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

#1328 IDU: Vanilla Diabetes Content

Scott and Jenny don't understand vanilla diabetes content.

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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
Friends, we're all back together for the next episode of The juicebox podcast. Welcome

everybody. Jenny is back. We're going to do another I don't understand today. Today, the topic is about entities, diabetes, organizations, companies, etc, and why the information that they kind of give out about diabetes and social media is so basic. 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, if you're a US resident who has type one or is the caregiver of someone with type one? Visit T 1d exchange.org/juicebox 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 when you place your first order for ag one with my link, you'll get five free travel packs and a free year supply of vitamin D drink, AG, one.com/juice box. Don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com All you have to do is use the offer code juicebox at checkout. That's juicebox at checkout to save 40@cozyearth.com%

Did you know if just one person in your family has type one diabetes, you are up to 15 times more likely to get it too. So screen it like you mean it one blood test can spot type one diabetes early, tap now talk to a doctor or visit screen for type one.com for more info, today's episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by the contour next gen blood glucose meter. This is the meter that my daughter has on her person right now. It is incredibly accurate, and waiting for you at contournext.com/juicebox, this episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by Eversense the Eversense CGM is more convenient, requiring only one sensor every six months. It offers more flexibility with its easy on, easy off, smart transmitter, and allows you to take a break when needed. Eversense cgm.com/ cgm.com/juicebox,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 2:23
I feel like we haven't talked in a long time. We

Scott Benner 2:26
haven't. But why is that? Because Arden's I went on vacation, and then Arden had to go to college, and then I had to cancel with you a couple times.

Unknown Speaker 2:35
Yes,

Unknown Speaker 2:35
that's my fault. I apologize. No, I

Jennifer Smith, CDE 2:37
hope your vacation was lovely.

Scott Benner 2:39
It was actually that was our first family vacation together in six years, and it was warm, and we did some cool things. We went out on a boat and did some like snorkeling, like out the sea snorkeling, that was cool. What else did we do? We did a paddle board. Well, not paddle boat, like, clear bottom boat tour through through these, like, mangroves. It was very, very cool. Arden's blood sugar really played nicely. That was great. So we had a good time. We really did. Yeah, thank you. I'm sure I said to Kelly this morning, like, we can't wait that long to go on vacation again, again, yeah? Like, you just worked too hard. So, but yeah, thank you. Good. Well, I want to keep going with the I don't understand fabulous, okay, and I'm going to bring the I don't understand today. Oh, yay. So this is blended from a couple of things that happened to me over the last couple of weeks involving diabetes. Okay, I don't understand why

Unknown Speaker 3:40
entities share

Scott Benner 3:41
such vanilla information with people, whether it's in their social media where they're teaching. And I'm not just saying companies now, I'm not saying like, I'm not specifically saying a pump company or a CGM company in general, pharmacom, not just saying in general, the content that people get is often like, Hey, here's a recipe for a cake that you can take to your July 4, blah, blah, blah, and diabetes. And, you know, like, does diabetes do this? And like, it's the same stuff regurgitated over and over and over again. And I'm always stunned, because they have an audience, and they could help them, but instead, they just churn out the same crap over and over again. I don't know why people do that.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 4:32
I think if we're talking in general statements again, not about a product in general, or, you know, in specific, or anything. I like the term vanilla. I really do. I

Scott Benner 4:44
usually say banal, but I think people don't know what that means sometimes, and then I throw off the conversation with

Jennifer Smith, CDE 4:49
them. No, vanilla is perfect in this I think it's because people are so scared to be what I think should be truthful and in the truth. Statement offending somebody. Okay, we are so worried in today's society that something you say, or the way that you tell somebody, the real, right way to do it, is gonna make them, Oh, my goodness, like you're saying this against me. My good. Do you know many times a day I could be offended if I really chose to be, come on, let it roll. I just

Scott Benner 5:26
come on. And so there is that, I think, that people's concern about making their content, you know, okay, for everybody, yeah, so that no one could possibly get upset ever. Does keep it very surface then, because you end up saying things that you're just like, well, this can't possibly make anybody upset. But I think the joke's on them, because, yes, someone's still going to be upset. What's

Jennifer Smith, CDE 5:52
still going to be angry? I mean, it's kind of like the whole concept you mentioned recipe, right? You can put a recipe out, and you could even put into it in terms of just the diabetes angle, right? You could say, and in this, I choose to use this product, and I choose to use this and it, it seems to do this for my blood sugar, but I think it's beneficial to follow up and say, but you know what? That's my n of one. You go ahead and you give it a try. And if you can't use this, or you don't do this, go ahead and do something else. I'm just telling you what works for me, right? But just be honest about it. Yeah.

Scott Benner 6:28
So what brings this up for me is that, did you know if just one person in your family has type one diabetes, you're up to 15 times more likely to get it too. So screen it like you mean it one blood test can spot type one diabetes early. Tap now talk to a doctor or visit screened for type one.com for more info. In a professional setting, a person asked me, but the conversation started with like, what are you most proud of about the podcast? And it was a business question, not a like a helping people question, because my answer is always going to be that it helps people. It helps people. But yes, they meant business wise. And I said longevity. I said that, you know, open your Instagram up today, see who's talking diabetes. Wait a calendar year, go back and see if you can find them again, right? Like that's, you know, keeping, you know, current and keeping your popularity up. And they said, well, then how do you do you do that? And I said, Oh, that's easy. I said, I genuinely get up every day, and I think what would help people with diabetes? Like, what could I offer them? What could I pull into the conversation that would help them? And they were like, Oh, okay. And I said that that's where the rest of you go wrong. I'm like, You're always saying things that are just like, I don't know. Like, oh, you know, insulin is too expensive. Great. Well, we all know that that doesn't help anybody's blood sugar be stable. You know what I mean? Like, here's a recipe. Have you tried this? I don't. I'm not angry about it. I'm just confused about it. Like, they never seem to say anything. And then I realized, as I was talking to them, a lot of doctors do the same exact thing, right? Just surface, always surface, never deeper.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 8:08
Yeah, I was just gonna say exactly that it's, it's almost like they're afraid to dig down and look for what do people really want a discussion about? And sometimes, I think you may not know until you hear discussion about something that, gosh, I had some of those questions too, yeah, and I wouldn't have even thought to ask, or they were subconscious, something like nicking at your brain to gosh, you know, but you couldn't put words to it, but somebody else did right? And you need to dig into people's life when you have conversations in order to get the wealth that can help somebody else, and it's not going to help everybody. I pick and choose things I listen to all the time, yeah, what

Scott Benner 8:57
I realized is I was doing this thing recently where I asked somebody to kind of expound on their experience, and it was a professional thing, and they just didn't, or they couldn't, I wasn't sure what happened. Like they defaulted to some pre written conversation that I could tell while they were saying it they had said 1000 times in their life, right? Like they went back to their script, and I re asked the question. I was like, No, how does it make you feel? And they couldn't, like, I was stunned. I was like, you don't know how you feel about this. And they're so professionally focused on, like, say these things, use these words, don't say this part. A lawyer told me not to do this, like, right? And I was like, I know there's knowledge inside of you. You don't even know how to let it out, right? And then I changed up the focus a little bit, and I thought I could get them to a moat, and they still could. And then I started wondering, like, is it just, are some people just better communicators than others? Like, if I said, Jenny, you and I have done this together. I know, you know, for people who don't like, maybe don't have context for. This, Jenny and I spoke together in Austin at a live event like last year, and we did, we speak for five or six hours to a group.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 10:08
The long time it was several hours before lunch, and then it was a couple of hours. It was a couple of hours after lunch as well. So I'd say probably six hours

Scott Benner 10:18
the extent of our preparation was standing outside of the door of the auditorium five minutes before it started, and I said, Hey, do you think we should talk about what we're going to talk about? Then we kind of like, giggled a little and went inside, and I was like, okay, diabetes, go. I never once looked at you and thought, oh, Jenny's stuck. She doesn't know what to say. She doesn't have anything for this moment, and it made me wonder, like, do people not have the information, and that's why they're not sharing it? Are they gatekeeping the information? I feel like I've seen both. I feel like I've seen people who find themselves. Today's podcast is sponsored by the Eversense CGM, boasting a six month sensor, the Eversense CGM offers you these key advantages, distinct on body vibe alerts when high or low, a consistent and exceptional accuracy over a six month period and you only need two sensors per year. No longer will you have to carry your CGM supplies with you. You won't have to be concerned about your adhesive not lasting, accidentally knocking off a sensor or wasting a sensor when you have to replace your transmitter. That's right. There's no more weekly or bi weekly hassles of sensor changes, not with the Eversense CGM. It's implantable and it's accurate. Eversense cgm.com/juice, cgm.com/juicebox, the Eversense CGM is the first and only long term CGM Eversense sits comfortably right under the skin in your upper arm, and it lasts way longer than any other CGM sensor. Never again will you have to worry about your sensor falling off before the end of its life. So if you want an incredibly accurate CGM that can't get knocked off and won't fall off, you're looking for the Eversense CGM. Eversense cgm.com/juicebox, the contour, next gen blood glucose meter is the meter that we use here. Arden has one with her at all times I have one downstairs in the kitchen, just in case I want to check my blood sugar, and Arden has them at school. They're everywhere that she is, contour next.com/juice, box, test strips and the meters themselves may be less expensive for you in cash out of your pocket, than you're paying currently through your insurance for another meter. You can find out about that and much more at my link, contour next.com/juicebox contour makes a number of fantastic and accurate meters, and their second chance test strips are absolutely my favorite part. What does that mean? If you go to get some blood, and maybe you touch it, and, I don't know, stumble with your hand and, like, slip off and go back. It doesn't impact the quality or accuracy of the test. So you can hit the blood, not get enough, come back, get the rest, without impacting the accuracy of the test. That's right, you can touch the blood, come back and get the rest, and you're going to get an absolutely accurate test. I think that's important, because we all stumble and fumble at times. That's not a good reason to have to waste a test trip. And with a contour next gen, you won't have to contour next.com forward slash juicebox, you're going to get a great reading without having to be perfect in a position where you would expect they know what they're talking about, but when you start talking to them, realize they don't have a lot. And I also feel like I've been around people who know the answer, but they want to be the ones to have the answer, so they don't want you to have it. Have you ever seen that like gatekeeping the information? Yes,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 13:56
absolutely. Like. But then who are they going to share it with? You can you can keep the information, but I mean to your beginning statement is, who's it going to help? Yeah, right. Well, that's not to help. Yeah, that's not their concern. But there are people who

Scott Benner 14:11
you would think that that was their concern.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 14:13
You would hope, yeah, right, aren't we in this too? I mean, my, my joy every day that I get to work with somebody is truly that I have given them as much as like at the end of my day, my brain feels done like because of all the little bits, the digging and the talking and the digging out the right information from what I know And what I can apply to that particular individual discussion and need, and it's different for every single person, right? But you have to be willing to say, why would I hold on to this information if it can help somebody else? Like, why wouldn't I share it? Yeah,

Scott Benner 14:55
I don't know that's for a psychologist to figure out for those people, but I've definitely seen. People gatekeeper information, like I'm the person of power. I want to stay like this, and I've always taken the the opposite approach. And you people have heard me say this on the podcast for years, like I actually believe that the hardest part about my job is that I have to find you, make you believe that I might know what I'm talking about, actually get the information to you, and then be willing to say goodbye at the end, right? Because you might not need this anymore, right? And, you know, in any other media situation, they get a listener, they want to hold on to them. My goal is for you to feel like, Man, I don't really need this podcast anymore. Like, you know, like, that big picture, that's what I'm hoping. I'm hoping you feel comfortable enough to your life and be happy and live, right? Yeah, yep, if you want to keep listening like, God bless you. Thank you. But like, you know, I I just find it. I don't know it's frustrating for me, because as much as that person who started that conversation with me was like, Scott, you're so your thing is so popular, tell me how you did it, I sit there and I think I'm stunned that more people can't figure out a way to do it. They either don't want to share it all or and then this is another part of it. I think it's possible. I want to be completely clear, like, I couldn't make this podcast if it didn't generate an income for me, right? Sure? Like, it just, it's just too much time, and it's all my time. Yeah, so I understand that if people are like, look, I can make this content, but I'm gonna also have to run a coaching service, or I'm gonna have to do something, because they're not big enough to draw in advertisers, and they're not small enough for it to be a part time thing. So they have to find a way to make money so they can't give you all the information, because they need you to pay them to give you the information so they can keep doing the thing, sure. So that's possibly part of it as well.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 16:46
And I think sometimes there is also just the want to be truly involved in a community effort of of bringing people together in maybe a different way and and that's okay, right? And I think your goals aren't truly to be successful for, hey everybody, look at me and look at what I did, but to be successful for the give to the to the broader community of people with type one and type two diabetes, truly to be able to gain information that they're not getting from someplace else, right? And so I think all the communities certainly have a pull for certain people, yeah, and I think there's value in all of the different avenues of getting it for sure. And the effort that you know the other you know, bloggers or podcasters or whatever their effort is, their own effort, for whatever reason they have behind what they're doing? Yeah,

Scott Benner 17:43
I don't listen. You make the point that if you want to reach a lot of people, you have to reach people. Yes, there's like, a I don't know. You have to strike a balance between not being a clown to get eyes and at the same time be entertaining enough that it draws in a massive amount of people so that it can help a mass amount of people correct. And

Jennifer Smith, CDE 18:02
though keep supplying enough information that is building on what's already there, it's not just rehashing it is getting more and getting deeper and having further conversation. Because despite having one same diagnosis, let's say type one diabetes. Everybody's life with type one diabetes is very different. We all have different diagnosis stories. We all have different experience with healthcare practitioners, medications, other conditions in life that we live with, crappy situations we've lived through. You know, you

Scott Benner 18:39
also have to have a vision for what I hope I say this correctly, but somebody asked me one time like they kind of insinuated that my job was to tell people what they wanted to hear. And I said, I think my job is to tell people what they need to know and might not know that they need to know. Yes, yeah, absolutely. They say one of the jobs in the future might be as much as chat GPT. Will you know as AI will know things, asking it the right questions in the right way is going to be an art, right? And so I ask myself, what are these faceless people who I know are listening like, what is it that I'm seeing in the community that they don't understand? And I don't need to make them comfortable. I need to give them good information or lead them down a road that they might not think to look down and and you also have to stay ahead of the curve, like, just thinking back quickly over the years, I take it hard when I do things and people don't like agree with it, so I've taken it over. Well, back in the day, I was like, these CGMS are amazing. And I know that seems really obvious right now, but there was a whole faction of old heads before who wanted to say, like, my kid grew up without a CGM and they're fine. And I'm like, Yeah, it's fine. Good for them. I'm glad you know this data seems really important. And so for the first two years, while I'm out there going, like, these CGMS. Are awesome. People are like, he's a shill. He blah, blah. I'm like, and now it looks like common sense, right? Present day, same thing's happening with GLP meds. I'm like, I think there's something here. And people are like, one guy, one, I swear to god, somebody said to me, you're pushing the GLP agenda. I don't know what, like, Looney, like, I don't know what you think. You know? I

Jennifer Smith, CDE 20:23
think that if there weren't enough people who are experiencing the benefit of this particular medication, right, that you wouldn't have people coming and saying, Hey, I'd like to tell you my story with this, right? You'd have silence. You'd have, okay, well, it sounds great, but I don't know anything because I don't want to try it myself, you know. So, yeah, I don't think that there's necessarily an agenda, I mean.

Scott Benner 20:47
But this person was like, saying, like, you know, basically, like, you're Strapping, you know, pharma to your back and carrying them on this. They're trying to sell this GLP thing. And I was like, Listen, what I'm telling you is, I'm seeing people with diabetes using this, and a lot of good things are happening for some of them. I think we should look at it more. And again, it'll be one of those things that two years from now, it'll see like common sense, and no one will remember this part. But again,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 21:09
what you're talking about is already, it's already being studied. So you're, you're not ready, like I want to make research out of this and put together all of this information to put out there as a whole, you know, whatever. If it wasn't actually happening, then they would not be studying the use of it in people with type one. Now, right? It's

Scott Benner 21:31
not like I took an aspirin for a headache in my toe nail screw fashion. I was like, I think somebody should look into this connection between nail growth and aspirin like, you know, am I the only one saying this? Like, plenty of people are seeing what's happening, but it's when you're talking about it out on the bleeding edge of of this community connection. Like, there's a couple people talking GLP, and other than that, everybody else is like, Are you sure? Like, does it make you sick? Should you be doing it? What about muscle wasting? Like, it's a lot of fear mongering around it, or being so careful that they're not willing to look at some of the positive things that are happening and, or

Jennifer Smith, CDE 22:06
even do their own research? Right? You can hear something about and, or you can hear somebody's 1n, of one, again, kind of story. If you really are concerned, then do your research. Look outside of this person's story. Look at what is actually in the research, what's being done, why they're considering the potential use of this, beyond just type two, and beyond the weight management, you

Scott Benner 22:33
got to pick through what you're what you're hearing like I listen, I'm pretty comfortable saying to you, I think if you pre bullish, your meals consistently, your a 1c, could come down a full point, right? Yeah. But I've had people come to me and say, Listen, I pre bolus, and I get low every time. So I'll say, Well, if your basal is right, if your settings are correct, if your insulin sensitivity is right, and that's happening to you, it sounds like you don't need to pre boss, yeah, you know, like, I'm not saying, like, do it anyway. I'm saying, This is what I've noticed. You go check into that for yourself. Is it valuable for you? Great. Is it like even with the glps, some people have stomach issues. They can't take it correct. It's not for you then. And yeah,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 23:13
absolutely. I have no need or desire to personally use it. I don't need it. So I can talk about it. I can tell people about it. I can talk through in the avenue of their individual could it be useful? Why are you considering it? And if you are, are there other things in place already that we haven't adjusted, or they're not in place yet, that we haven't adjusted? We could go those there first and then revisit this conversation, right? I mean, just like you're pre bolus well, you're pre bolusing for grilled chicken, that's probably why you're going home.

Scott Benner 23:47
Yeah, we don't need that. And that's the point, right? That's the bigger point around all this. This is there's an example of where you need more information, and it can't just all be dumped onto you in one second. So I'll make the point there, that maybe that's why people don't give more specific advice, because they can't give enough of it to make sure they've covered the whole thing. Whereas, if you have this platform that I have, it can be spread out, people can take their time to absorb it and hopefully get enough of it to put together that puzzle for themselves. Yeah, I would agree. I get frustrated when somebody says, like, I'm a professional, I know this stuff. And then you listen to them, and they speak for 20 minutes, and when they're done, I think they didn't even say anything. They just talked and talked and talked, and there's nothing left here. If I ask you five minutes from now what that person said, you won't remember anything from it.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 24:39
You know, how many conferences that I've gone to with the hopes of a topic being really, like, dug into, like, the nitty gritty of information that I want to pull more out of than the surface level, and I walk away thinking I could have read the PowerPoint presentation in five minutes.

