#1474 Head Like a Hole

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Diagnosed at 26. Chicago pediatric nurse and new mom who built a looping algorithm after overcoming early depression with her husband’s support.

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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 00:00 Here we are back together again, friends for another episode of The Juicebox Podcast.

Carolina 00:15 Hi, my name is Carolina. I'm 30 years old. Turned 30 yesterday, and I have type one diabetes.

Scott Benner 00:24 Please don't forget that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan or becoming bold with insulin. Don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com All you have to do is use the offer code Juicebox at checkout. That's Juicebox at checkout to save 40% at cozy earth.com AG, one is offering my listeners a free $76 gift. When you sign up, you'll get a welcome kit, a bottle of d3, k2, and five free travel packs in your first box. So make sure you check out drink AG, one.com/juice, box to get this offer. 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/juice, box. It should not take you more than about 10 minutes. Today's episode of the juice box podcast is sponsored by the contour next gen blood glucose meter. This is the meter that my daughter has on her person right now. It is incredibly accurate and waiting for you at contour next.com/juice, box. US med is sponsoring this episode of the juice box podcast, and we've been getting our diabetes supplies from us med for years. You can as well us med.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, use the link or the number. Get your free benefits. Check and get started today with us. Med, the episode you're about to listen to was sponsored by touched by type one. Go check them out right now on Facebook, Instagram, and of course, at touched by type one.org check out that Programs tab when you get to the website to see all the great things that they're doing for people living with type one diabetes touched by type one.org

Carolina 02:48 Hi, my name is Carolina. I'm 30 years old. Turned 30 yesterday, and I have type one diabetes. Are

Scott Benner 02:56 you serious that yesterday was your birthday? Yes, yes. Turned 30 yesterday. Yesterday, I recorded with a woman, and she said, Today is my birthday.

Carolina 03:05 Oh, yeah, and it was Election Day. It was a big day.

Scott Benner 03:09 It was, but that's not but what the heck? Isn't that weird? It is weird. The two people born on the same day recorded a rather niche podcast a day apart, one on their birthday and one the day after it. I don't like it. I think it's freaky. Okay? I just want to say I'm not okay with anything that's happened so far. Well, happy birthday. How old are you again? I'm 30. Congratulations. It's a nice age. Yeah, really is your hips don't hurt yet.

Carolina 03:36 Yeah, right, yet. Awesome. I woke up feeling okay, so we're okay so far.

Scott Benner 03:40 Oh, you might have named the episode. I woke up feeling okay. I like that. Let's see where this goes. How old were you when you were diagnosed? I was 26 oh, what the hell that's a bummer. It sure was. Tell me a little bit about that.

Carolina 03:56 Yeah. So I was, yeah, 26 I did not see it coming at all. I was losing weight. Excused everything away. I was having vision problems. I was just like, oh, I need stronger glasses. I was finishing grad school at the time, so everything I was just like, I'm stressed. I'm tired. Of course, I'm working full time and in grad school. So everything was excused away. And then the weekend of my graduation, we flew to Pennsylvania for graduation. My parents were there. My parents were like, You look really rough. Like, even my dad, you know. And my dad's like, you know, he's the type of guy who's like, everything's always fine, and he doesn't notice those things. And he's like, You look really thin. Like, are you okay? And I was like, yeah, yeah, I'm fine. I'm eating all the time. Like, I'm just so so fit and losing weight. It's great.

Scott Benner 04:48 You don't understand, this is me. This is this is Fit Carolina, okay, yeah, no, I've been doing uh, pilates, exactly, by the way. Had you been doing anything?

Carolina 04:58 Uh, no, no. Okay, working. Full Time and in grad school, so I was just doing homework all the time.

Scott Benner 05:02 I finally found the secret mix of El fudge to Doritos, and it's working perfectly. Dad, I don't know, I just I figured the whole thing out. Okay, so Does that strike you when your parents, who are normally not those people, are like, Hey, what's wrong with you?

Carolina 05:19 You know, when my dad said something, my mom, like, worries about everything. So not from her, but when my dad said something, I kind of was like, Maybe something's off. And then, like, the first thing that ran through my mind was like, okay, unexplained weight loss. Do I have cancer? And then I was like, in my head, I was like, if I do have cancer, I'd rather deal with that in a week after graduation, not right now, so I just kind of avoided thinking about it. And then on our plane ride home, I started vomiting. No, I didn't vomit till we landed. And then after that, I just kept vomiting and vomiting. And so eventually went to the ED and they, you know, looked at me, and they were like, has anyone ever told you that you have diabetes? And I was like, No, I have never heard those words in my life. It's

Scott Benner 06:07 only because I don't. So, yeah, because I don't have diabetes. I don't know if you know, I'm getting an advanced degree. I'm on my way. I'm taking over the world. So

Carolina 06:16 yeah, and that was that, you know, right away, I was like, maybe 100 pounds at the time. I was pretty small, so they were basically right away. They were like, it's probably type one. We're gonna have to wait for all these test results to come back, but probably type one. And I was like, I'm a nurse. So I was like, I like, begged them in the ED I was like, Can it please be type two? And they were like, No, probably not. What about

Scott Benner 06:38 your nursing background in your life made you wish you had type two, not type one. I

Carolina 06:42 was a camp nurse back in nursing school for a summer, and the type one kids were maybe needy is the wrong word, but like, they needed so much care, that was, like the closest experience I had to type one. So I just remember, like, having to wait, anytime we had a kid who had type one, we'd have to take turns, like waking up go prick their fingers overnight. I didn't know about CGM and all that stuff, because none of those kids. I don't know if it was a coincidence. It wasn't that long ago, but nobody had anything like that. So I was just like, oh my god, I'm gonna have to prick myself all night for the rest of my life and give these shots. And it just sounded so overwhelming. And I was like, with type two. I was like, I can fix my diet. Eat less of those Doritos that we just talked about, which, you know, now I know a lot more, a lot more than that, but at the time, that's how I saw it. And I was like, I can, I can go on more walks. I can, I can eat more salads. Like, I can do something, whereas with type one, I knew there wasn't really anything I could do to, you know, prevent or reverse, yeah.

Scott Benner 07:37 So it felt like two fold, like, this is like genetic somehow, I'm not getting rid of this. And functionally, there's a lot of work here, yes, and it's not going to end. It's always going to be this thing. I watched those kids, it felt like a struggle for them. Now I'm going to struggle that whole thing. Yes. Okay, exactly. Now, when you ask the lovely people in the emergency department to change over the kind of diabetes you had. Did anyone pull out a magic wand to try to help you? No, they were just, what a bunch of assholes. Why wouldn't they just help also, I have to get past this in my mind, or I'm never going to. I thought for sure that your name was going to have some weird pronunciation that didn't match its spelling. No, yeah, but it doesn't your Carolina doesn't,

Carolina 08:22 yeah. I mean, some people say Carolina, and I answer to that too, but I usually go by Carolina, but your parents

Scott Benner 08:28 were like, That's Carolina. My parents are Polish. Oh, is that why it starts with a K? I'm just kidding. Yes. No, go ahead. What do they say? Yeah,

Carolina 08:38 no, they say, you know, like Carolina, that's how you say it in Polish.

Scott Benner 08:41 Oh, okay, so it's not your parents being like, I just love the south on the East Coast, and I wanted to name my kid after. It's a name that's not, it's not an American name,

Carolina 08:50 correct? It's a super popular Polish name. If you, if you go to Poland, you'll meet Carolinas on like, every corner, oh, oh,

Scott Benner 08:57 it's the Smith of of Poland. Yeah. Gotcha look at us getting through all this. When they say it to you, what does it sound like? Catalina, Oh, lovely. You don't have a an accent of any kind, though. I don't I was born here. I was born in the States. Gotcha. Do you speak Polish? Is polish a language? Uh, oh, oh,

Carolina 09:15 wait a minute, polish it is language, okay, yes, yeah. Poland is a country. No, no. I mean,

Scott Benner 09:21 I know it's a country, but I don't know if they like, like, you're not like Carolina, that wasn't nice. I mean, I don't know everything. I'm just trying to find out. Okay, all right. So here we are, emergency department. I've got type one diabetes. Your parents are around, right? Because you did you do it while you were visiting, or did you wait till you went home to look into it. Yeah.

Carolina 09:42 So I live in Chicago. My parents live in the suburbs. I'm married at this point at 27 so, yeah, I got married at 24 Okay, which sounds young now, but back then,

Scott Benner 09:52 did it feel young? Uh, oh, I can feel I like you Carolina. I feel like we're gonna be all over the place today. Did it feel young when you were getting married? Or were you like? No, I'm so. Ready for this?

Carolina 10:00 No, I was so ready. Yeah, I always say I forever feel 24 because that's when I got married. Nothing really changed after that. So,

Scott Benner 10:07 yeah, so now when you look back, you're like, Oh my God, why didn't somebody stop me? Or are you, like, happy with it? I'm happy with it. He's the best. He's the best. He's not the best. Yeah, stop it. He's the best. He's one of the best. I guess, if I'm the best, how can he be the best, true,

Carolina 10:21 I said one of the best. Yeah, I see what you're

Scott Benner 10:24 saying. So me and him basically. Okay, yeah. So what are you telling me? He's got a decent job and he's not an idiot, right? Yes,

Carolina 10:31 and yeah, can't imagine, you know, even going through DKA and everything you know, without him. So

Scott Benner 10:37 let's talk more about that. Then you were in DK before you went to the emergency department, and how do you manage all that like, what? What's that run up like? What it's like after you get the diagnosis? You've 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 benefit. 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 us, med.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 all the sponsors. The contour next gen blood glucose meter is sponsoring this episode of The Juicebox Podcast, and it's entirely possible that it is less expensive in cash then you're paying right now for your meter through your insurance company. That's right. If you go to my link, contour next.com/juicebox, you're going to find links to Walmart, Amazon, Walgreens, CVS, Rite, aid, Kroger and Meyer. You could be paying more right now through your insurance for your test strips in meter, then you would pay through my link for the contour next gen and contour next test strips in cash. What am I saying? My link may be cheaper out of your pocket than you're paying right now, even with your insurance, and I don't know what meter you have right now. I can't say that, but what I can say for sure is that the contour next gen meter is accurate. It is reliable, and it is the meter that we've been using for years. Contour next.com/juice box. And if you already have a contour meter and you're buying test strips, doing so through the Juicebox Podcast link will help to support the show. Yeah.

Carolina 13:21 So before I thought they were going to tell me, I have cancer, as I had mentioned before, I was like, maybe it's stomach cancer. That's why I'm vomiting. And so that diagnosis came as a shock, so I'm still in shock. It's 2021 so it's still COVID ish, so they're not letting him spend the night or anything like that, which was really, really hard that first night. I think I cried like the whole night, the poor, like, CNAs coming in to prick my finger were like, Oh, honey, it's gonna be okay. I'm just like, it's not gonna be okay. So we made it through. And then, rather than, like those moments, the hardest part for me was about six months after, I never considered myself to be someone who had like, anxiety or depression. And six months later, I was, like, deep in a hole. I think the first few months, I was just like, Okay, I'm gonna carb count perfectly, and I'm gonna do everything that I'm supposed to do, and I'm gonna be the best diabetic on the planet, and it's gonna be great. You know, I'm carb counting, I'm trying to work out. I'm like, up, I'm down, I'm 40, I'm 250 like, nothing's making any sense. And few months later, I was like, Okay, I'm trying so, so hard, and it's it's not working. And so that's when I kind of Yeah. At some point, I was like, I don't think I want to live anymore. And having those thoughts really freaked me out, so I found a therapist. Like, right away, I was like, I I have the tools. I have so much insulin on hand. Like, I don't want to go deeper down this hole. I don't like myself like this. Like, that's not me. But I was in that place, and that was really, really hard. So you know, for my husband to be there for me through all of that, I. And, you know, just support me and be like, Okay, what do you need? You know, try to lighten the mood when I was upset, and then at the same time, not like, you know, when I'm having a hard time just, just really being there for me. Was like, you know, that's what marriage is, right? So it was, it was so important. And at some point I was like, we're not even ever going to have kids, because what if I pass this down to them, and he just let me process how I needed to process, didn't try to talk me out of anything or or pressure me in any way. Have you

Scott Benner 15:29 ever wondered if he was just sitting there quietly thinking, like, how long do I have to wait before I leave her? I hope not. I'm sure he wasn't. Probably, he's like, Oh, no, no. You're like, Oh, look how understanding he's being in his mind. He's like, so there's how much money in the bank account. No, no, that's lovely. That's it's really awesome. So how long did you, you know, how long did you have, like, your head, like, a whole moment, oh, look at me, Nine Inch Nails. Is that what I just did? Had, like, a whole black as you're Yeah, oh, I'd rather die than give you control. Is that how you felt? Yeah, I wonder what this song's about. Do you think Trent Reznor wrote this about you, like perhaps, but 20 years ago. I mean, how old is this? Do you even know this song? No, Holy Christ. You're young. You don't know head like a hole from Nine Inch Nails. No,

Carolina 16:23 all right, I don't my parents were foreign, so sometimes I don't know things that other people know. So are they not still?

Scott Benner 16:33 So now I can't play a song on here, so I'm gonna leave it to you to listen to. Do you what kind of music do you like? Oh, like country. Oh, you're not gonna like this song at all. Okay, I still listen to it. All right. Try it once head like a hole by Nine Inch Nails. Okay, all right. So obviously we can't go down that road or that hole, because you don't know what we're talking about. So your your boy is being very like supportive, which is awesome. You are not that far into being married, right? Like two years maybe, right? And you're, you're doing the whole thing. Everything's wrong, everything's nothing's gonna work out the way I want it to. I'm trying my hardest. All it's doing is returning, like, horrible results. And how do you get you go to a therapist? Is that? Right? What's the therapist tell you? That's helpful.

Carolina 17:20 She had type one, oh, which that was enough for me. I realized I really needed community, and I didn't have that at the time. I needed someone who understood without me having to explain, you know, the the mental toll of every day of type one, right? And so she gave me the phone number of someone she thought I would hit it off with, and I met up with this girl, and she was my first friend with diabetes, and that I feel like more than anything, more than the therapy, more than anything, that really started to turn it around for me. Wow, and I just really needed that community. Is that

Scott Benner 17:57 legal? By the way, I don't care, because it worked out really well for you. But are you? Isn't that a HIPAA violation? She asked, I suppose. Oh, okay. Oh, that makes sense. Yes, I see, I see she didn't just go like, Hey, check this girl out. Yeah, no, here's her Instagram handle, just like stalker. Till you can find her, it'll be great. Okay, I see she worked it out like a professional, yeah? So she gave you a friend. Is that right? That is right, huh? Say, Listen, I'm I, I'm not super surprised by that. Like, I watch it happen in my Facebook group constantly. So as a matter of fact, one of the things that I I'm saddest about that I have to say things on Facebook like, please don't DM each other like, you know, like, if you have an answer, put it here. Because, you know, for every great person who wants to help somebody, there's like, one Nick in there that's trying to take advantage of people, and so in order to try to stop everybody from being taken advantage of, sometimes you end up blocking what I think could be some of the best aspects of it. Yeah, now I imagine people do it on the slide behind my back, and I act like, I don't know that's happening, because almost like, when people are like, I have pumps that I want to give to somebody, and I'm like, oh, you can't give away medical stuff, but I sometimes wait an hour before I say it, you know what? I mean, yeah? But that's awesome. Like, she just gave you a buddy, yeah? Tell me what that did for both of you,

Carolina 19:13 yeah, for both of us. I mean, we still talk all the time. She ended up coming to my baby shower like we are legit friends, yeah, having her was amazing. We we built Iaps together. We had a little I back before it was, what is it now trio, when it was Iaps, we had a little IPS building party. We could just text each other like, you know, a screenshot of our Dexcom graph, and be like, today sucks. And just having that more than more than my husband, more than my mom, more than people who were like, yes, that sucks, but I don't understand. I don't know that was just so important for me, just to have that understanding without me having to explain. And since then, I hope you don't kick me out of your Facebook group. I met two other people on Facebook through your Facebook group. One. One of them lives a few blocks away from me, so we hang out, and I met another girl, and we have not met in person, but I'm going to her wedding next year, and so I just feel like having diabetes as a foundation to a friendship for me has just been, I don't know, I've made such great friends that it's like, unbelievable. Carolina.

Scott Benner 20:18 Me too. Listen. Would you believe that the first time I met Jenny, I had probably had hundreds of hours of conversations with her before we met in person? Oh, really, yeah, and no, Jenny and I did not like face to face meet for God, five years of knowing each other, I just met Erica last, like, two months ago. Oh, wow, yeah, I had no idea, for the first time in person, and it's such a strange thing. And I told her ahead of time. I was like, listen, Eric, it's gonna be weird. She's like, Yeah. And I was like, she's like, No, it won't I'm like, It's gonna be weird. I'm like, because we feel like we know each other, and then you're gonna get there, and there's gonna be this physical aspect of it that didn't exist before. But two days later, she and I at the end of, like, a long weekend where we were both exhausted from all the talking we did. We sat and had a dinner at the end of the night, and I felt like I was talking to somebody I'd known for years, because I was, you know, yeah, the internet for all the things that it does that, you know, I'm not always thrilled about it really does, right? It makes the pond, smaller so you can find your fish. That's pretty much it, you know, it's awesome. So look at how you, kind of like, low key slipped in that you made a baby. Yes, I did. How old were you when you did that?

Carolina 21:32 Well, I was 29 was born five months ago, just a little baby, still,

Scott Benner 21:38 holy shit, is this it Carolina? Is the baby's name, Scott. Is that? Why you're here? Come on, is it? Oh, my God, it's, I knew that was gonna come up, but it's not. It's not, did you even think of it for a second? We didn't, but

Carolina 21:50 we have a valid reason. It's a

Scott Benner 21:53 terrible name, but what else was the reason?

Carolina 21:56 No, so my husband's from Italy, so we wanted an Italian name. Oh

Scott Benner 21:59 well, I'm adopted, and I went to 23andme and I'm mostly Italian, so apparently Scott is an Italian name, and you messed now, we know, no, it's too late now, isn't it? I mean, are you gonna make another

Carolina 22:11 baby? Oof, not right now? Oh, I don't think so.

Scott Benner 22:19 I have kids. I know what you meant. I'm gonna get back to the making the baby part with diabetes. But before I do these words from Chief o kypo pen, no, I'm just kidding. It's actually like, are those lies? Can you imagine if I start doing live ads? Chief o kypo Pen is actually, God bless chief oak. They don't make me re record those. I don't even remember what that one says. I recorded it years ago. I could do some of the other ones off the top of my head, though, so I don't know. I just cracked myself up. Now, I gotta give me a second. Also, I have a day in front of me. So, I mean, election was last night. I think it was up to, like, three in the morning, and I'm recording with you, and then I'm recording two more times today. And the truth is, all I really want out of today, besides doing good recordings for you all listening, is I want to go to the grocery store and buy like, a half a pound of shrimp and steam it for my dinner. And I think I'm not going to be able to accomplish that, and it's pissing me

Carolina 23:17 off. Love, sucks. Can you order it? Can it be delivered?

Scott Benner 23:19 I'm old and I don't let people bring me groceries in their car. Oh yeah, I think you're all gonna live to regret that one day. I don't know how it's gonna happen. I just think one day, collectively, society's gonna stand up and go, Hey, do you remember back when we let strangers drive us around in a Corolla. Why did we do that? I don't know. Maybe not. Then again, I the cars are going to drive themselves. It's not going to matter. You're not even have time to think back on it. So whatever. Yeah. Anyway, this is not the point. The point is this, you got diabetes. It sucked. You got sad. You dug your way out of it through what it sounds like a really supportive young guy who was nice enough to not leave you when he found also, by the way, I don't think there's any reason he should have but do you know how many stories I've heard of people who did,

Carolina 24:11 yeah. I mean, I was telling him to leave me. So tell me more. There was that, yeah. I was like, you know, this sucks. I'm gonna have this forever. It's super expensive. We have to max out our health plan every year. I was like, we're not going to have a baby because that baby's going to get diabetes, so that's out the window. I was like, we're young. I was like, Go find someone young, healthy and leave me here. And he just ignored me. But yeah,

Scott Benner 24:38 he just ignored me. He's like, by the way, that's how I got my wife to marry me. She's like, I don't really like you. I'm like, I'm just gonna stay. I think you do. I think it's gonna be fine, don't worry. But by the way, see, that would have been a funny thing to say 20 years ago, but now everybody will get upset about it. But yeah, I just outlasted her. That's all I did.

Carolina 24:59 I. First it worked. You guys are still together, right? So, oh yeah, and

Scott Benner 25:03 we're generally happy, right? It's generally the right word, I think so mostly it might be better when you've been married for 30 years. Yeah, that's crazy. How old will you be when you're married for 30 years? I guess I'll be 54 ah, I'm 53 Oh, exactly I did the same made the same mistake you did. It's your husband your age. Uh, he's two years older. They're always older, right? Because you can't find boys your own age that are not nut next Am I right? Where's nut next coming from? What am I Yiddish? All of a sudden, it's hard to find boys that aren't idiots when you're younger, right? Yes, yeah. That's why I found one. And then we you're like, Oh, this is good enough. Let's go, yeah. Oh, I like you talking like a boy. Go ahead, say it again. I locked that up, Scott, that's what I did. How did you start your management off? It's not that long ago, right? So how long until you find CGM? And is that something you found through your buddy or on your own?

