I get my glasses. I know every time I do this, I'm sorry, 25th of July was 182 for my wedding ring was flying off my finger. I was so at such a low weight, 182 four still on the second of October, August, left the next day for vacation on the third, didn't return till the 11th. When I returned on the 11th, I was 184 eight. I was super excited about that. But today, 186 in fairness, My God, how do I say this? I haven't gone to the bathroom today or yesterday. I think I'm readjusting. I don't think I'm going to be 186 for long, but I don't know. I think getting back to 182 shouldn't be much trouble. Here's where I'm going to shoot this. I'm taking off the cap, unlocking the pen, 12.5 milligrams of zepbound. Let's put it right here. We're all done. I'll see you in a week. Hey guys, oh. August 21 I just got back from hydro. 1400 miles in like 36 hours. So the long and the short of it is is we had to go pick up Arden stuff from her school, because she's leaving one college and going to another one, and we had to get the stuff out of there. So we left on a Friday afternoon around five, and I was home seven. Monday night at 1am and in the middle, drove 1400 miles. More importantly, in the middle, I ate at gas stations. So I'm 187.4 today, and there's really not a lot more to say. So I'm going to shoot my zepbound, and then I'll be back in a week where I hope I have better news, where I'm not driving just it's insane. We drove 14 hours one way, 14 hours the other way. Slept five hours on the floor of a room and four hours somewhere else, and then through a monsoon. And I think I lived on Doritos for like, a week. I just, it was a last minute trip I wasn't able to plan for. It's not an excuse. It's what happened. Sucks. I'm moving on setbound 12 and a half. That was the cap. This is the injection, little bit of pressure there with that one lost the drop. Talk to you soon. Welcome back to Scott doesn't lose weight. It's August 27 I know you heard me talk about a 1400 mile trip in the last one this week, it was only 650 miles as we took Arden to our new school. But round trip took up about four days of my life, moving her in and out. Lot of restaurants, I have to say, a lot of eating in the car. I have not figured out how to do that. Well, woke up this morning. Weight was 187 I need to wait. I'll tell you. I don't want to say this. So in the past, I think I said I gotta exercise more. Is a way to try to motivate me to do it like I felt like, oh, I said it to you. Now I'm gonna do it, but I said it to you and I didn't do it. So I don't want to say it again next time I come back, I want to tell you, you know, I've got an exercise routine going, and I'm doing it. I don't. I want to throw it out there again, like that. I really disappointed myself, if I'm being honest, 12.5 zepbound. I mean, listen, truth be told, I've done a ton of road eating and restaurant eating in the last couple of weeks. If this would have happened without zepbound, I'd literally be 10 pounds heavier. So, I mean, a pound or two, I'm not sweating it, but I definitely, I've seen myself at 183 I've seen myself at 187 there's weight to lose there. You know, I'd like to get down to, I'd like to get down to somewhere where I feel healthy in every aspect of my life, and every part of my body looks healthy, meaning I'm not carrying fat that's gonna hurt my heart or my life or whatever. 12.5 here we go. Give me a good spot here. All right, it's in kids. I'll be back September 4. I'm a day late because I had to go pick up my meds yesterday and couldn't get back here in time to use them. Skeletal muscle mass is up. Body water is up. Body fat is down. BMI slightly down. Good stuff. My weight today, 180 4.8 is that road food? It ain't good for you. That's my takeaway today. I don't have much more to report. I'm a little behind on my work, so I'm gonna shoot this and get back to making you a podcast. Ready, cap off, lock off, find a spot that looks good. Here we go. Felt right. Little drop wiped off. It's dark in here. I'm still going. Still going for the trash can. You ready? Nice.

This episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by Eversense, and Eversense is the implantable CGM that lasts six months. Ever sense. Cgm.com/juicebox, com slash juice box. Have you ever been running out the door and knocked your C jam off, or had somewhere to be and realized that your adhesive was about to fall off? That won't happen with Eversense, ever since won't get sweaty and slide off. It won't bang into a door jam, and it lasts six months, not just a couple days or a week. The Eversense CGM has a silicon based adhesive forge transmitter, which you change every day, so it's not one of those super sticky things that's designed to stay on you forever and ever, even though we know they don't work sometimes, but that's not the point. Right? Because it's not that kind of adhesive. You shouldn't see any skin irritations. So if you've had skin irritations with other products, maybe you should try Eversense, unique, implantable and accurate. So if you're tired of dealing with things falling off or being too sticky or not sticky enough, or not staying on for the life of the sensor you probably want to check out ever since, ever since cgm.com/juicebox links in the show notes. Links at juicebox podcast.com. Hey everybody. I'm going to multitask here. I'm sorry. I'm going to do some cleaning up on the Facebook group at the same time as I talked to you about this, today is September 11. Oh, wow. 2024 going to do my injection today. It's been a week since the fourth when I was 180 4.8 I don't even know if I remember to say that last time, not certain. But anyway, there's like, a little cottage industry on Facebook where people take some picture of like, like, diabetes supplies. Then they write something like, oh, I have extra supplies if you want them, just, you know, direct message me and, you know, you just cover the postage. I just want you to have them. I'm like, they're all scams. They are all scams. Okay, Facebook actually is getting really good at seeing them and saying, no, no, no, and not letting them even post. But then you have to, I mean, I have to block the account. So let's see here, telling you the name's not important because they're not real people. They're not real accounts. They just make these accounts. Try to get people to send them 20 bucks for shipping. See if they can get that accomplished a few times before they get caught, and then they're on their way. They make another account and do it again. It is, like I said, a cottage industry so block, so we'll delete the recent activity. Make sure that that they say you can ban future accounts. But I don't know how well that actually works, so you click off all that and double check. I can't believe this is my life band. There were three band this morning. Actually caught one of them yesterday. Then I saw them pop up, like on a Dexcom user group, and I was like, oh, it's the same one. I just banned that one. So then we'll decline the post. Now, the post nobody saw, but it's gone. None of this is here, nor there. This is very behind the scenes, boring stuff. I got my zepbound today 12.5 it's Wednesday. I am going to shoot today. Uneventful weight thing, I was 180 4.8 last week when I did it today. I'm 180 5.2 it's, you know, point four more. It's, you know, negligible. Everything's pretty Yeah, none of these, none of these Trackables, are moving just a week. Had a lot of family stuff. This week, I'm getting settled back in after moving my daughter off to college, so that's good, but I'm gonna shoot this. I'm going to submit my stuff for my talk this weekend, and then I'm going to record an episode, actually, in about 10 minutes. That's pretty much it. Hope you guys are enjoying this. Actually got some more great feedback from somebody the other day about this episode, about these episodes, so I'm glad you're liking them. This person was motivated by the by this went off. Did it themselves? Lost like 70 pounds. It's crazy how well they're doing. There goes the cap. There goes the lock. Ready? You heard it in there. I got a spot that looks accessible. 1234, here we go. Kids, that one had a little pressure, not bad. Little drop at the end. Actually name it a drop like fuzzy bubbles. Fuzzy bubbles, all right. I I missed the goddamn trashcan All right, so, yeah, the trash cans three feet from here. I just want to be clear. Good morning, friends. I'm a day late. Today is September 19. I've got my 12 and a half milligram. Is that bound pen here? Can tell you a tiny bit about my last week, and I'll go over a little bit about my weight. I spoke at an event this Saturday, this past Saturday, excuse me, that I speak out every year, touched by type one in Orlando. And I guess last year, they made a video. And. And I I ended up in the video. So this year, well, let me go back. When I was there last year, I had lost some weight. I don't know how much anymore, maybe, like, 15 pounds or something. When I got there, people were like, Oh my God, you look crazy. Like, this is amazing. And you know, I felt amazing like being up there on the screen, being up there on stage and everything, I felt super comfortable. It looked different, like significantly different. Felt different. And then a year later, I go back and they run this video from the year prior, and my I'm on the screen for a second in the in the beginning, in the morning, and I look and I think, Wow, look how heavy I am there, much better than I was 15 pounds before that, but nowhere near where I am now, this little eye opening met a lot of people that I see every year, but only see once a year. There. You can really see it on their faces when you see them immediately. And while I was there, I met a man who said that the year prior we had met, and he had asked me about my weight loss that prior year, and I told him what I was doing, and he went off and did it and and a year later, we met again last week, and he had lost 80 pounds. I was so genuinely happy for him. I don't I just want to bring that up anyway. I get dehydrated when I travel. I'm starting to realize, because this morning, I'm 180 661 86.6 and which is cool. That's fine. I think last week. What was it? The 11th. I did this last week. I was 185 two. On the 12th, 185 four, but then I got back from the trip because I didn't take my weight for a few days when I returned from the trip on the 16th, I was 180 2.6 but I was positive I was, um, dehydrated at that point, and I missed the shot yesterday when I should have taken it. And I'll tell you, I had, like, a big lunch. For me, you're gonna laugh like I had a deli sandwich, but I ate the whole thing, so I expected to have a little more weight this morning. I haven't gone to the bathroom today yet, but I'm 186 six today. Gonna take my shot right now. Get Moving on the day. I'm gonna try to put it in my butt cheek today. Somebody asked me at the trip. They were like, they're telling me about their GLP. And they're like, I put it in my in my butt cheek all the time. And I'm like, I always put up my belly and I try a Bunche. And I was like, I've done it before, but alright, so I promised them I do it again, which is a weird thing to promise somebody, but here we go. I have to stand up for this one. I'm going to tilt the microphone down towards my butt. This is harder to do. God, I hope no one walks in here while this is happening. All right, buttreat. Unlock the pen. Apparently I was supposed to wake up now. Sorry about that. Apologies. All right, it's hard to pinch the do it backwards? Hold on, this is ridiculous. I'm so glad you can't see this. I'm kind of glad I can't say it ready. Ooh, little, pressure filled. All right. Well, that embarrassment is over. See you next week. What's up? Everybody? Wednesday, September 26 I'm going to do something a little different today. I'm

going to use up some older doses. So I have a five and a seven and a half here, 789, 1011, 12, five and seven and a half, or 12 and a half. Boom, bang, bang. Look at this. Go. I'm gonna have to hit it twice. I'll do one. I'll tell you a story. Then I'll do the other one. Let's put one on my belly. Do the seven and a half now. Cap off. Unlock. Hmm. This side. Ready. Hold on. I'll move the mic for you.

