#1352 Poopy Pills

Emma has type 1, uses Ozempic and has anxiety about eating in front of people.

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

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

Emma is a returning guest. She was originally on Episode 1090 called diabetes breakdown. Today, we'll talk about her type one diabetes, her use of ozempic, how she lost weight, her social skills, anxiety and how she feels eating around other people. 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 to save 40% off of your entire order@cozyearth.com All you have to do is use the offer code juicebox at checkout. That's juicebox at checkout to save 40 percent@cozyearth.com 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/juice, box 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/juicebox, it should not take you more than about 10 minutes. 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. The show you're about to listen to is sponsored by the Eversense 365 the Eversense 365 has exceptional accuracy over one year, and is the most accurate CGM in the low range that you can get ever since cgm.com/juice box. Having an easy to use, an accurate blood glucose meter is just one click away. Contournext.com/juicebox That's right. Today's episode is sponsored by the contour next gen blood glucose meter.

Emma 2:22
Hi, I'm Emma. I have type one diabetes. I'm 23 years old, and I'm back

Scott Benner 2:30
because where were you the first time you were in Episode 1090 it was called, what was it called?

Emma 2:36
It was called diabetes breakdown, right?

Scott Benner 2:38
Do you remember why I called it that? Because I don't,

Emma 2:41
because I cry all the time, and we kind of broke down diabetes too. So it was had a little double meaning.

Scott Benner 2:50
There was this one of those episodes where at the end I was like, try something and let me know how it goes.

Emma 2:55
I think so. I think you were, you were just like, stay, if you stay on ozempic, then come back and chat about it. Yeah,

Scott Benner 3:02
and you did, yes. Okay, so let's just do a high level overview. Diagnosed. How long ago?

Emma 3:08
2230, my gosh. Three years. Three years.

Scott Benner 3:13
Okay, and then at what point did your doctor add GLP to you?

Emma 3:18
It was about a year ago. Okay,

Scott Benner 3:20
so you've been on ozempic for a year. Is your insurance covering it?

Emma 3:26
Yes, it is. I'm lucky that way, nice.

Scott Benner 3:29
Do you know the diagnosis code they use to get it covered? No, I don't. Okay. Like, did they say you have insulin resistance or type two and type one? Do you know

Emma 3:39
I think it was insulin resistance. Okay, yeah, wow, good insurance.

Scott Benner 3:45
Let's just go right to that part. So your prior to the GLP, what are your a one C's, like, about how much is your total daily insulin, that kind

Emma 3:55
of thing. So my a 1c were fine. It was like, I think I was even in the fives at that point, but I was like, having trouble with management, because my pumps weren't lasting as long as they should be, because I was using so much insulin, either they would run out, I would use, like, the full 200 units like the max amount, but they would still run out before even the three days. Or I would be doing such huge boluses, 10 units or above, because of my insulin to carb ratio so high, I

Scott Benner 4:35
guess, flooding your sites and they weren't absorbing well and all that stuff. Yeah, right, right.

Emma 4:40
So my pumps were, like, leaking and stuff, and I wasn't getting as much insulin as I needed. So I was, like, having all these ties. And it like it wasn't affecting my ANC, but I was just it was affecting my mental health, because I was, like, stressing about it all the time. And just like, it was just not also

Scott Benner 4:56
using a ton of insulin, like, like using over. Or so you have OmniPod, right? Yeah, I just know because you said over 200 units so, like, so, so you're using over 200 units of insulin every three days. Yeah, wow. Were you gaining weight? No, no, okay. Was your weight prior to GLP where you wanted it to be? No, is there an amount of weight, you would tell me that you were over where you wanted to be. Well, at

Emma 5:24
one point I was, like, 150 pounds when I was, like, a freshman in college, and I also just, like, wasn't eating because I didn't like eating around people, so I lost a ton of weight, and I was not eating in a healthy way, but I was really happy with how I look. But then I got with my boyfriend, now, fiance, and we love to eat together, and so that part stopped. So I started eating really well, but then I gained some weight, so, and at that point we had been together for like, three years,

Scott Benner 5:59
Emma let me, let me pick through for a second. Yeah, if I asked you this the last time, tell me, but didn't like to eat in front of people. What does that

Emma 6:10
mean? I just like, I don't know. It's a weird part of my brain. I just have anxiety when I'm eating around, like, new people, not like people that I know are, like, my good friends, but like, if I don't know someone, I am like, thinking about what, like, what I'm eating, and if they're like, judging me for what I'm eating and like, how I'm eating it, and like, how much of it I'm eating. It's a really, really unhealthy way of thinking. But I just can't stop so when I went to college, I didn't know anyone, and we would like go to the dining hall, because that's what you do when you're a freshman. And I was, like, finding myself eating around all these new people, and, like, I just it was really hard for me. I eventually got over it. Obviously.

Scott Benner 6:56
Have you ever talked to a therapist about it? No. Do you think you should, or is it okay when I

Emma 7:02
go to therapy? It's probably something that I will talk about, but I just haven't, like pushed myself to go to therapy yet, which I know is bad, and like, everyone should go to therapy, but I just, I don't know, listen,

Scott Benner 7:16
it's not bad, and everybody doesn't have to go to therapy. I was just wondering if you had that's all because it seems kind of like a significant thing.

Emma 7:23
Yeah, well, it's not anymore, just because I'm not really surrounded by new people. The thing about now is that I as a as a teacher, I like, don't go to the lunchroom to eat with all of my colleagues that often. I usually just eat in my room, which is, like, fine, and I like, know, all my colleagues, and I like them, and I'm like, still forming friendships with them in other ways. But like, I just don't find community around food in that way. I don't know you have any insight into this at all. No,

Scott Benner 7:58
no, your mom always been. Did your mom talk about your weight or something like that, or

Emma 8:03
no, like, my family's never really been like that. I don't know it's it was probably just me being on the internet as at a young age and being impacted by that. But like, when I was in high school and I would do, like, summer camps, like overnight, like two weeks, wherever I would it was the same thing. That's kind of where it started, I think, summer game. But yeah,

Scott Benner 8:26
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Emma 10:59
You could,

Scott Benner 11:01
I guess I was talking to you. Hold on, let's, let's find out if it's actually

Emma 11:08
I call it like eating anxiety is what I call it,

Scott Benner 11:11
not being able to eat in front of other people considered an eating disorder. Lisk, chat. GPT,

Speaker 1 11:17
yes. Okay, not being able to eat in front of other people can be considered a sign of an eating disorder or related anxiety issue. This condition might be linked to social anxiety, where the person feels self conscious or anxious about being observed while eating. It's important to consult a healthcare professional. It's

Scott Benner 11:37
gonna tell you the stuff you're supposed to Yeah. Do you have social anxiety?

Emma 11:41
Yeah, okay. But doesn't everyone have a little bit of social anxiety?

Scott Benner 11:45
None, zero. Wow, absolutely not. What's

Emma 11:47
that like?

Scott Benner 11:48
It's fcking awesome. You couldn't say something to me that I couldn't just do in front of people.

Emma 11:58
That's amazing. I

Scott Benner 11:59
don't even care. I I swear to you, like I have, like, opportunities to speak sometimes in front of, like, four or 500 people at a time, like in person, and I'll be standing outside chatting with people, and someone will come up to me and go, Hey, your thing's about to start. And I'll go, Oh, okay. And someone will say, what are you speaking about? And I'll go, I don't know, and I just walk in, wow. And just go and then it's over. And people like, oh my god, that's so great in the situation I'm I'm describing. Now, I had, like, a flimsy understanding of what I was there to do, but I never, like, you get up there and like, Hey everybody, I'm gonna talk now and just start talking. And there's no like, I don't feel anxious about it one little bit. My My heartbeat is low. My pulse is low. Like, I'm like, it's, it feels very good to me to be doing that. That's kind of like a superpower. Well, would be if I could fly too, if I could fly while I was doing it, then I would completely agree with you. Like, I know we're supposed to say we feel lucky if anything happens to us. I like, how at this point now, I have to say I feel lucky to have a house, I feel lucky if I have food. I'm lucky if I have insurance. I feel lucky that I don't have diabetes. I feel lucky that my kid has insulin. I feel lucky that I don't have anxiety. There's a lot of ass covering going on in society right now. Emma, so I'll get on the train. I feel lucky that I don't have a problem with that, but it's just the thing that I'm good at. There's plenty of things I'm not good at that. You know, nobody says they feel lucky if they can do anyway. All right, so you have social anxiety to some degree. This is how it pops up. Blah, blah, blah, get the diabetes pumping using a lot of insulin. Doctor says, Hey, why don't you try ozempic? And you go, all right, whatever was that, what you said, like, cool, let's do it. Or what do you what were your thoughts

Emma 13:45
at that point, it was already, like, kind of, there was already some stigma attached to it, like in the media, with, like, all of these celebrities taking it for weight loss and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. And I was, like, I, like, had a ton of questions about, like, side effects and, like, how else it would affect me? My doctor was basically like, well, there could be side effects, like nausea and all this stuff, but you don't know how it will affect you until you take it. And it's something that we can try, and then if you don't like it, or whatever, we can just, you know, something else, yeah. I was like, Okay, I guess I'll do it, yeah? And so I started taking it. And I think when we filmed, I'd been taking it for like, one week, yeah, basically, you

Scott Benner 14:31
had just started. So, so let's walk through it. Like, what was it like in the beginning? What did you notice? Are you still taking it now? Let's hear all about

Emma 14:38
it. At the beginning, I feel like there was kind of a drastic change, like it really affected my appetite, and it really affected how much insulin I was using. I used a lot less, and at the beginning I like, wouldn't have to pre wolf at all, basically because. Because it was making the insulin work faster too. Like, I wouldn't have to wait 20 minutes. I could, like, bolus right before I ate, basically, and that kind of happened every time my dose would go up. So, but then, I don't know, it would kind of like, those effects would, like, not be as much, and then it would kind of plateau, hold

Scott Benner 15:22
your thought, OmniPod dash, or OmniPod five. OmniPod five. Okay. And basically, I feel like there are two things happening. First of all, you take the medication, and it helps with insulin sensitivity. Helps with insulin sensitivity a bunch of different ways. One of those ways is by slowing your digestion down. So is your insulin working faster, or are you digesting more slowly? So the insulin is having more time to work before the impact of the food is coming. Which do you think you were seeing?

Emma 15:50
Probably the digestion, okay. Okay.

Scott Benner 15:54
And then as you upped your dose, you noticed it for a while, but then it wasn't as as much at that point.

Emma 16:01
Yeah, so. And then I think, oh, sorry, go ahead, yeah.

Scott Benner 16:04
Just let me jump in for a second. My This is a guess. This is an absolute guess, right? But you're using one dose for a while. You get to kind of a a point where the pump is seeing your total daily insulin being aggressive. Based on that, suddenly you take a new dose, which changes probably your slows your digestion down more. You get the other impacts of glps, and on top of that, so better insulin sensitivity, but also you probably can't eat as much. Is that right? When you go up a dose, yeah, and then the algorithm and the OmniPod five is still bolusing at you like you're on your old settings with a lower dose, and then eventually, I would imagine that the pump then figures out your total daily insulin for your new reality, and then it levels out again. That's my expectation for what happened.

Emma 16:53
Yeah, you're probably right. It's possible. I never, I never thought it through like that, but you're probably, probably right. Well, you're busy

Scott Benner 17:00
dodging people when you have a pretzel on your hand, so you don't have time to think about these things.

Emma 17:04
Oh my gosh. The thing about ozempic, about taking this weekly injection, is that I love that it's made me lose or, sorry, use less insulin, and that now my UMP works better and everything. But it's also another variable to think about in my brain when I'm bolusing and stuff, because there's, like, it's not as effective, like, there's different effectiveness, like, throughout the week. Does that make sense? Like, it kind of peaks in the middle of the week, yeah, and then it, you know, so I have to also think about that when I'm bolusing, whether to like, kind of lowball the carbs, because I know that the OmniPod is like, working really well right now, because it's in the middle of the week, yada yada. So, like, most of my lows happen in the middle of the week, yeah, because it's just working well. The

Scott Benner 17:56
half life of the medication is very short, so you inject it on a Saturday, and now you're all juiced up Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, then Wednesday. It starts to wane, right? And then Thursday, Friday. So even if you're you'll notice, like, I can, like, I can eat more on Thursday or Friday than I can on Monday or Tuesday, and yeah, and so and so. The way you're adjusting around them is by basically, like, being more or less aggressive with your carb counts, depending on where in the week you are. Yeah, that's smart. Yeah, that's really smart. Okay, so how much, like you said before, you were using 200 units every three days. How many units do you think you're using every three days? Now,

Emma 18:42
did I see on my pump? I think it's like 50 a day, 50 units a day. So

Scott Benner 18:49
you you cut 50 units out over three days? So like 15, six, like 16 units a day, it went down.

Emma 19:00
Yeah, wow, that's great. And did you lose weight? Not really. Did you honestly? But I haven't, but I haven't been, like exercising or like actively trying, which now I am doing because I get I'm getting married in a year, so now I'm actively trying, trying to lose weight. So

Scott Benner 19:18
tell me how much weight you hope to lose 2530, pounds. Okay? And how much have you lost so far on ozempic, like,

Emma 19:27
maybe, like five, okay?

Scott Benner 19:29
And you've been using, really,

Emma 19:30
not that much,

Scott Benner 19:30
how long for a year a year. So what's your dose at now?

Emma 19:35
My sorry say that again, ozempic,

Scott Benner 19:38
dose, how much?

Emma 19:39
Oh, it's, I think I'm at four units. They're milligrams, yeah, sorry,

Scott Benner 19:46
yeah. So does she have you dialed a two milligrams inject and then do it again. Is that how that pen works? Or can you go all the way

Emma 19:56
to four? I think it's, I think it's a four. I might be wrong. Let me do. Because

Scott Benner 20:00
it's possible you're just not using enough, and that's why you're not losing weight.

Emma 20:04
It's the yellow box,

Scott Benner 20:05
Emma, the last time we spoke, did I turn into your dad at some point and feel like I had to take care

Emma 20:10
of you? You did. Dad's name is Scott. Starting to happen. It's two milligrams. It's two milligrams. I'm I'm silly. It's two, not

Scott Benner 20:19
four. That's okay, which is the most so, so you're shooting two milligrams of ozempic a day. Yeah,

Emma 20:25
no, a week a week. Excuse

Scott Benner 20:26
me, that was my fault and then, but so I think you're running into something that a lot of people with ozempic run into, which is that's the highest dose. And it's possible they could use more after a while, but it's interesting that so you haven't lost, I mean, lost five pounds in a year, which is great, but it's not a lot compared to what you're seeing with some people. So let's talk about it. Ozempic. Does it curb your appetite? Does it make you feel full in your head? Does it make your stomach feel full? Like what's all the impacts you're getting from it along eating?

Emma 21:00
I think it does. It has affected my appetite. It definitely did more in the beginning when I first started taking it. But that could also just be like, my brain getting used to it. Like, do I really remember what my appetite was like a year ago? I don't know, but I do think I'm eating less food, like I'm physically not able to eat more the

Scott Benner 21:22
mass of food is less, like, the actual like, like, physical amount of it. Have you changed the things that you're eating? Are there things that you can't eat anymore, or not attracted to anymore? That kind of thing?

Emma 21:33
I really don't like meat as much I didn't like ever love meat, but I sometimes I like, physically can't eat it. Like, it's just off putting to me, like the taste and the smell, like when meat is being cooked, I like, have to leave the room because it makes me feel nauseous. Sometimes.

Scott Benner 21:51
Are always census epic. Yeah, that's interesting. How are you getting your protein? I just

Emma 21:59
eat beet. My fiance. Just seasons it really well. He makes it he makes it yummy. But I, yeah, it's hard. I don't know chicken. I found that going vegetarian, chicken, mostly chicken. Yeah, chicken. Okay,

Scott Benner 22:12
so you're getting some protein every week, yeah? Okay, but you don't like, because Arden doesn't like the overall smell or taste of meat, either. But it was before, it was before her GLP as well.

Emma 22:24
Is she? Is

Scott Benner 22:25
she on it now too? Yeah, she's using Manjaro.

Emma 22:30
Okay, so my I just had a meeting with my Endo. I was talking to her about how I want to lose more weight and whatever, whatever, and she's moving me to Manjaro. Oh, cool. I don't know how different they are. She said that they that Manjaro is more like aggressive, or it like works better.

Scott Benner 22:47
So there's a GLP and a gip in Manjaro. It could help you more with weight loss. It might be easier on some of your gastrointestinal issues. If you're having any, are you having any? Do you want to talk about your poop while we're here? We

Emma 23:01
can go ahead. The truth is, I don't have any, like, I'm pretty regular,

Scott Benner 23:08
to be honest, nice. It comes out the way you like, it's not squishy or nasty or anything like that. No, yeah, it's

Emma 23:13
kind of perfect, I don't know. No complaints. Yeah, perfect.

Scott Benner 23:17
Like, you know, the the different, like, the different kinds of poop.

Unknown Speaker 23:23
Um,

Scott Benner 23:24
you don't know, Emma, this is what we're gonna do. Hold on a second. Hold tight. Okay. I had to do this with the guys helping me with my gut health stuff. And now you're gonna have to do it with me. Let me find the chart of poop. Googling poop chart gets me there, going for that. Hold on a second poop chart takes your right to it. I'll be god damn How about that? All right, ready? You can buy this on uh, Etsy, and hang in your bathroom if you want. Oh, great. All right. So there are seven types of poop, okay? Type one separate hard lumps, like nuts. Severe constipation is that you No, okay. Type Two, sausage shaped, but lumpy. Mild constipation, no, good. Type three, sausage shaped, but with cracks on the surface. I feel like that's me, okay. Type four, sausage or snake, like, smooth and soft.

Emma 24:26
Sometimes that's me. Keep going. I'm

Scott Benner 24:29
gonna keep going, then we're gonna go back. Okay. Type five, soft blobs with clear cut edges, lacking fiber, no. Okay. Type six, mushy consistency with ragged edges, fluffy pieces, nope. Type seven, completely liquid, watery, no. Solid pieces, nope. Congratulations. You have chosen the two of seven stool types that are considered normal. Congratulations. You are a type one diabetic and a type three and a type. Worship. Yeah, look at you. That's very good. It's super exciting. Don't you think

Emma 25:05
I know? Though it is. This is, like, my birthday. This is the best, yeah,

Scott Benner 25:09
you can just Google poop chart if you want, and then go to images, and they're just everywhere. There's also colors of poop we could go over. But I don't think it's necessary. Who got put in charge, by the way, this is the Bristol stool form scale for children, your or for adults, the poop chart who had to animate like, what poor person job was it to draw poop? Do you think? Yeah,

Emma 25:33
I don't know. I hope they got paid well. They

Scott Benner 25:37
didn't trust me. They absolutely didn't. They went home and they said to their fiance, can you believe that I had to draw poop today?

Emma 25:49
I wonder how many pictures they had to look at, like reference photos. That's

Scott Benner 25:53
the other thing. There were reference photos that they had to look at to draw it. And then they probably don't even have health care at their job. Terrible. Oh, all right, Emma, listen now, we know you're pooping, good, that's great, but they're moving. The doctor's moving you because of insulin resistance to the Manjaro or because they think you're going to lose more weight. What is the reason you're being moved?

Emma 26:16
I think it's because they think I want to lose more weight. Okay, I told her I was like, I have a wedding to be in, and I need to be skinnier Morgan, is what I said to her. And she said, Okay, I know

Scott Benner 26:28
you're young, but you want to lose weight because it's healthier for you. Okay, that's also true, and you'll just just look good in your dress because you're healthy. So but I

Emma 26:38
want, but the photos, I want to be able to look at the photos and be like, Oh, I look so happy and pretty. Not Oh, I look so happy, but I am fat. You know. Are

Scott Benner 26:47
you fat now?

Emma 26:48
I Yeah, it's just how you look at yourself, you know, no, but

Scott Benner 26:52
what about let's just use the BMI, the BMI skill. Do you know your BMI?

Emma 26:56
Oh, no, no clue.

Scott Benner 26:57
Hold on a second. Do you know how tall you are? Yeah. What's your height? 5454, you tell me your weight, yeah, 200 Okay, and then we'll get your BMI based on your height and weight. You have a body mass index of 34.3 this falls into the category of obesity. Generally, a BMI between 18 and 24.9 is considered healthy. So that's the way I would hope you would think about it, which is, you're not trying to look nice in a dress. You'll just look nice in a dress. I bet you, first of all, at your current weight, I bet you would look nice in your dress, but I hear what you're saying, and so you could lose, see, you said 30 pounds, but that's not really this happened to me.