Carolina 26:05 Yeah. So I actually got to CGM super early, so I was in the hospital, and you know how they like listen to you. So I was literally getting ads for Dexcom, like the next day after I got diagnosed.

Scott Benner 26:17 Oh yeah, your Siri knew you had diabetes, yeah.

Carolina 26:20 Literally, Instagram started showing me like Nick Jonas Dexcom, I don't remember what else, but all sorts of stuff. So

Scott Benner 26:27 all you're making me think is that I know somebody at Dexcom in marketing. Why don't I ask them how they did that? So that when people get diabetes, they get my podcast on Instagram?

Carolina 26:36 Yeah, you should. They did a good job. So Okay, all

Scott Benner 26:41 right, I'll figure that out on my own, by the way, right now, there's people out there like, do not do that, you idiot. I can't afford it. Obviously, I think Dexcom has a couple more dollars than I do. I almost said shekels. I am Yiddish today. By the way, Yiddish is not a person Jewish speaking Yiddish. This is not my point. Okay, so you're on what is wrong? Oh, I'm tired. Is that? What's happening that will never up till three, yeah, that could be it. Never mind. You get your ads. What happens? Yeah,

Carolina 27:05 so I get discharged from the hospital with nothing, I mean, a long acting, pen and short acting. I get the Dexcom, like a couple days later because somebody had sent in a prescription for me. And so I have a virtual meeting with an endo. I think they were like, a PA, do you feel like you can? She's like, you're a nurse. She's like, it's easy to put on. Like, do you think you can just figure this out? Or do you want to come in for a class? And I was like, I want to put this on as soon as I can. Just the like, four days of pricking my finger, that was enough for me. I was like, I'm either 40 or, like, 300 and I don't understand, I need something more. So she was like, okay, then just put it on and see you later. And so I put it on, and kind of from that moment on, I was like, Oh my God, no one's really gonna help me. I'm gonna have to figure this out on my own. And so I tried. I actually got, I don't know if it was an ad, but somebody on Instagram posted about your podcast. About your podcast, probably within that first week. And this is going to sound so bad, but the name threw me off. It made me think it was for kids or something, even though she was an adult who was diagnosed at like 30, and she was like, go listen to this podcast. It's the best. And I was like, that sounds like a child podcast. It's not for me. So it took me a while to actually listen to it, but the first episode I listened to was bold with insulin, maybe a month or so after being diagnosed, and I was like, Oh, my God, I need a pump. And then I did not want a tube, pump. And back in 2021 there was no algorithm except loop for the Omnipod. So, I mean, within like, a month or two of diagnosis, I was like, I need to loop. And I don't really know what that means, and I don't really know how I'm going to do this, but that is what I want. Okay, and so I had to fight with my underdog office to get the arrows pods. They really wanted me on Dash. And again, in 2021 you couldn't dash. Wasn't ready. Finally got my arrows pods that took forever, and so I started looping in, like, maybe, like, four months, four or five months after diagnosis. So I wasn't on pens very long. And so I never really figured out pens. I hope I never have to go back to them, but if I do, I guess I know how to, like, survive, but I did not have good management. And then all of a sudden, my my agency dropped. It was I was 11.7 at diagnosis, dropped to 6.8 and then after that, I've been in the fives. Oh, good for you. So that's awesome. It's been, I think, a combination of loop trio, Iaps and obviously your podcast, learning how to manage insulin. It's not

Scott Benner 29:41 lost on me that I wore you down too. You're like, Juicebox, nah, go off, and then you're like, woke up. Like, sometime later you're like, man, where's that podcast? This ain't going well, by the way. I imagine that's how it goes. For a lot of people, to be perfectly honest, do you know what I mean? Like, I see the barriers to entry, like I have type one diabetes. I'm an adult. I'm gonna go to listen to a guy who doesn't have type one diabetes talking about how he took care of his daughter with type one diabetes. Like, that doesn't sound like that's me. That sounds like it's them, until you listen, and then don't let me put the words in your mouth when you listen to the podcast, you realized what? Yeah,

Carolina 30:22 well, one, I was starting to get that community that I realized later that I really needed. So listening to the stories, especially the ones of people diagnosed as adults, was kind of my only like tangible connection to someone with type one at that point. So that was so helpful to me, and then the management, because I knew what I wanted. I wanted good control. And I got really lucky that when I was in the hospital, you know, we met with some of the doctors, and there was a fellow there, and my husband asked her, like, what can we expect in the future? Like, in terms of blood sugars, what is this going to look like for us in real life, and she just, like, off handedly, was like, Oh, I imagine, like, she's gonna have, you know, pretty normal blood sugars, like, once everything is, you know, stabilized and she gets the hang of it. And so that's what I had in my head, that like, I'm going to have stable blood sugars, but I couldn't figure out how. And so when I started listening to the management episodes, I was like, Oh, this is exactly what I was told was going to happen. But nobody, at the end, though, is able to give me any tools to, like, make this happen. So it just gave me everything I was kind of searching for, I guess. Well,

Scott Benner 31:32 good, just what I wanted, honestly, get. You know what I mean, like, I'm thrilled that it worked that way for you, genuinely, genuinely happy. You get your tech very quickly, you're motivated by not wanting to poke your finger CGM. You hear about, like, more stable blood sugars. You think, I need more control over my insulin pump. You go right to Omnipod because you don't want tubes. And then the algorithm is a leap. But why was it not a leap? Who in your life is tech savvy enough that you were like, Oh, I could do that. Is it you? I guess it's me. Yeah, cool. So you were, you're not put off by any of that. No, here,

Carolina 32:06 well, here's where I'm gonna sound, you know, dumb because I was a nurse. I was in healthcare. I'm a pediatric nurse at that. I thought that's how pumps worked, that they read your blood sugar number and responded to it. So when I got diagnosed and I found out that that's not how most pumps back at that time worked. I think it was just tandem, maybe, oh, and Medtronic. But I found out very quickly to not get Medtronic. So I, you know, didn't consider that one. And so I was like, shocked that that was not how it was. So when I found out you could do it yourself, I was like, Oh, well, perfect. This solves all my problems.

Scott Benner 32:42 That's awesome. So it was your expectation that led you to desire that stuff. You're like, this is how it should work,

Unknown Speaker 32:48 yeah,

Scott Benner 32:52 ignorance is bliss, yeah, yeah, and so, oh, that's awesome. Also, it should be noted that before we started recording, I joked with you, like, how quickly you, like, fixed your technical problem, versus people who are, like, 10 years older than you, who fumble around when it happens. Oh, that's right, yeah, and get pressured, and they're like, oh, I don't know what to do, and I like all that, but you were just like, okay, click, click, click, and it was like, oh, Bucha fixed that very quickly. So just generationally, you're not put off by technology either.

Carolina 33:19 Yeah, that's probably what it is.

Scott Benner 33:21 Yeah, no, that's that's really great. Let's see I'm looking at we skipped over that you ended up on antidepressants when you weren't feeling your best. Did that something that you kept doing? Or has that stopped? How are you managing that

Carolina 33:35 I am still on that I'm nervous to get off of it, because I hated how I felt like I didn't feel like myself, and I had all those thoughts and so I would be, I've been nervous to get off of it, especially, you know, considering that I was pregnant and now I have a little baby, I was like, it's probably not the best time to go off of it. So I'm hoping in the future, I'm just on, like, one low dose once a day to get off of it, but I feel like myself, and so I'm okay with it right next. I mean,

Scott Benner 34:06 listen, I think what works is what's right usually. So it's a thought in your head though, like you're like, one day in the future, I might like, wean myself from this and see what happens. Yeah, has your doctor talked to you about

Carolina 34:18 it? Whenever I get my refills, she's just like, do you want to try? Do you want refills? And I'm always like, I want to refill. And she's like, Okay, see you in six months, or

Scott Benner 34:28 whatever. Gotcha. I'm glad it's working for you. Yeah. How was it being pregnant with type one, it

Carolina 34:33 wasn't that bad, which I would never expect to say on the other side, I thought it was going to be it sounded so scary, but now going through it, I'm like, Okay, that wasn't really that bad. I will say I did a lot of work in the front end to get a team that I thought would help me have the pregnancy that I imagined. I think I went through like three undoes before I finally found one who would support me. Looping during pregnancy. That was a challenge. I had an endo who was supportive of loop, but literally, was like, the second you're pregnant, you have to go off of it. And I was like, What happens if I don't go off of it? And she's like, well, we you won't be compliant. We could hold your refills. I was like, That sounds terrible. Don't know if they actually would. But I was like, this is not the endo office for me. Hey, you're no

Scott Benner 35:20 fun. We're gonna find something. Did you say to her? I'm gonna be leaving? No,

Carolina 35:24 I went back a second time because I felt like I was so thrown off in that conversation. Because she was supportive of loop. I didn't expect it at all. So I went back for one more visit, hoping to have kind of an adult conversation about it, advocate for myself and it literally, she just like, said no. And I was like, you can't say no. You don't control what I do outside of here. So then after that, I left good for you. I went somewhere else that didn't work out either. And then I finally found a third Endo, and she was wonderful. And same with, you know, finding an OB GYN, I really did not want to be induced early, simply because I have diabetes. I know that happens a lot, just for me. I was like, I want to go to at least week 40 before we talk about induction, assuming the Baby and I are healthy. And so I finally found an OB who was on board with that. She was like, That's reasonable. She's like, you will have like, extra monitoring. But she basically said, like, even if we schedule an induction, she's like, we don't show up to your house, like, so if you don't show up, like, you know, not much

Scott Benner 36:30 we can do.

Carolina 36:31 And I was like, Wow, I like you.

Scott Benner 36:33 You're like, I just want this baby to be like, medium well before it comes out exactly. Yeah, I don't want it to come out too rare. And I don't want it to be tough, you know what? I mean, like, excellent. But what'd you end up doing? I

Carolina 36:46 ended up going into labor at 39 and actually exactly at 39 on my own, nice. So I'm glad that I did not agree to be induced at, you know, 37 or 38

Scott Benner 36:56 and maybe a good size. Were they happy with the size? Yeah, he was seven pounds. He come out the, the natural way. Or did he? Did you make a little pocket and take him out through

Carolina 37:06 that? I love that. Um, he came out the, the natural way.

Scott Benner 37:10 Gotcha, yeah? Something that is another reason you don't want to have another baby, right?

Carolina 37:15 Yes, no, we're good.

Scott Benner 37:22 But yeah, you keep listening. You can be the academic as you want and understand everything, but as it's happening, you're like, what the is going on?

Carolina 37:32 I know my husband was like, if somebody offered me a million dollars to do that again, I would not do that.

Scott Benner 37:38 It's like, whoa. The fun part turned into the weird part. What's going on? Yeah,

Carolina 37:43 and I was like, you, you're just, you were just there. You didn't do anything. Well, what

Scott Benner 37:49 does that tell you? He's like, I wouldn't go through this again, and nothing happened to me. Yeah, it's off putting. I'm just gonna say beautiful, Miracle life, etc, and so on. But what the hell am I right?

Carolina 38:03 Yeah, no, it's people

Scott Benner 38:07 ask me, How do you know there's not a god, I'm like, if there was, there'd be a zipper on the side of a lady, and that's where the baby would come out from. I mean, duh, oh my gosh. Like, right? Zip here. Zip done. I mean, if we're engineering this thing, why go with that? Yeah, no. Seriously, nice. Also, why doesn't P come out of the tip of your pinky? How great would that be if you just walked over to something you're like, convenient. I'm making a lot of sense. I'm just saying, if this is on purpose, maybe they could have thought it over for another week or two. Yeah, before me getting sick meant boogers getting in my nose. Like, I mean, was there not another way? True? You know what I'm saying. I do. Where are you from? What part of the country did you say Chicago? Chicago? All right, okay, it's the worst.

Carolina 38:54 Boogers the worst. No,

Scott Benner 38:55 boogers are the worst. Oh, oh, yes, oh, we can definitely call the episode boogers are the worst, can't we?

Carolina 39:02 People might not listen to it. Oh no,

Scott Benner 39:04 them, they'll listen i I've set my expectations up in a way where they're like, it doesn't matter what it's called. You know, can I loop back around to the thing I wasn't sure if I was gonna say or not. Yeah, okay. Is part of my charm, and this is me leading you by saying I'm charming, because you might not find that I am, but is part of why you like the podcast. That's not the question. Once you were like, Okay, I'm going to listen to a podcast, and it's going to be from the dad of a guy of a girl who has diabetes, right? And then there's this expectation, right? That it's a parent, I'm going to be like, all high voice, then like, oh my god, everything's great, or everything's terrible, or like that. But like, when you jumped on and you're like, This is just a person talking to me, like, I would listen to this podcast if it wasn't about diabetes. Did that happen to you first of all? And if so, was it surprising? Or am I making this up and I'm wrong? Like, I just, I feel like people must jump on here and be. Like, well, this is not what I expected.

Carolina 40:01 It was not what I expected. Okay, but I will say the first episodes I listened to were, it was definitely bold with insulin. And then, like, some management episodes, because back then, you didn't have all your lovely helpers on the Facebook group, and so somebody just randomly posted, like, if you're newly diagnosed, try out these episodes. And it was like a picture of, like, a note card with, like, handwritten right? Episodes, yeah. And so that's the list I went off of, because you had so many at the time. Now you have even more. But we had so many, there's

Scott Benner 40:29 gonna be more. Hold, hold, tight. Carolina, we're making a podcast here. There's gonna be like, 1000 more by the time you look up again. But go ahead.

Carolina 40:36 So I feel like I wanted the management and I wanted the diabetes, so I didn't even think about the fact that I would probably listen if it wasn't about diabetes, because I was searching for diabetes.

Scott Benner 40:45 So is that unfair of me? Like, or in hindsight, if, if I started making a podcast about something else and it wasn't like something that you hated, do you think you'd listen?

Carolina 40:55 I don't listen to podcasts except yours, so I'm probably a bad person to ask this question.

Scott Benner 40:58 Too interesting, but you do listen to mine like a podcast though, like you like, Oh, someone's here to talk about they used math. I'll listen to that. Like you do listen to it. Like, oh, yeah, I drew you in. Yeah, it's exactly how I tricked my wife. This is awesome. I'm glad to know it works in other forms of life. It just occurs to me that, I mean, if you said to me, I'm gonna listen to something that's made by the parent of a child with a chronic illness. I would not expect for someone at 30 minutes into a conversation to refer to childbirth as you turned the fun part into the weird part, yeah. And I think that's why people like the podcast,

Carolina 41:36 oh yeah. And that's why you keep listening. Because in the beginning, I was looking for the management I was looking for the diabetes, like I really needed that,

Scott Benner 41:44 but you wanted to get in and get out. Was, yeah, yeah. I would have stopped

Carolina 41:48 listening. But now it's, it's entertaining. It's nice to hear about people's different walks of life. And yeah, the conversations are casual or entertaining. They're they go all over the place. I never know. Like, when I click on an episode, I'm like, oh, what's gonna happen in this one, you know? So, yeah,

Scott Benner 42:03 podcast, I'm just following my heart. Seriously, I'm doing something later today. I'm recording with ever since, actually, I'm gonna, I'm gonna record about the ever since 365 that came out. So the new implant, the implantable CGM now lasts a year, and so I'm having somebody on from the company to talk about it, and the person who sets it up is, like, very cool with how I am, which is awesome, because some companies will be like, well, what are you gonna ask and what are you gonna talk about? And what do you I'm like, Oh, I don't know. And I think that, like, they think that's like, a facade, like, like, because the podcast does run very well, right? And it is popular. So I think they must think that, like, behind the scenes, I'm like, all Machiavelli, and I'm like, today I'll talk about this, and tomorrow I don't like, I swear to you, like, a week from now, there's gonna be an after dark episode on a Friday and then another one on a Monday. I didn't do that. I just was like, actually, when I found that, that's how I set it up, I was like, What the hell did I do that was dumb, like, so I'm not planning anything. I really don't know what we're going to talk about. I don't look at your notes before we start talking. You don't, no, I don't look at the note that you sent until, like, we're into the conversation.

Carolina 43:13 Oh, okay. I was like, Wait, why did we fill that out? No, no, you filled it out because,

Scott Benner 43:17 like, also, I want to make sure you're a real person and stuff like that. Also, honestly, it's your relationship with diabetes. Have you been on a podcast in the last six months about because another pipe on pot, because I wouldn't want you to come like, I'm not looking to like, regurgitate some conversation that somebody already had. So and then, what are some common themes you want to talk about? Is basically, once we start talking. My assumption is you have things in your heart you want to get out, and I don't want to, like, steamroll you and miss them. And as you're seeing today, I could easily be a little sleepy and then go off on a tangent, and then you don't get to tell me your story, and other people will enjoy it when they listen. But you, I don't want you to get short changed. If that makes sense, makes sense, having the baby with loop, not so bad. Yeah,

Carolina 44:07 I was on Iaps IPs for my pregnancy, not so yes, it really wasn't that bad. I mean, I had an easier time managing my blood sugars when I was pregnant than I do now. Postpartum. I know that's not always the case for everyone, but that's how I personally found it postpartum. I'm almost five months out, and I still, I think I'm having like, the worst blood sugars I've had since, since I figured out what I was doing. Okay,

Scott Benner 44:30 so are you breastfeeding? Is that part of it? Do you think?

Carolina 44:35 I think so, especially in the beginning, anytime he would eat, I would I would just crash, like, like, crash, crash, just double arrows down. So I would have to eat, like, while he's eating without taking insulin.

Scott Benner 44:47 Do you drop crumbs on him when that's happening by any chance?

Carolina 44:50 Oh, yeah, he said all sorts of things on it.

Scott Benner 44:54 Cleavage. Crumbs must be the worst. No, they're so uncomfortable. I would think, yeah. Yeah, the worst, I'm just imagine you like you're just chowing down and the stuff's like falling on the kid. You're like, Listen, I'm gonna pass out if I don't do this. Just nothing. Are you just flicking them off of him? How does it go? Exactly? I usually

Carolina 45:12 pick them off and eat them inside.

Scott Benner 45:15 Awesome. Oh, look at that big piece. What do you eat to help keep your blood sugar up while you're breastfeeding? It

Carolina 45:22 was like, breastfeeding? It was like bars for the most part. You know, Lara bars, Kind bars, whatever I could get my hands on. It wasn't usually like fast acting, maybe a little bit of fast acting, but I tried to circumvent by something that would keep me a little more stable. Yeah.

Scott Benner 45:36 So breastfeeding with type one sort of like going for a run. You just got a car blown in the beginning and put something in there. It's not going to digest very quickly. You didn't need it in there to hold you up for a while. How long is the impact after the breastfeeding?

Carolina 45:48 That part of my life is such a blur because it's gotten better, like, I'm definitely more stable now than I was, you know, the first month postpartum. I just remember my husband waking me up all the time, and he'd be like, sorry, but like, you're you're 35 you're low. I was constantly low, right? Don't die. I

Scott Benner 46:05 don't want to take care of this baby by myself. Yeah, Jesus, I should have left her. She said you can leave. And where was I? So it sounds like very hormonal. So you didn't have as many hormonal impacts during the pregnancy as you did in the weeks after it.

Carolina 46:20 Yeah, I never, you know, I feel like I hear, you know, I joined on some, like, Facebook groups and type one in pregnancy. And, you know, I read a lot. I read Jenny's book. And so I know some people are, like, on a one to one by the end of pregnancy. And I was terrified because some of sometimes, some parts of the damn like, one to five. So I have, like, a relatively stronger, you know, carb ratio. So I was terrified. I'm like, Oh my gosh, I'm gonna end up on u2 100. This is gonna be crazy, but I never got there, okay, like, I think one to four was, like, my strongest carb ratio during pregnancy. Are

Scott Benner 46:54 your blood sugars after pregnancy more like before or no, they're different.

Carolina 46:59 They're different. I just feel like I'm having a harder time timing my insulin than I used to, and I can't figure that out. So things that I used to have, I'd be like, Okay, I need I enter this many carbs, this much fat, this much protein. I Pre Bolus 15 minutes, 10 minutes, whatever it is, you know, I had these meals figured out. I cannot figure them out.

Scott Benner 47:19 Are you? I'm sorry to ask like, this, is your weight different than it was before you got pregnant?

