#782 Dexcom G7 User

Emily's son has type 1 diabetes and he uses the Dexcom G7!

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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 to episode 782 of the Juicebox Podcast.

As you know the show is international and because of that, we have listeners from all over the globe, listeners from places like Germany, where Dexcom G seven is already available. So I'm able to bring you an interview today with Emily. She is the mother of a 12 year old son named Henry. Henry has had type one diabetes since he was eight years old. And Henry has been using Dexcom g7 for a few weeks. So we got Emily on to talk about it. And at the end, Henry will jump on and visit with us for a couple moments as well. How about that? Nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan or becoming bold with insulin. If you're a US resident who has type one or is the caregiver of someone with type one, please visit T one D exchange.org. Forward slash juicebox. Join the registry. Take the survey. The whole thing takes you about 10 minutes you help yourself you help other people with type one, you help the podcast T one D exchange.org forward slash juicebox.

Today's episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by us med. US med is dedicated to bringing you better service and better care. Where else would you want to get your diabetes supplies other than us med that's where we get Rs Dexcom and Omni pod to get started with us med get your free benefits check at us med.com forward slash juice box or by calling 888-721-1514 us med has the brand new libre three, go check them out. The podcast is also sponsored today by Dexcom, makers of the Dexcom G six continuous glucose monitor and the forthcoming Dexcom G seven, which we're going to hear about today with our guest, Emily. So Dexcom g7 is not quite ready yet for the US market. But it is available in a number of countries. And you can find out more about it. And the Dexcom g six@dexcom.com. Forward slash juicebox when you're looking at index comm whether it's G six or g7 whether you have type one or type two diabetes, whether you live in Germany, America or somewhere else, please use my link dexcom.com forward slash juicebox. There are links in the show notes of the podcast player you're listening in now. And links at juicebox podcast.com. When you click the links, you're supporting the podcast.

Emily 2:59
My name is Emily, I am a mom to a my type one son Henry. I guess that sounds terrible to say it that way. One of my sons Henry has type one and I'm his mom. I have one other son. And he has let's see my son Henry is 12. And we're coming up on his four year anniversary of his diagnosis. He was eight years old when he was diagnosed.

Scott Benner 3:23
Alright, and you have one other child younger you said, I have an older son. Okay, who doesn't get to get talked about because it's at diabetes?

Emily 3:31
No, he doesn't get to get talked about. He just knows the look that I get my if he gets up to go to the bathroom when too many times.

Scott Benner 3:39
No one's allowed to eat too much in this house. You know, I just try it. As you just said, Henry is 12. He was diagnosed four years ago when he was eight, I guess. Right? But please hold on a second. I'm like, we're already off track on 90 seconds. And but let me just let me know it's my fault. I wrote 12. And then I wrote slash for almost like a date and then slash eight. And I thought, why don't I do that every time? Why don't I teach myself that it's age, length of time. And then age diagnosed? Why don't really make a shorthand for myself. I literally write it out. On a whiteboard in front of me. Every time someone says it. It took me 100 episodes to realize I could have made it easier.

Emily 4:23
And I'm picturing in my mind going okay, what could go wrong with this system, but it does seem like a dead white night.

Scott Benner 4:30
I'm just saying Emily. I mean, I'm like, oh, no, no, I'm a moron. And I just realized that just I was like, why am I not like coming up with a system that makes this easier for myself? Unbelievable. Okay. All right, so I really feel dumb. Anyway, so you live where? Right now?

Emily 4:50
We live in Bonn, Germany. It's on the western side of Germany.

Scott Benner 4:53
But you're an American. I am hearing your voice.

Emily 4:56
I am American. Yes, my husband is active duty military. Are you but we are not stationed at a US military installation.

Scott Benner 5:03
That sounds fancy for some reason.

Emily 5:07
I use all the fancy words. He he's about to retire, actually. So we've spent much of our time at bases and forks, things like that in the US military installations. Most people who are familiar with anyone who is American military, living in Germany probably will assume we are associated with the Ramstein Air Force Base, or I don't even know the other ones anymore. Kaiserslautern, something like that. And we're actually just geographically separated. He's actually working with the German military. Oh, here in Germany. Oh,

Scott Benner 5:42
I see. So he's, he's even he's installed somewhere where there's no housing. So you get to not

Emily 5:49
exactly correct, yes. And that and that affects us as a type one family as well, because it affects our we don't we're not going to a giant US hospital on a base somewhere for our medical either.

Scott Benner 6:02
Oh, so you have to go local for your health care? That's correct. Yes. Does that pose a problem? Or is it workable?

Emily 6:09
It has not my rabbit trail backwards here. My son was diagnosed when we were living in London, actually. And it was a similar scenario where my husband was working with the UK military. And so we're actually using the NHS for our health insurance. And so that was an absolutely lovely experience that I wish everyone could have. And so that's kind of how we started off. And then we were nine months in the States for my husband to take a language course. And so we were back in kind of the regular military system at Walter Reed. And then we moved here. And my so my husband took the language course. And he and I previously have learned some German in school, which when we were in school, they didn't treat languages as if it was going to be important to you. In the United States. It was as if it was like an art class or baking or something. It was do you want to take French or whatever is that we took we had we happen to take German and we've actually used it. The clinic where my son is seen. They do speak some English, the doctor speaks English, but the rest of the people around the staff speak German, the forms we fill out are German. So in the training I recently had for the g7 was in German, so it's definitely not for everybody, but we make it work pretty well. I think.

Scott Benner 7:43
I don't know if you know this, but when you translate diabetes from English to German, it's diabetes.

Emily 7:47
Yes.

Scott Benner 7:49
Is this why you had such an easy time learning learning German?

Emily 7:53
as possible? Yes, some of some of the words are definitely very similar. That sounds challenging,

Scott Benner 7:58
though, honestly, filling out medical forms with so you had like a nine month class. I love that they took you away from Germany back to America to teach you a different life.

Emily 8:10
Yeah, so we were in London and had to move during the pandemic, to the United States, for my husband just be at home to do a virtual course the whole time. And there was definitely some times where I was especially when I was sick with COVID going. So glad we did this.

Scott Benner 8:25
Could we have just sat? By the way, couldn't we have just sat in the UK and learn German?

Emily 8:30
The timezone might have been a little easier.

Scott Benner 8:33
Okay, so you. That's interesting. So you and he both do a brush up course to the kids have to learn German? Or do you do that to try to help them.

Emily 8:44
So during the nine months that we were in the states of schools, were just in kind of a little bit of chaos, I guess, you could say. And so I thought rather than worrying about going back to school, not going back to school, virtual or whatever, I decided to just homeschool my two kids. For those nine months, they had been in a pretty competitive school in London. And so I thought the worst that would happen was that they just had a little bit of catching up to do when we got to Germany. And then also, we have been out of the United States for most of our kids lives. We lived in Belgium before we lived in London. And so they actually haven't had things like US history taught to them in school. So I thought, Oh, this nine month window, I can't mess them up too badly. And we'll get some stuff like US history and before they go to Germany, and I also went ahead and taught them some German basics so that they're at least competitive at I don't not competitive, they're they're doing okay, where their peers are in school and that their school that they're in, they are it's an English language. It's a primarily an English language school. And they also teach German but my kids They're not behind on the German I guess

Scott Benner 10:01
when you're in Belgium. Are you in the French? Are you?

Emily 10:06
Yes, we were in Wallonia we are in the French speaking. So Henry, actually, that's where he was first in school. And so he spoke some beautiful French for a long time, and now has forgotten all of it.

Scott Benner 10:19
Isn't that disappointing? Really, that sucks. You're like, Oh, here's gonna be the happy part of the story. Your son speaks German and French and English, you're like, No, yeah, it's not.

Emily 10:31
The only thing I get out of it is that they don't think it's weird, or different or special that we speak more than one language. Because over here, it's so normal. Okay. So I don't get any kudos for that at

Scott Benner 10:43
all. When your husband retires? Will you go home? Or will you?

Emily 10:49
The plan would be if we if possible to stay overseas.

Scott Benner 10:53
Yeah, you found the place you live.

Emily 10:56
We like I think when we were first married, and he was in the Air Force we, for we did live in Germany for three years. And we just really, really, really loved it. And it's always been something that we've tried to get back to. And so when we did get back to it, when we went to Belgium, it felt right when we just really liked it. And then after Henry's diagnosis, we have found the healthcare systems overseas to be so much easier to navigate. And it just feels like he has more options. In the future. If we were to stay here and secure that kind of health insurance for him. Is the

Scott Benner 11:41
healthcare your main reason for staying? Or?

Emily 11:45
No, I would not say it's the main reason, but I would say it would. It's definitely a huge plus.

Scott Benner 11:52
Okay. All right. Well listen to anybody who has contact with militaries on both sides, and says to me, I want to live in Germany, I make a note, maybe I should be moving to Germany. I don't know what your husband knows that. I don't know. But honestly, assuming it's something. Anyway, I'm on my way. I didn't I didn't know. I didn't know I was supposed to be getting out. But okay.

Emily 12:18
Camera, we're not sending the evacuation signal.

Scott Benner 12:23
When I see the flare, I'll be on my way. That's right. You'll know. Okay, so Henry has had diabetes now for four years. Yeah, he started in the UK, what technology did he have a diagnosis.

Emily 12:36
So when we left the hospital, they gave him a Libra to us when we left the hospital. I was very fortunate in our diagnosis. So during a difficult time, I was actually very, very fortunate. I have a very good friend of mine. Lindsey, whose son Jacoby was diagnosed two years before Henry. And she hit the ground running with education and making sure everyone knew what she knew about diabetes. And so I had somebody I could immediately reach out to you. And so one of the first things she said to me was you need to get a duck's comp. And so we talked about it at the hospital and the NHS was not covering Dexcom they would cover the Libra. And then we so we talked about doing the labor, which was definitely better than nothing, right. And it gave us as first time. diabetes, Beatty's parents, something to kind of ease our mind. So we would be sneaking in in the middle of the night. And instead of doing a finger poke, we're just doing a scan on his arm with the Libra. It was very nice. Yeah.