That wasn't bad, okay, trash can, which I've moved closer to me now, my story in the last seven days, the amount of people, the number of people, the countless groupings of folks who have been telling me that I look younger, is awesome friend I haven't seen in a few months. Sat down, had breakfast with her. I. First thing she says to me is, my God, you look younger. You look good. And I was like, Oh, thank you. And I really did. I was like, Oh, it's fine. Like, you know, like, everything's like, I was very like, I don't know what. I played it off, I guess not, but not in the way where I was, like, pretending. I really felt like, it's okay. We don't have to talk about this, you know, like, I don't look better than anybody else. I've just looked better than I did, you know before, probably. But she goes, No, no, you don't understand. You look good. And I was like, Good. And she's like, good. And then I was like, Oh, she's not just saying, like, you look smaller. And she went on to talk about, I can't tell how old you are. I was like, Oh, that's so nice thought. Nothing up later in the day, I was in a store with 1234, kids working at it. They were like, high school, almost college kids, you know, like seniors at their after school job walk in buying something. Kid looks at me and says the craziest thing. She goes, You look like Bill Nye the Science Guy. And I went, I don't think you know who Bill Nye is. She goes, so definitely that's who you look like. So I'm like, I think you're so we all pull out our phones. Kids have phones. We have phones. We're all phones out. We're all googling Bill Nye. Show her, Bill Nye the Science Guy. She goes, yeah, like, see, you look just like him. Now listen, between you and I, I don't like anything like Bill Nye the Science Guy, which is fine. He's a fine looking gentleman, but he and I do not resemble each other. Then we come to realize that I'm wearing a piece of clothing, which it was a jacket. And she's like, See, you're wearing a jacket, like Bill Nye the Science I'm like, Oh, see, facially, you don't think I look like him? Oh no. Who do you think I look like facially? I said, Here's what I usually hear, I tell them, and then they start pulling up pictures of Vince Vaughn. Like, oh my god, you do look like Vince Vaughn, blah blah. Like, everybody's going crazy and everything. And that was the end of it. And I said something about my daughter is a little older than you guys. I don't remember how the conversation got there. And the one I look over at this one kid, this big, tall boy, and he's just like, he's got this incredulous look on his face. I'm like, what's wrong? And he goes, your daughter's 20. And I said, Yes. And he goes, I don't understand. How old were you when you had her? And I was like, Oh God, I don't know why. And then I realized what he was saying, and I was like, Is this happening again? Hello. I said, How old do you think I am? Now, listen, these are kids, so, you know, we have to undercut their you know, they think 40 year old people are, like, 110 so he goes, I don't know. Man, like 35 and the girl next to him goes, yeah, like 3538 and I started like, Oh my this is gonna be the best part of my day. So I whipped around the room like anybody else, they're all guessing late 30s and everything. And I was like, I am 53 my 20 year old is my younger kid. I said, my son's almost 25 and they were just like, No no, no, no. And so excited. I was like, Oh, this is awesome. Thank you. And then I do a live on Facebook, and people are jumping in and be like, Oh my god, Scott, you're reversing. And your age is like, you're, I think you're aging backwards. I'm like, am I looking younger? But I don't think it's younger. I think it's healthier. Like, I just think that I don't look weighed down by poor health, is what I'm starting to think of it as. Anyway, I don't think I look younger. I'm sure that a person my age would look at me and go, Oh no, you're 53 I can say it, but it's nice that people are having that reaction like it's pretty cool. So today's weight, I'll tell you the whole week actually, my glasses, very quickly. What was I the 19th? We did this last I was one. What was I on the 19th? 186 six. Is that what I said in the last recording. From there I went, 180 461 80 441 84 eight. Then on the 25th was that yesterday, I was 183 six, a cognizant, cognitively, drank a lot this week. I'm gonna keep that up, even though yesterday I was running around all day, as you could tell out. I had a breakfast and diner with a friend. I stopped at a place we eat pizza for dinner last night, woke up this morning, haven't used the bathroom yet. 185 even. I was excited about the 183 six, because I was drinking so much liquid and eating a lot of protein this week. And I really thought, like, this is it? But that pizza came in last night and I said, I am gonna have some pizza. So anyway, I'm 185 today. That's 1.6 pounds less than I was last time I spoke to you. My my low this week was 183 six, my BMI over 27 still. Body fat is steady body water. Steady, skeletal muscle mass, steady, BMR, steady. Everything's very steady. Fret free, body weight, steady, subcutaneous fat, Oh, wow. It's down to 21.1 but steady, my visceral fats at a 10. It's awesome. Give you some idea where that started. It started at 17 a year and a half ago, when I did this, my muscle mass is super steady. 133, two started off at 144, I lost some obviously, but you lost a lot of weight. Expect that bone mass, steady, protein, steady metabolic age says 55 what are those? What is? What is this thing? Now I'm gonna go find you some 18 year old kids. Think of a 35 anyway, doing well, hope you are the same. Gotta put this seven and a half in, or the five in. I put the seven and a half in the one side of my belly. Am I just gonna put it in the other side of the belly? Although I had it in my butt last week and I lost weight. But I can actually mean anything, but, oh well, you know what? Screw it. I'm gonna do it. I that's completely, you know, there's no way that could be a thing. But I'm gonna do it anyway. I'm gonna put the five in my butt, cap off, lock off. How am I gonna put my pants down? Alright, I'm standing pants. Move the uh, move the microphone. It's very hard to find your butt sheet. All right, I'm just gonna guess this is okay. Is that what I'm gonna do? I guess so, ready.

Oh, I didn't like that.

I didn't enjoy that. All right, I'm gonna go see you October 2. It's a Wednesday. I'm back. I have a 12 and a half set bound here to shoot, but before I do, I'm gonna philosophize for a second. I let me sit back.

I feel like I'm back where I started. That's how I feel in in this regard, if you would have taken me back to before I began this whole thing and told me, like, you know, what's your need for? Weight loss, body change, health change, all this stuff, I would have been like, I'm okay. You know, I feel fine. This is good, where I'm at, and then, like, I've gone over before, like, you know, you drop 10 pounds, you think I feel better, I look different. It's weird. And then it keeps happening. You know what I mean, 10 pounds, 20 pounds. I've been lucky. I lost more 30 and along the way, at every stop, you could see, okay, this is good, but there's more like I'm not there yet, and at this moment, I'm not there yet, but I'm so good where I am that it's gotten me back to that feeling of like, this is okay, like when I sit and talk about it, I know this isn't done, right? There's, you know, fat in my midsection that needs to go from my own health and, you know, my longevity, etc, but I just like, it's hard to get excited about it, because I'm good where I'm at. I'm just not where I need to be. Except I'm thinking about that now and realizing that that's how I felt two years ago. And I guess I'm here to say I'm looking for the I need, the motivation, the momentum build again, like that excitement, like, let's get this thing going. Because, like, little stuff, like, I don't know, just, you know, not exercising the way I should. Just not I want to be, I mean, to be notes to myself everywhere I say I'm going to just can't get the zoomed up to go and do it. It's really important, and I just am not doing it. So I don't really know what the answer is. I can tell you that without the the GLP, it would go backwards very quickly. I know my hunger would return, like, pretty quickly. But just the other metabolic impacts that I'm getting from the from the from the magic juice here, like, I mean, absolutely necessary. So I shouldn't just say that I'm okay with where I'm at. I am happy with where I'm at. I know that there's more to do. I don't know how to find the excitement to get it accomplished. That's gonna be on me. Obviously. I. I guess for now, we just kind of keep going and be okay with this lull. Like, I think I just have to be okay with this lull, meaning, like not to beat myself up over which I'm not. But I just, I think I cognitively have to not beat myself up over this, not get and not get so comfortable in this lull that I never get out of it again, that I'm just like shooting the medication and sitting at this weight over and over, which bounces around a couple, you know, pounds, one way or the other. I think I'm 186 this morning. I don't know that most people could tell the difference between me at 183 and 186 so that's not really the point. The point is just that I'm not moving towards, you know, my ultimate health goals. I'm gonna shoot this whole 12 and a half into my belly.

There. It looks like a spot. Is that gonna be good? All right, yeah, okay, who am I talking to? By the way, I'm not even sure. It's so weird not to know how you guys know, but it's so weird not to know how it's gonna feel when the thing injects so All right, here we go. I didn't unlock it, all that talking, and here we go. Oh, that was good. That was the soft underbelly of my belly. All right, so I'm gonna put this one out. It's not downbeat, but right in that trash can, like it was nothing. I don't feel I don't feel like beat down by any of this. I'm just becoming aware that I think I'm back where I started in my head, which is, like, this is fine, this is good. I'm okay, and I need to find some better motivation. I think, I think, I think some of the steps to that would be meal prepping better, which I haven't been doing lately. I've been eating on the go. I should be meal prepping better. And I don't know how to get myself excited about I've just never been a big exercise person. Like, it's just not I don't mean like, nobody likes exercise, I don't think maybe some of you do, but I'm just saying like she's never been a big part of my life, but I guess it's gonna need to be, or this is where I stay forever. All right, let me try to figure that out. I'll talk to you guys later. Thanks for listening. By the way, I got some great notes this week from people about this series, and I really appreciate it.

Speaker 1 32:42
You. I want

Scott Benner 32:49
to thank the Eversense CGM for sponsoring this episode of The juicebox podcast learn more about its implantable sensor, smart transmitter and terrific mobile application at Eversense cgm.com/juice, box. Get the only implantable sensor for long term wear. Get ever since. Don't forget, if you're a US resident who has type one or is the caregiver of someone with type one, visit T 1d exchange.org/juice box right now and complete that survey. It will take you 10 minutes to complete the survey, and that effort alone will help to move type one diabetes research forward. It will cost you nothing to help

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

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#1323 School Nurse Mistake

Lauren shared a harrowing experience where her daughter was overdosed by a school nurse.

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

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

Scott Benner 0:00
OmniPod, Hello friends, and welcome back to the juicebox podcast. This one is going to curl your brain up wait to hear this.