Carolina 47:23 No, I'm basically back to my pre, pre pregnancy. Oh, show

Scott Benner 47:27 off. Wait, I mean, that's nice. Good. Good for you. That's excellent. So I was just wondering if, like, your your ratios were off and because of that. But that's not the case. So, yeah, do you think it's hormonal? I think

Carolina 47:40 it might be, you know, I still have not gotten my period back since having the baby, so I assume there's some hormone somewhere in my body doing something. And, like I said, the timing of it. So I don't know if my digestion is different, or maybe that's related to milk production. I don't know, but, yeah, the timing, I think it's the timing rather than the amount, okay, but I can't seem to figure

Scott Benner 48:02 it out. Yeah, and, but you think it's normalizing slowly as time passes. It does

Carolina 48:06 feel that way. Okay. Now my nights, most of the nights, I don't get Dexcom alerts for a long time. I did, especially low ones, so that's been nice. Yeah, that's

Scott Benner 48:15 tough. Overnights are like, I mean, plus the baby, right? How old does he even sleep at this point. Yeah,

Carolina 48:21 he did till he turned four months, and now we have a fun four month regression. Oh,

Scott Benner 48:26 it's going backwards. Yeah, hey, buddy, go to sleep. Go to sleep. I'm losing my mind like that. Or is that about where we're at now?

Carolina 48:38 Um, kind of he sleeps with me now my my husband's in the guest room. So that's where we're at. That's how we're surviving right

Scott Benner 48:47 now. Oh, no kidding, because your husband can't go to work if, if he's near the what's going on? Oh, I see why you're not having another baby. There's a lot of reasons I got you. It'll happen to you. Probably you just wake up one day and you'll be like, Hey, honey, you know we should do and he's gonna be like, go on vacation, and you're gonna go, no, no, I think we should give away all the money that we were gonna spend on that vacation and make another baby because our son needs a sibling or something ridiculous like that. That you're gonna say, My God, God bless everybody. You're all in trouble, by the way. Good luck paying for college. I just want to say that too. Oh, I know, yeah, that is probably gonna like, I mean, have you already saved a couple of million dollars? So you'll be all right if you have, I wish. No, you haven't. Oh no. Oh, my god, yeah, it's ridiculous. Arden, by the way, is like, at some point today, she's like, I just looked into baking school. And I was like, Oh, if you want to drop out of college, that'd be awesome. I support that. Yeah, I'm fully behind that. I would also write you a check for a few $1,000 to help you get on your way. What do you think of that? Like, let's get you out of here. I'm sorry. You're a nurse, and can I ask what your husband does? I. He's an engineer. Oh, oh, I didn't know this about you. Is your dad an engineer too?

Carolina 50:06 No, my dad's a construction worker,

Scott Benner 50:09 contractor. Do they think similarly the two of them? Uh, no,

Unknown Speaker 50:13 no, okay,

Scott Benner 50:17 why? How do you like being married to like an engineering mind. I

Carolina 50:20 like it. I, you know, my dad was a business owner, and so I was like, I want somebody who works a nine to five and is, I mean, you own a business. So, you know, it's, I mean,

Scott Benner 50:30 I was working last night at 930 I don't know what I was doing. I just, I'm, like, up here. I'm just, like, hammering away Kelly's like, what are you doing? I'm like, trying to make money. I mean, you wouldn't be able to be able to pay the bills, right? Like, it's a terrible feeling. So okay, you're looking for a guy who's going to be around a little more,

Carolina 50:47 yeah, except he is now a consultant, so he works, like, you know, 800 hours a week. So it did not work out for me, but I gave it my my best try. I chose

Scott Benner 50:55 poorly. Scott, Okay, what else do you want to talk about? What else is on your list here? What are you thinking about? I mean,

Carolina 51:01 I think we covered most of the things. I think I just wanted to say how helpful it was to have community definitely advocating for yourself. I feel like I see especially in the pregnancy and type one groups like, Oh, my doctor said I have to do this. And, you know, people do it. I put a lot of time and effort into picking physicians who would support the pregnancy I wanted and the birth I wanted, and I think that was worth all the effort. And so I think sometimes people just forget that you don't have to stay with that doctor just because that's the one that you live closest to. And I know I'm in Chicago, so I have a lot of doctors to choose from, but if anybody's, you know, kind of on the fence of, should I stay with this doctor? Should I not? You know, it's okay to to leave them. I think sometimes people are like, Oh, I felt bad leaving. They're so nice, but at the end of the day, like you have to look out for yourself and your family. I'm so grateful, because I think my my pregnancy would have been way more stressful and way different experience if I hadn't done all that work up front. So, yeah, I just wanted to, I guess, encourage anyone who was thinking about

Scott Benner 52:05 it. Yeah, it's awesome. Are you an only child? Yes, oh, okay, I figured it out. Nevermind I got you, I don't know where, at 24 years old, you know, 26 years that age, like, where you get the like, your first response is just like, Whoa, no, I'm going somewhere else. I was trying to figure out, like, Why did you have such, like, a clear vision of yourself and what you would be willing to accept? And that I thought, oh, probably a only child, plus immigrant parents, right? Yeah, working hard. They weren't looking to, like, right? They're not trying to repopulate the world. They're trying to get their feet under them. So it made sense to me, and you speak like you're older than you are. Oh, interesting as you're talking, if you told me you were, you know, 40, I believe that easily. So not because you sound old, but because you're sure of yourself and measured. Does that make sense? That's nice to hear. Oh, is it? Oh, good. Well, then I meant it as a compliment. It was not, I know I didn't mean in any special way, but since you took it that way, I definitely meant it. No, I mean it is a compliment, and it's um, but indicative of someone who's an only child. Yeah, that's interesting. My son's girlfriend's an only child, like she doesn't accept bullshit. It's just very simple, and I was an only child for five years, and I have a bit of that myself. I was just trying to figure out, like, the whole time you've been talking, I've been in the back of my mind thinking about, like, what makes a young, pregnant, almost newly diagnosed type one say, like, be so self assured in the face of doctors telling them something, especially because the doctor was very curt with you. Yeah. It wasn't like, hey, we can talk about it. No, it's not going to work out. It was no, if you do that, you'll be non compliant, and we'll withhold your medication, yeah. And you were like, or you, and then you left, and I was like, Oh, awesome, because a lot of people would go, Okay, well, I won't do that. Then, yeah,

Carolina 53:59 maybe some of it is because I'm a nurse, so, like, I also know that doctors are human, because I've worked with so many doctors over the years, right? So, yeah,

Scott Benner 54:07 my wife says that my wife works with a lot of medical people. She said to me one time, she goes, Oh, doctors, some of the dumbest people I know are doctors. But it's not because they're doctors. She just realized they're people. And yeah, and they can be wrong or, you know, influenced by how they feel, or things they think that, you know, might not be what you think. It's just really awesome that you were just like, No, I'm just gonna go find somebody else. I'm gonna do this. Look what you got out of it. You had what you described as not a bad pregnancy with type one, which I think is, I mean, that's like saying rainbows and sunshine. Not bad, you know what I mean, yeah, yeah. Did you ever go back to that doctor and go like, Oh, I just wanted to let you know how wrong you are. No, look at you. I wish very mature. It's awesome. And a photo, yeah, a photo of the kid with a note that just says, Hey, just wanted to let you know how wrong you were about everything. My pregnancy went great. It's very easy to manage with IEPs. I. I carried the baby just about the completely full term all by myself, in case you're wondering. And also, like, I know who you are, a little bit like, you're a tinier person, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah, right. So like, that baby gets neck, it gets pretty big, and you were like, now I can hold it in forever. Don't you worry. You were wrong. Go away. Thank you. Carolina pronounced and then write it out phonetically. But I'm petty. So you know, I'm actually not petty, but I would have thought all those things.

Carolina 55:32 Oh, I thought a lot of things. Oh, okay, all right, cool. Yeah, it's

Scott Benner 55:35 good to know I'm not petty. Seriously, I would have laughed, but I'm older, like, if at this point, if a doctor would say something to me, I go, oh, oh, you're serious. Okay, never mind. You know, most people don't get into that situation. They get that white coat syndrome when they get in there and they're scared, and not you, though, huh? Were you in there by yourself during these conversations? Or was your husband with you? Oh, I was by myself. I like you. Okay. All right, you're allowed to be on the podcast. This is awesome. Oh, great. All right. Well, let's end strong.

Carolina 56:08 Well, I will say before we go, the one thing you didn't ask me was auto immune in my family. Oh, you're polish.

Scott Benner 56:14 I just assumed celiac. And hold on, what else did I assume? Celiac? Thyroid? Am I right

Carolina 56:23 kind of I have thyroid. I have Hashimotos. My mom has lupus. Oh,

Scott Benner 56:27 wasn't on my bingo card today, but it could have been on a different day. Go ahead.

Carolina 56:32 Yep. And then her brother, so my uncle, this is pretty recent. He was diagnosed with MS. I want to say, like a year or two ago. That sucks, yeah. Up until then, it was just my mom that we knew of, then me and now my own no celiac. I'm gluten free, but I don't know if I'm

Scott Benner 56:49 actually celiac. Oh, why are you gluten free? You trying to be trendy? Or did your belly hurt?

Carolina 56:54 Yeah, after I got my wisdom teeth removed back in high school, I got, like, super sick, and I was losing a lot of weight, and we couldn't figure out why, and so we were trying diet things, and I went gluten free, and I felt a lot better.

Scott Benner 57:08 Don't go getting tested find out Scott was right. Okay, yeah, let's just let that be a mystery.

Carolina 57:14 We decided it doesn't change anything. I will be gluten free either way. So what's the point of actually finding out? Yeah,

Scott Benner 57:21 is that part of your trouble with your blood sugars? Like, are you eating? Because I know a lot of gluten free foods can be car beer,

Carolina 57:28 maybe, but I've been gluten free the whole time. I've, you know, had type one, so I don't know it any other way. Yeah,

Scott Benner 57:33 it makes sense. Why would it matter this? Yeah, it's hormonal or something, something in there is messing with you. Yeah, get that kid to drink a diet fresca or something instead of your you know what you're making for him. And I think maybe a lot of your stuff goes back to normal. Yeah, diet fresca. Where did that come from? I don't know. Am I having

Carolina 57:53 a is there a regular Fresco? I don't actually know what fresca is. Oh, well,

Scott Benner 57:57 first of all, fresca is a terrible soda that was for sale when I was young. I don't know if it's still for sale or not. Oh, was there a diet fresca? I mean, we can look.

Carolina 58:07 I'm googling fresco right now. Damn, right here. Okay, to see what it looks like from

Scott Benner 58:11 the Coca Cola Bottling Company. Now, it's a sparkling flavored soda. Oh, so does it have carbs? Oh, it's soda. I don't think it does. If Wait, hold on a second. Oh, because you said sparkling, I see what you're saying. Hold on. I'm looking boy, anything you click on takes you to Amazon. That's Bezos guy, huh? He must be doing all right.

Carolina 58:28 Ai overview says it was introduced in 1966 and is a sugar free diet soda. Oh, it's

Scott Benner 58:35 a diet fresca. Yeah, there you go. Now we know. Now we know. Yeah, what do we know exactly? Not much. I'm laughing in my mind, thinking of you listening to head like a hole later. So, oh yeah, yeah, it's on my list. Is it really? Are you really gonna do it? Well, I have to,

Carolina 58:51 right? I feel like

Scott Benner 58:52 you and I could listen to it now at the end, but then I'd edit it out, and then afterwards, just ask you what you thought, but I don't know if you'll be able to hear it. Never mind. It seems like a lot of work. I just as I said all that, I was like, ah, that I'm not doing all maybe we gotta listen to the song. Then we gotta wait, and then you gotta tell me what you think, and the editor's gonna take out the bar over it just seemed like a lot. I was just like, Ah, never mind. We don't give a what she thinks about this,

Carolina 59:20 and I'll probably hate it. So we don't all have to listen to

Scott Benner 59:22 that. What kind of country music do you like? What's your go to right now,

Carolina 59:26 I have a baby. I just type in, like, you know, hot country hits, and then they play. Are you? I don't have a lot of time to

Scott Benner 59:34 Well, now you sound 40 for real. By the way, you're like, I let the machine Tell me. Like, so wait, like, more like jelly roll, or more like Luke Bryan,

Carolina 59:44 like Luke Bryan, Poppy country, yeah,

Scott Benner 59:47 so more like Poppy pickup truck songs, yes, all right, they're the best listen. I'm alright with. That's good, yeah. Can you imagine if I wasn't? You imagine if, right now, after all these episodes of the podcast, I just. Like, sat up on my chair, stealed my spine, and said, Listen to me. I can't believe these are the songs you're listening to. I have a lot of thoughts about this. I don't give a what you listen to, but I just wasn't sure if you were, like, where you were, like, falling your whole life. Country music, I'm

Carolina 1:00:13 not that picky. So like, whatever's on the radio, I'm usually like, Oh, this is catchy. I just like catchy things. Okay, faster music, catchy things. I'm less of like a slow listen to the words,

Scott Benner 1:00:27 would you listen to a Taylor Swift bop? Yeah. Okay, so it doesn't have to be boss. She's Do you know she started as a country artist. I do know that. Yes. Oh, finally, we found something that happened recently enough that you're aware of it. And I don't sound like I'm about to die. Why does he keep saying things I don't understand. I interviewed somebody recently and they said, Can I be honest, Scott, I don't understand a lot of your references. I like it when Arden says to me, like, like, what's a good example? She's like, you know that Dua Lipa song? And I go, what I'm like, is that a person? And she's like, Yeah, you know who it is. And I go, No, I don't. My wife will be like, you know this song? And I go, I do not know this song. And she goes, No, you've heard this before? And I'm like, No, I have not. I do not know this song. And she's, you know, like, I only hear stuff if it breaks through for like, weird social reasons, you know what I mean? Yeah. Like, if, what is that Whap song, like that. I was like, Wait, what's going on? Like, that made it to me. But do you even know what that is? I don't wait, hold on a second. This is gonna have to get bleeped out the Oh, God, I can't believe I'm gonna say this.

Carolina 1:01:36 Oh, wait, oh, wait. Don't

Scott Benner 1:01:39 make me say it. You're a young mother. You know what I'm talking about.

Carolina 1:01:41 Right now, I got it. Okay, yes. Now I know all right. Like that

Scott Benner 1:01:45 made it to me because I was like, What the hell is happening? In fairness, if you said to me right now, gun to your head, sing that song, I'd be like, I don't know how to do that. You don't even sing

Carolina 1:01:54 it either. Yeah. Well, I think, I don't know if that helps or not, but I

Scott Benner 1:01:57 think it's good. You think we could be friends, even though we're 23 years apart, I feel that way. I do too. It's awesome. That just makes me feel young. By the way, it's got nothing to do with you. I'm like, I can still hang I know I can. The minute my hair is not dark, I fear for how I'm gonna feel about myself. I feel like it's the only your hair. No, I don't, by the way, okay. No, no, I'm just saying I have nice dark hair, and I think that the minute it lightens like, if it goes to gray, I feel like it's my superpower right now, it's the only thing that allows me to, like, you know, when people say I feel like I'm 12 inside my whole life, like, I really do feel like that. But I think people do get to an age sometime where they just give up on that part. And I don't see a time where that's gonna happen for me so far, and I just think that, like, all this silliness, if I was gray, would be weird. I know that sounds super strange, but I think it would be

Carolina 1:02:49 weird. Yeah, you don't care, though, right? It'll be interesting when it happens to see how you feel.

Scott Benner 1:02:54 What's the cut off for when you go, I can no longer listen to a podcast made by a 65 year old. Like, where's the number, where you're just like, What am I doing?

Carolina 1:03:03 I don't know. I mean, as long as you keep bringing on the guests and all the Dexcom people, I feel like

Scott Benner 1:03:09 doing everyone, all right, yeah, I'm done. Okay, well, I'll tell you what. I've been holding off buying a new enclosure for my chameleon, because I always feel like I want to tell you, like, when you make content for a living, which I hate talking about, like, this way, but it's what I do. There's this, like, feeling in the back of your head constantly where you're like, this can't last much longer, right? You know what I mean, like, this has got and now it's a decade I've been doing, literally, making this podcast for 10 years. Wow. But I'm not like, I grew up broke, so I just want to buy a new enclosure for my chameleon. And I'm like, seems like a waste of money, because, like, this podcast thing, like, I'm gonna have to go get a real job. Like, you know what I mean? Like, maybe not. All right, I'm just gonna put that out there at everybody I would like to not get a real job. So if you can all keep listening, I think that would be awesome. Thank you very much. All right, Carolina, all sticking around, help me say, I want to try to say your name the way your dad says it. Okay. Help me one more time. I'm very bad speaking phonetically. But go, yeah, Carolina, Carolina, no, that was close. It was close. It wasn't good, though. Why? Why? It's back your throat? Carolina, no, front of your throat. Carolina, no. Bucha, I lost it. I'm so bad at this. The

Carolina 1:04:20 first A is different. It's

Scott Benner 1:04:24 Carolina, Carolina. Oh, Carolina. We're in that bounce. All right, I'm not doing that, but does your husband call you

Carolina 1:04:36 that? I don't know what he calls me. What a great question. What is your Oh, go ahead. What

Scott Benner 1:04:40 does your husband call you? Let's figure it out before we go, because that whatever he calls you is the name of the episode. Go,

Carolina 1:04:46 oh, I think he just calls me like Carol, or Carol or something like that, like

Scott Benner 1:04:51 the syrup that people put on pumpkin pie. Oh, there's no way you knew that one either. I. Yeah, all right. Carol is a corn syrup, which I think is really not good for you. So my dad was a Pennsylvania Dutch, like, I know it's not a thing you know about. It doesn't matter, like think Amish, but not that serious, okay, does that okay? They eat like the strangest things. So when Thanksgiving rolled around, my grandmother would make pumpkin pies from scratch, and then they would pour dark carro syrup on it, and then a little whipped cream. And I have a small jar of dark carro syrup in my house all year long, for the time when I put a tablespoon of it on a slice of pumpkin pie at Thanksgiving. Now, if you google this, you will look at it and think, oh, Scott, I don't think that's a thing you should put in your body.

Carolina 1:05:46 So I'm googling it right now. Yes, it looks a little scary to me. Oh,

Scott Benner 1:05:52 don't get me wrong, but if you put a little bit of that dark on pumpkin pie with whipped cream, and eat it and don't love it, I don't understand you. Now, I think the craziest thing we've learned by clicking on carrot.com is that Tia Mowry is their spokesperson. Oh, do you know who that is?

Carolina 1:06:08 Yes, but I'm not actually on their website. I was just on, like a grocery store from Sister. Sister. Yes, I see her now. I did know Sister. Sister. So there's something I know more crazily, am I right about this? I think it's possible

Scott Benner 1:06:26 that I once moderated an online chat that she or her sister was in for a diabetes org, and just now, when I Googled her name to see if I was right. I've learned that her daughter's name is Cairo. Oh, so Caro, K, A, R O, her daughter's name, c, a, i, R O, I think that's Cairo, right. And then I think I've spoken to her or her sister at some

Carolina 1:06:58 point. That's wild. Are they related to diabetes? I don't know.

Scott Benner 1:07:02 Now I'm trying to figure it out, because I don't remember why they were there, but I don't it was, it was some diabetes org, and they reached out to me to moderate their thing. So Tia had gestational when she was pregnant. Oh, I wonder if that's so long ago, I don't remember, awesome. I don't know what to call this episode now, before I'm excited to find out. Yeah, I mean me too. All right, I'm gonna let you go. It feels like you have to go breastfeed something. So, um, do you is that coming up? I'm at work, so, oh, you have a job. You're trying to get back to work. Yeah? All right, go do your thing, hold on one second. Having an easy to use an accurate blood glucose meter is just one click away. Contour next.com/juicebox That's right. Today's episode is sponsored by the contour next gen blood glucose meter, touched by type one, sponsored this episode of The Juicebox Podcast. Check them out at touched by type one.org. On Instagram and Facebook. Give them a follow. Go check out what they're doing. They are helping people with type one diabetes in ways you just can't imagine. Us. Med, sponsored this episode of the juice box podcast. Check them out at us. Med.com/juice, box, or by calling 888-721-1514, get your free benefits check and get started today with us. Med, hey, thanks for listening all the way to the end. I really appreciate your loyalty and listenership. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast. The Diabetes variable series from the Juicebox Podcast goes over all the little things that affect your diabetes that you might not think about travel and exercise to hydration and even trampolines, Juicebox podcast.com, go up in the menu and click on diabetes variables, the episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording, wrong way, recording.com do.

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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 00:00 Hello friends and welcome back to another episode of The Juicebox Podcast.

Carly 00:14 My name is Carly. I am originally from Canada. I've been in Texas for just over three years and I was diagnosed with type one diabetes at the age of 40, nothing

Scott Benner 00:28 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. AG, one is offering my listeners a free $76 gift. When you sign up, you'll get a welcome kit, a bottle of d3, k2, and five free travel packs in your first box. So make sure you check out drink AG, one.com/juice box. To get this offer, don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy Earth com. All you have to do is use the offer code juice box at checkout. That's Juicebox at checkout to save 40% at cozy earth.com. 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, T 1d exchange.org/juice, box. The show you're about to listen to is sponsored by the ever since 365 the ever since 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. Omnipod five sponsored this episode of The Juicebox Podcast. Learn more and get started today at omnipod.com/juice. Box, links in the show notes links at Juicebox podcast.com.

Carly 02:00 My name is Carly. I am originally from Canada. I've been in Texas for just over three years, and I was diagnosed with type one diabetes at the age of 40. It was a happy 40th birthday present for me, right around your birthday, right like so my birthday is October. The symptoms I was diagnosed in February, but the symptoms definitely started popping up like late November, early, early December. So yeah, and the other story is my husband. He was married before, to a type one diabetic, and he proposed to me on my 40th birthday, and then I got diabetes a month later, so it's basically all his fault.