Scott Benner 13:49
I think first of all, you use her full name. So I'll bleep it out for you later. But oh, I'm so sorry. Sorry. But I recognize her name. Somehow. Are you both in my Facebook group?

Emily 14:02
We are yes,

Scott Benner 14:03
I actually recognize. I know that must be. I was stunned by it. Because there's like 30 houses on there now, but I'm like, I know that somehow. Why does

Emily 14:12
that mean? Yeah, that's fantastic. Yeah, and I'm also friends with, you'll have to bleep this out too. But Michelle. Oh, okay. So she, I met her after I joined the group and we had a mutual friend in common. And then we kind of had a post in Juicebox Podcast in common and became friends that way. And she was actually she helps me out when we were in the States for the nine month period. And she is amazing. I love

Scott Benner 14:39
her 100% I don't know she's been around forever, too. So you're saying I'm making friendships for people?

Emily 14:47
I don't I mean, I think you know that.

Scott Benner 14:49
I mean, I don't know anything. You should I just live a life. You know what I mean? Like while you're over here, imagining something going on. I just got up and took the dog out and took a shower and you know, like, I don't know anything special? I wish I know.

Emily 15:02
But I think you're aware that the Facebook page especially is a lot about people connecting with other people. And it's a big deal. I think when we can find somebody to talk to in the middle of the night, I

Scott Benner 15:15
know for certain, and Michelle really has been around forever. I feel like okay. All right. So you start with Libra A, and I don't even know if it's Libra or Libra. I'm gonna care and I don't know. And Libra shots, or pumping. How does that go?

Emily 15:34
No, she was immediately on the shots.

Scott Benner 15:39
Okay. With a pen. Did they give you a syringes?

Emily 15:44
They gave us a pen.

Scott Benner 15:45
Okay, how are you still using pens?

Emily 15:48
He is still using pens. Yes.

Scott Benner 15:51
You guys like it? He likes it. What's the reasoning?

Emily 15:55
He likes it he. So and this is something I have gotten from other people. So it's by no means original. But for us. The CGM is kind of like a seatbelt. It's not that he doesn't have a choice about it. But that is the kind of that's what makes the car ride safer. So if he's not going to be finger poking all the time, there's got to be a CGM. So he doesn't really, he has choice about it. But he doesn't have a lot of choice about it, because he's not going to pick finger pokes over the CGM. But it's his body. And apparently, we taught him really well about body autonomy. Because he, when we first started talking about pumps during the first few months, he just told me, he said he didn't want something else on his body. And I said, Oh, okay. And every once in a while we revisit it. We've gone to some classes that the NHS had while we were still in London. So he could see what it was about. Maybe see another kid wearing it, maybe see someone his age, just talking about how what they liked about it. And he just at this point, is still happy to be MDI. So we taught we revisit it all the time. I mean, he's had three new endos in four years. So we definitely have talked about it. And those always want to know if he wants to go on a pump. But nobody is pushing it because his blood sugar is very good. So it's not a it's not an immediate concern. It's definitely his preference. And for now, his preference is the MDI,

Scott Benner 17:30
is He? Is he hit puberty yet? Yes, yeah.

Emily 17:37
This last year, I guess, for boys that might be one that might be a definitely is different. Because when you're in the middle of it, you're kind of going, Oh, my God, what is going on with the insulin and everything else? And then I look back at pictures from a year ago, and I go, Oh, well, yeah, he, he grew like a foot. And you know, he's got to watch like hair when I'm putting a Dexcom on and things like that. So yeah, he's definitely in the midst of that. Yes.

Scott Benner 18:04
Well, it's cool that you're able to keep it's that you're able to keep your goals and with the MDI, that's terrific. is, Is he real? Is he persistent about his diabetes? Or are you the one that's like, Hey, your blood sugar's going up?

Emily 18:22
No, he's really good about he, I mean, we try to set his alarms at a wider range than we have our our alarm set, so that I get an alert, usually before he gets an alert, but he will often kind of be he'll, he will glance at it and let me know, hey, this is what's happening. This is the trend. I'm just saying, you know, I'm this and I'm going down, but it's I'm not shaky, or he does, he does keep in good eye on it usually, actually.

Scott Benner 18:56
Okay, cool. All right. Um, but if, if I'm hearing correctly, that if you were somehow magically in charge, and he didn't have an opinion, you'd get a pump?

Emily 19:06
I would. I would, I think just because, from what I've been able to hear from other people about it, it takes a lot of the I mean, obviously, there's a lot of initial decision making to your algorithm and to get all those kinds of stuff, fine tuned. But after that, it would be very nice to you know, turn off the Basal for sports or to use that so that, you know, the Basal IQ kind of thing for nighttime lows, that kind of thing, I think would be really nice. And I think he would enjoy that. But I think he's enjoying being successful with this right now. And he understands it. And so maybe that's a factor in why he does not want to change.

Scott Benner 19:52
Yeah, I don't I don't think he should. I just think that I was just wondering what your opinion was.

Emily 19:57
Oh, no, it is. It's a funny thing too, because I think a lot A lot of people I know when he was first diagnosed, I had some people say, Oh, he'll get on a pump, and it'll be fine. And I always laugh now, because I see people in the group talking about their pumps. And I'm like, Oh, my God, I know that once you get things set up, it's probably not that complicated. But it's not uncomplicated, and all these people who are just like, Oh, you'll get on a pump, and I'll be fine. And I kind of laugh because I'm like, well, it's not the solution. You think it is. It's still there's still a user. That is, you know,

Scott Benner 20:29
there's a new learning Grammy music. Yeah. And there's, there's the new learning curve. Your settings are, of course, incredibly important. But you don't realize but you, you probably do realize, but you have settings with MDI, too. They're just yeah, you know, they're, they're amounts and numbers that you use that work. And so you've good settings now. And when you move to a pump, there might be some adjustment times where you're getting the settings right there, too. There's definitely a, you're definitely starting over to some to some degree.

Emily 21:00
Yeah, it's not a magical answer to anything. And I think that he'll go to a pump, he won't go to a pump, but, you know, whatever. He'll always have this knowledge, I guess, to fall back on if he wants it. No,

Scott Benner 21:13
I completely agree with you. Okay. So here, you're in Germany, where you want to be, which is exciting. He's now using Dexcom G six, I think, right?

Emily 21:24
Yes. So we got the G six, about two months into his diagnosis. We got we talked to our insurance, and got it through our insurance.

Scott Benner 21:34
Okay. So the better part of of the four years he's been using Dexcom? Yes. How long ago? Did you realize that G seven was released in parts?

Emily 21:47
So in September, he went to go see his endocrinologist for his regular quarterly appointment. And she just casually mentioned that Oh, as of next, oh, no. Sorry, in in August. So yeah, in August, he went to go see her for his regular appointment. And she just kind of casually mentioned that Oh, yeah. Starting next month, if we want. She could write a prescription for the g7. Just letting us know.

Scott Benner 22:15
It'd be that easy. Don't worry, just Yeah. And it was

Emily 22:20
it did end up being that easy. My husband who is kind of I'm kind of the glass half empty, look for problems before they happen. And he's my counterbalance of everything will be fine, no matter what. He right away was like, yeah, let's get this prescription. And I was going, Oh, we still have, you know, so much time left on our G six prescription, surely the insurance is not going to approve this until we are out of RG six. And that was kind of my base of like, oh, I don't think they will. And then we thought, well, we'll get the prescription at any rate, and we can, you know, the worst that can happen is they say no. Right. And so we got that prescription. And we we have a company here in Germany that acts as the kind of medical equipment procure, which I know is very common in the United States as well. And the lady we talked to there said, Okay, I could definitely get it for you guys. But just so you know, with your insurance, a might get hung up on the fact that the FDA has not approved it because it's an American Insurance. And so we said, okay, let's so we submitted it to our insurance to see if it would be approved. And they actually pretty quickly approved it much were surprised. No

Scott Benner 23:34
problem. Yeah. So yeah, I remember. I remember when it happened here. So you kind of have to like, my life is slightly different than yours in this. Right. So I start getting emails from people that are like, hey, we need to do agree to an NDA. And I'm like, I already agreed to an NDA. I agree to a lot of MBAs, by the way, right? Like now, this is new information, just respond back that you understand that there's a I forget what they call it. I don't pay close attention. But I'm like, whatever. They're, you know, they're about to say something, and you can't talk about it yet. And I'm like, okay, so I have to agree. And then once I agree, then they send me the information. And the email comes and it's like, Dexcom g7. Like, holy hell, like, this is great. Dexcom G seven is coming. And I keep reading and I'm like, UK, Ireland, Germany, Austria, Hong Kong. I'm like, I don't live in those places. Hold on a second. I started going, Oh, wow. It's going to come out first. overseas before it comes out here. And now we're you and I are recording on Halloween. And by the way, you and I were supposed to record the other day, but we were both so sick. We just couldn't do it. Yes. By the way, when you cancelled I was like, thank God.

Emily 24:54
I felt so bad. I was like, I will drag myself out of bed if I have to, but I don't think you'll be able to hear what I did. stages, my voice is just gone. I was

Scott Benner 25:01
so dizzy on that day. I was like, that's fine. I'm just It's okay. Let's move it. But yes, so it's not. I mean, I don't know, I don't want to say it's not common or uncommon, but in the past, I don't remember Dexcom coming out in Europe before it came out in America. Am I wrong about that?

