#1598 Future Murse
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Brandon, 20, has lived with T1D for 4 years and is currently studying to become a nurse.
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Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends, and welcome back to another episode of The Juicebox podcast.
Brandon 0:14
Hi. My name is Brandon. Let's see. I've had type one diabetes for four years now, and I am currently a nursing student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. If
Scott Benner 0:25
this is your first time listening to the Juicebox podcast and you'd like to hear more, download Apple podcasts or Spotify, really, any audio app at all, look for the Juicebox podcast and follow or subscribe. We put out new content every day that you'll enjoy. Want to learn more about your diabetes management. Go to Juicebox podcast.com up in the menu and look for bold Beginnings The Diabetes Pro Tip series and much more. This podcast is full of collections and series of information that will help you to live better with insulin. Please don't forget that nothing you hear on the Juicebox podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan or becoming bold with insulin. The episode you're listening to is sponsored by us Med, US med.com/juicebox, or call 888-721-1514, you can get your diabetes testing supplies the same way we do from us med. A huge thanks to my longest sponsor, Omnipod. Check out the Omnipod five now with my link, omnipod.com/juicebox you may be eligible for a free starter kit, a free Omnipod five starter kit at my link. Go check it out. Omnipod.com/juicebox Terms and Conditions apply. Full terms and conditions can be found at omnipod.com/juicebox today's episode of The Juicebox podcast is sponsored by the ever since 365 the one year where CGM that's one insertion a year. That's it. And here's a little bonus for you. How about there's no limit on how many friends and family you can share your data with, with the ever since now app, no limits ever
Brandon 2:18
since. Hi, my name is Brandon. Let's see. I've had type one diabetes for four years now, and I am currently a nursing student at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Awesome. How old are you? I am 20 years old. So my birthday is in August, so I'll turn 21 before the start of my senior year. Wow, you're 20?
Scott Benner 2:38
Yeah, I'm kind of young. No, no. That is, it feels, I think it's because Arden is 20. It probably feels particularly yelling to me. So you were diagnosed right around your 16th birthday, around that time,
Brandon 2:48
yeah, that's, that's right, I was, it was March 27 of 2021, so 16 years old, and it was kind of like a big shift in life. I guess you could say at that time, still sort of feels like it, but I've definitely gotten quite acquainted with it.
Scott Benner 3:06
Yeah, you have, how long do you think it took to go from big shift to acquainted?
Brandon 3:11
Well, for the first month, we ate just box food, because it had the carbs on it. After three months, I think I got my first CGM, which was the FreeStyle Libre two, which was, like, it worked fine, but you had to, like, scan it, which was kind of weird. And so I wasn't like, a huge fan of that. Yeah, I would say after that point, like, after I got that CGM, because I would just scan it basically, like, every, like, two minutes, every five minutes, whatever it was, just because I was not paranoid, but I was very curious. I kind of treated it like a video game, almost like I wanted to keep my blood sugar in between the two lines that kind of thing. Yes. So
Scott Benner 3:47
gamify diabetes Exactly, exactly. There have been a couple of companies who have tried, over the years to gamify diabetes with apps, and I'm sure for the people that they work for like They're awesome, but it doesn't seem to be a a widespread idea. So, yeah, tell me what you liked about it, though. Well,
Brandon 4:06
so I've seen those apps as well, and I haven't liked those apps, but I did have to download a few of them, like, like, it was a really weird chain, because when I had my I got the FreeStyle Libre three eventually, which I actually really loved. I think I prefer it over what I'm using now, which I'm on, the Omnipod five and Dexcom six. I think I like the FreeStyle Libre three more because it gave me that update every minute, so it allowed me to adjust faster. And yeah, so I had to, like, do this, like chain of apps so that I could get my libre data onto my Apple watch. It was like the weirdest thing ever, and it worked like half of the time. So that is the one thing that Dexcom does have, is they have just, like, direct connect. And I don't have to think about
Scott Benner 4:47
it. And then with libre, that doesn't work that way any longer, either, I don't think so. Yeah, that was people just making something work the way that. You know, Can I say something about technology? You're young man, so sure. I won't mention it again. But you are young, like you can see you, you might not know this, right? There is constantly stuff coming out, right? And people have to make a decision, where do I jump in on this? Yeah, do I get in now? Do I get in later? Like people are going through that with chat GPT right now and other AI models, right? Some people early adopt, which is awesome, but some people don't know that they're early adopting, and they end up with a CGM that doesn't talk to the thing. But then there's a guy online who makes an app that makes you that, and you're like and it can become frustrating if you stay in that early adopter space too long. You can feel like you're spending your whole life adjusting your tech. And I think there are some people who probably love that, which is awesome, and that's, I think, how it gets moved forward. But for the other people, like they're not looking for that they want on works, that's it, right? So when you dug into it, did you know you were digging into being early on that? Or did you did you think, Oh, this is just the way it works, and I have to adapt it to my needs.
Brandon 5:58
Yeah, I think it's the second. I think I just wanted to make the technology work for me. I wanted to have my blood sugar on my Apple watch, you know, so that I when I was walking around campus, I don't have to, like, pull my phone out and look at my phone. I just want to turn and look at my watch real quick and see, okay, that's where, that's where I'm at. You
Scott Benner 6:16
don't want to do it for convenience sake or cause you're not you're not up for people knowing you have diabetes.
Brandon 6:22
Oh no, no. Just for convenience sake. Okay, I don't really care. I tell, actually, I tell, like, not everybody, but I'm a very, like, widespread advocate, like, especially in the nursing school, about diabetes, and I kind of have been even before nursing school. I guess maybe I could explain a little bit the program like it's a two year program of, like, doing pre requisites, and then it's two years you have to apply to the nursing school, and then two years in the nursing school. So when I say in nursing school, I mean, like, my junior and senior year, yeah. So, like, before nursing school, yeah, even in high school, like, I kind of had been like, yeah, look, I'm a diabetic. And I was always really weird, like, when I first got home, like, because my cousin has diabetes as well, but it's not blood related. I talked to her and her family, and I was kind of like, look, I really want to be like an advocate for diabetes and kind of just be like, Look, I'm a type one diabetic, and this doesn't mean that I, you know, ate bad food, or, etc, etc, or, you know, type two is actually a lot of genetic as well. What
Scott Benner 7:20
made you want to be like that, like, that? Like, what made you want to be out in front of it? I don't know. I
Brandon 7:25
feel like I'm I've kind of been like a, maybe an extroverted person for most of my life, and so like just talking to people comes natural, which makes sense for me. Doing nursing. I don't know. I think I just wanted to help share, yeah, about diabetes, because it's not like, widely recognized or known about. Sometimes, do
Scott Benner 7:44
you think that that's you wanting to help others, or you wanting to make sure that people know the thing about you? Like, I didn't do anything wrong. I
Brandon 7:52
see, I see, no, I don't think it's that. I think it is mainly about helping others, which is like it, which kind of tailors into like, why my career as well? Like, I want to eventually maybe get like, an NP, like, a nurse, practitioning degree and work with diabetes, you know, and other endocrine disorders. I just want to help other people. And like, your podcast has been a help to me, and so I try to, like, spread the word to other people. Like, hey, look at this podcast. Or, like, here's this idea that the podcast gave me, and I'm giving it to you now so you can help better your care, so all
Scott Benner 8:24
that kind of thing. Thank you. Was nursing always your focus? Or did that happen after your diagnosis?
Brandon 8:30
Yeah, that happened after the diagnosis. It was when I was in the hospital that I kind of realized, wow, these nurses are really awesome, and had made my experience here really fantastic, to the point where I, you know, I wrote about them in my my intro or my essay to get into nursing school, I was like, Look, these guys have made huge impact. Like, I still remember their names, you know, yeah, and I want to be able to give that back to other people. And I remember specifically when I was in the hospital, I didn't really want to listen to any physicians or nurses or anything who didn't have diabetes, for some reason, yeah, well, no, it makes sense, because I'm like, Well, look, you haven't experienced this, like, firsthand. You don't really you can understand it medically. We don't personally understand it, maybe, and so I wanted to kind of be that that bridge almost,
Scott Benner 9:26
yeah, when you said that they these people that helped you were so lovely. Was it about vibe and feeling or about knowledge? Like, where do you think they were stronger?
Brandon 9:37
It was definitely about vibe and feeling like the nurse's job is definitely to have knowledge, like I've learned that, you know, we have to know all this stuff, but it's about how you make your patient feel, and how comfortable they feel and how because, I mean, going to the hospital is not comfortable in any way, you know, so just them being able to go. Comfort me, helped me feel, allowed me, like, take in more information and, like, remember stuff better, I think, and just feel
Scott Benner 10:08
better, right? It's interesting, because Arden was in the ER for a hot minute a week or so ago, and wow, and she just needed, like, an IV antibiotic for like, like, a tonsillitis that got out of hand. Oh, man, but, but point being that the nurse that helped us was light on information, but had a great way about her. And I realize, as you're talking, that if you would have asked me, how was the nurse in the ER that night, I would have said, Oh, she was great. But the one thing I asked her, she was so wrong about that my answer should be, well, she wasn't really very helpful. That really does kind of show what that job is about. She did a great job with the IV. You know, she didn't do anything technically incorrect, but we asked her question like, hey, this medication you're giving her. How long until this happens? And she was off by days. It's really wrong and but yet, I have a good vibe about her after leaving the hospital. It's interesting. Yeah, it's
Brandon 11:05
interesting. Stuff like that is definitely hard to remember, but the one thing that kind of nursing is about is patient centered care and focused care and making sure that the patient is getting what they need. Basically,
Scott Benner 11:19
what's the breakdown of your schooling? Technical to how to be a good nurse? Do they do? They talk to you about both of those things we don't
Brandon 11:28
really have, like, how to be a good nurse classes. It's mainly look. Here is your medic, medications that you need to remember. Here's like, all these diseases you need to remember and how they work in the body. You also need to know how the medications work in the body. There's a few classes about, like professionalism, or like evidence based practice, like research stuff like that. And then we have, for the first year, a, we call it C 10, or like skills lab. And that is, like, every Friday for like, four hours, and you are just learning a new skill, or learning a couple new skills, and just like, practicing and getting it under
Scott Benner 12:04
your like, placement or something like that, like an actual, yeah, like, hands on stuff like that. Okay, interesting. Is there anything about nursing that you don't like? I
Brandon 12:13
don't like the fact that, I mean, it kind of makes sense, but I don't like the fact that I can't, like, diagnose stuff. It's just so frustrating because, like, when you look at certain lab values, you're like, that is extremely concerning. And you definitely have X, Y, Z disease. But I can't say that. I just have to pretend like, oh yeah, everything. Maybe not pretend it's fine, but be like, Yeah, I'm just gonna take care of you until your doctor gets here as soon as possible to tell you what's wrong, that kind of
Scott Benner 12:40
thing. So having a person stand right in front of you and you have some knowledge about them that they don't have yet, you feel weird holding it back. Yeah,
Brandon 12:47
it just kills me on the inside. And like, for some of our simulations, like we one of the simulations I did, I it was like a UTI, and I was like, well, says there's bacteria in your urine. And I is fed in the simulation, yes, it looks like you have UTI. And I was, I got critique for that, because they're like, Look, you can't diagnose. I'm
Scott Benner 13:06
like, also, it's right there. It may not have been a clean catch. That's a phrase I know
Brandon 13:11
Correct. Yeah. I mean, it's totally possible. They would probably order another test and then see what happens there. So
Scott Benner 13:19
Brandon, I just took a victory lap with my arm. Nobody's here to see it. This is I knew a phrase. I mean, you, yeah, yeah, you're right. I was like, Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. Could not have been a clean cut possible. Okay, so two year program. How long have you been in
Brandon 13:35
it? I just finished my third year, and then I'll graduate next year. Okay,
Scott Benner 13:39
cool. Four Year program. Four year, excuse me, I was gonna say like, you're doing it wrong. Sorry. Four Year program and you graduate next, do you go right into a job? Does the nursing school help you get work, or is there just a lot of work to have? Like, how does that? How does that all shake out 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 Eversense 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 Eversense 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 ever since cgm.com/juicebox, one year, one CGM. This episode is brought to you by a. Omnipod Would you ever buy a car without test driving it first? That's a big risk to take on a pretty large investment. You wouldn't do that, right? So why would you do it? When it comes to choosing an insulin pump, most pumps come with a four year lock in period through the DME channel, and you don't even get to try it first. But not Omnipod five. Omnipod five is available exclusively through the pharmacy, which means it doesn't come with a typical four year DME lock in period. Plus you can get started with a free 30 day trial to be sure it's the right choice for you or your family, my daughter has been wearing an Omnipod every day for 17 years. Are you ready to give Omnipod five a try. Request your free Starter Kit today at my link, omnipod.com/juicebox Terms and Conditions apply. Eligibility may vary. Full terms and conditions can be found at omnipod.com/juicebox find my link in the show notes of this podcast player, or at Juicebox podcast.com a
Brandon 16:01
little bit of both. There's a lot of jobs right now for nurses. And on top of that, the nursing school also, like, helps you with figuring out, like, regulations and licensing and stuff like that. Because if you get a license in, for example, my state, Wisconsin, that transfers to, like, I think, like 20 ish other states and I don't have to do any extra licensing, but I want to go to, like, California or Minnesota, or, I don't know, like New York, probably there's like, additional licensing stuff that I have to take care of for the National, like board certification exam. So they help us figure out, like, the details, and also help us, like, apply for jobs and stuff like that. So they're helpful in that regard.
Scott Benner 16:42
When you're growing up through the idea of maybe becoming a nurse, it's also during the time of, like, right after covid, where people are talking about like, nurses are bailing on nursing like did did that not impact you one way or the other. I think after
Brandon 16:56
being in the hospital, I understand why that happened, and I don't blame any of the nurses that did that. I kind of, I have thought about that as well, like, what if another pandemic happens? It's probable that it will occur. In my personal opinion, this is no, this is no, like, you don't know, I don't have any insider knowledge, but I just with those, you know, global warming, etc. I just think that it's possible that another pandemic could occur in the future. And I thought about that, like, Would I be able to stay through it? And I don't know. I guess I'll figure that out when I get that out, but for now, I'm just going to do my best.
Scott Benner 17:33
That's awesome. It's nice that you're not deterred. Have you talked to other practicing nurses before you make a decision like that before, like, before you like, I'm going to nursing school. Maybe I ought to go talk to a few people about what the jobs like, or did you just be like, sorry, I'm going to make my way through it.
Brandon 17:49
That's actually, that's a good question. I think before I was, like, doing nursing school, not really. I did definitely talk to, like, a lot of the nurse practitioners, kind of, like, gaging, oh, you know, like, what is your job? How do I get your job? Like, what's your salary, etc. But not really, like the bedside nurses, I haven't really, I didn't really talk to them before nursing school. It was only, like, after I was in clinicals and things like that, that I was able to, like, understand what their job was. Like, okay, so I don't
Scott Benner 18:17
want to get you in trouble here. Okay, so, okay, but, but you listen to the podcast, you've heard a lot of people's stories about being diagnosed or going in for help and getting, like, shaky care. Yeah, and you've heard a lot of stories from people who've gotten awesome care. When you hear about the shaky care side, does it hurt you? Does it feel like somebody's coming after your profession, or you like, because you know how hard you're working at something. You know other people who are doing the same. Is it hard to hear someone be critical?
Brandon 18:49
Not really well. I mean, like, maybe a little bit, because I would like to assume that all people and nurses have like people's best interests in mind, but I've run into my fair share of nurses who I'm like, I don't know how you have a certification. Like, I don't know how you have your your certification. So there's just, like, you know, there's a few bad apples in every profession, I would say. So people who have had, you know, experienced poor care. That's super valid. You know your care and your experience is, you know what it was, right? And maybe it's because you had a nurse or a doctor who just was tuned out that day. Or maybe they're just not, you know, a great nurse or doctor, right? Yeah, it's just kind of healthcare. You know, there's nothing's perfect, so it can't, I can't say that someone else's experience is invalid because, you know, they felt a
Scott Benner 19:42
certain way, sure, but it doesn't make you feel a certain way. Doesn't make you feel attacked, maybe a little
Brandon 19:46
bit, you know, I again, Nursing is a hard job, and I don't think people would like truly understand, you know, like, if you're in the hospital and you're working with your nurse, you're not seeing how many other patients they have and how much work behind. Scenes they're doing, talking to providers, talking to pharmacy, you know, coordinating with, you know, or whatever it is. There's a lot going on. So,
Scott Benner 20:08
yeah, it's insane. Also, I feel like it can seem to the patient like a service industry. Do you know what I mean? Like, like you're a waiter.