Emma 27:42
Let me share with you

Scott Benner 27:45
when I started to lose weight, I was five nine, and I weighed 236 pounds, and my wife said to me, how much weight do you want to lose? And you know what I said, What? 20 pounds? And she goes, 20 pounds, you'll still be fat if you lose 20 pounds. And I was like, hey, actually, that's what she said. And I'm like, No, I'm like, 20 pounds is right? So I get on the juice, I'm hitting the juice, and I'm doing my business, and I'm losing my weight, and I lose 20 pounds, and I look in the mirror. And I thought, Ah, hell, I'm fat. How did I not realize this? Like, how did I not realize where my weight was and what it kind of become, you know what? I mean, they didn't see that. And so I thought, well, 30 pounds, obviously, and then I'm down to 2061, day. And I'm like, Nope, this is not close. And I started, like, looking at my body more about, like, health. And I was like, like, where am I carrying fat? Like, in that like, that fat needs to go for me to be healthy. I lost 2530 3540 45 now I've lost 47 pounds. And if you saw me today, you'd be like, Oh my god, Scott, you look fantastic. And I would say, thank you. And then I would say, I still have to lose weight. Now. I don't feel like weights my issue. I think fat's my issue. Like, I want the fat to go away, especially around my midsection. Don't want to have a heart attack, etc. My knees feel better. I'm healthier. My blood works better. All the other things that are actually important over how you look. Not that how you look isn't important, but all these things are getting better. But I stopped to reflect, and I thought, I don't know how much more weight I have to lose. Like, I don't think of it that way. I think of like, just thinking in terms of like the fat is what I'm saying to you, right? So when that when this fat that I'm squeezing right now is gone, I don't know what I'm gonna weigh, but I don't care, like the numbers completely inconsequential to me. I really don't care about the number I reflected on how far off I was on the number, like I was so wrong about the number. Her, and I don't know how that happened, like, you know, like you talked about your brain, like, getting used to things, or you look in the mirror and you just, you see yourself. You don't see you don't see what you look like five pounds ago, or something like that, for some and it's very quickly your brain tells you, like, this is what you look like. And you're like, Okay. And I'm like, I like myself. So this is great. You know what I mean? Like, I never really used to think about myself in terms of, like, when you ask me to describe myself, I would never describe myself physically. Yeah, I would tell you about, like, my thoughts, or how I think about things, or who I care about, what I do for a living, all those things would come out first. So I just don't think I ever accurately saw my health, especially as an assessment of my of my I guess I should have said I don't think I ever accurately saw my weight as an assessment of my health, like I just was happy with who I was as a person. So I never thought about my weight. And now I look back at a photo, and I think, how could I have thought that that person really only could have used to lose 20 pounds. It's really interesting. I wonder if you're going to go through some of those things as you as you lose weight. Yeah,

Emma 31:08
maybe probably,

Scott Benner 31:10
is it hard to talk about?

Emma 31:12
I weirdly, I have, like, an easier time talking about my than I do this. I don't know. I think it's because, like, as a woman, like, it's something that we have to think about constantly, and so I feel like I've taken the time and the work to like, not think about it constantly, which I'm happy with, because it's not like, impacting my mental health as much, but in that same vein, like, I don't love to talk about it, like even my my grandma, whenever she sees me, no matter what I look like, she's always like, Emily, you've lost weight, you look amazing. Like, even if I, even if I gained 50 pounds, I think she would still say that to me really, because she, like, just sees that as, like, a compliment and something that everyone wants to hear. I think that the younger generations are kind of moving towards, like, why is anybody talking about anyone else's body? Like, why is that even a topic of discussion, especially for women, just because it's so prevalent in society, and like, talking about how other women look, and comparing yourself, and all these things. And so I don't know, I've, I've conditioned my brain to, like, not want to talk about it. And like, I don't know, right?

Scott Benner 32:43
So first of all, I know what you look like, You're adorable, that's the first thing, okay? And like, so like, no one should think otherwise, and you shouldn't think otherwise. But it's interesting, because as you were talking about it, like you almost said something, I feel like you stopped yourself, like I've conditioned myself not to think about my weight that way for my mental health, but you paused, because for your physical health, it's not valuable.

Emma 33:06
But you know that, right? I guess so. I mean, I guess I think the thing about my physical health is that there's so much of my brain power that goes toward my physical health. In terms of diabetes, like, I make so many decisions about my physical health daily because of diabetes that everything else is just kind of, like, non consequential, like, it's not as important to me because my sugars are so important to me. I don't know if that makes sense. No, it

Scott Benner 33:37
does, because and I've I've interviewed a lot. I've recorded a lot. Today, I just talked to a guy who said that he started to gain weight with type one, and he thinks that one of the reasons why it happened is because he started seeing food and carbs as this thing that he could conquer with insulin, and he stopped thinking about it as nutrition or calories. Yeah. And so he's like, it didn't matter how much I ate, if I kept my blood sugar stable. I was like, I win, yeah. And he thought that. It felt like that was his only goal. And then he looked back in hindsight, and he's like, Oh, I was eating way too many calories, but I didn't think anything of it, because my blood sugar didn't go up, right? You know, I definitely relate to that. Yeah, so there's this like, and you're young too. So have you seen the South Park special about ozempic? No, I

Emma 34:30
haven't. Okay,

Scott Benner 34:31
they made a movie, like, a 50 minute movie about, like, ozempic and panchara. It's interesting, and there's a running joke inside of it, which I think took some flack online, but they said that, keeping in mind, this is satire, they're trying to make a bigger point. And basically what they were saying was, hey, if you're if you have money, you get ozempic or Manjaro, and if you don't have money, you get this other medication. And this other medication is body posits. Activity. And, yeah, I laughed, because I was like, oh my god, I see what they're saying, right? Like, big, like, bigger picture, what they're saying is, if you can afford to be thin, then here, and if you can't afford it, then we love you just the way you are. And I was like, Oh, my God. Like, because South Park is, generally speaking, a fairly liberal minded thing, but I think people would hear that as a very conservative view. Does that make sense? Yeah, am I making sense here?

Emma 35:35
Yeah, you

Scott Benner 35:36
are okay, okay, so, like, the idea of like, telling like, it's kind of like, it's kind of the feeling of like, look, we you know, there were, at one point, there were people saying, Look, I love myself the way I am. And everybody's like, Yeah, you should love yourself the way you are. And that at some point that that somehow translated into being unhealthy is okay if you love how you are. And I feel like somehow there's a connection between that and the person who told me that as long as I could conquer the carbs with insulin, I didn't think about the calories. Yeah, and either I'm drawing a really squiggly line or I'm not, I'm not, I'm not sure yet, because I'm in fairness, this is a podcast. I'm talking out loud, trying to figure something out. But you're in that space where you're young enough to think, like, I don't mean it this way, but like, like, you have more liberal views, which everybody has when they're younger. Usually, people's views get more conservative as they get older. You have liberal views, but you're not old enough to actually see the health concerns of extra weight. It makes me feel like if I got you into a time machine and made you 50 years old, and you lived for the next 50 years at a BMI of, like, 36 if you wouldn't go, like, I should have, like, done whatever I could have done back then, because this is where, this is where I am now. Anyway, yeah, it's these two competing ideas that kind of stop people from. It's the it's the psychological piece that stops you from worrying about the physical piece. If that makes sense. Anyway, yeah, and if you have to for your mental health, then that's, of course, I think paramount. But I don't think one doesn't exist because of the other. That makes sense, yeah. Anyway, your insulin needs are down, which is great. You are wanting to lose weight for your wedding.

Emma 37:26
How long until your wedding? A year, year.

Scott Benner 37:29
Oh, congratulations. It'll be in the summer. Yeah, very nice time to do it. Very nice. What is it you're going to do between now and then? Like you said, I'm not exercising. But is that a thing you're gonna add,

Emma 37:40
yeah, no, I bought, I bought a stepper. I also, like, hate going to the gym. It's a similar anxiety to my eating anxiety that I just don't like people observing me when I'm sweaty and gross. So I bought, like, at home, things to do. When we started doing daily, I have started doing daily, and it's, I don't know, it's kind of fun, because I can just, like, watch TV and do things I would normally do when I was sitting on the couch, and now I'm being active, which is nice, yeah, but yeah, but I know otherwise. Like, the thing about, okay, here's the thing, because you were saying how, like, You've lost so much weight and blah, blah, and you're always, like, you're always wanting to lose more. And my thing is that, like, I'm not super like, I see that my goal is 25 to 30 pounds, because I feel like that's totally doable in a year, and I don't want it to become like a completely different part of my life. Like, I like the way that I live, I like the things that I eat, I like the things that I do. And like, I don't know. I don't want, like, losing weight to, like, take over every moment of my day. Yeah,

Scott Benner 38:55
no, I understand. And I also don't want to put a number on it. That's so that would take so much time to get to that it would feel like a failure, even though you were moving in the right direction. Is that right? Yeah. Do you think you'd get to 25 pounds and go, Okay, that took as long as it took. I did it healthily. I'm gonna keep going. Or do you think you'd get to the number no matter what go, I did it, and that would be the end. Part

Emma 39:16
of me thinks I would just get to the number and be like, Okay, this is great, because, like, I remember what I looked like when I was that way. And the thing the thing about that is that however small I've been, I've always been, like, I look big, because that's just how women's brains work. Like we're just always comparing. So I don't know. Truth is, I don't know. I

Scott Benner 39:42
appreciate you talking through it. It's really very nice. It's it's a little listen. The one thing that's off putting about talking to you is you sound like you're 16, even though I know you're not. I know you're 23 and you're a teacher and you're out in the world being an adult and everything, getting married. But when you're talking like i i. There's a voice in my head that's like, don't ask her that she's so young. And then I'm like, No, she's not. Wait a minute. Like, it's hard to talk about, and I appreciate you talking about it, because it's obviously, it's not comfortable. Also, you know, where your body is good for you, your health and your happiness, etc, isn't necessarily tied to a BMI chart, you know, like, it's not at all. I'm happy to say that, like, I really don't care about, like, the number. I just care about my health, like it, really, like it, my blood work is so good now. And I'm like, okay, great, that's one step, but that's not a thing a 23 year old thinks about. And then, you know, like, my next step is to make sure I don't have a heart attack, like, that's literally, like, how I'm thinking about this, you know, my shirt size being smaller is nice and everything and, you know, but that's like, if I wasn't gonna have a heart attack and my blood work was good, I wouldn't, I wouldn't care about that part. Like, I'm gonna probably end up with loose skin. And the truth is, is, I don't think I care about that at all, you know, like, Good, yeah, even though it's visual, like, I don't think it's a thing I care about. You didn't have to adjust your insulin, though, the OmniPod five kind of did it for you, right? You just differently assessed the carbs until the pump caught up to your new need. Is that how you handled it? Yeah?

Emma 41:16
And my, yeah, and I, honestly, I don't I my settings. My endo gets mad at me because of how much I, like, I used to do, like, ghost carbs, because I would like have these highs, and I would like be looking at, like, that number, yeah. And so I would just tell my pump that I was eating even when I wasn't, and I've like, really tried to stop doing that, and I'm doing it less, partly because I'm not having as many highs because of Olympic but also because I'm just telling myself not to do it, and my pump will get smarter if I don't do it, my pump settings, my insulin to carp ratio and correction factor and all that stuff. I don't know how true it is, because for a while my incendi carb ratio was one unit to 10 carbs, because I would like look at food, and instead of seeing the carbs, I would see units, yeah, and so it was easier for my brain to have counter cats that like 10 units because it was easier math. And then my underwear just got mad at me, and she made me change my correct or my heart ratio. So now it's like eight. And so now I'm kind of having to relearn carbs are counting because I Wait.

Scott Benner 42:35
Was it working for you?

Emma 42:36
Yes or No, it was like, it was working fine, but I was like, just working too hard. And she was like, No, your pump settings need to be correct. And I was like, okay,

Scott Benner 42:47
so she made your insulin to carbo shoe a little stronger. Yes, okay. And that worked. That's been helpful. Yeah, have you remembered to go back into your manual settings and change them. So if you ever switch into manual, you're not getting like, like, crazily different amounts of insulin than you need. No, because your total daily insulin today is probably significantly lower than it was a year ago. Yeah,

Emma 43:14
right. I'm just never in manual, though, is the thing? Yeah?

Scott Benner 43:17
Well, you can go in your settings, just see your total daily insulin, do the basal, and then do the breakdown and go back and tell the manual, yeah, side of the pump. What's up? But okay, you don't go into manual ever. So OmniPod five works really well for you. Then,

Emma 43:32
yeah. Well, okay, my at my endocrinologist visit recently, she also suggested that I go to the, oh, it's the new, I should know the name of it. Oh, it's, it's the newer pump for teeth, slim. Is that the name of it? The Moby. I don't know it. It looks like an OmniPod, but it has, like an injection site and like a two inch tube.

Scott Benner 43:57
I think that's a tiny tube. Yeah. What's your A, 1c right now,

Emma 44:01
it's five, five.

Scott Benner 44:03
Why would she want you to change?

Emma 44:05
Because I struggle with my management around my period, and like, going from, like being super sensitive to being super resistant, and like having all that in my head is kind of hard, and like, taxing, right? And so if I were to switch pumps, I could have, like, a period program, basically, yeah, and be like it would. I could be able to make it really accurate, and whatever. And the other thing is that I could do extended boluses, which is something I, like, deeply miss from my OmniPod dash. Okay,

Scott Benner 44:44
yeah. Every time somebody comes on, they say to me, could you please ask OmniPod to put an extended bolus and OmniPod five? And I'm like, I not in charge of that. But okay, yeah, I hear that from a lot of people that they wish it had an extended bolus feature to help with, like, more fatty stuff, and I'm interested. To see what happens to you when they move you to the punjaro though, because I feels like there's a lot more ceiling for you that you haven't gotten to yet. Because the truth like, so we never got to this. So let's go backwards a little bit impact on I find it impacts like, three things. So how fast do you fill up your stomach, your physical stomach? Does your brain tell you you're hungry? Like, so does your brain tell you you're hungry ever sometimes?

Emma 45:25
But it's not. I don't know. The one thing that I've noticed, or if I get interrupt, is like food. Noise is like Gone, which I, like, always had before, right? I don't think about food and like, my next meal, and whatever, whatever I like, don't think about that stuff anymore, which is something that I did think about a lot, but, um, I would say I don't get hungry that often, but sometimes I do, depending on how long it's been since I've eaten, like I haven't I haven't eaten yet today, and I am Not super hungry, and it's like, 12, 130

Scott Benner 46:01
Yeah. So can you contextualize the difference between brain hunger and stomach hunger? I have sometimes a hard time explaining it, but like, you know what I mean? Like you have that empty feeling in your stomach, like you have to eat, versus the like I want food feeling in your head?

Emma 46:21
Yes, I so. I do feel stomach hunger, but not brain hunger.

Scott Benner 46:25
Okay. Do you have trouble eating even when you feel hungry? No, no,

Emma 46:30
not anymore. I think when I first started, I did, but not anymore.

Scott Benner 46:33
Okay. Did you have to teach yourself? I'm starting to think about it that way, like you almost have to teach yourself to eat on a GLP,

Emma 46:40
again, kind of, yeah, at school, I, like, don't eat a lot of food. I kind of only eat like one meal a day, like a big dinner, and then my lunches are like little snack packs with, like tiny crackers and like some cheese and like, that's it. Do

Scott Benner 47:01
you have a feeling for why you haven't lost more weight?

Emma 47:03
I don't know. I don't know just, I guess because, like, the food I'm eating, it's not that it's not nutritious, because I like, I eat my veggies and whatever. But I don't know, my boyfriend cooks with, like, lots of butter and tastes like that, which we're trying to cut that slow down. Yeah, we're not that active. Yeah, I

Scott Benner 47:27
think people think of butter as fat, but there's a lot of calories in butter too. Yeah, interesting. Are you just the person who like because you don't want people to see you sweaty, or because you just don't love activity, both food, noise. My wife talked about the food noise. She told me about it. I brought them up on here before, and she's like, I used to wake up in the morning, and first thing I thought was like, What's for breakfast? Yeah. Then she's like, and then I thought about it right up until I ate breakfast. Then I started thinking about what was for lunch. You know, that's that how it felt for you,

Emma 47:57
yeah. And it was not even like meals, but I'd be like, like, I would be like, bored, and I'd be like, Oh, I just want crackers, or I want like, chips. Like, I feel like it would be something to combat boredom, and I don't feel myself turning to food in that way anymore at all. Nice.

Scott Benner 48:18
That's excellent. Okay. Well, first of all, I wish you luck. I hope the night that the change, I mean, so are they going to put you on 2.5 to start or five of Manjaro?

Emma 48:27
I'm not sure. Okay, it's probably 2.5 for

Scott Benner 48:31
four weeks, then five for four weeks, then seven and a half. And they'll move you up until you get what you're looking for. Yeah? And then adding the activity will be a big deal for you, too. Pretty cool. Do you have trouble drinking water? Because some people even say, like, on the on the GLP, they not only you're not hungry, but you don't think about drinking either.

Emma 48:51
No, I like, I drink water, but I feel like I get dehydrated easier. I don't know I like, I feel like you need to drink more water than I had been. Okay. All right. Okay.

Scott Benner 49:04
So food, noise, hunger. So do your stomach feel empty ever? Like,

Emma 49:10
if I don't eat at school at all, then when I come home, I like, feel hungry in the way that my stomach is empty, which happens like, maybe, like, once every two weeks or something. I'm like, super busy at school, but I'm sorry, a lot of my answers are like, I don't know. Like, I It's weird, because I am someone who, like, researches things and gets super into that. But ozempic, I and and with diabetes, I'm like, super upfront, and I like to wear my sights where they're visible, and I like talk to you about it, yeah. But I think because there's so much stigma with ozempic, especially, I like, I'm not, I don't know. I'm not, like, shouting for the rooftops that I'm on OmniPod, because it's like, I don't know. I What will people think of me, which is like. Not nice, but I don't know. Oh,

Scott Benner 50:02
so, so what will they think of you that you're using a GLP medication?

Unknown Speaker 50:06
Yeah,

Scott Benner 50:07
are you afraid that they'll that'll make them think you have weight to lose? Or do you think, are you afraid it'll make them feel like you're cheating? Or what? What is it out of both?

Emma 50:18
Kind of both, and it's like, it's like, like, I am happy with how I look like, despite every, literally, everything I've said this podcast, like I am happy with how I look, and I don't like, I don't look in the mirror, and I don't hate myself. Like, I really am happy. So I feel like admitting that I'm on this medication I'm always like, but it's for my diabetes management, like it's for my insulin resistance. It's not because I'm trying to lose weight, which is, like, kind of ridiculous.

Scott Benner 50:50
I mean, it is, but I'm trying to figure out why you feel that way. Because I'm mentally

Emma 50:53
ill. I need to get therapist, that's why.

Scott Benner 50:58
But Do you actually believe you're mentally ill? No, that's just what the kids say. It's what the kids say. Do you think you need therapy?

Emma 51:05
I think everyone would benefit from therapy. Wait, even

Scott Benner 51:09
me, yes, I'm just kidding. Of course. I also, I, I get therapy all the time. On the podcast, I get to talk to people about all kinds of stuff. You're afraid of, what people will think I'm so I'm the opposite, like, if people say to me, Oh, God, you look amazing, the first thing I say is, I'm using zepbound. And they go, what? And then I make like, the, like, the motion, like I'm injecting something into my stomach, and they go, Oh, okay. But I haven't cared what anybody's thought of me since I was like, 15. I don't think so. It's awesome. Yeah, it's pretty cool. It just comes from, like,

Emma 51:42
I mean, you don't care, but like, I

Scott Benner 51:45
just, I grew up in a way where I needed to be my own person, you know what I mean, and I couldn't let somebody's opinion of what I was supposed to be doing or or thinking, like, impact me. Or I would have got sucked down a rabbit hole of being what they wanted me to be and I wasn't up for that. Having said that, I still I know that that's not as easy said. It's easier said than done for a lot of people, and I'm just I after I joked about this earlier, I feel weird saying this, but I am just lucky that that's the way my brain works. So you know, I recognize that it's just it's a crapshoot to feel the way you feel about something like I could easily be uncomfortable eating in front of people, and you could be, you know, super confident. And you know what I mean, like, who would know why it happens for one person not the other, right? But yeah, like, I just tell them right away. I'm like, I'm using ozempic work, great. I've lost 47 pounds. Like, oh, my God, that's terrific. You're all done. I'm like, Nope, I want to lose more. How much I'm like, doesn't really matter, but my guess is 15 or 20 pounds, and they go, no, no, you look terrific. I said, Please don't say that, because I don't care how I look. Try not to have a heart attack. One of the things I've run into the most along this journey is people telling me that I've lost too much weight, really, yeah. And I'm like, What is this? Then this thing I can hold on to here in front of me that has nothing to do with anything. It's not an organ. It's not important. It's not a muscle. Like, what is this? You look great, and it's just people are short sighted. They're like, You look better than the last time I saw you, so you're good. Yeah, that's how they think about it. But like, so what would happen if, I don't know if Emma was in the grocery store and some lady walked up to her and said, Oh, do you remember me from church? Let's just say, and you go, I don't remember you from church. She goes, I remember you. You've lost weight, you look great. What happens next in your mind?

Emma 53:38
I would be like, Oh, thanks. And then I would ask her something else, like, I wouldn't because, because, in my head, it's like, why are you commenting on my body?

Scott Benner 53:52
I don't know. Okay, what if you brought it up? What if, if they said to you, my God, you look so much healthier. I'm trying to do that. What did you do and you like were openly,

Emma 54:02
if they asked what I did, then I would be honest, for sure, but only if they asked such

Scott Benner 54:10
an interesting thing between the generations here, if I may, hold on a second, because everybody's judging each other constantly. It's, I mean, right, you do it?

Emma 54:20
Do you not? Yeah, yeah, no, yeah.

Scott Benner 54:23
So are you worried about what people are thinking of you? Because you know what you're thinking about them. No, okay,

Emma 54:28
I don't know. I'm not. I'm not a judgey person, but like you can't not like you can't just turn that part of your brain off. It's part of being a person, and that woman,

Scott Benner 54:38
if it's a human thing, to look at other people and make a judgment. When you talk about it, you say people judge each other like it's a bad thing, isn't it a normal thing?