Scott Benner 02:43 Have we had his penis tested?

Carly 02:48 Is it possible? But he refuses?

Scott Benner 02:51 Oh, no. I think we should do a scraping of skin cells and then send them off. So I don't know the technical dues that's behind how we figure out if his penis is calling seeing type one diabetes in women, but I think it's possible. Yeah, yeah. Would you let him cheat on you to see if the next girl gets type one next girl?

Carly 03:08 He'd actually, yeah, okay, fine, that's an experiment. I'll be

Scott Benner 03:14 Carly. I love you. But if this is what you need,

Carly 03:18 the sacrifices I have to do for my wife.

Scott Benner 03:21 Can I pick the girl? How does this work? Yeah. Okay, so Wow, do you have any other autoimmune in your life, like in your extended family, or you personally,

Carly 03:31 myself, personally? No, I've got a bunch of random, weird health stuff. It's always, um, generally, when I get sick, I get really sick. Tends to be my strategy my mom has, that's the

Scott Benner 03:45 funniest way anyone's ever said it.

Carly 03:49 I had a perfect perforated ulcer when I was 15, shingles in my 30s, dealing with cancer now. So Wait, seriously, heart disease.

Scott Benner 03:58 Wait, hold on, you have heart disease

Carly 04:00 I have, well, it's called an aortic heart dissection. So I've got a weird hair in my in my heart,

Scott Benner 04:07 Harley, we have to figure this out. And what kind of cancer are you okay? I'm

Carly 04:11 okay. I'm going through so it's basically the cancer is like a melanoma. So I did immunotherapy for a year, had a bunch of lymph nodes taken out my armpits, like, year and a half ago, thought that was all done, and then basically, kind of on, like, two weeks after I rang the bell, a new thing popped up, which was linked from the original stuff. And so they actually ended up doing a live herpes virus into the spot to kill it so, and then that was kind of working, and then I was gonna get that cut out. And then within those scans, they found a new they found a new variant. So now I want some chemo drugs that had more surgery. And yeah, that too much. I want

Scott Benner 04:53 to find out how that affects your type one. But not before I say this, how many of these things have happened to you since penis? Boy touched you. Almost all of them,

Carly 05:05 yeah. So yeah, yeah. Like the perfect answer when I was 15. I can't blame him on that. But yeah, everything else, yeah, yeah, we were definitely dating when I got single. Yeah? No, I feel like this is him. Everything else has happened

Scott Benner 05:19 post you're from the, what they call the Great White North. But Is he correct? He is yes, okay, okay, so you guys moved together into the states.

Carly 05:31 Yeah, during COVID, his company shut down, like their Canadian office. So he moved here in 2020 we spent a year apart trying to figure out who's going to quit their job. People felt like there was probably more opportunity for both of us down here. So, yeah, so I followed about a year later, healthiest year

Scott Benner 05:49 of your life. Yeah, no, beyond being serious

Carly 05:54 outside of, like, all the major diseases, like, yeah, generally, like, I'm super active and like, that's basically like, I've never been one that got to sleep lots, and I would sleep in workouts, eat workout, eat some more. Workout, sleep.

Scott Benner 06:09 I just didn't know if it was like a moldy house that you didn't realize had mold in it, like you walked out of it for a year and you're like, hi, everything tastes fresher all of a sudden, and then he came back. You're like, yeah, jeez, all right. Well, listen, let's not make fun of the poor guy. But hey, you two aren't going to make a baby, though, right? No,

Carly 06:26 no, they're both, yeah, we're too old, so

Scott Benner 06:29 sorry, would you if you were younger, it was definitely

Carly 06:34 up for debate, like we I've had, I've also had kind of issues on, on that standpoint. So I always kind of wanted kids when I was younger, and it just kind of wasn't quite in the cards. And, yeah, we have a, we have a great life now, and I'm very, very happy with, kind of, yeah, like with, kind of with our life together, not

Scott Benner 06:54 in the cards. Like, your lady bits don't work, right? Or just like that. You know,

Carly 06:58 yeah, I could get pregnant, but could never hold a pregnancy game. So that was, yeah, sorry. I'm sorry, but it was so Jeezy,

Scott Benner 07:07 took all the fun out of it. Never mind. Okay, I know. I know. Sorry. Hey, everybody just found my line Carly. I was like, they're like, oh, he choked right through cancer, but he got to, he got to miscarriage, and he shut them right down. Yeah. Anyway, that was it. That was it. Now you all know my line. Okay, so what is it? Well, geez. So how many years have you had diabetes for?

Carly 07:29 Not long, so I it will be eight years in February.

Scott Benner 07:33 Oh, you're, you're almost my age, yeah. Oh, okay, yeah. So you've had it for eight years, and in those eight years, you haven't found any other family members with autoimmune stuff or type one my daughter is 20 years old. I can't even believe it. She was diagnosed with type one diabetes when she was two, and she put her first insulin pump on when she was four. That insulin pump was an Omnipod, and it's been an Omnipod every day since then. That's 16 straight years of wearing Omnipod. It's been a friend to us, and I believe it could be a friend to you. Omnipod.com/juicebox, whether you get the Omnipod dash or the automation that's available with the Omnipod five, you are going to enjoy tubeless insulin pumping. You're going to be able to jump into a shower or a pool or a bathtub without taking off your pump. That's right, you will not have to disconnect to bathe with an Omnipod. You also won't have to disconnect to play a sport or to do anything where a regular tube pump has to come off. Arden has been wearing an Omnipod for 16 years. She knows other people that wear different pumps, and she has never once asked the question, should I be trying a different pump? Never once omnipod.com/juicebox, get a pump that you'll be happy with forever. When you think of a CGM and all the good that it brings in your life, is the first thing you think about. I love that I have to change it all the time. I love the warm up period every time I have to change it. I love that when I bump into a door frame, sometimes it gets ripped off. I love that the adhesive kind of gets mushy sometimes when I sweat and falls off. No, these are not the things that you love about a CGM. Today's episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the ever since 365 the only CGM that you only have to put on once a year, and the only CGM that won't give you any of those problems, the ever since 365 is the only one year CGM designed to minimize the vice frustration. It has exceptional accuracy for one year with almost no false alarms from compression lows while you're sleeping, you can manage your diabetes instead of your CGM with the ever since 365 learn more and get started today at Eversense cgm.com/juicebox, one year, one CGM. My mom's got hyper thyroidism,

Carly 09:58 and actually. Something that I never like, I just only recently learned was auto immune. Is, I keep wanting to say eczema, but eczema, my sisters had eczema her entire life, so that would be the only other so

Scott Benner 10:11 thyroid eczema type one, yeah, and then just you randomly getting sick, yeah, yeah. Nobody, anybody else that you're related to just have that, like, what people would call, like, bad health luck. Well, yeah,

Carly 10:24 my dad passed away from ALS about 10 years ago. So no, 15 years ago, so I'm sorry she's very bad health

Scott Benner 10:32 Yeah, that is bad health luck. Yeah, yeah. I think anything that happens that ends up with you dead is definitely bad luck. Oh, well, that sucks. I just feel terrible to me. Oh my gosh. You have brothers and sisters. You do? You have one sister?

Carly 10:44 Thanks, yeah, no, yeah, one sister, yeah. She's 15 months younger. Gotcha,

Scott Benner 10:49 you diagnosed eight years ago. You're in the States. When it happens, you're in Canada. I was in Canada, yeah, how do they start you off your treatments?

Carly 10:57 Yeah, I guess that was kind of one of the things, like just, you know, listening to the differences between the different the different countries. But so I was Alberta. Like, every province has their own health care system, so I'm guessing someone in Ontario is going to have a little bit different experience than someone Alberta. But like, basically, I was wasting away. Like I was about 20 pounds lighter than I should be. I had zero energy. I was trying to get to my family doctor, who was part of a walk in clinic and had an appointment in, like, March and like, that was, you know, three months this, as soon as I could get in to see her, and just kept feeling worse and worse and worse, and kind of went into the walking clinic with where, you know, my doctor was, and the lady who saw me, and I don't blame her, because I think a lot of people come and say, I don't feel well, and it's just like, Yeah, you know, to pick up yourself here, whatever. I'm like, No, but I'm like, I'm super active. I know my body, I'm definitely not doing well, but I kind of go in and she's like, well, you're seeing your doctor in a month. Like, can you wait? I'm like, I don't think I can anymore. And she's like, Well, you didn't just turn 40, like, things slow down. I'm like, well, it's not like it turns 40, and my entire body decided to to shut down. So she sent me spurs, some blood tests, and the next day she calls me and she's like, You need to go to emergency right now. Like, kind of in Canadian numbers, my blood sugar was like, 35 or something like that, which

Scott Benner 12:21 is, I can figure it out for while you're talking good, you talk, I'll figure, yeah, yeah.

Carly 12:25 So, yeah, so. But so she's like, he's going to emergency right now, kind of left the office, went to emerge, spent about six or seven hours in emergency waiting to see someone. So finally they like, yep, you've got diabetes. You've got type two diabetes, just because of my age. Like, you know you're over 40, so it must be type two and like, I'm, like, you can see my veins and all my body.

Scott Benner 12:51 Everything I seem to know about type two diabetes says I shouldn't be, like, wasting away like this, if it's happening. Yeah? Also, three took them three months to see you too. Huh? That's very Canadian, yeah, yeah.

Carly 13:03 Very, very, yeah. So he, like, he sent me away with a prescription for Metformin, and then and a bit the referral to see the endocrinologist. Like, a week, you know. So this was a Friday, so the soon as I could get in was a week later to see an endocrinologist. So he spent that weekend, basically, like, you know, my husband is like, six four and played rugby, so, you know, close to 300 pounds. And we're walking around like, we went saw a few friends that weekend, and he's basically walking in the door going, guess who has type two diabetes? And he was all excited, because it wasn't him and it was me. It's so kind of spent a week on Metformin. Carly,

Scott Benner 13:45 if he ever breaks up with you, be careful if he walks in the room and yells, everybody who's dating me, raise your hand.

Carly 13:53 Exactly. Yes, it's been a week on Metformin like that was kind of all I had. And no equipment, no nothing, kind of, not much guidance beyond that. And so I went and saw, kind of my endocrinologist on Friday, and I walked in and she's like, You are not type two diabetic. She's like, you are type one. We're gonna get you in to see, like the dietitian right now and stuff. So kind of, I saw a dietitian. They showed me how to do insulin shots in the moment, and she said, Come back and see me in a week. And they just put me on long acting for the first week, just to kind of guess, get used to it and see us, started finger pricking and long lasting per week. And then saw her that next week, and she put me on,

Scott Benner 14:31 listen, it wouldn't be hard and fast, I don't think. But if I saw you with a 35 blood sugar, which, by the way, is 630 in over here in America? Yeah, I think I'd have a really difficult time thinking this is just type two diabetes. Also, like, yeah, not that your body weight has you know that people can be thin and have type two diabetes. Like, that's not my point. But like, you gotta think you can start adding the things up, like, the losing weight. Like, did you have other symptoms? Were you going to the bathroom? A lot?

Carly 14:59 Yeah, oh yeah. Like, it was where it first showed up. I grew up competitive swimming, so I always know when I'm getting sick when I'm swimming, like, because I'll feel bad without, like, before I actually feel bad. So it kind of popped up in December where I'm, like, my energy levels were really low and stuff. And didn't really notice the weight loss until kind of maybe a couple weeks before I went in, where I was, like, Oh, wait. Like, I put on a pair of jeans and, like, these are falling off me. Like, like, I would do a bike class, kind of the group on Saturday mornings. And my husband's also a very good cook. Stay can pass at kind of Friday nights. And I would show up on Saturday mornings generally, like, hung over and, like, super dehydrated, and joking with it was always joking with a buddy that my husband was trying to kill me. So I just feel like sweating salt and stuff like that. Carly,

Scott Benner 15:42 you're so Canadian.

Carly 15:47 So like, it was, yeah, like, those lots of thirst, getting up in the middle of night, he definitely infections and stuff like that were popping up and wouldn't go away. And, yeah, so, like, you look back on it, but like it was, like it was the energy level, like, again, it'll do something active, probably two, two times a day. And like, you know, I'd go for coffee in the morning from the office and just to walk a block. Just felt like that was

Scott Benner 16:08 too much. Hey, things degraded the way we would expect. But for some reason, a doctor looks at you and says, You have type two. You see endocrinologist A week later, after a week of metformin, he probably lost more weight, I'm imagining. And, yeah, luckily, you're not dead, but you're in DKA, aren't you? Not? If I was, they didn't tell me. Okay, so the the endo puts you on the long acting for a little while to get used to it, i By the way, why couldn't they should have put you in the hospital, is my point? Yeah, yeah, no, like, I, they sent me home that night, yeah, this will probably be fine. Give yourselves one of these a day while you acclimate to it. And then we'll talk to get, like, acclimate to, oh my god, yep. So you live through that. Obviously, you go back in a week. What happens? So they

Carly 16:54 put me on normal, like, yeah, so kind of fast acting and long lasting. And, you know, I see the dietitian, like, or I get a diabetes nurse that I kind of have to go and see her for, like, once a week for, I think about three weeks to kind of make sure I'm kind of getting the hang of it, yeah, and then I see the Endo, I think about three months later. And then after that, I'm on a one year rotation with the Endo, and that's about it for my for my care.

Scott Benner 17:23 Are you carb counting right away, or are you doing sliding scale? Which province? Oh, excuse me, you're messing

Carly 17:29 they did, yeah, they Yeah, yeah, yeah. They got me on carb counting right away. Well, yeah. So I got one friend that, like, two of his three children had type one diabetes, and I actually, like, I think that first Saturday after I've been diagnosed, I showed up. He was also part of this computing class. Showed up, and I kind of just said, I'm like, I got type I'm like, I've got been diagnosed with diabetes. And dude looked at me and he said, you know, like, well, he's like, there's two things I know about this disease. It's a numbers disease and it's a routine disease. And he's like, if I know two things about you, he's like, You love your routine, and you love numbers. So he's like, you're gonna kick ass at this, and you'll be fine. But he definitely helped me on the gave me a little bit more direction on kind of carb counting, and, you know, how they like,

Scott Benner 18:14 you know, kind of gave you a leg up. Give you a leg up on things, and got you going. I have to tell you, this lag just saved me because you said I have a friend whose kids have diabetes, and my brain wanted to say, Oh, God, your husband wasn't near those kids, was he? And I knew, and I knew how wrong that was, and the lag gave me time to think about it, and so I didn't say it. Now I'm taking credit for not saying it as I've posturally said it anyway, I find that both not funny at all and hilarious, in case you're all looking for an insight into my sense of humor, yep, well, I get it. Yeah, no, I was like, the only thing that stopped me was lag. I don't want to, I don't want to talk over when I say my stupid stuff. Anyway, let's assume those kids were over 18, so that what I just said feels okay. Yeah, they are now. They are now, yep, for sure, or then whatever. Anyway, your husband had nothing to do with that, nothing, nothing, no, not on this one. But, I mean, it is fair to say his ex wife and you both have diabetes. I'm just saying, Oh, my God, he should probably wear a condom constantly. I'm just, I think, so I don't know what he's got down there, but I don't think it's good. So

Carly 19:25 it's dangerous. Whatever it is, it's dangerous.

Scott Benner 19:29 That's right. Oh, there's no way to call this Canadian danger. Penis is there. I don't know what

Carly 19:35 your what your safe cards are allowed. So

Scott Benner 19:37 I think Apple won't let me do that. It's a shame, because, god damn it, that'd be awesome. So okay, so you get a little help from a friend. You get not a lot of, you know, not a lot of direction from healthcare. Does healthcare ever step in for you and become more valuable? Or do you just free wheel it on your own and figure it out?

Carly 19:56 Kind of free wheel it on my own, like people like, I really. Like my endocrinologist, but I think just the system is too, like, it's the way that, like, it is the, definitely the difference. You know, both systems have their issues. But like, the one thing I've really noticed in the States, I'm getting more appreciation, kind of, on the cancer side of things, is like, because it's a business, there's some customer service aspects down here, whereas in Canada, like, it's like, there's not, there's no incentive to go above and beyond, and you're kind of getting paid for, like, who you see and like, anything extra is, but not even that. There's not compensation. But, like, they're overworked, underpaid, and don't have the capacity to do it. But yeah, like, I would see my endo once a year. She's like, you're doing great. Like, my a one, CS at the time was low, sevens, but she was like, it's a little high, but you're super active, so I'm not worried about you. You're, you know, like, your weight, steady, all of that kind of stuff. So here's a prescription for the next year. Off you go, and we'll see you in a we'll see you in a year.

Scott Benner 20:58 Yeah? So it's a shame. You know, it's funny, as I'm sitting here like it's election day in America while you and I are doing this, it just occurred to me, I mean, out of nowhere, almost crazy, that you could listen to this podcast not know me and be like, Scott's got some really weird right wing fringe ideas, like he's always talking about how doctors aren't blah, blah, blah and everything. And I'm like, and I don't really give away my politics on here, or how I lean, really, but I don't feel that way. You know what I mean? Like, I don't have, like, the, like, the whole world's out to get me. This is all a conspiracy. You know, no one's working on a cure because there's more money. I don't really, I don't think like that. And by the way, if you do it's, I don't give a play. It's fine with me. But I find myself talking that way because of all the conversations that people have coming in here. Like, if you go back to the first year of the podcast, all I all you would hear me say is, like, look, I didn't get a lot of direction from my doctors, and I figured this out. And here's what I figured out. And here it is, you can just do whatever you want with it, right? But I don't know how many people have to come on and and say this stuff before you just go, wow. Like it, mean, it doesn't matter. It's ladies in Canada. Like it's, I hear from people in I just interviewed a woman in where, what the hell was she the other day? You don't know, because it was just me and her, but I think about, I think I was interviewing a woman from Bahrain. How does a woman from Bahrain find a podcast made by a guy in New Jersey? Because the people there aren't helping her. And, like, you know what I mean, and and so, and everywhere in between. If I pulled up a map of where this podcast is, like, vigorously listened to, the answer is almost everywhere. Yeah. This is also not to say that some of you don't have, like, awesome doctors who, like, on day one sat down and talked to you like, bang, here it is. Let me lay it out for you. And you just walked out of there with a five, five, a, 1c, because you know what you're doing. That absolutely happens. But clearly, I interview a person at least five days a week, and overwhelmingly, this is how the stories go. And I know people don't come on the internet to tell people how good things go, you know, all the time, but maybe more people should. So if you're listening to this, you're like, hey, you know it's not balanced. Well, then come on and be balanced about it. But all I can tell you is that a lot of people that come on tell me this, like, Hey, Scott, I know who you are, because my doctor did not fundamentally help me. So sucks, is all well, and on the other side, like

Carly 23:24 they're here, like three months, like we've

Scott Benner 23:28 only been 15. Oh, Carly, did you go to the wrong part of the house? Again, I'm with me, but she

Carly 23:33 made me cry.

Scott Benner 23:37 Oh, I can Yes. Now, okay, did you go to the wrong part of the house? What just happened?

Carly 23:40 Maybe. All right, let me Are you moving? No, I was sitting very still,

Scott Benner 23:44 because when I talk on the phone, I wander around my house aimlessly. When I'm on the phone, I like, oh, clean toilets. I put laundry in like, I sweep floors. People like, what are you doing? What? Sometimes I have to say to people I'm on phone calls, hey, in a second you're going to hear me flush the toilet. It's not because I just used it, I promise. It's because I cleaned it while we were talking. Yeah? Try something else. Maybe put your Wi Fi back on. Yeah. Okay. Well,

Carly 24:10 first, let's I've just tried a different room, which is going to be a little bit more. I don't know if that's echoey, but

Scott Benner 24:16 you have a tin foil hat that you can wear that might help. So I made my big pronouncement, and I said, it sucks, really, you started talking. I literally couldn't hear you. I'm sorry.

Carly 24:26 Okay, so, yeah, just on the endocrinologist side. Like it the first one I found here. She was actually quite involved with my diabetes and, like, but I yeah, she basically made me cry everything. Like, I left,

Scott Benner 24:39 oh, the office. But Carly, how does that? How does that happen? What does she say that that makes you upset? Well,

Carly 24:45 so this is so I was before coming down to the States. I was just on MBI, and so saw her for a while, and she's like, You need to get on a pump. You need to get on a pump. I'm like, Hey, fine. Like, I want to so kind of starting out, trying to understand insurance and all that kind of stuff. And, you know, with the insurance that we had was my husband's company at the time, I was just covered for Omnipod and the five was coming out. So I'm like, Well, this is supposed to be the newest technology. Like, why don't I just wait until it's out? Started on the five, and I'm like, maybe two weeks into it. First time I'm ever on a pump, and I walk into the office and he's like, this doesn't make any sense. I don't understand how to read any of this information. This is not helpful. Like, I didn't even know this was out. Like, what's going on? And she's yelling at me.