Brandon 20:15
That's kind of how I and some other nurses describe it, yeah, sometimes, like, it is kind of a service industry trying to keep your kitchen, running back
Scott Benner 20:22
to the table, running to the kitchen, running back to the table. Like, can I get this? Can I get that? You got to keep it all in your head as you pass by people, they're yelling out the door. And for a shift that can be, how long most shifts are, standard is 12 hours. Yeah, that's a long time. How do you practice or prepare for running around for that long with type one. I have always disliked ordering diabetes supplies. I'm guessing you have as well. It hasn't been a problem for us for the last few years, though, because we began using us Med, you can too us med.com/juicebox, or call 888-721-1514, to get your free benefits. Check us med has served over 1 million people living with diabetes since 1996 they carry everything you need, from CGM to insulin pumps and diabetes testing supplies and more. I'm talking about all the good ones, all your favorites, libre three, Dexcom g7 and pumps like Omnipod five, Omnipod tandem, and most recently, the eyelet pump from beta bionics, the stuff you're looking for, they have it at us. Med, 888-721-1514, or go to us. Med, Comm, slash Juicebox to get started now, use my link to support the podcast that's usmed.com/juicebox, or call 888-721-1514,
Brandon 21:49
thankfully, I have the the algorithm working for me, so that's taking care of most stuff in the background. But you know, there's some days where you don't get to lunch until one or 2pm Yeah. And for me, I don't eat breakfast because I try to do like, a little bit of intermittent fasting. So, you know, making my schedule, you know, eating my first meal at like, one or 2pm and it can, you know, my blood sugar can be fluctuating throughout the day, so I just have like, glucose tablets with me to help regulate in case, like, I start going low. So when
Scott Benner 22:19
you get to that time, when it's time to eat, you need to eat, but that's not always going to going to be the case,
Brandon 22:24
right? Sometimes you don't get a lunch either. So yeah, that's another thing you have to think about.
Scott Benner 22:30
Eat out of your dirty pocket, right? Do you have any brothers sisters?
Brandon 22:36
Yeah, I have of a younger sister,
Scott Benner 22:38
yeah. Is she concerned about diabetes at all, I
Brandon 22:43
think a little bit, she's talked to me sometimes where she's like, I've been peeing a lot. Can I test my blood sugar? I'm like, Yeah, sure, go
Scott Benner 22:50
for it. So it is in her head. She does think about it a little bit. It's in her head. Yeah,
Brandon 22:55
I tell her not to worry too much about it, and even if she does get it, you know, like she has me and my aunt and my cousin as a resource to help her, but I understand her
Scott Benner 23:05
fear. Yeah. What did you mean? Your cousin has type one, but they're not blood
Brandon 23:09
related? Yeah? Sorry, so the type one isn't blood related. It was married in to that side of the family, so we like her grandfather, who is not my grandfather, so that kind of makes my uncle, my aunt is my blood relative, and my uncle is not, and my uncle's mom had type one.
Scott Benner 23:29
Gotcha. Okay, so it's somebody you know, because you're related to them. But, I mean, I assumed that. But I was just I wasn't like, yeah, sorry, yeah, no, Brent, I wasn't, I wasn't like, What's this magic where you're related but you're not related? I just I wasn't confused, yeah. How did you find the podcast?
Brandon 23:43
Actually, through my aunt, when I was diagnosed, like my aunt was doing a good job with my cousin, for sure, for I don't even know how many years it would have been at that time, like seven years, but after I got diagnosed, she kind of, like, I don't know how necessarily to like, communicate all this information that I've learned to you to help you without overwhelming you. So she went and looked for resources online and found the podcast and then shared it with me. Oh, no. And then we both started kind of like listening to it at the same time together.
Scott Benner 24:13
Oh, that's interesting. So she wasn't a listener. She was just trying to help you,
Brandon 24:16
yeah. And then it ended up helping my cousin as well. Oh, awesome. Well,
Scott Benner 24:20
hi to everybody. That's, that's really what? Oh, what a, what a lovely thing to do for somebody. Yeah, no, she's fantastic. Yeah, no kidding. Usually, when you ask somebody for help, they'll help you, if it's like, right there, you know, he's like, oh, yeah, I know what to do. Here's the thing. No problem. I gotta go look for it. You don't usually get out of people. Oh, what a nice person. Yeah,
Brandon 24:40
no, she's lovely, and she helped me, you know, get to where I am, where I haven't had an A 1c above six for like, three years now. So good
Scott Benner 24:48
for you. Man, that's awesome. How about your parents? Because that's such an in between age. Like, did they look at you and go, Oh, he's old enough he can do this. Or were they trying to help or, you know what I mean? Like, I feel like there's this thing that happens where, when the kids are at a certain age, when they're diagnosed, the parents don't want to, like, push themselves into it where they should, like, does that make sense?
Brandon 25:10
Yeah, that one's a little bit trickier. I would say, oh, is your dad in prison? No, no, nothing like that. Nothing like that. No, both my parents were in the hospital with me, and for the first few months they they were kind of like my guide, because I was kind of tuned out at the hospital, and so I was using what information they had to kind of like guide my care a little bit. They didn't get to do injections, though, because they each did one injection, and it went awfully so I said, I will take care of that part. It's true. I mean, my dad, first time he did it, he put in my arm, and then he injected it, and immediately pulled it out, and I saw, like, four or five units spill onto the floor. And I was like, Huh, okay, so yeah, they didn't do injections for me, but they did help me with, like, figuring out carbs. And we even, you know, we did the scales and stuff at the beginning. We're like, two blueberries, is this many carbs, right? So we did all that so that we could, you know, kind of get Gage, oh, okay, a piece of bread. It's like, 1015, to 20, whatever it is, right? Depending on the size. And after we kind of, like, got that basis, I kind of just took over for the most part. And they kind of were just like, you know, checked in every once in a while, like, Hey, how's it going, how's this going, right? And, you know, sometimes you don't want your parents to know. Oh, yeah, my blood sugar has been 200 all day or whatever, right? But after a certain point, you know, I got
Scott Benner 26:37
it under control. Have you ever said the phrase, it's fine. I've got it.
Brandon 26:41
That was my coined phrase from the age of 16 to about 19. So yes, no, if
Scott Benner 26:46
you ever want to marry a girl in New Jersey and make a baby that's definitely gonna have diabetes, she knows that phrase too. You can come right over and start chatting with her.
Brandon 26:55
It's fine. I got it fine. I've used that one before too.
Scott Benner 27:01
I feel fine. It's fine. I've got it. Dad, leave me alone. Stop. It's just such a balance. Like, so your parents let you lead the way a little bit. Do you think that when they stepped back? Have you ever talked to them about it like was their expectation? Like they really thought you had it? Or they were like, well, you know, he's not doing great, but it seems like a like a pain point that we don't want to push through.
Brandon 27:22
I never had officially, like, talked to them about it, but I think they kind of just wanted to see how it worked out for me. And I think they trusted me, because I have been pretty responsible for most of my life, so I think they trusted me in figuring it out. Yeah, kind of that
Scott Benner 27:39
makes sense. One of the hardest things to do, I think, parenting wise, is like, people will say it like, oh, to watch your kids make mistakes, but, you know, they have to do them. I don't think of it as even a mistake. It's a it's like a learning process. And, you know, like when the learning process is touching the stove and it's hot, you want to step in and say, don't touch the stove, right? And you do when they're young, and you should, right? But then where does that line get drawn? Like, do you let them fall? Do you let them, like, linger after they've fallen? Do you let them make friends with somebody where it's not going to work out? Like, do you let them, you know, do you while they're dating somebody that you're like, This is not right. And it's not just me being a jerk here, like this, this person's not right for a reason. I should point out. Do you say that? Do you hold it inside like you go through this constantly, but when you get to diabetes, especially when you've raised a kid with it, and you're like, you know, years into it, and you know, if we Bolus right here. If we do this with the temp basal, if we do that, your blood sugar is never getting high. Like, but once they take the reins, like, stepping back and saying, I know there's value in this learning experience, but I don't want the learning experience to tip over into a bad habit, like, how do you stay in the Batman I'm telling you, yeah, it's a tightrope walk that just it sucks. I don't know another way to say it.
Brandon 29:08
Roy, yeah. I think the weird part about my situation is that because I was diagnosed so late and my parents were only involved for a certain amount of time, they kind of lack that knowledge and experience that even my aunt had, that my aunt has, right because she took care of it for you know, I think it's like 14 years at this point, something like that might be even longer. So sorry, tired to my aunt, if she's listening, because she probably will. They don't have that knowledge. So it's kind of just on me, especially now. And I think a year ago, I kind of was like, Well, I wish they knew more, because there's times where they, you know, they'll make a comment, or they'll say something, and I'm like, No man, that's that's not even close to being right, but yeah, and I maybe I'll say, well, and I don't think so right, but,
Scott Benner 29:55
but they were never really in the fight, so they didn't really have to learn the tools
Brandon 29:59
Exactly. Thing. And that doesn't mean that they're not supportive still, and they want the best for me, it's just that they don't maybe fully understand it.
Scott Benner 30:06
Yeah, of course. Because how would they even do that? Right? Like you imagine you're taking care of it. There's already you're 16, there's already a parental child struggle that goes on one way or the other. And if they were like, listen, you're taking care of this, that's great, but teach us as you're learning, because we want to know too. You would have been like, Get away from me. Right, right? Yeah, definitely. And you seem like a pretty level headed person. Thank you. Yeah, were you when you were 16 for
Brandon 30:31
the most part? Yeah, you haven't been a real dick to your parents at any point. Maybe not, maybe a little bit. I mean, that's obviously me talking about myself in front of a million people, but hard to know. Yeah, yeah, I don't know. I guess I probably don't have the same perspective that I have. Like, but now you're not dude.
Scott Benner 30:48
You weren't doing heroin and like stuff like that, yeah, going crazy. You weren't somebody who, like, every five seconds they were like, oh my god, what is he doing now? Like, it wasn't like that.
Brandon 30:57
No, they kind of just like, let me be for the most part, because I would just kind of stay out of trouble and do good in school. So
Scott Benner 31:04
all right, trying to figure out, because you said you were a little disconnected in the hospital, which I understand, you're probably in shock about all this stuff going on, right? So your parents are taking in information, but it pretty quickly pivots to you, you go to your your did you go to your aunt? Or did your aunt go to you?
Brandon 31:19
I mean, she kind of like helped me get diagnosed in a way, like she had a post on Facebook that my sister saw that was, like a reoccurring post every year about like signs and symptoms of type one, and then my sister would talk to my mom, and my mom took me to my aunt, and then she helped me get, like a finger stick. And then she was like, go to the hospital. And then she kind of was involved in my care a little bit after that, just kind of like calling and checking in, like, Hey, do you need? Hey, do you need anything? Yeah, we, at that time, we only lived like a block or two away from them as well, and this was also during, like, the pandemic, though, a little bit, so we were cautious, but she did, you know, come and help, like,
Scott Benner 31:54
you're acquainted a little bit. Your little sister diagnosed your diabetes from your aunt's Facebook post, yeah, basically here, that's awesome,
Brandon 32:03
yeah, I know, and I have to live every day knowing that my sister can hold that over
Scott Benner 32:08
me. Now, no kidding, how much younger than you is she? I think she's three years younger. So your 13 year old sister comes to you one day and goes, Hey, you have diabetes. No, she went to my parents. Your parents said, Hey, this one over here is peeing a lot. We got to do something. I saw something online. No kidding. Wow, that's crazy. Good for her. What's her name? Her name's Caitlin. Caitlin saves the day. That's awesome. Good job. So did you not know anything was wrong?
Brandon 32:36
I guess, kind of like while I was living it, not really like I knew I felt very depressed and always tired, but I assumed that was because there was a global pandemic happening, and I hadn't talked to people in like, a long time, but I knew I was eating like five meals a day and drinking like 100 something ounces of water every day. So
Scott Benner 32:56
do you remember the moment that you're I'm assuming your mom got tasked to come to you and say, Hey, Caitlin thinks you have type one diabetes. We should go. Were you like, What the What are you talking about? Yeah,
Brandon 33:06
for sure. I was like, Heck no, that's not possible. Because, I mean, at this time, I had no idea anything about medical field, anything, yeah, the signs were there, for sure. But I was like, hell no, I don't have that
Scott Benner 33:18
must have been insane. I would I imagine the look on your face was these two big like, oh god. I almost made a reference that maybe is 40 years old.
Brandon 33:27
Oh man, oh my
Scott Benner 33:29
God. Have you ever seen the wolf in the old cartoons that sees the pretty girl and its eyes bug out?
Brandon 33:34
There's Oh, Looney Tunes. Well,
Scott Benner 33:38
yeah. I mean, yeah, you know that. Okay, yeah, I kind of know you're talking. I like, I see you, like, like, with your just your eyes, like, bugging out of your head. Like, what are you talking about? And now, by the way, I'm seeing a thumbnail for your episode, which is a young nurse with his eyes bugging.
Brandon 33:54
I like it, yeah, you
Scott Benner 33:56
must have been like, what is happening right now? That's a crazy way to find out.
Brandon 33:59
Yeah. And then blood sugar was like, 350 or 360 or something about it's like, let's do that again. Let's just wash your hands. And then she's like, You should probably go to ER.
Scott Benner 34:08
So by the way, the most frequently word heard words before a type one diabetes diagnosis are, let's wash your hands and try that again. I guarantee it. So your sister just rolled past you every once in a while and go, Hey, do you remember that time I diagnosed you? Time I diagnosed
Brandon 34:23
you with diabetes? Yeah, that happens. Oh, I would do that for sure. I still live at home so she Oh no for 100%
Scott Benner 34:28
like, even in the middle of an argument. If you're like, hey, you know your shoes are always in the floor, I'd be like, Oh, my God, they are. I'll get them right after I remind you that I helped you with your diabetes that time. Yeah, yeah. I'd be a dick about it, for sure, in a fun way. I just want to say yeah, for sure. Awesome. So okay, all right. So let me go back to my question, what, what? And by the way, good job keeping me on track. I got you what kind of nursing is attractive to you?
Brandon 34:54
So yes, it is like that. You can kind of choose where you want to go. Mm. And for me, I want to do diabetes stuff in the long term, but in the short term, it's not super possible with like, just a bachelor's degree. Like, I could go work at like, a clinic, but then I would kind of only be doing like that intake stuff. Like, Hey, what's your name, etc, right? You want to get your hours right, right? I'm going to take your a 1c right? Yeah, that's not really what I want to do. I want to be more on the MP side of things where I am helping you help, like, with care. Like, hey, I need new insulin prescription. I need, I want a Dexcom, right? Stuff like that. Like, that's what I want to be doing long term. But for short term, I have no idea. So I've kind of just, like, left it up in the air. I'm like, maybe I'll go work bedside. Maybe I'll go work in a clinic. Maybe I'll work in cardiology. Who knows, right? Yeah, I'll just, I'll figure it out. Game experiences, whoever offers me the most money, I'll go there.
Scott Benner 35:52
Would you ever do travel nursing? Yeah, you would okay, you have no problems, like, like, like, just leaving the state and going somewhere and trying somewhere
Brandon 35:59
else. Yeah, sounds good, as long as, like, again, it's like, the whole licensing thing, right? You got to figure that out. But, yeah, I'll do that. That sounds like fun. Hey, yeah, I'll go to Miami, pick me, get me out of Wisconsin.
Scott Benner 36:11
Cold. My friend's daughter does it right now, I think she's pretty happy where she is at the moment. But she's been in, like, Arizona, Hawaii, Baltimore. She actually left Baltimore, like, she went to her mom and said, I have to get out of this hospital. I'm no longer shocked by seeing someone be shot. I need to leave that. That's how she told her mom, like, she's like, I'm numb to a gunshot. And I think that means I have enough experience. I gotta go. So, yeah, that's fair, yeah. So she went somewhere else. Now you're listening to the podcast, and people are talking about their experiences with doctors and nurses and healthcare in general. Is that helping to inform how you want to do your job?
Brandon 36:50
Certainly, yeah, that is like kind of what I have drawn on for, even just like our general care, I just want to make sure that people have a good experience in the hospital, you know, maybe not to the point so much where they like remember my name, like I did with my nurses. But I just want them to help ease their pain and help them get acquainted to like their new lives, if they're, you know, going through major surgery, etc, or whatever it is, you know, it's, it's not easy, and I just want to make it as easy as I can for them.
Scott Benner 37:23
Did you hear the Grand Rounds series? No, okay, so there's a series in the podcast, and it's just called Grand Rounds. But what I did was I went into the Facebook group and I collected, I mean, we made an exhaustive, seriously exhaustive list of what people wished their doctors would have done or not have done during their their intake, their early days, you know, through diagnosis, through learning, and then beyond. And we ordered those things as far as, like you know, at the hospital, like, you know, going home, like, kind of in that, like, chronological order, we took all of their feedback, and Jenny and I sat down and talked through it all. And then after that, I brought in, I think there's at least five or six different physicians, endocrinologists, sometimes people with type one diabetes who are endocrinologist people who have type one in their lives, but are different kinds of doctors, and we talked with each of them about what they thought care should look like.
Brandon 38:27
That sounds really interesting.
Scott Benner 38:30
It might be. And I'm wondering, if you end up going through it, what you'll find you're just kind of like in the perfect position, because I keep wondering, like, you know, your aunt finds the podcast. She gets it over to you. You've got an A, 1c, under six. That's awesome. But, like, I keep thinking, like, is there a way to get to doctors too? Like, you know, there's this podcast has been going on for a long time. Now. People are going to grow up listening to it who have type one diabetes. Some of them are going to become nurses and physicians and MPs and etc, right, I'm trying to figure out, like, how can we get the message from people going through it back to doctors so that they can make you know better decisions, or know what to look out for anyway? On my website now, under guides, there's two links. One's called improving type one diabetes care, a guide for physicians, and there's one called Juicebox for Doc's Grand Rounds takeaways. And they're both, like, pretty exhaustive. I mean, I'd almost call them like research reports, but they're made with an AI model, but only from the transcripts from the Grand Rounds series.