Okay, we are talking to Lauren today. She has a number of children. One of them has type one diabetes, and a crazy story about a school nurse that I will not ruin for you here, but just let me say you're going to audibly gasp when you hear her say what she says. And she's got a couple other kids who have a very rare genetic disease that we're going to talk about later has lots to do with their blood sugar, and it's incredibly interesting as well. My notes say this is my favorite episode that I've ever made. We'll see what you think. Nothing you hear on the juicebox podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan. When you place your first order for ag one with my link, you'll get five free travel packs and a free year supply of vitamin D drink, ag one.com/juice box. Don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com All you have to do is use the offer code juice box at checkout. That's juicebox at checkout to save 40% at cozy earth.com three simple ways to support the podcast, subscribe or follow in your favorite audio app, tell somebody else about the show, use the sponsor links when you have the need. This episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by Dexcom. Dexcom.com/juicebox get the brand new Dexcom g7 with my link and get started today. This show is sponsored today by the glucagon that my daughter carries, gvoke hypopen. Find out more at gvoke glucagon.com, forward slash juicebox.

Lauren 1:55
My name is Lauren. I have three children. My oldest, her name is Lacey, and she's a type one diabetic. She was diagnosed at age four, and she's nine. Now, the story that I want to talk about today is on october 3 of 2022 she was overdosed on insulin by her school nurse. The school nurse gave her 150 units of insulin when she only needed one and a half units to cover her lunch. Yeah, that's talk about that today.

Scott Benner 2:28
Lauren, I already have questions. You're in luck. Okay, let's let people in on the secret that I tell people before we start. Go ahead and introduce yourself, and then after you do that, I'll ask you a question, but I don't know what that question's going to be then, while you're introducing yourself, I've never said this before. I don't think while you're introducing yourself, I'm like, I hope I come up with something to say, but I have something to say. Okay, good. Let's start with the school nurse, because this is interesting. The person who did this, had they ever given your daughter insulin prior to that, or was it their very first time?

Lauren 3:01
So yes, so I'll back up a little bit. That morning, I drive my two girls to school and or to the bus stop, and then the bus drives them to school, and when they got out of the car to go to the bus, she had left her phone in the car, and I didn't realize it until I got home, and so as soon as I saw her phone was in the car, I called the school, and I said, you know, I have an appointment. I'll be there as soon as I can to drop the phone off. But, you know, she has a 504 plan. So, you know, we have things to fall back on. Should she not have her phone for her OmniPod? So she had had the OmniPod five at the time, which she still does, and that would just mean that if you need a correction, that, you know, she would get it via either the pen or a syringe or, you know, however it's worded in the 504 plan. And so I called, and I said, I'll be there, so if you want to wait for me, you know, we could just do it via the OmniPod instead of having you give an injection, stuff like that.

Scott Benner 3:59
And she was like, okay, and you said this to the nurse directly?

Lauren 4:03
I said it to the nurse directly. Yes, I spoke to the nurse, yep. And this is a 40 year veteran nurse, apparently, who you know has been doing this for 40 years, had worked in the hospital, had worked, you

Scott Benner 4:18
know, I'm a 52 year veteran of being alive, and I'm an idiot still, so let's see what happens. Wait, but I have a question, though, this this, I feel like you misunderstood my first question, but I want to get you back to your story as soon as I can. But the nurse that did this, not that day, but in all time in history, had that person ever given your daughter insulin in the past, only

Lauren 4:41
via the OmniPod five, not via injection or the pen, okay, yeah,

Scott Benner 4:47
okay, that's all I so they they have practice with your daughter. They know how much they usually get. She usually gets, etc, so Exactly. And so she's also accustomed to dialing the OmniPod up to one point. Five units. Yes,

Lauren 5:02
okay, go ahead. Yeah. She, she normally does the OmniPod, and was very, was very thorough with it. Knew what she was doing. So I get to school right around noonish, and she had, like, literally just given her insulin. And I looked down at my daughter's arm, and I see that she has two injection marks in her arm. And I asked her, Why do you have two marks on your arm? And she said, Well, the the syringe wouldn't hold enough to just do one, so I have to do two. That's what she said. That's what the nurse told my daughter. And so I immediately, because we're in the front and the nurse's office is just like, a couple steps away. So I open the door to the nurse's office, go in there, and I said, Why does she have two injection marks? The nurse tells me the same thing. I said, let's pull out the syringes. She pulls out the syringes, and she says, this syringe is one unit. And I look at it, and I'm like, like, my heart just drops. And I'm like, this is not one unit. This is 100 units. This is 100 unit syringe. And she goes, No, no, this is one unit. And I'm, I'm praying to God, she's, she's correct. And I sat down for a second. I start Googling, and I'm trying to find something that proves her right. Because I'm like, Please let her be right. And I'm googling, and I knew it was just a matter of time, because her blood sugar was already dropping. Yeah. So anyway, I said, let's look at their syringes one more time. And this nurse goes over to the cabinet, pulls out the syringes, looks at them, and I'm like, Are you sure that's one unit? As I'm looking at the 100 unit mark, she's like, I think I made a mistake. And I'm like, yeah. So at that point, she had been dropping, and I had been giving her gummies and gummies and gummies and trying to, trying to get her to get a little bit higher. But at one at that point that we left, it had said low. It just said low,

Scott Benner 7:04
not gonna do it. She needed, I mean, yeah, what was her insulin to carb ratio at that point? One unit covers like 1515, carbs. So 100 units would be 150 carbs, but she got 150 units.

Lauren 7:21
She got 150 so this nurse gave her not only one full syringe, 100 units. She also gave her another 50 units. On top

Scott Benner 7:30
of that, 150 times 15. Hold on a second, Lauren,

Unknown Speaker 7:37
she knew 2250

Lauren 7:39
carbs. That sounds about

Scott Benner 7:41
right. Well, that's about right. Oh, sure. Okay, I'm sorry. I have a couple of questions. Now, were you in shock? Is that why you spent time trying to prove her wrong when you knew she was

Lauren 7:50
wrong? I was completely in shock because I wanted

Scott Benner 7:55
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Lauren 9:03
I want her to be right so badly. I was like, There's no way this. Nurses gave her 150 like, you can't wrap your head around that in the moment, you know, how

Unknown Speaker 9:10
old was your daughter at that point?

Lauren 9:13
Um, she was seven. How

Scott Benner 9:14
much did she weigh?

Lauren 9:16
She weighed maybe 60 pounds at most.

Scott Benner 9:19
And you punched the nurse. How many times in the face before you left the office?

Lauren 9:23
Trust me, inside is 2020? Okay, yeah,

Scott Benner 9:27
okay. I would have been like, oh my god, this is my time. I can actually assault another person, and a jury of my peers is going to let me off. Okay, okay, so wait, so there's not enough carbs in all of the land, and she's not going to be able to eat it all anyway, and so do you hit her with glucagon immediately?

Lauren 9:46
I didn't I, the only thing I, at the moment, thought to do was to rush her to the ER. And while I'm getting her in the car, I'm noticing she's starting to, like, slump over, yeah, and I'm like, Lacy, like. See, wake up, open your eyes. Open your eyes, open it. Like the whole car, right? And I'm like, the house is closer than the hospital, so I rush to my house, and I get on the phone with her endo and the nurse, and I let them know what's going on, and they walk me through the whole glucagon thing, because I get to my house extremely quickly, and I give her the glucagon, she's still, you know, out of it, and I rushed to the hospital. And when we get to the hospital, thankfully, she's able to walk inside by a miracle, like looking back on it, I don't know how she was able to walk inside, but she was able to walk inside. They took her blood sugar, and it was like 79 at that point, I think the glucagon had started working, yeah, and however, you know, flowing through, yeah, it was, it was dropping, dropping, dropping. All night at the hospital, she was on a, like a glucose strip. I bet it was still a drop, like I was. Obviously we're not used to that. I

Scott Benner 10:59
have thought you were going to tell me you went into snakebite mode, cut her arm and sucked the insulin out of her, because, honestly, it would have been one of the things that went through my head. So I might have stuck the syringe back in and pulled and see if I could have got some of it back again. By the way, not not medical advice, because I have no idea if that would work or not. But um, I mean, so you're only three years into diabetes at that point, right? Yeah, okay, because Lauren, between you and I as now we have distance. You made a couple of tactical errors along the way. I did absolutely, yeah. Okay, so I gave your daughter 150 units of of insulin, you should have hit her with a glutagon in that moment. 100%

Lauren 11:44
I completely agree. And I think it was just the fact that I didn't want to believe that, that that's what just happened, like I could not wrap my head around that that had just happened. Are you a

Scott Benner 11:56
kind person in general? Am I a what person? Kind person I'm trying to figure out, like, I'm trying to juxtapose your reaction to my brain, and I can't find any sense in it, because I would have been shooting glucagon with one hand and choking that fcking lady with my other one. Like, yeah, and so like, I mean, listen, people can make a mistake. God bless. But 150 and how about how other kids come through there with diabetes, right? Had she ever, ever drawn up that much insulin in her life?