Emma 54:48
I know in my brain that I'm saying nice things about other people in my head, but I don't I know that other people don't do that. You

Scott Benner 54:56
know, because you hear them. I.

Emma 55:00
No, because I assume the worst of humanity.

Scott Benner 55:06
But do you should I assume the worst of you? No, why would you assume the worst of them? Then it's

Emma 55:13
I don't know them. I don't know who they are, and they're strangers.

Scott Benner 55:17
This is interesting. I'm enjoying this. First of all, it doesn't matter what they think of you, because they have no impact or sway over you at all, like nothing, yeah, and if they're not actually saying it to you, then your worry is only something you're manifesting in your own mind. Right,

Emma 55:33
right? Okay, here's the thing, here's the thing, here's the thing, here's the thing, because it's, it's less about strangers, it's less about people, I mean, on the street, like, I really don't care about people that I don't know. It's more about social media and like, people that I know from high school, who I haven't seen in like, five years. Like, obviously, I look different than I did when I was in high school. And like, thinking about what they think about it and that sort of thing. It's not really about strangers.

Scott Benner 56:05
So it's not your mom, it's not people that you don't know on the streets. It's about people who you tangentially know, who will see you on Instagram. Yes,

Emma 56:15
which is so dumb. Oh, I

Scott Benner 56:17
know I'm listening to you. Yeah. So like, may I ask what seems like the most obvious question, why don't you delete Instagram?

Emma 56:24
Because it's have to be connected so that you can feel badly. No, I here's the thing. I don't I don't post that much on Instagram anymore. Like, I'm not like, it's not something that I obsess over. It's just like, when I feel like I should post, for example, getting engaged. I like, am constantly thinking about that, but if I don't have to post on Instagram, then I don't

Scott Benner 56:50
how many followers do you have on Instagram? Like, over 1000 I'm not laughing at you, but I am. Hold on a second. How many of them do you think are actually still on Instagram? I don't know. Okay, when you put up a picture, how many people like it? What's your number? I know, you know. I definitely know. You know,

Emma 57:07
my normal is like 200 ish, maybe a little bit more. But then my engagement post got like 700 Okay, or something,

Scott Benner 57:18
so a fifth of the people that follow you on Instagram, normally, like your picture, and when you put up your engagement picture, then all those, all those nosy bitches, like, double click, that is that, right? Yeah, okay, and this is a thing you've been like, you've can you've concerned yourself with,

Emma 57:39
yes, because I have to. It's not like I want to think about this. It's because I have to. Emma, do

Scott Benner 57:44
you know what I love about you? What you answer one way, but your voice says, I don't agree with what I'm saying, while you're saying, No, it's

Unknown Speaker 57:53
true. It's like, I hate

Scott Benner 57:56
this. It's fantastic to listen to you argue with yourself. It's like, my favorite thing, and if you don't giggle every couple of seconds, I feel like I'm letting you down. But that's neither here nor there. So you won't delete Instagram because it's very important, but it mostly makes you feel bad, but not because of what somebody says, but because of what you are afraid they're thinking, Yes, you understand this is all anxiety, right? Yes, right. So you don't just have an anxiety about eating in front of people. You have anxiety in general. Anxiety in general. Yes, yeah, you should have my job for a couple of weeks. You'd stop caring what people thought of you. Why? Oh, my God. Because if I got upset every time somebody cursed at me or told me that I'm pushing carbs on people, I'm pushing a GLP agenda. You deleted my comment, and that wasn't fair. You're trying to there. I don't have free speech. And then all the whining and fcking crying from the very what, you realize it's a very small percentage of people. It's not everybody. I have listen because I'm going to talk in your language for a minute. Okay? I have 21,000 Instagram followers. I have 75,000 Facebook followers, and my podcast has over 17 million downloads. Wow, I have reviews that call me a misogynist. Somebody is going to listen to this episode and say that I fat shamed you like no matter what I say or do out loud, someone's going to disagree with me or how I said something, or the word I chose, or that I laughed earlier about, everybody apologizes for everything all the time, because that is a very crazy, like young liberal, woke thing to do. Yeah, I just want to apologize for my privilege before I speak like, Jesus Christ, just say the fcking thing. Like, like, you know what I mean? Like, like, I you have insurance, and somebody else doesn't. Yeah, it's a travesty. It absolutely is. Everyone should have insurance. I'm not saying that, but we can't apologize for every like, how are we ever going to get through a problem if we can't talk about it? Great, we're always apologizing. I used to say all the time that when I was just blogging for diabetes, I would always say that most people's blogs were just so, like, filled with them apologizing before they spoke. They'd spend a paragraph saying, like, Listen, I'm not a doctor. This is not advice. You should not pre bolus your meals. It could be dangerous if you don't eat blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But by the way, I pre bolus my meal like they'd spend five sentences out of talking you out of pre bolusing before letting you know that they pre bolus. And I was

Emma 1:00:34
that about is that about society? Or is that just about like liability?

Scott Benner 1:00:37
Is that the same thing? If I'm gonna say I just picked up my GLP meds on Friday. You know what? I paid for them? What? $25 so if I don't start by going, I want to just recognize that I have privilege, and I have a good health care and I can afford $25 and and it's also I have a car, and I'm so lucky to have a car, because so many people are are unable to drive, and I was able to drive to the pharmacy and like so I want to really say that I recognize my privilege, which is just basically saying, Here's my disclaimer before I tell you how much my GLP medication costs. And then if I if I recognize my privilege, then you're not allowed to be mad at me, right? But you know, who's mad when people are mad? Who just people who want to be mad? Yeah, yeah. No one's upset that I have insurance. Nobody gives a gift that I have insurance, right? But it but there are people who take great pleasure in going you have something, and they don't. You said it out loud. You're making people feel bad. I'm not making people feel bad. How am I making people feel bad by saying I have health insurance ridiculous in some way, shape or form, that, like apologizing before you're speaking is no different than putting out a disclaimer before you say something valuable, like you're trying to deaden the response that comes back, but you really mean what you're saying.

Emma 1:02:00
Right? Yeah.

Scott Benner 1:02:02
I say to this, I believe that a lot of your anxiety, and even people your age's anxiety, is coming from this thing that you're worried is happening in other people's heads. Yeah, and what I'm saying is them, who cares what they think? Go

Emma 1:02:19
ahead. That sounds wonderful. That sounds wonderful. That sounds wonderful coming out of your mouth. But can I get that in my brain? Sure. No, right now, therapy.

Scott Benner 1:02:26
Well, listen, I just watched this thing. Listen, let me tell you something. Emma, why you say no, maybe I can. Okay, okay, I just watched on the Netflix. I don't know if you're aware of what Netflix is. There was a What's that called when they tell you a bunch of stuff, and it's not entertaining. Oh, Christ. Why is the simplest word escaping me? It's a movie that's informative. To tell you about a thing like a documentary. Thank you, Jesus Christ. That was embarrassing. Okay, so I just watched a documentary that I want to say that rob the editor of the podcast, told me about it's about gut health, right? And at some point in the documentary, there are these people who are using other people's poop to replace their own gut biome. Now let me just say this real quick. Hold on, Emma, 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. I said that mostly because of how we were talking about disclaimers medical and I thought it was funny. So anyways, this lady comes on, lady girl, she was in her mid 20s. I think she's talking about her poop doesn't go well, like, just a, I mean, a literal show when she's on the toilet, right? Everything's wrong. Seven, stage, like, six, you got it. You were paying attention. Emma, okay, like, she's got the diarrhea. Things are going wrong. She's like, she said something like, I can't enjoy food, like, I have anxiety when I'm eating because of what's gonna happen later. And she hears about this, these studies they're doing, where they're replacing people's like, gut biome with other people's like, poop like, you know, but very medically. But these are just studies, and this woman's like, gonna do it on her own. So hold on, you don't, don't cut me around. Oh yeah, she's gonna find a friend, right, and have a capsule, and she's gonna eat it. I don't know the details, but she does take her brother's poopy and put it in capsules. And I don't know any of the details, and I'm not joking, try this, okay, because I don't know what I'm talking about. I'm just relaying a story. So she does that, and in some time, she develops, I believe, hormonal acne that she's never had, never had in her life, but her brother has what? Yeah, no, hold on Emma. So then she realizes that's where it's from, and she pivots to her boyfriend's shit. I was just gonna say, oh my god, right. And she pivots to the boyfriend. The Acne goes away. OmniPod, and she starts picking up the boyfriend's mental health issues. What I know, right? There are little bugs that live in your belly. Did you know there are

Emma 1:05:10
bugs in your belly? Oh, and

Scott Benner 1:05:14
they change your the way your body works. This is what she was saying. So what I'm saying is Emma. I think if I shit in a pill and you ate it, you might be more

Emma 1:05:29
confident over Scott. I'm ready. Can I tell you, as long as you'll package them, I don't want

Scott Benner 1:05:38
to do the hard work. Okay? I know none of the details of how this is work. I don't think she just, well, listen, first of all, I don't know, but because they don't go over the details of how it actually happens, I would assume that's on purpose. We could ask chat. GPT knows, but I just want to tell you a second. This is a complete sidebar how proud I am of myself because I've wanted to mention the documentary on the podcast. I had no idea how to bring it up, oh my gosh, and that I fitted it in here and so x, I mean, really expertly wrapped it around all the themes of our conversation. I feel like a ingenious right now. Yes, yeah, no, I really do. No, no, no, seriously, I feel very good about myself right now. But how crazy would that be if, yeah, if that, if something like that is because if your anxiety, like, what if you changed your gut flora and your anxiety changed, this is not beyond the shadow of reasonability. If you listen to that documentary,

Emma 1:06:36
by the way, what was the name of the documentary? Well, remember? I

Scott Benner 1:06:40
mean, remember is a strong word. I couldn't remember the word documentary five minutes ago. But hold on a second, I'll find out for you. Props to rob, by the way, hack your health, the secrets of your gut. Okay, I enjoyed it. Don't look at the rot and tell you to score. Those people didn't like it at all. But I also think they said something about autism that pissed off a bunch of people whose kids have autism, so that might have hurt the Rotten Tomatoes score. Nevertheless, I don't know how valuable the information in that documentary is, but I will say this that I thought, my God, that girl got hormonal acne after never having it her whole life, and then picked up her boyfriend's mental health issues, like when she changed to his gut biome. And I was like, so they're looking at how to do this, but, but try to imagine, imagine one day in the future, you go to the doctor and say, Hey, I have social anxiety, and I'm very worried about what people think to the degree that I can't eat in front of people. And, you know, blah, blah, blah. And they walked up to you with a shaker, and they were like, hey, here you go. You said, What's this? You said, I just some shit from a really confident person. Oh, my God, my God. The

Emma 1:07:47
future is just, it pills, everything. No more medication. Just,

Scott Benner 1:07:54
I'm telling you, it's, I don't know that. It's crazy, pills and chat GPT taking over the world will just be robots and poopy pills everywhere. All right? Emma pills, poopy pills. Yeah, it's all about poopy pills, right now, that's what I'm saying. The whole world's just shit pills. You said, Have we fixed anything here today for you? Or no?

Emma 1:08:17
Fixed a strong word giving you a different perspective, like, right? Yes, I do feel like I've gained a different perspective. I have many things to think about. We'll probably be looking for a therapist as well.

Scott Benner 1:08:31
How many more therapy sessions with me until you're not anxious anymore? Do you think?

Emma 1:08:36
Yeah, I don't know. Yeah, I'd have to start paying you big bucks. First of all, I

Scott Benner 1:08:39
can't collect a fee on that because I'm not a physician, and that would be that would be against the law. But I want to say that I also don't think that anything about, you know what's funny? May we be serious just for fun at the end here. Yes, a lot of people write me and tell me that listening to the podcast has helped them with a lot of problems like this, and people who have been on the show have written me back to say that they've made some pretty big changes after our conversation. So I don't know that it's crazy, but it does seem unlikely to me, because you just said something so interesting a minute ago. You're like, how do I put that in my head? And I don't, obviously, I don't know that there's an answer to that, especially if it also could be biological, right? Is your mom anxious?

Emma 1:09:27
I think so. I'm very similar to my mom in a lot of different ways. Part of

Scott Benner 1:09:30
the documentary says that when you're in there cooking in the belly, you don't have any bacteria, and your first introduction to bacteria is coming face first through the hoochie canal, and you pick up hoochie stuff, bacteria, and then it's actually valuable that I can't believe I'm saying this. It's actually valuable that you come out near the mom's butthole, because you pick up some bacteria there that helps you right away to digest food and stuff like that.

Emma 1:09:57
Interesting, isn't that crazy?

You think any of that's true?

Scott Benner 1:10:02
I don't know. I don't either, but I'm going to talk more about documentaries on the podcast, because it's fun, but isn't that crazy? So you get those, you get bacteria like, moment one coming out, and then you've taken more through all these different things, and then you get this little like mix. But what if you started out with your mom's anxious bacteria. God, I wonder if any of that's

Emma 1:10:23
true, but I feel like my brother is not anxious. Maybe he came out first. Yeah, I don't know. I guess

Scott Benner 1:10:30
his face would still end up near a butthole at some point, though.

Emma 1:10:32
No, no, no, Scott, we were both C sections Oh, that's

Scott Benner 1:10:37
another thing they talk about in the in the documentary, that people who are C sectioned have different bacteria issues.

Unknown Speaker 1:10:42
This documentary covers everything. Oh, and please go watch

Scott Benner 1:10:45
it. Of course, really, of course you do, by the way. Now people are gonna be like Scott's listen to pseudoscience and blah, blah, blah again. Let me be clear, if you're thinking about it right now, go yourself. It's just a podcast and it's free. Don't listen if you don't like it. Okay, I don't care, by the way. I do care. I genuinely care. Please listen. I need to listen. But no, but, um, yeah, no, I listen. The details are auspicious, because my brain's not good, but I they talked about that there's a difference between being C sectioned and vaginal birth. Did your mom not love you enough to have you vaginally? What happened there?

Emma 1:11:18
I don't know exactly, honestly? Well, I know that my brother was C section, and then you can't deliver vaginally once you've had a C section,

Scott Benner 1:11:26
yeah, then they talk about the zipper, right? Like you just kind of pop it back open again, bring the baby out. Yeah, yeah, wow. Uh, also, I don't think if your mom didn't have you vaginally, that this doesn't love you. That was sarcasm, in case some of you can't hear that. Oh, that's interesting. All right, okay, I don't know. I love you, Emma.

Emma 1:11:45
I love you too. Thank you. This is awesome.

Scott Benner 1:11:48
I swear to God, these are the best conversations. I don't know what the UF you and I talk about, but like I told you, before we started recording, Isabelle, like, sent me a note. She's like, at the end of Emma's episode, you said you were gonna get back on and talk about her ozempic. And she's like, are you doing that book that she's such a nice girl. And I'm like, okay, she loved you. That's so sweet. Yeah, that nice,

Emma 1:12:10
yeah. All right. Would

Scott Benner 1:12:11
you have any questions for me?

Emma 1:12:13
I don't think so. Okay. Would you Well, okay. Would you actually be interested in booking an episode with Jose? He does not have diabetes, but he's similar to you and a caretaker way. But I don't know if you talk to people like that on here. Is that worth it? I don't know.

Scott Benner 1:12:27
Periodically I have once or twice. It's usually like one time I did a sister who had type one and her non type one sister. I interviewed both of them. I thought that was interesting. I think the problem becomes like, genuinely, the problem becomes, is that I get them on I say, like, so you're taking an interest in Emma's diabetes. He goes, Yes. And then I go, how so? And he goes, I understand, like, how to bolster things, stuff like that. I'm like, Oh, that's cool. That's nice of you. And then I don't know where it goes from there. Yeah,

Emma 1:12:56
no, that makes total sense. You like, it does not hurt my feelings that you are not interested in that at all. How

Scott Benner 1:13:01
is this the thing that doesn't hurt your feelings like an absolutely here you were absolutely turned down, like a person said directly to you, no, I don't like your idea. And you're like, that's

Emma 1:13:11
fine. No, no, no, for real. I'm just saying to your podcast, but it's not mine. But if

Scott Benner 1:13:17
you thought about putting up an Instagram post about this, wouldn't you kill yourself for six months wondering how I would respond.

Emma 1:13:23
Maybe, perhaps, Emma, did

Scott Benner 1:13:26
I tell you that worry is a waste of imagination? The last time we spoke?

Emma 1:13:29
No quote though. Yeah, it really is.

Scott Benner 1:13:33
You're wearing yourself to death. All you people out there, all you anxious people. I know it's not on purpose, by the way, I feel terrible like I'm being super serious, like I've had so many conversations with people who suffer with anxiety, and all you feel while you're talking to them is, I do really wish I could get in a pill and make them not feel this or what I don't really having that kind of lack of, that nervousness and that, that one wondering, I can't imagine How upsetting it is to feel like shackled by it. Yeah, you know it's,

Emma 1:14:04
it's quite debilitating at some points. Yeah, but it's not, it's not a constant thing for me, at least, which is good,

Scott Benner 1:14:10
right? Well, you do well, I mean, you, you teach people like that. You don't have any trouble with being in front of those people while they're No,

Emma 1:14:17
yeah, no. And like, when I'm in teacher mode, I feel like my anxiety goes away completely, like I could be in front of the entire elementary school, which I have to do weekly. I don't get nervous about it at all. That's

Unknown Speaker 1:14:28
fascinating kids, is

Emma 1:14:29
it just kids? It's like they're the

Scott Benner 1:14:32
judges, people on the planet. No, but they're,

Emma 1:14:35
but they're elementary kids. Like, when you get to middle school, it's like, I would never teach middle school in a million years. But like elementary kids, they're just like, sweet and they love you, or they love me at least. Have you seen

Scott Benner 1:14:46
all those end of year tiktoks from teachers, the ones who write down every thing a kid said to them all year and then read some into their camera.

Emma 1:14:53
But that's middle school and high school usually is right? I guarantee, yeah.

Scott Benner 1:14:57
Are you poor one kid? Ask the lady. She goes, why? And she goes, any kid says, because of those pants you're wearing,

Emma 1:15:04
oh my gosh, oh

Scott Benner 1:15:06
my God, just a launch. There's a never ending supply of videos of teachers telling you the things that students told them that year, and they're really horrifying. Yeah, so, but you're saying younger kids are all like, in a different mode, yeah,

Emma 1:15:21
like, like, I have gotten the worst I've gotten was after I got engaged, I came to school and all the kids were, like, so excited, and they all went to see my ring, and they were really sweet about it. And then one of my kindergarteners, like, saw all the commotion. She came up and she was like, are you pregnant? And I was like, No, I'm not pregnant.

Scott Benner 1:15:46
I'm already trying. I got it was epic. I'm working on it. Okay,

Emma 1:15:53
right? Yeah, but she didn't mean by it. It was just her being sweet and trying to be excited. I don't know. She saw

Scott Benner 1:15:58
a bunch of people being excited around you, and her mind went to, oh, she's having a baby, yeah, but that you didn't see poorly. You didn't say, Oh, my God, that kid's judging my weight. No, you're fascinating, Emma. How come on? It's because they're kids.

Emma 1:16:13
Yes, it's because they're kids and they're pure, yeah, I don't know it's much. It's easier. Here's the thing, I It's so much easier for me to be around kids and old people like I don't like being around people my age. Isn't that weird? No,

Scott Benner 1:16:30
I see what you're saying. See, because this goes to show how close you are to not having to suffer with this. Because if they're children of a certain age, you believe their thoughts are pure, and you think that old people's thoughts are pure, no, no, just easier

Emma 1:16:44
to talk to because, because they're, like, easier to joke with. I don't know I feel like, I feel like I'm an old soul in that way. I just find it easier because I'm listening. Because when I'm at school, I'm in teacher mode, and I'm not like my 20 year old self. I'm like, pretending I'm a teacher or an authority figure because I have to, because I'm a teacher, and I have a bunch of fifth graders who will bully me if I don't. So

Scott Benner 1:17:08
you make it as a teacher, yes, and you're comfortable with older people because they're more mature, and you feel like because of that, they're easier to talk to, they've seen more of the world. Do you think that they're going to be less judgmental because they've they're beyond it all,

Emma 1:17:21
I think so. And it's also because I feel like they look at me and they're like, Oh, she's just a fun one year old, and she's so cute and fun. But that's

Scott Benner 1:17:30
your opinion of what they think, yeah. Also, it was your opinion of what the kids think, and your opinion of what the people online might think, yeah, yeah. You don't actually know any of these people, no, right? Well, but can I tell you some things I know about old people for sure? What's two things I can tell you for sure what they're judging every moment of your life? Okay, that's the first thing, because they're alive. And the second thing is, if they're in a home, they're in like rabbits. You understand what I'm saying right now? Please. No, they are. They are. They are. Think about it. I want you to think about it. No, I actually don't. Anyway, do you know that you might not find a higher instance of STDs than in an old folks home?

Emma 1:18:14
That's horrifying information.