Scott Benner 25:27 She told you, get on a pump. You got a pump. And she's like, not this pump, you fucking idiot. Anyway, this is how the stories happen. People just keep listening. Go ahead. Yeah,

Carly 25:39 yeah. So that was kind of where I'm like, okay, yeah, I definitely it's time to leave her. So kind of got a new PCP, or found a PCP, and she referred me to a new window. I really quite like her, but again, like, I see her every three, four months, and, you know, we spend 1015, minutes together. But just even the difference, because, like, the Canadian and this could have changed. Like, I apologize to Dexcom, is it has changed. But the Canadian app versus the US app, like the Canadian app, the doctors didn't have the ability to download all your information. Okay? So, like, you'd go get your blood test and they would just see your ANC and like, that was the information they had, and that was that was it where. So even just the fact that, like, when my endo walks in, even if she only spent five minutes looking at my my information, she at least has a sense of what's going on with me. And, you know, and like, there is some kind of service around that level. But, you know, like, on the cancer side too, like, I'm just, I'm blown away at the care that I'm getting. And like, my access to doctors, and just, you know, one of the reasons that I was quite sure, if I was still in Canada, I might not even been diagnosed at all, and definitely would not have a lot of the stuff that has been caught would have gone unnoticed, just because of the way the system is set up there, versus it is here. Like there's something about the customer service, like, where it is a business, that you're trying to bring people back, that my brother in law had some kind of, like, just had some skin cancer stuff, and he went in, they treated it, and they said, like, hopefully we never see you again. And like, there's no preventative care to follow up, or like, anything like that. It's just like, you know, off you go and good luck. Whereas here it's like, you know, I'm still getting, you know, you're getting scans every three months just to make sure nothing new is popping up. And, like, there's a better sense of and with her, it could be just because, you know, kind of conspiracy people well, it's a business. They want to bring you in like they're trying to make money, you know, like, that's, I don't care, because they're, they're trying to take care of me. So do

Scott Benner 27:36 you think that, like, it feels like doctors helping you with cancer are more on the ball, because what they're doing is segmented, already understood, like their steps they're taking. We're going to do this, then we're going to take a scan. If the scan says this, we'll do that. Like it's much more if, then if this, then that, because it's a it's planned out, whereas diabetes probably has a lot of variables that the doctors aren't aware of. Yeah, I

Carly 28:02 hadn't actually, yeah, I hadn't really thought about that. But that does make again, with like, cancer, like, you're kind of supposed to be kind of cured, or whatever, and, like, but it can come back. And so there's whereas with diabetes, I guess, yeah, like, we have it, you have it, and it's not going away. So there's less, less need for follow up, is the right word. But yeah, yeah, yeah. I guess that's, that's a very good point. Yeah. I just

Scott Benner 28:23 wonder if that's the end it feels like it's going well because you're alive, so you're like, well, there was a CGM for your cancer, and you could see it bouncing around or whatever. I wonder if you would be like, well, they're trying their hardest, but it's not going as good as I wanted it. Like, you know what I mean? Like, it's such a I don't know. It's hard thing to quantify. I guess, yeah, maybe, yeah, yeah. I don't know. It's, it's, it sucks. Like, don't get me wrong. Like, in the end, you're asking a human being to, like, go to college, get an undergrad degree, go off to medical school, do the whole thing, absorb as much as they can, probably go into a specialty, learn as much as they can about the specialty, probably while they're learning about the specialty, the stuff they're learning is probably outdated, yeah. And then you come into a room and all the other stuff's going on, the human interaction, stuff, insurance, or time, or whatever, and they've got to look at you, make an assessment, say a thing based out of the knowledge in their head, and it's either right or it's wrong. And you go forward and see if you're lucky enough to, you know, to do it. I think with diabetes, when they tell you the wrong thing, it's so obvious right away, yeah, that you can say, Well, the thing that that person said to me was not helpful. And then they know that's the deal. And so then I think they throw their hands up and they think, oh, they'll figure it out. Yeah, that vibe, I don't know. I mean, I'm sure there's a lot of stories in between, but kind of feels that way to me sometimes, yeah, no, that's, yeah, that's a I like that, yeah, I don't know. It's just, I. Just think it's human. Yeah, I honestly think that if you stop talking about, I don't know, diabetes or cancer or health right now, and just shift it over to anything else and try to have a conversation about it, you'd start having the same exact conversation. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, yeah. So,

Carly 30:19 and it's person to person dependent too, right? Like, it's even kind of, I would think of this kind of, like, work from home stuff that popped up post post COVID. Right now, companies are pulling back on that. And there's, you know, like, there's people that, like, it's work from home, but I'm still working. And then you have people like, Oh, I'm going to take advantage of this system. And, like, you know, it's kind of that some employees are good at it. Some employees aren't. And it's, I would assume, kind of the medical system and the doctors and everyone else out there is the same, like, you know, kind of people's motivations different, or people

Scott Benner 30:49 are a mixed bag, yeah, that's, yeah, right? And they have their barrier. They can find the bad ones, yeah. And they have their variables too, right? There's, like, it's easy to say, like, oh, you know, I don't know David doesn't do good working from home, but you don't know if David's kids are sick, or his wife is yelling at him constantly, or he's yelling at her constantly and she's running around, hiding from like, I don't know, like they might have a lot of family problem, and then he's working from home, and then it's both, David doesn't do a good job from home, or maybe David's At home, you know, with his phone in one hand, watching a YouTube video, and, you know, looking at Twitch with the other hand, and that's why he's not getting anything done. Yeah, you know, you don't know what the reasons are that things happen, but at the same time, there's going to be as many just lazy people as there are people who are just not in a good situation. And you just never know why what's happening is happening. Like, it's easy to think, like, Mo, my doctor is an idiot. He doesn't care. He's not trying to help me. Or maybe that's not the case at all. Like, maybe your doctor's sick, or maybe your doctor's, you know, getting divorced. Or, like, you know, I mean, like, there's a lot of things going on in people's lives. In the end, none of this matters, because this is what ends up happening. Listen, if you really look at diabetes, like over a timeline, go back to 19, you know, 1915 as an example, and you get diabetes and you die eventually, right? They were doing starvation diets to try to keep people alive, like that kind of stuff worked. Sometimes, for some people, insulin comes out. Shoot people with insulin, hey, I'm alive, right? Insulin gets better. I'm sure these people who were saved by insulin in 1928 for example, didn't live till they were 7990 years old, like, Right? But it saved their life in the meantime. Then you know what comes next? Uh, pork, beef, you know, regular mph, like, you start going through that timeline there, and every time I talk to somebody who lived through one of those timelines, it came with its own challenges, and then it gets better every time the insulin gets better, and then it gets better when pumps come out, and then it gets better when testing is better, and it gets better when CGM come out, and it gets better When algorithms come out. But what we're counting on through this whole thing is technology, either biological or mechanical, technology, to make diabetes better. At no point during this process do I hear anybody telling me, Oh, I was diagnosed in 1965 but I'm still alive now. Let me tell you how much better my doctor got during this time, no one ever tells that story. Right in my mind, what we're waiting for is technology to be able to mimic better the ability to take in information, absorb it, consider it, apply it towards everything the world knows about health and type one diabetes, and then regurgitate the correct answer. I think we're waiting for AI. Yeah, yeah. That's where I think a leap in doctoring is going to finally come from, because, not because doctors are bad people, or they're not trying, or they don't take it seriously, or they don't care about me, or there's, you know, insurance, they got everybody in there. It's, it's the limitations of their their little like, noodle, they're thinking thing like, it just, it's not because they're dumb, it's because we're human. Yeah,

Carly 34:07 well, and in the end, we we're human. Like, doctors can only give us so much information, and, yeah, I can have best doctor in the world. It's going to be like, you know, no more than anyone have, like, the best advice that, if I don't take that home and listen like, you know, in the end, it's still like me that has to figure out, like, what my body's doing, and why does it, you know, why it reacts this way when you know I'm doing this? And like, in the end, like we have to take some responsibility ourselves. Like, it sucks that, yeah, you know, you hope that you could be able to kind of go and see a doctor, and they should give you the right guidance. But in the end, it's like, you know, again, we still need to go and figure out what's best for us.

Scott Benner 34:46 And even that perspective is like, we have to go home and do something with it that gives that you understood it. Yeah, it's not just about like the doctor telling you the right thing to do. It's about them telling you that in a way that you can absorb. And now. Like, you're a different person. Some people are visual learners. Some people don't want to read. They want to some people want it told to them, like, how the hell are we supposed to get this straight? Do you know what I mean? But like, yeah. Like, I've already done an episode or two. I'm not saying it's perfect or anything like that, but I've had people come on who have had, like, medical issues that they're like, I don't know what's going on with me. And I was like, why don't we just sit down and keep asking? Ai like, why don't we keep telling the AI about you? And then ask it what might be the problem? And it gives back, like, I don't know if it's right or not, but it gives back reasonable ideas to look into that I don't know that everybody would think to look into. Yeah, I know it's not perfect right now, and I don't know if it'll ever be perfect. I'm not saying it will be or anything like that, but at least it can hear what you said. Remember all the things that you told it. My name is Carly. I'm this tall, I weigh this much. I've got this kind of cancer and that kind of cancer. I've got this kind of this, and I've got that, and I have type one diabetes, and I end it's possible that somebody with a magic wand is trying to kill me.

Carly 35:59 And, you know, because I call it magic, that'll just that goes right to his head,

Scott Benner 36:04 which head? Now, listen, exactly. We'll get the Canadian out of you, yeah, now the AI is, is it's remembered those things that you've told it. Now, here are my symptoms. What do you see here? Like, here's who I am, here's here's my, you know, here's my measurables. Here's what I know is wrong with me. Here's what I'm, you know, experiencing. Lay it out for me here. What do you think could be going on? What could I try, first, to try to impact these things, and then let an intelligence you know that has access to the internet, which should have access to everything that doctors learned, and if it doesn't, someone's going to do it. And you know what I mean? Like, I think doctor, your doctor in a pocket. Listen, I said this to my wife a couple of years ago, and she fought with me a little bit about it, but I said, I think one day doctors will be technicians and not the clinician. I think the AI will be the clinician and the doctor will be the human there to go over everything, to make sure it makes sense. Makes sense. Yeah, I don't think surgery right away, but you know what I mean, although there are, like, there are some robot surgery tools that are awesome, but they're usually very specific to one surgery that they do, yeah, but that, to me, makes the most sense. Like, where's the limitation of doctors? It's their inability to keep all of the necessary information in their head and then compute it and spit out an answer. Well,

Carly 37:29 to your point, earlier, like, you know what they're learning? Like, you know, stuff is changing so much and, like, yeah, so quickly that, like, what they learned even a few years ago might be irrelevant, and they might not know it's, it's relevant, right? Like, it's so or, what about

Scott Benner 37:44 new literature, new new testing, you know, this stuff that comes up constantly. Like, I had a lady reach out to me this morning, and, you know, like, listen, let's be clear. First of all, I'm a podcaster, okay? Like, you know, and she's, you know, she sends to me. She's like, Look, I know you're not a doctor. And know, this isn't medical advice, but my three year old has diabetes, but only has this specific antibody and blah, blah, blah. And you know, like, you know, isn't using much insulin. He's getting stem cell treatments. Like, the family's doing a lot, you know, trying to keep this diabetes at bay. And she says to me, do you think a GLP medication would help him? And I'm like, I'm reading this, and I'm like, and if she's listening, you know, it's cool that you reached out to me and everything, but I'm thinking, like, It's nine o'clock in the morning, lady, and I didn't go to medical school, like, I don't know, but, and my assumption now is that she's been listening to the podcast and heard a couple of people's stories about using glps and their insulin needs going significantly down, but I asked her that, and she hadn't heard those episodes. Oh, now, side note, Carly. That made me sad, because I would like it if you all listen to all the podcasts. But I got past that part pretty quickly, and I sent off an episode, and I said, Hey, listen. Here's an episode with this 15 year old girl who's using a GLP, and she's, like, barely using any insulin. Now, she had type one for like, three years. She's using a ton of insulin. Like, something's working for her. It's not gonna, you know, it's not curing her, obviously. And I'm assuming, at some point in her life, you know, this is gonna, you know, ratchet up. But this has been going on a while now, and everything. So she's like, I'll go listen to that. But Scott, what would you do if it was your kid? And so I'm like, Look, I'm not a listen. Also, I'm not a doctor. I don't give people medical advice. Like, I can't answer this question, but she had a lady here. She's you, she's craftsmen at straws, right? And I don't know if this ends up working for her kid or not, but obviously the lowest dose that's available in a pre mixed in a pre, like, measured pen, I'm assuming, would be insanely too much for a person that size, right? And I don't know the reasons why or why not. You wouldn't give it to a kid. Like, I don't know any of this, right? So I tell her all that. I'm like, I have no idea about any of this. I really don't know, but I. I would wonder too, if I was you, like, is there like, a micro dose of this medication that would help but and then I said to her, the the lamest thing you should ask your doctor. And when I said that, I thought she's gonna go ask a doctor who is gonna just have heard, like the side effects from GLP from two years ago on the internet and go, you can't give that to them. Give them liver disease and shut off their they're gonna, their guts are gonna twist up in a butt. Like, you know, I mean, like, so I ended up saying, why don't you send this episode to the doctor and let them listen to it, see if you can spark their imagination to go ask questions and find out. Because I don't know. Like, would the tiniest little bit of that stuff, like, do something for the kid? Would it hold off their diabetes? Like, would it, like, lessen the impact on, on the on the kids beta cells? Would it stretch things out? I don't know, but you know who definitely is not going to know her doctor, and so she was put in the ironic position of thinking to herself, it's possible a podcaster will have more up to date thoughts on this than my physician will. Now I'm not saying that's a good idea. I'm not saying you should be coming to me before your doctor. I genuinely am not saying that. I want to be very clear, but like it puts her in that position to wonder that, yeah, and if aI had access to everything that was happening in the world, and it could, it could consider those things, you know, like testing and, you know, stories and, you know, anecdotal and and whatnot, it might be able to come back and just say to her, like, hey, You know what? Don't do that, or I wonder what maybe the AI would come back and go, Hey, you do have to wonder what would happen if we just gave the kid, like, the teeniest little bit of this, like, I don't know, like, you know, but that's what I think you're waiting for, is you're waiting for something to aggregate information, be able to hold it, understand who you are, and regurgitate reasonable things to look into, yeah, yeah, no, for sure, yeah, because it ain't gonna happen. It's definitely not gonna happen in Canada. I mean, no, I try not to make a big deal out of it, because I feel like some people are like, Oh, see, he's like, He's agreeing that socialized medicine is a bad thing. But it takes way too long to go to a see a doctor in Canada. Yeah, yeah, yeah. It just like, when I was, yeah,

Carly 42:21 like, when I was in and I remember, like, when I got diagnosed, I'm just talking to a co worker, I was like, Well, yeah, like, I always had a very negative view of the US system. Like, well, you know, you could go bankrupt and, you know, whatever. Like, just, how is this not just part of, like, your everyone should have decent health care, right? And, yeah, I get diagnosed, and I have, you know, access to a nurse, and I immediately get an endocrinologist and stuff. And then I come down here and it's like, oh, like, both systems, again, have their issues, but if you have insurance here, like the level of care you're getting is exponentially better, you know, like, is so like, it's, yeah, like, neither system is perfect, but yeah, the Canadian system, like, having, just having access doesn't necessarily mean you're being taken care of,

Scott Benner 43:09 right? Yeah, right. Access to people three months later, and you know, we're longer I know, listen, I know other Canadians, and they come in with reasonable concerns, but, you know, the doctor's like, well, that's not going to kill you. We'll see in a year. And I'm not making that up. Like, I've had people tell me, I you know, I had low iron. Took them nearly a year to see a doctor, but, and it's low iron that needed, like, intervention, not like a vitamin, yeah? I mean, a year is a long time to live exhausted, yeah, when it's not necessary, because I had that happen to me, and I pressured a doctor, and four days later I had an iron infusion. Guess what? I felt better in two weeks like so somebody else has got to wait 12 months to your point. What exists here that doesn't exist there? It's the carrot at the end of the stick. It's money. So, yeah, you want to get paid. You get my ass in there and you fix my low iron problem. Yeah? You know, yeah, I don't know.

Carly 44:03 Like, I'll use my sister like she so my sister, over her lifetime, she's had, like, it's happened three or four times where she's just stood up and she's just passed out. And the last time it happened, she knocked her head, got a pretty bad concussion. And so they finally ran it, like, we'll run some tests and stuff. And so they're like, Well, we think you have epilepsy. So she goes and does the test. Like, it takes her three or four months to get the test, another three or four months to get the results. And like, it's inconclusive, so we need you to run another test. So it takes another three months, takes another three months to get the results. They're like, just over a year into this, and they're sitting there going, if you have epilepsy, we're gonna have to take you're gonna lose your driver's license, but because we don't know you know off you go do your live your normal life, but it was basically, like, it took them almost two years and maybe four or five appointments in total for her to be diagnosed as like, it's inconclusive. So we're just gonna leave. It. But all of

Scott Benner 45:01 that, anything was yeah, just even wear a helmet. I mean, like, is that? Like, yeah, yeah,

Carly 45:08 exactly. She first told me to epilepsy, looked up for ways to like or things to, you know, things to do, to take care of yourself. And one was like, maybe wear a helmet.

Scott Benner 45:17 Did somebody really say that? Send her a picture of what? Wait You said that you and I

Carly 45:24 would get along. Helmet for Christmas,

Scott Benner 45:26 yeah, you and I would get along. I see this, yeah, to me, though, the horrible part about the story isn't that they couldn't come up with an answer. Like, I accept that they can't always find an answer. It's the amount of time it took them to not come up with an answer. That's the part that kind of pisses me off. Like, how much time has to go by for you to go, oh, sorry. Like, you know how demoralizing that is, yeah, well,

Carly 45:49 just the fear of, you know, she's 45 years old. Like, yeah, when are we gonna be like, I've been driving for almost 30 years. Like, you're gonna take this away from me and like, what are the like, what does that do for my job and my kids and like, yeah, and stuff just overhang, like, hung over her for almost two years, and then to be like, ah, not sure. So we're just gonna leave it

Scott Benner 46:10 anyway. Good luck. Thanks for coming. Yeah, hey, get yourself a Tim bit on the way home. Yeah. God, that's a donut hole, right? Yeah, that's exactly what it is. You call it something fancy, but it's, it's the it's the middle of the track, like you've made something up, you know what? I mean, yeah, yeah. Have you ever tapped the tree and taken syrup right out of it? Yes or No,

Carly 46:34 I did. I was at a water poll tournament nationals in long time ago, and they were in Montreal, and so we went and did, uh, we did do that. So

Scott Benner 46:43 I know any stupid thing I ever say to people they've done so, yeah, I know

Carly 46:49 only once, though, only once. I only

Scott Benner 46:50 do that so that people who think that generalizing is bad go, maybe, maybe it's not like every dumb thing he says to people like, oh, that definitely happens. Go back to the Canadian episode where the girls, she's a can can dancer in the Yukon. It's awesome episode. Oh, and I say something to her about, like, working at the bar that I know people were like, Oh, stop reaching for. She goes, yep. And I'm like, Yeah, I win again. Anyway. What do you have here in your notes about diabetes versus cancer? What do you want to talk about revolving around that was interesting.

Carly 47:22 Papers reached out about that, like, because it was kind of like this. You know, if I could have one over the other, and cancer is looking like it's more chronic and not going away either. But if I can get rid of one, I would get rid of diabetes, because it's still still it's because it's all consuming, right? Like, Cancer sucks and but in the end, if you don't do a good job with either of them, the end result is going to be the same. You have a little bit more control, actually, probably a lot more control, over diabetes. But it's like, it's all consuming, right? Like, no, I probably don't go much more than 10 minutes where I don't, at least I'm like, What's my blood sugar? Like, haven't looked at my blood sugar. What's going on? Like, in every decision you make, right, like, Okay, I'm going to eat, but I'm going for a ride in a couple hours. Like, where it's, like with cancer and it again, like it my thoughts process is changing a little bit on this now that it is a little bit more chronic and not going away. But, you know, like, when I was first just doing, like, head surgery, surgery absolutely sucked. Post surgery sucked even more. But like, then I was just going in for immunotherapy once a month, right? So you kind of go in, you get the treatment, and then you would think about it for another month, right? Like, you kind of go about life a little bit, whereas Carly,

Scott Benner 48:33 I gotta tell you something, it isn't often that I get bummed out by things, but that I'm usually a very positive person. I don't want to bum you as the parent of a child with type one diabetes. She's just embarking on her young life. That really kicked me in the stomach. I have to tell you, thanks, Carly. I'm Yeah, yeah. Just here

Carly 48:53 to bring joy. I appreciate you

Scott Benner 48:56 being honest about it, and it's a very interesting perspective. Now, may I ask you if the cancer was going to take you three months from now, for sure, you'd say I'd rather get rid of the cancer. Yeah, yeah, for sure. Okay. I mean, I just didn't want people who can't hear nuance to yeah, get upset. That's all,

Carly 49:11 yeah, yeah, no, and like, and yeah. Again, it's kind of, you know, the fact that this is not going away as quickly, it becomes a little bit more sure of a bigger deal and a little bit more emotionally time consuming and stuff like that itself. So, you know, that perspective, you know, is, is evolving, yeah, probably say, but yeah, like, it's, they're, they're different mindsets. Have you

Scott Benner 49:33 had a big if I'm not here anymore conversation with your husband? Not really

Carly 49:38 like, I think so. I'm generally, um, relatively positive. I don't do a lot of research, you know, like, kind of, my doctor's like, oh yeah, we'll just have the surgery and you're just gonna do this treatment and whatever. And so I'm just kind of, I've gone about thinking I'm going to be fine, and not done much research. I guess still am reading a book and, like, there was one section on cancer, and I was like, Oh, this isn't doing. Well, for my my emotional health. And I did, um, I shared, like, one paragraph writer to my husband, and the next morning he woke up and he's like, You have to stop reading that book, because he didn't sleep the entire

Scott Benner 50:12 thing. He's like, listen, I read it and it's upsetting. Well, I mean, listen, I think that's like, I again, it's, I can't believe Texas. I mean, come on, you know what? I mean, it's a state. It's big, isn't it huge? It's the biggest city in Texas. I think it's bigger than a lot of countries like you would think, get a nice, rock solid internet connection. But neither here, yeah, I get the idea that the cancers, like do the thing move forward, right? Like we do the thing, we test later, we move forward. It's the only way to live with that. In my like opinion, my mom lived a, you know, a time, but a short time after her cancer was removed, and like she got to ring her bell and like it's gone, and then, you know, a year and a half later she was gone. But in that time, look at me trying to be upbeat about my mom dying. In that time, I did appreciate that we did the thing. The thing is over. We'll set up the next test. Until then, you'll live like it's not going to happen again. There was something good about that. Yeah, yeah. I don't understand how you could live otherwise, to be perfectly honest. No.