Lauren 12:29
I have the same questions,

Scott Benner 12:30
damn, right? You do go ahead, yeah,

Lauren 12:32
yeah. So at that point, and even to this day, Lacey is only one at that school with type one diabetes, and obviously that's for a reason. I'm sure that there were other diabetics I had gone through there and were like, you know, screw this place. But

Scott Benner 12:48
she shot so much liquid into her. If I was her, I would have stopped and thought, like, could that little pot even hold all this like, like, Do you know what I mean? Like, it's just such a I'm telling you. Can I ask you, what did, what did she do for a living after they fired her, I have no idea. I she was fired, right? If you take insulin or so final 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 hypo pen. My daughter carries gevok hypopen 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, gevoc hypopne can be administered in two simple steps, even by yourself in certain situations. Show those around you where you store GEVO kypo pen and how to use it. They need to know how to use jivo kypo pen before an emergency situation happens. Learn more about why GEVO kypo Pen is in Arden's diabetes toolkit at jivok, glucagon.com/juicebox, 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. She was fired, right? Um,

Lauren 14:20
yeah, and only because I went in there and I had to demand her be fired. I said, I'm not trusting this lady with my daughter. And at that point, you know, she was still treating children with their other there was no type one diabetics except for my daughter. However, she was treating other children with medications. And you know, the they wanted to keep that nurse on, they did everything they could to keep that nurse on. And I had to go to two different meetings and fight for my daughter to get that nurse out of that school. And if my daughter did not like that school as much as she did, obviously she would be out like I would have pulled her immediately. I mean,

Scott Benner 14:57
for nothing. But if your kid dies. Is that manslaughter maybe, like, I don't even know how that works, but like, she would have gone to prison. Yeah, yeah, so, and they couldn't, by the way, in my perfect world, she would have gone to prison. I don't really know the law, but in my world, firing her is like, like, the least thing,

Lauren 15:15
yep, that's the least they should do. Yep, trust me, I know it's so infuriating. And when, when the principal came in to talk to me, and she obviously doesn't know anything about diabetes, even though I have had meetings upon meetings with her about it, she didn't understand the gravity of the situation. She just didn't until I had to pretty much yell at her, and I'm not somebody who raises their voice honestly, I do not yell at people, but this, this whole situation, was just like a nightmare, and it's like, probably the one thing that you know you're worried about happening that's kind of like an irrational fear, but it actually came to light unless

Scott Benner 15:55
it happens to you, and that is less than irrational all of a sudden, yeah,

Lauren 15:59
I guess. So. Okay, so,

Scott Benner 16:00
so listen, here's an important note for people. You know, when people are like, well, I don't want to pre bolus because I'm afraid my blood sugar will drop too fast. Your daughter pre bolus 150 carbs. You didn't even give her a Snickers bar out the door. And how long until they put her on a knife? Well, how long until you hit her with a glucagon? First I did.

Lauren 16:18
I did get, I did give her a bunch of she had so many gummies.

Unknown Speaker 16:26
I know, I know.

Scott Benner 16:31
So she's eating gummy bears. You hit her with glucagon. That that, but my point is, is that bridges the gap, because insulin does not work immediately when you put it in now 150 units and a 70 pound little, pound little kid, you know, you're gonna get some quick motion, but like so you had time to hit there with the glue gun. Then you put her right back in the car and drove the

Lauren 16:50
hospital. Yeah? Well, I did the glue gun in the car. I ran inside with her in the car with the line. And I, yeah, yeah. Interesting. I was shaking like a leaf.

Scott Benner 17:02
Hey, listen, one time when Arden was little, before I knew what I was doing, her blood sugar was falling, like, really quickly, and she got, like, super, like, combative, and she's like, I'm like, oh, drink the juice. And she's like, I want ice cream. And I was like, well, we don't have ice cream. Drink juice. And we were in the car, and so I drove her home, and she's like, why are we here? And I'm like, for ice cream. She goes, that's not the high ice cream I want.

Unknown Speaker 17:27
Oh my gosh.

Scott Benner 17:28
So now I'm speeding to a like, a soft serve place. I'm not lying. I get pulled over by a cop, and in my little ass town with four cops, they're never anywhere when you need them and like so I'm flying down this road, fair enough. He pulls me over. I pull over. I say, I look at him. I go. My daughter has type one diabetes. She has too much insulin. I'm trying to get her to food. You got to let me go. And he goes after I run your license. And I'm like, No. I'm like, what? Okay, here. I said, can I get out of the car and test her blood sugar? I'm testing her blood sugar. It's in like the 40s, I think at that point, right? And he gives me my license back. I looked at him, I said, I'm gonna be speeding again. Please don't pull me over. And I got in the car and I took off. You know, I got a ticket in the mail. Are you kidding me? Motherfucker sent me a ticket. I had to go fighting. I did get out of the ticket, in case you're wondering. Wow, but yeah, he said he mailed me a ticket. I don't know who that person is, but if he's listening, you so. But by the way, anybody could be listening because a woman just messaged my brother at their job and said, Hey, are you the ROB that edits the juicebox podcast?

Unknown Speaker 18:48
Are you kidding me? Oh, my God. My brother

Scott Benner 18:52
goes, A, how do you know about that? And B, my brother's like, I've never told anybody you have a podcast. He's like, it's embarrassing. I was like, I know. And he's like, No, I'm not. And she goes, Oh, and she, you know, she, they started talking about it. But anyway, my brother's name is my other brother's name is Rob. I have two brothers. And so anyway, where are we at? Oh, okay, you're in the hospital, and they're dumping an IV into your kid with dextrose in it. For how long? Just to combat this, 150

Lauren 19:18
units, I want to say eight hours, eight hours, yeah,

Scott Benner 19:22
do you send the bill to the school?

Lauren 19:26
Well, it was wiped clean somehow, the I did, we did try to to sue her, and all the lawyers said, Oh, well, because she didn't die, you pretty much don't really have a case. And

Scott Benner 19:40
if you could go hold a pillow over that kid's head, I think we're gonna be rich, like, well, listen, I mean, she's gotta be protect. I don't know nothing about nothing, but physicians and doctors have to be protected by some good samaritan clause, which I understand. I don't feel like you could wouldn't have been my inclination to. Sewer, but I definitely would have wanted to see her lose her job.

Lauren 20:03
Yeah, yeah. No, definitely. I definitely made that happen at least. And I guess the state had picked up the case, and I'm not sure where it's at at this point, but somebody at the state looked at the looked at everything, and said, something needs to happen. Because this wasn't just like a little oversight, you know what I mean? Like, no, no,

Scott Benner 20:24
it's not just a little oversight. Also, Lauren, it's a willful decision. Like, it's so much liquid. Like, do you know what I mean? Like, so much? Yes, it really is. She's a nurse, so the measurement of units is universal through all liquid medications, right? Did she not go this doesn't seem like one and a half like Do you have any explanation for it? Well,

Lauren 20:49
when I was at that point in the nurse's office, she had said that she thought that it was a TB syringe, which I'm not exactly sure what that means. I'm assuming that a TB syringe is smaller, but even still, what I cannot fathom drawing up that much insulin and injecting a small child with it. Here's

Scott Benner 21:10
another idea, Lauren, you know insulin is dangerous, right? She had to have known that much, right? Absolutely, if you find yourself in a position where you're saying to yourself, I'm not certain if this is the correct amount. Do you not stop? You just go get let's see what happens now, exactly,

Lauren 21:28
yeah, that's what it seems like happened though, you know, it's like, you know, it really does. Listen, there's

Scott Benner 21:34
no chance she was drinking her high or something like that, right? Because that would make sense. Well, that would at least makes sense. You know what I mean? I mean, yeah, little the mothers help her. You know what I'm saying? That might help. Okay, not to say she was obviously, I have no idea who we're talking about. I'm just saying it seems like you'd have to be impaired, if you've been a nurse for 40 years to make that

Lauren 21:55
absolutely I agree. I completely agree. Okay, yeah, and she was, like she was an older lady. I'm not gonna say any names, but you know, she was an older lady who seems like she knew what she was doing, which is why I trusted her.

Scott Benner 22:09
My mom was an older lady. I wouldn't have trusted you with anything if I'm being perfectly honest with him, and I'm 10 years I'm 10 years away from you not being able to trust me. In case you're wondering. Well anyway, that's terrible. I would she contrite? Did she apologize? Or Yes, really,

Lauren 22:28
she did apologize. What she said after she said, I think I made a mistake. I'm so sorry. That was the first time. And then she just kept saying she was sorry, and she did call me later that night to check on her, and, you know, it's so like, it's so infuriating that she did what she did, and at the same time, she's calling me and apologizing, and you know, she was crying on the on the

Scott Benner 22:55
phone, a lovely person, you know, yeah, and,

Lauren 22:59
but It's also in the same at the same time. It's like, I think I would have put if I were in that position, you know, however she she continued going to the school and treating children and kind of acting like nothing happened. So mommy,

Scott Benner 23:14
my stomach hurts. How come I drank a quart of Tylenol at school today? Yeah,

Lauren 23:18
exactly. But like, who knows? You know? Like, nobody knew at that point. And if I was not there to bring her her phone, she would have just sent her right back to class after the 150 units, and she would have been gone. Let's be

Scott Benner 23:33
clear, you getting there when you did absolutely saved your daughter's life. Yeah, she would have been just so dead, like, like, there's no, exactly, no nothing. Would have got her back once the insulin was rolling, and

Lauren 23:47
they would have to figure out, you know, what had happened. And the nurse would have been like, oh, I don't know, you know.

Scott Benner 23:57
Well, they would have seen the vampire bite on her arm and maybe figured it out. Like, maybe listen, not for nothing, but not that it would have been her responsibility to but your daughter didn't do the like, Hey, I've never gotten two of these before in my life.

Lauren 24:10
I believe she did question her like, why are you giving two? And the explanation was the same as given to me. That doesn't all fit. It didn't all fit. Yeah, exactly. Hello.

Scott Benner 24:22
Can I continue to, like, sprinkle common sense on this? Because the manufacturers of insulin needles would obviously manufacture needles that don't hold enough insulin for someone to use.

Lauren 24:36
Literally labeled units. It literally says units on it. I'm

Scott Benner 24:40
only 52 I can't see without my glasses, so I don't know that part I don't understand, okay, but, but like, but I'm talking like bigger ideas, right? I'm in a room with a computer monitor, a computer monitor company wouldn't make a monitor with the image on the back of it, because I need to see it if people are regularly giving them. Insulin? Wouldn't the needles be big enough to hold the insulin? Like, that's exactly. That's a thing. Your common sense should go, hey, hold up a second. Like, you know what I mean? And I don't know if it's age or comments, I don't know what. I don't know the person, obviously. And I'm not trying to say that I do. I'm just saying big picture is a lot of confusing things in this story.

Speaker 1 25:18
Yes, you know what I mean, there is,

Scott Benner 25:22
did it have any psychological impacts on you,

Lauren 25:24
on me? I mean,

Scott Benner 25:27
have trouble leaving her with people or anything like that after that?