Brandon 39:42
Yeah, sure, yeah. I mean, I'm all good with AI. So,
Scott Benner 39:46
yeah, no, you're young. You don't care. But my point is, is that some people listening, right there he is, again with the AI. Here's what I can tell you, I had upwards of like 20 hours of recordings. Wow, with doctors talking about their experiences with Jenny, and I really picking through everybody's feedback. And there's a lot in there. And I'm not, I don't know who you all think I am, but if I sit down to pick through 20 hours of this, to take, you know, to write down takeaways and take notes as I'm going through like that's never, I'm never gonna get that accomplished, right? So at one point it wasn't so much so, but at this point now, like these AI models are much better writers than they used to be even nine months ago, and they're much better at pulling out information. And you can kind of keep them on task by telling them, like, do not leave this information, do not go to the internet. Don't put in your own thoughts. Just pull this information out, and then you can go back and hand check it afterwards, which is what we did, right? Yep, if you're looking for, you know, basically 90 people's thoughts about what they wish would have happened for them, and six really awesome physicians thoughts on what they think they should be doing, all collected together. It's a good read. Yeah, I don't know how to get it out into the world. I look at it, I think, I don't think anybody's seeing this, because what are you gonna do? Right? Like, we didn't send an email to a doctor's office and go, you should read this. Like they'll be like, Oh, good,
Brandon 41:15
yeah. Be like, all right. And next email, Hey, I got an email
Scott Benner 41:19
from a podcaster who thinks they know how to be a doctor, that's how it's gonna feel, right? So it's up to people like you, or people in healthcare to, first of all, actually believe in it, and then secondly, give it to somebody else. And that's, you know, what I'm hoping for, I guess,
Brandon 41:36
yeah, no, I've, I've kind of thought about that as well from the podcast. Like just being able to like you are kind of raising a generation of people who are learning about this information, and we can go into the field. And I mean to be honest, when I am talking about diabetes, even to like my nursing cohort, like I that was one thing I tried to do, is educate them on type one diabetes, be a one on other, like 159 of us, whatever there is. I want them to be able to go into the healthcare field and be like, Oh, I remember the thing that Brandon told me at, you know, whenever, when I was talking about this nursing research before class started, or when we were just having a conversation in the lounge, right? I'm trying to educate them, mostly with stuff from the podcast and also from stuff from my life about type one diabetes, break those stereotypes and help them, kind of like, understand what it is to have type one diabetes and how to take care of people who have type one diabetes, so that they don't have those experiences. Yeah, but I didn't know about that series, because I've just been listening from zero forward, basically, oh yeah,
Scott Benner 42:46
no, I figured that out. Because earlier you said something about like, like, Oh, I didn't realize you did that. Or something like, Oh, you, hi. You hired an editor. Like, yeah, yeah, you're not up to that part yet. No, no, and I'm going to tell you something Brandon like, this will sound self serving, but it's not you listen to this podcast straight through, I think you'll be an excellent diabetes educator. Yeah, yeah, I
Brandon 43:09
really. I think so too. And that's kind of what I found. Like, I'm only like, 600 episodes in something like that. It's a small things like being able to just glean that small information from people talking about their their time. You can hear their tone right, right? And you can hear how that experience impacted the rest of their their care. So it's really important to get it right at the beginning.
Scott Benner 43:32
Yeah, that's such my takeaway after making grand rounds, actually. And you'll hear me harp on it when you get to it. But the way they start is often the way they finish. And you just don't realize what a misplaced word or sentiment or ill timed piece of advice or an idea could throw somebody so far off the track that they can't find their way back, you know, and then once they even if they realize they're in trouble, if they intersect another person who doesn't know how to get them back quickly. It just spins out of control. Yeah, and then I end up interviewing those people when they're 35 and 40 and 45 years old, and they're like, Oh God, I found the podcast last year. And they say stuff like, why didn't I find this earlier? Because they're thinking about their lost time and their lost health. And if you could hear those stories, and you were the person intersecting somebody on day one with their diagnosis, I think it would change how you spoke to them. It definitely would, yeah, but I don't think that sitting in a room in an hour and a half class where somebody puts that up in bullet points in front of you is going to make the same impact
Brandon 44:41
Exactly. And, I mean, that's kind of my little thing, like I've seen. We've had lectures on diabetes, but it mainly focuses on type two, because that's just the, you know, it's the more common one. It makes sense that I would, if I was making material, I would do that too, yeah, but we have done a little bit of type one. But. It's not satisfactory for me personally. And so there's times where I just like ask a question that I obviously know the answer to, but I just want my professor to say a certain phrase or sentence so that maybe that sticks with the people in my class. You know, things like that. I just want to try to educate them. Even
Scott Benner 45:20
with teaching, you get lucky and you get unlucky sometimes, like, sometimes, right? You just you get a great instructor, somebody who cares, and they're thoughtful, and they get it, and then sometimes you don't, and that's not even under your control either, like, so you might go through an entire course and not get the same takeaway you would have gotten if you randomly got placed with a different instructor, and there's, there's nothing you can do. But this, again, I know this sounds self serving, but like this podcast is the best way to disseminate this information, because, man, at 20 years old, you just said, sometimes you just hear a tone in their voice, and you can kind of like, get what they're saying differently. Like, I was so touched by that, because I spent a lot of time talking to people and getting them comfortable and saying stupid stuff to them so they're not nervous, so that they might say five things in an hour, that somebody, at the end goes, Oh, that's the stuff that's going to stick with me when it's over. And those are the things that make it easier to keep your a 1c under six or help you when you know it's the middle of the night and you're sick and your blood sugar is like, rocketing up. And like, I don't know what to do. I don't know what to do. And then you think, no, I do know what to do. Because some lady on some episode said a thing that stuck with you and you, and you pull that out like your Batman, and it's like, and you're like, boom, this is the tool I need. Like, right off my belt. Like I didn't, yeah, I didn't even remember it was there. But now that I know I need it, whoa, here it is, and I know how to use it,
Brandon 46:46
Yeah, certainly. And I mean, I feel, I feel especially that way, because, you know, that is my job as a nurse. Our job is about education as well. That's like, the big part of it is we're learning our material so that we can teach you when we end up taking care of you. And so the more I can do now to help educate my classmates, the more that they can do to help educate other people in the
Scott Benner 47:09
future. I'm super excited to hear you say that, because a second ago, you said, look, they spend a lot more time telling us about type two diabetes and type one because it's more you know, frequently seen. But you ever meet people with type two diabetes, they don't know anything about their type two diabetes, like, so that means they're spending extra time teaching you something, and it's still not actually impacting the end user. Do you know you mean, like, you know more about it, hopefully. But there's something about the process that doesn't leave people informed. And it's not just diabetes, I'm telling you, it's not just diabetes, it's everything. Anytime you hear somebody deal with a medical issue, that's not one and done, that's not a pill and it's over, right? Because I don't need to know how you fix my shoulder. Like, it's cool. It works again. Like, thank you. It's awesome. Let me definitely pay the bill, and I might even send a card over and say, thanks. So if I bump into you at the grocery store, grocery store to shake your hand right? Like, that's awesome. If something I'm dealing with every day isn't understood, then we all tend to, like, try to let it melt into the background. We ignore it. It's where phrases like, oh, that's just diabetes comes from. You know, like, Oh, your blood sugar has been 300 all day. Yeah, it's just diabetes. Nothing I can do it. Nothing I can do about it. You know, I've got the sugars, whatever, like, version of that, wherever you are in the country, you know, I've heard people say, Oh, it's my whole family's got it. It's gonna get me one day. Like, wow, you're 28 years old, and you've already resolved yourself to the fact that you're gonna die early from type two diabetes, because you've seen it happen to a few people in your family. I'm like, right? That's crazy. I don't know what to do about that systemically, other than to say that a person like you, like a front lines person, right, who has the knowledge coupled with the understanding of what it's like to live with it. I think you will probably be responsible for more good launches for people over a 30 year career than you'll be able to count. And I'm telling you, man, like I find a ton of value in what I do, and personal value too. Like, I was just standing with Arden's endocrinologist yesterday. We were chatting, and she told me about a person she helped recently, like no big details, but like, this person had PCOS, and nobody would help her. And so this doctor got her onto a GLP, and it alleviated her symptoms so significantly, and her pain and her struggle so significantly that the next time she saw her, the woman just walked into the office and grabbed her and started crying and just hugged her, like hugged the doctor, because of the relief that was been brought to her. Yep. And she said to me, Well, you know what I'm talking about. And I said, I do. And I told her I was like, if you would have met me 30 years ago. Know, you would not have been like, I bet that guy, one day is going to find a ton of comfort and value in helping people live better with diabetes. I'm like, Yeah, that was not me. Like, actually, if you knew me back, then you'd be laughing right now, how ridiculous that sounds, right? But at the same time, the next thing I said to her was, I'm so happy, and I feel so valuable. And every time I look up and hear from somebody, or see somebody doing better, I think like, you know, that's another kind of I don't know like, root in the world, or tentacle, that that is an offshoot of the thing I do every day. And I try to think of it as like, not just like, you know, you reach a mom today who maybe helps raise a kid who's never gonna have a bunch of problems because they understood this stuff, but then one day, that kid might have a kid who has diabetes. By having these conversations, we all might be helping somebody who isn't gonna be born for 20 years. And I think that's awesome. I think you could do that too,
Brandon 51:05
yeah? And, I mean, that's kind of what I hope to do, but and make some money, as you said earlier, yeah, and make some money. But, you know, it's not just that's not just me. Though anyone can kind of do this, right, like anyone can be an advocate for diabetes. And, you know, talk about, yeah, this is kind of what my life is like. And you can talk to your doctors, your nurses, things like that, and kind of be like, Hey, this is how diabetes has affected me, right? And give your story to them. And who knows, maybe that changes the way they look at it in the future as well.
Scott Benner 51:37
And you're not going to save everyone, and everybody's not of the same mindset, right? Like, so you might give somebody a great launch, and they might just not care, and I don't think it's because they don't care. I mean, if you listen to the podcast, I don't think anybody doesn't care about their health, right? I think that people are often impacted by other psychological, financial, et cetera, like situations that can stop them from taking as good care of themselves, like just being super busy, like, you know, like working 12 hours a day. How do you prioritize things? Like, it's, it's almost impossible, right? Yeah. Like, but for those people that you get a hold of, and not only have you given them a good launch, but you've given them good tools, now they can break it all down and make it make sense for themselves, and then when they need help, they won't be lost about how to go find more help either. Like, you know, you say to people, like, advocate for yourself. You know, most people don't know what that means, right, right? Like most Yeah, yeah. Most people assume I go to get my tires changed, I don't need to advocate that the guy puts the stem cap back on right? Like he should know how to do that. All of those situations like you just expect people to know, and you don't think I have to advocate for this. Like no one goes to a doctor thinking, I better make sure they do the right thing.
Brandon 52:56
I think the best way that I've learned like this was a my my pediatric endocrinologist made this a goal for me, like, learn how to advocate for yourself. And first I was like, what does that mean? But eventually, I kind of realized that it is getting as much knowledge as you can, arming yourself with that knowledge, and then feel free to question your doctors and your nurses right, challenge them in a respectful way, because maybe it'll help them think about whatever the problem is in a different way, in a different light. Just try something because they have a lot of patience and a lot of other things maybe going in their lives. So if you challenge that thought, you might break them out of that autopilot for a little bit and just kind of help you get the best care that you can
Scott Benner 53:43
have. But I'm saying that next step, like, say, You challenge a healthcare provider and they don't really know the answer, they could ball up and just play defense right. Their ego could get in the way. They could get embarrassed. They could just be like, Oh, you're a pain. Like, do you know, how many people I know have advocated for themselves, and in their chart, it says that they're problematic.
Brandon 54:05
Yeah, I hate when I hear nurses being like, Oh, this person's uncompliant. I'm like, yeah, they try other things. Or are they just talking and advocating for themselves? You know, exactly,
Scott Benner 54:16
like there's a difference between, hey, you need to take this pill at three, six and nine, and they don't do it, and you saying something incorrect to them and then pushing back, and they're not listening to me, right, right, right? That's a big difference. And so, you know, in the end, right? That's, that's just people like, you know, some people are gonna take that job and be right for it. Some people are gonna be a nurse and not be right for it. Some people might be very caring and human, but not very technically adept, or vice versa. You're not getting a robot, you know what I mean. So although, let me ask you about that, Brian, you're 20 years old, AI is doubling on itself. A. About every six months, right? Yeah, did you ever think I might have picked something that that might not be the same in my lifetime?
Brandon 55:08
I mean, I kind of hope it's not the same in my lifetime. Actually, this is interesting. Our school is very AI, I guess, and they actually encourage us to use it for, you know, not for cheating purposes, but for, like, prepping and stuff. So like, I've used it for, like, preparing for boarding, like the board exam, like I can just ask, Hey, make a question that the board exam would ask me about this problem, right? But in practice, I'm very excited for what it will look like in the next 2030, years, even when in the way that we can, like, save time, like aI listening to your conversation and recording it and auto charting it for you, saving me, like 10 minutes of that conversation, like I have to go chart that eventually. But if it just is auto charted, and I can just look through it and be like, yeah, that looks accurate to what we talked about, then I can move on to the next patient and just start doing that right? Or, I don't know, I did some research recently, or, like, helped participate in some research about, you know, delivering water and delivering messages through robots. And I thought that was really interesting and cool, because it takes more off of the nurses plate, so they can do other things as well. So I'm hoping in the future that AI does take parts of my job, because I want to be able to do the other parts of my job even
Scott Benner 56:27
better. Yeah, oh, see, this is exciting to me. I like, I like talking to somebody your age that's in your position right now. That's, that's really great, because I feel the same way, right? I mean, listen for those people like, I don't know, that sounds like something that's gonna like, you know, they're thinking Terminator when they hear it right now, I'm not saying it can't end up being that. I'm just saying, right, right. Okay, you're asking 20 year old Brandon to go to school and learn something and then learn a lot of things. And he's already telling you they don't really teach us much about type one diabetes, for example. There's also a lot of other things they're not teaching him about. Imagine that our lovely brand in here could learn everything, right? Everything, and that when you asked him a question, he just said the answer, and he knew it immediately. That's what you're talking about. When you're talking about AI, you're talking about a large language model that is trained only on the information that you want it to have, right? So you go get all the information in the world you need about nursing, and you put it into this model. You give people a prompt to ask a question that you could give it a voice prompt like, if none of you have yet downloaded the chat GPT app for your iPhone and just had a conversation with it about something, it's a great way to learn about what I'm talking about, right? And I mean a literal, out loud conversation, not even texting it, questions, like, because you realize you hear something and that makes you think something else. It's the way I interview people, right? Like you and I don't know each other. There's no notes here. Like, I'm not following a format. When I'm talking to you, you said something, it made me think something. I asked a question. Sometimes it leads to nothing, sometimes it leads to something. Sometimes I ask a person a question and I get back an answer on my car, and I guess I probably could have skipped that. Sometimes I get back. Oh, yeah, no, Scott, I am a little upset because my father used to beat me and blah, and then you go, like, you learn something from somebody, right? So you can do that with AI. So try to imagine that AI has all the current medical knowledge that we hold, and you get to ask it a question, hey, my fever is this? I felt like this over the last three days. Here's some background on me. I have type one diabetes, I have Hashimotos, I have acne, I have heavy periods. I This that, imagine you said it to that, and then five seconds later it came back and it said, Oh, you're probably anemic. Your blah, blah, blah needs to be stronger. This needs to happen. That that's information that, if you're lucky, you'll get out of your doctor over 18 months of visits every three months, if that doctor can hold all that stuff in their head about what's wrong with you, which they're not going to so you go to them in June and you just mention, my periods have been heavy. That's it. You that You say that right when you come back three months later, they don't remember that like they don't. But you might say the next piece that, along with the heavy periods, would lead them to go, oh, this plus this is that that's not going to happen for you, unless you're lucky, unless you're advocating, and you get a great doctor, and you get lucky and you look into it, and blah, blah, blah, otherwise, imagine if you just kept saying that to an AI, and one day it just spit back to you, like, here's all the things you've said to me. Here are the things I think we should look into. Take that to a doctor,
Brandon 59:42
right? And then you just think about the situation you talked about at the beginning of our conversation. Like, what does this medication do? Or, like, how long does it take for it to do its thing right? It just be like, Yeah, three days, whatever it is, right? And you don't have to rely on that. I mean, I don't. Remember all of that stuff, man, like she I'll try my best. I'll probably have to go look it up after you ask me. I'll be like, All right, let me go quickly, look at my encyclopedia of drugs and just be like, okay, yep, I remember it
Scott Benner 1:00:11
now. This wasn't a bad person. And for clarity, I said Arden was getting an IV steroid. And I said, How long do you think it's going to take for her her blood sugar, because I was thinking, because we need to, like, we're going to ramp up her, her basal and get ahead of it. And she goes three days. And I was like, Okay, thank you. And then she walked 24 hours, by the way. Then my human nature jumped in. I was like, this lady, don't know what she's talking about. What she was probably thinking was like, how soon until she's getting maybe, I don't know what she was thinking. It doesn't even matter, right? Like, but she did not understand type one diabetes well enough to know that what I meant was, How long until this makes her blood sugar higher. I assumed she'd understand that, and then when she didn't, I got gruff about it, like, not outwardly, but in my head, I was like, All right, well, I gotta talk to her anymore about stuff like this, right? Like this, right, right. Here's the thing I haven't shared yet. Is that a half an hour before Arden and I left for the hospital, I did two things. I spoke to her physician, because I said, this looks like it's becoming emergent. I don't know that we should be waiting until tomorrow, right? And I so I spoke on the phone to her physician, who said, I agree with you. I think you should go to the hospital. I was like, Okay. And then I spent, I'm gonna tell you, four minutes while Arden was upstairs, getting her charger and putting on more comfortable clothing to go to the hospital with, and all that stuff, I spent four minutes on my phone explaining to chat GPT what had been going on with Arden for the last week and a half. And then I asked it what to expect when I got to the hospital and Brandon, I am not lying to you. I know we got a good NP that night, because everything she did was literally what chat GPT said she was going to do. And in the order that she did it is the order it gave it back to it had,
Brandon 1:02:01
that's crazy. I mean, not, not too crazy, though, because it makes sense, like we follow procedures,
Scott Benner 1:02:07
yeah, because that lady learned from procedures, and so did chat GPT, right? I knew I had a good person standing in front of me, because she was recalling what she was taught in almost a robotic way. So I was like, All right, she knows what she's doing. So I got comfortable, like, I'm gonna listen to her. Then we got to a point in the evening, I'm going to tell you it was at 230 in the morning. Oh my where she wanted to keep Arden overnight to get another round of IV antibiotics. And I did not want that to happen, but I also wanted to make sure that it wasn't medically necessary. So while she was gone, I asked all of my questions to chat GPT to find out what her concerns might be. And then when she came back, I said to her, can you tell me why you're asking her to stay the night? What is your real concern? Because we can go pick up more antibiotics in the morning orally, and keep going like she's got the IV infusion of it. It's gonna last until midday tomorrow. You're gonna, right? You're gonna tell me to get up, go to the pharmacy, take get this Med, start taking it. That's what you're gonna tell me, right? And she said, Yes. And I said, Okay, why does she need to get it by an IV one more time? I'm like, what are you really worried about? Now I already knew what she was really worried about, because the computer told me okay, but also because I had my own intuition about what it was. But I didn't lead her to the answer. I let her tell me what she thought she was worried about, obstruction. I see okay, because Arden's tonsils were overlapping.