Scott Benner 1:18:16
Well, now you know those are the people you're comfortable

Emma 1:18:19
with. Oh my gosh. I actually, just to be clear, I actually did mean my coworkers who are probably around your age. That's actually

Scott Benner 1:18:29
old. You meant like me, so not like geriatric. Yeah, I'm very judgmental too. But see, it's funny, I don't see myself as judgmental. I generalize a lot because I think it's a quicker way to get to something, and I don't have time to, like, learn everybody's like, you know what I mean, like everyone's ins and outs when most of the ins and outs are fairly similar. But I don't, I really don't judge people like i And it's funny, because if I said that, if ARD was in here and I said, I don't judge people. We would then have a two hour podcast about it. Okay, actually, that's a great idea. But I don't feel judgmental of people. I genuinely do not care what you do, what you think, how you are like I really don't care. I am incredibly interested in it, and because of that, I talk about it a lot, and I wonder out loud about people's motivations and what they do in my personal life and on the podcast, etc. Yeah, but I have no judgment about it. Like you said, your height and weight earlier, I didn't have a thought in the world. I didn't go, oh, that means a thing. I just thought, I need those numbers so I can tell you what your BMI is, so we can talk about it like that and and I don't like I have no judgment about it whatsoever, none. I have no opinion about whether you should or shouldn't lose weight. I don't care. I get involved in these conversations. But me, personally, I'm very agnostic about things. Yeah, I really, genuinely, I genuinely don't give a what any of you do. You don't. To jump off a bridge if you want to do I'd be like, Oh my god, that was horrible, and that would be the last time I think about it. And so like, yeah, agnostics the right word,

Emma 1:20:08
Yeah, but you're not Wow. No, no, all right, I

Scott Benner 1:20:12
don't know what you're gonna do. Yeah? Is Jose anxious? Not

Emma 1:20:17
as much as me. Well, I feel like we're anxious about different things, interesting, like, he he has some relationship anxiety, but I don't at all with you, yeah, just because of, like, past relationships, like nothing that I've done. Oh, he thinks you're gonna break up with him. No, no. But when I get upset, he gets super anxious.

Scott Benner 1:20:42
Oh yeah, Disney from a divorced family, yes, yeah. He thinks you're gonna get he thinks your thing's gonna when he sees the angry people, he thinks there's gonna be a disillusion of the family, right? Yeah, I used

Emma 1:20:54
to feel like that. I don't carry any anxiety in our relationship at all. About

Scott Benner 1:20:59
your relationship. You have no anxiety, yeah, which is so beautiful. Just about your Instagram posts,

Emma 1:21:06
yeah, but you won't get rid of Instagram, no, because it's important. Yes,

Scott Benner 1:21:13
all right, I don't know what to do. We're finished. Now it's over.

Unknown Speaker 1:21:18
Yeah, we're not

Emma 1:21:19
gonna go anywhere from here. Yeah, there's

Scott Benner 1:21:21
nowhere to go. Just delete the thing. What do you care? Seriously, I only have it because I have this podcast. Yeah, that's fair. Yeah, if I didn't have this podcast, I wouldn't know what Instagram was. Wow, what's that like? It's fantastic because you're old, that's why, yeah, but what is okay? One last thing. What does that mean? Why? Because I'm older. Do I not care about Instagram? Because I grew up with Instagram, just like I grew up, I had a computer to stop it. Like, like, no, no, I had a computer. I had the internet. I know how to like, I know all about that. I've had all the little different social media things coming up, whatever those things were called, then Facebook, when it was huge, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, but why does it matter?

Emma 1:22:09
Oh, no, here's the thing, here's the thing. No, here's the thing, because it answers it doesn't. But also, I don't live in my hometown where I grew up, and I also don't live where I went to college, so I have all these people around the country who I'm friends with who are doing things I don't know what they're up to, unless I I'm

Scott Benner 1:22:30
gonna say something horrible. Are you really friends with them if you don't know what they're up to? Oh, okay, but aren't they just followers who you've met in person once?

Emma 1:22:41
No, not once. No, these are like friends from college in high school.

Scott Benner 1:22:48
When you're 40, you're gonna think back on those people and go, I wonder what happened to him, and you're gonna have no idea, and you're not gonna care. And if he's only presenting himself like, do you present yourself as you are on Instagram or the best version of you? Oh, the best version. Then, do you really know how those people are no, but I want to know what they're up to. I

Emma 1:23:06
don't know when they're getting engaged. Well, you

Scott Benner 1:23:08
want to know what they're up to. They think to pull out their phone when they think they have a good photo to take. That's not what they're up to. Emma, I'm right. It's okay if you don't want to.

Emma 1:23:17
But the thing is that Instagram is not going away. Social media is not going away.

Scott Benner 1:23:21
It goes away be the leader. It's completely gone. For the same reason. I don't understand how somebody could become cyber bullied. I don't understand why you won't delete Instagram.

Emma 1:23:32
Yeah. Well,

Scott Benner 1:23:33
do you know who? I know for sure is real, what? Right now I could walk downstairs at this moment in my life. See my son, my daughter, my wife and two dogs. These are the people I know for sure are alive. That's it. My neighbors left to go somewhere a couple of days ago. They could be dead. I have no idea if they never came back. I wouldn't even think twice about it. I'd be like, I wonder why that house is like, just sitting there. That's maybe what I would think. Okay, so like, and if my neighbor, I'm using them as an example, because they're lovely people. And this is definitely not happening. If my neighbor was somewhere right now seated, and he had 20 people around him, he goes, I want to tell you a story about a mother named Scott, okay, and he was bad mouthing me, like he was using all the like, the favorites, like, I should just get up all my bad reviews and read them. He's saying those types of things about me, right? Like just a horrible person, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, and he doesn't care about these. Is a massages now, he had this girl on one time. She was a stripper. He talked about her boobs. What a idiot, all that stuff. Okay, by the way, she's a stripper. What do you want me to talk to her about physics? Also, she's a lovely girl, and I really like her, and, but that's not the point. Yeah, he's off in the world somewhere, trashing me right now, I'm unaware of it. Does it matter? It matters to you, doesn't it?

Emma 1:24:49
I think so. Yeah, I

Scott Benner 1:24:51
don't give a why would it matter? There's 20 people I've never met before, three states over my neighbors telling them bad stuff about me. Why does it matter? Her, Emma, you're not going to help me because you don't think, yeah, because you agree with me.

Emma 1:25:06
I do.

Scott Benner 1:25:08
When's this going to change? What do you think will happen that'll that'll shift you? I

Emma 1:25:12
think maybe when I like, have a family, when I have my own kids, when I'm I don't know, worrying too much about their life and I can't I don't just have to worry about mine.

Scott Benner 1:25:23
Is it wrong of me to say when you have something that's actually worth worrying about to worry about? No,

Emma 1:25:27
no, that's probably true. Okay, all right. Oh, this episode's

Scott Benner 1:25:31
gonna get me in a ton of trouble. I hope you're happy. I can't wait to see that. I can't wait to see the reviews. Let's see which one of you is wokest When you review my conversation with Emma. Good luck. You

Emma 1:25:41
think they'll listen this way, all this way. There's no

Scott Benner 1:25:44
way they make it to them. No, no, we lost them. They were already writing the bad review back when I said, I don't I don't want to apologize for having health insurance before I talk about something like, yeah, they're already like this motherfucker, although used like words that make them sound fancy? Yeah, you want me to read you the words. I can find it for you real quick. Gonna find the last bad review and tell you what they said. I'm sure the last social justice warrior who left her review called me a misogynist. On a second, we'll find out I have a daughter.

Emma 1:26:14
Wait, so where do they write these reviews?

Scott Benner 1:26:16
I gonna tell you that.

Emma 1:26:19
Why don't you delete that app. You

Scott Benner 1:26:21
can't, because I get a report about I have I'm a business owner. I get a report about them sent to me.

Emma 1:26:29
Well, delete those emails. Okay, well, I

Scott Benner 1:26:31
don't read them with Listen, do I sound worried about this review? No, oh, here. Oh, here's the last person that hit me on the here's my latest privilege email.

Emma 1:26:41
Oh gosh, take

Scott Benner 1:26:42
a shot. Lose weight one star. I assume they would have given me zero stars if it gave them the opportunity. Wait, that's all they said. No, that's the title. Oh, as a person with type one that has struggled with body image issues, listening to Scott talk about how great he looks and feels because of we go, V is getting really annoying. That was wearing capital is really an annoying. And they used, and I want to be clear, I don't want to get this wrong. 123, it looks like six exclamation points. So I think they really meant it. If only we could all just take a shot to lose weight. Check your privilege. I want the person to know who wrote that, that, when I read that, I laughed like a son of a bitch, like I was like, how could that possibly bother them so much that they were like, how do you leave a review for this podcast? I have a weight loss diary trying to help people understand what it's like to be on a GLP medication because a lot of people are using it. I'm being incredibly honest while I'm on there, because I don't think it's going to be helpful if I get on and pretend, and I also don't think it'll be helpful if I get on and apologize for 20 minutes every time before I say something that you need to know anyway. That was that was that one. A lot of these are really great. I don't want to lie to you these. A lot of these are actually fantastic. Five stars, incredibly helpful. Uh, thank you for doing this. Everyone should have the juicebox podcast. All right. Fairness, there's not a lot of bad but I don't know. I fully admit, I don't understand why anybody would leave a review for anything. I've listened to things that I've completely disagreed with, and it has never made me want to leave a review for it. I don't understand, like, your whole generation of like, my thoughts are so important, I'm going to put them here. You know, who sees those reviews? Nobody, and if they do, it's because they're trying to figure out if this podcast is going to help them with their diabetes. And you may have just talked them out of trying it. And by the way, I don't talk about a GLP medication in the Pro Tip series, the bowl beginning series, or a number of other places where people with type one diabetes learn how to be healthy and take good care of themselves. So I hope that person's happy they probably just killed a child. Can you hear sarcasm? Emma anymore? It's yeah, okay, it's

Emma 1:28:51
okay. That's so funny. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:28:56
I'm done. Are you okay?

Emma 1:28:57
Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:29:00
you get me very chatty.

Unknown Speaker 1:29:02
I'm so glad. I

Scott Benner 1:29:03
appreciate this. Thank you so much. Hold on one second. You're just gonna keep talking. You're so amenable.

Emma 1:29:12
I'm I like I said. I don't have anything else going on today. It could be a six hour episode. I

Scott Benner 1:29:17
can't afford to edit a six hour episode. The guy that does these swear words you're gonna have to bleep out? Yeah, I can't even afford to run this one. But okay, hold on a second.

Arden started using a contour meter because of its accuracy, but she continues to use it because it's durable and trustworthy. If you have diabetes you want the contour, next gen blood glucose meter. There's already so many decisions. Let me take this one off your plate. Contour, next.com/juicebox Are you tired of getting a rash from your CGM adhesive? Give the Eversense 365 a try. Eversense. Cgm.com/juicebox, beautiful silicone that they use. It changes every day, keeps it fresh. Not only that, you only have to change the sensor once a year. So, I mean, that's better. 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. I can't thank you enough for listening. Please make sure you're subscribed or following in your audio app. I'll be back tomorrow with another episode of The juicebox podcast. I want to thank you so much for listening and remind you please subscribe and follow to the podcast wherever you're listening right now, if it's YouTube, Apple podcast, Spotify, or any other audio app, go hit follow or subscribe, whichever your app allows for and set up those downloads so you never miss an episode, especially in Apple podcasts, go into your settings and choose, download all new episodes. The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way, recording, wrong way, recording.com

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#1351 Caregiver Burnout: Experiencing Chronic Sorrow

A three part series about caregiver burnout with Erika Forsyth.

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

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

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

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

Today. Erica Forsyth is back, and we're going to do a short series on caregiver burnout, this is part one. 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 healthcare plan or becoming bold with insulin to save 40% off of your entire order@cozyearth.com All you have to do is use the offer code juicebox at checkout. That's juicebox at checkout to save 40% at cozy earth.com if you are the caregiver of someone with type one diabetes or have type one yourself, please go to T 1d exchange.org/juicebox and complete the survey. This should take you about 10 minutes, and will really help type one diabetes research. You can help right from your house at T 1d exchange.org/juicebox, Erica Forsyth is a type one herself and a therapist for families with type one diabetes to learn more about her. Go to Erica forsyth.com. Eric, can see you in person or virtually in California and virtually in Oregon, Utah, Vermont and Florida.

This episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by ag one drink. Ag one.com/juicebox when you use my link and place your first order, you're going to get a welcome kit, a year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs. Can you name the only CGM that has only one sensor placement and one warm up period every year? Think about it. It doesn't matter if you can, I can. Eversense 365 is sponsoring this episode of The juicebox podcast, Eversense, cgm.com/juicebox, a year's a long time. The episode you're about to listen to is sponsored by OmniPod and the OmniPod five. Learn more at omnipod.com/juicebox use my links to support the show. Erica. How are you?

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 2:21
I'm great. Thank you. How are you? You're

Scott Benner 2:25
great, but your power just went out. We just got you back in time to record.

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 2:28
Yes, good thing.

Scott Benner 2:30
Things are happening now. It's Friday. Day's almost over for me. For you just getting started, but nevertheless, I get a note from you pretty recently, after we saw each other for the first time, Eric and I got to meet in person at the touch by type one event in Orlando, and you had an experience there that gave you an idea for the podcast. Can you tell people about

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 2:53
it? Yes. Well, first it was, it was such a joy to be at the conference and get to meet you in person, and Jenny in person, and all the wonderful people who run touch by type one. And just being there, I was there to speak in two different seminars, one for teens and one for caregivers, which was an absolute thrill to do. But also I was reminded how important it is to show up and do you know, participate in events like that, personally, because I was reminded of how great it is just to be in the room of hundreds of people, hearing the beep, seeing the things on our arms and being supported just in that way, physically. So I loved that.

Scott Benner 3:35
Do you feel like you got something out of it?

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 3:39
Yes, I think just, you know, even though I work in this field and I'm and support people living with type one and caregivers and with diabetes in general, I often don't do probably enough for my own benefit within in the type in the diabetes world. And so just the reminder that you're not alone is so powerful, yeah, and that, wow, looking in a room of people who know and understand what you do and how you live on a day to day basis is is so significant that it's almost kind of an intangible, unspeakable, and you know, it's hard to define, but You feel it? Yeah,

Scott Benner 4:20
I kind of found myself wishing I do this one thing. It's not really a talk, it's an hour with kids, and they range in ages, like, there's probably five, six year olds in there, up to, like, 14 or 15. But they don't let the parents in. There's somebody there from the organization and everything, but they want the kids to feel free to speak, and I just used it as an opportunity to let them find kind of commonality between each other. And then it opened them up. And I just started easily going around the room, like, What's it feel like when your blood sugar's high, and then, you know, what's it feel like when you're low? And what do you not like about this? Like, just real simple stuff. But you could see them a young kid, seriously, like a seven year old, looking at. 12 year old and go, wait, you have that thing happens to you too. That happens to me, you know. And then before you knew it, they were asking questions and making pronouncements about things they'd learned about their life and their health and everything. And I was like, wow, these kids, they know way more about this than I think people would give them credit for. It was really, it was eye opening for me, and it was helpful for them. Because, you know, on a basic level, one of the kids was like, Wait, why does my blood sugar get high when I'm at school? And then they all started talking about it. And then they realized about stress and anxiety, pressure, even just going in for a test, could make your blood sugar go up. It was wonderful. This little girl came up to me afterwards. I'm dying to interview her. I don't know who she is. I hope I can figure out who she is. But she came up to me with a notebook, and she asked me to sign it. And I was like, What? What are you? What are you doing here? Like, I don't think my my signature is not worth anything. She goes, No, I took all the notes of the stuff we talked about. I was hoping you would sign it. And she had pages of notes from the conversation. It's so cool. So that

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 5:58
is so great. It it creates a space for people to feel safe, to share what they're feeling. And I was so also impressed by the teens who were able to open up and just by one person saying something, and then they can say, Gosh, me too. Right? Like I feel that too. I've experienced that too, and that is the validating, normalizing experience that we all crave as humans, but in the diabetes world, that is so powerful. Just

Scott Benner 6:27
to let them say out loud, what feeling low felt like. And they all were like, oh, that's how I like just you could see their faces light up, like, wow, everyone feels this. It's not just me. It was a big deal, you know. So anyway, we were there. We had a great time. We met each other in person for the first time. It's awesome, yes, but you came away from the experience with an idea for the podcast. So what was that? Yes, so

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 6:50
I in the second seminar, I was, had the privilege to speak to caregivers, and I was, I was also blown away by the vulnerability that that the caregivers were able to share and experience in the in the group. And I thought in the session, it felt kind of a little bit like group therapy at times. And so I felt like, you know what? This might be powerful to bring that the talk that I gave at touch by type one here, and we can create it into a series awesome and essentially that the title and the focus was, you know, the caregiver burden. And I know we've talked about it before in various episodes together, but my hope is that by having kind of a really focused series on the caregiver burden, we would be able to create that experience for you here in the podcast, to validate your experience, to normalize it, and then to hopefully empower you with tools to not to maybe understand what's going on through your caregiver burden experience, and then actually give you some practical tools beyond deep breathing, which are, you know, It's always good and taking a walk, but beyond, beyond, kind of the the stereotypical coping strategies. So yes, well, how

Scott Benner 8:08
do you want to begin? I mean, this is your baby. So what do you think? Okay, well, I

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 8:13
think, just as we often do, kind of going to the definition starting with like, what is we talk about, the mental load of being a caregiver, we talk about the burden and that it's there's a there's a hardship and a loneliness that comes with it. And when, when we're talking about the caregiver burden, that kind of the true definition is the financial, physical, social, spiritual and emotional or psychological stressors that accompany caring for someone with chronic illness. So those are a lot of different factors that are really significant in life, that are impacted that I know you, you all experience as caregivers. And as a quick note, I also just want to say yes, I am I am a parent. I am a caregiver. My child, one of my my fourth graders, actually sick at home today. But I am not a caregiver to a child with type one. And so I was just even thinking about like, gosh, if she were, if she had type one, and I was trying to do this, I'd be worried about her ketones and all the other things, you know. So I certainly understand what it's like to live with type one for you know, now 34 years, but I don't. I will never pretend that I know what it's like to be in Scott's shoes or to be in any of your shoes as caregivers, but I do have the experience professionally in walking alongside you as a caregiver to a child with type one, and wanted to validate that, I

Scott Benner 9:40
take your point. It's nice of you to say, but it does bear pointing out that just taking care of a child is not the same as taking care of a child who has type one diabetes. It's just, it's different, and it even, like you said, a sick day. I can remember them in my head like ardent sick everything stops anything you had planned that day kind of over now. Well, you know, like, you're going to be super focused on this. You're going to be running around, hopefully everything goes the way you want it to. If it doesn't, am I going to call the doctor? Am I going to, you know, the first time, the first time you realize that your kid has ketones, but their blood sugar is 85 but they need insulin. Fries your mind. You're like, what am I supposed to do? 85 doesn't need insulin, but ketones need insulin. Yeah, it's not, it's not for the fatal heart, that's for sure. Sorry, yeah, today's episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by OmniPod. And before I tell you about OmniPod, the device, I'd like to tell you about OmniPod, the company. I approached OmniPod in 2015 and asked them to buy an ad on a podcast that I hadn't even begun to make yet because the podcast didn't have any listeners. All I could promise them was that I was going to try to help people living with type one diabetes, and that was enough for OmniPod. They bought their first ad, and I used that money to support myself while I was growing the juicebox podcast, you might even say that OmniPod is the firm foundation of the juicebox podcast, and it's actually the firm foundation of how my daughter manages her type one diabetes every day. Omnipod.com/juicebox whether you want the OmniPod five or the OmniPod dash. Using my link, let's OmniPod know what a good decision they made in 2015 and continue to make to this day. OmniPod is easy to use, easy to fill, easy to wear. And I know that because my daughter has been wearing one every day since she was four years old, and she will be 20 this year, there is not enough time in an ad for me to tell you everything that I know about OmniPod, but please take a look omnipod.com/juicebox I think OmniPod could be a good friend to you, just like it has been to my daughter and my family. This episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by Eversense 365 and just as the name says, it lasts for a full year, imagine for a second a CGM with just one sensor placement and one warm up period every year. Imagine a sensor that has exceptional accuracy over that year and is actually the most accurate CGM in the low range that you can get. What if I told you that this sensor had no risk of falling off or being knocked off? That may seem too good to be true, but I'm not even done telling you about it yet. The Eversense 365 has essentially no compression lows. It features incredibly gentle adhesive for its transmitter. You can take the transmitter off when you don't want to wear your CGM and put it right back on without having to waste a sensor or go through another warm up period. The app works with iOS and Android, even Apple Watch. You can manage your diabetes instead of your CGM with the Eversense 365 learn more and get started today at Eversense cgm.com/juicebox, one, year one CGM,

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 13:04
basically what we're going to do in in my preparation for the talk in the conference, I did some research, and I was curious to like what what research is out there, what tools from research are already out there to support caregivers for children with type one and coincidentally, there was research that was conducted and published just in March of 2024, and the title is called caregiver burden among parents of Children with type one diabetes, a qualitative scoping review. So these researchers, I'll just say them once here, so we won't repeat them. Azimi Johnson, Campbell and Monte Santi said, You know what we're going to do? We're going to look at all of the research that has ever been conducted on caregiver burden from 1995 to 2021, and they actually gathered, I think it was 1900 papers from there they, you know, had reduced it down through various filters of duplicates, but they and they wanted to ensure that every article identified all of those stressors that we that we discussed for caregiver burden. So they landed with 18 studies. And so from these 18 studies, they discovered six themes that are common and consistent through all of their research. Okay, so these themes are we're gonna what we're gonna do, and we'll start with the first one today, and then we'll break them down with each episode. So the six themes from all of these, from all the studies, are this. Number one, experiencing chronic sorrow. Number two, responsibility for glucose, highs and lows. Number three, managing T, 1d and night time. And sleep disturbances. Number four, making career sacrifices and choices to optimize T Wendy care. Number five, navigating social experiences post diagnosis and number six, isolation and stigma, and as a result of that, they're also everyone's endorsing, how much support they're finding from social support online. So I'm sure you all can relate, and all these things resonate. So from these six themes, we're going to discuss them as barriers to self care. Like, why is it we're going to look at the question, why is it so hard to create time, to take time for yourself as a caregiver? And so through that lens, we're going to discuss these themes as barriers to self care. And then after each barrier, we're going to discuss some tools, okay? That will help you find ways to, you know, to understand and then to make some changes, however big or small, to taking care of yourself. How does that

Scott Benner 16:11
sound? That sounds like a perfect plan. Excellent. Okay, yeah. Okay.