Carly 51:15 Well, you can't, like some people do, right? Like, I guess you know you you see it in the in the diabetes community, you see it in cancer community, right? Like, cancer came back and, like, I probably need to talk to someone. So kind of got a therapist, and, you know, first meeting, he type one diabetic and has been type one diabetic for like, 35 years. I'm like, okay, Kim and I, we're, we're each other's people. So kind of got along right from the beginning. But, like, both of us, we kind of talked about that. It's like, how I am not diabetic. I have type one diabetes, right? Like, and so it's kind of across everyone. Like, some people just internalize whatever's happening to them and make it part of their identity. And like, I'm not saying one way is right or wrong, right or wrong at all, but it's, you know, like, it's kind of how you guess, like, that's kind of part of me. And, yeah, like, you know, I guess saying like, diabetes is all consuming, but I still, like, I don't, my lifestyle hasn't changed, you know, like, I didn't, yeah, I haven't stopped drinking. I still eat carbs. Like, you're gonna live the way given that cookie, like, you know, like it's, yeah, like, my life is exactly the same as it was

Scott Benner 52:18 before. And how many visits with a therapist till you ask him if he's had sex with your husband.

Carly 52:26 That's a neckline. I think,

Scott Benner 52:29 listen, I don't think I can tell you any more of my secrets till I double check on this. Yeah. Rugby guy, big dude. You don't know him, do you? He's like the Johnny Appleseed to type one diabetes, your husband. He's gonna find this funny, right? Because he's big. And you, yeah, yeah, you can reach me through an interstate. So I'm not worried.

Carly 52:54 You can see the stuff that he sends me on Instagram, like the reels. He says, I don't want

Scott Benner 52:59 to open my front door. One die. And like, you know, like, this giant man sitting in front of me, I'm gonna go, Oh, you're gonna be Carly's husband. Yes, I'll just tell him that story about the can can dance or loosen him right off. He'll be fine. Yeah, yeah, Carly, is there anything we haven't talked about that you that you want to, that I haven't brought out of the conversation?

Carly 53:19 No, no. I think that's kind of Yeah. That covered it like, yeah, I guess just one kind of like that. Every system is a little different. And it's just, you know, I find kind of, when listening to someone from Canada talking about the system versus the states, that there's always kind of a bit of a, I don't know, cognitive difference. Is that the right term like that, I struggle with. And it's just, yeah, the system just, it's a little different and interesting, you know, managing both,

Scott Benner 53:46 yeah. So if someone comes on and starts saying, like, Oh, I'm in Canada, and everything went great, party used, like, It ain't like that everywhere. Sister, like, that kind of feeling like, just makes you feel like, that wasn't my experience, yeah,

Carly 53:57 yeah. And it just, and I think kind of people like in in Canada, we don't, like, until he was here, I didn't appreciate some of the, you know, the positives of the system down here, and some of the pro like, you know how some of it is a little bit more proactive and preventative versus, you know, yeah, like in Canada, like, unfortunately, like, it's part of the system, but, like, there's not a lot of preventative stuff. It's more like, just, how do we manage what's already happened? Yeah,

Scott Benner 54:22 I think that's pretty much everywhere, though. Like, yeah, if you're lucky enough to be working on preventative care, you're doing it yourself to some degree and or bringing in doctors who you're paying cash to here that are helping you with stuff like that. Like, if, you know, I don't know if they're, yeah, I don't know if most of them are, you know, even allowed to, like, listen to you. If you come in and say, Hey, like to preventative, I need you to help me manage some preventative mate, but that'd be interesting. Why don't you go into a general practitioner and say, I want to, I want to preventatively main, do something here. Can you help me watch the doctor go? Yeah, sure. But we can't bill your insurance. I. You know, so that sucks, really does, by the way, I love Canadian danger penis so much that I'm wondering, can I just, like, make it pee, like, you know, like ampersand, like NIS, or, would that, yeah, be okay, yeah, I don't know such a good title, or, what if? What if I called it Canadian danger and then a different P word, like a more acceptable one. Then the first thing I said when the episode came on was like, Look, guys, this episode is really called Canadian danger penis. But I couldn't put that, yeah, I couldn't put that in the title. I'll probably just reflect

Carly 55:36 that. That'd be another like, of course, in the moment I'm blanking on any other term for the Oh, for the penis, for a penis, but like, Is there, like some other, like Carly, I know, for

Scott Benner 55:47 fun, why don't you name all the words you know for penis right now? Yeah, the guy can bleep him out. What comes to mind? Go ahead. Well,

Carly 55:59 you said, imagine it like magic wand, like the shrimp boat. I'm now, I'm going to, was that Grumpy Old Men? At the end of Grumpy Old Men to be able

Scott Benner 56:08 men. How old were you? What the hell

Carly 56:10 was the same, like John Lennon and Walter les gal and stuff like,

Scott Benner 56:15 you got that. So, right? Walter Matthau, did you say? Is that right? Is that right? Is that the Walter, Matthau and Jack Lemmon, I believe you said John Lennon. Did you say John Lennon?

Carly 56:32 Wrong. One. Wrong.

Scott Benner 56:34 That was awesome. I did some use my Google fingers. Member, phallus. Phallus could work. Canadian danger phallus, oh yeah, that's what we're gonna do. Also, manhood, organ, shaft, tool, genitalia, private part, masculinity, Rod, package, pecker Johnson, Willie and junk. That's what came up for me. All right, that sounds pretty standard, yeah, none of the dirty ones came up.

Carly 56:59 No, no, yeah. But see, there you go,

Scott Benner 57:02 Canadian, let's go phallus, because the P is there, and then, yeah, because in private part would be weird. Yeah, I'll do phallus in the title, and then everybody will come in and I'll let them know I just had to do that for the title. And then we'll move on. Yeah, there we go. I love it. You've brought a lot to this podcast. When I look back over this thing when I'm done, I'm gonna remember this moment. I wonder how long I'll do this for. How long have you been listening?

Carly 57:26 So I started during COVID, like, I was kind of like, I needed to get out of the house, you know, work from home. And so I wasn't big into podcasts at all. I don't listen to podcasts at all at that time, like, oh, maybe this will be a good place to to learn about diabetes. And so it just kind of Googled diabetes podcasts and landed on yours

Scott Benner 57:44 and just started listening and have been stopped. 2019, 2020, 2020, Oh, awesome. Thank you. So I think I can Kelly, summer 20, Summer, summer. 2020. Summer. Okay. I think I could keep this going. I think I could do it another 10 years. Like, for me personally, like, I could, like, once I get into my 60s, like, I'm gonna be like, Listen, I'm just whatever money I've been able to scrape up, I'm, I'm gonna off with it now and be done. But I think I could do this for a decade. I think I could make it interesting for a decade. So that's my goal. Is 10 more years, 20 years total. Like, at the end, at my funeral. What's that well, and then the end, like, where

Carly 58:23 it's, like, it's part of, it's just creating a community, right? And people sharing stories about, you know, their own experiences that we're all experiencing. So it really is,

Scott Benner 58:31 Listen, I'm very proud of the whole thing, like, how I see it helping people every day, and it's a great outlet for my stupidity. So that's awesome. And, you know, like, people come on and tell stories that you just don't hear anymore. Like, listen. I don't know what we talked about today, but at one point you said, I think I'd rather keep cancer than diabetes, and I think that's a thing worth hearing and considering if you're out there listening, you know what I mean? Like, I do agree that you have to live like it's not their diabetes, that you have to minimize it as much as you can, you know, all that stuff, and try not to let it over take your life. But the truth of the matter is, is that, you know, when Carly came on and said, If you could give one of these away, she said, What? She said, You know, so you got to keep that in mind while you're living with it or parenting with it, or whatever. Yeah, all right, well, this was somehow a bummer and fun at the same time. I'm so sad about your just go

Carly 59:25 back. Just go back to the penises. And yeah, we'll make it end on a high note. On a high note,

Scott Benner 59:34 you just broke up. But I was so sure you're gonna say strategic and, oh, you just, you just broke up, Carly, I was so positive you're gonna say on a high note or on a hard note, but I wasn't sure where you were going with that. Is that where you're Oh, you and I would get along really well. You and I would get along very well. Wouldn't we look at us, you'd be like, Oh, he's about to say something stupid. I know. Yeah, I know he's about to say something stupid because I'm already thinking of stupid now. There you are breaking up like it is so infuriating. All right, I don't know what's wrong with Texas, but I hope they fix it. You were just gone. Hello,

Carly 1:00:11 Carly, hello, I'm here. Yeah, breaking up.

Scott Benner 1:00:15 I don't know what's wrong with Texas dog. Houston, we have a problem technology. Am I wrong? Yes, Justin,

Carly 1:00:21 we really do have a problem. Also, I can definitely call you not wrong.

Scott Benner 1:00:27 Carly, I'm gonna let you go so that I don't bang my head on this desk while people are listening. Okay,

Carly 1:00:32 yeah, no, that's great. Hold on one second. I'd

Scott Benner 1:00:42 love I'd like to thank the ever since 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 ever since CGM, ever since cgm.com/juice, box, one year, one CGM, a huge thanks to Omnipod, not just my longest sponsor, but my first one. Omnipod.com/juice box. If you love the podcast and you love two plus insulin pumps, this link is for you. Omnipod.com/juice box. I Juicebox. I can't thank you enough for listening. Please make sure you're subscribed, you're following in your audio app. I'll be back tomorrow with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast. If you or a loved one was just diagnosed with type one diabetes, and you're looking for some fresh perspective. The bowl beginning series from the Juicebox Podcast is a terrific place to start. That series is with myself and Jenny Smith. Jenny is a CD CES, a registered dietitian and a type one for over 35 years, and in the bowl beginning series, Jenny and I are going to answer the questions that most people have after a type one diabetes diagnosis. The series begins at episode 698, in your podcast player. Or you can go to Juicebox podcast.com and click on bold beginnings in the menu. Hey, what's up? Everybody? If you've noticed that the podcast sounds better and you're thinking like, how does that happen? What you're hearing is Rob at wrong way, recording doing his magic to these files. So if you want him to do his magic to you, wrong way. Recording.com, you got a podcast. You want somebody to edit it. You want rob you.

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#1472 Tao of Tom

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Tom, 29 (T1D since age 8), overcame resentment, weight gain, and stigma to take control of his diabetes while working in commercial real estate.

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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.

Tom Taylor 0:14
My name is Tom Taylor. I'm 29 years old. I'm from the New York City area. I work in commercial real estate analytics, I was diagnosed as a type one diabetic when I was eight years old in third grade. Please

Scott Benner 0:26
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. Don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com All you have to do is use the offer code Juicebox at checkout. That's Juicebox at checkout to save 40% at cozy earth.com AG, one is offering my listeners a free $76 gift. When you sign up, you'll get a welcome kit, a bottle of d3, k2, and five free travel packs in your first box. So make sure you check out drink, AG, one.com/juice, box to get this offer. Are you an adult living with type one or the caregiver of someone who is, 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, T 1d exchange.org/juice, box. It should not take you more than about 10 minutes. The episode you're about to listen to is sponsored by tandem Moby, the impressively small insulin pump. Tandem mobi features tandems newest algorithm control iq plus technology. It's designed for greater discretion, more freedom and improved time and range. Learn more and get started today at tandem diabetes.com/juice box. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the Dexcom g7 the same CGM that my daughter wears. Check it out now at dexcom.com/juicebox,

Tom Taylor 2:07
my name is Tom Thaler. I'm 29 years old. I'm from the New York City area. I work in commercial real estate analytics. I was diagnosed as a type one diabetic when I was eight years old in third grade, and I have had quite a journey managing the disease. I've been relatively independent about it since I was young. I come in contact with a lot of folks who recognize my pump or my CGM in public, even though my my omnipot receiver usually gets mistaken for a second phone. I'm not nearly that cool to need two phones. I think it's very, very interesting community, and I really appreciate the work that you do, Scott and educating people about it.

Scott Benner 2:44
Oh, thank you. Did you see the omnipot app came out yesterday? I

Tom Taylor 2:47
didn't. I've been waiting for that for so long. Oh, I can't wait to get rid of this device. So,

Scott Benner 2:53
yeah, the app came out yesterday. I put a link up, got hit like 1000s of times in the first 24 hours. I was like, Wow, that's amazing. So people

Tom Taylor 2:59
were obviously really excited waiting for it. Well, thank God you're on top of it. Yeah? Al, I mean, in fairness, I get a text from somebody who says, hey, the app just came out, so I'm a little ahead on stuff like that, nevertheless. So you've had diabetes for 21 years. Your Diabetes can vote, drink and all that stuff. That's right, yeah, that's exactly. Has it ever gone to Vegas for the weekend, left you alone? Yeah, yeah. I think it has, I think it's gotten away from me from time to time. And then, you know, it'll, especially when I was younger, you know, I'd come back and, metaphorically speaking, you know, the disease would kind of say, hey, you know, you've been feeling terrible for a few days. This is why you need to get a grip on this. You know, over time, I've definitely found, you know, rhythms and mechanisms to kind of regulate it. And I think that, you know, it's a blessing in disguise, in retrospect. In fact, actually, I wrote my my college essay on type one diabetes and the phenomenon of high blood sugar and just how unfortunate the feeling is, I likened it to, and this is pretty nerdy, so stick with me here for a second. But there's a there's an old epic poem called The rhyme of the Ancient Mariner. You know, this guy kills an albatross and and all of a sudden, the world kind of collapses around him. And he's, he's sailing on the high seas, and the seas kind of turn to molasses. And I, you know, when you when your blood sugar is high, it feels like your blood is molasses, and everything is just kind of, you know, prickly and painful and slow. And so, you know, I think that feeling, which when I was younger, was probably like half of the time I was awake, something like that. What it makes you appreciate just feeling normal and all the little things in life. Gotta accept everyone, but it's definitely a blessing in disguise. In that way, you mentioned that you've been taking care of this since a pretty young age, but it wasn't because you were doing awesome at it. It just wasn't. It was because that was what was needed to be done. Exactly right. Exactly right. You know, it was no one in my family had this disease prior actual that's we found out when I was diagnosed. I have a very large family, and my mother's one of nine, my father's one of six. We've got a lot of very close blood relatives that are all very close. Geographically and as far as spending time with each other, but nobody else got was diagnosed with type one diabetes of the, you know, I can probably count, you know, 60 to 80 close relatives I could probably name for you right now, I was, I was the lucky one, but our great grandmother, on my mother's side was a diabetic and and she apparently had to use one needle that she would boil to sterilize and bore insulin. Insulin from a bore because they didn't have synthesized one readily available in the early part of the 20th century. And so, you know, we kind of figured out what was available as far as equipment and stuff. My parents and I kind of got into a routine when I was young, but I was very much left to monitor my own blood sugar, to set a schedule, to inject myself with the help of school nurses as well. When I was, you know, enough to be in school, basically, I think that the kind of epochs of time for me in managing, you know, type one was when I was younger, in elementary school, and I was diagnosed in third grade. School Nurses were a big part of the regulation, because that was the time I was away from my parents, and I would have to go to the school nurses, as you probably hear all that all the time, and check my blood sugar and take insulin ahead of lunch and whatnot. So they were very integral in establishing some structure there for me and having some accountability, which I think is important for a young kid dealing with the disease. There's a fine line, frankly, between accountability and, you know, oversight kind of taking away that sense of internal accountability for a kid. So I think that, you know, I was very fortunate to have some great school nurses when I was young, that that really made me accountable to managing the disease myself. But also, you know, giving me oversight and checking in to make sure that I had the help I needed to

Scott Benner 6:43
what was the level of expectation 21 years ago? What kind of insulin were you using? What were your outcomes like, and what were your goals? I remember,

Tom Taylor 6:52
you know, being diagnosed. Then it was November, 2003 you know, I kind of had in my head. I think I'm a fairly managerial person, and that I'm always kind of tracking progress in some way, whether it's my health or, you know, my work or whatever else. So I would think about these things in the way, a couple of different gages. I would think about my blood sugar on a day to day basis. I would think about my a 1c in the long term. And then, you know, just kind of how I felt, the expectations were, you know, you're going to have some swings. In retrospect, I kind of wish that the knowledge, I think that is kind of widely disseminated now, about how food affects you and what cycles we have immediately after eating, how much pre bolusing can help. Due to CGM, that wasn't really in my consciousness yet, so it was kind of like, All right, well, you're going to eat, you're going to then take a shot. You're going to feel probably pretty bad for a while, but then it'll come down. And, you know, if you run around a lot and you're active, that'll probably help control it, but you know, just good luck kid, you're gonna, you're gonna have probably feel bad for a lot of the time. But before I was diagnosed, so, you know, who knows exactly how long it was that I was diabetic before, you know, we realized it. And I'm happy to go into the story too, of how I was diagnosed. But I remember, I was in third grade. It was my first year playing tackle football, you know, I would think about the number of bathroom breaks I could take in a day in terms of, like, time outs for, you know, a college basketball game or something. You see the amount of time outs on the screen, on the crayon on the bottom, and they've got, you know, five a half, or whatever it is. I was, you know, left my own devices. I would have gone to the bathroom probably 20 times a 20 times a day, but I tried to limit myself so I wasn't, you know, in and out of class and disrupting everything. And the teachers would get upset with me. And wherever I was, you know, I had to find myself having to go to the bathroom every 1520 minutes. So during football practice, I would urinate on myself at least twice a practice. And there's a tremendous amount of shame, you know, and it was just a very unpleasant and confusing experience, you know, I remember speaking with, you know, my coach about the problem and just having having no answer, being, you know, being eight years old, yeah. But, you know, in retrospect, like everything was better than that, you know, finally getting in some of my system, I kind of just thought about it incrementally. You know, I went from having an A, 1c in the double digits, I remember, you know, at eight, and then by the time I was, you know, probably 10 or 11, I got it down into the, you know, the sevens, and then, you know, eventually that was kind of the plateau, yeah, I think it was probably in the, in the kind of low sevens. And then I went off of the pump for a while, because it would just kept coming out. And I hated tubing. That was very active kid, you know, I'm a golfer as well. And just anytime you have twisting and sweating, the pump is going to come out. So I switched to injections, until the last couple of years, honestly, in my mid 20s, I went back on the pump. And that, combined with the CGM, you know, has me now in the in the fives. Well, you know, I think my last ANC was like 5.3 or 5.4 and I'm, you know, trying to optimize, to hopefully be as close to a non diabetic as possible. I have a clarifying question. Back when you're talking about the football practice, is that prior to your diagnosis or after diagnosis, you were still using the bathroom that frequently

Scott Benner 9:53
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Tom Taylor 12:01
Okay, I remember, I was diagnosed November 7, 2003 which was, you know, toward, toward the latter part of the football season. But, you know, I had had most of it already. And I, you know, I go, basically at a doctor's appointment, at a regular checkup with our pediatrician that day, that November they, you know, test my blood sugar. As part of that, it's 350 or so. We go to the hospital, to the hospital, to Greenwich Hospital in Connecticut, and I stay for the weekend, and I remember just the, you know, when I finally got an insulin drip and tremendous relief that I felt. I didn't realize, you know, how what the cause was from my horrible, just kind of state of existence for the prior several months. But yeah, going forward, that was not a problem anymore.