Scott Benner 24:59
Yeah, I. Flew here for this. Flew here, and it feels like their presentation is made from a Google search that just returns the basic ideas of the of the thing, right? And when you go to dig down, they go, what? Yeah, we don't have time for that right now. Or

Jennifer Smith, CDE 25:15
they're constrained by some other disclosure, like they they have an association with somebody and they can't, as you were saying, they're sort of contained into what they can say, and they do know more that they can't say more because somebody told them that they can't.

Scott Benner 25:32
So I use chatgpt all the time, so I asked it this question, and it says that for reasons of professionalism and ethical standards, this might be one reason why a healthcare professional wouldn't give more, but also fear of misinformation and liability. It goes on risk of reputation and damage. Like, if I tell you something and you get it wrong, even if I'm right, and then you go off and you say, Oh, my doctor said this, and he doesn't know what he's talking about. And then you're screwed in the community, like, that's understandable. There can be institutional guidelines that they have to follow. But they also talked about a conservative culture in medicine. Traditionally, medicine is a conservative hierarchy with a strong emphasis on adhering to established norms and protocols. That's something too it's like, you know, as treatments move forward, you're still talking about whatever you heard in medical school and whatever, whatever the writings say. And I actually heard a doctor talking about this recently, like there's all these advancements, but the papers don't reflect them, like the paper and the papers reflect them, right? So the research reflects it, the papers reflect it, but it never gets moved back into the teaching at the medical school. The Medical School's teaching off of papers from decades ago. Sometimes,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 26:46
yeah, absolutely. And the unfortunate thing about teachings in medical school now, of course, we have so much that's being taught that's relative to medicine use and I'm trying to be careful. I'm trying to be vanilla.

Scott Benner 27:08
Well, you don't want to insult anybody, and it's not my, it's not my desire to insult anybody. Yeah,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 27:13
I don't want to insult but truly and completely, the majority of information that is taught and given and where they where they get their information that then gets fed into the patient, and what the patient is going to be provided with in terms of a medication. It comes from research that's been conducted by the companies that want their product to be the one that's put out there. I hate that, because I think medication is an important piece of of navigating health conditions in some circumstances. But if that's all you're using as your basis, and you're not going to the first step, the first line, which is more preventative, there are so many lifestyle things that could be being taught to incoming doctors in medical school to be able to say, this is the first step to teach the patients you work with, you want to care for people. You want to do no harm, teach them to live a healthy life. If that isn't working and they've put that in, then move into this researched potential use that could benefit their efforts that are already in place, right as

Scott Benner 28:28
you're talking, I thought, Is there just a way to, like, tax everybody, 50 cents per person, put all the money in a pile and then use that money to pay researchers and lawyers to be on the side of the people, not the side, not side of the government, not the side of a company, but but the people like, right? Just people, because that's what, that's what you need, is you need someone out there doing this research for you, yes, and then throw it all out into the world and let it shake out where. And then

Jennifer Smith, CDE 28:55
it would be honest, right? It would be not vanilla. It would be this. These are the ground rule facts. This is what you should know and move forward.

Scott Benner 29:06
Yeah, no, I just, I'm saying that

Jennifer Smith, CDE 29:08
live long and be prosperous. Yeah,

Scott Benner 29:11
get out though. Well, you made a point a second ago, right? Like, if you, if you can by eating well and exercising and living a life that your body needs, live healthy, then great. And if you have processes in your body that aren't working well enough that that's not enough for it, then let's see if there's a pharmaceutical or something else that can help you with it, right? So, I mean, it makes a ton of sense to me to start at that basic but as soon as you do that, you're going to get argued with by 17 different people are going to tell you the way to eat is everything you open your mouth with becomes some sort of a fight. I'm answering my own question, by the way, why companies don't get involved in specific? Yes, yeah, there's no way to win if you said hey, even if you said eat, well, someone go. Well, what does that mean? And then now we're arguing. About that for 10 years, and then that pisses away, and people finally stop arguing about that. And then you move on to the the next step, and then it starts all over again. There's five different opinions, five different financial perspectives, and everybody wants their thing to be the thing

Jennifer Smith, CDE 30:16
right? And I think what you know, what it honestly brings in that you're kind of skirting around is that we need discussions to happen. We should not shy away from discussion. We should not shy away from bringing up hard points, like uncomfortable discussion points. We should be happy to be able to talk about something that is not vanilla. Yeah,

Scott Benner 30:42
right. Let's have a deeper conversation and disagree. That's fine. Be nice, like, that's even like, I listen, I cultivate what I think is maybe the kindest Facebook group around diabetes that I've ever seen, but it's based on you're all adults. I'm not going to tell you what to say, just however you eat, however you feel, love, I don't even care. Like, go ahead and have your conversations, but then be nice. And it's interesting. I had this thing happen the other day. I can talk about this, probably right. So there was a post, there's a, I don't want to out anybody, there's a post that comes up and somebody says, this is one of the most controversial posts in diabetes. What would you bolus for this? Like, you know what I mean? And it's a photo, yeah, yeah. And eventually,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 31:23
in a million different places, not just Yes, people post all the time. Look at the bowl of ice cream and all the toppings, and it looks like, like a kitchen sink full of stuff. Like, well, that's a wide guess.

Scott Benner 31:35
A lot I'm guessing, but so, but somebody will come in and say, hey, well, you know, I see this in there, and that you're going to get an impact quickly from this. There might be some fat in there. You get a lot of thoughtful answers, but there's always one person that can't stop themselves from saying, I just wouldn't eat it. Well, no one asked you. That guy didn't ask you the question. Question wasn't, Hey, would you eat this? And so something like that happened where a person came in and said, like, yeah, you know, I just, I think that if you ate a different quality of food, and blah, blah, blah, and then someone got insulted by that. And I'm like, okay, that's legitimate. I have a one of my rules in my Facebook group is, don't tell people how to eat. And so this person gets very angry that this person told another person how to eat. Now we've got three people involved, and the person who gets angry about it then fires back at that person, very rude. And I removed the rude comment, and I said, please be kind like you know, I next time somebody does something like that, report that comment. I will take care of it. Because I would have taken that comment out and said, Please don't tell somebody how to eat. So all I would have done, right? Well, you know, that person left the group in anger because they didn't want to be told what to do. And I was like, you just got mad because that person was cruel. You were three times crueler to them in return. And now you're mad at me. I was like, and then I'm dumb enough to get on here and ask you this question when the obvious answer is, you can't win.

Unknown Speaker 33:04
No, you can't win. There you go.

Scott Benner 33:07
So Jenny, I think we're getting back to what you started with. If people want to know why they're not getting straightforward information from companies and entities, it's because they're scared to talk to you all,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 33:17
yeah, yeah, pretty much they're they're scared, and companies, especially, they're scared to be sued if they get back to you with an answer that's 100% the nitty gritty truth of what they're doing. I mean, it is the reason that today I am so not in love with all of the pharmaceutical commercials. I mean, I grew up with Band Aid and I think an aspirin. They are aspirin and band aids. Those were the commercials for medical care on TV right today. It's not this and not that, whatever it is, but they have to put in some of those sort of things that could be symptoms after because, you know what? They don't want to get ground out for not stating, well, you could have headaches with this medication because one person had it. In a study of 300,000

Scott Benner 34:06
people, yeah, if your eyes start bleeding and fall out your asshole, please, yeah. What did that happen to one person? But, yeah, so you have to disclaimer everything, which I'm not against, but, like, no, it's just very by the way, now I have the I am stuck on Band Aid brand because Band Aid stuck on me. That's got stuck in my head, and now I feel very old. But here's the problem, okay, so if, whether it's a diabetes website who's captured an audience and is feeding you information, it ends up being just this banal, vanilla information, or it's a company who's not willing to say, you know, maybe you should look at this if my our product's not working for you, what it ends up leading to is, people with diabetes are misered, right? They have a difficulty managing their blood sugars. They get increased anxiety. They're frustrated, they misinterpret things. They. Make self management errors and then misinterpret why those errors happened. Then it's just a tumble, right? You just you lose empowerment, you feel disengaged, and before you know it, you've got a nine, A, 1c, and you think, Oh, this is the best I can do. And so isn't it interesting, if that is that loop, which is people won't speak up and say what works because they're afraid of all the things that we discussed. In the end, it doesn't hurt those people. It hurts, it hurts the audience and those, those people have diabetes. It's the one thing like I know I've, I've told this story on the podcast before, but I wrote a blog for a long time, and it was popular. It was really, really popular. And one day I just realized I'm just saying what everybody else is saying. This is silly, like I'm gonna start sharing directly what's helping Arten, right? And when I did that, the blog got massively more popular. But I'm also, at that point, a blogger. I can say, hey, there's a disclaimer page on here that says, don't listen to me, anything you read here is for entertainment purposes, like that thing, right? A company, a company, can't come out and say, hey, you know this information is for entertainment purposes, but I would change your basal if I was you, like, like, that's not gonna work, right? But, but when I saw that help people, and then when I moved it to a different medium, where it's easier to reach people, and it's easier for people to, like, absorb the information. The amount of people I saw help with it exploded. And then that's what frustrates me. I'm like, I don't reach everybody, and some people don't like me, which is totally cool, yeah, but if you don't like me, but you still don't know how to pre bolus, I want someone else to be telling you how to do it, if it's not me, right? And that just doesn't happen. And then I get super frustrated about it, because I want people to be well, whether they get the information here or somewhere else. Yeah,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 36:47
I think the other piece, in terms of companies, especially diabetes companies, that is frustrating from the the coding of what you get told when you call in with a complaint is that they're choosing to use your product to benefit their life in a really significant way. Right? So if each individual person uses a product and has some minor things that are easy to overcome, but some people have more specific, really considerable issues, but you're still feeding them the same response. That's what also makes people really, really frustrated, right? You know, if you're going to replace something, replace it because you've said you're going to replace it, if you're not going to replace it, then you don't replace it for anybody, no matter what. But you can't, like cherry pick, so to speak, who gets something who doesn't get something? What you say to somebody, and I think that is where, on that end of calling into customer service, you get a little bit more. Get the tip of the iceberg. You get the person who's reading off of the form that says, This is how to answer this type of question that comes in. But in diabetes, especially with products, again, we need more than that, because this is impacting our life. If

Scott Benner 38:09
you're the one giving out that information, you have to understand that whatever is said is going to be received by the person on the other end of the phone, or the other end of your Tiktok, or wherever it is. As all of the information, they're not going to wonder if there's more. They're going to think if there was more to it, you would have said it. And so when you give incomplete answers, the person hearing them believes it's a complete answer, correct? That's why it works so poorly with management ideas, because if you can't give it all, then you're not going to be able to succeed. And even with like, the you know, like you said, with with how to use a device. And I listen, I understand device manufacturers are prohibited by the FDA. They're not allowed to tell you how to use them. That's not allowed, but they find ways to to get good information out into the world. And it can be done. Do? I did it with OmniPod for OmniPod five, we put together a three part series that very completely explains how to use OmniPod five, right? It's awesome, and they should be lauded for the amount of effort and time that a ton of people behind the scenes put into making sure that that content was valuable, right? You don't see that from a lot of places. And I'm not like, I'm not blaming like, another pump company or something. I've even learned to believe it. It's not just because they don't want to. They might not have the staff for it. The staff might not have the expertise for it. There's a lot of reasons why stuff like that doesn't happen, right? But mostly I think it's the stuff we've covered here.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 39:29
I think in what you just said, too, is that I think people get frustrated because they can see that the company isn't being openly honest about what they can tell you or what they know, right? You know, what? If you don't know how to answer a question or you can't answer it because you're bound by legal, kind of, you know, constraints, then tell me that. Tell me that so that I don't remain frustrated with the problem that I'm having. And I've called six times and I get six. Different answers, but the real answer is that you just can't tell me, because you really don't know yet. Miss Smith,

Scott Benner 40:05
I'm sorry, but the FDA precludes us from answering that question. The problem is that the next thing they're going to say is you should ask your doctor, and then apparently, if you're unlucky, you're going to get to your doctor and they're going to go, but I don't know, call the company. Call the company. You see people do that all the time. They bounce them back and forth, because nobody wants in the end. Listen, there are plenty of great people, okay? And this is not a blanket statement, but when you run into those people who aren't great in the end, what you're going to run into with people who are covering their own ass. And that's that like so and you do not know if that's who you're talking to or not, that's always my problem is, like, I don't know. Am I talking to an ass cover, or am I talking to somebody who doesn't know? Or Is there really no answer, you know, right? That's all right. You know, nothing you hear on the juicebox podcast should be considered advised medical or otherwise

Jennifer Smith, CDE 40:54
there No, yes, I have no affiliation for that. I

Scott Benner 40:57
don't know those people. But then you share your stories, and hopefully people can cherry pick and take things out that'll help them or resonate with their experience. They go, Oh, I never thought of it that way. I just helped somebody. The other day, a person emailed me and said, my kids on OmniPod five, they're in college. He's starting to take his health much more seriously. That's awesome. I was so excited, exercising more, eating better, but he's getting low a lot. And I was like, Oh, God, I know the right answer here. The answer is that that algorithm is working, is just over giving insulin based on his needs prior, and it's not shifting quickly enough in this case. So my thought was, you know, so I what I thought was, like, reset it, you know what I mean? Like, figure out what your total daily insulin is and start over. But I can't just email a stranger back and say, Hey, here's medical advice, right? So I have so I go. If this was happening to me, I would wonder if blah, blah, blah, and then I might look into making sure my settings are clear, and then maybe the algorithm could benefit from being, you know, reset with those new numbers. And as I was writing it, I felt ridiculous, because I'm still saying the same damn thing. You know what I mean, but like you are, but you're

Jennifer Smith, CDE 42:18
putting in a disclosure so that it can't come back to you. You're saying, if it were me, this is what I would do. I mean, I'm asked things all the time from a personal as well as a clinical perspective, and sometimes I give clinical perspective based on a professional stance, right? But my personal perspective is because of personal experience. And I can say, You know what, but that isn't what I do, because it doesn't work for you.

Scott Benner 42:47
In the end, I'm looking at my inbox and I'm thinking, Can I really ignore this and let this poor kid who's trying to pull his together? Am I gonna let him give up and live a life of poor health? Because I don't have the balls to answer this question, yeah, so, so I answered them, and I guess that's where my frustration comes from with everybody else. Like, just, like, what if we all just did the right thing? Like, going back to why I mentioned that the podcast is popular. The podcast is popular because it helps people, and then they tell other people I was helped here. Like, imagine if we were all doing that, how much more quickly people would be, you know, brought forward with their outcomes. That's just, I don't know it gets anyway. I understand why you guys don't do what I said an hour ago, but I get frustrated by it, and I'm so sick of seeing your freaking recipes for that cake that I can bring to my July 4 that won't make my blood sugar spike. It's just Jenny, by the way, the secret is using whipped cream for the icing. Oh,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 43:45
whipped cream for the icing. Lovely. So, because it's not real frosting,

Scott Benner 43:48
it doesn't have all that sugar in it and everything. And if I ran a website for type one diabetes, I would probably end up having to do what they're doing. But it still frustrates the hell out of me that that's how they do it. And, you know, I just wish people would just be more forthcoming if they know they should say, and if they don't know, they should stop pretending they know. That's pretty much what I think anyway,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 44:12
stop. Don't put the Fourth of July recipe out anymore. Yeah. I mean,

Scott Benner 44:15
just stop. It's so upsetting.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 44:20
I clearly have not visited whatever you're looking I'm

Scott Benner 44:22
so afraid that the website that does it's going to be like, Hey, he's directly talking about us, but I think they could figure it out too. And I feel badly. But it's so weird that that we live in a world where a person can have a medical question and be better off going to the juicebox podcast, Facebook group and asking a bunch of faceless strangers and come up with a better answer than if they went to their doctor, the company they bought the thing from, or it just, I don't know, I find it weird, like I'm almost here arguing against myself, like I don't think this is how it should work.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 44:54
I think with technology today, if it wasn't you, I think somebody else would have. Likely figured something similar out. Yeah, right. I mean, in whatever way. But I think because you were so quick to the move from just being a blogger into putting that voice specific connection, I think especially in the past several years where we've gone through a lot of poor social interaction, like True Seeing somebody. I think podcasts really have bloomed because it was the closest to socializing that you could get. And with you talking to so many different people all over the world, it was a great way to feel like you were almost having a conversation. No,

Scott Benner 45:43
I agree, but at the same time, it's only working because I'm being so authentic and honest while I'm doing it, because there's other people doing this, and they they run banal all the time as well. Listen, it went all the way back to when I was blogging. What I noticed that was that made me it was confusing is that people would get popular by being a blogger, which is to say that they're speaking to people very genuinely, right? And then when their popularity rose, the first thing they do was make over their website. Then all of a sudden it looked like a pharma website, like they put some money into it, they shined it up. And then they thought, then they took themselves too seriously, and then they stopped saying what they thought, and then they somehow turned into the thing that they were railing against the year before. And I was like, Oh, that was weird. I was I was like, you just stopped doing all the things that made you popular, like, because they wanted to look, I don't know, more

Jennifer Smith, CDE 46:37
professional maybe, or more like a more like a knowledgeable resource, trust

Scott Benner 46:44
me, they did the wrong thing. Jenny, my website looks like a five year old. Made it juicebox podcast.com, go check it out. But it works, and all the information's there. And I don't care if it doesn't look fancy, you know, and by the way, that website gets, it's really great traffic, so I'm sure it does, I don't know Anyway, all right, I appreciate you talking to me about this. Thank

Jennifer Smith, CDE 47:07
you absolutely.

Scott Benner 47:12
Thank you. A huge thanks to the contour next gen blood glucose meter for sponsoring this episode of The juicebox podcast. Learn more and get started today at contour next.com/juicebox your kids mean everything to you, and you do anything for them, especially if they're at risk. So when it comes to type one diabetes screen, it like you mean it, because if even just one person in your family has type one, your child is up to 15 times more likely to get it, but just one blood test can help you spot it early, so don't wait. Talk to your doctor about screening tap now or visit screenfortypeone.com to get more info and screen it like you mean. It a huge thank you to Eversense CGM for sponsoring this episode of the podcast. Are you tired of having to change your sensor every seven to 14 days with the Eversense CGM? You just replace it once every six months via a simple in office visit, learn more and get started today at Eversense cgm.com/juicebox. 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 bold beginnings 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 if you're not already subscribed or following in your favorite audio app, please take the time now to do that. It really helps the show and get those automatic downloads set up so you never miss an episode. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The juicebox podcast. The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording, wrongwayrecording.com I know that Facebook has a bad reputation, but please give the private Facebook group for the juicebox podcast, a healthy once over juicebox podcast, type one diabetes. The group now has 47,000 members in it. It gets 150 new members a day. It is completely free, and at the very least, you can watch other people talk about diabetes. And everybody is welcome, type one, type two, gestational loved ones. Everyone is welcome. Go up into the featured tab of the private Facebook group and. And there you'll see lists upon lists of all of the management series that are available to you for free in the juicebox podcast, becoming a member of that group, I really think it will help you. It will at least give you community. You'll be able to kind of lurk around, see what people are talking about, pick up some tips and tricks. Maybe you can ask a question or offer some help. Juicebox podcast, type one diabetes on Facebook. You.