Emily 25:20
So someone told me, they said, oh, when we were living in Germany, everyone, we got the gadgets first in Germany, it was awesome. They loved it. So I don't know if it came out first or not. But I was honestly, just from what I know about regulations and agencies and departmental government kind of stuff. I was just honestly surprised that Europe or the UK would get it before the US because of those kinds of things. Because whenever anybody kind of bemoans the FDA, I think, Oh, well, it's like, in Europe, it's like the FDA times a million. It's not a fast process at all. So and then, because I know there's been hangups with the apps, and I thought, oh, there'd be more likely to be hanging up here with the apps because they are more into the privacy and consent on all the different websites and apps and things like that. So the fact that it came out here first was a complete surprise to me, who knows nothing. But I was surprised. Well, I

Scott Benner 26:21
was stunned to I got through the email. I was like, huh, this is interesting, because and, you know, and then the public relations around it was clearly I mean, I don't think it's surprised anybody, like they don't start working on how to tell you about the day before it comes out. Right? Like it's a process. There's months and years of work that goes into things to launch products and stuff like that. But I was like, wow, they have a real, there's a big launch here set up. And I thought, I mean, I have no idea. I am genuinely, I'm being genuine, like, I don't know anything. But you have felt like, they must have thought that the US was going to kind of roll at the same time, because I don't know, the marketing material looks to me like they were ready for it, I guess. And so I don't know what happened in the US, they gotta kick back one more time at the FDA. But now you're hearing people talk about early 2023. You know, that kind of stuff I had one person told me, you know, it would definitely be a Christmas miracle if it happened at the end of 2022. And I was like, Okay, so I'm like, you know, kind of like picking through what I'm hearing and trying to figure things out. It gets pretty obviously coming very soon to the US, hopefully. But you guys got it first. So this is you know, so I'm like, Well, how do I interview somebody about g7? Like, how do I and then you were just like, I have it? And like Oh, yeah.

Emily 27:42
I was so excited to share it. Because it has been such a point of gossip almost of like, Oh, what have you heard? What have you heard? What have you heard? Yeah, and oh, I've heard this about it. And I've heard this about the launch and all the details. And so it has just been such a boiling. And of course, since we've only had the diagnosis for almost four years now, unlike so many people we came in with the G six, like I said, We've been really fortunate. So this is the first kind of leap in technology that we've experienced. And so it's so I feel like as far back as my son's diagnosis, people have been talking about this though. So it's a slow boil, build of gossip about it. And I thought I like I shared it with like my people I care about but like they still don't really get how big of a deal. So I thought I'll just put it on the Juicebox Podcast page, and then it kind of blew up more than I thought it was. Which I don't know why I thought people wouldn't be about it, because it's so exciting.

Scott Benner 28:41
Well, I definitely expected it once I saw your post. But let's like I really want to dig into it. So you just said it was a big leap. Was it a big leap because it's the first time you guys have experienced a leap in technology or is the g7 actually that much different than the G six Arden has been getting her diabetes supplies from us bed for quite some time. And here are just a few reasons why us met accepts Medicare nationwide and over 800 private insurers. They have an A plus rating with the Better Business Bureau and they carry everything from your insulin pumps to your diabetes testing supplies. The latest CGM is like libre three from freestyle and the Dexcom G six. US met is the number one distributor for FreeStyle Libre systems nationwide. The number one specialty distributor from the pod dash, the fastest growing tandem distributor and they're also the number one rated distributor index. com customer satisfaction surveys with over 1 million diabetes customer service since 1996. US med is offering you better service and better care, not to mention, always, always giving you 90 days worth of supplies and fast and free shipping. Sounds pretty easy right? Oh 888-721-1514 You can call them at that number, or go to us med.com forward slash juicebox. And don't forget us Matt has the libre three. If that's what you're looking for, they've got it. Check them out. So in just a moment, we're going to get back to Emily. And she's going to talk all about Dexcom g7. But for the moment, I'm here to tell you about the GS six and Dexcom. In general. What are you getting when you have a continuous glucose monitor? With the Dexcom G six, you're seeing the speed direction and number of your blood sugar. I can pull my phone up right now. Arden's in class, it's an evening time, I can see that her blood sugar is 107. And it is rising. Looks like she had a little bit of a lower blood sugar. But I can see what's going on here. Actually, I don't have to act like I don't know. Looks like she had a little bit of a low as she was getting ready to go to class. She must have drank a juice for that. Yeah, I'm gonna say yes. And then came back up. And her blood sugar is leveling off. In that cool, I can see that on my phone. Actually, up to 10 people can follow your blood sugar with Dexcom. myself. I'm watching right now my wife is falling on her phone. And actually Arden's roommate follows a college. Anybody you want can follow your CGM. It's up to you. They can also see rates of speed, direction changes, arrows, get alarms. That's the kind of stuff like you know, I said Arden had a little bit of a low before she went to class. She was actually taking a nap. She's a college, I saw the falling blood sugar. I called her on the phone. I said, Hey, where are you at? She was I'm sleeping. And I said, Well, your blood sugar is falling. So do something that she said, Okay. And that was we talked about like 20 seconds just like that. You can do that stuff to dexcom.com forward slash juicebox. Make knowledge your superpower with the Dexcom GS six. Just get started today. There's a button right there. It says get started with Dexcom GS six, you click on it, boom. And before you know it, you've filled in a tiny bit of information. And you're on your way. I don't know if it does on every browser. But if you're on my page, and then you try to leave like you try to close the browser window. But you haven't done anything yet. It says Hey, before you go, are you interested in our free Dexcom G six sample question mark? Well, maybe I am. Our 10 day trial empowers you to make more informed decisions and delivers a new level of diabetes management request the sample, who knew I mean, I know. But now you know, to dexcom.com forward slash juice box head over get your sample. Get started. Do whatever you want to do. Just do it with my link, please.

Emily 33:04
Think you're right. It's it's definitely a perspective as far as for us. It's the big leap that we've had. So we don't pump we don't do any of that stuff. So we don't loop. So we've gone from the G six to the g7. It's for us it's a big leap for other people, I definitely can see people thinking it's different, but it's not huge. Honestly, though, the warmup time alone feels like I am somehow light years in the future from where I was a couple of weeks ago.

Scott Benner 33:40
Okay. All right. So let's let's kind of make a list of things that are changed, and then we'll go through them one at a time. So the warm up, the warm up time has significantly decreased. Yes. Okay.

Emily 33:55
So what was two hours before, and now it is 30 minutes, and we have found the two so we changed it last night, for the first time. And the first time we put one on when we looked when we started everything. The app gave us a 24 minute warmup time. And yesterday, it was a 25 minute warmup time, so it wasn't even 30 minutes.

Scott Benner 34:18
Okay. And like, I'm gonna keep jumping ahead for a minute, then we'll come back to warm up. So warm up the saw the size is obviously different, right? Like, and it's disposable now. So size, disposable. The inserters different.

Emily 34:38
Yes. And I think the grace period is a big deal too.

Scott Benner 34:42
And there's a grace period, which Yeah, we're gonna hold up to last because that is a big deal. Is that it warm up? sighs disposability. inserter.

Emily 34:53
No, um, and then the app has changed.

Scott Benner 34:56
Okay. All right. Okay, All right, Emily. I'm actually excited. Like, there's, I know people probably think I get product before other people, but I don't.

Emily 35:08
And so, you know, Yeah, cuz you can't on this one. Yeah.

Scott Benner 35:12
Well, not only that, it just doesn't. There are so many rules about how these companies can, like, do stuff like this, like marketing or even like testing like, it's you have no idea. Like, even when we got on the pod five, it had to go through our insurance. And if our, if our insurance wouldn't cover it, then art and couldn't get it was like that easy, you know? So? Yeah, you don't you don't there's no ways around these things. Anyway, so Okay, so warmup time right now, Dexcom, G six, you take off your sensor bed, pop out your transmitter, clean off your transmitter, put on a new sensor bed, put in the new transmitter, connect it to the app, and then two hours later, it comes online. But that's not how this works anymore. So

Emily 36:01
no, so we go, let's see, we go in and on my son's app, he uses a phone for his he does not use the receiver uses his phone. And you just say I think I think it's changed sensor. He's not with me. So he's phone is with him. So it's like, it's like end session or change sensor or something like that. There's two different options. And so we go to let let's see, we went to change the sensor. The applicator is really easy. And there's a huge instructional with pictures as well, that comes with it that is easy to follow, just in case you get a little mixed up about what you're supposed to do. Yeah, of course, the wash our hands, we wipe the sensor site we and you don't have to take, it's not going to send data from both to his phone at the same time, of course, because he's got a Bluetooth with one of them or not the other but you don't have to take off the other one before you put on the new one because they're not sharing a transmitter anymore.

Scott Benner 37:11
Okay, hold on a sec. So I'm a little over work. Sorry, no, I'm sorry. I translated the word confused. And I tried to slip it in in German, but I must have not done a good job. I am a little confused. I want to make sure I understand. Henry Henry is wearing a g7. It's the day to switch. His g7 is giving information to his phone, we can see his blood sugar. You put on a new one. It's got a warm up time. But during the warm up time, you're still seeing the old one.

Emily 37:43
No, as soon as I because it still requires the warmup time. But I don't have to take off the other one before it put the other one on because I'm not sharing any components between the two.

Scott Benner 37:53
I see. So it's not like you have to take off the old one disconnected shut it down or it confuses the process.

Emily 37:59
Exactly. It just wants to the only thing it wants to do is connect new Bluetooth to the new sensor.

Scott Benner 38:06
So what is the reasoning why I would put the new one on but not take the old one off?

Emily 38:11
I don't know. There's no There's no I don't think there's a reason to and honestly at first I was wondering if we would not have a lapse of numbers because of there's no transmitter to share. But I guess it's just I don't know why you would not take off the other one. But just in case you were like Oh, I'm in a hurry and I just need to pop this one on so the warm up can go or whatever. See

Scott Benner 38:37
what's your sir? Yeah. Okay. All right.

Emily 38:38
Have to take the other one off.

Scott Benner 38:41
I Emily, I thought you were getting to some sort of exciting announcement and then that turns

Emily 38:45
No, no, we wondered, we wondered, that's that was our big experiment last night was like, Can we do this? Because it kind of seems like you might be able to, but No,

Scott Benner 38:56
all right. So the warmup time is is listed as 30 minutes but you are getting shorter times like it's almost like a calculates it once it's on.