Brandon 1:03:42
Yep, like that makes sense. So what? Airway obstruction?
Scott Benner 1:03:45
Yes. Okay, so she said, I'm worried about airway obstruction. I said, Okay, I thought that might be what you're saying. So this has nothing to do with the antibiotics or clearing up what's going on. She goes, No. I said, well, she's been like this for seven days. This is exactly what I said. She's been like this for seven days, and she's not dead yet, so I assume this is going to be okay. And I do also think that the broad spectrum antibiotics you hit her with are going to work pretty quickly, because Arden had already tried two different antibiotics the week before that didn't touch her problem. I said, do you agree with that? And she said, Yes. And I said, Okay, if I promise to take her to an ENT tomorrow. If there's any problems, do you have any trouble with her leaving? And she said, Nope, that sounds good. I didn't push her into it. I wasn't being difficult, right? She and I together got to a comfortable decision that I was only able to really get to because I used AI to find out what it was she
Brandon 1:04:38
was thinking, Yeah, and you respectfully challenged her, right?
Scott Benner 1:04:41
And I checked myself too, with AI, like, if I thought something, like, I at one point, I said to it, I'd like to take her home, but I don't want to cause a medical emergency. Like, what are all the reasons why I wouldn't want to take her home right now? Like, so I knew before I anyway, like, I'm just telling you, like, that's a. Long way to say, I think there's going to be a time in the very near future where you're going to be recorded while you're talking to your patients, I hope so, everything you're saying and everything they're saying, and then you're going to go back to a screen or a terminal, and it's already going to tell you what you should be thinking about. Yep, yeah.
Brandon 1:05:21
And, I mean, to be fair, like there are some limitations, and we we explored that, like one of our professors wanted us to explore what the limitations are right now, but that's right now, and who's, who's to say in a few years that those limitations are going to be gone, and we don't have to worry about them as much.
Scott Benner 1:05:39
Listen half the people listening to this, not half of them, but a lot of people listening to this right now are probably living with undiagnosed something right like hypothyroidism or anemia or low vitamin D or any number of things. It's really genuinely, meaningfully impacting your health and happiness. And you are just saying things to yourself like, well, I'm older now. I get you know I was I was, I was going to gain weight, I got older, I was going to be more tired. This happened to me. I have diabetes. That makes sense. That's not true. I put up an episode last week. It's just with this girl. She's like, in her mid 20s, and she's a little on her own. You know what I mean? Like, she doesn't really have very helpful parents. She's got a number of different medical issues, and they're not being addressed. It took me a half an hour of talking to her. I was like, Hey, I think you're anemic. Hey, I think you have this. Are you being treated for your thyroid situation? Oh, they said it wasn't bad enough. Oh, what the does that mean? Right? You have all these thyroid symptoms. They're not giving you the medication. She goes, No, they said it's not bad enough. I'm like, Is your hair falling out? Are you tired all the time? Are you lethargic? Do you feel depressed? She's like, yes, yes, yes, yes. I'm like, seems bad to me over Hey, I've even done that in episodes where I've sat down with somebody and just said, Tell me everything that's wrong with you. We just beat it into an AI model, and it comes back. And I'm like, here, like, take that to your doctor. Like, you know what? I mean, it's just, I get very frustrated by it. But of course, I think it's because I have a lot of conversations people who are generally speaking in that situation. But anyway, you all got to get out of your own way and just do what's going to help people, and not do what you think is going to save your job or your but I mean, that's what we're going to run into, is that they're going to be people fighting against this stuff, tooth and nail, some for very good reasons, and I'm not unaware of those reasons, by the way, what's the great example? Like, if you told a robot, like, make as many paper clips as you can, don't let anything stand in your way. Like, what happens when, like, they run out of metal and they don't know to stop, and they start, you know, rip their robots rip down the buildings to melt the I beams, to make more paper clips, like that, like like that. All needs to be worked out, obviously. And there are going to be plenty of people Brandon who are going to use this stuff in a nefarious way, right? Yeah, you're going
Brandon 1:07:53
to get, I mean, like, it's like, I said, you put the nurses at the beginning. There's a few bad apples in every profession, right? It happens.
Scott Benner 1:07:59
Yeah. I'm just telling you, like, try to imagine a world where you sit down in front of your computer, explain how you feel, and before you even reach a clinician, you know what's wrong, and you can then send it to them and let them re evaluate it. Now you've got human eyes on it, right and and, boom, you're to your answer right away, Yep,
Brandon 1:08:21
yeah, I agree. I will have to put one caveat in here, please, for right now, please do not be Dr Google and like, fight against your healthcare professionals like hell because you found something online that said XYZ, yes, it's good to respectfully challenge them, like Scott was talking about in his example, be like, hey, question. I'm gonna ask this question, I'm gonna ask this question, and I'm gonna state My reasoning for why I'm thinking this. But don't be like, Well, Google said this. So this is true. They are still. They have gone through hundreds of 1000s of hours of medical training and experience. They we do know what we're talking about most of the time. There's just, like, some small things. So please be respectful to your healthcare workers. Thank you. Yeah,
Scott Benner 1:09:07
there's a ton of things you might not know to ask, right? So if you don't know to ask, you're not going to get the answer back and listen. Also, many of you are going to go to awesome doctors and nurses, like, absolutely awesome. But that's not why the conversation needs to happen. The conversation needs to happen because a you don't know which is which Right. Like, if I go to a doctor, my expectation is they're a great doctor. If they're not, how do I know that right? That's good. That's a good question. How do I know I'm not getting the care I should like? If I if there are two people in front of me, like a game show, and I picked the left door, not the right door, and I would have got a better answer in the right door. I'm never gonna know, because the doctor in the left door is gonna go, oh, Brandon, here's your problem, yeah, and here's what we're gonna do. And blah, blah, blah. And six months later, you're like, still, like, hey man, my ass is still dragging, you know what I mean? Like, I don't like, you're not even gonna think maybe the guy sent me the wrong way. Like, maybe. Maybe she didn't know what she was talking about. Like, that's not it. Here's a big picture answer to my question. Generally speaking, how many visits to a doctor does it take to get an answer? Everyday acute issues like strep throat, UTIs and ankle sprains, one visit, sometimes two if you need tests, okay, new but common, chronic conditions like high blood pressure, type two diabetes, thyroid troubles, takes one to two visits tough to sort out problems that need a specialist, like an autoimmune issue or a migraine, for example, can take between three and five encounters with a doctor to come to some sort of an answer. Rare Diseases seven different physicians over a five year average.
Brandon 1:10:43
Okay, yeah, yeah, that's what. That's a long time. Yeah, that's a long time. And no one should have to wait that long.
Scott Benner 1:10:49
You're living your life while that's happening, right? That's my point. My point is that the quicker you can get to it, the quicker you can hopefully get back to your life, or get an answer, or, you know, whatever ends whatever's gonna happen next. And this is not because doctors are bad people. This is just again. This is the limits of humans like and the system and insurance and healthcare in general and all that stuff. I'm gonna ask you one last question. I'll let you go. All right, sounds good. You seem like a really decent guy. Thank you. And the way the system is set No, you're welcome. And the way the system's set up is you're basically working for a bank that sells band aids. How do you reconcile that the healthcare system is not perfect? And I think probably everybody listening recognizes that even the medical professionals, right? We realize it's not a perfect system, and the only real way that we can try to change it is by trying to get ahead of things, like the upstream approach, or has a lot of different names. So trying to get ahead of things and trying to shift our healthcare system instead of treating symptoms, you know, finding the root cause of a problem and treating that ahead of time. And that's kind of a goal that I have as well. It's just trying to, like, help people before it becomes an issue, so that they can live their lives to the best of their ability. Brand, you did not answer my question. Oh, I'm so sorry. Don't be sorry. What I'm saying is, that hospitals are, generally speaking, owned by major conglomerates. They you know, if you look at, if you look at most big businesses, they don't the thing they make their money with is not the thing they are. They usually are lending money, or they have a lot of money, and they and they make that money by selling health care, and but you're the person who's like, I'm trying to help people like that and not that, maybe we're not all in that situation. I mean, honestly, I think if you stop and think about it, we're probably all in that situation to one degree or another. When you are such a like heart first person like, what do you think is going to be your first feeling when you realize you have to order a test that you think isn't necessary, because the diagnosis allows it, and we're allowed to bill for it, so we're going to do it. Yeah,
Brandon 1:13:06
it's going to suck. Like, I know I'm going to have to probably do things like that that I'm not wanting to do, per se, or that is not necessary. I guess at the end of the day, I'm just living my life. You know, I got to earn my paycheck, and I also got to take care of my patients, and whether or not I'm ordering, you know, an extra test or whatever else, I'm still trying my best to help them in any way that I can. And so maybe it's not ideal, not maybe it isn't ideal to be, you know, working for the system. That's not really working for us, but I'm just going to try my best to do what I can
Scott Benner 1:13:47
good answer, and I think it's a very reasonable answer too. I also think you might turn into one of those guys who like slowly closes his eyes and nods his head no while he's saying something, once in a while you need a test from don't do it. Say no and I don't think there's anybody not in that situation, right? Like, if you're working at the Apple Store, you know, 17 rows down the line from you as a kid in a mine, digging up minerals for batteries somewhere. Like, you know what I mean? Like, there's everybody's gonna get caught in that to some degree or another. But it just, it's very in your face, because people are so aware that they feel like they're being ripped off when they're involved in their healthcare. You're a good dude, and I really appreciate this conversation, and I think from all of us, we're super happy you're gonna be out there trying to help people with diabetes. So thank you very much.
Brandon 1:14:36
Yeah, thank you. Thank you for the talk. I had a great time. I'm definitely a lot more comfortable than I was at
Scott Benner 1:14:41
the beginning. All right, man, hold on a second. A huge thanks to my longest sponsor, Omnipod. Check out the Omnipod five now with my link, omnipod.com/g Box, you may be eligible for a free starter kit, a free Omnipod five starter kit at my link, go check it out. Omnipod.com/juicebox Terms and Conditions apply. Full terms and conditions can be found at omnipod.com/juicebox Are you tired of getting a rash from your CGM adhesive. Give the ever since 365 a try, ever since cgm.com/juicebox beautiful silicon that they use it changes every day. Keeps it fresh. Not only that, you only have to change the sensor once a year. So I mean, that's better. A huge thanks to us, med for sponsoring this episode of The Juicebox podcast. Don't forget us, med.com/juicebox This is where we get our diabetes supplies from. You can as well, use the link or call 888-721-1514, use the link or call the number get your free benefits check so that you can start getting your diabetes supplies the way we do from us met. 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. You
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#1597 Advice for T1 Parents from T1 Adults - Part 2
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Adults living with type 1 diabetes (from the podcast's private Facebook group) share their thoughts with type 1 parents.
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DISCLAIMER: This text is the output of AI based transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors and should not be treated as an authoritative record. Nothing that you read here constitutes advice medical or otherwise. Always consult with a healthcare professional before making changes to a healthcare plan.
Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends and welcome back to another episode of The Juicebox podcast.
If you're looking to meet other people living with type one diabetes, head over to Juicebox podcast.com/juice. Cruise. Because next June, that's right, 2026 June, 21 the second juice Cruise is happening on the celebrity beyond cruise ship. It's a seven night trip going to the Caribbean. We're gonna be visiting Miami Coke, okay? St, Thomas and st, Kitts, the Virgin Islands, you're gonna love the Virgin Islands. Sail with Scott and the Juicebox community on a week long voyage built for people and families living with type one diabetes. Enjoy tropical luxury, practical education and judgment, free atmosphere. Perfect day at Coco Bay. St, Kitts, st, Thomas five interactive workshops with me and surprise guests on type one, hacks and tech, mental health, mindfulness, nutrition, exercise, personal growth and professional development, support groups and wellness discussions tailored for life with type one and celebrities, world class amenities, dining and entertainment. This is open from every age you know, newborn to 99 I don't care how old you are. Come out. Check us out. You can view state rooms and prices at Juicebox podcast.com/juice. Cruise. The last juice cruise just happened a couple weeks ago. 100 of you came. It was awesome. We're looking to make it even bigger this year. Hope you can check it out. Please don't forget that nothing you hear on the Juicebox podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan or becoming bold with insulin. Every once in a while, I see a post on the private Facebook group for the Juicebox podcast that makes me feel like I wish everyone could see this, and today that happened, so I'm going to give you a ton of highlights from that post. Don't worry, I'll get through it quickly. I know Scott reads you the internet might not be your favorite thing, but trust me, this is valuable. The original poster asks for adults who were diagnosed as children to answer a couple of questions, is there something you appreciated that your parents did to help you as a child? Is there something your parents didn't do that you wish they had done? And so far, I'm seeing in under two hours, 86 replies. I don't know if I'm gonna read you all 86 of them, but maybe, who knows? Let's see, my parents involved me in my own care very early. They let me be a kid, but they also understood that this disease was lifelong, and in order for me to understand it as best as I can, it was best for me to get involved. I'm glad they did that for me. They never pressured me or anything, but they did a good job being honest with me about the disease and the care and letting me take part in it. They also taught me it's okay to say no to food. Sometimes, I think a lot of people, especially in the US, have horrendous relationships with food, and they feel like they need what they want, and they want all the damn time, and then sometimes wonder why their diabetes is hard to control. Sometimes they told me no, and I'm glad they did, because now I can say no to certain foods in certain situations easily, and it doesn't phase me at all. It's just food and it will still be there later or tomorrow. And I'm grateful for all of this. Thank you. Next one. I was diagnosed at 13 in 1995 the only thing my parents did immediately after diagnosis, like while we were in the hospital, was learn to do my injections, because I refused. I was so thankful to them for taking that off my plate. My mom sent me to diabetes camp my first summer with diabetes. At the time, I was terrified and I did not want to go, but I'm glad I did. I learned so much the first day, including having reverse peer pressure to do my own injections. I saw a six year old doing their own shots, and I felt like I should know how to do it as well, so I just did it. I attended the same camp Clara Barton and I'm still friends with a handful of girls I met the very first summer. This person goes on to say my parents were hands off other than the shots, and I didn't know I had a choice about it. In their heads, diabetes was my thing. I'd have to live with so it was better for me to figure it out while under their roof instead of after I had moved out. Did it make me take a lot of responsibility at a younger age, it did, but it also made me incredibly confident in myself and my ability to take care of myself. It taught me advocacy and adaptability and that I can lean on others when and if I need to. Isn't that awesome? She goes on to say, My parents always allowed me to be the final say. And my decisions in my care. Did I want to go on a pump, stay on shots, try new insulin? I did a lot of my own research and discussed it with them, but at the end of the day, my decision to this day, 30 years later, my mom still celebrates my diagnosis day with a card and a little note about how proud she is of me. Some years have been more difficult than others, so her little notes of encouragement and showing me that she sees me and how hard I work. That was lovely. Made me emotional. Thank you for sharing that. Let's see. Wow, this is a great post. You have some awesome insight on a bigger picture. I'm 37 and have lived with type one diabetes for 32 years. My parents did a great job, even before Dexcom and pumps of never letting me use my diabetes as an excuse to not to do something through adulthood. I've always had that mindset. It may take more prep, but I've been able to do things that I've wanted to do. I hated that they restricted food. Learned to Bolus for tough foods together, so they'll have the knowledge to do so without you and talk about alcohol and drinking effects on your glucose. So I'm an ICU nurse, and I can't tell you how many patients I've treated that could have avoided a hospital stay with that knowledge. Another great insight. I was diagnosed at 13. I'm now 39 so this might be different for those of you who have younger kids, but my mom had me get involved right away, gave myself my first shot, checked my blood sugar all the time. She was right there. Knew how to do everything, knew what questions to ask, but she wanted me to be as independent, responsible for my care as possible. Person goes on to say, I felt ownership over myself and what was happening to me. I didn't feel like the doctors or my mom were telling me what to do, and without her stepping back and letting me handle it at 13, I would have felt like I was just another thing I had to do, or that my parents were telling me to do. And I have talked to her about this since becoming an adult, and she said it was really hard, especially in the beginning, to not just do everything for me, because that is an instinct of a parent, to protect your kid at all costs, to make things easier for them, but she knew it was going to be the right thing for me, having something medically wrong with you, you can feel so out of control, and it's very easy to not feel autonomy over your body. So having the tools to feel as in control as I could was so important if I needed her. My mom was there. She was at every appointment. She knew how to do everything. She goes on to say that back in the day, we used to have to eat at certain times of the day because of how the insulin worked. So I had to eat my breakfast at 8am I used to babysit late nights, and my mom would make me breakfast and bring my glucometer insulin to my room, wake me up to do everything. I would eat and go back to sleep.