Scott Benner 12:41
Okay, are there autoimmune in your family besides type one? Not that

Tom Taylor 12:45
I'm aware of, no some thyroid stuff, but yeah, nothing, really. This is a kind of a lone wolf,

Scott Benner 12:50
but there is thyroid people have hypothyroidism or Hashimotos, I

Tom Taylor 12:55
believe so. Yeah, and you know, not to pry too much into their lives, but I know that there is definitely, you know, some metabolic dysfunction going on, but, and you know what, I have this suspicion that a lot more people are diabetes than they that are actually diagnosed, but, but, no, I was, I was the lucky one out of, you know, a few dozen family members. Wow.

Scott Benner 13:16
You feel like there are people that have diabetes type one that don't know in your family, or what

Tom Taylor 13:21
do you maybe not in my family specifically, but you know, it's kind of, it's kind of strange how much it's come up that, you know, I'll have a friend say, you know, I've got this crazy brain fog, and you know, I'm just, you know, I'm out of it, and you know, I'm going to the bathroom a lot, and I'm always like, Okay, well, there's, there's a clue we should look into this. And I'm also one. I always keep extra land sets on me or my backup meter, and I'm always testing people's

Scott Benner 13:43
blood sugar Tom's like, I'll get, you know, I was like, we'll figure out what's happening right now, I always offer. I always offer. And when I was, have you ever found one? Have you ever unearthed the diagnosis? Thankfully,

Tom Taylor 13:54
no, I guess, for better or worse, you know, I wouldn't want to, you know, unnecessarily bring anybody into this. But, you know, I just maybe it's my, you know, whatever, just seeking misery loves company. But I do think that at some point I will probably find somebody is just suffering day in, day out, unnecessarily, who could be helped by, you know, just the regular course of of type one treatment, obviously type two is proliferating. You know, as a mild tangent, I do also have this pet cause that I think we should probably come up with a new name for type one diabetes. I know there's juvenile there's, you know, diabetes mellitus, but I just think that there's a lot of association that people have with type one and type two diabetes that is really not, you know, helpful for for the top of public consciousness. And, you know, I don't know if it affects research dollars or anything like that, progress toward a cure, but I think that their disease is enough that separately, that hopefully one day we can call it something different, and it would maybe, maybe lead to a better understanding.

Scott Benner 14:55
I'm always interested, because I find that some people have that feeling, and some people. Don't like. But what do you think the the confusion is because I know nobody understands type one diabetes versus type two diabetes out in the general you know, in the general world, they don't know this diabetes to them. But once you understand what it is like, once you have it type one, you know the difference. And why does it matter to you if other people don't,

Tom Taylor 15:23
you know, I think there's two realms to it. One, you know, having had this since I was a kid, and having it, you know, it's not, I don't think it's a main feature of my identity, but it's definitely part of my identity. There's definitely some judgment and some shame whether not people realize they're doing it. I think a lot of people do these things without intending to, you know, I think so too explicit. But I think that a lot of people here, you know, you say you have diabetes, and they're like, Oh yeah, you've got the fat disease. You know, are you where you're responsible or you don't take care of yourself? And it's like, well, no, I've got the genetic one actually,

Scott Benner 15:52
right? And

Tom Taylor 15:53
so whether that is even true or not, it doesn't matter to you, right? Like, you don't want to be associated. You're looking to have one less thing on your on your head, and if they're looking at you thinking, Oh, you have diabetes. This is a thing you had a choice in, and you did it, and you just, you would just like it if they understood it was a thing that happened to you. Yeah, yeah. And maybe that's, you know, a victim mentality, and I don't know why. Maybe it's not productive. And I've, you know, I've gotten over a lot of the resentment that I had just put this, you know, luck of the draw. Obviously, I couldn't control it. And I guess, you know, part of me, just my, you know, animal brain wants people to know, like, Hey, I, you know, this was just a, an unfortunate draw that I got, and it wasn't my fault. Yeah, I've largely gotten over that. It doesn't really, you know, keep me up at night, but I do think it would be productive, you know, for the discourse, just maybe, maybe, maybe, just for me, but to to have a different kind of label, because I do think that the way that the diseases work to, you know, I explain it very simply. I just say, Look, my auto immune system thought that my pancreas and the islet cells producing insulin were a foreign, you know, invader, and shut it down. And so it's more of an autoimmu disorder than diabetes, which is insulin resistance type two, which is, you know, a function of this kind of that, you know, avalanche effect, snowball rolling downhill of more insulin having less effect, you know, due to numerous causes, but oftentimes due to a level of a, you know, body mass that

Scott Benner 17:17
is so well, first of all, the first part, I completely agree with you, and I understand why you would want in a world where everybody misunderstands why type two diabetes exists almost, you know, like you don't. You just don't want people looking at you and going, like, you did a thing to yourself, like, like, all right, I got enough going on here. I don't need that. I also think it's interesting. There's a study recently, and I did it on one of the I forget it's been in an episode, so I'm going to get some of the numbers wrong. But they did a study with GLP medication and people who were pre diabetic, so people who were all, you know, looked like they were on their way to type two. And they put these people all on a GLP medication. And something crazy, like, in the mid 90% of them are no longer pre diabetic. Wow. My thought is, like, I know some people take in more calories than they need, and I know some people's activity level is lower, but I also think that a lot of it is genetic as well, because we're all basically out here eating the same food. And to say that, like, the impact it had on one person versus the other person, like one person's lucky enough to not have insulin resistance, and the other one does, I don't know that anybody's out there making like there are some people who are eating great I'm not saying that, but I'm saying of all the people that are out there who are just eating everyday foods that are available to them, that they can afford. Some of them get type two diabetes. Some of them don't, yeah, I don't know. Like, we're blaming people now for the food they can afford. Like, the only mean, like, it's, it sucks, right? Because if you go back a number of years, probably before, and I'm not a conspiracy theorist, but probably before, we were using all the processed foods and the chemicals on foods and etc. Like there's just one again. Details are, you know, you can go look them up if you want, but somebody chemically engineered a weed killer so that it wouldn't kill, I think wheat, yeah, yeah, you can basically just drop it all over a field of something that you're growing, and everything dies except the thing you're growing. Because they genetically, I don't know how they obviously, I don't know how they do it, but they make that that that poison so that it won't attack the thing that you mean to be growing. You're still spraying it on the food right before we did that. I mean, I'm assuming, if we go back to before things like that happen, you're going to see much less insulin resistance, type two diabetes, autoimmune issues, you know, inflammation, type stuff. You know, people saying, I can't eat my stomach hurts like that stuff. So, I mean, if this is how the food's made, I wish people could say it looks like we're caught in a thing here. You know what I mean. Like it's, no, I don't think you can blame one person or the other, but you also can't fight that fight as a type one. You're just looking to not have people point fingers at you, whether they're right or wrong about what they're saying. You're looking for them to just leave you the hell alone. It all makes sense to me.

Tom Taylor 20:15
Yeah, make a great point. And you know, I do have a lot of I think we're very aligned on the root causes of a lot of this stuff, you know, as a type one, I think again, one of the blessings is the part of the disease that is most dangerous for me. I can also, you know, have have some degree of control over, right? I can. I can manage my blood sugar. I try to be as efficient with insulin as I can. I try to maintain activity and not, you know, cause a snowball effect of inflammation. You know, I take medications. Originally, I was on humanogue and Lantus, and now I'm on, you know, mostly hemolog, just, you know, with my pump and I can, I can I can, you know, make lifestyle changes. And I'm very fortunate to be able to mostly afford, you know, to do what I want when it comes to food, and eat whole foods and not rely on processed and fast foods. You know, talk about snowball effects and momentum. You're right. I mean the prevalence of processed foods and glyphosate and other other weed killers that are illegal in many other countries. People always talk about going to Europe and you eat pasta for, you know, a week, and you come back having lost weight, and your stomach doesn't hurt, and you feel good. And, you know, who knows if those effects are over blown? I'd love to see like a real study on that. But, I mean, we all know it, right? I mean, the American food system definitely has inputs that are less desirable, whether or not it's specifically the volume of food, which I also do think that just because the food is so calorie dense, but nutrition low and made basically to be addictive in terms of its texture, its color, its crunch, its whatever its flavor, its sugar content, it's high fructose corn syrup. It really does create this compound effect where people, people can only do so much. You know, there there are stronger forces. There are people whose jobs it is to design addictive substances, whether it's slot machines, whether it's Doritos, whether it's social media, and they're really smart and they're really well paid, yeah, they know how to do it, that's for sure. And it creates this, this cycle of inflammation, where the insulin resistance is just inevitable. You know, again, there's no single solution to all this, but my my answer in my life has been, you know, the best I can to try to break those cycles. You know, people have different methods for it. You know, there's the, I forget the name of it right now, but there's an index that basically says, you know, how much food causes you to crave more food? You know, it's carbs and and the simplicity of carbs. And if you eat a very simple carbohydrate, heavy diet with low protein, low fat, you're going to just crave that dopamine hit of more food, and your body is not truly satiated. So I go high protein, high fiber, high healthy fats, low carb. And, you know, my body composition has changed dramatically. You know, I was a relatively chubby kid. When I graduated college in 2017 I was 290 pounds, you know, now I'm down in the low two hundreds just, I think, largely because I reversed the effect the momentum. Well, good for you. You're 290 How tall are you? I was 290 Yeah, I'm, like, between six one and six two. Wow. I was pretty rotund. There's a, you know, I was always a bigger kid. You know, when I was playing football, I had to wear an X on my helmet because I can only play line. Otherwise, I guess would have just fell on, fallen on some smaller kids and broken them. But, you know, I was never small. But then, you know, college, which is difficult to manage for any diabetic, definitely got a little out of control. And you know, I was definitely in a bad cycle of just eating and not exercising. And you know, alcohol doesn't help. And you know, being able to reverse that once I kind of got some resources, you know, once had my first job and could buy the food I wanted and whatever else made a big difference. And it's just amazing how good you can feel every day when you put a lot of effort into deliberately crafting your

Scott Benner 23:50
body. So even though, and you can now afford to do these things, but still, something has to motivate because you also could have afforded to buy a pizza every day. So like, what happened to you? I'm kind of going to your notes here, like you're talking about a journey of struggle, resentment, self pity. Like, why don't you walk me through that, and then let's get to where you where you are now, totally, totally, you

Tom Taylor 24:09
know, I think you're real. This is one of the things I love about your show, is you get to the heart of the matter there. So, yeah, as a kid, I definitely felt sorry for myself that I had this, you know, disease. I had this befall me. Why me? Why me? But it could have happened to anybody. And then that just kind of, I think I got better at it, but I never quite fixed the underlying issue. I went to a college where there were a lot of folks who had just a lot more resources than me. And so, you know, I'm thinking here, why have I gotten such a bad, bad break? And then you fall into a hole, and you and you say, Well, you know, if I wasn't given what other folks were given, as far as health, as far as you know, financial resources, as far as you know, guidance, what's the point I'm never going to win? And I think that that was a very destructive cycle for me. It really led to me not doing. Anything that I could have done in retrospect to make a little bit of a difference. And so it comes to a point where I am, you know, 22 years old. I'm sitting in my parents house because I had, you know, graduated college without a job. And, you know, I'm not a very efficient person, really, in any way. And I remember sitting in a room in my parents house without a job and just having a moment, and I don't know what it was, you know, I'm not well attributed to any specific phenomenon, but I kind of said, All right, what are we going to do here? Here's the path that you're on, doesn't it doesn't seem like fun. So are we just going to kind of roll over? Are we going to become, you know, just somebody who gets by? I think I'm I think I'm better than that, and then that that I think I'm better than that moment, I think is what was the spark, and it's not better than anybody else. I'm better than what I currently am. Yeah,

Speaker 1 25:47
also, you weren't. It's so interesting. You weren't. It's not like you were starting in some horrible hole. You weren't as advantaged as some of the people you went to college with. I hear that. Listen, my son told me once, when he went to college, he was, I am the poorest person here. And so I think I understand what you're saying, right? But at the same time, if you look at the country as a whole, I'm not asking you exactly where you fall, but like you weren't poor, am I? I grew up. I had food to eat. I had a home. I was blessed my you know, I had two parents in my house. I and then so that, that spark of, you know, I'm better than this is why? Why? Because I have been given opportunities. And, you know, there are billions of people on this earth who would kill for the life that I have. So you know what? Let's stop feeling sorry for ourselves. And you know what I just said, let's give it a shot. Yeah, let's give it a shot. Let's let's give a shot trying to not be at war with the world and not feeling sorry for myself. Let's try to reverse it. And it's not as if everything changed that day but that minute, sure that spark, you know, became flame. And maybe that's not the perfect metaphor, because I guess it would be something like a forest fire, but, you know, I turned it around and I said, Hey, look, I'm gonna try to make incremental progress here. I'm gonna keep working at getting a job. I'm gonna keep working at I'm gonna start working on my my health, my physique. And, you know, I found a friend of a friend who was a nutritionist and a personal trainer who was willing to, for, you know, a friends and family rate help me out with a nutrition plan and a workout plan or starting slow. It was probably the fall of 2017 after I had graduated college, and it took me three or four months, but I, you know, I lost 80 pounds. I worked out, really, for the first time in my life. And other than playing sports as a kid, right? I learned about food. I learned about, you know, what makes my body feel good, what makes it doesn't what makes it not feel good, and then, and all that momentum just kind of built on itself. And I really do think that the way you and I'm not treading new ground here, this is, you know, millions of people have made, have made statements publicly, but, but but I just, you know, you have to, you have to really believe it yourself. And then, you know, the whole the diabetes thing really fits into it, because it's like diabetes is a momentum disease, type one especially, and if you do the little things right consistently, you're going to be fine. You're going to feel better, build and compound. I understand what you're saying is that you're not, you're not saying anything magical the world's never heard before, but in your life, it was the first time you thought about it. Pretty much it is new information. You know what I mean, like, because you I mean, I don't care what people can have their own opinions, obviously, but I look at other people and I think that we're born and, you know, we say, Oh, here's our kids, like, we'll give them all the advantages that we can possibly go forward to give them, and, you know, the sky's the limit. And then you tell the kid the sky is the limit. The kid thinks the sky is the limit everything, like, nothing's gonna hold me back. And then when real life gets to you, you know, like, when someone beats you out for a spot on a on a baseball team when you're eight, or when you, you know, graduate with a degree, and you're like, No one's hiring me like, what's happening? Like, you know, all of those things, they're speed bumps, right? And, like you said, you keep going and you keep going, and you get past them eventually. But the knowledge that that's possible, I don't know that we talk about that, right? Because everything sort of just happens for you as you're growing up, like your parents pull you along from thing to thing, and bail you out along the way, and then all of a sudden, you know, this diabetes is on me. I've, I've gained weight at school, I'm not getting a job, and it feels like it's sink or swim, like, like, right? Like I gotta, I gotta do something here. But some people don't feel that way.

Tom Taylor 29:18
Like, no, totally. And I think you're right, and I think that knowledge is was probably underlying that, that spark, right, you know, I probably, you know, ingested a lot of this, you know, motivational talk or examples in my head, and just, you know, whatever it added up to, it eventually bubbled at the surface. And, you know, look, I, I love my parents very much. They had their own struggles in life. And we were actually on Medicaid for a large portion of my kind of teenage years, you know, so getting insulin was always tough sometimes. And, you know, navigating the health insurance process kind of radicalized me on that. But coming to this personal philosophy, this kind of like outlook on life, where I wake up every day and I say, You know what, certain things. Things are going to impede you. It's truly the biggest thing that makes a difference in getting over those things and building momentum forward is just that first moment, that first moment when you get bad news, or whether you know something doesn't go your way. And you know the first pin is like, you know that anxious, angry, negative feeling, if you can kind of accept that for what it is, process it, digest it, not hate it, because it's never going to go away, but just digest it and then step over it. Yeah, and you can actually do something, and then also appreciate other people. I think everyone has a cross to bear. Like I said, I, you know, I've, I've dealt with with my own struggles, and, you know, being on, you know, public assistance for health insurance made me appreciate like, you know, look, I respect people who can't do it, who have, you know, don't have help. Aren't there yet, but I'm not there yet. And I think it's just to think of life as a continuum, and you're never done, you're never tapped out, and you shouldn't be, and diabetes is just one realm for that. If you're a 1c is bad right now, and you just feel bad and you don't see a way out, like, just accept that, process it and then start over.

Scott Benner 31:09
I do think that everyone is at some point gonna think, Why me? Like, I have to, I'll be honest that maybe six days ago, for the very first time, probably since she was a little kid, like Arden and I were talking about, like, personal, like, you know, stuff about her, and she got upset, and she's like, I don't understand why this is happening to me. And she's talking about a number of different things, but I think diabetes was mixed into it. How come? You know, the things that are trying to feel like they're trying to stop me, like, I don't see them happening to other people all the time. And I just told her, I said, I think everybody generally gets something, some people get more, and some people get less. And it's pretty random. I just shared with her. I was like, Look, I for me. I just get up every day and I start over again. Like, you know, whatever happened the day before we took care of the things we couldn't take care of we couldn't, you know, and the things we could we did. And then you keep moving, you know, if you think backwards to something that was really horrible in your life a decade ago, that thing probably doesn't exist anymore. And so the thing that's happening today won't exist at some point either. And Scott, yeah, that's just how it occurs to me. Is that? Like, I mean, people say it by saying, like, keep moving. You know that that kind of thing. But in my mind, stuff's not, not important. Like, you know, you need to be kind to people, you need to make some money. You got to pay for your things. Like, all the things that have to happen have to happen. But if they don't like, you're still going to keep living. And then it's up to you to decide how that the life as it's reflected back to you, like, how you accept it, feel it and and treat it like, you know what I mean? Like, yeah, I don't want to say you can be happy anywhere, because I'm sure there are places I couldn't be happy. But you know, you could try to until you can move forward.

Tom Taylor 33:04
Well, it's a couple of things that I'll build on that, because I think you make fantastic points, you know, there's a lot of, you know, you can borrow from different philosophies, right? But a lot of the philosophies I buy into, most are kind of talk about thinking of life as, as something that's, that's motion, that's, that's movement. It's not. There's never a perfect moment, right? There's never a snapshot in time where everything is going to be perfect and everything's going to be good, and you're going to have this shining, perfect feeling, you know, and no anxieties and no sadness and no loss. It's motion. Life is constantly progressing forward. So let's think of it that way, and let's think about progress. And let's be gracious. Let's have gratitude for the get the things that are good and realize that everything that is good came because somebody got up, put their pants on, that's what I'd love to say, and went to work, yeah. And the buildings you live in, the art you watch and the music you listen to, is because somebody thought, and they were probably told at some point, like, you know, that's dumb, or they had self doubt, but they did it anyway. And one thing I also think about in terms of time and that kind of motion thing is, you know, somebody once, I was at a wedding a couple years ago, and somebody told me, like, Oh, I just, you know, I wish I lived in the 19 and the year 1900 you know, I just think all this natural stuff would be so much better than what we have right now. And I said, Look, if I was born in 1900 I wouldn't have lived past age eight, yeah, and I was eight years old when I was diagnosed with diabetes before 1920 when, you know, the some unbelievable doctors in Toronto synthesized insulin, you know, kids just fell into comas and then they didn't wake up. Yeah. And so I was born in 1995 I for whatever reason, I was fortunate enough to be born then, and I have insulin, and I can live a life that prior to then, I would not have been able to for all of the, you know, million plus years of human evolution. Let's build on that. Just take that, that gratitude, and, you know, think like, All right, well, if I was born at a different time, whatever you weren't, I don't understand

Scott Benner 34:55
that. People don't understand that today is the best time, and they'll. Yes, in the history of the world, to be alive, and the only thing that's going to beat that is tomorrow, smallpox, tuberculosis, malaria, typhoid, diphtheria, syphilis, pneumonia, cholera, the plague, leprosy, 1900 that all just kills you, probably, childhood mortality, yeah, I mean, and we don't have to, you know, everything isn't rosy and gold. There's still work to do, but there's, you know, we get to do that work, and that's great, and all of this is because people worked. It didn't just happen. Not that attitude is, is big. I wonder, sometimes I am not clear on purpose about like, how, like, where I fall politically, because I don't think it has anything to do with this podcast, but I think I speak in a way where I believe liberals hear me and think I'm liberal, and conservatives hear me and think I'm conservative, but I just take that as doing what you just said, which is kind of just taking good ideas from where they are, things that make common sense to me. I think

Tom Taylor 35:54
that's very advanced. I mean, it's not these sort of tribal as to say, you know, my team, my team, and I'm always right about this. You're just trying to find, I'm just trying

Scott Benner 36:02
to get trying to get through this thing, yeah? Like, I'm trying to get through this whole thing, like, and in the moment, what makes sense is, what

Tom Taylor 36:07
makes sense in order to run a government, you do have to, you know, eventually form coalitions and stuff. But when it comes to just people talking about stuff, yeah, we I just, I don't get how people can side with the camp and say, you know, look, I'm on this team. You know, you're wrong, because you're on the other team.