Emily 39:06
We put it on we go through the screens where you have to verify the site you use that kind of thing. And once we say start censoring put in the number it the first time it immediately told us 24 minutes remaining and the second time yesterday that we put in the new sensor it said 25 minutes remaining,

Scott Benner 39:26
okay? And is everything still kind of scanner based if you're using your phone, like there's a box with a code on it, you scan it with your phone, like that kind of stuff.

Emily 39:34
So this time it's the applicator that has the scan code, or the number and or the number of both of them on there. So it's a QR code. And it also has the number in pretty big font, and it's actually on the applicator that you can find that sensor number

Scott Benner 39:54
Okay, and the applicator sort of looks like I don't know how to describe it. So it's like a little cup almost right ate

Emily 40:00
like, I was yeah, like a small yogurt cup or something.

Scott Benner 40:03
Okay, around that size? And then what do you do you pull off the adhesive.

Emily 40:08
So there is a screw top on the front of it. So pardon me,

Scott Benner 40:15
don't worry, you're fine. I appreciate you doing.

Emily 40:19
So you just screw the top off of it. So if it was like some sort of a single serve yogurt, like you had this screw top on, you screw the top off. It's very, I found it very easy to screw the top off of. And it's just kind of right there in mechanism that deploys

Scott Benner 40:39
it is it already exposed the adhesive when you screw off the top? No, you're fine.

Emily 40:48
Yeah, but it's it's kind of within the canister a little bit. So it doesn't seem it's not. There's nothing pressing about it. Sorry,

Scott Benner 41:00
no, no, no, we want to get the story out of you before you die. The one thing I do you want to stop and drink something?

Emily 41:08
I did. Thank you. Okay. Let me take another one here.

Scott Benner 41:12
Yeah, you straighten yourself out, because I'm trying to understand something. And I think I do, but I want to make sure.

Emily 41:19
So

Scott Benner 41:21
So what let me say this with G six right now, right? I take the sensor, you know, and it's got the applicator, it looks like that spaceship from Star Wars, that is great. And you you pull off the tabs, there's two tabs that expose the adhesive, you touch it to your skin, and then you push the button. But now you're saying I have this kind of small thing, maybe the size of a small yogurt cup, and then I screw the end off of it. And when I do the adhesive is exposed already or I have to still pull off paper from it.

Emily 41:51
You don't have to pull anything off of it, you there is a part of basically where the cup would touch your arm that needs to be depressed against your arm. And so if you're not doing that, so if you're if you unscrew the cap and look inside, you can see the sensor and everything inside, but it's down further inside the IC. So there's there's no worry that oh, I'm going to touch the adhesive and mess things up or anything like that. But there's nothing to peel off. You unscrew it, there's a seal on the screw part. So you know, it's sealed at some point in you break that seal when you unscrew it. And then like I said, you can look inside of it. And you can see everything, it's just a little bit deeper inside the cup. So that there's no worry that I'm going to, like I said, touch it, maybe screw up the adhesive or do something weird, right?

Scott Benner 42:42
So I'm, I'm not an engineer, but I'm starting to imagine because at first when you said screw top, I was like, why is it a screw top, but it's probably reasonably airtight. So the adhesive doesn't dry out. Maybe that's what the screw was about, like makes a seal.

Emily 42:56
It's possible. I think it is a nice tight seal when you're when you're first opening it. But I also think it's somebody actually mentioned this in the group and I hadn't thought about it it. I feel like that if you had any sort of mobility or joint issues, unscrewing the cap would not be a problem

Scott Benner 43:17
comes off very simply. Yes, yeah. Seal is you don't have to

Emily 43:21
have. Yeah, so there's just a little tiny seal on it. I think just you know, the peace of mind that no one's touched anything inside. I guess it's sealed up. But it's not like it's hard to break the seal or anything like that. It's very easy to unscrew.

Scott Benner 43:36
That's really amazing. And you made me think of the singer SEAL who also is in great shape. He's also a nice tight seal. If you think about it. You don't I mean, I'm keeping it tight. I mean, he really is. So he's an older man, he looks terrific. So

Emily 43:48
I would never think of him as an older man. So he's definitely keeping it tight. Want

Scott Benner 43:52
to know how old he is? Hold on a second.

Emily 43:54
No. Let me keep my the 90s just happened 10 years

Scott Benner 43:59
ago, Emily seal is 59 years old. No, that makes you old, doesn't it? Well, no, my my wife. I had a conversation last night where I said we are right at the age where people are going to start dying from our childhood and it's going to shock you. And I'm like, I'm not you know what I mean? Like it's gonna be like a frontman from your famous you're like the best band you loved when you were in high school or something like that. And you're gonna be like, Oh, God,

Emily 44:29
oh, because it's already happening where they report somebody died and they report the age and I'm like, Oh, they weren't very old. And it's like they were in their 60s, which is not very old. And I'm going oh, that's not that old. Like that's not old. Yeah. And now they're gonna like you said it's going to be people that are beloved from our childhoods, and they're not going to talk about it being like, tragic. They're just going to talk about people dying. You lived

Scott Benner 44:51
a good long time. Like, let's think Alright, hold on, who's the singer of Aerosmith. Oh my god.

Emily 45:01
Tyler Perry.

Scott Benner 45:03
No. Tyler Perry's director God. Tyler, Steven Tyler, Tyler, Steven. How old Steven Tyler is.

Emily 45:17
This is hard focus. He's looked old for forever.

Scott Benner 45:20
I don't care. I want you to guess. As he's 7874 Mick Jagger is 79. And Ozzy still alive. I don't even know how that happened. Yeah, but just he's probably pickled, but that's not the point. Alright, so Okay, so now we've got this, right. Sorry. People are like, could you talk about the g7? You all

Emily 45:44
know, damn, it doesn't matter. Things

Scott Benner 45:47
got important. You said tight seal that made me think. good shape. And now we know that Ozzy 73 Just be happy and entertained. You'll find out about the g7 as we go, did you not hear Emily coughing? I had to help her. Okay, so we screw the cup off. You touch it to your skin? I guess you hold it still. And then when does it

Emily 46:11
pay to have you have to press it in a little bit. So there's kind of this plastic rim around the outside that's exposed when to take the screw cap off. And it goes, it can be pressed in and out like it's on a spring. And it has to be like compressed in order for the button to work to

Scott Benner 46:30
during during that compression. Emily, are you sticking the adhesive on or No? No. Okay. So you compress it down a little bit, then you just push a button.

Emily 46:40
You push a button, it's much quieter I find than the G six. So I don't know if anyone has any sensory issues around that button. I know my kid would always flinch for that, which I totally get. But this one, it's a lot quieter when you hit the button. And it won't. If you're not compressing it properly. It won't let you hit it will look you're hitting the button it will not deploy.

Scott Benner 47:08
Okay. And so has your son described whether or not it's feel similar to a G six going in.

Emily 47:17
He said he didn't feel it. So sometimes he feels sometimes he says that about the GS six. Sometimes he gives us uh oh, it hurt more than normal. Or, you know, it's he always kind of gives us the review of the Yelp review right away afterwards.

Scott Benner 47:34
Every time this one wasn't this one. That hurt.

Emily 47:38
Like, as I'm doing the three times around going Oh, I'm glad or Oh, I'm sorry. So I totally just did that as if you can see me.

Scott Benner 47:49
You were talking times around your finger around the adhesive. G six, hold it down. So when arting when Arden's on the pod goes on, if it hits a spot where like stuns are getting, I mean like I used to like kind of tickle her skin a little bit. And then around it and she got to an age where one day she just reached out move my hand and she's like, do not do that. And I was like, Oh, okay.

Emily 48:12
Yeah, yeah, we

Scott Benner 48:14
grew out of that. Okay. So okay, so you're, you're so used to like, push down the adhesive for him on the GSX. And then you would get his review. But is there even anything that pushed down now do you still do that with the g7

Emily 48:30
Or is so once you click the button it, it does the adhesive and everything, it puts the sensor and the adhesive in you pulled a cup away, and it's all there, the adhesive is there, everything is just there looks very similar to what's the Libra looked like from my memory. And you are there is a very thin adhesive that goes around it still. And so they do still ask that you do the three times around,

Scott Benner 48:57
pushing on hang.

Emily 48:59
Yeah, and each each box does also come with an overlay. So now you don't have to ask them for overlays. Each box comes with its own overlay. So I guess if it looks a little funky right from the beginning, you could throw the overlay on over it right away or as time goes on, you

Scott Benner 49:20
can see is Henry using it the overlay so

Emily 49:24
the first time we used it last week, I since I was doing a video of it because I was so excited. I was doing it one handed so I did not it was not my best application. And so I went ahead and put the overlay on for the first sensor that we used. And on his on the back of his arms. He tends to have with the G six even with the overlay stuff would start to come up and we'd have to put another overlay on. So even with my kind of not so great application of it with the overlay and everything It actually seemed are really really well, the first time.

Scott Benner 50:03
Yeah. The weight is lesser right.

Emily 50:06
I in sign I know that you had I talked about this in a previous podcast with what they call the Z height. Yes, I think that makes a huge difference. It's not getting caught on anything. Okay, and so nothing is snagging it. And I think that makes kind of a big difference on the overlays,

Scott Benner 50:27
effectiveness and the adhesive in the adhesive in general being able to work better because it's not, if it's, the farther away from the body it is, the more I'm imagining, like drag there is you know, and you can get caught, caught on more things. And even just, I don't know what the word is because I didn't pay attention in school. But you know what I mean? Like, just the, you know, the, I don't know, like thinking about holding a broom out at its end, like the farther you know, the the closer to the middle, you're holding the broom, the more control you have over it. So exactly, I guess the same thing is happening there.