Lauren 25:29
Absolutely. I mean, it's always kind of been that way, and I think this just kind of made it worse, because I guess I live in a small town where there's not many people diagnosed with diabetes. And I literally know one other family who has type one, and that's pretty much it leaving her before this happened with somebody I really didn't do unless it was like my mom, who I had trained for months before, you know, sure. And so even after this, you know, I still, she's still extremely sheltered. And, you know, I'd

Scott Benner 26:04
be wrapping that kid with bubble wrap and armor. I'd be like, listen, well,

Lauren 26:09
I have three children with medical conditions, and my other two, it happens to be a genetic condition, and they are actually hypoglycemic. So I have a hyperglycemic and I have a hypoglycemic.

Scott Benner 26:21
Wait your kid. You have two younger children whose blood sugars are always higher, are always lower. Excuse me, you said hypo. I miss surgery. Okay, all right, so they're Oh, no kidding. What is that? Is that a like a diagnosable thing?

Lauren 26:36
Yes, it's, it's a long name. It's called dopamine beta hydroxylase deficiency, and only 30 people in the world have ever been diagnosed with it. And it's where your body has a complete deficiency of adrenaline and norepinephrine, 3030,

Scott Benner 26:53
yes, I'm assuming you've had your husband's tubes tied, or your tubes tied, and your husband's got like, yeah, you're not gonna

Lauren 27:00
make it as soon as we found out with genetic is, yeah, we were done.

Scott Benner 27:04
What a pairing you two are, right? Do you get along really well? At

Unknown Speaker 27:10
least we do.

Lauren 27:13
We are a great match. It's just we both happen to have a recessive variant that only a handful of people have. And, you know, that's crazy. That's just kind of how my life kind of goes. I feel like everything happens for a reason, and I'm kind of like the guinea pig in life, Lauren.

Scott Benner 27:33
There are so many people in the world this. Odds of you matching up with that boy are so slim. That's crazy, telling

Lauren 27:39
you, I'm telling you, they they said it was astronomical that we found each other and we're not related.

Scott Benner 27:48
Did they test? Did they go, Uh oh, they did. Yeah, this lady might have married her second cousin. Hold on, a second. You imagine? Can I imagine? I mean, after this story, sure. Why not,

Unknown Speaker 28:00
right?

Scott Benner 28:01
Jesus Christ, did your daughter? Sorry.

Unknown Speaker 28:08
No, I love it. So

Scott Benner 28:10
I guess are there other people in the town married to relations? No, okay, good. It's

Lauren 28:17
just the chances are higher if you're related of having the same that's what I meant by that.

Scott Benner 28:23
No, no, I knew what you meant by it. I was just thinking, like, it might be more common to marry somebody you're related to than somebody who you have, like, like, these two genetic like, matches with. It's really just

Speaker 1 28:34
incredible. Yeah, it would be, but, yeah, okay,

Scott Benner 28:37
how do you help the other two kids? What's the the treatment or the help for them, pretty

Lauren 28:41
much just give sugar. Um, it's they get hypoglycemic, especially when they're sick, so they have to, like, have sugar or carbs every like two to three hours when they're sick, during a regular day, they can't sleep longer than six ish hours, because that's when they really start to drop? How far will they drop until they're dead? Honestly? Seriously? Yeah, my son, he's two now, but June 25 of last year, I went to go wake him up, and his Dexcom said no signal. And it hadn't said no signal for that long. It had been, maybe been like 30 minutes, yeah, um, went to go wake him up, and he was limp. Checked his blood sugar, and it was like 26 I didn't know it at the time. However, he was having silent seizures, which I had, no I didn't know anything about sure, you know, called the hospital and everything. And when he came to he started having, I guess more you know you could see the seizure. So the doctor had said he had been having silent ones, and now he's having to where you can see them. I'm not really sure what that's called, but he was like biting his tongue and stuff. So, yeah, he they because they don't, they cannot get their stored glucagon. Yeah, naturally, they can't access it, because you need adrenaline to do that. That's why it's so dangerous.

Scott Benner 30:06
So this is a vigilance thing. You have to be constantly at this. Yeah,

Lauren 30:09
I have all three on dexcoms, yeah, it's yeah, it's a lot, yeah,

Scott Benner 30:15
it's a lot. How old are all three of them? Again, they're nine and

Lauren 30:20
nine, six and two. Oh, my God.

Scott Benner 30:22
So what's the plan? You're just gonna, like, go out for cigarettes and not come back. What do you what do you think they're doing? You're gonna be an old lady when you're 20 more years. People are gonna be like, That's Lauren. What is she 80? She's like, No, she's 45 like, Oh, no kidding.

Unknown Speaker 30:41
It's her kids.

Scott Benner 30:41
Your kids are dragging her down. Like she actually kept them alive. It's insane. Like, seriously, though, like, not to be a bummer, but you did come on and talk about the lady trying to, like, off your kid. Yeah, it's already in your head, right? I'm going to send them away. They're going to fall asleep and they're not going to wake up.

Lauren 30:59
Absolutely. I don't even think about sending them away. To be completely honest with you, honestly, my younger two would not be here if I was not completely like because with their condition, and I didn't know this till afterwards, of course, but with their condition in the third trimester, your body or you need norepinephrine in order to continue the third trimester. And so I did have two stillbirths in the third trimester, after I had my oldest, which now we know is due to this condition. So like every single aspect, like all three of my children, would be dead if, if there was no intervention, like Lacey with a type one, and then my youngest two with this condition. They had to have emergency C section in order to be, you know, alive.

Scott Benner 31:45
Tell me you've had five pregnancies, two of them ended in the third trimester with a stillbirth. Yes, yes. Jesus, are you okay?

Lauren 31:54
Seriously, I'm not, but I'm hanging in there. I'm not,

Scott Benner 31:56
but I'm hanging in there. That's the most honest goddamn answer anybody's ever given to that question? No, Scott, actually, I'm not okay.

Unknown Speaker 32:05
I mean, would you be but no, I

Scott Benner 32:07
wouldn't be. That's why I asked. That's why I asked. So therapy? Do you see an actual psychiatrist? Does one follow you around all day? Like, how do you deal you drink? Are you a drinker? Lauren, are you putting them away? No. What's going on. I

Lauren 32:21
think my kids kind of keep me so busy that it's like, you know, I don't really have time to even think about other things. But, like, honestly, no, I did do therapy for for a while, and, you know, that's why I'm here today.

Scott Benner 32:37
Okay, your husband is he rich, handsome, got a really big like, what's the deal? Like, is something is making you happy? Or are you looking at him thinking I could have picked someone else? Like,

Lauren 32:50
he's a very good guy. He is extremely smart. No, he, I've known him since middle school. And, yeah, we, we're just, you know, like I said, I feel like everything happens for a reason. So I feel like something has, has to be at the end of this, you know, like, Lauren's

Scott Benner 33:06
down to Lauren. How old are you? How old are you? I'm 31 you're 31 and you're down to, there better be a Jesus at the end. And he better put me, yeah, there better be like, I better go live in a nice, like, maybe a park setting. I would like a castle. I'm telling you. God, damn, 31 years old and you're like, you better be can gift at the end of this.

Speaker 1 33:35
Oh, my god, yeah, my No, I

Scott Benner 33:42
Why am I doing this? How did the kids I'm sweating, I'm laughing so hard, it's ridiculous. All I can picture is you walking around muttering to yourself in the quiet moments.

Lauren 33:57
You must have a camera.

Scott Benner 33:58
Oh no. I just know people. Learn, and I understand implications of things the kids, did they know how screwed up things are, or do they live pretty normally.

Lauren 34:09
They don't have any kind of, like, other issues other than, you know, shutting off. Yeah. I mean, as as far as you know, cognitively, they are completely, quote, unquote, normal, but they have to have a Dexcom, and they complain about that. They understand, and I've tried to explain as much as I could.

Scott Benner 34:31
So what's their understanding of the eating thing? Because you said sugar specifically, but could it be any carbohydrates?

Lauren 34:36
Yeah, actually, like, carbs are better for, like, when they're sleeping. Yeah, yeah, it takes longer, like starchy stuff takes longer to, you know, break down. But

Scott Benner 34:47
is this having an impact on their weight? Is to the point where it's not healthy amount of calories? Or do you have that figured out?

Lauren 34:53
Yes, they have, like, a sort of a little bit of a faster metabolism. And as far as the research. Search goes. There's not, there's not a lot of research at all, but the but what I can find is their metal metabolism seems to be a little bit faster than the average, and that's why they're able to keep up there. Because if you think of stimulants, stimulants stimulate, you know, norepinephrine and adrenaline in your body. And because they lack that, there has to be some kind of other mechanism, you know, coming into play. Otherwise they would just be obese. You know,

Scott Benner 35:28
how did you figure this out in such a small town? Did you have to go to a children's hospital? Or were they actually able to figure it out there,

Lauren 35:34
after multiple so many hospital visits, they referred us to a pediatric geneticist. We live in Florida. So this was in Orlando that they were able to figure out what was going on after they did after we were cleared from genetic, you know, things, I asked to go further, and I say, Could we just do a, like, a whole, you know, Genome Sequencing thing? And the geneticist was like, I don't think we're going to find anything, but, you know, I can try to push insurance to see if we'll cover it. And I was like, please. And because I did that, you know, she she called me back, and she was like, You will not believe what I found. And she was in shock,

Scott Benner 36:13
I bet I want to look it up. I want to know how to spell it. I want to know how to spell it again. But first I opened up a Google page, and I typed in what is. Then I was going to ask you to spell the the thing, sure, yeah. Before you do, let's look at what other people have been googling. What is CTE? I'm going to blame the Tom Brady roast for that. Okay,

Unknown Speaker 36:38
okay.

Scott Benner 36:38
What is Hoda? Is she not like the person from, like a TV show?

Lauren 36:43
Oh, yeah, she's from, yeah, that morning show, right? Yeah. What

Scott Benner 36:47
is my IP address? Oh, what is Doge, D, O, G, E, that's a, like, Bitcoin kind of a thing. I

Lauren 36:56
right, yeah.

Scott Benner 36:57
What is Ramadan?

Unknown Speaker 36:59
What is today.