She was my support, even though she wasn't the one doing it all. That's another one. I'm gonna cry making this damn episode 45 years type one, diagnosed at six, also the parent of a type one, teaching me to be independent and able to advocate for myself is the best thing my parents did for me and that I'm doing for my daughter, let them live and learn and be there to support them when they make a wrong choice, but don't make them feel bad, because in time, they will figure it out on their own. It was a long time ago for me. There wasn't any technology, but what helped was that my mom included me in decisions, not that I made the decisions, but that she would work through the food counting and the insulin amounts with me. She also kept a journal of food insulin and just as importantly, how I felt, be it cranky, drowsy, sick, or whatever. We didn't have a CGM or even finger sticks when we started out in 75 so connecting how I felt with the BG was important. This person has had diabetes for 50 years and still carries an A 1c of five, seven, and they say knock wood. No complications yet. I was diagnosed at five, and one of the best things my parents did was to let me figure things out with them. It's another one saying the same thing. I was only a child, and I was fairly bad at being a child. Even at five, I was fairly bad at being a child. I don't know what that means. It's funny, even at five. So I wanted to learn and manage and treat my own hypos, inject myself and etc. I had been at school for six months and thought I knew everything. My mom was also not an alarmist, and treated my diagnosis with calmness and a lack of fuss, as did her parents. My father is a little more alarmist, but he did a good job of masking it. However, his side of the family were quite hopeless. They irritated me profoundly with their random fussing. My mom also told me that a lot of adults are a bit stupid and had learned incorrect things about diabetes, and I might have to put up with this for a while. No, it's awesome. She taught me to swear in lieu of lollies and chocolate. This was a bit fabulous, because I had a thing that other kids didn't even if I couldn't eat the same treats they did. It was in the 70s, and the diet was quite restrictive. She says, I now swear and eat chocolate and maintain a very tidy HBA 1c and A time and range. I also have. Good mental and physical health. The absolute best thing that happened in my early type one years was that at my friend's sixth birthday party, my mom and I had worked out some good options for me to eat, but Caro, my mom's friend, quietly told me that all the jell orange quarters were sugar free and that I could go mad if I wanted to. I nearly cried with relief. I had already taken on a lot of responsibility. It was my choice, and I was doing my best to get things right, but Kara had just made my job so much easier. That's awesome. You guys are really sharing. This is lovely. Hold on. I see this person has a slightly different perspective, very interesting. Ready? I've always had the mentality that if I was going to have to do this for the rest of my life on my own, I might as well get as much help as I can while I was living under my parents roof, I will say I didn't get as zoned in on my diabetes care until I was like 23 when I started to see small but reversible complications. My a 1c has always hovered around seven and a half to 8.2 for 20 years, and I'm still trying to get it lower. My suggestion is to ask your kid what they need from you. Show them this group and put the podcast on when they're around. If they are still young enough, send them to camp, if they're old enough to take on some responsibility, let them or make them, but don't ever be mad at them for a mistake they do with diabetes. They are already feeling the mistake and the consequences before you realize it be caring and annoying. She laughs. Remind them to Bolus, remind them to check blood sugar. I grew up with just the basic pump and finger sticks, so there was a lot of nagging, but I really don't mind. They never restricted food. There's a dosage for every food, and we were capable of eating it. Now, healthy food options should be taught to everybody. Just being type ones can eat whatever they want. That doesn't mean that they should eat the things that people think they shouldn't all the time. Moderation and proper nutrition education is key. Protein and fat is a must. Intermittent fasting has helped my insulin uses go down. My blood sugar leveled out, and the average time and range has now gone from 10 to 60% over three months. That's awesome. Good luck to you and your kid. I appreciated that my parents never restricted what I ate. I was always told I can eat whatever. I just need to give insulin for it. As a young girl, I think that helped my entire childhood not revolve around food, counting carbs, sugars may be high sometimes as part of the disease, we don't always need to be perfect. I wasn't diagnosed until I was 14, and now I'm 46 my parents made me do it from the beginning. My mom was a nurse. She knew the basics, but I did my own injections, glucose testing, et cetera. One thing that both my parents did that helped me was they immediately switched to drinking water and diet soda. They let me be a normal teen. I played sports. I went to France in the summer after my senior year, I went out with my friends. I worked all summer long, and I know they worried, but their worry didn't get so bad. They didn't allow me to do stuff. We still ate cake on my birthday and had pizza on Friday nights. Type one here for 20 years when I was diagnosed in my teens. Looking back, I will always be grateful that my parents taught me from diagnosis that my care was my responsibility. They were there every step of the way, every appointment, etc. Because of this, I am so much more involved, invested, versatile, responsible, accountable, proactive, grounded and humble in my care. For example, should my insulin pump break down, I am able to easily get back to being MDI, the internet and all the conveniences of tech go away. I know the fundamentals of bolusing and carb ratios, corrections, etc. My parents did not micromanage me, or at least I don't think they did. This person says that all families are different, but I think my advice might be to let go a bit and let the child learn. I understand that can't be done for a very young child, a toddler or baby, etc. And every person is different. Some are definitely more independent than others, but I guess once a child gets the grasp and the understanding of what to do. You have to let go a little bit. This person was diagnosed in 1983 someone posted episode 392 advice for type one parents from type one adults. So this is an update to that episode. If you want to go listen to that one as well. I am totally for this, because I feel like I'm ruining my kid. This person says, just diagnosed two months ago. Probably just normal parent guilt, but it's on a whole other level. I'm glad to be hearing from other adults with firsthand type one perspective. Look, they get some support here. You're not ruining your child just by caring and posting. This shows you're an amazing parent. I agree. I wish mine would have sought help for their fear and anxiety surrounding me. It took years of therapy as an adult to stop feeling like a problem. Oh, I've been waiting 62 years to be asked this question. Well, then this is going to be hell of an answer. I think my answer is that my parents were great. It's just that I realized that things look different from my perspective, and I wasn't sure my folks knew that i. I hope that makes sense, my parents encouraged my independence so that I was able to take charge of myself at a fairly young age. At the same time, they would quietly pitch in on tasks that I had trouble with until I didn't. They made sure I never felt like an object of pity. I know my diagnosis was much harder on them than it was on me, but they managed to set a positive tone and live by it. It was basically a normal kid like life, but with hard candy in my pocket, and I think they sent me to camp. It must have been easier back then fewer tasks and benchmarks. Okay, this person says diagnosed in 87 at age nine. From the get go, I was taught how to manage, how to draw up insulin, measure, food, etc, what portions looked like for situations when I wasn't at home, how to treat it low. My parents gave me agency over my own body and over my diabetes. They never made a big deal about it. I was never told I couldn't do something. Never denied a sleepover or a party or a hot dog at school. I didn't miss school for lows or highs. I had no accommodations unless I was actively experiencing a Hypo. I am so glad my mom never said she wished it was her instead of me. She actually became a type one at age 50, many years after my diagnosis, and I never thought to myself, Oh, now she'll understand what does that success look like for me. Now I have three adult kids a degree, no complications yet, no diabetes, anxiety, nothing I see as a true impediment to getting the life I want. I don't pray for a cure. I have never once felt sorry for myself or asked why me. I am deeply, deeply grateful that my parents gave me the gift of independence. This person jumped in because I commented about an hour into this, and I said, I'm going to make an episode out of this post. And a person said, Oh, I think that's amazing. I'm the parent of a 10 year old daughter diagnosed in 2024
I'm also a nurse practitioner, and it is amazing what I didn't know and how much I've learned in the last eight months. My biggest struggle is preventing the prevention of resentment. Because of our daily battles, I want my daughter to feel like a normal kid, yet she often resists what that means fixing highs, late pod changes, etc. I read a post by a member months ago that said she resented her parents for all the pressure they put on her and the control and the constant nagging, I don't know how to find that happy medium. I don't either. That's why we just talk about it. I'm struggling, and I feel like I'm drowning at times. I take on complete management myself. My husband doesn't do anything. It's 24/7 as we all know, but I want her to feel as little stress as possible while being as independent as she wants to be with their own management. I love advice on helping to decrease the resentment and how to foster the trust and care and relationship without causing a strain as the age. I'm including that here because that's the middle right. Like you know, you can hear from all the people that you know can look back in the rear view mirror and say, here's what my parents did, and it really worked for me. There are just as many people whose parents did that and it didn't work for them. There are just as many people who were more involved, and, you know, did things longer, like there's no one size fits all answer for this, some kids will respond well to what you've heard. Some won't. My mom would tell you that she tried really hard, and I wouldn't listen to her. It was not until I found a reason to be responsible for my health that I started to care. You can lead a horse to water. I hope I can be a cautionary tale for kids now, but they really need to find their own path and a reason to care. I was diagnosed at 14. So I was very independent. From the beginning, my parents learned about how to give shots, but never gave me any, not that I wanted them to. They were with me at all my classes. Learned the basics, but after that, probably the first year, they didn't keep up. I've always been doing this myself. It is definitely not their fault, because the doctors always told them that I was doing great. I really wasn't doing that well, I had an A, 1c in the eights, and I never asked for help. I wish they would have taken more time to learn about how to help me, not lecturing me, because I definitely wouldn't have listened, or just time to keep up with the technology so that I had someone to lean on if I needed it. That being said, they have been my biggest supporters since my diagnosis and after the initial fear of low blood sugars, they never bug me about numbers. If I would have asked for help, they would have tried their best and still would. So basically, even if your kid is easy in quotes and does everything themselves, you should still learn about management and how to live with diabetes. They might not appreciate it in the moment, but they will later. I love this post as a type one adult. I appreciate your curiosity and willingness to listen to those living with the disease. I'm so glad this is going to be an episode Me, too. I was diagnosed at 50. Mean and loved being independent. I would have absolutely despised having my parents on my back about my diabetes, even when they would make comments I would get frustrated. But the key problem was they weren't educated about it. They didn't really try to learn the disease and the nuances of it. They just knew sugar equals insulin, low sugar equaled eat. That's what they know. Maybe they had been more educated and approached from the viewpoint, I might have been more open to it say that the other downside to them not being educated was that I wasn't given opportunities to become educated. I struggled with my sugars until I became an adult and took charge of my own. All this to say, I think there's a bit of resentment when you have an older child who craves independence and already feels pulled down by their diagnosis in their life, and they have a parent who is breathing down their shirt. But there's also a blessing in having a parent who cares enough to learn with you. I think there are so many gray areas, and you really need to know your child best. Take their cues when they're ready to be more independent, let them let them make small mistakes, let them become educated. Let them learn their body cues and when they're ready, let them go on and do the things on their own. They won't live with you forever. And a well educated diabetic is more important than a well educated parent. I was diagnosed in 1994 at age 16, but because my mother and grandmother both had type one, I grew up surrounded by it, and my parents worked with diabetes educators to help me get dialed in. I took over most of the management fairly early, because I knew it would be necessary if I wanted to go to college. I have a weird experience with this. I wasn't type one as a child. I was diagnosed in my late 20s, but I was raised by a parent with type one. It wasn't intentional, but it taught me a lot about how I wanted to manage and how intentional I am about handling burnout and stress related to diabetes. He faced a lot of different challenges than I did due to available technology, so his options were limited, but his relationship with diabetes and the complications and outcomes he's experiencing really impacted how I handle diabetes for myself, we have a pretty open relationship, but he's always been fairly closed lipped about his diabetes, and sometimes I wonder how different his relationship with diabetes would have been if he had a social support structure like we have now, with social media and outreach programs. I was three, and I can actually remember my first time my mom and dad held me down to give me my first needle. It was horrific, but if they hadn't, I've kept going, I wouldn't be here. My mom gave up her life to give me mine, and I am ever so grateful. Once I started doing it myself, I really understood all the anxiety and worry over something you can't always control, and respected her more for it. It is a hard and tiring job, and when you've got a healthy support system, it makes it a little easier and a little more fun. Type one for 33 years, diagnosed at 12. It was hard, and I felt alone and hated so much. My mom helped me, but still, to this day, doesn't understand the things I felt, but I'll say that I wish my mom helped me longer. It was learning for all of us at first, but after a year, I was left to do it on my own. I'll also say I've been married for 23 years, and my husband may not feel what I feel, but he has helped me since the first day we were together, and he helps me not give up and not feel alone. This person says I am sending lots and lots of love to everybody. I'm 57 and a type one since my teens. I think it's wonderful to have both perspectives. I am 100% complication free. I love telling that to people to confront them, but I can't claim to have been diagnosed as a young child. And the most surprising thing about this group is the level of regret and guilt parents feel. I'm a mother of four, and I understand those feelings would be completely normal. I just never considered how my own parents felt at my diagnosis. Personally, I would say, understanding the physical side of things, being tolerant of lows and out of range, because I don't always feel fantastic, but don't change your goals for your kids because of this disease. They are still strong, beautiful, capable people. I don't ever want anyone's pity, understanding. But understanding is awesome, though. I believe that we all need to find a way to do everything with diabetes that's been my life. How can I do this? I haven't missed out on a thing, and I'm a kinder, more compassionate person because of type one. That's very nice. Type one adult diagnosed at 12. I appreciate that. My parents let me be my very independent self. I gave myself my shots, calculated my carbs, did my math, check my sugar. I was older than a lot of the kids that I see here in the group sometimes, but I didn't have any restrictions on food either. One thing I did not appreciate was being treated differently. I wasn't allowed to go to friends houses for sleepovers or after school events very often because my parents worried about me. It is possible that it's different now, since they have Dexcom and follow apps, but when I was diagnosed, that was not a thing. I also wish my parents would have advocated for newer technology. I feel like they just went with it and so. Pump, and that was it. I had the same one for 10 years before I got my own insurance. I've only had a Dexcom for the last four or five years, and I just feel like the advocacy was not present enough. I was diagnosed at 12 in the 80s. I took the bus to my diabetic clinic myself, dosed myself alone in our bathroom, and never knew what was going to be on the plate for dinner. School. Teachers did not know I had diabetes. I managed all my lows, bought all my low snacks. There was no glucagon. That's what was going on at the time. My mom let me handle it,
but she was there when I asked for help, which was few and far between. I was nine at diagnosis. To be fair, she was a teenage mom with two young kids who lost her husband at a young age, so I was pretty independent from the get go. I don't know if mentally, it was something she could have dealt with at the time if she had to manage it all, she was an emotional mess. When I was discharged from the hospital, I knew how and when to check my blood sugar, give injections which insulin I needed for what I could carb count fairly well, and had a notebook paper cheat sheet I kept with me in my insulin case until I memorized the carbs that I ate most. I knew what to do on sick days and that it was my responsibility and decisions that would make or break my outcomes. No one could do it for me. She let me yell and scream and be mad, but also confided in her about being scared and feeling different. Though no one treated me any different than any other kid, because I wouldn't let them my diabetes was never allowed to be an excuse, to be honest, the only thing my diabetes ever held me back from was a career in the military because I couldn't pass the health check. I wish she didn't worry as much as she did, but it's in her nature. I didn't understand that until I had my own kids. So my advice, they can handle what you let them, but you have to give them a chance. Don't let their life or yours be dictated by this disease. This person says, Thank you so much for sharing your stories. I have tears rolling down my face reading your thoughts and experiences. As a parent of a newly diagnosed type one who's 13 years old, I promise to carry you all with me in support and try to guide him. Thank you through the original poster for this thread, I hope it's just as meaningful to others as it is to me. Diagnosed as a teen, my parents loved me, supported me, and attended diabetes education classes with me, but they let me handle my diabetes on my own. This set me up for success in college and beyond. The other things parents did right? I wanted to go to diabetes camp, but we couldn't afford to, so my mom found a scholarship through Lions Club, going to diabetes camp as a teen, soon after diagnosis, changed the trajectory of my life and helped me in so many ways. Yes, there are some risks associated with sending kids to diabetes camp. For me, the benefits were immense, and now I have lifelong diet buddies. Okay, well, I've gotten to the end of the 96 comments, but I will now refresh it and see what else there is before I stop. That's just been good. You guys are smart. I'm proud of this group. Let's see. Maybe this is the end. Yep, that's it. I made it. So in three hours, 96 people commented. Other conversations broke out. I think I read you pretty much everything. It's been a half an hour, as Scott reads the internet, that's probably enough, right? Going to take all of the information in this post and find a way to turn it into a blog post. So check for that at Juicebox podcast.com We'll call it a companion to the episode. You'll find it. Thank you so much for listening to me read the Internet. I'll be back soon with another episode of The Juicebox podcast. You
and don't forget, if you enjoyed this episode, there is another episode that was made years ago on the same topic. It might be interesting to hear that one as well. It's episode 392, called advice for type one parents from type one adults, I think I'm just going to call this one advice for type one. Parents from type one adults. Part two, not the most imaginative, but not bad either. I might find a way to combine all these into that blog post I was talking about too. If you're looking for community around type one diabetes, check out the Juicebox podcast, private Facebook group Juicebox podcast type one diabetes. But everybody is welcome type one type two gestational loved ones. It doesn't matter to me, if you're impacted by diabetes and you're looking for support, comfort or community, check out Juicebox podcast type one diabetes. Diabetes on Facebook. If you or a loved one is newly diagnosed with type one diabetes and you're seeking a clear, practical perspective, check out the bold beginning series on the Juicebox podcast. It's hosted by myself and Jenny Smith, an experienced diabetes educator with over 35 years of personal insight into type one our series cuts through the medical jargon and delivers straightforward answers to your most pressing questions. You'll gain insight from real patients and caregivers and find practical advice to help you confidently navigate life with type one, you can start your journey informed and empowered with the Juicebox podcast, the bold beginning series and all of the collections in the Juicebox podcast are available in your audio app and@juiceboxpodcast.com in the menu, the episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording, wrong wayrecording.com,
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#1596 Hot As Balls
You can always listen to the Juicebox Podcast here but the cool kids use: Apple Podcasts/iOS - Spotify - Amazon Music - Google Play/Android - iHeart Radio - Radio Public, Amazon Alexa or wherever they get audio.