#1327 Beaver Tail

Charlie had gestational diabetes with all three of her pregnancies and now has type 1.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Scott Benner 0:00
Welcome back to another episode of The juicebox podcast.

Charlie had gestational diabetes with all three of her kids, and she probably actually had type one during the third pregnancy. We're going to talk about that and a lot more on this episode of the podcast, 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. 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. 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 you OmniPod.

This episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by OmniPod five, and you can learn more right now at my special link, omnipod.com/juicebox this episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by the Eversense CGM. Eversense is going to let you break away from some of the CGM norms you may be accustomed to. No more weekly or biweekly hassles of sensor changes. Never again will you be able to accidentally bump your sensor off. You won't have to carry around CGM supplies and worrying about your adhesive lasting. Well, that's the thing of the past ever since cgm.com/juicebox

Charlie 2:11
My name is Charlie. I am from Canada, and I was diagnosed with Lata diabetes type one and a half in march of 2023, after the birth of my third child. But I didn't become insulin dependent until seven months later. So it was a bit of a shock, because I had two gestational pregnancies before that. I thought the third was gestational, and I was expecting type two, like I was fully prepared for type two

Scott Benner 2:41
let me, let me ask you that question. So then you have, you have two pregnancies. So you have, you get pregnant. You have gestational diabetes. It pass, passes, goes away, isn't impacting you anymore. You get pregnant again. It happens again, passes again. Yeah, that leaves you with the expectation that one day you will have type two diabetes, yeah,

Speaker 1 3:01
and we have family like, there's family history of type two on both sides of my family, and they told me with gestational like, the more gestational pregnancies you have, the more like you are to develop Type Two later in life. So I was just that was on my radar.

Scott Benner 3:16
So you're like, hey, let me see if I can get this going, and I'll make a third baby and see what happens?

Speaker 1 3:22
Well, yeah, my sugars got crazy after my second when my second child was a year old, okay, my sugars were weird. I wasn't on I wasn't a diabetic, yet. I was getting lows. Was getting lows all the time, like I was hitting even the twos, like 2.8 after I had a snack, if I was late for a meal, I was crashing. I was hitting, like, threes all, all the time. I was hitting threes if I missed, was late for a meal or missed the snack, and I just kept I feel it like I'd feel the drain, I'd start shaking, I'd start sweating. And I test that I'm in the threes. And I'm like, why am I in the three and then even in the twos after eating, and like, what is going on? So I went to my doctor

Scott Benner 4:08
real quickly, Charlie, for people listening, 2.8 is a 53 is, like a 54 just for like, context for everyone, yeah, yeah,

Speaker 1 4:15
which I mean, and I so I also knew really nothing about diabetes, because I'd only had two gestational pregnancies, and I never saw the twos when I was pregnant like because if I was in the fours, I'd have a snack to come up above five.

Scott Benner 4:32
Can I ask during the pregnancies with the gestational what was the management plan like?

Speaker 1 4:37
My first two was different than the third, because we did move. So just a different team altogether. So it was quite different. So the gestational for my first two, they had me record. I had to write down all my sugars, like so fasting, and after each meal, I had to record it on paper and then take a picture and email it to them on Sunday, and then they'd. On Me Monday and say, these are your adjustments. And I did it. I mean, I knew nothing else. They and I already had a big baby with a big head. And they did tell me in the in the education class, they said, if you don't manage your sugars, then that can cause your baby to have a larger head, or just be larger in general. I'm like, great. I'm already there. If you're telling me this can get worse, yeah,

Scott Benner 5:26
Charlie, when they tell you that, how do they shape that statement? Is it like, Hey, careful your hoo ha, is going to have a problem? Or is it like, it's an actually, actually a problem for the baby itself.

Speaker 1 5:37
It was for the baby, like, the health of the baby was the main concern, I mean, and then in turn, I mean, it was my first child, there's already fear of, how does this thing get out of me? Right? Like, is your first pregnancy, and you're like, Oh my goodness. So they did say, like, and this was pre covid. So there was, like, 10 ladies there for this gestational education Yeah, class, it was like an hour long. I was already in shock that was diabetic, because I know gestational diabetes was even a thing, okay, until the lady called me like I knew I was getting a glucose test done and had to drink the sugar and wait the hour and and then a lady called me a week later and said, I'm calling to book you in for the diabetes education class. And I said, Does that mean I'm diabetic? And she froze, and she said, Well, I'd assume so, because I've been told to call you to book you in for the diabetes education I said, Okay, I just nobody told me that my blood work was done and I was diabetic, so I was confused. I guess I just had never heard of it.

Scott Benner 6:45
The OmniPod five automated insulin delivery system is available now and waiting for you@omnipod.com forward slash juice box. OmniPod five is the only tubeless automated insulin delivery system that integrates with the Dexcom g6 CGM, and it uses smart adjust technology to automatically adjust your insulin delivery every five minutes, helping to protect against highs and lows without multiple daily injections. OmniPod five is also available through your pharmacy, which means you can get started without the four year Durable Medical Equipment contract that comes with most insulin pumps, even when you're currently in warranty with another system to get started today, go to omnipod.com, forward slash juicebox. Now, for those of you who aren't in the market for an automated system but still want an insulin pump and love the idea of tubeless you're looking for the OmniPod dash. Head over to my link, omnipod.com forward slash juice box. While you're there, you'll be able to learn everything you need to know about the OmniPod five and the OmniPod dash, and you can also find out if you're eligible for a free 30 day trial of the OmniPod dash. My daughter, Arden, has been wearing the OmniPod since she was four years old, wearing an OmniPod every day, and it has been nothing but a friend in this journey with insulin. Because the OmniPod is tubeless, you can wear it while you're showering, swimming or participating in your favorite physical activity. It's a big deal to not have to disconnect from a tubed pump to do those things, head over now to omnipod.com forward slash juicebox to find out if you're eligible for that free 30 day trial of the dash. To learn more about the dash or to learn more about the OmniPod five, get started today. OmniPod five full safety and risk information as well as a list of compatible phones and clinical trial claims data are available at my link, and at that same link, omnipod.com forward slash juicebox, you can also find terms and conditions for that. OmniPod dash 30 day trial. Lot of assumptions made like so the doctor says we're going to send you for a glucose test, and they assume that you know what that means, and then the results come back. Nobody tells you, until the person calls you to say, hey, coming in for your diabetes training.

Unknown Speaker 9:08
Yeah, I'm

Speaker 1 9:09
like, Okay, I'm I'm diabetic. What part of you know what that meant? What part

Scott Benner 9:14
of the Great White North Do you live in? What um? What province there? Ontario? Okay, yeah, when you become a type one, I know I'm gonna jump ahead for just a second. What's the management structure? Like, what insulin do they give you? How do they talk to you about technology for

Speaker 1 9:30
my type one? Like, for my type one? Yeah, dependency, um, they put me on basal R and long acting and novoropping with meals, okay,

Scott Benner 9:38
all right, that's all I wanted to know. If not, we can go back to the pregnancy. Okay, so she gives you the call, Hey, you give diabetes, and you're like, Well, what now and then? Where does it go from there?

Speaker 1 9:46
So I go to this class with all these other pregnant ladies, and they just, they gave me the glucometer, and they're like, this is how you test your sugars. And I'm just like, I was so scared that I was started to shake when I had to use. The Lancet. I just couldn't believe how to do this. And then they told me how to do it, like, five times a day, and I just couldn't believe it. I'm like, that, that's a lot of work. And I'm like, I'm already busy, and it just seemed like such an inconvenience. But I did it like, I followed all the rules to a T because I didn't want my baby to get any bigger, sure. And they told me that, like, once baby's born, you stop your insulin. We'll test you make sure you're not diabetic. And that's what happened. He was born. Stopped my insulin like six weeks later. Did the blood work? Everything was fine. And I'm like, great, glad that's over with I hated the needles. I got pregnant again, and they tested me early because of the first pregnancy, because the first gestational Sure. So they tested me a lot earlier, and I was borderline. So then they made me do it again, but with more sugar, and then I was diabetic again, and that was for even longer. That was like for five months, four to five months, whereas the first one was like two months, okay? And then so second diabetic pregnancy, then after my second was born, I never got tested. I just never found I just didn't do it. I don't know. I never went

Scott Benner 11:11
back for that postpartum follow up. Can we talk about the kind of this psychological aspect of all this, the Hey, this is horrible. I can't believe I have to do this. I don't like needles. I'm not following up after my second pregnancy. Is there a reasonable expectation that that gestational diabetes is just a momentary thing and it just goes away and it went away last time? So why should I possibly need to follow up the second time it's gonna happen again the same way? Yeah.

Speaker 1 11:42
I mean, there was also covid, okay, which I didn't want to leave the house. I had a baby that was, I mean, a minor factor, I suppose. No, I just didn't do it. I mean, I had my glucometer, so I was able to check every now and then. And I'm like, my sugars are fine. I'm like, I I'll be fine. So I never did it. Babies a year now. So this is March 2022, and that's when I started getting weird sugars,

Scott Benner 12:11
all these lows. By that, you mean lows. Okay, so, so I just want to be clear, and not that I'm questioning you, but because this has been in my head lately as I've been watching people in my personal life ignore their significant health issues. That's not what you were doing. You weren't doing out of sight, out of mind. I'll whistle and it won't nothing like that. Okay, no, okay,

Speaker 1 12:32
they went away the first time, and like I said, I was checking my sugars. I would randomly check, yeah. And then I just reached a point I just, I just didn't go back because I'm, like, my sugars are fine. I wasn't being ignorant about it. I My sugars were okay when I tested them. So I just, I mean, I know I should have gone. It's not that big a deal. It's just another blood work test. But I didn't,

Scott Benner 12:54
no, I'm not breaking, listen, Charlie, I'm not breaking your snowballs or anything like that. Yeah, I just, I just got to watch somebody recently walking around with like, 350 blood sugars, a type two, and they're just, they've lost like 100 pounds in the last 12 months, and they're just not doing anything about it. No, yeah, it's, it's, I'm genuinely fascinated by every sign points that I'm dying and I'm just not going to do anything. It's, it's and, you know, and the person knows, by the way, they're not doing anything to lose weight. They're actually eating voraciously, which, of course, makes sense, because they're probably in and out of or on the verge of DKA with this type two all the time, and now they're finally going to a doctor. But as I spoke to them about it, like face to face. Could really see in their eyes. I couldn't tell. That's why I asked you. Like, I couldn't tell. Was it just, like, blissful ignorance, or was it, yeah, you know, or was it I just don't understand this? No,

Speaker 1 13:51
if I, if I've had numbers that high, like with my pregnancies, I don't like, I rarely went over 10, which is 180 Yeah. Like I just 10 was bad, like that was above target for pregnancy. And so I never even knew how high blood sugars could get until, until I became insulin dependent. Were

Scott Benner 14:12
you using insulin during the pregnancies? The first two, yes, I was, yeah. Did they have you shoot, like a FAST Act thing for a high blood sugar? Were you taking a basal?

Speaker 1 14:21
So the first two was different, like I said. So they had me on humlin N, which was my long acting that, but that was like an eight hour duration, so I had to do that. It was gradual. At the end of the first pregnancy, I was on five units of human end in the morning, four units at bedtime, and then Humalog with breakfast, lunch and dinner. Okay, six, six units at breakfast, two at lunch and six with dinner. Did they

Scott Benner 14:49
have you eating a certain amount of carbs?

Speaker 1 14:51
Oh, yeah, there was a specific this many carb choices. So you had to have like, breakfast snack, lunch snack, dinner, snack. Boo

Scott Benner 15:00
boy, was it too much its points? Were you like, Oh, my God, I can't believe I'm eating all this food. Or was that okay? Yes,

Speaker 1 15:05
did I already No. Was not okay. I already naturally ate lower carb, okay? Like, I was not following by any means, a strict low carb diet, but I just ate,

Scott Benner 15:17
like, whale meat, seal, Penguin, stuff like that.

Speaker 1 15:19
Yeah, the norm, you know, Moose

Scott Benner 15:24
right? You're probably moose jerky, am I right? Yeah, wash that down with a nice glass of crude oil. I don't, I don't know a lot about Canada.

Unknown Speaker 15:35
Good old beaver tail.

Scott Benner 15:38
So too much food for you, but you're keeping up with it. Oh,

Speaker 1 15:41
man, it was so hard because so I already, like, I said, already low carb, and then my baby was huge. I didn't have room in my stomach for that, like,

Scott Benner 15:48
for the baby, and the food I didn't,

Speaker 1 15:51
the indigestion I had, and I I struggled. I'm like, Look, I can't eat this volume of carbs. Yeah, like, it's because and then you can't just eat the carbs, so you have to pair it with protein. And I

Scott Benner 16:03
forget exactly how big were the babies Charlie when they came out. The first one, the second

Speaker 1 16:07
one, my first born, was eight pounds 13 ounces. Okay, the second was six pounds 14 ounces. And I I cried when I saw her on the scale, because part of me, I felt some guilt with my son, which is silly, because, I mean, 813, is a big baby, but not

Scott Benner 16:24
crazy. I know lady had a 10 pound baby, she still limps 20 years later. Oh, my God, go ahead. Yeah.

Speaker 1 16:31
Just wondered, like, is he that big? Because he was also he was 11 days early.

Scott Benner 16:36
So you thought, oh, I, I did this with the blood sugar thing. You felt like, yeah, and

Speaker 1 16:40
because I was looking back with what I knew then, looking back in my blood sugars, they were high, like I was 12 after that sugar drink. And like, how long did I go without managing my diabetes? Like they caught it there. But was I already diabetic for a month before? And we didn't even know because, because with your first pregnancy, they don't test you till the third trimester. Today's

Scott Benner 17:00
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Speaker 1 18:42
told me, like it can affect their development, if it's really bad cognitive development, just overall, I suppose, okay, and then it just makes them larger, like they're just bigger. They just put on more weight, is my understanding. As far as unmanaged goes, I don't know, because I was managed. I managed it very well, and it was easy to just avoid sugar, because it was they told me, like, this will be over once you deliver. So it was like, Okay, I just won't eat

Scott Benner 19:15
dessert. It felt like a momentary thing, like I could cut this out for now. Yeah, it

Speaker 1 19:19
was momentary. It was easy to say, No, I'm not going to eat that. I'm diabetic and I'm caring for my baby like it was not a struggle to watch everyone else eat cake and I ate nothing. It was, it just mentally was fine. Well,

Scott Benner 19:32
yeah, listen, if you, I gotta be honest with you, if you're, if you're planning on raising a kid for its whole life, and you can't cut out like snacks, you're probably not cut out to be a parent. I mean, seriously, or at least you're not ready for the the amount of that probably sounded harsh. You're probably you're not ready for the amount of things that you give up to be a parent. Because that's no that's next. I mean, honestly, if the top 10 things I give up every day, if someone just said sugar in. That of this, I'd be like, Oh, is that it? That'd be terrific.

Unknown Speaker 20:02
Yeah, all right, I'm

Scott Benner 20:03
gonna try something here. How does elevated blood sugar in a pregnant woman impact fetal development? That's a pretty good right? My Google.

Speaker 1 20:25
Let's see what I never Google. I never googled that, and,

Scott Benner 20:30
yeah, we just always talk about, like, don't, don't do that. Why that isn't good? What? Why not? Yeah, listen now, I feel like we're all curious. So if we're not, you probably shouldn't be listening to the podcast. If this doesn't have your curiosity peaked, you should probably get out of this episode. Okay, so I'm gonna put it. I'm so interested to see where this comes back, because the place I put it, I put it into my vision AI app. Elevated blood sugar levels during pregnancy, particularly in cases of gestational diabetes or pre existing diabetes, can have significant impacts on fetal development. Here's a detailed look at how high glucose levels can affect the developing fetus. This is Scott reads the Internet to you, but hold on a second. Macrosomia, large birth weight, high blood sugar in the mother can lead to higher blood sugar levels in the fetus. The fetus then produces extra insulin. I get it to process the glucose, which can lead to increased fat deposits and larger body size known as micro microsomia. This can complicate delivery and increase the risk of birth injuries. So your blood sugar goes up, the baby's blood sugar goes up, and the baby makes more insulin. Ooh, okay, that's interesting. Hypoglycemia at birth. Babies born to mothers with high blood sugar levels can have very high insulin levels at birth. And then once the umbilical cords cut off, and the and the maple tap is, I guess, in your situation, is, is cut, the glucose supply from the mother stops, but the baby's insulin levels remain high, which can lead to dangerously low blood sugar levels shortly after

Speaker 1 22:01
birth. So they did explain that to me, okay, like the week before, like the week before delivery. Yet I sat down with the they called her the diabetic doctor. I don't think she was an endocrinologist. And basically that was explained to me, like, you need to monitor your sugars up until, like,

Scott Benner 22:17
the baby's born. Don't give up now, because we're close, yes, because

Speaker 1 22:22
some woman, apparently some woman, will wake up the morning of their induction, and like I made it, I'm having fruit loops for breakfast, and then your sugars are high. And then yeah, baby, sugars are high. Their pancreas doesn't know what to do, because it's been leaning on my pancreas. And then, yeah, sugars drop.

Scott Benner 22:39
So baby's making a ton of insulin. It comes out, the umbilical cord gets cut, then the baby's glucose level is not being fed by your high glucose level anymore, and the insulin crushes the baby. Here's the third thing. It says preterm birth and respiratory distress syndrome, high maternal blood sugars can increase the risk of early labor and delivery. Premature infants are at risk for many complications, including respiratory distress syndrome, a condition that makes breathing difficult. There's more. Did they tell you about that one? By any chance, no developmental delays. There is some evidence to suggest that children born to mothers with poorly controlled diabetes may face a higher risk of developmental delays. These could affect cognitive, motor and social skills. And then there's congenital malformations, elevated blood sugar levels, especially during the first trimester, when the baby's organs are forming, can increase the risk of congenital malformations, this includes heart defects and defects of the brain and spine, and the last thing is increased risk of obesity and type two diabetes. Children born to mothers with high blood sugar levels during pregnancy may have a higher risk of becoming obese and develop type two diabetes later in life. They told me about that one. They did tell you about that one. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 23:53
they did tell me about that one.

Scott Benner 23:54
Then there's some direction here. I want to tell people I used my vision AI app, which is an AI platform that I've gotten involved in, because they are, at the moment, integrating a ton of content from the podcast into the knowledge of the AI. So I'll be telling people more about that in the future. But that's I've never done that before, because there are going to be those of you listening who are like, Oh yeah, Scott's got a piece of this vision AI company, and he's trying to get us to use it. Well, let me be clear, you're 100% right, but I'm actually using it because instead of googling it and getting back, kind of like a high level answer and then having to dig through to get all this, this thing knows why you're asking. It actually knows I'm using Arden's account. It knows Arden has diabetes, as interesting is that is, although I think it wouldn't answer the question the same for anybody who is using it. You don't have to have diabetes to use the app anyway. Okay, so they told you some of that, not all of it, now that you've heard the rest of it, does it freak you out more? Or are you like, okay, no.