Scott Benner 37:01
You're telling you're telling me that the way some people figure out the date is to write into Google, what is today. What is today. I want to say right now, if you do that, stop listening to the podcast. I don't want you as a listener. Okay,

Lauren 37:16
what is the be giving insulin? If that's what you're Googling, yeah,

Scott Benner 37:19
if you're Googling what is today? You shouldn't be giving people medication. There's a calendar. Also, there's 1000 better ways to phrase that. What is the weather? What is the weather today? Also, I don't agree with that. I like looking outside if you wanna know what the weather is, what is mewing and what is a solar eclipse? Interesting. Do you know what mewing is? Well, so

Lauren 37:46
I have a nine year old, so I think that I don't, I don't 100% No, but it has something to do with like, this newer generation.

Scott Benner 37:54
I'm clicking like it's the only it's the only one I don't know. I was so proud to know that today is Thursday, the 16th Hold on a second mewing is an internet craze that promises to change the shape of your jaw line and fix other problems.

Unknown Speaker 38:11
That's not what I thought it was

Scott Benner 38:14
Lauren's like I thought it was a sexual position form of oral posture training purported to improve jaw and facial structure. It was named after Mike and John mu the controversial British, British orthodontist who created the technique as part of a practice called orthotropics. Does mewing actually reshape your jaw? I don't care if it does or not. I want to be clear, but I do want to say this, Lauren and I know you might be disappointed your episode is 100% called what is mewing.

Lauren 38:50
Oh God, all

Scott Benner 38:53
right now spell this thing that your poor two kids have. Okay,

Lauren 38:55
so dopamine, D, O, P, A, M, I, N, E, next word is beta B, E, T, A, hydroxyl, hydroxylase, h, y, D, R, O, X, Y, L, A, S, E, deficiency,

Scott Benner 39:12
also known as dopamine, beta mono, oxygen, yes, is an enzyme that in Humans, is encoded by the D BH gene, dopamine, beta hydroxylas catalyzes the conversion of dopamine to noreparin norepinephrine. The three substrates of the enzyme are dopamine, vitamin C and oxygen. How about that? And your kids just don't have that. It's a deficiency, right?

Lauren 39:39
Yeah, it's a complete deficiency. So they do not create DBH at all, which means they do not create the norepinephrine or the adrenaline. Does this

Scott Benner 39:47
sound? Right? Is a condition that affects the autonomic nervous system, which controls involuntary body processes such as the regulation of blood pressure, blood temperature. I'm going to guess blood glucose is in this list too, huh? Yeah.

Lauren 39:59
When they become around the teenage years is when they have a little bit of it now, but the orthostatic hypotension, which means when you stand up, your blood pressure drops to the point where you can faint. They have it a little bit now, but it's just going to get progressively worse. There's a medication that's called droxy dopa, which acts as kind of like a synthetic precursor, so it acts as DBH, but not naturally. So that helps with the orthostatic hypotension. But is it

Scott Benner 40:29
just so few people have it that there's no medication for it, or is that there's no way to impact it with a medication?

Lauren 40:35
Yeah, the drugsy dopa does help. It's never my daughter is actually the first child to be on it. So that's kind of scary. And, yeah, I'm serious, yeah, the dosage that she's on right now is like 40 milligrams twice a day, but adults are known to have like 600 milligrams three or four times a day, so the dosage is like, all over the place and holy, you know, obviously it's not a perfect science. So, yeah,

Scott Benner 41:05
this is terrible. Like, I'm sorry to say it like that to you, but like, yeah, sudden drop in blood pressure, severe when getting out of bed in the morning during hot weather. As a person gets older, deficiency. Experience extreme fatigue during exercise due to the problems maintaining a normal blood pressure, droopy eyelids, nasal congestion. Males may experience retrograde ejaculation. Now, for those of you who don't know what that means, the discharge of semen goes backwards into the bladder. Less common that I mean, less common features include unusually large range of joint movement, like hypermobility and muscle weakness.

Unknown Speaker 41:47
Holy Christ, yeah,

Scott Benner 41:50
yeah, you're not okay. No, no, yeah, you answered honestly. I got that. Okay, good, yeah, no. Do you cry a lot? I'd cry a lot.

Lauren 41:57
I used to not as much, is kind of like the normal, I guess I've kind of transitioned into this being a little bit more, you know, Lawrence, like I said something, I have resting

Scott Benner 42:08
sad face exactly well, how do you keep up the thing you're supposed to do as a parent around your kids, the like, every little thing gonna be like, how do you do all that for them?

Lauren 42:20
I try to compare them to, like, you know, worse situations. Honestly,

Scott Benner 42:25
have you seen Frankenstein again?

Lauren 42:29
Well, like, like to be completely serious with my daughters that type one diagnosis, we didn't know what the heck it was like. I had only heard of type one, you know, a handful of times, and I still wasn't 100% sure. So when she had the symptoms of, like, losing weight, like she was so skinny and she was vomiting, and the two things that popped up when I would go online was type one diabetes and cancer. And so I'd, I'd say, there's so much worse that you can have, you know, she complains about the pod, or she complains about, you know, my, my other kids will complain about the Dexcom, and I'll be like, there's so much worse. Like, we're lucky that, you know, it's not worse. And obviously I do mean that, but you know, it is hard, because they do have it pretty rough. So yeah, just trying to see the the light. Well,

Scott Benner 43:18
listen again, to be serious, you have to, first of all, yeah, like, and yeah, it does give you, I mean, this is not a thing you would have asked for, but you have more perspective at 31 years old than most people are going to gather, gather in five lifetimes and that, and that will be valuable. Like, like, moving through, you know, for your kids and for you and for your husband, everybody else, I guess that's really the move though. Like, how do you not say to them, like, at least it's not that and to try to make them feel a little better. So, I mean, I guess there's no I have to ask you, like, if you could give one of these away, the diabetes, or what your other two have? Like, there's no, like, pause, even, right?

Unknown Speaker 43:59
Like, diabetes is way easier or no?

Lauren 44:02
Well, they are both very hard in their own ways. But I think the way I think of it in my mind is my youngest two, like, they shouldn't be here, you know, according to nature, because we had to, like, intervene. So during my pregnancy, I had to be seen every single day at the hospital to measure what's called the umbilical artery, because it's very technical and complicated, but they get reverse umbilical flow in their umbilical cord, and when that happens, you have to deliver that day like so they shouldn't be here. You know, it's hard for me to think which one I would take away, because they're both. I know that that my younger two are going to progress, and I don't know what the future holds. You know what I mean? So

Scott Benner 44:51
I have such a difficult question that for the first time, and I'm not kidding you, I stopped myself from asking a question, and I don't. Well, I don't know if I can say it out loud or not. Please ask it. I'm less worried about you and more worried about what people are going to think about me. Oh, gosh. So the two stillbirths happened prior to these children being born, right?

Lauren 45:15
Yeah, my oldest, who does not have that condition, however, does have type one diabetes. Was my first, and then after my first, the two that we lost, okay, we're in the middle,

Scott Benner 45:25
and then you find out this thing, when, like, when do you know what's happening during the second or during the, what I guess would be your fourth pregnancy, or after they're both born? When do you learn about the the issue,

Lauren 45:41
um, I learned when I was eight weeks pregnant with my fifth child, so with my youngest now. So I was already pregnant when we found out it was genetic. Because we did get cleared by the geneticist after we did the initial test, okay, and she had said to me, you know, there it's so unlikely that this is genetic. Like she didn't even want to do the in depth, you know, whole genome sequencing, because she she was like, we're not going to find anything. Well,

Scott Benner 46:08
there's another person who let you down. So Exactly, yeah, but so when you know that is there a moment in that fifth pregnancy where you think, I'll let this go naturally to its conclusion and not intervene, or Absolutely

Lauren 46:22
not. You never know, knowing what I knew like, because I had to give birth to pretty much full term, you know, infants who had passed, and I knew something, so I did something, you know what I mean, like, I would never, yeah, yeah, if it, it would have turned out horribly if I didn't intervene. So, you know, and obviously I was asked the question, do you want to terminate? Because when we I did an amniocentesis, when I found out it was genetic, and they did find out that he did have it. So, you know, I was given that option at the time because I guess it was still legal, but I don't think I'd be able to live with myself, because everything that's happened in my life was not technically my fault, you know what I mean. And so I didn't want to cause something, you know,

Scott Benner 47:09
Oh, that's interesting. You didn't want to be, you didn't want to be the decider on it, yeah,

Lauren 47:13
yeah, yeah. I mean, like, everything that's happened has not been something that I've chosen, you know what I mean. And so I understand if I were to choose, yeah,

Scott Benner 47:22
nothing, no, I completely understand. Yeah. I mean, it just, it bears asking, right? Like, no, yeah, you're not gonna have other children. Absolutely not. Yeah, no, you and your husband don't even sleep in the same room anymore, right? Just, just in case.

Lauren 47:36
No, they removed my tubes.

Scott Benner 47:38
Did you like, say I want to watch you throw them in the trash.