Scott Benner 36:24
I believe what I said earlier about type two diabetes. I think that if it progressed the way it has over the decades, it's clearly outside influences that are impacting people. And yes, people could continue to make better decisions. But that's not always as simple as it sounds. So I think a liberal person would hear me and go, My God, Scott is he's such a lefty. What a lovely thing. And but you know, like you, everybody deserves a chance, and you know, it's not your fault and everything, like all that stuff, generally speaking, I believe that. I also think that the world works because of people that get up off their ass and do stuff, and that complaining about your situation and expecting people to treat you in a certain way, I find it to be childish. And so, like, that's why, if you ask me where I am politically, I'd say I'm probably nowhere. Politically. You don't even mean, like, I know people are insulted to say that you're in the center and you see both sides. Like, it's like, well, I'll pick a side. I'm like, I'm picking our side. You don't even mean like, I'm picking your side. Like, there's some people have good ideas on all different kind of ideologies. You should try to soak them up as best you can. I don't. I just don't understand. And it's this time of year. And I mean, in fairness, the political cycle now runs like two and a half years. So it's like, you know, 18 months after an election, it goes away, and then it's back again pretty quickly. But I don't understand not wanting something enough to work for it, and I don't understand blaming somebody for being run over by a system or a world that is out of their control. And

Tom Taylor 37:54
that's, I think, the key there, is the out of your control, because I, you know, having been a kid, needed needed some help, needed some help, needed some instruction, and needed to learn some lessons for myself. You know, I do have a lot of sympathy for for folks who just taken it on the chin. Man. I mean, like life is a series of choices, and it's a series of inheritances, luck, whatever it is that you're getting, but neither are determinative. The choices are probably more determinative. But, you know, some people were born on third base and nothing hit the triple, and some people keep swinging and missing, and they don't realize they're facing the wrong way, you know? So it just all I can take it is, and your head starts to swirl, if you think about it, all at once. But from my perspective, all I ever want to do is try to make people's days a little bit better. I try to smile at people. I try to say hi to people, and then if I'm fortunate enough to tell my story, and you know anything about my outlook on life, I think it's about trying to elucidate, cast light upon the real choices that you make every day. You know, if you prioritize that there's like, also a sequential order of things you have to get an order in your life. I think, I think that it's like, you know, it's your physical body is very important in order to have order in your life. Then it's, it's clean your room. It's, it's, it's good, get some sleep. Find peace in your relationships. It's drop your resentments. Be honest with yourself about things, and then be honest about what it is that you want. You want validation from your peers. Do you want praise? Do you want security? You know, I think we all want those things a little bit, but I think just basing them head on is the first step. And like I said, you know, the batter facing the wrong direction keeps swinging and missing. If you just turn them around and say, hey, look, the pitcher's over there. Now they got a shot. A lot of people never get that shot. Yeah, no.

Scott Benner 39:33
And it's also can be very, very off putting to continue to put effort into something and watch it fail over and over and over again. I get that like, you know, in your parents didn't point you in the right direction, and you're just beating your head against the you know, like you said, you know you're facing the wrong way. You're beating their head against the wall. There's people too,

Tom Taylor 39:53
and you gotta, everyone's gotta just take accountability at some point their own life, do their best. And then we, you know, who have. Platform and, you know, have kind of come to these realizations. We just do our best to tell people, you know, the lessons we've learned, and hope that they can do it themselves as well. Yeah, well,

Scott Benner 40:10
for sure, listen. It doesn't change my life one way or the other people listening are like, I'm gonna try. Or they don't like, I just, I agree with you. I didn't know what you were going to talk about when you got on today. Now I know we're going to call this episode The Tao of Tom, you know, interesting to have the conversation and to let people listen and think maybe I am putting my effort in the wrong place. You know what I mean, like, because I'm not one foot in front of the other, one foot in front of the other. And if you're a diabetic, who was like me in my teens and 20s, who you know, was just like, you know, this sucks. Was given a bad deck of cards. You know, no one else has to deal with this. I'm playing life on hard mode totally. But you know what? That's gonna be a great story when you figure it out, and you will have earned it, when you feel good every day, and then that's something you can build on. I genuinely believe in that, like, I think that nothing feels better than something like hard fought, yeah, to be able to step back at the end and say to yourself, like, I started in a hole, and I got out of that hole, and then I looked around, absorbed some sunshine, made some good decisions, made some bad decisions, I'm moving forward. Don't hold yourself up against other people. I just think that in the Kim Kardashian world of like, you know, watching rich people do rich things, and thinking, that's my goal, I don't think that's your goal.

Tom Taylor 41:29
No, it's about again, it comes back to that snapshot. It's like, you know, you imagine what it's like to be. Insert celebrity here. Insert whoever your you know, load star is. And you think, oh, you know, they must feel perfect all the time. You know, they're beautiful, they're rich, they don't have any worries. They don't have the anxieties that I do. Yeah, they do. What is the one thing that every rich and famous person says is it's like, you know, you think you get all this and it's going to make everything better, and it doesn't, you know, you you know, my favorite public people are the ones who say, Look, you know, I have fears and anxieties just like you. It seems kind of condescending in a way, and pedantic but, but I think it is true, and you just have to understand that there's no easy way life is is motion, it's progress, it's work every single day. If you are willing to accept that and just be present in the moment and do your best every single day, no matter how you stumble, then you can actually find that thing that you're searching for and just realize it doesn't feel like this imaginary, perfect snapshot that you think it might

Scott Benner 42:29
right. What you're trying to do is hone your life and your situation, not create someone else's. And examples

Tom Taylor 42:35
are good, by the way, example, I think examples are good. That's why I kind of, you know, we do this, and you need to be able to point to somebody and say, hey, look, all right, I don't feel like I can do this, but they did. If you

Scott Benner 42:45
listen to the podcast, you know, I agree with that too, because it's been for a long time in the diabetes spaces. You don't celebrate in public because you make people who aren't doing as well feel bad. No, you gotta show them how. I always think like if you're not having success, nothing could be easier than looking at someone who is and asking them, like, what are you doing? And then looking at yourself and going, they said they're doing this. I'm not doing three of those things in diabetes. The way it occurs to me is you go putting up a graph that somebody else would kill for, and then they come ask you, Hey, what is it, you know, I don't know. And they start telling you about, like, well, I got my settings right. My basal is good, you know, like, that kind of stuff. And they're like, Oh, I haven't looked at my basal in years. Or, you know, like, you Pre Bolus a meal, like, of all the crazy things, yeah, go for a walk after you eat. All these little things, they add up. Like, all these different like, so wait, I know I can Bolus for a bag of chips, but you're saying you don't eat chips. You don't even like back all that stuff like so you hear what? And then you can keep some of it. You can say, Look, you know what? I'm still eating chips, but I will Pre Bolus for them. I didn't realize that, and let me go find out what the math is on my basal insulin. And then you have some successes. And you say to yourself, like, wow, that worked. Now you fine tune and hone. And then one day, you find yourself back in that square. You know, often for me, it's either being on the podcast as a guest or being in the private group. And then you put your graph up and you go, you know, six months ago, this is what my graph looked like. But look at it now. And then someone else comes along and says, Oh my god, that's amazing. How did you do that? And then it all starts over again.

Tom Taylor 44:18
Hey, man, you know one of my favorite lines of all time, and you know, a song, or any kind of media was, you know, song, Atlantic City, the guy, he says, you know, there's winners and there's losers. I'm south of the line. There is no line. There's no line. You are not south of the line. You're not a loser. And, you know, all it takes is little choices, believing that you actually can make a difference. And I hope that doesn't sound too you know, cliche or, you know, or repetitive, but it's real.

Scott Benner 44:42
Well, you know how it sounds Tom to people who have done it and it's worked for him, it sounds like scripture. And to people who were struggling, it sounds like, yeah, the point is, is that everybody who made it was struggling at some point, I felt like a loser. I felt

Tom Taylor 44:57
like this wasn't going to happen for me. You know? It. Never was going to but then little things every day, you know, for instance, like losing weight. Like, one of the things I tell you to do is take progress pictures every, every single day, because you can't notice it's not one day to the next. You're not going to lose, you know, an inch off your waist, but over after a month or two, you will Yeah, and it motivates the hell

Scott Benner 45:15
out of you. After you realize it too, exactly, yeah, you go, Wow, this actually is working. Because you can't you get, you know, they say things like, you get sick the same way you get well, like, that stuff like, you know, slowly and, and it's very true, you didn't notice yourself. Like, you didn't notice you going to 290 pounds. You didn't notice it on the way. And you might have noticed it coming down a little bit because it happened more quickly. Because you're lucky and you're young and you were, you know, you put something into action, start happening. But if you're an older person, you're trying to lose 50 pounds, it could take you years,

Tom Taylor 45:46
yes, but it's worth it, yeah. And you got to zoom out and say, I'd rather you know if I'm 40 years old and I want to lose 50 pounds, yeah, it's going to take you two years. But you think about when you're 50, and you look back and you said, Thank God, I did that. And yeah, it took some time, but I've got a lot more time now on the back end, because I did that an earned feeling. We're talking about is

Scott Benner 46:04
that losing weight, finding a job after college, or honing your diabetes care. In the end, they all work the same way. It's slow and steady, right? Like again, I like checking in and saying, here's where I'm at. I can see progress. This is awesome, and give yourself some credit for it, because you can get tired, you know, I listen. I watch my son come out of college. I'm gonna guess, based on what you do for living, your degree and my son's degree are probably reasonably similar. Are you doing this? Yeah, basically, are you doing coding in your job?

Tom Taylor 46:35
Little bit, yeah. Little bit, okay, yeah, writing, analysis, modeling, coding. So

Scott Benner 46:40
he comes out of school and he's got a an econ degree, and then he comes to me one day and he goes, I don't want to be involved in like, money. Basically, he's like, I know I have this degree, but I have it because I'm good at math, like, not because I wanted to go get involved in finance. He's like, I don't want to do that. My son's had a couple of opportunities coming out of college that he's turned down for personal reasons, that I was proud of him, because they're not things I could have turned down when I was like, right? And one of them was like, somebody got him an interview at a at a place, and he interviewed, and he said, I don't want to work for a company like that. I'm not going to do that. And I'm like, okay, and it's a big company, and it would have done well for him, trust me, but he just that's not the part of society I want to be involved in. No, it's important

Tom Taylor 47:26
to him and unfortunate. You know, obviously he's had, you know, good parenting and tutelage to be able to recognize his values. Well,

Scott Benner 47:34
it's also, and I don't say privilege very often, but is also privileged, because when I was 2223 I needed a job. Like, I would have, like, if you came up to me and said, like, Hey, we're gonna pick dead skunks up off the road, here's what it pays. I'd be like, All right, I'm there. Let's do it. Yeah, my son might have been like, I'm gonna hold out for something better. So he has the opportunity to hold out because of whatever, but he still made a choice for, like, a valid reason. He was trying to be a better citizen. Like that was really the answer. There's another job. Another job would have been great for him. And he said that, I do not want to carry a gun. I can't take this seriously. And I was like, Okay. I was like, well, then stop talking to them. But he was super interested in the rest of it. He just that one piece of it. He's like, I don't want to do that. All this progress in life is about realizing what matters to you, whether it's your health, whether it's being around, whether it's feeling good, whether it's it's, you know, being a good citizen, and then figuring out what you can control about it, and then doing those steps every day. You can do those things for your diabetes, though, is, I think what Tom's saying, and what I'm obviously been saying for years, so, but you can't be mad, like you can't hear this, and go, Sure, well, it's easy for you. At some point it wasn't easy. Like, I didn't know what the hell I was doing when Arden was younger. Like, I actually heard a woman recently say it helped me a lot to go back and listen to the beginning of the podcast to realize that Scott's been on a journey too. I came in so late, it was hard not to just look at him and go, like, well, sure, you can do it because you're the guy from the thing. But she's like, and I realized he hasn't always been this person, and that really, like meant a lot to her. She's like, I can grow too. Then I think that's

Tom Taylor 49:11
why humans love stories of journeys, right? Whether it's the Odyssey or whether it's, you know, a person's life journey, sure, it's like, we all started somewhere, we got a path to take, and we're all gonna end up somewhere. And yeah, your journey, my journey, their stories of figuring it out slowly but surely, having patience and you can control your diabetes again. It will not be a flip of a switch, but it is worth it to put in the time and to when you zoom out on your life that year, whatever it takes will be minuscule, and it'll be worth it.

Scott Benner 49:39
Yeah, what do you think you learned along the way that got you to where you are? I know you made a decision to do better for yourself, but once that decision was made, what are the steps that got you there?

Tom Taylor 49:49
I think it was a relatively slow process at first, but you know, like anything with inertia, you know, there's resistance to change, and then then all of a sudden, the change, kind of it has momentum in and of itself. You know, I think the biggest things were those realizing those values, you know, and what I wanted to, you know, you think about what makes me feel good, right? And you think about, some people think about their bank accounts. To think about, you know, how many friends they have, any likes they get, whatever it is that you get these sources, basically, of dopamine, you know, I thought I really want to feel good, you know, I just feel I wake up and I feel blah, you know, I'm tired, I'm sluggish. I want to see what it's like to feel good. I would love to know what it's like to be fast, to be able to run quickly. So I, you know, I started kind of searching. I asked friends, but you know, they do friends who are in shape. And eventually I connected with a friend of a friend who's a trainer and nutritionist, and you know, he said, you know, I'll help you out. And so I got a plan, and I we talked about my goals, and I said, I want to lose weight, and I want to get strong. Want to get stronger and faster, and I want to feel good. And so we come up with a plan. And it was a, you know, a 16 week plan, or whatever it was. And, you know, there were time I remember, you know, a couple months in, I injured my shoulder because I really had never lifted before. So he said, All right, so downshift and do something else. Do active recovery. Do you know, until your shoulder heels up and then get back on the horse? Because this isn't permanent, and you need to keep it up. And this is a lifestyle once I've figured out that created that virtuous cycle for myself, where working out, eating, right, sleeping, hydrating, being on top of my Pre Bolus, saying and going for a walk, figuring out the right dosages for my insulin, checking my blood sugar, making sure I'm good before bed, all that made me feel good. It was over. It was it was a cycle from there, and all of a sudden my motivation wasn't the quick dopamine hit from the bag of chips. It was, No, I'm gonna feel worse and I'm honest with myself, yeah, worse about having that. I'm gonna feel worse when I look at myself in the mirror and myself in the mirror. And I wanted to look in the mirror and feel good as well. And eventually I got

Scott Benner 51:48
to a place I wouldn't say I'm fast, yeah, never

Tom Taylor 51:50
was. And I feel good when I look in the mirror, and I feel good when I wake up every morning. And you know what? I know that I earned that.

Scott Benner 51:57
Yeah, my wife bought something that she thought I wanted, like a food product that she thought I wanted, right? I like it. I like what she bought me, but it's like a frozen, kind of processed version of something that I like. And then I saw it in the freezer, and I was like, Well, I am in a hurry today. I do like this. It's not my choice to eat it, but my wife bought it for me, and that made it feel like I should eat it. Like, do you know what I mean? Like that idea? So I had it, and I wake up the next day, I'm like, two pounds heavier than I was the day before, because it's, you know, like, processed, and there was, like, all this crap in it and everything. And I thought, What in the hell am I doing? Like, why didn't I just throw that away? Why didn't I just say to her, thank you so much for getting this for me, but I know if I eat this, it's gonna hit me tough, and I don't want that to be involved, but I did. I ate it and then, but then the next day, I thought, do something right now. And I went downstairs, and I grabbed what was left, and I threw it in the trash. And I was like, I was like, I lost a couple of dollars there. But I think it's better than eating it out of guilt and then throwing off the next three weeks of my life somehow, which is what it would have done. Like, I know that sounds crazy, but my body is I'm delicate.

Tom Taylor 53:07
I hate Listen, yeah, I feel you. And, you know what? I just take that as you know again, what motivates you and what motivates you, I think it's sweet is you want to, you know, make your wife feel good for getting having gotten something that you appreciated. And you know, you, but you then you have these competing values and priorities, and you're like, Well, you know, in this moment, the appreciation that I had for her, and let's be honest, a little bit of self indulgence won, but it's not permanent. And you said, All right, well, you know what? I'm gonna make this other competing priority take precedence over that going forward. And you're a human and you can't beat yourself up over it and just say, Yeah, learn a little lesson there.

Scott Benner 53:44
Yeah. I think I was eating it for her, because she was like, she bought it out of love. And I was like, I didn't want to reject it and make her feel like, oh, I try to do something nice and that. So I had some and then I'm like, she's not even gonna remember this is in the freezer, like, I can just get but I'm gonna tell her, I'm just gonna tell her, Look, I really appreciate it. From now on, let's get this version of that food instead of that. And

Tom Taylor 54:04
you appreciate what she's trying to do for you. But this is, you know, this is something I want to be, you know, this is, this is something that I prioritize and, you know, I appreciate it, I acknowledge it. But you know what? Let's, let's stick to something a little bit more clean or, you know, whole food or whatever, whatever motivates your diet.

Scott Benner 54:20
Yeah. I mean, listen, we're like, we're cooking. We're having people here for Thanksgiving this year. And I said to my wife, I'm like, they don't expect me to, like, make carrots with like marshmallows on it, or something, like one of those things that people eat. I'm like, I'm not doing that. Yeah, I'm not doing that. I'm, uh, I'm gonna make like, staple foods. I'm gonna make it out of Whole Foods, and they can eat what they want. And if that's then we'll have a pie. And if that's not enough, then they should, you know, they'll bring it with them or get something from somewhere else later. But like, I'm not, like, I'm not gonna make candy food. That's okay, right? My wife's like, I don't think anybody cares. I was like, All right, I might be the only

Tom Taylor 54:57
one anyway. And I have found, I think one of the. Kind of, like last highlights from my experience with diabetes that I had to come to understand the hard way was anything with syrup or any kind of, like, crystalline sugar structure like that is just deadly.

Scott Benner 55:09
Hits you fast, hard, you know, and

Tom Taylor 55:13
it just, it just accelerates. And, you know, I rarely ever, and I take pride in this. Get the, you know, the double arrows and my my CGM like it's rising rapidly. You know, I always say, you know, if I have some maple syrup or something, that's, there's my day, you know, honey, it's unfortunate, because that stuff is great. But, you know, when I was a kid, I would just spend entire days just feeling terrible. You know, high blood sugar is, is a very low, slow burning health that the syrup is. I mean, it's heinous. And the fact that high fructose corn syrup is in everything, it should motivate people as well to be conscious of the ingredients they're putting in themselves. If it's a plastic packaged product, it's probably not what you want, and just anything with syrup or high fructose corn syrup, whether or not you're diabetic, it's gonna cause inflammation, it's gonna spike your blood sugar, and you're better off without it. You just don't realize how it throws you off. You know, so many people walking around saying, Oh, I'm tired or, you know, but then sometimes they go back to it again because they felt good when they were eating it. So like, oh, I eat this crappy food. I'll eat more of it because I get a nice jolt when I eat it, but then it ruins hours of day cycle. Yeah, and it's remembered. It was, it was the glycemic index. That's what I was trying to recall earlier. This phenomenon where, like, you know, you eat something with a simple carb, no other nutrients, and, you know, it causes a large insulin release, and that's inflammatory, and it also causes you to crave more carbs, and then you're just, you're a snowball going on a hill, versus, if you break that cycle, it's hard. You're probably gonna have basically withdrawals. But if you can power through it, and you can zoom out and say, this is worth it, protein, fats, whole grains will break that cycle, and you won't need to crave the simple carbs, and your body will have less inflammation. And you're you're on a much, much better path.

Scott Benner 56:48
First of all, there's an episode in the Pro Tip series about glycemic index and load. There we go. It doesn't mean you can't have something sweet once in a while. It's just you're not on a Benner that you don't realize you've been on for years. You know, like conscious of what

Tom Taylor 57:00
you're putting in your body. I love ice cream. I love chocolate, but, you know, like and to my detriment, I have a tremendous sweet tooth, but it's a treat. It's got to be a treat. And you can't be sitting there housing a bowl of ice cream every night. And I think that, just in general, in life, giving yourself a little bit of work for to earn an indulgence, and not just making it a given is also a great I mean, that's a great I mean, that's a personal philosophy. I'm not prescribing anything for anyone, but this is what works for me, and I feel a lot more imbalance with my life and everything else, especially my health. If the treats are treats, and they are not just part of my diet, and you're conscious of the ingredients you're putting in

Scott Benner 57:36
your body, yeah, no, I appreciate you sharing that. Is there anything we didn't talk about that we should have, anything that you have on a list somewhere or in your head.

Tom Taylor 57:43
No, sir. We covered a lot. I'm really appreciative for the opportunity I love, you know, trying to help folks the best I can. I'm really appreciative of what you do. You know, I listen to probably 90% of the episodes. I think you're doing really great work. And I hope that, you know, diabetes is, is obviously a topic close to my heart and thinkers, but I think that this is a message that's applicable to everyone, and that's kind of why I wrote my college essay about it. I think whatever it did, you know, helps me get into the schools I got into because I learned a lot about life from having to deal with this. I think a lot of people probably do too, and if they haven't yet, there's an opportunity to it's any any obstacle can become a vehicle, you know, if you just kind of orient it correctly and figure out how to ride it.

Scott Benner 58:26
Well, that's awesome. No, I appreciate that very much.

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