Emily 51:00
It's it's slightly lighter, it's smaller. It's like there's just less drag around it. I guess if

Scott Benner 51:07
he was racecar less wind resistance, that'll be more miles per gallon out of them.

Emily 51:15
But right now is would be really nice.

Scott Benner 51:18
Okay, so now it's on the size is? I mean, has he mentioned the size like this is easier better? I mean, it doesn't stick out of your clothing anymore, I would guess right? Like how far off the skin? Does it feel like it is? It is? So

Emily 51:33
I don't I feel kind of bad for Dexcom? Because I know everybody's seen him compared to like, I don't know, what was it like a quarter or something like that? It doesn't do it justice, how small it is. And I think it really, it ends up being that Z height. Because the G six transmitter is not just sitting on the skin, it's sitting on top of like the sensor kind of carrier thing on top of the skin. And the Dexcom G seven is really just this quarter sized sensor transmitter sitting right on top of the skin.

Scott Benner 52:11
How about so good, I'm sorry.

Emily 52:14
It's also so it's not just that it's the distance from the skin to the top of the sensor is so slim. I think it's also there's, there's like no real 90 degree angles either. And it just it's almost shocking how much smaller it seems even though when I put the Tran like if I put the G six transmitter next to it, it doesn't seem crazy smaller. But there's just something about it on his skin where I'm like, it's so much smaller and right away. He just said he couldn't, he couldn't feel it. And I thought he was giving me another review on the insertion. Which it is a different insertion because instead of the needle going in at an angle, like it does off of the G six spaceship, it does go straight in and I don't know if that makes a huge difference on how it feels going in. But

Scott Benner 53:02
I'm just gonna bring that up like now it's a 90 degree insert and it used to be more Yeah, 45 right, I guess.

Emily 53:09
Yeah. So I don't know if that is part of what's making it better for him so far, but he so far is just kind of laughing. Oh, yeah, I didn't feel that at all. So

Scott Benner 53:18
that's excellent. Hey, did did Henry have compression lows ever with G six?

Emily 53:22
He did a lot.

Scott Benner 53:25
Are you seeing them with your seven?

Emily 53:28
We have not seen any with the g7

Scott Benner 53:31
See, this is my if you listen to the podcast, you know like two years ago when I was interviewing someone with Dex from Dexcom I was like hey, is this gonna cut down on compression lows feels like this would kind of cut down on the compression loads and like well we can't say that you can't say anything. It didn't test it. You know what I mean? But it just makes sense. So

Emily 53:49
if you just because even if he's laying right on it he's never going to be laying on it and an angle I think that

Scott Benner 53:56
puts pressure on it.

Emily 53:58
Yeah, so yeah, we haven't had we hadn't none No no, no compression laws at all. That's

Scott Benner 54:06
great. How many warrants so far do you think?

Emily 54:09
Oh, the G six is

Scott Benner 54:12
now the Gol G six for four years but how many G sevens Have you been through so far?

Emily 54:15
So this is the second g7 Wow, you

Scott Benner 54:18
guys are so new to it. Oh, this is so cool. Okay, all right. So when the first one came off now different than G six g six you take off you're like oh don't lose the transmitter. This one you rip off? It goes right the trash, right? Yes, exactly.

Emily 54:31
Which still feels really weird. Like there's part of me that's like should we keep it just in case?

Scott Benner 54:37
Something that did so much for you? Right like for 10 days and then you're like you're done that's how people feel when they get divorced.

Emily 54:49
Obviously goes in the trash, but we bought a house to get okay.

Scott Benner 54:55
I guess I'm done. Thank you. So right in the garbage but you have that feeling still Whoa, I shouldn't be throwing this out. That'll go away. Oh, I'm

Emily 55:03
sure. Yeah.

Scott Benner 55:05
He must be. Gosh, I don't know. Is he around? Well, I guess it's talked to him at some point. Yes, yes. All right, cool. Let's keep talking. But I'm gonna I want to grab them up. I want to get his feeling about it. So we've talked about the inserter. The inserter. Is, is it recycling or garbage when you're done with it?

Emily 55:22
So, I don't know. When I yeah, when I look at it, I feel like the top part could possibly be recycled. But the cup part? I think not. There's too much still going on inside of it. Okay. All right. So you could potentially grab stuff out of there if you really wanted to, but then the part where the button is, is more of a rubbery kind of material. So I don't even know if that would be

Scott Benner 55:52
a thing. Gotcha. Do you find the inserter? The the, the yogurt cup, which now the internet is going to call it a yogurt cup? And that'll be your fault, Emily, but it's the yogurt cup inserter? Is it feel like it's material wise? Is it commensurate to the old inserter? Or is it does look like they were able to use less material? What do you think?

Emily 56:18
I think it. So I have I actually kept one of the old ones just like you kind of look and give you a better idea. It looks so much. It's obviously a different shape. But it definitely looks smaller, less materials than the old one.

Scott Benner 56:34
Okay. Oh, cool. Well, I hope that's true. Now, what about I think

Emily 56:37
she the packaging is less as well.

Scott Benner 56:40
The box is much smaller.

Emily 56:43
And it's not so and how they. So they're all in their own box. But the there's no like plastic packaging.

Scott Benner 56:53
Okay, so this little cue box, I'm imagining, I opened up the inserter comes right out. It's not wrapped in anything or anything like that. So that's just the yogurt cup. Cup comes out of the box. And then you can press the spring and push the button and it's on. Yep. Nice. Alright. We talked about the app. So you said the app on your son's phone is now different. Is that right? Yes. Okay. Did he have to update the app he had? Or did you have to delete the app and put on a new one?

Emily 57:27
We did not have to delete the GSX. It just is not working anymore. But so we had to get a new the g7 app on the App Store new

Scott Benner 57:35
app? And what do you think of it? Is it uh, I haven't seen it yet.

Emily 57:42
So I really like it, I am sure that there are people who will not like it. Obviously, people are people in that regard. And like I said, we don't pump. So there might be things that other people are wishing we're on it that aren't on it that we don't even notice. But I really like the way the app is organized. And I think so we were in the States, we were using sugar mate to follow his numbers more easily. And when, when that kind of went wonky, we went back to Dexcom here. And I feel like they take not everything. But they've taken in a lot of consideration of what people like about some of the other apps besides Dexcom that they use. And they've incorporated some of those things into the new G seven app. So I think the number one thing people would probably want that they did not incorporate is the rate of

Scott Benner 58:41
change. Yes, I know I saw.

Emily 58:45
But they do have NIF different alarms that you can now set for if it's falling at a certain rate or rising at a certain rate, which is better than the last step.

Scott Benner 58:56
Okay, good. So there's more functionality with the alarms. Yes. And then there's kind of like tabs across the bottom right like glucose, then history. There's,

Emily 59:05
there's glucose, history, connections and profile, and they each have their own little icon that you can go to. On the glucose, tab page, whatever it is, you can see you can see what you're used to seeing from Dexcom on that page, which is the chart with this with the numbers and the dots. There's a plus sign and if you go to the plus sign, you can go right from that plus sign to add meals, carbs, exercise, long acting insulin, quick acting insulin,

Scott Benner 59:43
putting notes, putting notes into Yes, things you've done. Yeah.

Emily 59:46
So you can do that just right from that page. You can also do that from the history page so you can see what you've had in there. And you can also add things in from the history page. Okay. And then on the glucose app, I think something But I didn't fully realize until we had the app going, was that you literally just scroll further on that page, and it gives you your clarity information. Okay. And that I think for some people, that's going to be maybe a nightmare of too much information that they don't want to see.

Scott Benner 1:00:20
But it's not, it's not something you have to see though, right? Like the, like crawl. Yeah, like cards, right? Like, that's how they were talking about it when they were on like, so one screen or a card is your graph. And then you can go to history to see a different card with information, what is connections?

Emily 1:00:39
So the connections is just, I really think that's just like the followers, basically. Okay,

Scott Benner 1:00:47
that makes sense, following people who are following, and then your profiles, probably just a little bit of information about your account, you can get a profile,

Emily 1:00:54
it gives you a countdown of how many days you have left on the sensor. And it's done in a much more friendly way for my 12 year old. Instead of going into the settings and kind of giving me the date readout of exactly what time it's going to end it has a system of kind of like blocks that are there's 10 blocks and then one comes off of it for every day. And it gives you It also tells you this many days remaining makes

Scott Benner 1:01:20
it very visual. Yeah, it's a good idea.

Emily 1:01:23
It's nice just to glance at and it also from that tab will allow you to connect to Apple first. So we have iPhones, it allows you to connect to Apple Health if you would like to. And we have not done that so far on his but I will be looking into it when I have more than a couple of seconds to rub together.

Scott Benner 1:01:44
I have Arden's attached to Apple Health. And it's it's helpful, honestly, yeah. And so on that graph, still three 612 24 hours, I can see that it does it's it still goes landscape or portrait. What are the um, I found a picture of it now while you're looking at it. So across the top three 612 24 hours, then there's three dots to the right, have it? What is that four? Do you know? It's a menu. Right.

Emily 1:02:12
Let me let me call my son in here for a second. See. Or I'll text him because that's the way we all communicate.

Scott Benner 1:02:22
My father would be bellowing right now, Scott.

Emily 1:02:27
Normally I would

Scott Benner 1:02:30
come into the room going like oh god, did I do something wrong? Or like, how's this gonna go?

Emily 1:02:36
I was usually in trouble when it was me as a kid. Yeah, I we like to do that to our kids every once in a while just to keep them on their toes.

Scott Benner 1:02:42
Yeah. Hey, listen, that's a great idea.

Emily 1:02:46
You get the bellow get out here.

Scott Benner 1:02:49
What do you offer job today? You did it. You didn't piss me off too much.

Emily 1:02:58
It's not going through. Alright, so now I'm gonna bello for Andre. Could you come here please? Yes.

Scott Benner 1:03:11
What makes me think of Goodfellows Is it good Phil Hendry, Hendry? What was that? That was a little guy. God, I can't think of anybody's name. I'm so old at this point. Pachi Pachi Pachi Hendry.