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 16:15
So what I'm going to do, so the for burden one experiencing chronic sorrow, I'm going to read a quote that is, this is all taken from this the research. Okay, so experiencing chronic sorrow as time goes by. There is not the same drama about the whole thing, but I still feel the despair and the loneliness when I let it come to me.

Scott Benner 16:39
I know that feeling right? You hold it, you kind of hold it all at bay on the other side of a wall somewhere, right? Because if you keep experiencing it over and over again, it just it crushes you. Yes,

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 16:51
yeah. So we know, and all across all the studies, and I know all the people you've interviewed and the people they work with, there's that initial sense of shock that we've talked about, that you've experienced, the anxiety, maybe guilt. What you know, could I have done anything to prevent this despair, the sense of overwhelm, feeling sad, angry, a lot of self doubt, as you're trying to learn so you're feeling all of that intense sadness, anger, grief, but then you also are forced to have to learn and educate, and so that is that initial shock and loss is very intense. Yeah, it's the the loss

Scott Benner 17:32
piece too. You think you're not sure what your life was supposed to be, but you're positive it's not going to be that. Now, you know what I mean, like the loss of possibility, maybe, or freedom? I don't know, but it feels like I've never, not heard anyone talk about it that way. You know,

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 17:49
I think I shared this in the in the talk, but I'm also remembering that you once said no parent ever gives birth or adopts or however you have your child with the expectation that they're eventually going to be diagnosed with a chronic illness like you never. That's never in your you

Scott Benner 18:07
never, yeah, there's no planning for that. No matter how thoughtful of a person you are, you never sit around going, oh my god, we're pregnant. You know what'll probably happen? You know, in year 17, they'll have a car accident, and like you don't. That's not how it works, you know. So you have all this hope and diabetes, somehow it doesn't just ding the hope, it dashes it completely. It just feels like it just removes all of it, and then you have to build back and realize that's not actually the case. But boy, it feels like that at first, yes,

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 18:40
and go ahead. No,

Scott Benner 18:42
I just upset. I'm already upset.

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 18:45
I don't want to be upset. And I think that's actually a good point. You know, as you are listening to this episode in this series, be mindful of maybe where you are in the day. And if it does, if this does trigger or evoke emotions. I do encourage you to let them come out, if you are able to, if you can give yourself that time and space in this kind of chronic sorrow. So we have this initial shock grief and loss. With that is the disenfranchised grief that I'm pretty sure we've talked about before, but I think it's important to go back to that disenfranchised grief kind of the definition is, it's also known as hidden grief or sorrow, and it can refer to any grief that goes unacknowledged or unvalidated by social norms or by your family or your friends, this kind of grief is often minimized or not understood by others, which makes it particularly hard to process and work through. And this type of grief is really is so common with those you know with us in the in the diabetes community. Because there is so much misunderstanding, you're suffering, you're grieving, and you want people to know, but you don't quite know how to communicate. That part, there's like this duality, right? But you and even when you try to communicate it, they don't quite ever get it. And then that leads you to maybe even feeling worse and more alone. And

Scott Benner 20:23
if you're caught in that, in that vortex, when you see a late night comedian, for example, like use diabetes as a, you know, in a joke line, or something like that, yes, that's where you get that feeling of like being minimized, dismissed, or just that unrecognized social problem. So that's where that comes from. Like, I need people to understand what this is, so that What the Why do I need them to understand so I can get past this part from me.

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 20:51
We want people to understand because that will decrease that feeling of isolation, okay? And but then we realized it's really hard to fully understand this severity and intensity of what it's like to care give and

Scott Benner 21:09
so you're isolated, and you feel helpless to explain it to somebody. Yes, so if they just didn't make that joke, you'd feel less isolated, and the pressure to explain it might be alleviated as well.

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 21:23
Yes, yeah. I mean, which is why, consequently, the community is so important for us, right? Because we do have that immediate understanding and decrease isolation and but in anything that you're going through. You want people, you want support, and you want people to know, but when you find that it's challenging or that they just can't quite get it, you then come to this point of, okay, how am I going to move through this? Right? Like, am I going to keep trying? And I think that's that's part of your experiencing this chronic sorrow and chronic grief is that journey of, how do I share? How do I be vulnerable so that people know and I'm talking even like family members, how do people know that I'm struggling without feeling like I have to share with them all the nuances of T, 1d, or diabetes. How do I let them know where I'm at emotionally and be vulnerable enough so that they can support me that I mean, that that's and that's a journey, that's a personal journey. So just noticing that yes, so

Scott Benner 22:36
you can get emotional validation from them. Is that what you're looking at. Like, yes,

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 22:41
emotional validation, like, I'm here for you. Like, wow. And, and we'll, we'll get to these more, even more specific tools in the in the social episode. But this is part of it. Is kind of trying to figure out, what can I say that elicits the response I need, and when I'm not getting it? What do I do next? How do I educate without having to, like, re traumatize myself, or having to re educate everybody and get the support I need?

Scott Benner 23:07
Yeah, I mean, once people really see you and there's affirmation about like, who you are and what you're going through, once they understand it, my expectation would be that they could be empathetic about it, and that probably begins a new process for you, right? Like, once, once those other people like, oh, they get it. They understand. They're not fighting with me anymore. It's not like, Oh, you're always been so difficult. I actually heard somebody say that recently, just in a social media post, this girl who's in a wheelchair, I didn't even know what for, and she was saying that her family says, Oh, you're always so dramatic. I'm like, okay, like, you know what I mean? Like, and she's, you know, she's like, I'm just trying to share my situation with people, and they just see me as, like, looking for attention. She's like, I don't want this attention. I this is not something I wanted, but it's interesting that you can get that pushback. I'm just I'm so stuck on the idea that I need those other people to understand and to be empathetic, but I can't keep putting myself out over and over again to explain it to them. Is that where the rub comes?

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 24:16
Because, okay, we're and I'm talking this could be at any stage in in your child's diagnosis, when you are struggling and you're exhausted and you want people to know, because maybe it's not even a want. Maybe you just need people like you just you need the emotional support. You just need like, Hey, I don't understand what's going on, but I see that you're really struggling, and I'm here for you. And it might even be hard to communicate that much to somebody. And it's not necessarily like you want people to know that it's hard. But when someone, and this is what this is exactly what is disenfranchised grief is that because. Is they don't know how hard it is. You might not ever get that, yeah, extreme, that validation that you really are needing and wanting, and that is hard. That's hard, yeah,

Scott Benner 25:13
needing biologically too. I mean, we're humans, are we're social creatures, right? So as long as the as long as your social structure is about what people expect it to be, then they're accepting of you. But then once the thing becomes too different or scary or unknown, or even some people get I've seen people have unreasonable fear that someone's illness will make its way to them. I can't tell you who this is, but I know a person who has a story of getting into a pool with cancer and other people getting out of the pool like that. And so now you don't get that like that, just biological need fulfilled for connection, for society, and, you know, a social group.

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 25:55
Yeah, yes. I mean and that. And this is why, if this, if this is particularly challenging for you to work through, to process this, the grief and the isolation, that's why group therapy, that's right. Group conferences, you know, are so significant and powerful. Yeah, it's just, it's just hard, and it's not impossible to work through, right? But I think it's important to have a name to it. If that's what you're noticing and experiencing, is feeling the grief, but then also feeling isolated and alone in it, that that is the disenfranchised grief.

Scott Benner 26:33
Do you think some people get stuck there forever?

Unknown Speaker 26:37
Gosh, that's a possibly. Yeah, and

Scott Benner 26:40
then it affects everything. You don't realize that. That's when you start seeing yourself becoming, I don't know, I'm not sure what the word is, but cantankerous, and just always thinking everybody's coming for you. And that whole piece that I do see sometimes, right, where some people are just so backed into a corner that, you know, and by themselves, that everything that comes towards them feels like a thing they just have to run from or attack back at, even if it's not attacking them. Yeah, you've seen that with people with type one who are older, right?

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 27:12
Yes, there's, there's a reason why, right, that perhaps you're stuck in that space. And whether that's past trauma, and we'll, we're not going to go into all of that. We'll plug our resilience series here. Yeah, if you, if this is you're noticing, gosh, I feel like I'm really stuck in this spot. There's a reason why. But if you're noticing that you're filled with the constant sense of resentment and bitterness and just you're ang full of anger, again, that's really normal at times. So not just not to dismiss that or minimize that, but if you're feeling stuck, and you've been in that place for years and years and years and years and years, I would encourage you to get to do some analysis around that. And what is that? What is keeping you in that stuck place? It's hard, it's hard step to acknowledge and to take

Scott Benner 28:01
when we're doing these, I'm always worried that I'm taking you from where you want to be. So I know this is good, okay, all right.

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 28:07
Well, this is, you know, these are points that I would I made in my talk, but because I don't have you know, you as a sounding board, this will make it more, you know, probably rich, richer, hopefully. Well, I'm glad the last point before we get into the tools for the chronic grief is that we know, we all know that grief is not linear, even though we know there are the stages, the five stages of grief. And while we can get to the place of acceptance that will look different at different stages of your journey with diabetes as a caregiver, and perhaps you you get, you kind of get through, I like saying, get through. And kind of, instead of getting over the initial diagnosis, you kind of get through those initial stages of shock and loss. And then you might feel like, okay, we've got, we've got a rhythm going. And then go back to the six your child's sick for the first time, your child goes to the birthday party for the first time, or goes through puberty or off to call, you know, all these small and big changes where you feel like you're the comfort and the security and the safety that you felt in managing and managing the diabetes and also managing emotions felt very secure. And then you go through this first time, and then that can just that sometimes it can set you right back to where you were. And this is for all the reasons that we talked about in the in the resilience series as well.

Scott Benner 29:32
Oh, for sure, I see it online all the time. There's hallmarks in people's lives, and those who are struggling are, for sure, going to be set off by them the first time they have to go through TSA with diabetes.

Unknown Speaker 29:44
Oh yes, I

Scott Benner 29:45
have to get an x ray. I don't know what to do. Do I take this off? Is the company going to really charge me for another one? Like it just falls off a cliff, like the worry and the anger and everything and the fear birthday parties? I used to play softball with my buddies, and now I don't think I can. Anymore I ride a motorcycle. Can I still do that? Like it just every little thing that pops up for people, it just over and over again. It feels like it starts over. And when you're sharing online in an open space, it's also interesting to see what people decide to come in and be supportive and say, Oh, I've been through that. Here's my support. There are people who are like, Oh, that's a thing I've been worried about, and now they're hoping maybe they can learn about it before it actually happened to them. Then there is this interesting thing that happens sometimes, if a person's been in the community too long and they've seen too many people say, I don't know how to bolus for a cupcake at a birthday party, they can almost get frustrated. They'll lose sight of the fact that this person asking this question, this is the first time this has happened to them. They are not everybody else. It's interesting, you know what I mean? Because suddenly you get, you get measured with I already saw people ask this question three weeks ago, and I'm like, that's not how a Facebook group works. They didn't see that, you know, like, like, this is the this is the time when they're going through it. And it always brings me some measure of comfort, because I think the things that are happening I see happen over and over again to people and over and over like, what if we could get to them with this information before the fear hit them? Then maybe it would be easier to deal with and quicker and maybe not as painful. So that's kind of where I come from when I'm making content.

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 31:23
But yeah, yes, we are all on our different stage and age in our relationship with diabetes, yeah, for sure. And we want to offer support and encouragement, and we always have to hold where you're you know, where am I in this journey? Where is this person coming from? And that could be hard to do if we're not pausing. No,

Scott Benner 31:46
no. This line here that you have in your note, grief is not linear. Intensity of grief can pop up at any time, and there's a lot of and there's first times for a lot of different things. It just just kept making me feel, made me just think about over and over again. Like, I don't know that people would understand how valuable the private group is for me, feeding the podcast, right? Because I it's almost like, sometimes it's almost like, you guys are all in a room together, and I'm like, behind a I'm behind like, a one way mirror. And like, you know, get to say, like, oh, look, that happens all the time, like we have lists of things you wouldn't imagine. One I just saw today was common questions that people have online, common fears that we keep lists of all that stuff to try to inform the podcast. So I didn't mean to make anybody feel like they're like a test subject on the other side of a piece of one way glass, but, but when they're willing to live their life out like that, besides all the great communal things that happen and the support that happens in the social setting, you're actually helping me to make a better podcast as well. So pretty great.

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 32:52
That is great. Yeah, good. So

Scott Benner 32:54
now we got to get to the schools, and we have all this sorrow, what are we going to do with it? Yes,

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 32:58
okay, so what? So, yes, what can we do? What can we do with this, this chronic sorrow, because you're caregiving for a chronic illness. So grieving without a timeline is the major tool here, and then we're going to go through some specific items. One of the things that I hear the most is having an expectation around when the grief should be over, and that then lends itself to shame, right? Like, okay, it's been a week, or it's been a month, it's been six months, it's been a year. We should be getting it by now. Why we should be and again, I'm holding both of these. We should be getting it now the diabetes management side, and I should be feeling better. I shouldn't be grieving as much. I shouldn't be crying as much. I shouldn't be lamenting as much. So not only are you feeling the primary emotion, which is the grief and loss, you're then piling on shame that you should be in a different spot, and that is keeping yourself kind of stuck in that cycle. I know this can feel complicated, right? Because you're saying, Well, it's a chronic illness. There's chronic sorrow, but don't put a pressure on your don't put a timeline or expectation around when you should be done. And so it is important to hold that loosely and give yourself that freedom to be on your own journey. And again, it might be more challenging for you and your own story because of your past history and past trauma. And so just by allowing yourself to say, okay, yes, it's been a year. It's been two years, and yes, maybe I feel better, but it still feels hard. Now we'll get into kind of the nuances of, you know, what's right, what's appropriate, but I think you you know, like, how are you functioning? Like, noticing some of the things that we're going to talk to right about right now, but I want to pause. Did you want to say anything?

Scott Benner 34:55
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Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 36:48
me. I'm sorry that this is, yes, it is this is intense, this is heavy. This is what it's but it's real.

Scott Benner 36:55
But I do appreciate what you said about the timeline thing that happened to me, and now I'm acting like, you know, but it probably happens to everybody, like, Arden's one year anniversary. I don't know what I thought, but I thought I was going to wake up and magically understand diabetes that day. I don't know why we do that with arbitrary like, dates and times. And then I thought, well, one year wasn't enough. It'll be two years. And then the second year came, and I was like, I am not much better at this than I was last year. So, yeah, that's it's very important. But how do you, how do you give yourself like that loose hold on that idea that there's no timeline but guard against falling into an abyss you can't climb back out of either right?

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 37:35
Okay, great, great question. Scott, so I'm going to encourage you to notice a few things here in your in your thought process, and increase some awareness. So as we've already mentioned, you know, no parent envisions or expects the loss that's going to come, whatever that may be. But obviously, in this instance, we're talking about diabetes, and I encourage you, a lot of times, what I hear is the grief or the life that your child had before diagnosis, and then the grief and anticipation of a of a life that's going to be riddled with challenge and medical trauma for their child. And so the from the parents perspective, you know, you're you're grieving what was, and then you're anticipating a really hard life for your child, because that's all you maybe know and are feeling in the moment. And sometimes, then we, as parents, we put our own emotion or grief onto our child, not, you know, mistakenly not knowing or or we kind of feel like maybe we're doing it empathically. We feel like I'm, I'm going to connect with my child and worry for them and grieve for them, that it's going to be hard for them to play sport, it's going to be hard for them to go to college, it's going to be hard for them to find a partner. You know, all these things that, as parents, we worry about, I totally understand that, but then we have the diabetes there, and we project kind of worst case scenarios, and that's coming from the grief. And so I encourage caregivers, as you're grieving, to be mindful of how much is your own grief, and separate your grief from your child's journey and your child's relationship with diabetes and their own grief

Scott Benner 39:25
because they didn't have the same expectations for their life that you had, right? Exactly, so they're not judging their situation based on your expectations. Yes, they might not be nearly as upset as you are.

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 39:39
Yes. Ah, okay, that might not. How do you stop

Scott Benner 39:45
yourself doing that?

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 39:47
That might not make you feel better in the moment, right? But I think through a process of awareness, whether that's through journaling, through and, you know, obviously. Through therapy to separate your grief and your relationship with diabetes from your child's and obviously this is going to be so different based on the age and stage of your child at diagnosis, you will be surprised how much your child remembers before diagnosis. I will speak for I was 12. I don't remember what it was like to not have diabetes prior to 12, right? Some kids might remember who were diagnosed at five. They might remember, you know, everyone is different, so how do you separate it again? It's it's being mindful every time you're thinking, Oh, my child, are they gonna base? Are they gonna all the things I just said? Are they gonna play sports? Are they gonna find a partner? Are they gonna do all these things that I envision them to have this six? Have this successful, thriving life, that that is your grief and your worry and your they aren't feeling that when you start to feel and be mindful that gosh, is my child going to feel this? Their child is not going to feel that they mean, they may have, they may have challenges,

Scott Benner 41:00
yeah, but they're not gonna be overwhelmed the way you are, because expectation is really the it's the enemy here, right? Like, because you don't recognize that you had all the expectations you had the day before diabetes, and that most of the things you thought were going to happen, or the way you thought they were going to happen, they're not actually going to happen that way, but that gets to unfold slowly over years and decades, and so you adjust as you go, Oh, I thought my kid was going to play soccer because I played soccer, but it turns out they really love baseball because sports where you can't use your hands aren't sports. I'm sorry. I was just kidding. And like, so that adjustment happens when they're seven, and you go, Okay, well, I wanted to play soccer about you play softball anyway. It's okay, no big deal, right? Like, but when it all comes in one shot and your brain starts rolling through all of the expectations you had, you don't stop to tell yourself, oh, this wasn't actually going to go the way I thought it was going to anyway. So this isn't that big of a deal. You just say this is what life was going to be, and now it's not going to be that. And so we give like it said, it's all it's all ruined, you know what I mean? And then that's how you feel. But that's not the case. Like people are going to come help you, if you're in this community, they're going to say to you, don't worry. I did this with diabetes when I grew up, or I did that, or I drove here, like, you have any idea? I just shared Arden's graph one time while she drove to college, and it was an all day drive. She drove like, 12 hours one day, and so many people were like, like, adults who came back and said to me, this is so encouraging to me, I won't go on long drives. I'm like, oh. And I thought, God, you don't go. You're an adult. They won't go on a long drive because they have diabetes. And then just seeing some kid leave for college, and they're like, Oh, she did it. And then they just reset their expectation, and then then they do it. It's awesome. Actually, I'm sorry. I feel like I got you off track. Yes,

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 42:58
no, no, it's good. It's good. And we'll, that's a good point. We'll, we'll expound on that. Okay, going back to your question of, you know, giving yourself permission to grieve without a timeline, what do you do? How do you kind of keep yourself in check, right? Like, how do you know, and so noticing, I encourage you to notice the amount of time, like, literal time that you are grieving privately and publicly and again, this can be at any stage from diagnosis. And I told the story the conference I shared here again to shortly after, my brother was also diagnosed with type one, two years after I was and I remember we went out to a restaurant, and the hostess was walking us to a table, and she directed us to a table, and my mom said, We can't sit there. My children, both my children, have type one. And so she we kept walking us to another table, and I remember looking at my brother, and I remember being horrified, and just like, why did she tell this person what there's nothing to do about the table, like, what is, you know, I was just like, solely embarrassed and probably pretty angry too at the time, and upon reflection, I now think and believe that my mom was grieving. She obviously had nothing to do. She

Scott Benner 44:19
just wanted to tell somebody, I'm struggling. My kids are struggling. We have problems like, be empathetic with me, yeah,

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 44:28
like she, I mean, maybe she didn't like the table where it was just like, um,

Scott Benner 44:33
I got a card who says type one on it. We don't have to sit in a booth like a common person, by the way. I prefer a booth, but

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 44:39
I'm sure, I'm sure she, she probably didn't like the table, but it came out as both my children have type one and feel

Scott Benner 44:47
bad for me and give me the table I want. I gotcha. I got so

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 44:51
she, I mean, and this happens right? Like, we tell when we are grieving and we're kind of like just oozing out. And flooding over and again. This is normal when we are in a really intense situation. For a lot of people, a lot of people will hold everything in and not say anything, and a lot of us will will share everything to anyone who can listen, and she was grieving I needed to tell people. And didn't, you know was landing in different places, yeah, and so just noticing, are who are you? Who are you talking to? Are you talking about it all the time? Are you reading? Are you going, you know, again, the Facebook group, other social media, are you going there to find support or to share your story and receive some validation and normalization of your experience that is so healthy and probably really powerful for you in the moment. And then are you finding yourself hours later reading through traumatic story after traumatic story. So perhaps your initial motivation is to go to a community who understands you, to be validated, supported. You receive that. But then we're humans. We get, we get sucked in, and then, then we're, then we're experiencing kind of more vicarious trauma and reliving everyone else's trauma. And so just notice, how long are you doing that? What is the impact you don't

Scott Benner 46:28
want it to turn into disaster porn for yourself, where you're just like, Oh, I've worked through my problem. Now let me go relive it again and again and again and again. There's a difference between community and searching out those stories that why do people want to feel badly, though? Is it because at least they know how it works? I

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 46:47
think it's initially you feel validated because you're saying, oh, this person went through that too. This Karen is struggling with the same issue I am. Yeah, and that feels good, because then you feel that isolation is decreasing and decreasing and simultaneously, depending on how much time you're then exposed to can you become consumed and overwhelmed by all everyone else's trauma? Yeah, right. So there it is this. It's a sweet balance of finding it just going to support groups in person. I

Scott Benner 47:22
think in the 70s, my dad would have said you have to pull your head out of your own ass at some point. Is that, is that what you're saying? No, of course, that

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 47:34
is not what I'm saying. I think it's, it's, you know, noticing then this is, it is hard to and even as I say this, like notice your thoughts increasing that awareness of what you're doing is hard to do when you're exhausted and trying to just get through the day and trying to manage it all, yeah, not just your child's diabetes, to manage it all, so that even in and of itself may feel challenging, and the awareness piece of noticing how much you're talking about it, reading about it, crying about it, consuming yourself with it. There is a time and place for that. And notice if you feel like you're you're stuck in it, yeah. Also, you can

Scott Benner 48:15
just look at your kids while you're talking to other people, because if you've been telling the same story over and over again, they will be looking at you cross eyed. So, you know, has everyone not been in that situation where they're like, why is mom telling that person so much like, I have that story from when I was a kid. I was like, What is she's really oversharing here, yes, and I Yeah, I hear you. Yes. Okay, yeah. I just want to say like that to me, sounds like the most difficult part of all this, because I don't imagine that most people are standing up and saying, I'm gonna go do something now that is really unhealthy for me. Like, you know, you don't know you're doing it when you're doing it, to be aware of it to, I guess, helps you see it eventually. And then maybe then you can, you know, curb it somehow. But I'm sorry, go ahead.