Speaker 1 24:55
I mean it makes sense. I mean it certainly is scary. But then I. The bit that they did tell me was enough to have me Listen,

Scott Benner 25:05
take it real seriously. I'm

Unknown Speaker 25:07
yeah, this is serious. This is for my baby.

Scott Benner 25:10
Yeah. May I say, Charlie, still, even though you took it very seriously and did what they told you, you're still at the at the, I was going to say, the whim, that's not quite right, but you're at their direction constantly so you're not making adjustments. Like, can you look back with your type one diabetes mind now and say, Oh, I would have done differently when I was sure, okay, oh, yeah,

Speaker 1 25:30
like I did. As they said, I knew nothing about insulin. They said, inject this much at this meal. And I did. But then what happened with my second pregnancy is my A friend of mine had gestational diabetes, like I had my first child, then she had hers, and then I had my second. So for her, her pregnancy, I was watching her, she was on the sliding scale, and she could adjust her insulin, and I was never allowed to do that. I didn't even know it was an option. I never even thought to ask, because it was never brought up. It was inject this at this meal and this at bedtime, and, yeah, that was it. So watching her manage her diabetes, I

Scott Benner 26:12
was like, huh, like, that looks that

Speaker 1 26:16
looks easier. That looks nicer. So for my second pregnancy, I remember asking them on like, Christmas, I'm like, What can, what can you do for me? Like, help me get through Christmas? Like, I want to eat more sweets,

Scott Benner 26:32
yeah? Like, I want this kid to be healthy, but I would also like a chocolate chip cookie.

Speaker 1 26:35
Yeah, I want the Christmas treats within reason. I hear you. How can I increase my insulin to accommodate that? And they said, they said, No. They said, You just have to be careful. Just try and, like, balance it out.

Scott Benner 26:47
Okay, so Charlie, are you and her going to different doctor's offices?

Unknown Speaker 26:51
Yeah, we were in different we had different clinics.

Scott Benner 26:54
Were you in, I just like to say province, but were you in different provinces? No, same problem. Okay, all right, so it's literally, yeah, the reason I ask for people who don't know is that you can get wildly different healthcare depending on what Province of Canada you're in. I just It's something I've learned from making the podcast is about diabetes specifically. And I was wondering, was this just like, literally a different doctor? Because so would you consider now that she had a more progressive Doctor than you did.

Speaker 1 27:22
I don't even know like, I wonder if my team like everything I know now, if my team was a bit dated, I suppose, and even just the insulin they used. I had heard later that what was it? Humolin and hemolog were kind of older insulins, and then over rapid love of mirror, kind of newer. I mean, I don't know if that's true. I never looked it up, but I had heard that from my third pregnancy team, because that was a different team.

Scott Benner 27:48
The thing that throws me off is that you had the first baby. Would you say 810, eight pounds, 10 pounds,

Unknown Speaker 27:53
13 ounces. How

Scott Benner 27:54
much is that in kilograms? Why don't you guys? Why do Why do you guys do some things in in kilos, and so thank goodness,

Speaker 1 28:00
because we are influenced by the UK and and the US, so we're all mixed up.

Scott Benner 28:08
I apologize anyway. But my point was, you had an 810, baby that was pretty like, not premature, but came 1010, days early,

Speaker 1 28:15
right? Which is early. I was induced. I was induced because of the diabetes, oh, because

Scott Benner 28:19
they were like, We got to get this, this Zeppelin out of you, is what they were thinking. Right, right. Okay, apparently

Speaker 1 28:24
induction. So induction is normal with the gestational because the last week or two is when your sugars get really hard to manage. So they just don't even let you go there. So

Scott Benner 28:35
then what I wonder is, when you come to them with your second baby and say, Hey, I got a friend over here seems to be doing a more adaptive thing, using more insulin, more targeted. How do they not look and go? Well, she did have an eight pound, 10 ounce baby. We had to induce her, like, worth a worth a roll. But then your, then your daughter was the other way, though. How was that like? How do you she

Speaker 1 28:55
was smaller? So I did wonder, okay, my third child was not even smaller, but she was eight, four, I think. But yeah, when my daughter, when my first daughter, was born at 614, I remember just the relief of, like I did it, yeah, like I did it. I grew a small baby, and now she was early too. She was two weeks early, but she came. She came on her own. She came two days before her induction date, so she was a solid two weeks early. I believe.

Scott Benner 29:27
Can I share with you? I almost cried when you said that, that feeling that you I did it. It feels,

Speaker 1 29:32
yeah, yeah. It's making me emotional, remembering because, well, because I experimented a bit with that second pregnancy, because I'd witnessed my friend do her adjustments and whatnot with my second pregnancy, when they said, No, you can't increase insulin for Christmas, I did it anyways. You were like,

Unknown Speaker 29:49
I bet I could.

Speaker 1 29:51
I'm like, I think I can. Just gonna push this a little

Unknown Speaker 29:55
harder.

Speaker 1 29:56
And then I just, I never wrote it down. I just lied on. My on my sheet because I had good sugars after Yeah, I bet you did like or like, or like, date night. Like, if we had pizza night, guess what? I actually had pizza night. I just increased my insulin a little bit. You have pizza base it off of like, I had no carb ratio. I none of that. It was just, yeah, this many units for this meal, so I would increase. Now this was not, I didn't do this daily. I was still quite strict with my like I did what they told me. But when we went out for dinner, took a bit more insulin, but I wrote down the the units they wanted me taking, and then everything was fine. What

Scott Benner 30:34
did you base it on? The extra a gut feeling, and just a little more, I guess, and

Speaker 1 30:41
just a little more. Yeah, yeah, that's what it was. I mean, I would kind of eyeball it, and know, okay, I'm generally eating three carb choices. This looks like five, so I will almost double. Like, I just it was an eyeball

Scott Benner 30:56
on the old OmniPod PDM, which they don't call it a PDM anymore. They call it a controller. But there was, like, this rubber button you had to hold down to make the, like, the insulin go up, like, the numbers, like, you know, if you were going to choose how many carbs or something, I would like, I just push and hold it, like, say, I was trying to get to, like, I don't know, five units, and it would roll up, and it would like, go to, like, 5.25 and Arden would be like, go back. And I was like, ask, close enough, and then, how many times back then was I going, Oh, no, we've used too much insulin. But it was almost always, I don't have enough. So, yeah, it just hit me one day, like, once she got bigger, five units, 5.15 what the who? I mean, what's the difference? Like, you like, when it's down to, like, when you're little, and it's, you know, point one is, like, all the insulin, well, then obviously it's a lot, but where did you get the courage from

Speaker 1 31:49
my friend? Yeah, that's it. Okay. She she can go up for ice cream and increase her insulin, and she's fine.

Scott Benner 31:58
I like Charlie's, like, I want to be a good mom, but I would really like ice cream too.

Unknown Speaker 32:02
Well, yeah,

Speaker 1 32:05
and this was an even longer duration of diabetes because it was caught earlier, so it was kind of like, oh, man, I got to do this again, but it's even for longer. I mean, there's still a light at the end of the tunnel, which was the delivery of the baby, and then insulin will stop after, like it didn't last time, but I had a few. I treated myself a bit. So

Scott Benner 32:24
then what happened after she came out? Like you had an expectation, you were supposed to do a follow up. You didn't, and then I didn't.

Speaker 1 32:30
I checked, like I said, I checked my own triggers, and I didn't, but I didn't do the True Blood work. Yeah. And then when she was a year, is when my sugars went

Scott Benner 32:42
dizzy. Is that how low you got?

Speaker 1 32:44
Lightheaded, okay, but my so my fasting was high, like, my fasting was around nine, but then I would, like, I'd crash after meals. But I wonder if it just hit me harder because I was higher and then crashing, because in the moment, I'm like, I'm always low, but I learned later I was high, but then I was getting low, very fast, okay, I just was never catching the high, because I would go to test an hour after my meal, and I'm in the threes, but I would probably already hit the twelves, but Then within the hour, come back down to threes. So my doctor, I went to my doctor, and I said, like, I'm something's wrong with my sugars, and he just did a generic blood sugar test. Like, I don't know it was fasting. I think fasting and a 1c my fasting was 5.7 my ANC was 5.9 and you need to be under six. So he's like, You're fine, you're you're okay. And I went back and I said, I'm not like, I keep like, this was, if I went to get groceries, I had to bring snacks, like grocery shopping. Oh yeah, I couldn't go anywhere without bringing a snack or having fueled up with a meal beforehand, because I was getting low

Scott Benner 34:03
no matter what, even if you didn't matter what, like, you couldn't fast, right? No, no.

Speaker 1 34:08
Like, I would. So I was in like, a I wasn't managing diabetes because I wasn't diabetic, yeah, and I didn't. I was never diagnosed yet. So I was in a preventative, like, Let's prevent the lows,

Scott Benner 34:23
but you knew this was a problem, right? Like, you weren't, like, unaware. I

Speaker 1 34:26
knew it wasn't okay, and that's why I went to my doctor. And then I went back and I said, I can't, I can't live like this, like I'm I have two kids. I'm crashing every it felt like a crash in the threes if I don't eat enough food. And even, like, even a fully balanced meal, like, like, we had chicken curry with quinoa and, like, that's a filling meal. And I remember an hour after that, I was in the threes and shaking and sweating, and I didn't feel good. So he did even more blood work that I had to pay for. It wasn't covered. Covered. Why?

Scott Benner 35:00
When he said, Can you tell me why it wasn't covered? Because he didn't think it was necessary. No,

Speaker 1 35:05
it just not covered by OHIP. So it was, it's just a specialty blood work, I suppose, not A, not A common one I see so and he told me he's like, You need to come in for this blood draw during a low

Scott Benner 35:19
hell. You want me to do that? What? Like,

Speaker 1 35:23
how do I do that? And he's like, I know, I understand, you have two kids at home. I understand the complications, but this is, this is the blood work I want to do. So my neighbor at the time, like, we've moved since then, but her has, like, he's diabetic, type two. She's not, but I chat with her on the fence, over the fence all the time, because she was retired, and so she knew everything, and I told her, and she's like, well, if a low happens, just let me know. I'll watch your kids. It happened, it hit. I could kind of time it too. Like I knew if I'm late for a snack, I'll get low. So I just didn't have a snack. And then I got all shaky, and I tested and I was like, I think 3.8 or something. I holler, hollered over the fence and like, can you watch my kids? I gotta go to the doctor's office, and it was only five minutes away. I was nervous because I had to drive there, yeah, but I also knew I've been in the twos before and not passed out, so I should be fine. And I did it. I drove i She took the kids. I drove to the doctor's office, yeah, and I'm shaking, and I've got my sugar pills in my pocket, but I'm shaking and I'm sweating, and the lights are somehow brighter. I guess it was the one of the symptoms of the low and then I go in and I'm like, I need my blood drawn now. Like, I'm experiencing a sugar though. It needs to happen now. I'm uncomfortable right now. Yeah, and so she, she got it, and she's the lab tech. She's like, but she can't just draw the blood. She has to, like, take the requisition and do all that stuff. So I'm sitting with her, waiting, and she says to me, she's like, Oh, you're gonna have to pay for this. And just said, Okay, that's fine. She goes, but it's pretty expensive. I said, okay, just, and I'm like, I can barely think, yeah, exactly. I'm in a like, I'm I'm sweating financial decisions, and I'm nervous because I don't I've never passed out from a low but I, I mean, there's a first for everything, yeah, and I knew I was 3.8 at home, so I've got to be lower than that by now. 20 minutes later, she said it's going to be about $500 and I and I was shocked, but then I said, Just do it. Just Do It Like It's fine. I'll figure it out, because I need I can't live like this anymore. So she drew the blood, and then I shoved some sugar pills in my mouth. Right away, my doctor told me later that it was actually only in the fours, the low fours, whereas my glucometer had shown the high threes. The blood work result from that was that my pro insulin levels were slightly elevated. That's what he got from that. And then he referred me to an endocrinologist. He couldn't have

Scott Benner 38:00
just referred to the endocrinologist, and let you keep the $500 No, did you get the 500

Unknown Speaker 38:06
back? I and I did through my husband's work. I

Scott Benner 38:09
would like you should have asked him if I could pay him millimoles instead of dollars, because I think the number would have been

Speaker 1 38:15
lower than I'm not right. It's only through, it's only through the coverage with my husband's work that we got that

Scott Benner 38:23
doctor sounds like what they call a pill. You understand? Like, I don't understand why. I mean, you had gestational twice. It is not unreasonable to think you're going to develop diabetes. Like, why do they have to have you drive around Ontario with a low blood sugar? I know you know what I mean. I mean, what if you would have crashed the plow. Yeah, there's definitely a plow on

Speaker 1 38:44
your truck, right? Yeah, not now, but that was gone, but you have

Scott Benner 38:47
one, is what I'm saying, yeah. Okay, all right,

Speaker 1 38:51
so I get referred to. This is March. Now, this is end of June. I had that blood work done. So I get referred to in 2022 I get referred to the endocrinologist, but by the time I get to the Endo, I'm pregnant again. And I noticed right away, when I was pregnant, the lows stopped. It was immediate, because your blood sugars rose. They were high, yeah. So whereas before, my fasting was around nine, and then I was, like, I said, in the threes very often. I mean, sometimes fours and fives like it happened. It was just rare.

Scott Benner 39:22
Can I ask real quickly, the time between the first pregnancy and the third pregnancy? How long is that?

Speaker 1 39:28
So my first was born September 2019, and my third was born March?

Scott Benner 39:36
Are you making a hockey team? What are you doing over there?

Speaker 1 39:38
I know, right. We did we yeah, we committed.

Scott Benner 39:41
Are you done now? Are you just gonna go for like, a five or something like that? I

Speaker 1 39:46
love four. I've always loved the idea of four, okay, but the diabetes has certainly cooled down my baby fever, it kicked

Scott Benner 39:55
your ass a little bit. We shall see.

Speaker 1 39:59
We shall. See, I'm currently focused on me and my diabetes, and then we'll see. Okay,

Scott Benner 40:07
I don't know. Yeah, no. Priest, could you've added to the total? Well, don't worry, yeah, but Okay, I'm sorry. So now you're pregnant again. No low blood sugars, no

Speaker 1 40:17
lows, none. So I was my fasting was still around nine, but then I was like, 1011, 12, after my meals. So I went to the endocrinologist, and she's like, How can I help you? And I said, Well, this, these are the reasons why I was referred here, but I am now pregnant. And she said, Okay, so we need to ride out this pregnancy as a gestational and then after delivery, we will go back to what's going on. We'll see what happens. So I was three weeks pregnant when I had that blood work done, and my ANC was seven. So this is where it gets questionable. My random sugar at the time was 12.8 and my ANC was seven. And they said, Well, you're only three weeks pregnant, so your your pregnancy doesn't have much effect on your a 1c so your a 1c reflects that you are diabetic, but because you're pregnant, we can't truly diagnose you as a type two diabetic, even though it was only three weeks you're probably type two. We'll just have to wait

Scott Benner 41:17
for I mean, it doesn't matter. You're gonna manage it the way you're gonna manage it, right? Yeah. So,

Speaker 1 41:23
yeah. Well, I had my next end of appointment. It was a few weeks later, and I was thinking, I can't go a few weeks double digits here, like I need insulin. I know I need insulin. And she said, she

Scott Benner 41:38
didn't say we're gonna try to get your blood sugar down. Because for people listening, at 12.8 is a 230 blood sugar and an average, like, nine and a half a 1c so I don't understand, like they she knew that about you, but didn't say we're going to use more insulin and be more aggressive. Yeah,

Speaker 1 41:52
she didn't give me insulin. She sent me to the gestational she sent me to the diabetes clinic, whereas I was at her office, she sent me. She's like, Okay, you're pregnant. Here, go see the team. The team will look after your pregnancy. That's what happened. I understand. So, so then my team, I put on the team,

Scott Benner 42:09
yeah, what's the gap in time? Though, when once she i It feels important to me, she sees you, how long till you see the team?

Speaker 1 42:17
I think I didn't. I don't have that in my notes here. I'm going to guess I think it was two weeks part

Scott Benner 42:23
I don't understand it, really is the part I don't understand. Always Charlie about all these I didn't

Speaker 1 42:28
understand it either. So I phoned them. Now this is a new team, remember, it's not because we moved, so it's a totally they don't know me, right? Whereas my other team for the second pregnancy, they knew me. So I ended up phoning them, saying my appointments in whatever it was two three weeks, I want insulin now, because I know I need it. These are my numbers, and an endo, a different Endo, called me, and he's like, Look, I can't just give you insulin. I don't know who you are, but he asked me a bunch of questions, and I answered them all, and he's like, okay, yeah, here I'll give you. Here's your prescription. So he did give me insulin before I had my first gestational meeting with them, because I called and basically demanded it. I'm like, these are my numbers. I need insulin, and I know what to do. So he did give me insulin before I met him, and then I had my appointment a few weeks later. And this was different management, like they had me titrating, they had me adjusting my numbers, like they gave me the power, like I could do this, yeah, which was really nice, like, because my appointments, because before I had to email them every Sunday and they call me Monday with my adjustments first here, like I'd see them every three weeks, three four weeks. I mean, I could call them if I needed them. They were always there if I had questions, but otherwise, I was left to manage myself. And I really enjoyed that, like I knew what to do. Yeah, well, hell,

Scott Benner 43:59
you got enough practice you know how to make babies and take care of diabetes, that's for sure. Diabetes, that's for sure. Yeah. So that was hugely different for me. At what point do you think during your third pregnancy, if, if, during your third pregnancy, at what point do you realize I'm gonna have diabetes now, like this isn't going away again? Yeah. So that

Speaker 1 44:21
was honestly, I didn't fully get that until the insulin dependency, when, like seven months after she was born. Because what happened? Like it was managed really well. I think the biggest adjustment for me with the third was doing needles for the full nine months. That was a hard pill to swallow, because before it was such a short period, I'm like, Yeah, I can. It's only a few months. Like, it's fine. But so I had to ask my team, like I knew I'd do my insulin and whatnot, but I had to ask them, How do I have dessert? Because I never done that before. I just didn't have. Dessert. How do I do this? So, like, they gave me pointers on how to indulge it. That was one of the hardest things, was making this like a lifestyle, yeah, instead of like a strict regimen of I just don't do that, it was like, Okay, how do I do this safely? And then exercise, because I had two kids, so activity level was a factor, whereas it was not a factor with the other two. So

Scott Benner 45:22
that was, those were the hardest things, like things to hurdle, yeah, to figure

Speaker 1 45:29
out with the third, with it being the full pregnancy on insulin. So the signs for them was that I was going to be type one later was how sensitive I was insulin at the end of the pregnancy because my target, I think fasting, they wanted, I forget now I think it was under seven, so like, my fasting would kind of be creeping up to seven, and then I'd increase my 11 year by one unit, and then the next morning, I'm waking up at four or something like that, and they're like, Wow, That's a big jump. That's a big draw. So then they gave me half unit pens, but half units for 1111, half units for an over rapid because I had a similar issue with food, like with meals, but even then, a half unit would drop me quite a bit. That was, that was the biggest sign for my Endo. I mean, throughout that pregnancy, some people, they'd ask, they'd say, so you're gestational. And I'm like, Well, I don't, I don't know, because I was told. Some people were like, Oh, so you're diabetic and pregnant. I'm like, I guess so. And others are like, but your pregnancy are gestational? Like, I saw different people all the time, like, different, different dietitian, different nurse, different Endo. There was three endos in that clinic, so everybody had a different view as to what I was fantastic, but it was not type one. It was not type one like that was not a thing yet until the very end, like, it was two weeks before baby was due, and he goes, he's like, You need to get this blood work done now, because there's a chance you will need to continue your insulin after the baby's

Scott Benner 47:00
born. And I was like, what?