Emily 1:03:30
Okay, so Okay, so the three little dots is basically a really quick way to get into all your different alerts if you want to change them from that page as well.

Scott Benner 1:03:43
Okay, cool. That's excellent. And now, what about your app? Did your follow up change at all? Or no,

Emily 1:03:49
not yet. No, it is the same, which honestly, was a little bit of a relief because I didn't, it was just it was easier the first time we were doing everything to go okay, it's working great. So it went perfectly with our follow ups. But we don't have a new follow up yet, which I know from previous podcasts, you've done that that's I'm sure something they're working on. But for now, it's the same follow up it's just his app that's different.

Scott Benner 1:04:18
My last question about the graph is you know how you look at the graph and you kind of infer things from it like the pitch of the line tells you stuff none of that's changed graphically.

Emily 1:04:28
No, it's still the same I think we have a different layout for us that is it's it's like a different background. Basically it's it's brighter than it was

Scott Benner 1:04:41
color schemes a little different but but the color schemes

Emily 1:04:45
a little different but otherwise, and now I'm looking at his phone and is it not let you do landscape? So his on his app, it's not letting him do the

Scott Benner 1:04:55
landscaping Android or iPhone. iPhone. Is it there? There's a landscape lock in the main screen, he might have it, he might have the whole phone locked.

Emily 1:05:05
Okay. I'll have to look into

Scott Benner 1:05:09
figure that out. But yeah,

Emily 1:05:09
so so it looks, it basically looks the same with the dots and everything else. Okay. And the arrow, the arrow I think is slightly different than it was. So where it actually tells you your number and gives you the arrow, though the design of it is slightly different, but it's basically the same. It

Scott Benner 1:05:27
looks updated, but similar. Yeah. Okay, so I have one more question for you that I'm going to grab Henry, if that's okay. Okay, that's fine. I want to understand the grace period, how that works. Okay, so what does that even mean? Because they're pushing it. And then I started listening. And I was like, that makes sense to me that that's a big deal. So what does it explain to me how it works functionally for you.

Emily 1:05:51
So you start getting the same messages of you know, your sensor is going to expire in 24 hours, 12 hours, six hours, three hours. And then once it actually expires, it just doesn't stop it says new basically says you now have 12 hours to change it. So if you wanted to change it before, you could, of course, but then it's just it's basically it's extended for 12 hours no matter what. So it's interesting to me, because there's definitely been times where sensor has been failing, or something's been wrong with it. And so we've had to change it early. And we know that the time that we're changing, it is not a good time. So it's normally a time that he'd be at school, or it's the morning or something like that. And so we have to think ahead with the GSX. To go okay, well, the next time we change, we're gonna have to change it the night before, or you know, earlier than we planned on changing it. So we're not getting the full 10 day use out of it. And so, for this, it's definitely that 12 hours, it's a it's a big deal. It's hard to explain to somebody, I guess he doesn't use these, what a big deal that is to be able to say, we'll you know, it will change it in the morning, or we're gonna go out to dinner right now. And it's, you know, let's just wait till after dinner.

Scott Benner 1:07:17
You basically get the freedom of the entire 24 hour clock to decide when it happens. Instead,

Emily 1:07:22
because 12 hours is such a huge Yeah, no,

Scott Benner 1:07:25
yeah, I listen, I think this agenda and an episode recently, but we had two months before Arden left for college. We were like, Hey, we've got to get your CGM on a better set on a better what am I looking for? You know, a better, like schedule schedule. I got Emily, thank you a better schedule. Schedule. I couldn't come up with the word schedule. So the COVID still has me a little bit Emily. But that's okay. Because it just happened that one time, right, like you got this, this sensor that just it just went off before you expected it to we last one at like 1112 o'clock at night one time. And then every time we changed it, we'd say to ourselves, let's set an alarm for nine days from now. And we'll just change it in the evening. We'll get ahead of this. And we kept I swear to you, we kept screwing it up and screwing it up to the point where he started writing it on stickies around the house because I didn't want Arden to have to change her CGM at midnight. Yeah, you know, when she was a college, because then all that comes with it. Forget it just being not pleasant to do when it's it's late at night. But now you had but with G six a two hour warm up window? Yes. And then, you know, you also are like you're a little like in the first couple hours. You don't I mean, you're not sure what you're getting as far as readings go. And, and so it just took us forever. But now basically, we could have just done it whenever we wanted to. Yeah.

Emily 1:08:53
It's interesting, too, because the 12 hour grace period is so nice. Of course, it's makes so much sense. But also, my husband and I kind of had to laugh a little bit because we were kind of going well with the 30 minute warmup. I don't know when is not a good time to change it.

Scott Benner 1:09:12
So quick. Yeah. Well, you gave your game that too. Now, I guess my last question for you is, what about accuracy? Are you noticing? What are you saying?

Emily 1:09:22
So for us, the G six within the first 24 hours was always we tend to be the kind of people who we since we are on the MDI and not the pump. We basically believe Dexcom unless we have reason to not believe Dexcom. So unless he's feeling a certain way or something doesn't seem right with the number to us, we basically go that's probably right. And whenever we've had to do a finger poke, it's generally been okay. With the G six. I know in the first 24 hours we just get used to okay the numbers kind of are a little crazy at first you end up Doing a few finger pokes in the first 24 hours just to kind of see how far off it is. Yeah. And with this, we did some finger pokes. And it was, like, just right from the beginning it was on. Oh, that's great. And we never really had you get the kind of scattered. I don't know how to describe that first 24 hours where sometimes you get that kind of scattered shot, kind of look to your graph. That still happens. But it's more, it's like tighter.

Scott Benner 1:10:33
So not much of a bit. So listen, I have to say, just for clarity, like, generally speaking, Dexcom works really well for Arden. And will either EPS as well, yeah, on G six, I'll either see, like the last one she put on was good to go. Like, I don't even know how to describe it to you. Like she had a lot of for two hours. I was like, hey, just test that. Make sure that number is right spot on. Super smooth graph always fine. The one prior to that the first couple of hours, I think four or five hours that it was on. I kept saying to her, like, hey, Don't doze off that number. Like check it, you know, like, but and they were they weren't wildly off. But then all of a sudden one time it was like, your blood sugar's you know this. Now suddenly, it's at points higher. And five minutes later, it wasn't again, I was like, Whoa, you know, like, I'm like, this one's not settled in yet. Which is usually how I ended up thinking of it, you know?

Emily 1:11:24
Yes, yes. This one hasn't settled.

Scott Benner 1:11:27
Exactly. term. It hasn't it hasn't settled in yet. But that is, I mean, I, I don't know that I can remember the last time I've had to say to her take that off. That one doesn't work. I mean, it's maybe happened like two or three times and all these years, you know what I mean? So,

Emily 1:11:44
yes, for us, even when one is not great. Right away, it eventually comes around and sooner rather than later for us as well. We've been very lucky. We've had a few where they've just been terrible. And we all laugh about it. But it's been mostly wonderful for us. So we definitely don't have any complaints that way. But it did. It felt different in the first 24 hours. So even being somebody who, who likes the G six and who found it to be good, I still found a difference, a better difference in the first 24 hours of the g7. And then throughout the 10 days. We, with the GS six, there will be times where you know if it goes too low or too high. There's just times where it's like the we're gonna take just feels like the sensor is going to take break for a few for a little bit. And you're kind of going yeah, it was an extreme number. So I get it. And that just it didn't happen at all with the g7. We didn't have, we had some slight disruptions where it would tell him that, oh, it's the they he basically been too far from his phone even if he had not, but it came back on right away. So the disruptions were just minimal to nothing. It's great.

Scott Benner 1:13:00
I do find myself wondering how long it'll be until the integration happens. Like you know, G seven to control IQ, G seven on the pod five, you know, how long till the DIY community figures out how to do GCF and like, all that stuff. But it's super, I mean, listen, from my, from my perspective, as a person has been using this stuff for a long time with his daughter. The size change alone is a big deal. The warmup time is huge. I mean, that it's not going to get caught on stuff. Give me that you won't have the same ability to compress it while you're laying down. Seems like a big deal to me. Like I don't see any. I don't see any back steps here. So how about you? Do you see anything where you're like, Oh, God, they shouldn't change that?

Emily 1:13:52
No, I for us, because we came into this with G six, we haven't had the hard time that a lot of other people have had. And we've been really, really grateful for the G six and it's been wonderful, but this I had to pinch myself. I felt like I was dreaming. It's just a really good product in my opinion.

Scott Benner 1:14:14
That's good to hear. Okay, well, thank you, Emily, for doing this for me. I'm gonna say goodbye to you now, just in case. You know, Henry, and I really hit it off and this is the end of you. So do you stick those air pods in his ears?

Yes, I can. Here he is. Hey, Henry, how are you? I'm Scott.

Henry 1:14:39
I'm good. Good. How are you today?

Scott Benner 1:14:46
Oh, I'm getting over COVID Thank you. So oh, I'm better than I was yesterday. Your mom can't hear us. It's just you and me. I think so. Yes. Still there though. Yes, she's still there. Yeah, let let us let her think we're talking about her for a second. It'll make her uncomfortable. It'll be fun. How was she is a mom decent good or not? Okay.

Henry 1:15:11
Pretty good. Pretty

Scott Benner 1:15:12
good. Yeah, that's excellent. She doesn't hate you

Henry 1:15:17
know? Okay.

Scott Benner 1:15:19
I mean, if you if you need help, you'll tell me. Yeah. She seems she seems lovely. You have an older brother. Is that right? Yeah. And do you remember being diagnosed with type one?

Henry 1:15:33
Oh, yes. I don't remember too clearly, which probably fits better, but I do still remember it.

Scott Benner 1:15:45
Okay, Henry, your voice is so deep. It's like you're 70 years old. But your, your your are you? 12?