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 49:01
Yes, it is. It is hard, and in the moment, you're dysfunctioning from moment to moment, day to day. Yeah. So these are, these are tools that, when you have the bandwidth to implement and start to noticing, what are the thoughts, what are my actions, and how are they impacting how I feel one thing that I know we've talked about before is the dear diabetes letter that I think is powerful. Whether you're living with diabetes or you're caregiving, doesn't matter what type, but oftentimes this goes back to you want people to know how hard it is to live with it, to care, give, and they don't really understand, and you hold a lot of feelings towards the actual diabetes, but it can't, can't talk back to us, you know, right? And so this is a tool that I know many people have found to be successful, to do not just once, but monthly. Or annually, and you're writing, you are literally writing a letter, dear diabetes, comma and let it all come out. Sometimes it'll be neutral, sometimes it'll be full of hate and rage and anger. Sometimes it'll be sadness. And I think if you do practice this kind of in a ritual way. If it feels helpful, it's interesting to always look back, because I think we often forget that we have healed or we have grown. And so when you can look back and be like, Wow, two years ago, I was in a real I really hated diabetes. Yeah, I tell you now all

Scott Benner 50:37
the time, a year from now, you will not recognize yourself today.

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 50:41
You do say that, yeah, it's just true. I'm sorry. And if we know it's it's so true, but we forget. We forget because it's hard to remember where you were and where you are today for sure. And so I think that can be a really effective oftentimes, what comes out in these letters, too, is an anger and kind of disillusionment with people's when they if they have a faith or belief in God or kind of the universe, whoever your relationship is to a higher power, if you have that, that often comes out in these letters, and people are surprised by that, and that kind of goes along with the expectation of what your life is going to look like.

Scott Benner 51:23
I mean, that's you don't even think about that, that that extra layer of it's not just like, oh, I wanted my kid to be able to do this thing, or I didn't want to be up in the middle of the night dealing with something. But if you have those beliefs, then somehow this, this entity, decided to screw you right, like that's, that's what it feels like, yeah, and that's got to be hard to deal with too. Okay, all right,

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 51:49
okay. The practical tool, the dear diabetes letter, the kind of psychological, emotional tool of noticing your thoughts and your actions, I have also found through, you know, professional work and also listening to all the stories on the podcast, that your past really does impact how you cope and with with the diabetes. And I have found that if you you know if you have past trauma or even specific experiences with diabetes that impacts your not only your grieving, but also your like, hope and belief that things are going to get better or or that it's just going to always be hard. Conversely, if, for example, when I work with caregivers who have type one and then their children have type one, it's a different experience because they have the belief and hope that they've lived with it. There's still grief. It's still hard, right? But it's different. And even for caregivers who have partners or other family members who have type one or another form of diabetes when their child is diagnosed and it's positive and it's positive, their grief is still there and present, but there's a hope that's easier to grab onto, as opposed to when you have a negative either experience with diabetes or a negative either medical trauma or trauma in general. And so I know, I know again, we've, we've spoken into that piece a lot, but I think it's important to park it here too.

Scott Benner 53:31
I'd be remiss not to say that when we did that four part series about resilience, how much I learned about past trauma and how it affects who you are in the future. Really, I thought that was awesome. But what you put together for that one, and so I'll throw it in here. It's episode 1229, 1235, 1245, and 1250, I mean, if you want to look into why you might do what you do, or react the way you react, it's, it's just super helpful for that, I think,

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 53:59
thank you. Yeah, I think it was, there's a lot of content there that might help you kind of understand and at this point that we're talking about right here, yeah, yes. And then if you are having difficulty, even having the bandwidth, time energy to notice your grief, obviously, having, you know, sessions with therapists or mentors, and if you feel safe enough, asking close family or friends to reflect back to you how you're doing. To say, it's a vulnerable question. To say, How am I doing with my grief? Like, how do you feel like I'm doing? And again, this is it's I want to make sure that you ask that in a in a relationship that feels safe insecure, a

Scott Benner 54:50
kind truth teller who understands the big picture, not just somebody who's going to look at you go, you're being dramatic, like that kind of

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 54:57
thing. Yeah, yes, right. So I'm talking. You know, mentors, pastoral counselors, therapists, maybe a really close family member that has walked with you for a long time, somebody who understands, somebody who understands and also knows you. Because at some point you might be healing in your grief. Again, we know that it's chronic, but you might be healing, and you might not even be aware of that. And they could say, no, actually, look, you, you were doing X, Y and Z, and you weren't able to do that last month or last year, yeah. Or they might say, gosh, you know what? I think it seems like you're you're still in a really hard and challenging place, and that might be because I don't know what's going on, but how can I help you? So again, it's a vulnerable question to ask non professionals, but it can be really powerful, right?

Scott Benner 55:48
Yeah, definitely vet out the person you're going to ask that from, if it's not a professional person, who can, you know, be thoughtful, a third party, that kind of thing, like, Yes, don't be surprised too. If either, if your spouse is either great, like at this, or not great at it, because they're also going through the same thing you're going through, but they experience it differently than you do, because when they were eight, something different happened to them than what happened to you when you were eight. And so it's, I know people, there probably are people who hear that think, oh, that's like therapy mumbo jumbo. But man, that I'm telling you that resilience series, I was like, Oh, my God, that. What's that list that the 10? How come I can't think of the name of the list of the things that, if you have a certain a number of them, have happened to you in the past. Oh,

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 56:36
the aces, yes, the adverse childhood experiences. Yeah. That

Scott Benner 56:41
thing opened my eyes. And I have more than although I couldn't remember the name of it right now, I have more than one time, more than a dozen times in my life, pulled this thing up in front of other people and gone through and went, Hey, have you ever experienced emotional, physical or sexual abuse? How about neglect? Emotional or physical and like, gone through it like that. And you can see people ticking in their heads, and then, you know, they come up with, like, Oh, I've got, like, four things on this list, and you and they go, oh, oh, yeah, oh, okay. And then they all of a sudden, see their situation, really fascinating. So anyway, yes, think we're to the end,

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 57:16
but I don't want to we're to the end. We are to the end. Yes,

Scott Benner 57:19
I can't. Thank you enough. Seriously, this is wonderful. I was so excited when you reached out about this. So thank you.

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 57:24
You're welcome. I hope it's hope it's helpful. Tell people where they can find you. Erica, forsythe.com,

Scott Benner 57:32
you have a website. Everybody's got a website, Erica, but yours is awesome. They should go check it out. That is my website. Yes, you can help people virtually in what states,

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 57:41
California, Oregon, Utah, Vermont and Florida. And

Scott Benner 57:46
you can see people in person if they're Cal California

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 57:49
or California. Yeah, I have an office in Southern California in Pasadena.

Scott Benner 57:53
Thank you so much.

Erika Forsyth, MFT, LMFT 57:54
I appreciate you.

Scott Benner 58:03
I'd like to thank the Eversense 365 for sponsoring this episode of The juicebox podcast, and remind you that if you want the only sensor that gets inserted once a year and not every 14 days, you want the Eversense CGM. Eversense cgm.com/juicebox, one year. One CGM, a huge thank you to one of today's sponsors. AG, one drink. AG, one.com/juicebox you can start your day the same way I do with a delicious drink of Ag, one, OmniPod five sponsored this episode of The juicebox podcast. Learn more and get started today at omnipod.com/juicebox, links in the show notes. Links at juicebox podcast.com. 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, if you or a loved one was just diagnosed with type one diabetes, and you're looking for some fresh perspective. The bold beginning series from the juicebox podcast is a terrific place to start. That series is with myself and Jenny Smith. Jenny is a CD CES, a registered dietitian and a type one for over 35 years, and in the bowl beginning series, Jenny and I are going to answer the questions that most people have after a type one diabetes diagnosis. The series begins at episode 698, in your podcast player, or you can go to juicebox podcast.com and click on bold beginnings in the menu. Are you starting to see patterns, but you can't quite make sense of them. You're like, Oh, if I bolus here, this happens, but I don't know what to do. Should I put in a little less? A little more if? You're starting to have those thoughts, you're starting to think this isn't going the way the doctor said it would. I think I see something here, but I can't be sure. Once you're having those thoughts, you're ready for the diabetes Pro Tip series from the juicebox podcast. It begins at Episode 1000 you can also find it at juicebox podcast.com up in the menu, and you can find a list in the private Facebook group. Just check right under the featured tab at the top, it'll show you lists of a ton of stuff, including the Pro Tip series, which runs from episode 1000 to 1025 I can't thank you enough for listening. Please make sure you're subscribed or following in your audio app. I'll be back tomorrow with another episode of The juicebox podcast. Hey, what's up, everybody? If you've noticed that the podcast sounds better, and you're thinking like, how does that happen? What you're hearing is Rob at wrong way recording, doing his magic to these files. So if you want him to do his magic to you, wrongway recording.com, you got a podcast. You want somebody to edit it. You want rob you.

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#1350 Don't Get Stuck in the Mud

Jess is the father of a nine year old type 1 who wants to get more in touch with his emotions.

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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
Here we are back together again, friends for another episode of The juicebox podcast.

Jessie is the father of a nine year old daughter who has type one diabetes. She was diagnosed just a year ago, and she's already taking a big chunk of the care on herself and has an A, 1c, in the sixes, 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. 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, if you're a US resident who has type one, or is the caregiver of someone with type one, visit T 1d, exchange.org/juice box right now and complete that survey. It will take you 10 minutes to complete the survey, and that effort alone will help to move type one diabetes research forward. It will cost you nothing to help. 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.

This episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by cozy Earth. Use the offer code juicebox at checkout@cozyearth.com and you will save 40% off of your entire order. The episode you're listening to is sponsored by us. Med, usmed.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, you can get your diabetes testing supplies the same way we do from 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 juicebox. Hello, everyone.

Jesse 2:14
My name is Jesse. I am a dad of a nine year old daughter, Brianna, who was diagnosed with type one diabetes in February of 23

Speaker 1 2:30
February of 23 she's nine now, or was nine then she was eight, then, okay, correct. It's been a challenging year. Yeah. Do you have any other kids?

Jesse 2:43
So my son is five, and his so my daughter was in the hospital February 21 and his birthday is February 24 so we were just in fact, she told the doctors, I want to be discharged so I could go home for my brother's birthday.

Scott Benner 3:03
Did you have the birthday in the hospital? Or did she make it home?

Jesse 3:06
We made it home, which was awesome. Very

Scott Benner 3:09
cool. Was this a surprise? Do you have type one in your family?

Jesse 3:14
It was a complete surprise. No diabetes in the family.

Scott Benner 3:18
Okay, how about now that you've been with it for over a year, other autoimmune stuff that you've noticed with yourselves or her? Yes, so

Jesse 3:26
in 2014 and that's the year that she was born, I had issues that were undiagnosed for five years, and in 2019 I was diagnosed with autoimmune disorders. I've had two of them. One of them is children's, and the other is Hashimotos, which is also news to me. It's, it's new to the family, okay, that I'm aware of.

Scott Benner 3:53
So you think your Hashimotos symptoms go back for years. It's

Jesse 3:58
kind of tough, because I think my primary is definitely showgirns, and I check just about every single box for that. And I denied it for like, a year or two, saying there's no way, how could I have this? It doesn't make sense. It's gotta be something else, you know, continuously trying to look and find an answer, but I check almost every single box for that the Hashimotos. To date, I still don't require any treatment or anything. My levels are still relatively normal, but I have the presentation, you know, the scan of my thyroid and everything gives me the presentation of Hashimotos.

Speaker 1 4:39
Can I ask you, do you have any symptoms of it? No, no. And what? What are your PSH levels when they measure them?

Jesse 4:48
I don't know offhand, but they're, they're all within normal range, and they, in fact, I recently saw a second endocrinologist for a second opinion, and. And still have to do the blood work on that, but I have been tested multiple times from TSH levels, and they're relatively normal.

Scott Benner 5:08
Yeah. So there's a pretty wide range in the testing. So if you are over like 2.1 TSH and you have symptoms, they might still tell you you're in range. But if that ever happens and and you have symptoms, tell them you'd like to treat the symptoms. Yeah, because at

Jesse 5:25
that point, like I said, the doctor wasn't willing to treat anything. That's why I'm looking for that second opinion, because I have most of my everyday symptoms are answered by the Children's but there are a couple things that are still unanswered. And it's you know question as is it rheumatoid arthritis? Is it Hashimotos? Is it other things, what do you have? Joint pain, muscle muscle tightness. Is a big one that really isn't answered by shogrens.

Scott Benner 5:58
Stiff back, stiff neck. Yeah, yeah. All the time. Crack your neck. Doesn't matter. Cracks again. Five seconds later,

Jesse 6:05
I have a spot in my shoulder blade that is just a constant knot, and it's, you know, and it's not answered by anything orthopedic. So it's kind of like Arden has all that interesting, yeah, she she diagnosed with Hashimotos as well, or just yeah, she

Scott Benner 6:24
has she takes um two thyroid medications. She takes uh tyrosine for t4 replacement. She takes cytomil for t3 replacement. If you take insulin or sofony ureas, you are at risk for your blood sugar going too low. You need a safety net when it matters most, be ready with jivo hypo pen. My daughter carries gevok hypopen everywhere she goes because it's a ready to use rescue pen for treating very low blood sugar in people with diabetes ages two and above that. I trust low blood sugar emergencies can happen unexpectedly, and they demand quick action. Luckily, jivo kypopen can be administered in two simple steps, even by yourself in certain situations. Show those around you where you store jivo kypo pen and how to use it. They need to know how to use jivo kypopen before an emergency situation happens. Learn more about why gvok 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. But she's like, we could start an ASMR podcast of just art and cracking herself. I mean, every

Jesse 7:54
so in my journey to getting diagnosed, I had a lot of physical therapy, and physical therapy seemed to be the only thing that helped me and but it's only temporary. Every therapist I've been to, every doctor I've been to, is just massage therapist. Their first comment is, Wow, you're really tight. And I'm like, Yeah, that's just my muscles. Hey,

Scott Benner 8:15
Jesse, can you hyperextend your elbows, your arms? Are you super stretchy? Can you pitch a baseball, really well, anything like that. No, no,

Jesse 8:24
I would say my joints are pretty flexible, like, especially my neck. I mean, it's tight and it cracks. But at the same time, the chiropractors that I've seen have also said there's a lot of motion,

Scott Benner 8:35
yeah, so you could maybe have you looked into um airs, Danlos Syndrome. I've heard of that, and I have checked into that at some point. Also, you're much louder right now. So whatever you just did, let's keep doing that. Okay, cool, okay, yeah, so that's an autoimmune issue that would be highlighted mainly with, like, super flexible flexibility, because your ligaments are extra stretchy. You might get, like, over like, hypermobility, I guess would be an easy way to say it, and there is no real treatment for it other than physical therapy. So that might be while, why, while you're doing the physical therapy, it's better, but then it doesn't stay better, gotcha, it's E, H, L, E, R, S, D, A, n, l, o, s, if you want to look into it, awesome. Yeah, that could definitely be it. And the thyroid thing, again, if you have a TSH over 2.1 like, say your thyroid is like three and a half that or four, and your doctor's gonna go, that's in range. You would say, I would prefer to be under two. Can we medicate it under two? It's one little pill. You take it like once a day. I

Jesse 9:42
just pulled up a 2020 result, and it's 2.090

Scott Benner 9:47
okay, yeah, almost 2.1 no one would medicate that. I wouldn't see anybody medicating that, but it's a watch for sure.

Jesse 9:53
Yeah, it's and that's 2020 so, yeah, okay,

Scott Benner 9:56
no, well, how about when you think. Back on your your family, your connected family, your mother, your father, aunts, uncles. Up until

Jesse 10:04
recently, the only thing would be my grandmother had rheumatoid arthritis, and that was the only known diagnosis. You know, autoimmune in the family, in the family. Until recently, my aunt on my mother's side and my grandmother's on my mother's side. My aunt was just recently diagnosed with celiacs.

Scott Benner 10:25
Okay, that's you guys, Irish, Italian, Italian. Okay, interesting. Do you have I'm gonna, I hope you don't mind unpick. I know you're probably, but I think I'm getting to your topic. So give me a second anxiety for you.

Jesse 10:42
No, no, nothing over the top. No,

Scott Benner 10:45
okay, you know, it's funny. I'm just gonna, I'm gonna throw this out there, because I want to get into your topic, right? You know, you sent a little note. Everybody sends a note about, like, what they want to talk about, and because, I hope you take this the right way. You have an androgynous name, so I didn't know if I was going to be talking to a man or a woman today, and now I'm going to say something that people are probably going to find offensive. I found your note I get I was guessing you were going to be a woman because you spoke so much about trauma in your note.

Jesse 11:22
It's interesting. I mean, so when I started my pitch, my pitch was, Hey, Scott, I'm just a dad. I'm just a 45 year old dad, and it's just like, I'm just a regular dad kind of thing. But I will tell you that this diagnosis hit me hard. My wife was the champion the let's put all that crap aside and full steam ahead, let's figure this out and get going. And I was holy. Now, what

Scott Benner 11:53
you know, like stuck was that your personality prior to it,

Jesse 11:57
no, no, no. Like, I'm, I'm, I'm,

Speaker 2 12:01
I think I'm often the problem solver,

Jesse 12:06
the let's deal with reality. We need to get to the next step. My wife is also like that. Both type a people that just, let's go, let's, you know, get things done, right? You know, there's, there's, you know, going back to college, you know, a breakup hit me hard. Generally, I'm not the emotional guy. I'm the, let's do, you know, I'm very task oriented. And for some reason this not, for some reason, this just hit me. Yeah,

Scott Benner 12:37
you think it could be, because it is your daughter 100%

Jesse 12:40
you know it's like when it's your own kids, and it's the same thing, like anything medical you could give me gunshot wounds, stabbings, somebody bleeding all over the place, and I'm calm, cool, collected, no problem. My daughter gets a paper cut, and my wife is often like, get out of the way. Let me do this. And it's like, it's, it's my daughter.

Scott Benner 13:04
I don't need this guy crying on the band aids. We gotta go. I'm telling

Jesse 13:08
you, like, she literally pushes me out of the way and says, Get out of here. You're no help. So, and it's, it's strange for me because like that, that's like, my, um, that's my wheelhouse. That's, you know, I have no problem with that, but it's my daughter and I just, I crumble. Do you freeze or do you fall apart? Um, just fall apart. I don't. I don't freeze like I definitely act, but I'm a mess. You know, it's just not the typical my wife's right. Get out of the way. You're not

Scott Benner 13:41
crazy. Tell me about about Brianna's diagnosis. Then how did you guys figure it out? No, it's,

Jesse 13:47
it's kind of like mirrors, you know, everybody else's story leading up to it. She was super tired. We had just gone to Disney in December, in December, all the way back then, she wasn't herself, like, I remember saying it to my wife like, She's awfully quiet, she's not quite herself. And then come February, you know, up at two, it she the the bed wedding is, was the final clue that, you know, we're like, something's not right. We, you know, we did the research, we looked and we're like, diabetes. Maybe she has diabetes. And, you know, like a typical parent would do, I went in to denial, and I was like, nah, nah. That seems crazy. But again, she checked

Speaker 2 14:36
the boxes. So we scheduled an appointment

Jesse 14:41
with the pediatrician just prior to the bed wedding, and then she wet the bed and like the following, like, I don't know it was like four days away or whatever, that we had the appointment previously scheduled. So we're like, Okay, let's get her to the doctors and see what happens. I'm. Never forget it, because I don't know what happened, but I promised Brianna. I was like, Yeah, well, I'll get you a smoothie. So let's go get a smoothie. We'll go to the doctor or whatever. We just happened to be running late, so I was like, All right, the smoothie is going to have to wait until after the appointment because we're running really late.