Speaker 1 47:04
Like, I didn't know that was a thing, right? I got the blood work done on time. I remember phoning the office, like, a few days before she was born, and asking, like, do you have these results yet? Because my baby is about to be born, they told me I might need to continue insulin. I need to know. What am I doing? I need to know so they did, like I had to dig for those adults, they called me and they said, they said, stop your insulin after baby's born. And now I know because I didn't know in the moment, but now I know that was the what is the anti gat like the antibody test, and I was high, like there was I had high antibodies, but my C peptide was fine, so they had me stop the insulin, but I had to continue checking my sugars every like every morning and every meal. And that was not easy to do with a newborn and two toddlers running around. So that was a shock too, because, like, I just had in my mind, this will end when the baby's born, yeah, and then baby's born. And now I need to remember to check my sugars an hour after every meal. So I have these timer set, and the timers are interrupting. Like, I want to have a nap I just had a baby. Like, sleep when the baby sleeps well, I would, but my alarm is about to go off because I had my lunch an hour ago, so I'd have to either skip a blood test, like Skip turn off my alarm, not test my sugars that time, have a nap, but then feel kind of guilty because I'm not collecting this data that my team needs to figure out. What the heck is going on with me is I did not want that those daily lows to happen again. And I knew I'm like, I need to give them this information so that they can diagnose me, like, what's going on? I need that can't happen again all those lows. So I was testing after every meal. Dinner was awful, because the dinner alarm, like the blood check for after dinner, was very often during bedtime with the kids. So it just stopped. It was just constant interruptions, testing, testing my sugars. And then they so she was born March 7. I had my first follow up in April, or the April, and that's when they said, You're type one and a half. And I'm like,

Scott Benner 49:20
what? Like,

Speaker 1 49:21
I never heard of that. Like, never.

Scott Benner 49:25
So they tell you Lada. And, yeah, yeah, right. And so do is that? Has that persisted? Like, is that what they tell you, today or today? Are they just saying you have type one?

Speaker 1 49:37
Well, they don't depend. Some people say, Lada. Some say, well, Lada is type one,

Scott Benner 49:42
yeah. I mean, do you have any honeymoon at all?

Speaker 1 49:44
I don't know. I wondered about that. I didn't know if I was like it was the first few months of being on insulin. Was just a blur. And I don't know if that was honeymooning or if it was just my monthly change from. Sensitive to resistance, like I just, I don't know my endo did at one point say, he said, You're not honeymooning, because honeymooning, honeymooning is when you go from eating insulin to needing no insulin. Well,

Scott Benner 50:10
less. He's like, Yeah, not none, but less so well, well,

Speaker 1 50:16
he said, because I do get quite sensitive on my period and resistant the week before. So he's like, you're not honeymooning. You're just sensitive. So I don't know. I mean, I don't know, just another gray area,

Scott Benner 50:28
yeah, no. I mean, listen, what I'm saying is, how long has it been since you have baby three a year? Okay? And do you forget, like, within the month, like, consistently over the last couple months, you use the same amount of insulin in a month. Yeah, yeah. I mean, I don't think you're honeymooning then, like, I mean, you you have hormonal impacts that ask for more or more insulin or less insulin, but that that does, that's not honeymoon. A honeymoon would be, like, all of a sudden for, you know, days or weeks with no other impact at all, using, like, sometimes significantly less insulin. Or, you know, or out of nowhere, in the middle of the day, all of a sudden, you bolus, and then it's like, oh, God, I didn't need to do this like usual. Like, that's more about, yeah, yeah, more of a, like, a sputter, and, like, a sputtering, you know, ending of your pancreas is its ability to give you insulin. Yes,

Speaker 1 51:22
I don't think. I don't think a honeymooned. I don't think so. Or maybe it was honeymooning through the pregnancy, and you wouldn't know, but it was drowned out by the pregnancy hormone. I don't know, but he told me he's like, You are type one and a half. He said, that starts out like type two, but then turns into type one. And he said, I don't want this to hang over you, but I'm going to give you a ketone meter. And he's like, because a a severe, like the bad, like a bad case of the flu could be what turns you to type one, something like that. And it didn't hang over me because I didn't know what type one management looked like. I had no idea like, if I could go back and tell me, then, hey, go listen to the juicebox podcast to learn how to use insulin while you're not pregnant. OmniPod, that would be so would have made my insulin dependency so much easier. Oh, no kidding, because I didn't know. Like, I just didn't know. I don't know any type ones. I had asked them before during the pregnancy, like, what does type two management look like? And they said, Yeah, you check your sugars a few times a week, and you generally, like, there's medications for it. So,

Scott Benner 52:35
like, that's also a fairly inaccurate description of how to, well, take care of type two diabetes. Yeah. Well, I mean, listen, you you get you're gonna get flung right into that world of nobody really knows what they're talking about, or if they do, they don't do a great job of explaining it. And you know now, here you are. But how are you doing today? Like, what's your management look like today? I'm

Speaker 1 52:55
pumping now. I've been pumping for a month. It was a blur, like, so they told me in April was I'm type one and a half, and they're like, type one can happen next week, next year, five years, they don't know. So, like, just keep to keep monitoring, is what they said. So that's what I did. I kept checking my sugars. They kept checking like, they kept doing blood work. They put me on Metformin in August, end of August, and I did ask for insulin. I didn't know, like, again, I didn't know that what type one management looked like. I just knew type ones used insulin and like, I didn't know. I'm, like, is it a like, is it a weekly insulin? Because that would be nice. Like, I'm, like, I could do once a week needles. Like, that's fine. Or, like, once, here's

Scott Benner 53:39
what I'm willing to do. Yeah, yeah. So

Speaker 1 53:42
I asked about it, because they put me on Metformin, and I'm like, Look, I already have a sensitive gut. I've heard it can have gut side effects. What about insulin? Because I was, I think I was hitting like, 14, 1314, after meals sometimes, but I was still hitting four at times. So they're like, you're not high enough for insulin. For sure, insulin will turn your 13 is into like, a 10 or nine or an eight, but then it'll turn your fours into a two or a one. So they're like, you're not high enough for insulin. They put me on Metformin. My sugar would definitely better on Metformin. I was even getting into the fours, like, especially if I went for a walk, it definitely was good for my sugars. I My gut couldn't handle it. Like, I couldn't, so I was only on it for a month, like, I I stuck to it for a month, because they did say, my pharmacist said, like, your stomach can adjust to it, like, get used to it. So I gave it a month and it, it didn't, you

Scott Benner 54:42
didn't feel better. No,

Speaker 1 54:44
I stopped the end of September, and I also stopped testing my sugars. I was usually testing because I felt funny, anyways, because I was getting lower, but for like that three weeks, I didn't test my sugars. And I knew I should have, but I wasn't, because I'm like, Ah, on my next I know they'll just give me a different pill. Pill. I'm, like, they'll just pick a different pill or something. Like, I'm

Scott Benner 55:04
gonna take a break. I'll take a break for a month till we get back to that. Yeah,

Speaker 1 55:08
like, I mean, I had a baby, my middle child in diapers, my oldest had just started school. Like, it was a lot, it's chaotic. And so I didn't, I didn't check unless I felt funny or whatever, but I didn't really check for the three weeks. So then I had, I had my annual appointment, and he's like, Well, what have your sugars been? And I said, Well, I haven't been checking, but like, this is what they were when I was on Metformin. And he's like, Well, check your sugars right now. And I was 19, oh, and I had never, ever seen a number that high, never, yeah. The dietician went, Whoa, insulin. And he and the endo goes, Yeah, insulin. And I said, But wait, like, I just had lunch,

Scott Benner 55:55
you don't know. And he's like, he's like, that

Speaker 1 55:58
doesn't he's like, Well, what do you drink? Because I drink because I drink water. I always drink water. He was like, No, 19, yeah, yeah. He's like, 19 means your pancreas are shocked, right? You need insulin.

Scott Benner 56:09
I could go drink a two liter bottle of soda, and my blood sugar might go to 160

Speaker 1 56:13
Yeah. So then he goes, so then they're talking, the dietitian, and the end over talking, he they're talking, they're saying, like, so basic alarm the morning and over wrap it with meals. And that's

Scott Benner 56:27
when it hit me, like, I diabetes, Yeah, no kidding.

Speaker 1 56:32
It was like, like, I'm getting emotional just thinking about it. Because I thought I was done with that, because I gave birth, right?

Scott Benner 56:40
I tried to, I pushed out the baby and the diabetes. I thought, Yeah, no kidding.

Speaker 1 56:44
So then it was like, oh my god, I'm on needles like, for the rest of my life. Like it was, I was in chalk, like, I think it was compared like I I couldn't believe it. So that I'm processing that of like a needle with every meal and the morning and like

Scott Benner 57:09
it was, I just wasn't. I didn't

Speaker 1 57:13
know. I wasn't expecting that. Like, even with the one and a half diagnosis, nobody had said, Hey, like they had said, it'll turn into type one. But no one had said he didn't really know what that meant like. And I didn't think, yeah, I didn't know what it meant. So they put a libre on me, right, and sent me home with a prescription. And he said, he said, start with eight units of basal glare in the morning. And I think it was three units of Nova rapid per meal. That's all your direction. That was it. And I remember thinking, maybe they have more trust in me, because I already have experience with this. No,

Scott Benner 57:48
that's not it. Charlie, what happens is, no one tells anybody. You know, I am never not gobsmacked and think to myself, how is everyone even alive? Like, here, just take some insulin. It'll work out. Like, okay, yeah,

Speaker 1 58:00
right. And I did, so I kind of, I went into this overconfident. I know that now because of my gestational so I thought, Okay, this like needles with every meal and every morning. That's what I did. So I can do this. I had this false it was false. Common is I would figure it out, because I what they told me when I'm pregnant is the

Scott Benner 58:25
pregnancy hormones affect your sugars, and I'm like, Okay, well, I'm not

Speaker 1 58:30
pregnant, so I won't have that roller coaster. I'll figure out my dose, and I'll be good to go.

Scott Benner 58:36
It still felt like taking a pill to you, but through a needle. Yes, yeah, exactly. Because

Speaker 1 58:41
I thought I'll just figure out my dose, like I will put my heart into this, like I was weighing everything, I was measuring all my food accurately, and I was trying to figure out the right dose, and I was never I couldn't get it.

Scott Benner 58:58
There's a reason for that.

Speaker 1 59:01
I mean, now I know like it's so much better now, but at the start of it and eight units was way too high, but I didn't know that. So then I'm getting low between meals, which was normal with pregnancy, so I'm snacking, and then I'm getting high before my next meal. And and my appointments are a few weeks apart, so I'm on my own for a few weeks, and I can call them if I want to, but I also thought, Why call them like I'm allowed to adjust. I'll do my own adjusting and tell them what I've been doing. So then at some point they said, like you're not you shouldn't snack on carbs between your meals. Type ones don't do that, like meat and like protein and veg between meals. Like, okay. I mean, I guess that kind of makes sense. So that was an adjustment. Like, I just went into this thinking, like, I know how to do this, but I didn't, like, no clue. But the pregnancy made me think I did. And the other thing he never told me, he just. Said, this is your target. You need to be between four and 10, so adjust your insulin until you're within target. While I was 19, no one told me, like, Hey, do this slowly. The next few days, I'm just doing my like, I'm going to target. And then I had, I guess, a sugar withdrawal. I don't know what it is, but my vision was so blurry I could barely read my phone. Oh, because

Scott Benner 1:00:27
you were bringing your blood sugar down so quickly. Yes, and,

Speaker 1 1:00:31
but I didn't know that in the moment. So I'm trying to Google like, is this a weird Is this a low? Like, am I going to pass out?

Scott Benner 1:00:42
Yeah, what? Why can't I see?

Speaker 1 1:00:44
Why can't I see? Oh, the other thing, when he gave me the insulin, he also gave me a prescription for Vax. Is it vaccine? Me thing? And I said, What's this? And he said, Oh, that's in case you're unconscious from the low blood sugar, someone else can spray it up your nose.

Scott Benner 1:01:03
What a description I was like, what like? Because

Speaker 1 1:01:08
I was on insulin before, when I was pregnant, nobody ever gave me this. No one ever like that wasn't a thing. So I'm leaving with like, Okay, I could pass out, and someone else will need to stay like, what? Like, I was just so confused, yeah. So then I'm scared, because I'm like, okay, the chance of me passing out must be high enough,

Scott Benner 1:01:32
because they've given gave me the squee, yeah, gave me

Speaker 1 1:01:35
this thing to fix that. I'm home with a baby and two toddlers. What am I? Who's gonna save me?

Scott Benner 1:01:45
Charlie? Which one of these kids Am I gonna put in charge of shooting powder in my nose?

Speaker 1 1:01:50
Yes. Well, so then, anytime I felt funny, my first thought was, if I pass out right now, are the kids okay?

Scott Benner 1:01:59
No, not if you fall, for sure, you're gonna squish one of them.

Speaker 1 1:02:04
I pass out on the floor right now. Is the baby? Like, where's the baby? Where the kids are they? Like, where are they? Yeah, you

Scott Benner 1:02:10
have this whole new fear, yeah,

Speaker 1 1:02:13
I was terrified, damn, right? Because I'm I'm home with the three kids. So

Scott Benner 1:02:18
where's your husband? By the way,

Unknown Speaker 1:02:20
he works for, for hydro,

Scott Benner 1:02:21
is that he

Unknown Speaker 1:02:23
fixed. He's a lineman. He's

Scott Benner 1:02:25
a lineman. Okay, all right, so he's gone, he's he works, yeah, he's gone all day, literally, up a pole, Yep, yeah, a lot of that's what got you in trouble, by the way, with the adjustation. But yeah, I hear what you're saying. I assume he's gone for long stretches then he comes back. You missed him? No, no, it's not like that. Okay, no, he's

Speaker 1 1:02:47
home every he works seven to three, Monday to Friday. Oh, you have time. He works a lot of overtime, but he's gone all day. Yeah, yeah. So the fear

Scott Benner 1:02:56
pay for insulin.

Unknown Speaker 1:03:01
The fear was huge. Yeah, I

Scott Benner 1:03:02
imagine I'm not No joking like, I mean, it's the idea that I could pass out and I have three little kids with me is overwhelming. Yeah,

Speaker 1 1:03:11
now, over time, I learned to trust the tools, and I knew, and like, I learned after a few weeks, I don't know it was such a blur, because I tried so hard to be perfect too, and then I was so hard on myself, so fixated on target, that's where I really went wrong. Is like four, four to 10. I need to be between four and 10 and under seven in the morning. So if I was over seven in the morning, I'd increase my basal glare, because that's all I knew to do. Like, Target,

Scott Benner 1:03:41
Oh, you were being too reactive. Yeah, the wrong thing.

Speaker 1 1:03:47
Like trying so hard to be perfect, and it was just causing this roller coaster. Yeah, I didn't know to connect all these dots. I didn't know. Okay, maybe my fasting was high today because we had a movie night last night. Like, I didn't know to analyze it that way. It was just, oh, my fasting was high. It's been high for a day or two or three. I'll increase my long acting well, then I'm getting low between meals and in the night, and then, because that

Scott Benner 1:04:11
wasn't the problem, your your long

Speaker 1 1:04:12
problem. But I didn't know it yet, because I didn't, I hadn't found the podcast yet. I was stuck on with my gestational experience, like that was the only experience I had. So I was kind of Yep. That's what was guiding me mostly. I mean, I had my team, but that's only a one hour ish appointment every few weeks. Yeah, and

Scott Benner 1:04:35
they're not all that helpful, let's be honest. Like, you know what? I mean, they only, well,

Speaker 1 1:04:39
they only look at the last week, let's say. But then there was two or three other weeks that I was struggling that they're not analyzing to tell me where I'm going wrong or not. And I didn't know about compression lows, like I'd pricked my finger a few times during the day, like, Hey, can I trust this thing on my arm? And it was accurate. I'm like, okay, I can trust. Said I didn't know about compression, though, so I'm getting these lows in the night. I'm just getting up and drinking juice because I didn't know to question it like a compression, though. Until the one morning I woke up and it's screaming that I'm like, 3.9 and dropping, and I'm like, I don't feel that. I

Scott Benner 1:05:15
don't think that's right. So

Speaker 1 1:05:17
then I tested on like, seven. I'm like, my god, like now I can't even

Scott Benner 1:05:23
now you feel like you can't trust that. No, no, yeah, there's a cascading thing that happens as you're learning. And I, I'm always fascinated when somebody thinks to grab a different meter and test their blood sugar again, and then they see the two different numbers, and that like, frozen feeling. It gives you of like, if that one said 83 and that one said 105 then what am I? And then, you know, these are all what they call come to Jesus moments when you when you start really understanding, you know what this is going to be, and you accept it. That's really the big part. It's just the acceptance of it. Charlie, I appreciate you sharing this story with me very much. Is there anything we didn't talk we didn't talk about that you wanted to because I'm up on time, but

Speaker 1 1:06:05
I was just looking at the time. We didn't even make it to my pumping.

Scott Benner 1:06:09
Yeah, see that? No. Well, you did a really. So it I don't know how interesting this is to people, but there are some people that I interview who are very leadable. They'll tell a bit of a story. I ask a question that takes the story in the direction that I'd like it to go in because it feels natural to me. And people like will answer. And then there are some people who know how they want to tell their story. I can affect it. You're one of those people. So so in the beginning, in the beginning, in the first 10 minutes, if anybody wants to listen back for a podcast lesson about how to interview somebody, I tried to do what is most comfortable for me. You didn't respond to it, so I adjusted to what's more comfortable to for you. So if you would have let me, I could have got us through it faster.