Nicole from Perth shares her 25-year type 1 diabetes journey — from pancreatitis at 13 to DKA, loss, GLP-1s, and thriving with CGM, Omnipod, and hard-won perspective.
+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
DISCLAIMER: This text is the output of AI based transcribing from an audio recording. Although the transcription is largely accurate, in some cases it is incomplete or inaccurate due to inaudible passages or transcription errors and should not be treated as an authoritative record. Nothing that you read here constitutes advice medical or otherwise. Always consult with a healthcare professional before making changes to a healthcare plan.
Scott Benner 0:00
Friends, we're all back together for the next episode of The Juicebox podcast. Welcome.
Nicole 0:15
Hi. My name's Nicole. I am from Perth, Australia, and I have had type one diabetes for almost 25 years now,
Scott Benner 0:27
my diabetes Pro Tip series is about cutting through the clutter of diabetes management to give you the straightforward, practical insights that truly make a difference, this series is all about mastering the fundamentals, whether it's the basics of insulin dosing adjustments or everyday management strategies that will empower you to take control. I'm joined by Jenny Smith, who is a diabetes educator with over 35 years of personal experience, and we break down complex concepts into simple, actionable tips. The Diabetes Pro Tip series runs between Episode 1001 1025 in your podcast player, or you can listen to it at Juicebox podcast.com by going up into the menu. 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. The episode you're about to enjoy was brought to you by Dexcom, the Dexcom g7 the same CGM that my daughter wears. You can learn more and get started today at my link, dexcom.com/juicebox, the episode you're about to listen to is sponsored by tandem Moby, the impressively small insulin pump tandem. Moby 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/juicebox
Nicole 1:57
Hi. My name's Nicole. I am from Perth, Australia, and I have had type one diabetes for almost 25 years now.
Scott Benner 2:06
You're from Perth? Yes. Do you know what people from Australia most commonly do when they're on the podcast? I've heard a couple that, yeah, they always get the day wrong. Like, I sit down to record. I'm like, okay, meanwhile, like, it's 9am for me, that's as early as I record. And you it's What Is it midnight for you,
Nicole 2:25
and nine o'clock, 9pm 9pm
Scott Benner 2:27
for you. Okay, so it's nighttime for you, and most of the time I sit down, and then every time it's from somebody from Australia, they're not there. And I send a note, and I send a note, and I go, Hey, you know we were supposed to record. And they go, no, no, that's tomorrow. And I'm like, yeah, no, it is tomorrow, today, here or like, and I don't even know how many of that works, so I get confused by it, and then we just laugh and we try it again, yeah? Anyway, 25 years, and you are how old? Yeah, I'm 53 three, so you got it when you're
Nicole 2:57
28 Yes, yes, okay, oh, 29 Yeah, okay, all right,
Scott Benner 3:02
are you a mom?
Nicole 3:04
I am, yes. Now, were you then? Well, that's a long story. Okay, that's part of my story. So
Scott Benner 3:12
then go ahead and tell me that story. Hell. Jump right. Well, how's that part of your story?
Nicole 3:18
Well, I think my story probably starts earlier than that, probably when I was 13. When I was 13, I got very sick one day and ended up in hospital. I had severe stomach pains. My parents, like, ended up rushing me to the hospital, and I had did the tests, and they were like, Oh, we think you have diabetes. Ended up not being diabetes. It was pancreatitis. Okay, so, yeah, I was in hospital for about three weeks.
Scott Benner 3:53
Three weeks almost done, yeah, yeah, were you on death's door? What's going on? I
Nicole 3:58
Yeah. I was Yeah. I i when they rushed me in, and it was probably about six days, I was very, very sick. I remember one night, the the one night when they kind of said to my mum, oh, look, if she if she doesn't, the fever doesn't break and she doesn't get well overnight, then we're going to have to operate and take out her pancreas. Hopefully it will only be, we might only have to take half of it out otherwise, you know? And, yeah, I remember, like, at 13, I was looking up, and they had all these fans on me trying to, like, bring my temperature down and all this kind of stuff. And I looked at looking over at my mum, and I've never seen her so scared. I could see on her face that she was really scared. But yeah, it did break overnight that night, so yeah, and then they kept me in hospital for, I think, in that another week or so, because I'd lost so much weight that I was already very skinny. And, yeah, I'd lost so much weight, so they were trying to. That me up and yeah, get me get me better.
Scott Benner 5:03
So what was the onset of that pancreatitis like? Was it instant, very quick, or
Nicole 5:08
it was instant? Yes, I remember it was like it was New Year's Day. We'd gone down to the beach. When we left for the beach, I was okay. I was just feeling a bit off. By the time we got down to the beach. I was in severe pain. I just laid on, like, lay down on my towel, and I couldn't really move much at all. And then by that night, yeah, I was in severe stomach pain. I couldn't move, couldn't do anything. Yeah, they ended up calling in a locum doctor, and he said, like, get it done. But he did it, like a urine test, and said, No, you need to take it to the hospital right now. Yeah, it was very sudden, and they never found out what what it was, either they did tests afterwards to, like a endoscopy and CAT scans and all sorts of things, and never actually found a cause
Scott Benner 5:58
for it, like viral or, like, you don't know what brought along law, no, don't know. And then don't know, that's 13. How long? What's the recovery time? A few weeks,
Nicole 6:09
a couple Yeah, a few weeks.
Scott Benner 6:11
And then you just keep going and never think about it again. No, no, yeah. Were you sick more as a child after that? Or was that this one time thing?
Nicole 6:21
No, it was just a one time thing. Okay, one time thing. Yeah,
Scott Benner 6:25
interesting. And you think that's where this may have all began? Well,
Nicole 6:30
I don't know. It's just the pancreas. It's possibly no one's ever said that, like I've mentioned it before, to doctor, to my endos and that kind of stuff. And they've kind of just gone, oh, yeah, that's interesting. You don't know, do you,
Scott Benner 6:44
yeah? Well, I have, I have a little thing here I was doing while you were talking. So, yeah, if you get something called pancreogenic diabetes, it's acute or chronic pancreatitis, and it can happen because of physical scarring or loss of both exocrine or endocrine tissue. They say a clue that it's not classic type one could be that you have little or no digestive enzymes. Did you have any trouble with that? Did you digest food poorly through your life? Yes, really. So it says here, a key clue is that it's not a classic type one diagnosis, little or no digestive enzymes, low C peptide, but no autoimmune antibodies. Have you ever been checked for the antibodies? Is that That's you. That's me. Well, our overlords on my computer say that that's probably what happened to you. So so we'll see if they don't take over the world and blow it all up, maybe they know something about this. Well, that's interesting, isn't it? It sucks, because there's no other autoimmune in your family,
Nicole 7:49
right? No, no, no. That's not just a
Scott Benner 7:51
random illness you picked up probably got bit by one of those spiders. Possibly, possibly, damn right? They're everywhere. Tell people they're everywhere. Yeah, everywhere. Yeah, you live in a Jurassic Park over there. Tell
Nicole 8:04
people, yep, yep. We do. Yes, lakes, spiders, lizards, kangaroos.
Scott Benner 8:10
Are there no planes. Why won't you leave?
Nicole 8:13
Oh, yeah, there's planes here. But I love it too much. Is it
Scott Benner 8:17
a good place to have you ever lived anywhere else? No, I haven't. No. Have you visited other places? Yes, yes. Where have you been that's anywhere equal to Australia or something that makes you feel as comfortable?
Nicole 8:29
I've been to New Zealand. Don't know that it's equal,
Scott Benner 8:34
but not bad, not bad. Yeah. People in New Zealand are like, hey, it's not bad here. It's not Yeah, yeah. But so you're you just, you love it there, yeah, nothing wrong with that. How's the weather like right now? It's summer's coming here. What's happening there? Yeah,
Nicole 8:49
Winter's coming here. I see. So we're about, well, it got to 18 today. Oh, you use
Scott Benner 8:56
that other system, 18. What does that mean? I'll figure it out. You keep talking. So it's cold there today.
Nicole 9:02
Yeah, it's getting cold. Yeah, okay, and we've had kind of a late onset to winter, but yeah, it's, it's getting here. You'd never saw snow, though, right? Oh, once, but not here. Where was it? It was on the east coast of Australia, up in the mountains.
Scott Benner 9:17
Yeah, in the mountains, you can get some there. Okay, I got it? Oh, 64 so that's cold for you. 18, yes, okay, yeah, I call that a spring day. Little chilly, yeah, yeah, do you have pants on the coat?
Nicole 9:31
Just pants in the jumper. Yeah, interesting. So summer is like a hot day in summer, would be 4546 okay? 4546
Scott Benner 9:45
in like the 80s or 90s, I get you all right. I'm doing my math. I got you all right. So it's not that different from here, although it just doesn't get that cold. It gets cold for you, but it doesn't get cold compared to how it gets cold here I see, yeah, well, I think you're lucky, because the cold is terrible, though, apparently, if it doesn't. Cold enough, then the spiders don't die, and then they get, yeah, they get bigger over time, and they're as big as your face. Oh, no, the big ones don't hurt. Yeah, it's the little ones we're scared of. Yes, the little ones awesome, the ones you can't see coming. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Have you ever had a snake in your toilet? No, no. Have you heard of people who
Nicole 10:18
have, I have, I've had one at the front door.
Scott Benner 10:21
What I see the other day over is it on the TOC tech or perhaps Instagram, this guy's ring camera went off, and I think he was in Texas, and there's just like a five foot bull snake going up the side of his house, and it just tripped his ring camera. And they're harmless, I guess, but nevertheless, do people get constricted to death in Australia, ever?
Nicole 10:43
No, no, no, not so much in the pythons. They have them as pets here. Oh, do you have any pets? No, no, no. You're like, I can go outside. Not snakes. I've got a dog and
Scott Benner 10:55
that's all. How about I? What do you got crocodiles? Right? Anybody ever get chomped up by a crocodile?
Nicole 11:01
Oh, not in Perth. We don't have many here, the top half of Australia.
Scott Benner 11:05
Okay, all right, so you're okay. I see what. I'm very worried about these things. As you can tell, I would not be okay. I would definitely, I'd be in a panic most of the time, just walking around thinking like, when is one of these snakes or spiders gonna end my life? Probably right now, but you don't think about it. No, no, not really. All right, I guess I'd be okay then. So 13 years old, this happens, kind of move on. Nobody thinks twice about it. Now you grow up, go through school,
Nicole 11:33
yeah. Do you go to college? Yep, no, I left school and got a job,
Scott Benner 11:38
okay? And yeah, what kind of work were you doing in your 20s? Admin, work. Okay, so you just out in the world chugging along. And then how does the diabetes present for you?
Nicole 11:49
Well, I then, like, made a boy. We decided to live together. And, you know, do what you normally do.
Scott Benner 11:57
Argue about where to get dinner, yeah,
Nicole 12:00
yeah, we do that. But, you know, it's getting on to like, 2025 26 now, I'd always wanted to be a mum, so Yeah, time was getting on. So we decided that, yeah, it was time we we tried to have a bait, you know, start having the baby. Took a while to get pregnant. That took like two years or so, tracking my cycle and doing all that kind of stuff. We were trying hard. Okay, took two years. Yeah, it finally happened. Yeah, it took two years. We finally, it finally happened. All was going well, I didn't have that great a pregnancy. It was, like, lots of morning sickness, that kind of stuff. I got to about 27 weeks and started having, like, I'd be walking around work and I couldn't go anywhere without a bottle of water. A lot of the normal, like, signs of diabetes started happening, but because I was pregnant, you're just like, oh, well, I'm, you know, I'm drinking lots of water because I'm pregnant.
Scott Benner 12:57
Yeah, if you pee a lot when you're pregnant, right? You just think, Oh, the baby's on my bladder. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, you still working that far into the pregnancy? Okay, okay, yeah,
Nicole 13:06
I was still working. Funnily enough, I was actually working in a nursing home. So I was surrounded by registered nurses and nurses. The first time I'd ever come across type one diabetes. One of our residents was a type one, yeah. She often. It was a bit of a controversy, because she was often high cowing, and they were having to give her glucagon quite a bit. And looking back now, it's kind of Yeah. That was a bit worrying, yeah, but yeah, they no one saw anything. And I just by about 27 weeks, I got sick. So I went into my my GP doctor. He saw me, he was like, Oh, I think you've got a virus. You've got, like, the flu. Go home lots of rest, have some rest, drink lots of water. So I went home that night, and just steadily got a lot worse over that night. I I started getting in it, in quite a lot of pain. I don't think I slept much at all that night. When I got up in the morning, my partner got up to go to work in the morning, yeah, he got up to go to work, and I then, when he went off to work, I called my mum, and she came and picked me up and she took me to the hospital.
Scott Benner 14:19
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Nicole 16:44
Yes,
Scott Benner 16:47
Nicole, explain the female ability to hold a grudge. It's an amazing superpower, isn't
Nicole 16:52
it? It is quite amazing superpower, yeah. Well, to be honest, I kind of forgotten a lot about that that time, yeah, it was, yeah, it was, it's a bit of a blur till right
Scott Benner 17:04
now, when I brought her up, and it brings it all right back again, and you can murder him right now,
Nicole 17:12
I have been thinking about it, and I've talked a bit to my mum about it as well. Yeah, like, she filled in some, some of the blanks, because she came to me, she came to visit me the night before, she was worried. Okay, so, yeah, she was ready to take me to the hospital in the
Scott Benner 17:25
morning. Yeah, how many kids does your mom have? Five, five. So, yeah, yeah, four girls and my brother. Yeah, nice. She knows what to do. So she got you to the hospital. Now, when you get there, is it a is it a right away thing, or do they have to struggle to figure out what it
Nicole 17:40
is? I got in there, and I was having the breaths by then, two small respirations. Yep, that's them. So they looked at me, and they said, Oh, how long have you had asthma for? And I said, Well, I don't have asthma. So, yeah, they brought me in pretty quickly, then took me in and did an ultrasound. Then they told me that the baby was passed. Oh, yeah, from the DK, DKA, basically they said the my blood had poisoned him. Poisoned his blood. So, yeah,
Scott Benner 18:16
Nicole, now I feel bad about joking about the boy. No, that's good. No, it's terrible. I'm so sorry. Yeah, I mean, it's a long, long time ago, but I'm, I'm still very sorry it is didn't stick with you through a lifetime, losing him. Yes, yeah,
Nicole 18:32
particularly as I feel, I almost feel responsible because it was me that I should have known. I should have gone insane. Now, I should have I know logically, I tell myself it's not my fault, but I still feel like it is. I
Scott Benner 18:50
understand, yeah, when you listen to the podcast and you hear so many people tell stories like that, where you know they they feel responsible for a thing that is clearly not their responsibility, or a thing they could have known about. Do you? Yeah? Do you have compassion for them, but not for yourself?
Nicole 19:05
Absolutely, I do still feel that compassion for myself when I but I still feel it and then tell my give myself the compassion,
Scott Benner 19:14
but then the but it doesn't, it doesn't dissipate. For you, the fear, yeah, it doesn't dissipate. Yeah, people are weird. I mean, the way our brains work is strange. Oh my gosh. So what happens then? I mean, I don't want to walk you through it step by step, but how does that get managed? That's, I mean, that was seven months in, right?