Lauren 47:41
Yeah, pretty much. And they the doctor still questioned me, like, Are you sure? What if this one doesn't survive? And I'm like, Okay, we're gonna take them out no matter what,

Scott Benner 47:51
am I sure? Are you out of your mind? Like,

Lauren 47:56
yeah, they don't understand the content. Like, like, you have more of an understanding just talking to you, and I can tell, than talking to any other medical professional. You know what I mean? Like? Because I feel like they just they don't. I don't

Scott Benner 48:09
know, listen, my brain works very simply. You just told me your kids can't sleep more than six hours without it being dangerous for them. One of the great joys of life is like going to bed late on a Friday night after working a full week and waking up whenever the hell you wake up on Saturday. Your kids are never going to do that. And that point is, is that they're going to be 18 and they're going to go to college, and then they're going to drink or something, and then you're it's going to happen like you're literally going to be on the phone going, someone's got to wake her up and give her something to eat like you don't need, like that's and that's not a thing you're going to forget about. And it's doesn't matter how old you get, it doesn't matter how long this goes on for. You're going to think about this every goddamn day for the rest of your life, and that's not fair to you. It's not fair to them, and it's brave to deal with it, but to not understand it from a third party perspective. Why you might not want to do it is predict. I mean, that's just silly. Like, yeah, please. Oh, my God, it is. Yeah. No, yeah, yeah. Seriously, what the hell? Like, who would not understand that? Like, and, you know, the same thing with the diabetes stuff. When people say, like, look, I'm all for sitting around and speaking high mindedly about things and doing some like, gazitas and like, you know, being whimsical, and saying, oh, there's a ton of stuff that I've learned because my daughter has diabetes, and I am probably a smarter person and a stronger person and more resilient, and all that stuff because my kid has type one. It doesn't matter. I'd give it away. In a half a second, I'd go back to not understanding things and not having perspective and being less intelligent and all the other I'd give away the podcast. It wouldn't matter to me. Can all go I'd give it away for anything. And that's why that conversations makes people upset. When people say, hey, what's something you've learned from diabetes? And you'll hear. From people who say, Oh, like, you know, I'm, you know, I think I'm actually overall healthier because I pay more attention to my body. That's a very valid statement. And then somebody else will come in and be like, you're, you're out of your mind, like, there's nothing I wouldn't give away to get rid of this. And so I'm with you, like, I see how hard it's also why I decided to be jokey with you, because I didn't think we could make it through an hour of talking about this, because I'd be, I'd be like, half out the window crying right now, if we treated this too seriously. So I got the space for that. It's getting towards the end of the week, you know

Lauren 50:33
what I mean, Lauren, like, I'm

Scott Benner 50:36
trying to get the Saturday, you know? Yeah, I can't be walking around all day thinking about your kids not being able to sleep. To sleep more than six hours, and your other daughter, your other daughter, surviving a hit. I mean, Jesus Christ,

Unknown Speaker 50:48
it's like one thing after another. There's no

Scott Benner 50:51
way you guys are gonna have other bad stuff. Either you've used it all up already or you're just a target for it. I can't decide what's gonna happen. Your house is Never No No. You don't live in like a tornado part of the country or something.

Lauren 51:04
No, but we get hurricanes. We're in Florida, so the hell out of there

Scott Benner 51:09
right now. If I was you, you're clearly gonna find your ass on a raft floating out to sea one day. Oh, no, I knew it.

Lauren 51:18
If anything, hopefully we'll win the lottery, because we're just that, you know that are, that's our odds. I feel like,

Speaker 2 51:24
I swear, I always make that joke with people like you have these incredibly rare things that never works out with the lottery. Like, you know what I mean? Like, I know, right? Terrible, really, terrible. Oh, are you at least, really pretty Lauren, or something like that. Like, is there any like,

Lauren 51:39
No, I might not even have that go over

Scott Benner 51:43
something I could feel less. Are you six feet tall? You're like, a runway model? No, no, no. I mean something I can, like, at least go, oh, well, she got that. Are you driving, like, one of those Range Rover trucks or something I wish.

Unknown Speaker 51:56
No, I'm just normal.

Scott Benner 51:59
This is terrible. Do you find money on the ground ever?

Speaker 1 52:02
Oh, you know what I have before go ahead,

Scott Benner 52:06
enough to buy something or not. When

Lauren 52:09
I was living somewhere else, I actually found $100 in like, random bills all over the street. All right,

Scott Benner 52:16
I would like for that to happen to you every five hours. Okay,

Unknown Speaker 52:19
thank you.

Scott Benner 52:20
I think that's the way to go. Like, you know, like, when I have stuff bad, I always think, like, at least if I was tall, this would be acceptable.

Lauren 52:30
Yeah, if I was a supermodel, then maybe I can handle it better. I would

Scott Benner 52:33
prefer if my teeth were a little straighter. I feel like I could live with this easier. And like, you know, like, seriously, like, why? I don't know, yeah, it just some people are so goddamn handsome. Just like, that's gotta make up for something, doesn't it, right, money or something like, anything to just like, move this offset it a little bit back to the center, a little for me, for God's sakes,

Lauren 52:58
I know all the way on the edge. Like, come on now, listen

Scott Benner 53:00
your kids, they don't end up ejaculating to their bladder. Can they have children? Or they're not. I know he's like two. Sorry.

Speaker 1 53:10
No, they can't have well, they,

Lauren 53:13
I mean, there's not enough studies, but when they're taking that medication, apparently they, there's a possibility that they may be able to reproduce. So I don't know. I won't, I won't advise any of my children really to reproduce, because it scares the crap out of me. And so even

Scott Benner 53:32
your oldest that has type one, like, does she have the gene?

Lauren 53:36
She's a carrier. And so, like, she doesn't actually have the condition so she carries it. So the odds of her finding somebody who is also a carrier is like slim to none. But, you know, I the, you know, guess what? Anything could happen now, so, you know,

Scott Benner 53:54
unless she meets her third cousin somewhere, oh, God, I like how that shocks you more than the other thing that's fantastic. Do you like, put the all the word out to your entire family about this?

Lauren 54:06
I've tried, you know, it's just talking anything medical. Anybody tell me. I mean, you know how, if you try to explain diabetes to anybody on the street, and they're just kind of like, nodding their head and pretending like they're understanding, I feel like that's how the conversation goes. Yep,

Scott Benner 54:29
it's upsetting on a different isn't it upsetting on a different level, it is.

Lauren 54:33
Yeah. And my brother, who is also a carry this condition, is having a child, and we're getting his girlfriend tested to make sure that this child does not have the condition, or, I guess we're testing the mother to make sure she's not also a carrier.

Scott Benner 54:47
Jesus, so I'd never not ejaculate into a condom if I was in your family, even if I was by myself. What do you think of that? Like this ain't getting on anybody. Dang.

Lauren 55:03
Course, Yeah,

Scott Benner 55:04
no kidding. Thank God you came on the podcast somehow oddly, Lauren, this is the most fun I've had making the podcast. Thank

Lauren 55:18
you. Thank you for having me.

Scott Benner 55:19
Oh my god, are you and crazy. Thank you for coming on and shame on you for not doing it sooner.

Lauren 55:23
I tried.

Scott Benner 55:26
That's my fault. Yeah, fair enough. Although I did, I did record an episode. I found this great doctor, this endocrinologist in Texas, Blevins, and he's going to come on a number of times to talk about GLP medications. Okay? And so we're on yesterday, and we're recording together, and it's a, he's a nice man, and it's not, it's very it's serious, but it's not so dry. And at one point I brought up this like scenario where this person started using a GLP and lost five pounds in the first 36 hours. And I was like, could that be water weight? Like, black and forth, and he goes, I would imagine it would be a water weight or, like, maybe they experienced diarrhea or something like that, and like, we're talking about it. And I said, Yeah, but in fairness, this person's a very clean eater. They have PCOS, right? They're very clean eater, and they're gaining weight uncontrollably, very clean eater, exercising constantly, uncontrollably, gaining weight. This poor girl in her 20s, right? And I said, you know, never had a five pound loss for any reason. And they're in during this entire thing, they injected that GLP and lost five pounds. I was like, it's, you know, and then I think I said, No, whether that's because they exploded out there or not, is neither here nor there, in my opinion. And he kiss kind of giggled just a little bit. And I was like, Oh, I like this guy because, because, as I said it, I thought that's not what I should have said. But oddly enough, exploded from their is less creepy to me than the word diarrhea. Yeah, I agree. So I just rolled with it. I think I'm going to receive a Nobel Peace Prize one day for the conversation I had with you. I would like that to happen. I can I be serious for a second and at the same time say something really nice about myself? I think that this thing that your kids are going through, right and this experience you had with your daughter, seriously, they're two really important conversations, like blended together here with us today. Yes, these are not things that people would sit and listen to. It's too goddamn depressing. It's too obtuse. Nobody's going to have this happen to them. You know what? I mean, like, like, but it's, it's valuable to hear about. And I think maybe the biggest value is to hear, like, your reaction to it more than anything else as a podcast. Like, like, seriously, because there are plenty of people, plenty of people who would just leave. They'd just be, like, these kids are a problem. I gotta go, yeah. Like, like, right. And that's not what you're doing, and you've got their best interest at heart. You're working every day at it. It's obviously a 24/7 situation. You're aware that it's going to have detrimental effects on your health, and you don't care. You're going to take care of them still. Yes, yeah, that's the story to me. The joking around and the laughing part is so that I don't cry while we're talking about it, in case you're wondering, and I don't need you crying, because if you cry, I'm gonna cry. And then, you know what everybody's gonna do with their podcast player. They're gonna go dis depressing and they're gonna shut it off. Instead, we laugh the whole time, and yes, we have a cartoonish vision of me shooting glucagon with one hand and choking a one in their 60s with my other hand. So yeah, oh, my God. I honestly think I might ended up in jail.

Lauren 58:46
I know, right, yeah, someone come in here

Scott Benner 58:49
and give my kid glued gun while I murder this person. Like, just, what in the hell? You didn't say anything. Mean, no, oh, I would have been so incredibly mean. I'm disappointed in myself saying that

Lauren 59:01
I did. But, yeah, I don't. I'm not really that kind of person. I guess. I don't know if I I was just so, like, out of it, like I was in such shock. I think I, you know, it's just,

Scott Benner 59:14
I mean, listen, maybe I wouldn't, truth be told, it's possible I wouldn't, but in my heart, I kind of hope I don't think I'm that person. To be perfectly honest with you, people now are probably laughing going, oh my god, Scott, you're 100% that person. But I think I'd be shooting glucagon while yelling, you dumb mother and like, I think I would have said such horrible things to her, and I probably would have apologized afterwards, but I don't know how you stopped yourself. You were in shock, obviously,

Lauren 59:44
yeah, I was just like, not, I don't know. I was not present in my head. I guess I sometimes, like, you just have to, like, remove your brain. I don't know. Well, no,

Scott Benner 59:55
it sounds, it sounds like you, you. It took you a second, but then once you did it. You pulled it together and you started taking steps, right? Yeah, that's true. I would have been disappointed in myself, but I definitely would have cursed a lot and said is probably the most hurtful things I could think of. Yeah, I'll see a third Yeah. About that, maybe, but,

Lauren 1:00:12
but, yeah. Going back to the other conversation with my other two, I just want to mention that there's something called pots. I don't know if you heard of its Yeah. So, yeah, you know, they don't really know a whole lot about it. And this condition, the dbhd, of main beta hydroxyl, place efficiency, actually kind of mirrors it, in a way. And the researchers think that the dbhd may be a little bit more common, you know, then we know of because it's just so not really tested for so, you know, if anybody does have pots likes and you know, symptoms and medications are not helping them, and also, if they've been like, born, low birth weight or prematurely, then I would look, you know, I encourage you to look into that diagnosis, because, You know, there's potential for other people to be diagnosed with it as well. It's just not, you know, it's not researched and studied enough interesting.