Speaker 1 1:06:57
But now I didn't even realize you were

Scott Benner 1:07:01
resistant, oh, but not in a bad way. I just, and I've learned that it's better for you to tell your story the way you want to tell it than for me to cram you into my style, because then every time I've tried to do that, it makes people they're on. I don't know what the word is, but it's not as smooth, so I don't do it anyway. No, I think you did a great job, you know. And then we'll say, and you move to pumping it happily ever after, not quite, but not quite. You're still getting it

Speaker 1 1:07:28
hopefully. Well, I'm only six weeks in. What are you using? A learning curve as well. You're

Scott Benner 1:07:33
using OmniPod, no tandem control, IQ, mobi, yes, regular. There's

Speaker 1 1:07:40
only, there's only three pump options in Canada, and so Medtronic tandem or omnipodge. So it's tandem teasing, okay, is what I'm on.

Scott Benner 1:07:49
And you're still, you're still figuring out. Tesla, have you tried the control IQ ninja episode?

Unknown Speaker 1:07:55
Not yet. You

Scott Benner 1:07:57
would want to find that one that's a good one. Yes. Okay, for sure. All right, so g6 control IQ, on on the on the T slim, and you're just getting into it now you're digging in and learning,

Speaker 1 1:08:10
yeah, so I'm following the rules of the pump to try and just see what the pump can do, testing the boundaries, like, hey, if I eat this, can control IQ, control it, that kind of thing. And then I know in time I'll start maybe, like, taking some carbs. I've heard people will do that stuff like that, like breaking the rules at the pump. I suppose you

Scott Benner 1:08:30
should check out that episode. I'm gonna tell you what episode number. Just hold on a

Unknown Speaker 1:08:33
second. I

Unknown Speaker 1:08:34
it's, it's on my to do list for sure. Okay. It's,

Scott Benner 1:08:37
um, 662, wow. I have four. I have three episodes with the word ninja in it. I have control IQ ninja. 662, somehow episode 290, from 2019 is called theoretical ninja. And then episode 800 is lazy control IQ ninja, which I remember this woman's like, I want to come on, like I heard control IQ ninja, and I really like, and as she was describing it, she's like, I'm more of like, a lazy ninja.

Speaker 1 1:09:05
That's hilarious. Yeah, I need to listen to more pumping episodes for sure. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:09:10
understanding how, you know, even understanding how loop works, and OmniPod five works, and and all the different algorithms, like, just getting a vibe for how algorithms work helps you to understand how your specific one is doing, what it's doing, even if they're not like exactly apples to apples. There's you need to understand no matter how your system does it that concept of raising basal, lowering it, taking it completely away, giving it back again, like this constant dance that's going on with insulin, little micro boluses with some of them, bigger boluses with some of them, like, how is it like, you know, loop sometimes will put all the insulin in, like, for a meal, and then completely just take away the basal for hours and work off of just the bolus, and then suddenly start. Reintroducing the basal. It's, it's, um, it's, it's interesting. And you learn about a lot about diabetes, watching your pump do what it's doing. Yeah,

Speaker 1 1:10:09
I'm always going back in the history to see, like, what did it do? What am I what am I pump doing? How did I respond when

Scott Benner 1:10:16
Arden first went from just manual pumping to looping, and I had, and still have the night Scout app, and I was watching it, give her insulin, take it away and give it and take it away. I was like, Oh, my God, it's doing what I was doing. Because if you listen to the to the Pro Tip series, you hear me talk about, like, you know, temp basal increases. Temp basal decreases. Like, you know, create, like, black holes where there's no insulin for a little bit like, so there's a stop, a drop, and, like, I talk about all that stuff that I figured out completely on my own. And then I was, I'm watching the algorithm work, and I'm like, oh, it's doing what I was doing. That's so interesting. Yeah, how cool is that? So? And now I sleep. So, ha, ha, yes, yeah. Anyway, all right, Charlie, I'm gonna let you go. I think we're definitely calling this one Beavertail. Okay, otherwise, I just have to call it. There's no chocolate factory. And that doesn't make any sense at all. No, but, but I really do appreciate you doing this. And like, people don't know, but like, you had to set up, you had to set up all these raccoons to run on this thing to make electricity so that you could get online. And it's a lot of work to be on if you're Canadian, a lot of work. Yeah, so I appreciate you doing that very much. Thank you. Great. Way north. Oh, please. Hey, real quick, strange brew. Do you know the movie? Yes. Okay, I I'm now asking every Canadian that, like, you know how I ask, like, Are there any other autoimmune issues in your family? Which I didn't ask you. Are there any other autoimmune issues in your family?

Unknown Speaker 1:11:41
No, not

Scott Benner 1:11:42
that I know of. Okay. Do you have anything else? Celiac, thyroid, anything like that? No, okay, not

Unknown Speaker 1:11:48
yet. At least the last

Scott Benner 1:11:49
two Canadians I've interviewed have not known the movie strange brew, and one of them didn't even know who Rick Moranis was. So, oh, I am now going to try to remember to ask every Canadian, these questions, you should I'm going to I love you, by the way. You are so Canadian. That's fantastic, Charlie. I don't know if you know that or not, but I didn't know that. Oh, okay, you'll listen back and you'll hear it. You'll be like, Okay, I am very Canadian. I will listen for it. Nothing wrong with it. Just interesting. All right. Hold on one second. For me, I really appreciate you doing this. I want to thank the ever since CGM for sponsoring this episode of The juicebox podcast and invite you to go to Eversense cgm.com/juicebox to learn more about this terrific device, you can head over now and just absorb everything that the website has to offer, and that way you'll know if Eversense feels right for you. Eversense cgm.com/juicebox, the conversation you just enjoyed was sponsored by OmniPod five. You want to get an OmniPod five you can you want to make me happy? Do it with my link. Omnipod.com/juicebox if you're looking for community around type one diabetes, check out the juicebox podcast. Private, Facebook group. Juicebox podcast, type one diabetes, but everybody is welcome. Type one type two, gestational loved ones. It doesn't matter to me. If you're impacted by diabetes and you're looking for support, comfort or community, check out juicebox podcast. Type one diabetes on Facebook. Okay, well, here we are at the end of the episode. You're still with me. Thank you. I really do appreciate that. What else could you do for me? Uh, why don't you tell a friend about the show or leave a five star review. Maybe you could make sure you're following or subscribed in your podcast app, go to YouTube and follow me or Instagram. Tiktok. Oh gosh, here's one. Make sure you're following the podcast in the private Facebook group as well as the public Facebook page you don't want to miss. Please do not know about the private group. You have to join the private group as of this recording, it has 51,000 members in it. They're active, talking about diabetes, whatever you need to know. There's a conversation happening in there right now, and I'm there all the time. Tag me. I'll say, hi, hey. What's up everybody? If you've noticed that the podcast sounds better. And you're thinking like, how does that happen? What you're hearing is Rob at wrong way recording, doing his magic to these files. So if you want him to do his magic to you, wrong wayrecording.com, you got a podcast. You want somebody to edit it. You want rob you.

#1326 Vibrations

Lana has two children with type 1 diabetes.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

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

talking to Lana today. She's the mom of two kids with type one diabetes. One of them had a seizure. The other one came close due to a dosing mistake, and the results of that are her going into what she called a tailspin. She had to take some time to address her own mental health issues, and this is her story. Please don't forget that nothing you hear on the juicebox podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan or becoming bold with insulin. Are you an adult living with type one or the caregiver of someone who is and a US resident? If you are, I'd love it if you would go to T 1d, exchange.org/juicebox, and take the survey. When you complete that survey, your answers are used to move type one diabetes research of all kinds. So if you'd like to help with type one research, but don't have time to go to a doctor or an investigation and you want to do something right there from your sofa, this is the way t 1d exchange.org/juice box. It should not take you more than about 10 minutes.

This episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by the Eversense CGM. Eversense is going to let you break away from some of the CGM norms you may be accustomed to. No more weekly or biweekly hassles of sensor changes. Never again will you be able to accidentally bump your sensor off. You won't have to carry around CGM supplies and worrying about your adhesive lasting. Well, that's the thing of the past. Eversense cgm.com/juicebox, US med is sponsoring this episode of The juicebox podcast, and we've been getting our diabetes supplies from us med for years. You can as well. Usmed.com/juice box or call 888-721-1514, use the link or the number. Get your free benefits check and get started today with us. Med. This show is sponsored today by the glucagon that my daughter carries, gvoke hypopen. Find out more at gvoke glucagon.com forward slash juice box. Hi.

Lana 2:36
I am Lana. I am a mom of two kids with type one diabetes for the last five years. So both kids were diagnosed when they were seven years old, and they are now 11 and 13. Yeah, my son was first and then my daughter was 14 months after

Scott Benner 2:54
that, and we live in Canada. Canada. Alright, hold on a second. They were both seven years old. Yeah, both seven, no kidding, and

Lana 3:06
diagnosed. Like, the I remember the nurse saying, like, oh, let's weigh your daughter, and we'll just kind of keep an eye on her too. And just, kind of, you know, said, like, yeah, there's a chance that she could get it too. So we'll just keep an eye on her and we'll just, we'll weigh her too. So it was always in the back of my mind. And

Scott Benner 3:23
wait a second. First of all, let me do this because of your Canadian accent. I'm not sure is it Lana or Alana? Lana. Lana LAN, I got it. And then what the hell does weighing the kids have to do with figuring out if they have diabetes? I

Lana 3:38
don't know if it was just like, kind of being a part of it, that they just like, had her weighed to and it was kind of just like, maybe keep an eye on her weight, so that if she was to drastically lose weight, it would be a red flag.

Scott Benner 3:52
Seems like a Canadian thing, but Okay, all right, do you know the last Canadian I interviewed? I brought up Bill and Ted Mackenzie, and they didn't know who it was. Oh, my God, you don't either.

Lana 4:03
Is that like the the movie, Bill intense. Wait,

Scott Benner 4:06
how come I'm so old. I'm old too. How old are you?

Lana 4:12
I am 44

Scott Benner 4:15
Okay, you've never seen a movie called strange brew with, I'm sorry, Bob and Doug, Mackenzie, but you've, have you ever seen that? No, unbelievable. Okay, I'm now asking every Canadian if they've ever seen strange, bro, it's on my Canadian question list. Oh, it's on my Canadian question list. Now you don't have to ask people, although, if you go out there and do like a survey, I would be interested in the results. So my list to watch it? Oh, I don't think you should do that, although it does still get good scores. I guess people enjoyed it. You know? Rick Moranis, right.

Lana 4:49
No, I honestly like, I don't watch TV. Lana,

Scott Benner 4:51
what part of the Canada are you from? Are you in the Yukon?

Lana 4:55
I know I have a TV. I just I don't watch TV.

Scott Benner 4:58
You have a TV? Well, that's hand. I. Yeah, wait, but Rick Moranis, one of your most famous Canadian comedians. You don't know him.

Lana 5:04
I've heard the name, but

Scott Benner 5:05
it doesn't like really click of Hold on a second. We'll get back to your kid in a second, both of them, but first. Celine Dion, yes or no. You know who that is. Yes. Jim Carrey, yes. Drake kind of Michael J Fox, yes. Justin Bieber, yes. Ryan Gosling, Canadian or American?

Lana 5:32
Canadian. Good

Scott Benner 5:34
Seth, Rogen, Canadian or American? Oh, I don't know. Is he Jewish? I don't know who he is. I'm stuck. Hold on a second. Okay, I'm gonna keep going. Recently deceased. Matthew Perry, star of friends. Do you know who that is? Yes. Can you name a Neil Young song?

Lana 5:51
No,

Scott Benner 5:52
interesting. The captain of the Starfleet enterprise, Canadian or not Canadian? The original. No idea what's his name. No idea did he just go to space in his 90s? Or no, for real. All right, I've got three more. Jason Priestley, yes or no, you know who that is. Yes, excellent. See, I think I'm like, stuck in the

Lana 6:16
80s, 90s, like, I know those people. All right,

Scott Benner 6:18
hold on. Let's do it this way. Then. Joshua Jackson, nope, interesting. Donald Sutherland, no, okay. Tom Green, is

Lana 6:28
that a comedian?

Scott Benner 6:30
Lana? It is. Lana sounds familiar. Do you know who he was married to for a bit? No, lispy girl from the ET movie. Who's that Drew Barrymore, good, okay, and we found something you know about, all right, this was fun. I hope you didn't feel put

Lana 6:48
on the spot. I've always been scared of, like games, like Trivial Pursuit, because, yeah, well, you

Scott Benner 6:54
should be, you don't know. And these, those people were all Canadian, really, Seth Rogen is insanely famous, okay, I'm gonna look him up too. Okay. William Shatner, yes, you know that name, yes, okay. Mike Myers, yes, but not Rick Moranis,

Lana 7:16
like the name is familiar, but I've never listened to him. Okay,

Scott Benner 7:22
this was a lot of fun for me. I appreciate this very much. Okay, so we're gonna get past the part about them weighing your kids, because I don't get that exactly, but I am interested in this. So you have two children, they're a couple years apart, but both of them were diagnosed in their seven year old year. Is that right? Yeah, okay. Are there any other people in your family who have type one diabetes, extended family, even I

Lana 7:43
have a great uncle that my dad says, they think that he had type one that

Scott Benner 7:50
was a long time ago, though, right? A long time ago, a couple generations. Okay, how about other autoimmune issues?

Lana 7:56
So I have thyroid, hypothyroid, and my husband has vitiligo. Oh, there are two autoimmune things,

Scott Benner 8:07
the devil's brew, a father and a mother both with an autoimmune issue. Yeah, you only have two kids, right? Yeah, did you mean to have more or two? Was your number two was our number Okay, son was diagnosed first. Yeah, let's go through that. How did you notice he had something was amiss? So

Lana 8:26
it was October 1, and the summer before that, we had, you know, been doing lots of camping. And so we had, in our graduate some cases of water bottles from our camping trips. And so I think probably, like, the month before October, I kept, like, going to his room and seeing that he'd been drinking water bottles. So he would just be, yeah, he was drinking getting up in the night. Occasionally I would hear him in the middle of the night going to the bathroom. Yeah, it was just, I am a nurse, and it just kind of always was in the back of my mind. You know, once I just saw a few things, it just put it together for you, yeah, thinking diabetes, yeah. So I told you to my husband, and he was like, Oh, you're crazy. You're just, I tend to worry a lot. And, you know, he said, I'm crazy. So decided, like, I'm not crazy. I'm just, I'm going to ask the doctor. So we, I made a doctor's appointment and said, I'm probably crazy, but I'm worried he has diabetes. Luckily, the family doctor was amazing, and, you know, just checked him, right there. She's like, Oh, let's just check him. So she did a finger poke, and he was 30, so then she's like, Oh, that must be a mistake. Let's do it again. So then she redid it, and it was still high, and then

Scott Benner 9:47
crazy,

Lana 9:50
check for keto, and then sent us off to to emerge. I

Scott Benner 9:54
am not allowed to, even in a joking manner, refer to my wife as crazy. I. It's one of our rules that we've never written down. But I know for goddamn sure is a rule, and

Lana 10:05
I'm probably imagining like he did probably say it, but

Scott Benner 10:09
yeah, I'm not allowed to say it. If I say it, can I just say, what happens? What? She goes crazy, and then she yells at me, yeah. I would, if I was her, remain very calm, so as to not give the illusion that perhaps I am crazy. Do you know what I mean? But no, she leans into it. Well, that sucks, so they sent you off to the hospital. Now are you in one of those, hold on, let me get my Canadian mouth together. Are you in one of those provinces where they give you NPH and regular or they give you modern insulin? If you take insulin or so faunal 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 voc, hypo pen. My daughter carries G VO, hypo pen everywhere she goes, because it's a ready to use rescue pen for treating very low blood sugar in people with diabetes ages two and above that. I trust low blood sugar emergencies can happen unexpectedly, and they demand quick action. Luckily, jivo kypopen can be administered in two simple steps, even by yourself in certain situations. Show those around you where you store jivo kypopen and how to use it. They need to know how to use jivo kypopen before an emergency situation happens. Learn more about why gevok hypopin is in Arden's diabetes toolkit at gvoke, glucagon.com/juicebox, gvoke shouldn't be used if you have a tumor in the gland on the top of your kidneys called a pheochromocytoma, or if you have a tumor in Your pancreas called an insulinoma. Visit gvoke, glucagon.com/risk, for safety information. I used to hate ordering my daughter's diabetes supplies. I never had a good experience, and it was frustrating. But it hasn't been that way for a while, actually, for about three years now, because that's how long we've been using us Med, usmed.com/ usmed.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, US med is the number one distributor for FreeStyle Libre systems nationwide. They are the number one specialty distributor for OmniPod dash, the number one fastest growing tandem distributor nationwide, the number one rated distributor in Dexcom customer satisfaction surveys, they have served over 1 million people with diabetes since 1996 and they always provide 90 days worth of supplies and fast and free shipping us med carries everything from insulin pumps and Diabetes testing supplies to the latest CGMS, like the libre three and Dexcom g7 they accept Medicare nationwide and over 800 private insurers find out why us med has an A plus rating with a better Business Bureau at usmed.com/juicebox, or just call them at 888-721-1514, 87211514, get started right now, and you'll be getting your supplies the same way we do.

Lana 13:28
We started on NPH, so, yeah, I remember, like, obviously in the doctor's office when she told me that I was like, you know, trying not to cry with the kids there, but almost on the verge of crying. And then, yeah, called my husband, told him he's got diabetes. Meet me at the hospital. And so then when we were at the hospital, did blood work and all the stuff, and he wasn't in DKA. And then when we saw the endocrinologist, they said, you know, you've got a choice. There's two choices we can do. We can do this type of insulin, kind of MDI, route, or we can do this type of insulin NPH. We would do the NPH if there's no one at lunchtime to give insulin for the time I was working and we kind of just thought, Okay, well, we'll try that route. Yeah, Lana,

Scott Benner 14:17
Isn't it fantastic that the one thing that consistently gets said to me from Canadians is that that entire NPH thing in Canada has to do with giving insulin at lunchtime at school. It's like somehow become a rule across an entire country. If there's no one there to give them an injection on their own, then they get mph, fantastic.

Lana 14:38
And like, we don't have nurses like there's no one else that would give it if the parents can't. So

Scott Benner 14:43
if I said to you in that moment when your son was diagnosed, hey, listen, we'll give you mph if there's nobody at the school to give an injection. Or, you know, you can do this much more modern way that will lead to significantly better health outcomes, and your kid will have. To teach themselves how to give them give themselves a shot, or something like that. Like, if it was couched you that way, do you think you would have paused, like, hey, I can give you this insulin technology from 50 years ago, or you can have this modern stuff? Which would you like? Because, yeah, I

Lana 15:14
would have chosen the modern, yeah, it's so

Scott Benner 15:16
it's like they predispose people to choose the Oh, like they set up a false narrative. There's no nurse there, so you can't use this other insulin. But that's not true at all, because plenty of kids give themselves insulin all day long without a nurse, right? Yeah, yeah. I don't know. I don't it's a one of the things I don't like about Canada. It

Lana 15:37
only lasted maybe two months, and then I was just like, I'm not liking this. I want to try something different. And so, yeah, then we got a prescription, and it was just, you know, I'm gonna just make it work that, you know, I'll be there at lunchtime. So things got a bit better once we switched. And eventually he started giving it himself. And so, yeah,

Scott Benner 16:03
is that what you did? You went to lunch, to school every day. Yeah, for quite a while it was at a great distance. How were you able to do that?