Go in,

I knew what was going to happen. I knew they were going to check her sugar. And I don't know if I expected it to be high or not, because I really didn't really believe it. I was like, There's no way. Yeah, but sure enough, they checked it. She was I forget what the number was, but by the time we got to the hospitals, it's close to think it was 600 you

Scott Benner 15:41
know, you and I live so close to each other. I think you might have gone to my kids pediatrician as possible. Yeah.

Jesse 15:47
I mean, it's like, it's crazy, because it's funny, because the office that we normally go to, we went to a different office because there was the available appointment, right? They were like, you have to. I think they did the finger stick there, but we are the urine test, but we had to go to the other office to do a finger stick or something. I forget. It's kind of all a blur. They made us go to the other office in another town before we went to the hospital? Were

Scott Benner 16:21
you? Well, maybe it wasn't my pediatrician. It sounds like a sounds like we got to get you to a better place. But so wait. So what are the um, with the four of you together,

Jesse 16:29
where did you just go? It was just me and her.

Scott Benner 16:32
Why did they send Captain crumble? How come your wife didn't go? Did you? Oh, you didn't know this about yourself yet. No,

Jesse 16:38
that's true too. Like, I mean, I wasn't crushed at that point. So, like, you know, but still dealing with her with any true emergencies. It's

Scott Benner 16:50
not, not the best. But how often does that really happen?

Jesse 16:53
Yeah, it doesn't, yeah. So it wasn't like anything, you know, it's super known. But then after that, it was like, I just went into, like, a tailspin pretty quickly that day, no, no, I think the during the hospital stay, like it was just, you know, once we got the confirmation, once, you know, they did the finger stick and sending us to the hospital like it. I mean, I, I knew at that point. And once we got to the ER and they did the intake and whatever, the number was six, 700 I don't quite remember, but it was definitely high at that point. I wouldn't say I was crumbling, but it was like, Oh my God, you know, like it was just, what

Scott Benner 17:38
were the thoughts that were getting you. Do you remember specific things that were were alarming to you? I mean, I listen, I understand the whole thing's alarming, but were there things that stood out, I think,

Jesse 17:50
for me, and I think why it hits me, hit me hard is and I think a lot of parents will say this, but like Brianna, is a very bright eight year old. She's in gifted and talented. She's super smart. She has so much going for her, super mature, you know, bright girl, really nice, great friends. You know, just everything about it is like, this is perfect daughter kind of thing. Just knowing the diagnosis it, it was just,

Scott Benner 18:25
did you think her life was over? Yeah,

Jesse 18:28
yeah, that that's, you know. And again, it goes to that my wife pulled me back in. Like, hello, this isn't cancer. Like, you know, this isn't death sentence, you know, so to speak. So, yeah, like, you know, in my mind, this totally changed her life. You know that I didn't view it as a speed bump. I viewed it as crushing, like a crash,

Scott Benner 18:53
like, like, we Oh, my God. She only made it seven, eight years, and now and now, all the promise of her life is gone. How

Jesse 19:02
is she going to do those things that we envisioned? You know, you know her bright future and right just taken away or gone. A little, you know reality, a little knowledge and understanding what diabetes is, and knowing that it is not a stage four cancer or something like that. I mean, once reality sets in, it's not that doom and gloom, but I I still had a really hard time with why her, you know, like that. Why did they why God, pick her, you know, why does she have to go through this, that type of stuff.

Scott Benner 19:41
Was your life going really well up until then? I mean, it was good, good. Okay, not like you like, but things were going the way you expected they I guess that's more. Mike, yeah, that so that's how I felt, right, like things weren't easy, but they were going I had a goal. We had goals together. Things were moving towards those goals as expected, exactly, yeah. Then the diabetes is, like, it felt like the thing that, really, I was gonna, if it, like, if me up, because I was like, it's maybe the first time as an adult that I thought, Oh, I have no control over any of this. Yeah, yeah.

Jesse 20:18
It's, it's, you know, all that taken from you. You know, you have zero control. And as far as I want to say, like the outlook, I mean prognosis or whatever, like at that point, you don't, you're not really in tune to all the nuances of diabetes. But at the same time, you know, it's not stage four cancer, but it's still heavy, yeah. And I think once throughout the hospital stay, you know, and seeing, okay, yep, she's going to be okay. This isn't, you know, it's manageable. There's tons of stuff out there, seeing, you know, the various people who came in during the hospital, it was outstanding, even like I I hear, you know, horror stories from people admitted and whatnot. And we had an unbelievable hospital stay. We had, we got connected with her current doctor. You know, when she was like, you know, I practice outpatient. She could be my patient if you're interested. And I'm like, Absolutely, you seem great, you know. And she she is her doctor. Is amazing. That stay in the hospital definitely helped. But it's still overwhelming, you know, and that fresh feeling of, now, what? And

Scott Benner 21:40
it doesn't take long for you to realize that as good as the hospital was and how and as comfortable as they might have made you feel that they didn't really tell you, like, a small percentage of the things you're actually going to need to know no fault of their own. Like, how would they

Jesse 21:52
but you were really I feel like we were really lucky. We had an unbelievable educator. You've

Scott Benner 21:58
probably heard me talk about us Med, and how simple it is to reorder with us med using their email system. But did you know that if you don't see the email and you're set up for this, you have to set it up. They don't just randomly call you, but I'm set up to be called if I don't respond to the email, because I don't trust myself 100% so one time I didn't respond to the email, and the phone rings the house. It's like, ring. You know how it works. And I picked it up. I was like, hello, and it was just the recording was like, us, med doesn't actually sound like that, but you know what I'm saying. It said, Hey, you're I don't remember exactly what it says, but it's basically like, Hey, your order's ready. You want us to send it? Push this button if you want us to send it, or if you'd like to wait, I think it lets you put it off, like, a couple of weeks or push this button for that, that's pretty much it. I push the button to send it, and a few days later, box right at my door. That's it us. Med.com/juice, box, or call, 888-721-1514, get your free benefits checked now and get started with us. Med, Dexcom, OmniPod, tandem, freestyle, they've got all your favorites, even that new islet pump. Check them out now at usmed.com/juice box, or by calling 888-721-1514, there are links in the show notes of your podcast player and links at juicebox podcast.com to us Med, and to all the sponsors. The podcast is sponsored today by the place where I get my oh gosh, my sheets, my towels, some of my clothing, a lot of the things that I stay warm or comfortable with. Cozy earth.com I'm wearing a pair of cozy Earth joggers right now. I've recently gotten another pair in a different color. I sleep on cozy Earth sheets. They are so comfortable and soft and temperate, temperate meaning I'm never hot or cold, which is really saying something, because my wife loves to turn that giant fan on, but they keep me nice and warm without making me like, sweaty or moist. You know what I mean? You don't want to be moist while you're sleeping. And then, of course, the waffle towels I use every day to dry off my bits and parts after I've showered. Cozyearth.com use the offer code juice box at checkout to save 40% off of your entire order. I'm not saying 40% off of one item. I'm saying 40% off of everything you put in the cart. Cozyearth.com use the offer code juice box at checkout.

Jesse 24:24
They got her CGM on her, like, day one or day two. Like, I mean, super quick, just the connection of here's what's going to happen, as far as you know. Here's your MDI. Here's how it works. Here's all the calculations. We're not going to discharge you until you know what you're doing. A nutritionist came in, like we were peppered with you

Scott Benner 24:45
felt ready? Yeah, 100%

Jesse 24:49
like when we we left, we I forget how long we're there, three days, four days. I mean, it was on a longer end compared to a lot of people. Let's say day three. Three, like, I don't wanna say we were experts, but we were pretty comfortable.

Scott Benner 25:03
Did that end up panning out like in real, real world play? Did you actually know what you were doing?

Jesse 25:09
I Yeah, okay. I think we, like I and I attribute it to the A our the endocrinologist, amazing, and then the diabetes educator that we had. She also had type one, okay, it was absolutely huge. I mean, she hit every point that you would want to know, and she really, truly educated us before we were discharged.

Scott Benner 25:34
What's your background? That you felt like you picked it up so quickly. So I,

Jesse 25:39
I was an EMT. I was an EMT for about 10 years or so, high school through college, and now I'm a police officer. Now the medical aspect of things is always interest. I always had an interest in the medical field, okay, I think it was a combination of maybe a little bit of my background. I did not as an EMT. I definitely did not know diabetes until the diabetes, until Brianna was diagnosed. And the educator, as far as, like, being an EMT police officer, you get very, very, very little training. You

Scott Benner 26:15
know, it's funny, I don't want to shift this on to me, but I just felt for the first time that I might get a PBA card out of this podcast, and I got really excited. You could I have one you don't want to take responsibility for how I drive. Trust me,

Jesse 26:34
all of my I get, not different than many people in New Jersey, New Jersey. So I don't know, I don't

Scott Benner 26:38
even know how to describe what I use driving for, but it's some sort of a release, that's for sure. Isn't that interesting because at work, you're constantly, that's what you were alluding to earlier, like, in like, blood bang situations, you're okay,

Jesse 26:53
yeah, it's like, and, and my wife could see it as soon as you know, it's one of my kids, she's just like, get out. And typically she doesn't deal with the blood and all that stuff. But when it comes to her kids, she's on it. So we kind of reverse roles with that. Yeah, that's

Scott Benner 27:10
the mom thing, for sure. Yeah, that that whatever gonna say blockade they throw up in their brain in situations like that, is really impressive. You know, it's, it's like a superpower, really is crazy. I'm like, OmniPod. Like, normally she's so goofy, and now she's like, seems to know what's happening.

Jesse 27:27
So we have this, we have the same life. It's superhero powers. No

Scott Benner 27:32
kidding. Really cool. Okay, so you've taken the the diagnosis as a trauma. Did you go to therapy? Yeah. So not initially,

Jesse 27:42
initially, I think we were still very much in the management stage, just trying to figure it out and balance things out and more task oriented. So even though I was crushed, it took me a little bit of time, I don't know, let's say, actually, I guess it wasn't that long, maybe a month and a half, month to month and a half, before I found somebody. And the therapist that I found is a type one diabetic. I don't know that. I knew that up front, but he, he was a former paramedic, and I knew him like I've I've been to training, you know, he's a little bit older than me. I've been to training with him. I know he trained me to some degree, through various EMT classes, and I knew who he was, and I that's how I found him. And I think it just happened that he happened to be a type one diabetic, so I kind of got a double benefit, because he's familiar with the job and how I kind of react to things and deal with stuff. But then he also had the knowledge of diabetes, which was huge, because he can put things in perspective and just simply say, you know, her blood sugar's 200 she's not gonna die. You know, Jesse, how

Scott Benner 29:02
old are you? 45 oh, you're not that much younger than me. I'm sitting here as you're talking, and I thought this podcast keeps like surprising me as it grows like I didn't if you would have asked me, like, where on my bingo card do I have, like, in touch, open, honest male cop. On my possibility of recording with somebody, I would have put that pretty low on my list.

Jesse 29:28
You had me as young female mom.

Scott Benner 29:33
Yeah, no kidding, good for you. So,

Jesse 29:35
I mean, I do have an interesting background, like I started EMT wise, and I went to school. I was the first one in my family to go away to school, go through college, got my master's degree, and I got my master's degree in community counseling. I have the degree in counseling, and I at that point, I was like, I satisfied my family. I got. My degree, but this isn't what I want to do. And I did a lot of internships and stuff in the inpatient psychiatric inpatient because I liked the variety of it, and I quickly put myself through the academy doing the police thing. And that's where I want to be. My background is that typical of a police officer?

Scott Benner 30:20
Yeah. I mean, I know a lot of cops, if you listen, you might know that right, like I was, I was just at a retirement, my buddy just retired as a sergeant the other day, and I was, I was faced with all these guys I knew when I was younger, who had all gotten older. Such a crazy thing. Felt like I walked through a time where I was, you know, 1819, 20 and they were 2324 2526 like back then. And then I get there, and they're all like, you know, in their late 50s and early 60s, I was like, What? What happened to you guys? But they were all still very kind of classically the way you would expect them to be. And I think for people from the outside, you might have one picture I find the people I know who are police officers, to be really lovely people, but they're also more no bullshit people. They usually lean a little more conservative than liberal, maybe, like they fit into a bit of a into a mold, right? But, but nobody you'd want more than them in any kind of a personal situation, like anything like my lawnmower broke, to my kid just fell out of a tree, to I killed somebody. What do we do? These are the people I would call you know what I mean, not one of them is anything like you. Well, super interesting. Do you feel proud of that? No, I

Jesse 31:35
do like I I've been lucky to like. I'm lucky to have the background. That I do. Retirement wise, I'm definitely thinking along the ways of counseling for kids with diabetes. Like, that's kind of like, yeah. I mean, both my wife's pushed me to do that because they're not out there. They really don't exist. It's pretty tough. Yeah, there's

Scott Benner 32:01
not a ton of them. I'm just, I'm just surprised you didn't say I'm going to work security to car dealership, because that's pretty much so

Jesse 32:07
I have the mindset that as soon as I retire, I'm doing nothing police related, so and, and I think with my background, like, I'm lucky I have that option, which is, which is kind of nice,

Speaker 1 32:19
but you ever had to pull your weapon out? Oh yeah, yeah. The thing had things changed over the last 10 years around here. Oh, my goodness.

Jesse 32:30
The world we live in is crazy. Easiest way to put it, it's absolutely nuts. The thing that grounds me is the perspective and, like, just, you gotta put things in perspective. And like, when going back to the diagnosis, I couldn't do it like, like, you just spiral, because it's, it's my kid, you gotta look at the bigger picture. You gotta look at, you know, what is the reality of stuff, and put things in perspective.

Scott Benner 33:00
So you're doing that? Is that helping you? Yeah, 100%

Jesse 33:02
like I think, as time has gone on, you become more educated, you learn more, you're able to manage things, and you obviously become more confident and able to deal with stuff. It certainly helps. Yeah, I think for for me, where I'm at now, when I reached out to you to say, hey, I'm interested. You know, this diagnosis really crushed me, but at the same time, things were getting better, and you are the physical and the daily management of things is easier as time goes on and you know, you're less I guess, bothered by the late night lows or whatever it may be, because you're just able to deal with it. But Brianna has had a hard time mentally since I put the request in to be on the podcast. So the whole mental health aspect of it is shifting from you to her. Like, when I say, like I was crushed, like I felt it, but I don't she. She may have picked up on it, but I like, you know, like in your mind, you may think like a full blown depression, I wasn't there. It was just the maybe more of like an anxiety of now what and having to

Scott Benner 34:33
move on and deal with it. But

Jesse 34:34
I think, like I was able to do that relatively quickly. But for her, she internalizes things very much so, like where

she feels like it not that it's her fault, but it's that she's no good. And it's not,

I know it's not all diabetes, the daily stress. Answers of the disease has made things harder for much harder for her.

Speaker 1 35:06
Do you have examples of of some things that have gotten gotten the better of her? So

Jesse 35:11
I guess the latest thing for her is, you know, obviously, I think most kids that are diagnosed, obviously have to deal with their peers and a lot of the questions and things of that nature. And at first, Brianna was like, no shame. You know, here's my pod, here's my Dexcom. This is what it does, zero shame she was out there. She was not afraid to show them. And that kind of slowly morphed into, well, I don't want to put it there today. I'd rather, you know, put it on my arm. Wear long sleeves to so and so keeps asking me about it, and I don't want to talk to him about it to I think the biggest challenge we had recently was her nurse, her regular nurse was out with an injury, so we had a couple of substitutes, so the consistency was difficult, because she was, you know, she would text and say, I just got called down to the nurse's office for 130 you know, down or they called me down to the nurse's office at 90 and they wouldn't let me go to to class for 30 minutes. I treated with 15 carbs, but then they gave me an another 15 carbs. So, like a lot of different things, and like, over like a month's period of time, I was trying to figure out how much of it was her just reacting to things, or just having a hard time to how much of it was the nurses just not following the plan. It took a little bit of time to try to figure it out. And I'm like, You know what? My daughter is really smart. She pretty much has this why am I relying on the nurses at this point? Because she's having a hard time with the nurses, either over treating her or calling her down prior to a low to different different things, like one nurse just like to let her ride high, another nurse would not be okay with the Dexcom continuously going down, even though she already treated and should be going back up so she would overdose.

Scott Benner 37:33
Yeah, so once the new car smell like, wears off, and she's not like, you know, like, I've got diabetes, and it's cool, and let me show you my stuff. Like, once that happened, that went away, and, by the way, was that heard, were you guys pumping her up like that? Do you think, because I see that, I see that sometimes, like the parents are, they get, like, cheerleaders. And I'm like, oh, you know, you're trying to make something exciting. That's not really exciting, you know, like, No, I mean, insulin pumps are terrific and everything, but they're not like, on the level of, have you seen my new iPhone? Yeah,

Jesse 38:04
in the beginning, I think we were pretty we were very strong with me, encouraging her to help others understand, like, educate kind of thing, as far as showing stuff off. And I don't think so, like, I don't think we pushed that with her, but we were definitely like I was saying, we were, you know, with two type a parents, and we were very much with the teach people about this. If they want to know, teach them, tell them, educate. I think she did, but I think that we're off to the point where she became annoyed with the, yeah, too

Scott Benner 38:37
much, right? And then the kid that wants to know too much. It stops being fun, and it starts being like, leave me alone. And then the nurses start making mistakes, and then everything is a hassle, like it, it's holding her back instead of helping her.

Jesse 38:50
Oh, like, you know, she's diagnosed at eight, so I kind of envisioned, you know, burnout happening like 1314, 15, someplace in there. But here we are at age nine, and it's like, kind of like a burnout, and it's, it's just been at it for a year. Yeah,

Scott Benner 39:10
I saw somebody online today. They were kind of lamenting all the things that have been going backwards for their kids since the diagnosis. And it feels terrible when you're reading it. But like, there's this part of me that knows, like, this is all normal, which it sucks, because, you know, your kid wishing that they were somebody else because they don't want to have diabetes or something like that, is not, it's not an easy thing to hear, obviously. But then you start, you know, I start hearing the I can't take this anymore. Like, I can't do this anymore, from the from the parents, like, I don't know how much longer I'm supposed to live, without sleep, without this, without that. And I'm like, Yeah, you gonna do it? Like, so, I mean, I'm not saying your attitude, you know, makes it better, but you got to get past the part where you're like, I can't, because it does.

Jesse 39:57
I mean, yeah, I think the attitude is. Is, like I said, kind of going back to grounding and putting things in perspective. Like the attitude is key. Yeah, I find, like me and my wife, we kind of like trade off, you know, she has bad days, and it's like, this sucks. And it's like, all right, I got it. I'll deal with it tonight. Where, you know, I have bad days, or just came home or something, and she has it. So, yeah, the attitude is key. But I think, like, personality goes into it for her a lot. She is, like, there's a control factor. And when she doesn't have control it, it's very hard for her. You know, in talking to her teacher, the social worker and the nurse, the nurse wasn't on the same page, but at least the teacher and the social worker is like, she needs to be independent. She can do this on her own. Let her do this on her own, and gave her carte blanche. Everything is yours. And nine years old, she's she's rocking it.

Scott Benner 41:06
How are outcomes like, what's her? A 1c like, in

Jesse 41:10
February 23 she was diagnosed. She was a 12.8 in May of 23 she went down to a 6.8

Scott Benner 41:19
and then we were, like, couple visits

Jesse 41:21
in between. We're 646364, and then our latest visit, which was last week, couple days ago, actually, was a 6.5 so she went up by point

Speaker 1 41:33
one. Oh, she's doing terrific. She's doing that by herself, mostly herself, 100% Oh, geez,

Jesse 41:39
she has brought up, like, you know, the nurses have said things to her, like, you shouldn't have just juice. You should stabilize, you should add protein and protein to help stabilize your sugars and whatnot. And it's like, I see your point. You know, like to the Brianna's like, no, that's not how you do it. I gotta have fast acting carbs, and then they're giving me additional carbs and proteins on top of the juice, and it's causing me to go high, and my pumps doing corrections, and then I'm hitting the low an hour, two hours later. Because what

Scott Benner 42:15
kind of pump is she using? The

Jesse 42:17
OmniPod five. The OmniPod, we have it set almost as aggressive as you can. We're constantly in a state of flux where we're adjusting stuff. But I would say her Target's 110 her ratios are pretty aggressive. Correction factors aggressive, like we're pretty aggressive with things. But at the same time, you know, the endocrinologist says don't correct Under this circumstance, and she has followed her guidance, which is awesome.

Scott Benner 42:49
Yeah, wow. So do you think that having it, the management on her is part of her burden right now, or do you think she's okay with that part of it, and it's more about the outside forces?

Jesse 42:59
So she's only been managing for completely by herself about a month, and it's been like night and day, much better for her. The flip side is she's still nine, so she's a kid, and she'll forget to dose, she'll not do a correction. You know, some of those things that you would expect of a nine year old. So I

Scott Benner 43:26
bet she also doesn't like being told what to do by the nurses, especially when they're not right, too.