Scott Benner 1:01:08
That's very interesting. I was speaking with a person who has pots recently, who also has a heart issue, like a medication for I wish I was paying enough attention at the time to remember the name of it, or I would share it with you, but it makes me wonder, like, yeah, POTS is one of those things. They're like, that's that ultra step. I can't I'm saying the word wrong when you stand up and you get very dizzy,

Lauren 1:01:28
exactly, yeah, orthostatic hypotension type syndromes, yeah, yeah. Interesting.

Scott Benner 1:01:33
All right, Lauren, is there anything that we haven't talked about today that you want to

Speaker 1 1:01:39
No, I believe we covered a lot of it. Yeah, I think that was, that was really good.

Scott Benner 1:01:43
Mm, hmm, yeah, okay, anything you want to say, you want to curse once, or anything like that, let it out

Lauren 1:01:54
a little bit sometimes. But yeah, I

Scott Benner 1:01:55
like how you blended the at the end there with, though you were, like, you were very strong with the mother. And then you, you kind of got a little, like, like, a little, like, a criminally there with the part that was nice, yeah, like, I felt like you could have stolen my car.

We're done some good voiceover work for children's cartoons over 18 years old. Thank

Lauren 1:02:16
you. Yeah, somebody needs to hire me now. Somebody

Scott Benner 1:02:18
needs to hire you. Listen to me. God bless you. You should find $100 on the ground every five hours. As I've just said, Someone should call you immediately and give you a job where you make $90 million a year. And some researchers should end up with, uh, whatever your kids have. So maybe they pay attention to it for five seconds. But for real, though, by the way, seriously, yeah, 30 people,

Lauren 1:02:40
30? Yep, yeah. Online, you can read it says between 25 and 30. So my kids are two of them.

Scott Benner 1:02:48
Holy shit. All right, yeah, listen, you're a saint. What do you think of that? If there is a heaven on a bumper sticker, if there's a heaven. You don't get into it. Something went wrong. Okay, you murdered 43 nuns, if that happens. Okay, holy hell, man, I don't know what. Hey, listen, I didn't want to ask because I was afraid I'd get a sad story. But is your husband? Like? Is Is he okay?

Lauren 1:03:18
Yeah, he's okay. Ask each other, are you okay? Like, every so often, so we just have continuous, like, rusting bitch face, I guess, oh,

Scott Benner 1:03:29
oh, are you kidding? 1,000,000% don't let the kids say it, though you gotta figure that out. Yeah, Jesus. You know, In what world, what family does the kid with type one run around going, Whoo, dodged a bullet. No kidding, I got lucky. Exactly you too. I can't believe you two met. Did you at least meet in a small town, or was it like a way at college or something like that? No,

Lauren 1:03:58
it wasn't a small town. Yeah, we were in middle school, and that's where we met initially, and then we we ended up getting together later on, when we were in our early 20s. So like,

Unknown Speaker 1:04:08
sixth, seventh grade,

Lauren 1:04:10
yeah, yeah, we were sixth grade, sixth grade, yeah,

Scott Benner 1:04:13
did you like, make, like, hold hands and stuff when you're in sixth

Lauren 1:04:16
grade? No, no, but we knew of each other, you know,

Scott Benner 1:04:20
yeah, yeah. He's like, I'm gonna get that lady pregnant a bunch of times one day, and it's gonna be all kinds of horror that comes afterwards. Also, children are a blessing, etc, and

Lauren 1:04:33
so, absolutely, absolutely,

Scott Benner 1:04:36
well, listen, I gotta tell you something. I have my last question for you. I know how you're gonna answer it, so it's almost silly to ask it, but I think it but I think it makes a good point, if you could get in a time machine and not have these kids, would you do that?

Lauren 1:04:47
I'm telling you, I think about this question daily. Go ahead, I really do. I can't say with 100% certainty, but I don't know if I could go through it all again, to be honest with you,

Scott Benner 1:04:58
I really don't if you went back. Back in time and you knew what was going to happen, you could stop yourself, right?

Lauren 1:05:05
Absolutely, yeah, it would be a completely different narrative if I knew what I know now, right? Absolutely,

Scott Benner 1:05:10
because you wouldn't know the kids. You just know the like, what like? Because I if I gave you a magic wand, you wouldn't make the kids disappear, right? Right? She's like, Yeah, no, of course not. What?

Lauren 1:05:21
Take away their take away the shitty part. Did

Scott Benner 1:05:24
I sound convincing when I said that? No, but, but seriously, I understand what you mean. You go back in time. You don't know the people, you just know the situation. Yeah, and you and so listen, I gotta be honest with you, I would do the same thing. Yeah, yeah. 100% now, if I took you back in time and showed you a picture of the three kids and had all the memories of loving them, and then said it, what happens then?

Lauren 1:05:46
I didn't know any better than Yeah, go for it. You know what I mean? Like, it's rough. If I could go back to 14 and tell her everything that went down by the time you're 30. Like, there's

Scott Benner 1:06:00
a little boy in sixth grade. He's gonna smile at you when he does, kick him in the balls as hard as you can and yell no, and then uppercut palm into his nose. Exactly.

Unknown Speaker 1:06:23
We might want to believe your name.

Scott Benner 1:06:28
All right, I need more people on the podcast being this honest, uh, send me an email. Okay. All right. All right, Lauren, let's let you go before one of us has a stroke from laughing and then or more people judge us for being terrible. People, whatever is going on right now. I know, listen, that's on them. Okay, never heard your tits been through a ringer. Your whole show gone through a couple of times. I think

Unknown Speaker 1:06:53
they pushed me through the whole thing

Scott Benner 1:06:54
barn. We would be friends if we were near each other, we really would be sure, no, we would definitely be friends. I would never, ever get you pregnant because you you were very dangerous, as far as I can tell. But we could definitely friends. Yes,

Unknown Speaker 1:07:11
oh my gosh,

Scott Benner 1:07:12
you must be the lady in the neighborhood that other ladies point to and go, Oh, don't worry. At least that didn't happen to us. Like you're like, oh, there's some out there that are still absolutely Lauren just said there are people in my town I wouldn't trade places with. That hurts if you're hearing it. No kidding. Are you a stand up comedian in your in your private life? What do you do for a

Lauren 1:07:39
living? No, I can't. I don't really have time to do anything.

Scott Benner 1:07:43
It's like your job. Is that, right? But no, yeah, so let me ask one last question. Have you always had, like, a in my estimation, you have a terrific sense of humor. Okay? I think sense of humor is measured by your ability to make fun of things that are clearly not funny, but you can say something funny about them. I mean, obviously nothing that has happened to you is fun, right? And so did you have this before all this? Have you always been like this? The sense of humor part,

Lauren 1:08:12
I think, a little bit, and I think I also had to kind of acquire it, because it's like, kind of like a coping mechanism, I guess, because if you know, if you don't laugh, you'll cry, yeah, you know, it

Scott Benner 1:08:24
is a little bit of a coping thing for you, but, yeah,

Lauren 1:08:26
yeah, no, I've always, I guess, yeah, but it is mostly coping. And

Scott Benner 1:08:34
maybe I don't usually do this while I'm being recorded, but Have I done anything that's made you uncomfortable? No, okay, not at all. Okay, because if you have been you could just tell me, I'll just delete it. You know that? Right? No, okay, oh yeah, of course, because there are going to be some people who don't have a good sense of humor, gonna be like that lady just took that for an hour and blah, blah, blah, like I hear you old hens out there. Don't you worry. I want to say this. I'm gonna say something, because there's no place I'd ever say this again on any episode when I was growing up. Like, between me and my friends, our measure of if you had a good sense of humor basically boiled down to, could you laugh at a very well crafted dead baby joke? Because that there's nothing funny about that. So like, if somebody could actually craft a piece of humor that would take something that horrible and still, your brain could go, Oh, I see why that's funny, huh? Like, like, and laugh like that. To me, is a pure sense of humor, because there are obviously plenty of things in the world that are not funny. It's not the thing you're laughing at. It's it's actually the structure of it, right? It's the Yeah, it's the conversation around it that makes it, that makes you laugh. It doesn't make you laugh at the horrible thing and it just makes you be able to laugh at the situation. Absolutely,

Lauren 1:09:44
yeah. I mean, could you imagine being that serious about like, I don't think I'd be here if I didn't have some kind of, you know, way of thinking otherwise, yeah,

Scott Benner 1:09:53
I think you'd be on six different pharmaceutical medications, right? Absolutely, yeah,

Lauren 1:09:57
totally, yeah. You have to, you have to. Well, you have to be able to laugh at yourself and laugh at the situation regardless of what it is, because if you don't, then you're just going to be miserable. You know, I

Scott Benner 1:10:07
think that attitude gives your children a very good chance at finding that for themselves too. So I applaud that, honestly. Okay, yeah, all right, well, that was weird to get serious at the end, but, all right, you want to curse anymore, Lauren, because you were really great at it okay? Because, I mean, if anybody needs to scream into a pillow, I feel like it might be you, so I'm gonna let you go. Yeah. All right. Hold on one second. All right.

Lauren 1:10:32
Thank you for having me a huge

Scott Benner 1:10:41
thank you to one of today's sponsors, gvoke glucagon. Find out more about gvokopen at gvoke glucagon.com, forward slash, juicebox. You spell that, G, V, O, k, e, g, l, U, C, A, G, o, n.com, forward slash juicebox. This episode of The juicebox podcast was sponsored by Dexcom. The Dexcom g7 is what you need. It's what my daughter wears, and you can learn more about it at dexcom.com/juicebox. Links in the show notes links at juicebox podcast.com, the diabetes variables series from the juicebox podcast goes over all the little things that affect your diabetes that you might not think about, travel and exercise to hydration and even trampolines. Juicebox podcast.com, go up in the menu and click on diabetes variables. Alright, 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 you.

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