Nicole 19:32
Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, six months in, yeah. It's, it's all a bit of a blur. There, they put me in the ICU and got the ketoacidosis under control, and then they had to wait for my health to recover before they could induce the labor. How long? So that was a week. Oh, geez. So, yeah, I was a week in, yeah, a week in the maternity. 80 Ward, learning how to control, how to handle type one
Scott Benner 20:04
diabetes, gosh, see a therapist after something like that. I
Nicole 20:08
didn't straight away. I did later on, which was very helpful, Yeah, I
Scott Benner 20:13
bet, I mean, that week of being being pregnant, but not, you know, knowing the baby's gone is, I mean, that's, that'd be, it was terrible, yeah, taxing in a way that a lot of us wouldn't understand. My gosh, so you're learning your diabetes in the hospital during that and then you have to have that procedure, and then you go home.
Nicole 20:33
Yeah, yes, yeah. Like, so then, yeah. Then tell me that I have to wait. I have to wait until I can try again for another baby. I have to get my blood sugars under control, all that kind of stuff.
Scott Benner 20:48
You understand yourself to have type one diabetes. At that point,
Nicole 20:52
I did Yes, and I think at that point it was all I didn't grieve that process or accept that process, because all I was focused on was starting my family again, starting again, and trying for another baby,
Scott Benner 21:07
right? What happened to the baby? And the idea of like, let's get going and get this. Yep, happy again. Doesn't really let you absorb the diabetes diagnosis. Yeah. Does that stop you from understanding it, or does the imperativeness of wanting to have a baby again make you does it force you to take care of
Nicole 21:27
it? Both, because they told me that before I could get pregnant again, I needed to get my a 1c down under six. That forced me to do that. But at the same time, I wasn't focused on learning anything about diabetes. I think because I was diagnosed as an adult, I didn't, I didn't get any training. Yeah, I didn't get any training at all. Like I said, I was like shown what to do in the maternity
Scott Benner 21:51
ward. Probably not their cup of tea there, I would imagine, no, no.
Nicole 21:56
The adult endos here really don't know that much. So they just prescribe, pretty much, just prescribed the insulin, and that's it. I was given one appointment with a diabetes educator who sat there pretty much and told us the difference between type one and type two and what to do with a glucagon. And that was almost it was. That was all my training.
Scott Benner 22:19
Not a lot of direction. I mean, 20 some years ago, how do you figure that out? Back then, if you need that information, where do you get it
Nicole 22:26
from? I didn't really. When I left the hospital, they gave me mixard pens, which was a mix of 7030 I pretty much did it with I ate to the insulin. Oh, so I did it with my diet.
Scott Benner 22:42
Yep, you shot the insulin and then just ate the food, and then they kept you from being too low. Yeah, yeah. How was testing back then? Like, were you testing your blood sugar with any frequency, oh,
Nicole 22:54
before a meal, and I think it was an hour, two hours after a meal, and that was
Scott Benner 22:59
it. That was it. Do you have any idea of what kind of like outcomes you were having.
Nicole 23:03
I did get my a 1c down to about six, and within probably about four months, I fell pregnant again. So I did. I did well in that, that first part, yeah, I
Scott Benner 23:14
know this is a long time ago, and is the process of trying to make the second pregnancy. Is it joyful, or is it scary?
Nicole 23:23
A very scary. Once I actually fell pregnant, it was very scary. Okay, I worried at
Scott Benner 23:29
every step, and then then your diabetes on top of all that. Yeah, yeah, what were they telling you? Your goals were for pregnancy, for your type one.
Nicole 23:38
Once I got pregnant, I was testing before a meal and then every hour after a meal. Okay, if my blood sugar started to go up for three days in a row, then I would increase my insulin the next day for by one unit. My dose. Right up until two years ago, I was basically, I don't even, wouldn't even say it was a sliding scale. It was I'd go into my Endo, and my dose was three units before each meals and 30 units of long acting. And that, that was it. There was no correcting, there was no counting carbs. I was never taught any of that. How long did you do that? For 20 years, until just recently, yep, what the heck? How did that happen? Because I never got any education at all. Were you using fast tracking insulin? I was using Nova rapid.
Scott Benner 24:34
Okay, okay. Well, what changed a couple of years ago? Did you meet a doctor that was like, hey, you know, there's a more modern way to do this. Oh,
Nicole 24:42
no, kind of okay. What changed was continuous glucose monitors were approved here or approved to be subsidized here for adults, okay? Because before that, it was only under 21 under 18, that they were approved for and for adults, they were quite a. Expensive, the same with pumps. So I was on MDI for that whole time. Okay, I had before that. I had a endo who was a little bit different, so he was like one of the leading endos in Perth, and back in, I think it was about 2011 2012 by Etta came out, and then was approved for type twos. He decided that was too good a drug, and he gave it to all his type ones as well.
Scott Benner 25:30
Oh, you got a GLP. I got a GLP. So how long ago was that? Tom?
Nicole 25:36
That was 2012 I went on by ITA. And then when trulicity came out, I was changed over to trulicity. And then when ozempic came out, I was changed over to ozempic. So
Scott Benner 25:48
13 years ago, you got a GLP, but you were Yes, but you were MDI officially,
Nicole 25:54
yes, yes.
Scott Benner 25:55
Interesting. It's interesting where you got the modernization from.
Nicole 25:59
On one side, that have no modernization, like no tech, or anything like that. But that was he went against the norm. He actually decided that, like, he just put the authorizations through without telling the authorities kind of thing, yeah, but he
Scott Benner 26:15
never thought to give you an insulin pump. No. And how long ago did you to see Jim
Nicole 26:21
as about two years ago, same doctor. No, he retired. He retired.
Scott Benner 26:25
Okay, so this guy saw something that he thought this would be valuable for my type one patients. He kind of went out on a limb and got it for people, but he didn't know. Would have been nice if you knew. Yeah, it would have been expensive for most type ones. Okay, adult type ones here, yeah, for for a pump, or a pump or CGM, yeah. Okay, so it's just not, it's not the way it worked. Yeah, I see Yep. Your outcomes pretty good through that time, through those years, up till 2012 Yep,
Nicole 26:52
my one Cs were around seven. Not fantastic, like, like now, but not bad, but not
Scott Benner 26:59
bad. Yeah, yeah. And did the GLP, the first one help with that at all?
Nicole 27:03
Yes, each one helped a little bit more.
Scott Benner 27:06
Progressively got better. So tell me the first trulicity was the first one, or biota, no,
Nicole 27:12
which was on a day, a shot a
Scott Benner 27:15
day. Yeah. And do you remember what the impact was? It reduced
Nicole 27:18
my insulin needs by a small amount, but it also stabilized, like the weight gain. It stabilized all that. And it, I think, even though I wasn't testing very often and I didn't have a CGM, so it was very difficult, by my a one saying that I think it did still, like smooth those highs and lows out a
Scott Benner 27:39
lot. Highs aren't so high, the lows aren't so low. You don't use quite as much insulin. Talk about your weight for a second though, like, was it at a place at that point that something needed to be like you felt like you needed to do something?
Nicole 27:51
I was probably about five kilos over where I wanted to be. Okay? I wasn't overweight or anything like that, but it was something I was always worried
Scott Benner 27:59
about. Did that take that weight off or just hold it at bay? It
Nicole 28:03
helped me lose about, probably about three or four kilos, and then it held it there, nice, which is what it's done pretty much the whole time,
Scott Benner 28:11
right? It's interesting, because you have experience with these three different drugs. So I'm going to have fun. I think we'll have fun picking through this. So how long are you on that one, till you move to the
Nicole 28:19
next the biota, I think, was about three or four
Scott Benner 28:23
years, okay? And then you move the trulicity. Is there any increase in impact, only
Nicole 28:30
a small amount. And the main thing with trulicity was that I went from a once a day to a once a week,
Scott Benner 28:37
okay, yeah. And so you didn't have to inject it every day, but it was helping about the same. Yeah, okay. But then ozempic, when did that? When does he move you to exempt? Thank God he didn't retire before ozempic came out. When did he move you
Nicole 28:52
to that? Ozempic was around 2019
Scott Benner 28:56
Okay, wow. Yeah, that's fine, yeah. So you're saying, Nicole, that the internet knowing something doesn't mean that's when it first existed. Interesting. I love how everybody thinks that it was epic. Came out, like, a year and a half ago, because that's when they heard about it on tick tock.
Nicole 29:11
Oh, yeah, again. So, yeah, it was been a while for type twos. It's been around a what? Long time? Yeah, a while.
Scott Benner 29:18
So now talk about like you went from by added trulicity to ozempic. What was the the change in impact then
Nicole 29:24
ozempic was, was, was better than trulicity. But if you went from ozempic to biota to ozempic, there was quite a difference, yeah, in the holding the weight gain and the holding the the blood sugars, like level and that kind of stuff,
Scott Benner 29:40
yeah, yeah. I want to hear about it. So did you lose more weight on ozempic? I did.
Nicole 29:44
It was kind of like, probably the same as what like with the weight loss now, where, where you increase into it, into the next level, where, you know, it kind of flattens out, you're on it for so long, and then you kind of plateau, yep, and then you lose, go up to the next one, and you lose a bit. More, but I didn't have a lot of weight to to lose anyway. So
Scott Benner 30:04
what weight was there to lose? Is gone
Nicole 30:07
now? Well, not really now, menopause and and then I was off it for a while because of the shortage. Oh,
Scott Benner 30:16
so tell me how long you were on it and then how long you were off it.
Nicole 30:19
So I think I started in 2007 and then think the shortage, the shortage might have happened. It was it 2020 or 2021 2022,
Scott Benner 30:29
and you couldn't get it. Then, no,
Nicole 30:31
then I couldn't get it. By that time, my endo had retired, and I got a new Endo. I remember the first, my first appointment with this new Endo. And I walked in there, and he said, Oh, you had Dr such and such. And I said, yep. And he said, I just got off a he because he was one of the top end days, he did a, like a training session, like a zoom training, training session with a with a lot of endos. And he told all these endos that all my patients are going to be coming to you now, and all my type ones are on pick, so they're all going to be asking, be asking you for them. Pick, he, I think I got one script from him, and then there was a shortage, and I couldn't get it
Scott Benner 31:09
anymore. Okay, so that, what's the fall off like, when you stop taking it, does the weight come back?
Nicole 31:15
Yes, okay. Weight comes not really, really bad. Okay. There was a bigger impact on my blood sugars, though.
Scott Benner 31:24
Yeah. Does those EMP impact your hunger, or did you not have an issue with that? It does impact my hunger? Yes, you would say you had, like, prior to that, like hunger that didn't make sense at times. Oh, yes. Okay, absolutely. Yeah. And so, do you think that the decrease and then subsequent increase in insulin needs. Was it multifaceted? Meaning? Was it some about your weight, some about your intake, some about insulin resistance. Or do you think it's not touching you in all three of those places?
Nicole 31:53
It's touching me in all of those? Yeah. Okay. Well, it did. It
Scott Benner 31:57
did, yeah. And then so tell me that you go off it slowly, like, let's take a I forget the actual Half Life is, like 20 days, maybe, or something like that. So it's out of your system in a few weeks, and then your insulin needs start to rise up again. Yes, yeah, by how much do you remember?
Nicole 32:15
Well, I can, I can say my a 1c within 18 months, my a win, a 1c went from the low sevens to up to the nine.
Scott Benner 32:24
Your a 1c in 18 months, went from low sevens to nine when they took you off the ozempic.
Nicole 32:29
Yep. Geez, yep. But there was other, like, other things going on at the same time, which because at that time, I was going through a divorce. Oh, okay, and that impacted my mental health as well, and I wasn't looking after my diabetes.
Scott Benner 32:46
I see, yeah, that's uh, taxing. So, yeah, yeah, yeah, is that a late in life from your first Marriage Divorce? Yes, yes, yeah, it's a long time, right? You were married for a long time, 20 years. Yeah. Geez, was Can I ask, was the divorce you're doing, or his or mutual? It was my doing? Okay, that's taxing in a different way. And then you, when you get over, I'm guessing, overwhelmed, but when you get impacted by that, what? How does that impact your diabetes? Well,
Nicole 33:17
I was working a lot. I was probably having a few drinks every night and forgetting to take my long acting and I'd wake up sometimes and, like, then get back out to work so, and I wasn't testing my blood sugar either. So
Scott Benner 33:31
now you had diabetes for a long time before this happened. Had you not been through other tough life things before? You know what I mean? Like, I mean obviously, yeah, losing the baby, but you lose the baby when you're you're just diagnosed. I mean, like, Yeah, after you're diagnosed, had things not happened before? And did you? Did you give up on your your health during those things too? The
Nicole 33:50
last half of my marriage was very toxic and very taxing, but I think what saved me was the temp how it made it easier to manage my blood sugars.
Scott Benner 34:01
Ah, you weren't used to having to put as much effort into diabetes anymore, because ozempic made it easier. Yeah, I agree with you that it makes it easier, by the way. If you have, yeah, I want to say this, if you have insulin resistance, if you have, do you ever feel like you might have had PCOS at any point in your life or no
Nicole 34:19
possibly, but not to an extent that it was very
Scott Benner 34:22
painful or had a lot of, yeah, so I'm saying, like, if the things that the ozempic impacts, if you're getting those things, you could see a, you know, a pretty significant decrease in insulin needs, like you said, spikes and lows. You know, it lessens your hunger, so it lessens your intake, if you lose extra weight, that helps your your your insulin resistance as well. All this stuff helps. And then, not that you're lazy about it, but like, diabetes got easier, and then, boom, they take away the ozempic, and you decide to get divorced. And all this stuff kind of piles up on itself.
Nicole 34:59
Yep, I see. Yeah, so something I didn't have to pay that much attention to. All of a sudden I did have to pay attention to, but I had other things going on in my life as well, so
Scott Benner 35:08
it was taking that attention away. Yeah, I see, oh, it's interesting now in like, sitting here talking about it. Now, fair enough, but like, were you aware that any of that was happening while it was happening?
Nicole 35:19
I think in the back of my head, yes, I was
Scott Benner 35:22
just didn't have the space to handle it, yeah, yeah. Okay, yeah. How long did it take to get divorced? Took
Nicole 35:29
about three years before the final orders came through, and everything was, yeah,
Scott Benner 35:33
yep. Did your blood sugar suffer through that entire time?
Nicole 35:37
The first part wasn't too bad, because I was on the same so half of it I was on the Zen pick for which helped me to just coast through it. Yeah, it was the last half. As soon as the Zen pick was gone, it just spiraled a bit from
Scott Benner 35:51
there. Well, I hope you're happy. Novo Nordisk, look what you did to Nicole. Yeah, these things are important to people, like all the you know, forget ozempic. Like the things you count on are important to you, and being able to afford them and have access to them is important. And when it's not there, it's not as simple as just, like, oh well, like, you know, we had a shortage, or this thing broke or something. It's really affecting people, not that they don't know that, maybe, but, and you're back on it. Now
Nicole 36:18
I am, so I'm getting it off label, so I'm paying full price for it. Oh,
Scott Benner 36:22
but yeah, what's that cost in Australia? And what's your money worth?
Nicole 36:26
Okay, well, it's costing me 170 a month. 170
Scott Benner 36:30
what rubles, I don't know you guys use. You guys just have dollars. That's awesome. Is that the equivalent to an American dollar? No, no, oh, Australian dollar equals point six, five of the United States dollar. So it's not quite half as but it's close. So you said, How much 100 What 171 70? So you're paying about $85
Nicole 36:57
a month, or a week a month, a month. Are you able to afford that? Yes, yeah, I make sure I can afford it
Scott Benner 37:05
like I've lived with glps and I've lived without it. I sold my soul to the devil, and he gives me $85 a month, and now everything's good again. I'm with you, Nicole, there's not much I wouldn't do. Yeah, I know what it's done for me and for people around me. Yeah, I chopped down George Washington's cherry tree right in front of him for, uh, first on those empy, I guess to that year and a half gave you a lot of perspective on what it was doing for you as well.
Nicole 37:29
Yeah, it did, yeah. But then I, I also, before I got back on the exam pick, I actually got a CGM, which just blew my mind and opened my eyes up to a whole new world, yeah? Because the other thing I'd never even heard about was pre bolusing
Scott Benner 37:47
really. Well, I mean, yeah, your MDI, there's no CGM. Like, kind of makes sense, right? Like, everything's a little behind, yeah,
Nicole 37:55
yeah, my, my Endo, the one, the previous one, at one point, he said to me, he didn't use the word Pre-Bolus, but he tried to get me to do that, but he made me come home. He said, when you've got someone home with, you just do a little test. So take your insulin for your meal, and then every five minutes, take your blood glucose, take a finger stick and record it, and then work out how long it takes for your insulin to start acting. If it takes 15 minutes for every meal, that's how long before you meal you you need to do it to your insulin.
Scott Benner 38:33
Okay, let's start all of them. Yeah, but when, when did that start?
Nicole 38:39
That was, I don't know. I can't remember exactly when it was. I did it for a while, but it didn't always work. So it didn't stick, because it was, well, as you can imagine, it's kind of daunting to not know when that drop is going to happen, and it and where you're starting from, what your curve is, all that, all that kind of stuff.