Henry 1:15:53
I'm 12. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:15:54
you have a very nice deep voice. Thank you. Yeah, that'll come in handy for you as you're getting older. Your mom was telling me you don't want to pump? Can you tell me about that?

Henry 1:16:05
So yeah, I, when we were first introduced to it, it sounded like a good idea. But I didn't like the idea of changing something every three days, because it seemed very, very inconvenient. As well as it does like situation where do like have something connected to you, and you'd be connected to monitor device thing? And then you'd have to keep that somewhere? It seemed very, as again, inconvenient. And so I felt like the my situation with the G six felt like, the way he was going felt very good. So that I would just stick with that.

Scott Benner 1:16:52
Okay, that makes sense. Well, I wasn't, you know, I'm not pressuring you. I was just wondering what you were thinking, when you said that? Did you look at a tube pump or tubeless? Pump? Or did you look at all of them?

Henry 1:17:04
We look at right now it was probably a tubeless. But, um, yeah. The the three days situation was not good for me.

Scott Benner 1:17:22
You just did not want to be switching it every three days. Yeah, I gotcha. And you make out okay with carrying a pen with you. And you don't have any trouble with with obviously injecting? Are you good with injecting a lot if you have to, like if you eat something that's very heavy carbs in your budget or starts going up, you're not bothered by injecting and re injecting again.

Henry 1:17:44
I mean, I get irritated because a when I get high, I usually stay high for a bit, but I still get irritated. But I I will do multiple injections easily.

Scott Benner 1:18:00
Okay. If if the pumps got to the point where the algorithms were working so well, that it would take away a lot of that. Do you think that would be a good enough? I don't know. Do you think that would be enough of a reason for you to change? If you knew that, suddenly, if your blood sugar was trying to go up that a pump would see that and keep giving you more insulin? You wouldn't have to think about it as much, for example.

Henry 1:18:23
Oh, yeah, I do think that would be nice.

Scott Benner 1:18:29
Yeah, okay. All right. Well, well, it gets you see what the future brings. So let me just ask you a couple of questions about g7. Before I let you go. Okay, you weren't G six for a number of years obviously was was switching to G seven. A change for you that was positive, negative. How did you feel about it?

Henry 1:18:49
Oh, I think it was very positive because I'm the G The G Flex. I can't remember when we started using it. We use like the Libra thing for a bit. But then we switched to it. It just kind of happened. I can't really remember when it happened. But then the g7 felt very like like it happened like there it feels like not much has changed but it still feels like something's different. Yeah, it makes sense.

Scott Benner 1:19:34
The only does so I totally understand what you're saying. The so the g7 functionally feels a lot like wearing G six, because of the process that you go through is is changed but still similar. But is the big change for you. Just the size of the device. Has that been a benefit?

Henry 1:19:54
Oh yeah, it is because I can I can barely notice it at Um, and even when I am like trying to like, like, see where it is? I can, it's hard for me to find it because of how small it is. As for the G six, it was like, three times a day that I would accidentally notice it because of how like clunky and big it was not Kong. Not big but it was like it. It was kind of large.

Scott Benner 1:20:25
Well compared to this one. Right. It's it's a lot bigger. Yeah. So how about sleeping with it? Have you noticed the improvement there?

Henry 1:20:34
Yeah, definitely. When I usually I don't stay still in my sleep as I like to move around as and so with the smaller sensor, it's easier for me to kind of sleep on a side that I'm comfortable but comfortable on but also, like situate my arm so that it's possible to still sleep on that side. Just not like in a mess up the sensor. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:21:15
yeah. So you were getting compression loads before your mom was telling me? Yeah, it's nice not to get that and get woken up by an alarm. That's not necessary. This is really, how about the I know you're only on your second one but has your mom put both of them on for your Have you done it yet? With the with the inserter?

Henry 1:21:35
Um, my mom did it the first time and then I think my dad did it the second time. Yeah, my dad did it the second time.

Scott Benner 1:21:47
Previously with G six. Were you doing it? Or were they helping you still?

Henry 1:21:52
They were helping me still because for a while I was doing it on my, my. My I was doing it in the the upper but until like, until like last year when I started using my arm about um, and so but I still can't really do it on my own.

Scott Benner 1:22:23
Right? Because of reach and where it's at. It's a little difficult. Yeah, yeah, you'll figure it out. My daughter was like, here help me with this helped me do this. Then she had to go to college. And she's like, I can do this. And she's she just started doing it. So apparently, a necessity is the mother of invention. Hey, your mom told me that when you were little you could speak like other languages, but you lost it. You don't could use Do you have any now?

Henry 1:22:49
Well, so I used to speak really good, really, really good French. Because we lived in Belgium. And that's when I started going to school so and it was like the only you can only the only time it was necessary to speak English was like talking to your friends. And so when you when you had to communicate teacher, it was usually French and so I learned it. And I learned pretty well because there wasn't a distinct French class. It was just everything was in French and I kind of got the hang of it. But then after we moved to London, I heard God basically all of it and because now that's London and in French is just a subject that you we I was I got I lost my fluency in French and now that we're here in Germany, I'm much better at German than I was at French. I think. But yeah, well, the only

Scott Benner 1:23:59
Oh, I was gonna say the UK. In London, Germany now you've been in America, Belgium. Do you have a favorite spot? These are one of those places you wish you lived?

Henry 1:24:12
Um, because they're all nice. I mean, I definitely have I definitely have a preference but I can't think with all the top ones. I mean, my my favorites have been Germany and London. But I can't think between them because in London the community was really nice and like the cut the stuff we could do like there was this bookstore and we lived around it as in Germany, this schools really nice. There's not much to do around our area. There's like we can go to other part except Germany, but I'd say that London has pretty much been my favorite place so far.

Scott Benner 1:25:08
Nice. That's excellent. So if I I'm gonna let you go on a second. And I appreciate you doing this, Henry. But if I asked you to say, I don't know, my name is Henry and I have diabetes in German, you can just spit that out.

Henry 1:25:22
Ah, no, I, I can say my name is Henry Haifa, Henry, but I don't I don't know the words for type one diabetes. My, one of my friends with this project were like helping each other with subjects. He gave me some flashcards on like, diabetes stuff in German. And so I'm thinking to like, look over those sometimes. Got it.

Scott Benner 1:25:50
So you speak better with the everyday words that are necessary.

Henry 1:25:56
Ah, yeah, I'm, I'm better with like, if I, if I've lost my way. So it's good.

Scott Benner 1:26:08
Please help me get home stuff like that. That's excellent. All right. Well, Henry, I really appreciate you taking the time to do this. And I hope you're enjoying the g7 It sounds like you are. It sounds like you're doing terrific. And I don't I just I appreciate your time. If you give me back to your mom, I'll say goodbye to her before I go. Okay, thank you. Amen. Thank you. Thank you. Hello, hey, Emily, I just wanted to tell you before you went, he was delightful. Good job, kid and everything. Early in the, in the episode, you talked about that you put up a post in the in the Juicebox Podcast Facebook group, the private group, I actually found it. And, you know, there's, I don't know if people don't care about this. But there's like 30,000 members in the group. And posts are, like, you know, I can see tracking on them. Like, how often do people see them, your post reached 21,000 of the 30,000 people in there. Which is insane. Because that's incredible. If I get up there, and I'm like, hey, it's the guy from the podcast, I don't reach that. And people are pretty excited. Usually when I show up, and they're like, Oh, the guy from the podcast is here. You know. And so this is just to me an indication of how much people are interested in this. I mean, that's out.

Emily 1:27:36
People have been talking about it and thinking about it and speculating about it for so long. It's just such a big deal.

Scott Benner 1:27:43
Yeah, I mean, it's a stunning percentage of I like I couldn't believe it when it scrolled up. I was like, That's stunning that it hit that many impressions. And, and had a big conversation, 350 comments, and, you know, 1000s of likes and stuff like that really, really terrific. So anyway, I appreciate you sharing it with everybody there. I really appreciate you coming on and doing this. I know you're not feeling well, was a big deal.

Emily 1:28:07
No, I appreciate it. I've had so much help from people in the community. I appreciate the opportunity to give back even in a small way. So thank you.

Scott Benner 1:28:15
Well, this should keep their whistles wet until it until it until it makes it to the US. But thank you so hopefully

Emily 1:28:24
sooner rather than later. I know people were very gracious in congratulating us about it. And I appreciate that as well.

Scott Benner 1:28:30
Yeah, so we'll cross our fingers for a Christmas miracle. But we'll keep in mind probably the beginning of 2023.

Emily 1:28:37
Hopefully Christmas miracle but yes, it'd be nice.

Scott Benner 1:28:44
First, I want to thank Henry and Emily for coming on the show today and sharing their experiences with the Dexcom g7. I'm going to thank the sponsors as well. dexcom.com forward slash juice box get started with Dexcom today use my link dexcom.com forward slash juice box type in your browser. Click on it somewhere, please. Who else? We're going to thank us med That's right. Go to us. med.com forward slash juice box. Were called 888-721-1514. Get your diabetes supplies the way we do from us med. Listen, I'm still sick. So I'm just gonna say thanks so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast because I can't talk much longer. i You have no idea. I'm out of breath.

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#781 Mama Wants Her Happy

Sabena’s conversation got adult out of nowhere.