Jesse 43:30
Yeah, like that. That was probably the biggest factor for her mental health. I mean, she and I didn't really see it as a father for a while, as to how defeating or annoying it was to her. It it truly bothered her. Yeah, now that she's doing it and she has more confidence, she feels better about herself. Every aspect about it thus far has been when we last week, when we met with the endocrinologist, the social worker, the first thing the social worker said to her was, you know that you don't have to do this all by yourself, right? And she's like, No, I know. And she's like, you know, there are people to help you, right? And she's like, Yeah, you know, like, sometimes I forget, and Mom and Dad help me. Sometimes mom and dad ask me, you know what my number is. You know, different things like that that, you know, it's

Scott Benner 44:31
most important that she just realizes that there's someone there, not maybe so much that she has to actually take them, take them up on it all the time. I think maybe just knowing it's there is valuable

Jesse 44:41
100% because she would take it on herself if she could 100% you know what? I mean? Yeah,

Scott Benner 44:48
it's something super well. You know, I just put out an episode today. It's the first of a four part series with Erica about resilience. We really dug into what like. Being resilient means, and how people end up in that situation. And it's not as clear cut as I think we make it out to be. It's pretty it's really very interesting. A lot about like, what's happened to you in the past, how you face things, you have a much better chance. There's this list. It's called, like, the ACES list. I'm gonna do a lot of this off top of my head. But for people who have lived through certain issues, they have different challenges, physical, sexual, verbal abuse, physical emotional neglect, living in a household with mental illness, growing up a parent who's addicted to drugs or alcohol, if someone in your home has been imprisoned, witnessing abuse, losing a parent to divorce, separation or death, like these things all impact how you manage like stresses and how resilient you actually are as an adult. It's super crazy and interesting, and it's very often not up to you, yeah, so we spent a lot of time picking through it. It's interesting because you describe you and your wife is very type A, yes, you know, like, and so your daughter, I guess, likely, is too like, even that's what I hear, which doesn't want the nurses to tell her the wrong thing. Yep, you know, a lot of people, they'll just listen to authority and do what they're told, and if it's wrong, they'll go, well, they were wrong, not me, and then it's all gone. But she doesn't want someone else in control of it. She doesn't even really want you guys in control of it. It doesn't

Jesse 46:30
sound like, no, yeah, and it's and she, you know, as a kid, it's tough, because she she has to balance the listening to authority, and she, 100% wants to do that, and does that because she has those values and everything else. But at the same time, she also wants to control to or at least, like you said, if they're doing something wrong, she just, more often than not, will take it and listen to the authority, and that would make her feel worse, because she feels like

Scott Benner 47:05
she knew the right thing to do, right? And she's not in control. Well, this is, this is very new, developing, to say the least, for you guys,

Jesse 47:13
resilience is a, I think there's like, certain key words, like, you know, putting things in perspective, resilience, patience would I don't like I think resilience is probably the best word, but to be that way, like you said, I don't I think your life experiences helped you to do it like I find it

Scott Benner 47:33
after having the conversation with Erica, it's largely not up to you how resilient you are.

Jesse 47:38
Like my mentality is adapt and overcome. You just gotta do it, unless it comes to my kids, right?

Scott Benner 47:46
But do you, can you look back on your childhood and figure out where that comes from?

Jesse 47:50
Yeah, like, it's definitely your upbringing. I think, like, my father was tough. He was definitely disciplinarian kind of thing, authoritarian, but he, he also very much so challenged us. Everything was, you know, trying to figure this out and do well. And he pushed us to do well, motivated. So I think that it kind of put you on that track. Yeah, you're kind of put in a position where you have to do it, right? I think, you know, like, I hear it a lot at work and stuff like, Gen Z, Gen X, you know, different. The word is, like, it's just a different breed. I don't completely subscribe to it. It's, it's true, like, it generational differences is, you know, there's clearly differences, but I think part of it is the world and how they're growing up today is different than when we grew up, you know, like, just think of like the playgrounds when we were kids in 1980s the playgrounds at school were considered death traps in the 1980s and I wouldn't go out and play without getting like a splinter or banging your head on a metal bar or something like that. Whereas today, everything is padded and low to the ground and, you know, just super, super safe that it's, you know, it's almost like, over compensation. It doesn't allow kids to to learn.

Scott Benner 49:28
Yeah, I wonder how, how that's going to change, because your daughter's a completely new generation now. I mean, at eight years old, you know, and your son even at five, like, right? Like, where does this like? Because they, they're going to fast forward through so much stuff, like things that we would have spent years adapting to, they learn about, get thrown into, figure out and move past, sometimes in weeks, it's kind of fascinating. Like, I think it's gonna overall make people more capable, you know, but like. In those in between generations, for the people who weren't accustomed to it, it was a big shift, yeah, like, a, like, a really, really big shift. I feel lucky that I paid attention to technology early on in my life and I kept up with it, because I think that keeps me, like, nimble. And like, you know, I see something new, and I'm like, Ah, that won't work. But then you see another thing. You go, that's a good tool. I should learn how to use that. Then you use it, you learn. Then you have to be careful. You don't start learning so many things that actually, you can't actually apply them. And then when I kind of explode that out into real life, like, I wonder how many things kids are taking in that are valuable, and how many things they're taking in because it's in their face, and you feel like, oh, I need to learn this new thing. But it really, it won't hold any long term value for you, right? It's super interesting. Like, I mean, like, I can't wait to do this podcast for 10 more years and talk to like, your daughter 10 years from now, like, and see where she's at, because she's probably going to be fine. And you'll realize that a lot of this was just necessary to have happen, and that the real key to the whole thing is to not get stuck in one place, like not hit quicksand and think, Oh, God, this problem right here is gonna define us, and then you worry about it so much you can't get past it. You know what? I

Jesse 51:19
mean, yep, and I think for her and people growing up, you know, today, it's the management tools are changed, evolving and changing so much that it's like all these tools or resources are available, at least for the physical part of it. I think the mental health side, it's tough, like, there's not a ton out there for the mental health aspect, yeah, but I take

Scott Benner 51:45
your point with kids. Think about this though 30 years ago, an eight year old type one just had diabetes for a year, could not have said I have a mid six, A, 1c that I manage on my own. And my biggest problem is that my nurse doesn't understand fat and protein and how it pushes up my blood sugar later, and how to mean those people were back there going, Oh, the doctor told me I'm gonna die in my 30s. So I

Jesse 52:12
mean, like the management's evolving so quickly that

Speaker 2 52:16
her and even new generation, it's like they're gonna have different experiences,

Jesse 52:21
and it

Scott Benner 52:22
should allow them to focus more on the mental health side of diabetes, which might be one of the might end up being one of the more, like, unsung heroes of the technology, like, you know, like we think about it, and all the other aspects of life, right? Like your car drives itself. You don't have to do this. You're you know, this does that like, you know, takes this load from you. What do you do with that time, once the the load's been taken away? And I would say that type ones, historically, are so busy keeping themselves alive in the moment, they don't have time to think about big picture stuff. And maybe now they will like, maybe now you can throw in an OmniPod, five, an eyelet pump, hand them something or other, like, you know what I mean, and let the thing run your A, 1c, in the sixes. You figure out the nuts and bolts of it. You move past that part, and now you have, like, time and bandwidth to think about the other stuff. Like, you know, and maybe you you'll end up with a more complete person at the end because of that, set it and forget it. You know, hopefully, hopefully they, some people figure it out. Like, I mean, it's not always. I don't see how it can be perfect ever, but, you know, right now, but the algorithms are insane. Like, I'm updating Arden tonight to another algorithm. So, you know, she's been using Iaps. Now she's going to move on to a different one. I love seeing where all this stuff goes and and, and what it lends you back, like, that's the part, man, that like what it gives you back in time and again, bandwidth. I don't think we're even up to appreciating that all yet. You know what I mean, even just like people use the GLP medication, they don't use as much insulin. You think, oh, there's great reasons, like, you know, to not use as much insulin. But how about, like, you know, removing acne or PCOS problems for girls, or, what about just use less insulin? You know, fewer insulin units, fewer lows, less three pound highs from medications like that kind of layer from eating and trying to stop below, like, all of that stuff just removes a layer of complexity, like, over and over and over again. Yeah, anyway, I want to keep doing this. I think the stories might be even crazier. 10 years from now,

Jesse 54:37
you had the one person on who I forget that you brought back. And I don't know if she was an exchange student, and I forget her name, but it was interesting to hear her story, like four years later, or whatever. I think you had her on, initially, a diagnosis, and then like, four years later, where she was, was

Scott Benner 54:54
it from Russia? With sarcasm, yes, yes. Yeah.

Jesse 54:58
That was really cool. See, because, like, you got, you know, the real life version of where they're at. And you know, some things are good, some things are bad. You just, you just deal with it, and, you know, you move on. But no, I

Scott Benner 55:11
agree. Even cool, she had, like, a tragic, personal yep thing happened in her family. And even though you could tell she's dazed from it still. Yep, she's moving. She's still moving in the right direction. And and, you know,

Jesse 55:27
hearing those stories like it's it's huge, because, like, you know, other people can relate. The beginning of her story

Scott Benner 55:35
is crazy. She lived in Russia when she was diagnosed. She's in, I think she's in America at college now, she didn't have access to a lot of the tools and or anything. She didn't really know what she was doing so well. You have to go back. It's called From Russia with sarcasm. She's like, 14 when I'm interviewing her, and she found by herself the podcast figured out all the tools she needed to take good care of herself at 14, went to her parents and said, I need you to find out how to get me an OmniPod and a CGM. And, like, she, she basically tasked her parents with, like, Fine, get these things for me in a country where they were not particularly available. They sourced the things for she puts her a 1c crazy good, takes care of herself completely. And then, you know, like, just has the greatest outlook on things,

Jesse 56:24
that is Brianna. Brianna is very much, here's what I need. This is, you know, and what's interesting to me is, you know, in the beginning, she was, I wouldn't say, showing stuff off, but she she had no shame. Then she moved into, well, you know, I'd rather not talk about it to now. I mean, she listens to your podcast regularly, like, and I'm like, I'm like, All right, Bree, let's, let's turn this off. You know, like, I'm sick of hearing Scott's voice. Let's turn this off.

Scott Benner 56:58
Listen. You can turn the volume down Jesse and let it finish. So I get to download, you know what I mean,

Jesse 57:03
or headphones, something. But, you know, like

Scott Benner 57:06
to the point that, like, listen,

Jesse 57:11
as a parent, like, I think one of the struggles, you know, if somebody's so young, is balancing. It's not all diabetes, you know, let's, let's tune out. Let's go something else, you know, let's not make it all diabetes. But she's also in a place where she she wants to learn which is, which is awesome, yeah, but

Scott Benner 57:32
it's just really fantastic to think that that she might be able to find herself and her answers in other people's stories. And again, there's a thing technology brings to you, right? Because if you go back 1015, years, I don't think in a lifetime, you could meet 1000 people with diabetes and hear their story. You know, 10 years ago, how would you do that now? You just like, you know, subscribe to a podcast. People will ask me times like, Why does it take so long to get on the show? Well, when you stop and look at Jesse's note, I'm going to read your note. Keep in mind it's not even the one you probably started out writing, probably not newly diagnosed child. Resources, support. Learning diabetes is tough, but the emotional aspects is being missed. Everyone is in a state of trauma, and they just react for good reasons, but the mental health element is absent, then navigating these emotions and learning diabetes as time progresses, does the trauma ever end for the child and for the parents? Also, I have to navigate schools and camps. It keeps kids safe, and that was probably written six months ago. You're not even that person anymore. Yeah,

Jesse 58:38
I remember it. I definitely remember that stage, but it's not the part you're in now. We're not trauma, we're not screaming at everything. Yeah, it's definitely different.

Scott Benner 58:49
Yeah, that's the lesson, Jesse. And one of the reasons why it takes six months to come on the show, because you'll actually have something to talk about when you get here, and then this will sit and marinate for months before it goes up, and when you hear it back, I guarantee you'll listen back and think I'm not even there anymore. Like and to me, that's the takeaway for people, is that, you know, train keeps on rolling. I think the biggest mistake people make, and if it's a mental health issue, sometimes it's not a mistake, it's just what happens to you, but it's that getting stuck in the mud and then not getting away realizing that this thing, as important as it seems at the moment, with just a tiny bit of hindsight, will seem irrelevant and just be a small portion of like, my perspective, and not the entirety of my life,

Jesse 59:33
going back to that, that word perspective, I think for me, that's it's huge, because there are many, many moments that are muddy and challenging, and whether it's nighttime lows or just a stubborn high, whatever the case may be like, there's there's moments that are challenging, but the overall perspective and the overall. Overall, like, you know, just moving in the right direction. It's, you know, we're only just over a year into this, and that journey over the past year has been, it's been a roller coaster, you know, looking back at it, but it's, you know, we're still riding it. And it's, it's one of those things that I think when I wrote that note, one of our challenges was the support, you know, just getting her connected with, like a mentor or other kids that you know, she can share, and she has a couple of friends you know who've been diagnosed that she's met along the way, one at camp, a couple at the walk and different events, but nothing close and personal. And I just think she's not ready for it, or maybe it's just not the right connection. But she does occasionally text, you know, all three or four of them with, you know, notes like, Hey, how are things? Check out, you know, screenshots of her sugar pixel or whatever, and different things that, like

Scott Benner 1:01:04
they do talk, but,

Jesse 1:01:06
you know, not super often, but I think she's missing. She was missing, and now is getting connected with like she tends to connect with older girls that share what they have, and she views them as kind of like an authority figure, or like somebody with knowledge that she wants to learn, or, Hey, that's a cool teenager who's who knows, and it's not mom and dad. I think that will be really helpful for our doctor's office actually has just connected us with somebody that, hopefully that works out well for her. She's also the type that wants to be the the ambassador, you know, that wants to teach others.

Scott Benner 1:01:47
And if she can't find those people, she always has a 52 year old guy with a podcast she can listen to, which I think is just a very crazy pairing. But

Jesse 1:01:57
I tell you what, though, like it, it helps. Like I don't, I wouldn't know what it feels like to be in her shoes with the constant Bree, what's your sugar? Brie, did you dose? Bri, you're really high, you know, like it's constant. And me, and me and my wife try

not to harp on that stuff.

But we're also type A and we kind of, we try to stay on top of it as best we can, yep, without harassing her. But you know, it's, it's that balance. And I think by her taking ownership and listening on her own and really wanting to and doing it on her own is pretty cool.

Scott Benner 1:02:39
Well, Jesse, it sounds to me like you guys are doing really well in my questions. Like, my question would be, just, does it feel that way? No,

Jesse 1:02:47
no. And that's, that's the tricky part. Like, I honestly, and I can't say no, like we, we are definitely moving in the right direction. But it's, it's like, one step forward, two steps back kind of thing. You know, there's been some other things that I would say, mental health wise, are not diabetes related, pre diabetes, like, we had her connected with a counselor for like, you know, at three years old, like, she would hit herself, you know, just saying, like, I'm I'm no good, and would hit herself when we'd say, hey, Bri, can you please clean your room up a little bit of it? I'm just no good. And she would hit herself kind of thing. And it's like so that kind of stuff, you know, has nothing to do with diabetes, but I think the diabetes definitely amplifies things to the nth degree.

Scott Benner 1:03:37
May I suggest Jesse to take a cue from your medical stuff and make sure they're tracking her TSH and her thyroid stuff too. So

Jesse 1:03:46
that was just included in her recent orders. I'd have to look back to see if it was ever previously tested going forward, yes, yeah,

Scott Benner 1:03:55
just because some anxiety and even like personality stuff could be thyroid related mood swings, yeah, yeah, for sure. Just keep that in your head. That's all absolutely yeah. And it also, by the way, a well regulated thyroid makes blood sugars easier to manage, too. That's

Jesse 1:04:12
interesting, yeah. So, I mean, what like, there's a pretty good percentage of diabetics who have Hashimotos as well, right?

Scott Benner 1:04:21
I mean, I don't know what it is, but when somebody tells me they have type one and Hashimotos, I don't go, oh, gosh, really, that's crazy.

Jesse 1:04:30
It's, it seems to be a more common theme,

Scott Benner 1:04:33
yeah. I mean, autoimmune can run in families, and it doesn't always have to be like, I have type one. So you have type one, it could be a number of different things. It just can't. I mean, it's clearly in my family, my daughter's got issues that, you know are not are more than type one. My son has Hashimotos. My wife has thyroid, you know, like, my son will talk sometimes about, like, I'm cold, you know, even though he's really good with his medication is and his TSH levels are great art. Is exhausted without a cytome supplement to her t4 supplement when she's taking her thyroid medications. She definitely is hypermobile to some degree. She's creaky and cracky and stiff and, you know, joints ache at times, stuff like that. Probably not Ra, it's all that stuff, man, like, you know, like, you start, my wife started using a GLP, and she's like, Oh, my inflammation went down so much like just from the GLP medication. She's like, I wonder how much this inflammation is just impacting my life. And I, I 100% take her, you know, at her work,

Jesse 1:05:35
I describe my autoimmune as to sum it up, it's an inflammation disorder.

Scott Benner 1:05:40
No, what it is, yeah. I mean, everything's just essentially there. Listen, this is completely unfounded. Then I have to let you go, okay, but there was a time where there were people running around the diabetes community and they were saying, your beta cells aren't dead. They're just frozen there. There's no room in there, so they can't move. I forget the exact way it was put, right. And now, tomorrow I have an episode coming out with a 50 year old, eight year old type one, who took Manjaro for weight and for insulin resistance, and it works so well for him. He's not on insulin anymore. Like I don't even know what to say about that. Like I'm not drawing a conclusion from it, even I'm just telling you, 50 years old, diagnosed, if I'm remembering his timeline right, he honeymooned for a while, four or five years, then for the last couple years, then the next couple years, like heavy usage of insulin, right where you would expect. Then they put him on manjarno, and he does not use insulin anymore. And he's got auto antibodies. He has type one diabetes, and he'll very likely need insulin again at some point in his life, but for the moment, he's not using it. That's very interesting. Ridiculous. Like a 15 year old girl a couple months ago, her mom came on. She's gone from 70 units a day down to four, and doesn't bolus for meals anymore and took off her pump. Yeah, so I

Jesse 1:06:57
don't know, man, that's impressive. I mean, the thing the amount of studies that are going on now, like you can only hope it's very positive. Gonna figure

Scott Benner 1:07:06
a lot. It's not everything's not gonna work for everybody, but some things are gonna work for a lot of people. And that's that's where you wanna be excited and have people continuing to look Jesse, I'm gonna say thank you right here. This is a great time to stop. I thought you were fantastic. I say this every time after I speak with someone like you there. If there are more men out there in touch with their feelings, please reach out to be on the podcast. I'll even talk to you guys that aren't you're fun too, but I don't get as many men, so I appreciate you reaching out. I really do.

Jesse 1:07:36
Also, I could say is I'm definitely, typically not the emotional person. But in this topic, in this realm, it it got me, diabetes

Scott Benner 1:07:45
brought you there, that's for sure. It got me, yep, let me ask one last question. Is there value in that for you? Like, if you can, like, let go of the part that diabetes is what brought it here. Like, are you happy that you have these connections now, or are they hard to deal with.

Jesse 1:08:01
I think it's one of those things, like, as I get older, you appreciate more and you understand more, and you kind of just, you comprehend it better. But I'm not an emotional guy, so it's not comfortable for me. It's not my wheelhouse. It's not like, you know, I don't enjoy having the, you know, range of emotions, or, you know, whatever it's, it's, it's typical. It's not typical of me, but at the same time in the realm that it's happening, and truly wrapping your head around all that's going on, it just gives you a better perspective. And you just, like, for me, it's, it's a growth type thing, like I'm at that age where you just, you learn from it, you appreciate

Speaker 2 1:08:44
it, and it's, it's helped me.

Jesse 1:08:49
I mean, if I were to take it back, I guess I would probably go back and say no, no emotion, and just get things done and do it my typical way. I think there's no other way for me. Okay, best way to put it,

Scott Benner 1:09:04
oh, that's very honest. I appreciate that. Thank you. Wow. All right, hold on one second for me, but you were terrific. Thank

Unknown Speaker 1:09:10
you. Appreciate it. Good

Scott Benner 1:09:11
times. You

a huge thanks to cozy Earth for sponsoring this episode of The juicebox podcast. Cozy earth.com use the offer code juicebox at checkout to save 40% off of your entire order. This episode of The juicebox podcast was sponsored by us Med, usmed.com/juicebox or call 888-721-1514, get started today with us Med, links in the show notes. Links at juicebox podcast.com a huge thank you to one of today's sponsors, gevok, glucagon. Find out more about Chivo hypopin. OmniPod at gvoke, glucagon.com. Forward slash juice box. You spell that, G, V, O, k, e, g, l, U, C, A, G, o, n.com. Forward slash juice box, if you or a loved one was just diagnosed with type one diabetes, and you're looking for some fresh perspective. The bold beginning series from the juicebox podcast is a terrific place to start. That series is with myself and Jenny Smith. Jenny is a CD CES, a registered dietitian and a type one for over 35 years, and in the bowl beginning series, Jenny and I are going to answer the questions that most people have after a type one diabetes diagnosis. The series begins at episode 698, in your podcast player, or you can go to juicebox podcast.com and click on bold beginnings in the menu. 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, wrongway recording.com, you.

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