Scott Benner 38:59
Sure. No, yeah. It's like, somebody blindfolding you, putting you near a cliff and saying, just wander around. You probably won't fall, right? Yeah, yeah, yeah. The CGM changes the whole thing for you. It does, yeah, you see it happening. And then, then you can it's not like, you're not like, testing every I mean, imagine how many times you'd have to do that to build up some belief in how it's going to work, right? And, yeah, yeah, oh, wow. Okay, so the CGM, if I made you give one thing back, the CGM or the GLP, what would you keep? CGM? You'd keep the CGM, yeah, because it's seeing it as everything really is, yeah, yeah, you can. You could work it out without the GLP, it would be, you'd use more insulin, etc. Other things would happen. But
Nicole 39:46
so I got the Omnipod as well at a similar time. So with those two, I got my a 1c down to about six and and the podcast, of course, oh,
Scott Benner 39:56
but how do you find it, though? Because you're not, you're not a young person. Person like, who, like, tells you, you know,
Nicole 40:02
my endo suggested a pump to me, and I thought, realized that I could get, like it was all fun, like it was funded by my insurance and subsidized the as well through NDSS here, so made it more affordable. So I was researching, they had the three pump. See, they had Omnipod tandem at ipso Med, and I was went looking online for like experiences on what people thought of them, and that's how I found the podcast. Yeah,
Scott Benner 40:34
wow, that's awesome, and that, and it's all these things together, these basically tools, right? Like the Omnipod, the CGM, the GLP, my voice, they're all just tools, right? Yeah, yeah, put them together, and suddenly you're having some nice success. Where's your a 1c,
Nicole 40:49
today. Did you say in December it was at 5.8 look at
Scott Benner 40:53
you. That's awesome. Congratulations. Yeah. Do you have any long term health issues from type type one?
Nicole 40:59
No, I have had a frozen shoulder Other than that,
Scott Benner 41:03
nothing else, nothing else that's great. Good for you. How do you describe yourself to people now, like post divorce, post having all this technology to help yourself with the are you in a different place than you were five years ago? A better place? How do you think of yourself?
Nicole 41:18
Yeah, yes, definitely a different place. I'm happier, I'm more settled, I'm healthier, yeah, yeah. Are you dating? I've tried dating. How'd that go? Oh, not very good.
Scott Benner 41:32
Did you find some guys that made you go like, Oh, if I'm gonna put up with this, I could have kept
Nicole 41:37
the other one. No, no, oh, no. Happier on mine,
Scott Benner 41:41
the first guy wasn't good, huh? No, I wasn't good. I'm sorry. Okay, what is it that you're, like, my our age? Like, how old are you again? 53 Oh, yeah, at our age, Nicole. Like, what was hard about dating? What made it something you were just like, I'm not doing this.
Nicole 41:57
Oh, it's the apps and the I don't know. There's a different mindset out there nowadays. A lot of, most of the don't know if it's just the men, because I don't date women so, but they're, they're just after casual things. And yeah, so you
Scott Benner 42:14
went out in the world and found out that 53 year old guys are just like 18 year old guys, true,
Nicole 42:19
yeah, without the ambition to have a family and settle down and all that kind of stuff.
Scott Benner 42:24
Yeah, and so, oh, I get you. Are you through menopause, or are you still involved in it? Involved in it? What a weird way to say that. Sorry,
Nicole 42:32
not too sure. I've had a hysterectomy. I think I'm through the other side,
Scott Benner 42:36
pretty through the other side. So interesting. You're not the part of your life where you're trying to build a family. You have kids, right? How many kids do you end up having? Three kids, three kids. You got three kids, an older person like, you know, meaning you're not 20. Sex isn't the same, like, weird fun that it was when it was younger, right? It's a little more. What utilitarian trying to get to the end is that the idea, am I missing? No, did you want it to be fun? And it wasn't?
Nicole 43:03
No, that part was okay. Oh,
Scott Benner 43:07
Nicole's like, that part was good. I was good with that part. Yeah, okay. What's the part that wasn't okay?
Nicole 43:13
It's just the connection. And what people want. They just want to go out and hop from person to person and have have a little bit of fun and nothing meaningful.
Scott Benner 43:24
Yeah. So the sex was okay, but you were trying to build something with somebody, and you couldn't find interest in
Nicole 43:31
that. Well, that's where I'm at now, yeah,
Scott Benner 43:33
does the diabetes impact? It like Do or do you not bother telling them? Or
Nicole 43:39
no, I'll wear it proudly. Now, up until about two years ago, I'd only ever met one other diabetes, which was a kid that was like my, my child's age in school. Okay? So I never had any community, never knew anyone else with diabetes, type one diabetes. So now more people are wearing dexcoms and and pumps and that kind of stuff. You kind of see them out and about. So, yeah, I've been to restaurants and seeing people and been approached in the shopping center. So are you aware of Dexcom? How is that kind of thing? And it's kind of nice,
Scott Benner 44:16
yeah, just to have that feeling it's nice. It really is. Does it help online too. Like to meet on people online.
Nicole 44:22
Oh, yeah, definitely, yeah. You know, you're the first
Scott Benner 44:26
lady from Australia I've spoken to who I don't feel has what I would call a delightful mental illness. This is no disrespect to other people, but, like, I used to get, like, a lot of high energy people who are just like, I'm like, wow, that was a lot. I thought it was an Australian thing. I guess maybe it was, unless you know a lot of those ladies and you know what I'm talking about. No, not really. Oh, awesome. Then it's just a was just a coincidence, yeah, possibly, yeah. Listen, you're not representing your country and I'm not representing mine, but let me apologize for getting your reporter shot with one of those rubber bullets. Yesterday. Sorry about that. I'm sure it wasn't you that did it. No, it was not me. I was not even on that coast, but that poor lady is just out in the street. She's like, I'm reporting. Oh
Nicole 45:10
yeah, you look at the guy who the cop, who, I'm not sure who it was that did it. It looked like he actually turned around and aimed for it. Wow,
Scott Benner 45:19
I know I'm dying to hear from him, because, like, it can't be, you're not wrong. They were standing in a line, and it almost looked like you looked and went, Hey, there's a lady from Australia. You're doing a report. I'll shoot her in the lake. They just kind of, like, turned her was like, thump. She did go down hard, by the way, that That must hurt like a son of a bitch, yeah, I'm sure, yeah. But I would love to hear the expert. I wonder what he thought was happening. You know what I mean, like, because I don't believe that he was like, Oh, I'll be just shoot a
Nicole 45:43
reporter from Australia right now, especially when there's cameras on her as well, exactly like,
Scott Benner 45:47
I wonder if it's going to be one of those things where he's like, I didn't mean to do that. Like, I didn't even mean to pull the trigger. Sorry or not. Anyway, it wasn't fun. You know, it's one of those things, Nicole, it's not funny. And yet, I mean, if you see the video, it's a little amusing, not to her, obviously, I think it's the reaction that's amusing. Not the not the not the action. You know what? I mean? Yeah, yeah. She just looks like something, just like bitter. And she's like, Whoa, what the hell. Probably a hell of a I had the same feeling for I have when I see a baseball player get hit in the back with a pitch. I'm like, oh, that's gonna leave a mark. Yeah, it sucks. What made you want to come on the podcast?
Nicole 46:23
Well, the community. And I didn't really know anyone that was type one, so I want to add my voice to what's become my like, my community as well. Oh, that's
Scott Benner 46:36
wonderful. That makes sense. It makes a lot of sense. Am I not letting you be effusive enough about how much this podcast means to you. Is it a big deal for you?
Nicole 46:44
It is a big deal for me, actually, yes. It keeps me grounded in my diabetes like I listen every morning on my way to work, and it keeps it in the front of my mind and thinking about diabetes without actually thinking about it. It it keeps all those little catch phrases that you have, that you hear on and off all through the podcast. It reminds you every day,
Scott Benner 47:10
yeah, and you saw that drift away during your divorce, and you don't want that to happen again. Yeah, yeah. This sentiment that being like, just listening to a podcast once a day. It's not like someone's yelling in your face, take care of yourself, you know what you're supposed to be doing. Like you don't get that feeling like, the shame, feeling like you're not doing what you're supposed to be doing, or whatever, or somebody like, you know, talking to you like a school mom or something like that. Yeah, but it's enough just to keep you connected to it without you focusing on is that right?
Nicole 47:46
Yes, that's right, excellent. But it also gives me a great feeling with not just the diabetes, but putting some of the theories into into life as well. Like I remember your graduation speech that you give to all anyone that
Scott Benner 48:03
graduates, oh, this is water. Yeah, this is water. Yeah,
Nicole 48:07
you mentioned that on one of your one of the podcasts, and I thought, I'll just go and have a listen. So I listened to it, and that resounded with me quite a lot, yeah. And that brought that into my life as well, like, into my into my work life I had recently, I had someone kind of came at me a bit and accused me of something, and in the email that he she C like 10 people in like she was trying to cover her own and put put blame on me. Now I could have come back and, like shame to in front of everyone. And I just sat back. And I thought, No, I don't think I'll go. I'll just sit back. And the next day, I thought of that, that speech, and I thought, well, what's going on in her life, that
Scott Benner 48:49
she's Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Nicole 48:53
So yeah. I thought about that speech, and I thought, well, what's going on with her, that she has to defend herself and just gave her a little bit of kindness instead, and now she's, like, not doing it anymore, and she's, she's quite lovely.
Scott Benner 49:07
Yeah, that's awesome. Yeah, I think I'm a reasonably common sense person, yep. And I don't get rattled normally. You know, when I think about bigger ideas, I can kind of hold a few thoughts in my head at the same time. And I'm not, I'm not brilliant, like, I certainly I hear, sometimes I hear people starting to talk about, like, political things, and I'm like, I get lost, like, you start getting into that sixth level. And I'm like, I can't keep all this straight anymore. Yeah, I'm certainly not brilliant. I think that if you listen to that Pro Tip series, or any of the stuff that I talk about, about managing diabetes and exchange some of the words for other things in your life. I think it works for almost everything. Yes, anybody who gives me credit for being good at diabetes, you should actually just be giving me credit for, I don't know. I think I'm a clear thinker. And then I apply that to I had to. I applied that to. Diabetes, and that's why it worked out, not because I certainly didn't know anything about diabetes.
Nicole 50:04
Yep. And you can hear that. You can hear that through the podcast in different aspects, like good that this is water.
Scott Benner 50:09
Yeah, no. You know, it's funny. There's this moment in one of the series that I did with Jenny where I said, Oh, I want to talk about something that I came up with. And she goes, Okay, what is it? And I said, I said, I call it over bolusing. And I start explaining it to her, and she goes, Yeah. John Walsh called that super bolusing in a book he wrote 20 years ago. And I thought, well, first of all, lucky me, I don't read I've never heard that book. I mean, I know who he is. I know the book pumping insulin. I know it exists, but I've never read it. No one's ever said to me, Hey, you should try a super Bolus. It's a thing that I just figured out one day, and then to hear her tell me that's a thing that people who really know what they're doing about diabetes do i That made me like, that actually gave me confidence. That made me feel like, oh, what I'm seeing is maybe, right, you know, like, because I didn't know, I was just guessing. I'm just guessing. I'm just trying to help my kid. Yeah, I don't know what I'm doing. You know what I mean? Like, I'm thrown into this problem. I take who I am and I apply it to it. I get my goals, I get what I'm trying to avoid, and I make as decisions as well as I possibly can. And then here we are. And then one day I say, you know, I have this idea, like, you know, sometimes when you can't Pre-Bolus, what if you Bolus for the food and then went into the future in your mind and said, What is the spike gonna look like from not pre bolusing, and how much would it take to kill the spike? What if we put that into the Bolus and didn't Pre-Bolus, we could super Bolus, it stop the spike and not get low later. That made sense to me, you know. And then you try it one day, and it works like, Huh? And then later, you know, 10 years later, some lovely lady tells you, yeah, that's the thing, you know. Have you ever read pumping insulin by John Walsh? And I'm like, No, so it's so cool. I'm just happy. Honestly, I'm happy for you. I'm happy for my daughter. I'm happy for the other people who listen. If you got me when I was 20 and said, Hey Scott, you know you're going to help a lot of people making a diabetes podcast, I'd be like, That's how my life ends up. You
Nicole 52:13
know, where I'm working now, this sheet metal shop.
Scott Benner 52:15
Are you really? I am really. What do you do there?
Nicole 52:19
I'm the office manager, bookkeeper, so I don't work out in the in the factory, but you get an air conditioner.
Scott Benner 52:27
Yes, yeah. That's all you need. That's excellent. We used to come up with reasons to have to go into the office to look for a blueprint, shake it, stand in the air conditioner for a minute. The guys do that still. Yeah, they do, yeah. Oh, my God. It's like, you just walk in. You're like, oh, I don't think I'm gonna die if I stand here for 20 more seconds. It's so hot in that building, and everything's hot, dirty, and it's horrifying. I did enjoy working there. I have to say,
Nicole 52:50
Yeah, I love it. It's the guys are great. People work for that. Work for their they're great.
Scott Benner 52:57
You know, you said that some of the best guys I ever met my life worked there, yeah? Like, really good, solid dudes, you know, yeah, yeah, welders and fabricators. People did paint shop stuff. Like they were all just reasonably, you know, good people worked hard, yeah, yeah. I just talked to a guy recently who I worked with there, and he's like, it's so crazy to me, like he's retired now, he's in his late 60s, you know? Oh, wow. And I'm like, oh, that's nuts. Like you were like a 35 year old guy when I had that job, like, talking about raising your kids and like, stuff like that. And now I talk to him on the phone. He's like, we'll talk sometimes while he's in the car and he's coming back from like, his like grandchild, like karate class or something like that. And I'm like, oh, it's nuts, man. He was so this guy, I had to give him a lot of credit. He's one of the funniest people I ever met my life. His name was Bob, and it used to get like I said it was, it was hot as balls in there. And that saying is important, because every once in a while you'd walk through the shop and just see Bob, grab the front of his pants, yank it out, take a bottle of talcum powder, and just shake it down his pants and jump up and down real quick, and then go back to work, there'd be little talcum powder puffs on like the floor, because they would go down your pant leg. Then, yep. Anyway, go to college, get it.
Nicole 54:21
I'm gonna be careful. Now, walking out the workshop,
Scott Benner 54:24
you see any white on the floor? That is definitely where someone has powder in there, that's for sure. Yep, is there anything we didn't talk about that we should have? No, I think that's that's all good, good, good. That's awesome. I'm so happy for you. I mean, we didn't really say it out loud, but just the slower pace that Australia got technology, got CGM cover for people like you. Seem like a nice person. I don't imagine you do. But does it make you mad that you didn't have these things sooner? Sometimes, yeah, yeah, but it's okay, because you don't really have any, you don't have any outcomes that you're not looking for. So yeah,
Nicole 54:58
and I got, like. Well, I did get the same pick, which I think helped you a great deal. If I hadn't have had that possibly could have been a different outcome.
Scott Benner 55:07
Yeah, what's that doctor's name? Would you be willing to say it? Retired, Dr Stan. He was thinking way ahead of the curve. He did you a solid. He was, Yeah, no kidding. I mean, it's, you know, 2025 now halfway through 2025, it's, you know, five, six years after somebody started talking to you about glps, they've obviously gotten a lot more effective. And I think we'll continue to I bet you it turns into a daily pill sooner
Nicole 55:31
than later. Yeah, that'd be good. Not that I mind an injection. But, well,
Scott Benner 55:35
some people do, though. But like, do you notice it wanes after day four or five? Yeah, yeah, right. It would be nice if it if you had a little more even coverage. You know, we're still arguing with people now, like, it's been five years since, you know, trulicity and by Ed and all that stuff. And I think the outcomes are obvious, and yet you'll get online and some people still say, like, Oh, that's not for type ones, or you're cheating. Just don't eat as much. Like, you know what I mean, like, that kind of stuff. Like, yeah, it's just not that easy all the time. You know, no, and you got one life, and it doesn't last that long, Nicole, so I don't, I don't like you suffering. Yeah, I like it. I like it being, uh, I like it being happy for you, you know, yep, all right. Well, you were awesome. I appreciate this. You probably got to go to bed. Yeah, it's getting late, right? You got to get up tomorrow and watch those guys do whatever. Well, it's winter time now, actually, working in a shop during the winter is awesome because, yeah, right, because it's so cold outside, the building is in no way. There's no insulation in the building, so the heat, kind of the cold comes in from outside, and the machines kind of off balance. It's almost kind of nice and toasty. Not bad, actually. Yeah, that part I remember
Nicole 56:39
fondly, not so much in the office. It's cold in the office.
Scott Benner 56:42
Well, yeah, you got to get out there
Nicole 56:44
with Yeah,
Scott Benner 56:46
yeah. Just constant banging and clanking, right? Yeah, you don't hear it after a while, though, it's interesting. No, yeah, that's right, yeah. And the shears, like, you know, coming down and cutting a plate. It's like, just, I can hear it. My God, I lived through it so many times. I'm gonna let you go, Nicole, because it's late. Hold, it's late. Hold on one sec. Hold on one second. For me, today's episode of The Juicebox podcast is sponsored by the Dexcom g7 and the Dexcom g7 warms up in just 30 minutes. Check it out now at dexcom.com/juicebox, today's episode is sponsored by the tandem mobi system with control iq plus technology. If you are looking for the only system with auto Bolus, multiple wear options and full control from your personal iPhone, you're looking for tandems, newest pump and algorithm. Use my link to support the podcast, tandem diabetes.com/juicebox, check it out. I can't thank you enough for listening. Please make sure you're subscribed or following in your audio app. I'll be back tomorrow with another episode of The Juicebox podcast. If you're looking for community around type one diabetes. Check out the Juicebox podcast. Private Facebook group. Juicebox podcast type one diabetes. But everybody is welcome type one type two gestational loved ones. It doesn't matter to me if you're impacted by diabetes and you're looking for support, comfort or community, check out Juicebox podcast, type one diabetes on Facebook. 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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