Lana 16:11
Um, no, we just, we lived right by the school. But based on, like, the whole experience, I was, like, super anxious and stressed, so I wasn't able to work for quite a while. So it was probably six months before I went back to work after he was diagnosed

Scott Benner 16:27
too. Okay, so you just kind of slipped on your penguin shoes, skied down the hill, gave the insulin, and then went back home to cry in a corner. What was your situation like? Like,

Lana 16:36
I remember before we got Dexcom, there was moments that I was like, sitting outside of his school crying, just worrying, thinking, What's his number, and my job was like a half an hour away, so it just didn't seem feasible that I could drive a half an hour away and not be close to him when the school didn't have much support to be able to help him. So yeah, it just always made it my thing that I was just near the school for that first little while,

Scott Benner 17:04
Lana, did you have any signs of instability prior to the diabetes diagnosis? I just want to know. I'm not making fun of you, because I've heard this story like 1000 times from people, but my point is, is that, prior to this happening, would you have been a person standing outside of a building crying or worried even, maybe, maybe, okay, yeah, I

Lana 17:23
definitely had anxiety beforehand, and, like, just ramped it up emotionally. I can get just dysregulated. I cry easily. And, yeah, when it came to diabetes, it was pretty stressful. Lana,

Scott Benner 17:34
I cry pretty easily too, but it's usually not about, like, stressful stuff. Yeah, yeah, I watch TV and cry. Well, you don't know what TV is, but I when I watch TV, by the way, you might have less stress if you watch television once in a while. There's a fantastic show on max right now that you should try. I don't know the name of it, but I'm really enjoying it. It's either called the realm or the rain. I'm not sure which one.

Lana 17:57
I need more TV time to relax better. You had a

Scott Benner 18:01
veg a little bit. Have you tried the weed? By any chance? Tried the what weed? Have you smoked weed to relax, or done something like that? Have you gone to like, lengths to try to, like, chill out? No, does anything help you relax?

Lana 18:12
Like, I don't. Later on in the story, I can talk more about like, I had, like, just like, more trauma, like PTSD and so then, since then, I've learned to do things like exercising and walking and eat better and just taking better care of myself, and it has helped that I'm not quite as stressed out as I used to be beautiful. All right. Well,

Scott Benner 18:33
we'll definitely get to it. Obviously, one of the things that relaxes you isn't telling a story out of order. So let's keep going. So this goes on for a bit, and then now your daughter's diagnosed. Does it ramp up from there? Had you found any comfort prior to the second diagnosis, or were you still like struggling at that point? No,

Lana 18:53
I was, I was doing okay. You know it was. Yeah, 14 months afterwards, she was diagnosed, and things were pretty good. I was able to get back to work a little bit. I'd started a day home also, just because I still did want to be closer to home, make some more money, but not be nursing all the time. So yeah, I'd started a day home. And then in September, and then December, she was diagnosed. Hey,

Scott Benner 19:20
Lana, you just used the Canadian term, I don't know, day home,

Lana 19:26
like, childcare, childcare. Okay, that's in my house that I was looking after while they were at school.

Scott Benner 19:30
I was kind of thinking that's what you meant. But I wasn't certain if it was like a nursing thing or not. So I just wanted to check okay, so you just get settled into this little rhythm, and then she gets diagnosed. Yeah,

Lana 19:41
oh, gosh. And with her, it was like, I'd finger poked her a few times, and everything was fine. And then just yeah, one night, she drank some milk before bed and said, Mom, I'm still thirsty. And so just knew at that point she was really scared. Narrative needles. And so I just kind of let it be and gave her some more water to drink, and then she went back to bed. And then, like, two hours later, I'm like, Okay, I'm gonna finger poker now that she's sleeping. And, yeah, that's when we found out, and I'm sorry, in the middle of the night. And then the next morning called, like, I called the endocrinologist in the middle of the night, and he had me check her for ketones while she was sleeping. I just kind of quickly did a urine check and she was okay. So he said, don't need to come to emerge now, just come to the diabetes clinic in the morning. How

Scott Benner 20:36
did she handle it when she woke up to the news? How did you tell her this episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by the only six month wear implantable CGM on the market, and it's very unique. So you go into an office, it's, I've actually seen an insertion done online, like a live one, like, well, they recorded it. The entire video is less than eight minutes long, and they're talking most of the time. The insertion took no time at all, right? So you go into the office, they insert the sensor. Now it's in there and working for six months. You go back, six months later, they pop out that one, put in another one, so two office visits a year to get really accurate and consistent CGM data. That's neither here nor there for what I'm trying to say. So this thing's under your skin, right? And you then wear a transmitter over top of it. Transmitters got this nice, gentle silicon adhesive that you change daily. So very little chance of having skin irritations. That's a plus. So you put the transmitter on it talks to your phone app, tells you your blood sugar, your alerts, your alarms, etc. But if you want to be discreet, for some reason you take the transmitter off. Just comes right off. No, like, you know, not like peeling at or having to rub off adhesive just kind of pops right off this silicon stuff, really cool, you'll say it. And now you're ready for your big day. Whatever that day is. It could be a prom or a wedding, or just a moment when you don't want something hanging on your arm, the Eversense CGM allows you to do that without wasting a sensor, because you just take the transmitter off, and then when you're ready to use it again, you pop it back on. Maybe you just want to take a shower without rocking a sensor with a bar of soap. Just remove the transmitter and put it back on when you're ready. Eversense cgm.com, dot com, slash juice box, you really should check it out.

Lana 22:27
Yeah, remember, like, I'd called my mom in the morning to say, like, could you just come that Caitlin's now diabetic too. Could you come help us? So my mom was there, and just, yeah, she woke up, and I said, you know, Caitlin, I'm so sorry. I did a finger poke in the morning, and you have diabetes too. We have to go to the hospital. And so she started crying, freaking out, and then, yeah, slowly, just got her in the car, and off we went.

Scott Benner 22:58
Now at that point, is your son using a pump or a glucose monitor by then?

Lana 23:03
Yeah, he was on Dexcom and MDI, no pump. Yes, no. MDI,

Scott Benner 23:08
now, did you get her a Dexcom immediately?

Lana 23:10
We actually got her a libre at first. Okay, just because of insurance, we ended up with a libre first, and then a couple months later, then switched to Dexcom. Dexcom.

Scott Benner 23:21
How did she accept the addition of the device? It was okay. Like, the first

Lana 23:27
few days were hard. Like, I remember that day doing blood work was, like, horrible. It took a few people to hold her down to get blood work done, and we ended up getting a psychologist appointment just to kind of help do some relaxation things with her, to get calmer with doing the needles, right? But yeah, soon after it

Scott Benner 23:49
was okay with both of them, that's excellent. Well, it sounds like they adapted pretty well. You adapted well too. Or did your anxiety just double when it was the second kid,

Lana 24:00
I think, like it was easier, like we didn't need to go through all the training again, but it was still very emotional. How

Scott Benner 24:07
about how did your husband handle it?

Lana 24:09
Like he's not outwardly emotionally, like I am, so he kind of keeps things to himself a little bit more, but he's also anxious. And, yeah, we were both stressed. Wow, sure. Oh, well,

Scott Benner 24:23
that sucks. I'm sorry, but that's not really why you're here, right? You had a pretty specific reason for one to come on and talk. So let's maybe jump forward to that. One of the kids have a seizure. Both of them had it. What happened?

Lana 24:36
So my son had a seizure, and we had gone away for the weekend to like a little Airbnb cabin, and you know, it was supposed to be all relaxing and fun, and we had gone snowshoeing during the day, so had lots of exercise. And then that night, I. Probably, in hindsight, we obviously should have adjusted his long acting we should have lowered it, but we had given him his normal dose, and then we were tired, and my phone died, and my husband slept through the low alarms, so he had just kind of been coasting low for a few hours in the night, not like crazy low. It was 3.4 was the lowest. I'm gonna

Scott Benner 25:26
have to look up the conversion for that. And while you're talking, hold on a second. I will do I haven't done this in a while, but at juicebox podcast.com there's a conversion chart. Works great, a 1c and blood glucose calculator. What was the number you just said 3.4 3.4 point four, which is 61 so he was, he was coasting there for a few hours, yeah. And then finally, maybe the that new injection of basal started to ramp up a little bit, maybe all the carbs, and everything was out of a system. And then he got drugged down farther, yeah. So

Lana 25:58
it was kind of like first thing in the morning. Around eight in the morning, we were in this cabin, and so he was in a bunk bed, and I was in a loft, kind of just kind of up a few stairs, and I just heard this, like loud scream. It was like, just this really odd sound. And so I kind of jumped out of bed, and then his bunk bed was kind of right under me, and then I saw him having the seizure. So I jumped into the bunk bed and just started, kind of like screaming for my husband wake up. And it was just like I just woken up. So I was not completely aware, and I was thinking, get me juice. He must be low. Get me some juice. Just within a few seconds, I'm like, No, he doesn't need juice. He needs his biscuit me. So he needs glucagon. And so I was just screaming to my husband to find it in our suitcase, yeah. Then he got it for me, threw it up the bunk bed, and it was tricky, like, just in my panic moment, just to get the wrapper off and to 100% figure out what I was doing, but got it done, got it given, and then, yeah, it was definitely traumatic. I'm thankful my daughter didn't see it, because she was in the room, but with him being up in the bug bed, she didn't see him having the seizure.

Scott Benner 27:23
She awake? Was she aware something was happening? Yes, she just didn't visually get to see Yeah, wow. Sorry. My daughter's had a seizure. So made me upset when you were describing it, because I remember all that too. They get the stuff and the yelling and, you know, the panic and not sure how to use it, and all that stuff. Back when it happened to Arden, she was was just diagnosed. She was probably like two and a half. It was still like that old the red box, the ill Lily injection, and I didn't even remember how to do it, to be perfectly honest. You know,

Lana 27:55
it doesn't work when you're in that state of panic.

Scott Benner 28:00
Yeah. And on top of that, I went, Arden hadn't had diabetes for very long. And when they gave us the glucagon, they said, This is glucagon. It's an emergency injection for if you have a seizure, don't worry, you'll never need it. And I was like, Oh, well, we'll never need this. Oh, I think I just didn't pay attention to it, if that makes sense, yeah, how long after you crop dusted his nose. Did he come back? So

Lana 28:22
it was probably like a seizure. Maybe lasted two minutes, and then he was confused afterwards. So, like, I think I was telling my husband to call 911, and we had no cell phone reception, so that wasn't working. And then he was kind of coming out of it, and was confused. So we just, like, tried to, like, carefully get him down the ladder while he was, like, just not completely with it. Then we were just kind of like, you've got to get out of here. Like, let's just get to the hospital just to have him checked out. He threw up all over the cabin as we got him down the ladder and then tried to clean that up, you know, get us packed, and then get everyone in the car, and then we went to the hospital. Well,

Scott Benner 29:08
that's terrible when you got to the hospital. Did you find that you actually needed to be at the hospital, or was it a precaution that wasn't didn't end up being necessary, probably

Lana 29:17
didn't end up needing to be necessary, but they still did a bunch of tests just to kind of rule it out, it was actually a coincidence that the eMERGE doctor had a son with type one diabetes. So as soon as I met with this doctor, it was just like, Oh, I was thankful that he was the doctor and that he understood. And so he just said, like he was surprised with having a seizure, you know, with that number. And so he just thought it would be safer, just to rule things out, to have did a CT of his head. A few days later, we had to come back to do an EEG.

Scott Benner 29:50
I'm assuming, in the panic, it never occurred to you to like test his blood sugar to see if the CGM was accurately reading or not. Right? Yeah.

Lana 29:59
I'm pretty sure we did. I did

Scott Benner 30:01
okay. And so he was in the like, 3.4 range when you test them,

Lana 30:06
no, by then, like, it had already come back up. So, oh, I see it was probably like, right after the seizure, we did a finger poke, and by then it was like, six or something. So he was back up over.

Scott Benner 30:18
Listen, not a doctor, I can't imagine you having a seizure at 3.4 like, so I don't know. I'm not obviously, it's hard to say what would happen. Or definitely

Lana 30:27
it could have been lower than that, yeah, and we don't know that, right? Of course.

Scott Benner 30:31
How is the guilt afterwards for sleeping through the alarms or not plugging in the phone, that kind of stuff?

Lana 30:37
Definitely bad. Like, yeah, lots of guilt, you know, I didn't go back to work for a little while after that. At that point, I had been back working full time as a nurse, and so, yeah, I'd taken a little bit of time off after that, and then, you know, kind of got back to life. And then it was probably two months later that my daughter did a mistake with her pump, so she accidentally overdosed with her pump and gave instead of 12 carbs, she entered in 12 units. I think the max bolus was 10, so she got 10 units in the morning. That experience kind of put me over the edge that it was just correct and like, I didn't want mistakes to happen, and so I went on a stress leave after that happened with my daughter.

Scott Benner 31:26
So you get to two different seizures, two different ways. One's kind of like a slow drip, basically from the basal, and the other one is like a big bolus right away. So she bolus for, she's thinking, for 12 carbs, how much insulin should that have been for 12 carbs? Do

Lana 31:45
you remember? Probably would've been like four units. All

Scott Benner 31:49
right, so she got six units too many. She didn't notice. She ate her food, and then how long after the she pushed the button, did the seizure happen?

Lana 31:59
So she didn't have a seizure. It was just a a close call, so she seizure. Oh, so walk me. Walk me through what happened then, okay, so it was morning breakfast, so dropped her off at school, thinking everything was good. I was driving to work, and then all of a sudden, she called me, and she had looked at her pump, or no, oh yeah, she was on a pump by then. So she looked at her pump and realized, Mom, I've got like, eight units on board. That doesn't make sense.

Scott Benner 32:27
And so just what?

Lana 32:31
Like, what did you do? Like, how do you have eight units on board? And then I just said, Okay, I'm coming to school. So I drove back to the school, ran into the office crying, and, you know, she was drinking her third juice box at that time, and, yeah, brought her back home, and everything was okay once she'd had all of the carbs she needed. So,

Scott Benner 32:54
yeah, so she replaced the carbs, and she was fine. Like, there was, like, literally, no actual danger. Is that right? Nope, no, okay, but it threw you over the edge, as far as, like, somebody needs to be watching these kids like a hawk the whole time, kind of feeling,

Lana 33:12
yeah, it was just like, you know, I felt over, like, stressed, burnt out, you know, with working and trying to manage the two kids, it was like, mistakes are going to happen. Like, we

Scott Benner 33:24
can't do this anymore. Okay. Is that financially? Was that comfortable for you to stop working? Or no, um,

Lana 33:32
at that time, I had, like, a full time job, so I had had benefits, so I had gotten, you know, money while I was off. And at first I thought, okay, like, I just need two weeks, and then I'll be back and I'll be good. But it ended up being like, 10 months.

Scott Benner 33:47
And did that, that stretch of time, did that become more about you or more about diabetes? Does that question make sense?

Lana 33:54
Yeah, I feel like, I think it was, it was me. So, like, you know, to be off of work, I needed to go through all of the stuff of you know, getting counseling, seeing a psychologist, getting on medications for my anxiety, seeing a psychiatrist getting diagnosed with PTSD from just the seizure, mainly, right? Diabetes kind of triggered it, but I've had to work on my own mental health to be able to handle life?

Scott Benner 34:21
No, sure. I'm really grateful for you to come on and talk about it like this, by the way, because this is very you're very clear and being very honest and and I appreciate that, because I'm sure a lot of people feel this way, and maybe don't have great benefits or understanding employers, or you don't even anything in between, the ability to take care of themselves. Well, is there a way for you to help yourself, which obviously you're going to do without the kids thinking our diabetes made mom feel this way. You see what I mean. Like, like, how do you like, navigate that bit of it?

Lana 34:57
Yeah, definitely like looking back. Back, I, you know, would sometimes, like, cry thing, like, Oh. Like, if they were upset about diabetes, I would cry too. And like, say, like, oh, I, you know, diabetes is so hard. So looking back, I would try to keep myself together a little bit more so that they didn't have that feeling that it was their fault.

Scott Benner 35:22
Is that difficult to do in that time? Like to hold it in? It

Lana 35:27
was, but I think since going through lots of counseling, it's just I've learned tools and techniques to be able to help myself better.

Scott Benner 35:35
Did you do the the 12345, thing, the one thing you can see, two things you can that, that whole thing

Lana 35:43
she did that, I think, like the one cool thing she did was, EMDR,

Scott Benner 35:47
oh, a lot of people talk about that, yeah. What was that like? Yeah, you use

Lana 35:52
your eye movements, and then it rewires your brain to, you know, heal, kind of past trauma. And so you kind of go from like, what are you thinking that's negative, and you have that in your brain, and then how can you switch it to a better positive feeling? So in my brain, it was always like, safety, like the kids aren't safe, the world is unsafe. And feeling that panic whenever anything would happen with diabetes. And so doing the EMDR, eventually my brain would switch and kind of be, like, they are safe, like they've done this so many times. They know what to do to treat lows, and they're going to be okay. And then we eventually, like, sometimes just the low alarm of the Dexcom would be my trigger. And so I'm like, can we try something different? And I'm like, This is what triggers me. It's not always a thought. It's the alarm will trigger me. And so we just kind of did a simulation of like, let's pretend that they're low, and I put the alarm on for low, and then we went through the process of the EMDR,

Scott Benner 37:00
wow. So now, now the beep, beep, beep, doesn't make you like, triggered,

Lana 37:05
no, like, it's still just like, you know, okay, they're low, but it's just, I breathe. They're low. I deal with it. I don't go through that panic feeling

Scott Benner 37:15
you have two so there's no way they're both low at the same time. So you get to you get to experience it twice a day. Probably right? Just, you know, it happens to one at one time and one at another time. But they're not synced up with their diabetes. Are they? Sometimes

Lana 37:29
they are and that sometimes one's low and one's high and yeah, what's

Scott Benner 37:33
worse, a low blood sugar at two o'clock and then another one with another kid an hour later, or two at the same time?

Lana 37:39
Probably like, two, yeah, two at the same time. It's not fun.

Scott Benner 37:43
Oh my gosh. Your husband hasn't left yet. I mean, gotten lost going to the store.

Lana 37:50
No, he's still there. And you haven't

Scott Benner 37:52
gotten lost going to the store. You're like, I know what to do. They're driving to the snow and not come back. How are the kids doing with all of it, like, did they have anxiety your daughter little, right? They both

Lana 38:04
do slightly. So they've been going through counseling kind of on and off. You know, as they've needed nothing significant. I think with my son and the seizure like that, does sometimes come up that he's worried about those at the beginning, he would probably like over treat the lows. And I could just tell his mind was thinking, you know, of the seizure, yeah. But now, like, he's pretty, like, he like, he doesn't like to be high either, and so he's pretty, pretty good with not over treating. But you know, he never ignores it. So

Scott Benner 38:40
have you ever heard Arden discuss the seizure she had after her senior prom? No, I haven't. Oh, it's in her SEC she's only been on the show twice, but it's in her second episode we talk about it. Okay, yeah. So I don't know if it'll like, make you feel better or freak you out. I can't exactly tell, but yet, I'll share this one thing that she said. So I asked her, like, are you worried about this happening again? And she said, I did everything right. She's like, I look back, I've thought about it 1000 times. She's like, I think it was just the extra activity throughout the day, and probably a lot of adrenaline holding my blood sugar up throughout the day, and then all that insulin just caught up at the end. And you know, I then we ate a meal in the middle of the night. She's like, and I, even though I'd cut my insulin back on that, I knew I didn't need as much as normal. I took less. It was still too much. The thing that ended up comforting her was that she didn't do anything wrong. And she's like, so if it happened, it happened, but I got to live my life still like. That was kind of her attitude about it was really interesting to hear her talk about it, yeah. But anyway,

Lana 39:45
I remember, like, I remember crying to my doctor about being worried about making a mistake. Like that was just the big thing in my head that, you know, scared to make a mistake. Yeah,

Scott Benner 39:55
no kidding. Well, even the 12 units, 12 carbs. Thing that's not crazy to have happen. You know, you're rushing around or something, and she's probably trying to get to school and, you know, that whole thing so, but now today, how long ago was that, by the way, how long ago were you with the therapy and doing those, those different techniques? How long has it been since you did that stuff? So

Lana 40:19
I went off of my stress leave just over a year ago. Okay, and

Scott Benner 40:25
how do you feel today?

Lana 40:26
Pretty good like I feel. Yeah, definitely things are better and more Stabler, and I'm working on my own health and self care and trying to take care of myself. But I also know that if I went back to work full time, things might go downhill again.

Scott Benner 40:45
So you're just part time right now. Yeah, yeah. You have it set up so that your schedule allows you to be there during what you think of as more important times.

Lana 40:54
Um, so currently, my job is working from home, so it's actually really amazing that I can get them off to school, I'm home when they get home from school. And it's just flexible so I can see what's happening. And it's the type of job that if something does happen, it's okay for me just to tell my coworkers, sorry, diabetes emergency, I've got to go. Yeah,

Scott Benner 41:15
wow, that's great. So many people work from home now it's amazing, yeah? Like, I know it doesn't seem amazing to younger people, but it really is. It's crazy. My wife has been home every day since covid, so I don't even how long it feels like it's been three years, and she just took a different position at another company, and she's in the middle of this two week break right now, and she starts her new job on Monday, and she's gonna have to be in the office, I think, three days a week. And I was like, I was so bummed out. I was like, Oh, I'm gonna miss her. Like, I love that she's here, and like, we can see each other throughout the day and everything, and she doesn't seem as upset about leaving me as I pros

Lana 41:57
and cons, I think, like, getting out of the house, and, you know, being social, there's, there's good parts to that, too. No, for

Scott Benner 42:04
certain, yeah, for real. Wow, huh? Well, what made you want to share all this?

Lana 42:10
I think it was like you had posted something about looking for guests that had used the basquimi. Yeah, there's so much that sometimes people don't know. They don't know that it's as much of a risk as it's still like, it is a risk, and you should be prepared for it, you know. And just to remind people to, like, always have it with you, always have sugar with you. Like, even just to practice, you know, we've done that since then, but we've just, I've gotten my husband to to practice doing one that was expired. And

Scott Benner 42:45
I love the way you say it back. Squee. Me. I don't actually know how to say it. I say back. Semi, but I have no idea not the point. The point is, this is the one in the little like, put it up your nose and and squeeze it, and it like, kind of shoots a powder in your nose. Is that right? Yeah, okay. Did he describe that as being unpleasant, pleasant, not pleasant. But what was his experience with it? Or was he so out of it, he didn't really know about it? Yeah, I don't think he even remembers that happening. Yeah, the vomiting is common after the glutagon. I think,

Lana 43:14
yeah, it can be. And I think the second reason of wanting to come on was just that, like that mental health piece that in the diabetes appointments, it's usually focused on the kids, but I think there needs to be more help for the parents to be able to, kind of like, just manage their mental health and to to know that they need to take care of themselves kind of extra well when you've got all of this stress on you. Yeah,

Scott Benner 43:37
no. I mean, Arden's diabetes. I mean, I guess that part of me hope she never hears this, but Arden's diabetes, like fundamentally changed my life, and my wife's as well. My son's probably too, you know? I mean, on top of hers. I mean, once you get into a rhythm and it's a day to day thing, I don't think of it as a thing that I'm consciously aware of all the time. I mean, we've been at it for a long time now, but at the same time, I do think that I'm gonna say something kind of weird and hippy for a second, but I think the vibration that we live at is different than it would be without diabetes. Like, there's that makes sense, yeah, definitely, yeah. There's like, a raised level of awareness constantly. You know, little things, like, even just before I started recording with you, like, I I have to mute my phone to record the podcast. So I looked at Arden's blood sugar before I muted the phone. And, yeah, you know, and then there is this, like, small part, part in your head that's like, Okay, well now it's gonna be an hour before you look at it again. And so now I'm there's a little bit of me that's waiting for the table to vibrate from my phone, because it won't be because I've, I've silenced it, but my phone will vibrate if she gets low or high. And I think that just happening all the time. It's interesting, or I've noticed that she's away at school now, and you only get. So many touch points with your kids, like, when they're older, and I feel like some of the touch points that I would use on, how are you, what are you doing? What you've been working on at school, I miss you. Get used on, hey, don't forget to change your pump. Or, you know, can you tell me how much insulin you have left if we have to order more. Like, I feel like I some of my touch points get wasted on stuff like that. Sometimes that makes sense. Definitely.

Lana 45:26
Like, I try to make it when they get home from school that I'll ask them something non diabetes before I talk about diabetes. But it's hard. Just I've got my to do list of things I need to check. And yeah, sometimes

Scott Benner 45:41
I stopped myself. It was a smart thing to do. Like, I didn't want her to think that I, like, just saw her, like, diabetes, or that I'd been sitting at home all day waiting to ask her if, blah, blah, blah, you know, so when she'd come home, I would definitely, I definitely switch to that just, you know, talk about anything except that, yeah, yeah. I think that's a good idea. Good for you. Jeez, anything happy happening? Share a fun story. Lana, are there polar bears, where you live, or anything cool like that? No, no. Polar bears. Have you ever seen a Mountie? Um, nope. You have a pet penguin? Anything good? No,

Lana 46:24
I don't know. I do have, like, a vision of, I want to, like, just spend more time in nature. And so that's not like there's always snow here, but I like to go camping. But I do have this thought of, like, be fun to have an igloo that you could stay in all

Scott Benner 46:41
right. Now we're getting Canadian now, yeah, how often in a year do you think I hope a bear doesn't kill me?

Lana 46:49
There's no bears where I am, where the hell Oh, what

Scott Benner 46:51
are you in? One of those cities that they have in Canada, it's

Lana 46:55
in so it's in Alberta, and it's, yeah, just it's out of the mountains. So there's, there's no bears here.

Scott Benner 47:01
Gotcha a moose? Ever walked through town or anything like that? Yeah, there would be like,

Lana 47:06
there's deer in our city. Sometimes see the deer. There's

Scott Benner 47:10
deer in my backyard. I was looking for a moose. So, yeah, Geez, it's kind of boring. Have you ever heard the the episode where I talking with a nine year old Canadian girl and I, I try to convince her that she's not even sure if there are cars in the United States or not, because she's never been there. You have your Canadian episodes. I just love Canada. I love how you guys stab each other in bars and play hockey. It's all fantastic. I think my honest to God, favorite Canadian thing that sticks out from the podcast is when the One girl said she was a can can dancer in the Yukon. If you ever heard that, or not, I love that. Yeah, this is my favorite Canadian thing that's ever happened, actually. Anyway. What have we not talked about that we should have? I don't want to. I don't want to miss anything. And we're like in the last quarter of your time. So is there other stuff like, outside of this topic that you're interested in sharing? I

Lana 48:00
feel like the stress and the mental health kind of burden, it's just like, I think it's aged me. And so, like, during covid, I'd put on 60 pounds, and I was just like, I thought I had lupus, you know, I was like, in chronic pain. And part of it, I think, was like stress eating and just living a life of stress. So it's just really important to me now to try to take care of myself. And recently, I've kind of signed up for some program that I want to prevent myself from getting type two diabetes. So that's kind of my my newest thing that I'm trying to learn about, you know, insulin resistance in myself. And I just feel like with them having type one, I owe it to them to take care of myself and prevent type two. Yeah,

Scott Benner 48:50
I knocked 50 pounds off with GLP, if you want to give that a shot, really. Yeah, I've

Lana 48:55
lost 30 so far. So good for you. That's

Scott Benner 48:58
wonderful. Yeah, I think I might have had an actual metabolic problem, so I didn't change how I ate and lost 50 pounds. But nevertheless, actually, oh yeah,

Lana 49:10
this feels good to like, feel better. And so, you know, do something if you're not finding what's try something different.

Scott Benner 49:19
Yeah. No, I can't. I can't agree with you. Enough, I had done the things and nothing happened. So I was like, alright, am I gonna try something else? This medication became, like, so popular, and I talked to a doctor about it. It's been, been a year and a month now since I started it, and just I've lost, like I said, I've lost 50 pounds, and my wife's used it as well, really changed her life. And I saw my doctor on Saturday. Me, she's taking my vital signs. And she kept, like, under her breath, going like a kid. She kept saying to me, she's like, you're like a kid, these numbers are terrific. And I was like, Yep, and like, yeah, all my aches and pains are gone. And, you know, I went down so many sizes and clothing. I went from a two. 2x t shirt to a large like, I didn't even wear a large T shirt when I was like 18. My waist size, I know ladies just have pant sizes, but my waist went from a 38 to a 32 Yeah, that's good. I'm glad you're doing it. So you do it with exercise. You changed your eating habits back to where they were prior. Probably, yeah,

Lana 50:18
I've tried changing the timing so I don't eat after supper, and then, so, yeah, a little bit of timing, and then lessening my carbs, trying to eat more protein and fiber, and, you know, just overall, trying to eat healthier. Just good ideas. Yeah, exercising,

Scott Benner 50:36
that's excellent. The not eating after a certain time once you get to a certain age, is very, I think, kind of important, to be honest, especially you don't want, like, overnight food sitting in your stomach and digesting and, you know, just a lot of reasons for to want to avoid that. So are you eating in like, a fasting window? Have you tried that? Yeah, kind

Lana 50:57
of, but I just like supper is the last time I eat and then breakfast, I'll usually kind of delay it a little bit. I used to, like, you know, have something carbs, right, first thing in the morning, where now I just try to have something more like protein and a little bit of carbs. And I would probably wait a little bit till after I exercise. Yeah,

Scott Benner 51:16
that's, it's a great idea. I mean, it's one o'clock in the afternoon here. When you and I get done, I'm gonna eat breakfast, and I've been up since eight o'clock. So, yeah, I kind of agree with the all those ideas. Actually, I think you're onto something very nice. It's excellent. And do you feel better, like, in general, like body wise, you do feel better, right? Definitely,

Lana 51:37
yeah. Like, before I would just be so achy that it would be hard to get up off the floor, just all of the weight on my joints and everything, like I just, you know, I was tired all the time. I was crankier, I was more anxious. So taking care of myself has been really important. We've

Scott Benner 51:57
noticed all the same stuff, like we were getting to the point now, like we'd watch TV for an hour. I know TV is this thing. It's a box in your room Atlanta, and like, a picture comes on a sound, but like, so we were we do that and stand up to walk out of the room, and one of us would like, limp out of the room, or, like, your back, your back wouldn't straighten all the way up. And you're like, laughing about it, but you're also like, what the is happening? All that's like, gone now. It's fantastic. Awesome. Yeah, that's very cool. Long term for your kids. I mean, they're still pretty young, right? So are you very involved at this point out of the stress, anxiety piece, or do you let them do it and you kind of oversee it, like, what's the day to day look like with you guys?

Lana 52:40
They're 11 and 13 now, and I'm still fairly involved. My thought is just, you know, after they're 18, once they move out like then they have to do it 100% and right now, I'm happy to help them, you know. And I know eventually they need to be a little bit more independent. But for now, I don't feel it's the right time, and just do what I can to take off some of the burden from them. But they do some things on their own, like at school, they know their carbs, what they're eating, and they enter it in the pump. And they're doing that independently. Occasionally, with my daughter, she'll forget doses. So I've started recently just doing another text to her, just to remind her, yeah, this is the first that they've been more independent before it was for sure. I was always texting them, and they would tell me what their dose was,

Scott Benner 53:32
right? So you see it growing slowly. Yeah, that's how I like it. Actually. Do you think if you release them feral right now, they could take care of themselves? No,

Lana 53:40
I don't think like their brains aren't ready to take Lana. I used

Scott Benner 53:46
to take a lot of crap from people who'd be like, you're doing it all for her. She's not gonna know how to do it when she's an adult, like all that stuff. And I would always tell them, like, I'm, first of all, we talk about it while we're doing it. It's not a big secret. You know, like, I see a plate this looks like this, bunch that looks like this, looks like that. Maybe we should extend it here, etc, like, that kind of stuff. And so she was learning as we were going. And then there's times where you'd just be like, hey, bullish, your meal and see what you think. Or we'd even do that thing where I'd be like, Hey, I know how much I think you should have. What do you think? And then she'd say, and I'd be like, well, let's try what you think. You know, and like, we would do that, that stuff a lot. And then, I mean, Arden's two years into college now. She's almost done her second year, which is insane, and she's doing great, like her a 1c is, I mean, I don't even really look at it anymore, to be perfectly honest with you, I'd have to look to see what it is.

Lana 54:37
We definitely like do that, to try to get them just to kind of help with some decisions. And, you know, what do you think? And, you know, kind of we do the sugar surfing method. Kind of just recently, I've listened to that episode of yours with Dr ponder, okay, so kind of trying to just teach them that a little bit. And just like he's interested in, like, learning. About clarity. So every week, I'll print off the AGP report, just kind of looking for things. And you know, he's curious. So he's wanting to know, you know, why I might make a change, or that's great, and look at it and see what he thinks. So I

Scott Benner 55:15
like a very slow, steady handoff. It takes years. Actually, I'm probably with you. I don't like the idea of just like, flopping all this on an 11 year old and being like, hey, you can do this. Because I'm not sure that it works that way.

Lana 55:29
If I'm stressing it, I'm sure they would be stressed doing it themselves. Yeah,

Scott Benner 55:33
they came to me and said, Look, you know, I want to, I want you out of this. I'd say, All right, well, I can, you know, you can do it, but you know, we're gonna have checks and balances in place, and then once it all looks good, then, you know, okay, but not just gonna flop. I mean, honestly, they're 13 and 11, right? Like, what else are they in charge of? Nothing. You know what I mean. So I think it's weird to put an 11 year old in charge of, like, a major health thing that's difficult and daily and unrelenting just seems strange. Yeah, so I agree with the idea. Have you heard the Pro Tip series for the podcast? Yes, okay. Was that helpful? Definitely. Oh, good, good, good.

Lana 56:11
I've recommended it a lot to to other people that have been diagnosed since my kids were and, yeah, definitely love the pro tips and kind of just random other ones that I've listened to, like the defining diabetes. I'll kind of just go through the lists with the pictures of what is in each one, and then pick what episode is something I want to learn about that day. Very

Scott Benner 56:31
nice. I shared that series this morning because somebody, somebody put up a photo of something that is very clearly something called feet on the floor, and another person came in and said, That's Dawn phenomenon. I was like, ah, it is not that. It's not Dawn phenomenon. And I so I said, Hey, here's a, you know, defining diabetes series. You can listen to what these different things are, these different terms, but you're misconstruing feet on the floor with Dawn phenomenon. I like that because they're shorter episodes, and people can get a lot of terms. Like, you know what I mean? Like, I supposed to know what all this stuff means. It's just a lot. So, yeah, very cool. I appreciate you doing this very much. I am going to say goodbye to you, and then I'm actually gonna go ready to I'm doing an interview with The New York Times today. Oh, fun.

Lana 57:18
I have one more question. Go ahead, do your thing Canada. Is there ever a chance that you would come to Canada to be a guest speaker?

Unknown Speaker 57:26
Okay?

Scott Benner 57:28
I was just approached by somebody on the West Coast, and I said, I'll do it like remotely, but I can't, I mean, it's like, it was like a six hour flight. I was like, I'm not doing that. I mean, if you could do more Toronto, Montreal, that's closer to me. Just something to

Lana 57:48
think about. I know there's lots of people that would love to have you come to Canada. And so

Scott Benner 57:53
I would love to see Canada. It's

Unknown Speaker 57:55
a great place.

Scott Benner 57:55
Well, listen, first of all, I think it would be nice if when I spoke about Canada, I actually knew what I was talking about that would, first of all, I think, be lovely instead of, instead of how I handle it right now,

Lana 58:06
I think you should put it on your list, and then I'm sure there'd be lots of people

Scott Benner 58:11
that would love to figure out their

Lana 58:13
way to do a conference.

Scott Benner 58:14
Yeah, no, I was very excited when someone reached out, but they were about as far away from me as they could possibly be without being in like, the tip of Alaska, yeah. I mean, I'd love to come to Canada. I wish. I hope somebody invites me and it tells me it's not six hours on a plane and two layovers and stuff like that. But for those people, I was like, I will absolutely do it virtually, like, no problem at all. But yeah, no, please reach out Canada, like during the warm months, if you would. Sounds good. Yeah, thank you so much. Elena. I don't want to be cold. I just want to be clear about

Lana 58:48
that. Yeah, come in the summer, it'll be fine, absolutely. Well,

Scott Benner 58:52
okay, all right. Well, I appreciate you doing this very much. Hold on one second

Unknown Speaker 59:01
for me. Okay, I

Scott Benner 59:02
A huge thank you to one of today's sponsors, gvoke glucagon. Find out more about gvokepopen 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 juice box. A huge thanks to us med for sponsoring this episode of The juicebox podcast. Don't forget us, med.com/juice box. This is where we get our diabetes supplies from. You can as well use the link or call 88872115141. 87211514, use the link or call the number get your free benefits check so that you can start getting your diabetes supplies the way we do from us. Med, I want to thank the Eversense CGM for sponsoring this episode of The juicebox podcast learn more about its implantable sensor, smart transmitter, anchor. Terrific mobile application at Eversense cgm.com/juice, bot, and keep listening. There's some exciting news coming very soon in New Eversense ads. 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. Hey, what's up? Everybody? If you've noticed that the podcast sounds better and you're thinking like, how does that happen? What you're hearing is Rob at wrong way recording doing his magic to these files. So if you want him to do his magic to you wrong way recording.com, you got a podcast? You want somebody to edit it? You want rob you.