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

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

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

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends, and welcome to episode 781 of the Juicebox Podcast

this was going to be one of those episodes where I got on here and told you had a great conversation with Sabina. She's really interesting. You're gonna have a lot of fun. She's from New Zealand, where do you see, but here we are in an after dark episode, and I did not expect that. And I have to tell you, it's just because the it's because of the shift of the conversation talking like the last 20 minutes, maybe were just kind of very adult all of a sudden, I mean, it was adult but then it just got. Anyway, we said penis a lot. So this is an after dark episode with subida. While you're listening, please remember 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. You don't have to ask a doctor before you say penis on a podcast or hear someone say penis on a podcast that is completely up to you. If you're a US resident who has type one diabetes, where he's the caregiver of someone with type one, please go to T one D exchange.org. Forward slash use box fill out the survey completely and join the registry so I'm asking you to do it should take you about 10 minutes T one D exchange.org forward slash juicebox. This show is sponsored today by the glucagon that my daughter carries. G voc hypo Penn Find out more at G voc glucagon.com. Forward slash juicebox. today's podcast is also sponsored by touched by type one their annual dancing for diabetes event coming up very soon it touched by type one. So you're going to want to get to the website right quick and get yourself some tickets touched by type one.org. Today's podcast is also sponsored by Omni pod five. On the pod five of course, is the only tubeless automated insulin delivery system that integrates with Dexcom G six in layman's terms, that means it uses the data from your CGM to make decisions about insulin. Learn more and get started today at Omni pod.com forward slash juicebox. Before we start, I just want to tell you that the first like four minutes, the audio is weird, but we fix it very quickly. But I left it in because it sort of helped start the episode. I couldn't just cut it out. It wouldn't have made sense that we're TWICE I'm sorry. I'll say a couple words in a row.

Sabena 2:43
Yes, is like four o'clock in the morning. So I do probably just sound like it's four o'clock in the morning.

Scott Benner 2:49
Is it really? Yeah. We could have done this later.

Sabena 2:53
No, no, no, my child is asleep.

Scott Benner 2:55
Oh, you wanted to do this at four o'clock in the morning? Well, I

Sabena 2:58
actually booked in and didn't realize the time, but that's fine. I don't sleep anymore. Anyway. My son has diabetes.

Scott Benner 3:04
Sabina, can we just start talking? Do you mind if we just start here?

Sabena 3:08
No, that's fine. Is it? This is the sound cafe. Is it fine?

Scott Benner 3:12
I think I mean, I think so. You you're living on a small island in the corner of the planet. So I mean, I'm amazed I can hear you at all. Right. I think you're fine. I think you're absolutely fine. Okay. So usually I ask people to introduce themselves before they come on. But why don't you go ahead and do that and we'll keep talking.

Sabena 3:31
Okay, I'm Sabina from New Zealand and my son has my three. He's four now and he was three when he was diagnosed with type one diabetes.

Scott Benner 3:41
Okay. What is the noise behind you? wombat?

Sabena 3:49
No, that was just me moving in. My child's couched it. I'm hiding in the playroom.

Scott Benner 3:57
Okay, trying to stay still because the couch is noisy. I will watch like that right there. That's not something growling at you.

Sabena 4:08
Is it the actual computer? Like? I don't know. I'm an old

Scott Benner 4:12
computer or using the one from the television show last?

Sabena 4:18
Almost it's it's pretty old.

Scott Benner 4:21
It might be is there a way to get away from it a little bit or no? Like this? I don't know. I can't see you. Oh, maybe so I'm hearing the computer writing to the hard drive. Is that correct?

Sabena 4:37
Yeah, but I've moved as far as like, I'm pretty far away now.

Scott Benner 4:41
All right, good. Okay, well then let's let's go ahead and get comfortable. Do you guys not get modern technology in New Zealand or gaming? Can I send you something?

Sabena 4:51
Well, it would be great but no, I have to buy dates times every month so I can't get a new laptop.

Scott Benner 4:58
I used to you're buying data Sometimes you can't afford a laptop I got Yeah, exactly. Is that? Is that can you hear it? Or is it just me? You feel like it's just whack. Whack. Whack whack going. It's happening right now. There's nothing take your take your headphones off for a second and tell me if you hear anything.

Sabena 5:21
No, I can't. I can't hear anything. I could hang up and ring off my phone. Let's.

Scott Benner 5:27
Let's try that because at the moment, it sounds like a baby chewing on a hard rubber like passing. Okay, okay, I'm gonna kick you and then you can come right back. Okay. Hey, hi.

Sabena 5:41
Okay, is it? Is it better?

Scott Benner 5:43
Oh my God, it is so much better.

Sabena 5:46
I'm just gonna shut the laptop. Now.

Scott Benner 5:50
Yeah. And don't throw it but you know, moving far away from it's just the case. That was it. Sabina, do you want us to we get started like a GoFundMe and get you a laptop or something? Is that something you'd be? It was, it was going like this ready for an amp or an amp or an amp or an amp? Was if you could imagine like, a hard piece of rubber. And then it just felt like you were like, like trying to like grind it through your teeth and then your phone sounds so much better. So thank you appreciate it. Alright,

Sabena 6:21
so funny because I thought my crappy Samsung phone wasn't going to be good enough.

Scott Benner 6:25
Well, thank you Samsung. It sounds terrific. Yeah. So okay. So let's start over again. You're Sabine. You live in New Zealand. Your four year old has had diabetes for about a year diagnosed when they were three. And that's a son. Am I right?

Sabena 6:46
Yeah, my son. Joey.

Scott Benner 6:47
Look at me go. And Joey was diagnosed with threes for now. Joey have any brothers or sisters?

Sabena 6:57
He had as well. He still has a sister. And she was three months when he was diagnosed.

Scott Benner 7:02
Okay. So she's just a little over a year old now. Okay, yeah. And you were like he had a sister. You were gonna say he had a sister who was three months old. And then you stopped yourself? Because you're like, I don't want to characterize my baby as being not here any longer. So let me rephrase.

Sabena 7:24
We didn't tell her.

Scott Benner 7:27
I was just think she'd be snatched by something. But I don't know. We'll get to that later. Married. Not married,

Sabena 7:34
yet. married yet? Okay.

Scott Benner 7:37
Cool. So I love that you came on the podcast. There are so many people living in New Zealand and Australia. who listen to the podcast. It's just bizarre to me. So I'm always excited to hear from you guys. I am so sorry. So you got Ken, what happened? What time? Did you think you were doing this when you set it up?

Sabena 7:58
I have no idea. I don't I just move forward with my life. I don't really pay that much attention, because I've just got to keep going. So I have no idea what time I booked.

Scott Benner 8:09
Because you said earlier when the connection wasn't good. It's 4am. Where

Sabena 8:14
you are? Yeah, it's 435. Now

Scott Benner 8:17
Oh, my goodness. Did you go to sleep before doing this?

Sabena 8:22
Yeah, I went to sleep. I don't really sleep that much anymore. Because I because I still breastfeed my, my baby. And then, you know, getting up in the middle of the night to check numbers and stuff. So sleep is overrated.

Scott Benner 8:35
It's not something that you really need sleep. You have to sleep. Could we get the husband to breastfeed? Like I mean, can you put the milk in like a bag in the refrigerator or something

Sabena 8:45
like that? No, no, no. There has been can't go without sleep.

Scott Benner 8:49
What happens to him if that happens?

Sabena 8:52
I don't even think he would survive. I think you'd probably die.

Scott Benner 8:56
What happens to you without sleep?

Sabena 8:59
Without sleep? I just drink coffee and I'm fine.

Scott Benner 9:02
I think you're giving the coffee too much credit but okay, we're gonna get you through this part of your life. And then you're going to sleep again. Does that sound fair? Absolutely. Okay, good. So what made you want to come on the podcast?

Sabena 9:17
A little bit because like, this has been my main community. Like you, I'm so grateful for you. I remember when so someone that I know was type one. She recommended the podcast and I didn't listen to her and then she recommended it again. And I was like, oh my god I set when I first found you. I set for a whole day listening to the episodes and finally, FINALLY found like the community and people telling stories and people feeling as sad and confused as me.

Scott Benner 9:48
Are you in the Facebook group? Yes. Excellent. Are you so your friend tried to get you to listen once? What was your reaction when she said it?

Sabena 9:59
Was she well Isn't my friend She's my friend now. Hey, Tasha, because I know to be listening. She was just someone that I knew through my sister. And when my son got diagnosed, I thought the world was going to end. So I was desperately like going through the world trying to find people that were type one that were normal, as awful as it sounds.

Scott Benner 10:22
What do you mean? Like you were like for people who were doing well, or you were looking at you? Were you in Mensa people? They weren't didn't seem normal. So you kept moving to your?

Sabena 10:33
Well, like, because he was my baby, obviously, he was three. And I've never hit my baby. I've never like I try and do conscious parenting. And so it was really hard transition, suddenly having to pin him down and stab him with needles. You know, all of that, that I thought he was going to hate me forever. And it was going to be hard for either, because it's really hard in the beginning. And it's not hard anymore. Like it's still sometimes. Sad. It's not like it was.

Scott Benner 11:10
I understand. Okay, so, okay. What is how did you characterize your parenting?

Sabena 11:17
Um, conscious parenting does that mean? It's kind of like respectful parenting that you your first goal is to be like in a relationship with your child, you're not. You see them as equal humans. And like when they're having a tantrum, you don't just say, Oh, we're having a tantrum you, you might be like, I can see you're really tired. And you just kind of do the all the mushy stuff.

Scott Benner 11:44
And you somehow saw that taking care of the diabetes is getting you away from that.

Sabena 11:49
Yeah, so like, I would never hit my children. And I was literally inflicting pain on him multiple times a day, like doing the preps and doing the needles. And like he would hide from me under the table. And it was like, he looked at me like, Man, why you hurting me? And then he told me, he hated me. And he'd never told me he hated Me before. And I was, it was like, you're meant to do this when you're a teenager, not now.

Scott Benner 12:15
The first time your kids tell you, they hate you. It's a special moment for you. How did you stand very still and try to push it all back inside? No, I cry. Did you just cry? I describe. Yeah, there's not anyone. It's funny. When you have kids, isn't it? What you expect is going to happen versus what happens is very different. Absolutely. Yeah. No kidding.

Sabena 12:41
I was. I was the best parent in the world before I had kids.

Scott Benner 12:48
You really thought you had it all figured out? Right? What What surprised you?

Sabena 12:53
So I'm an early childhood teacher? I've got a degree. Child Development.

Scott Benner 12:58
Yeah. That's worse, isn't it?

Sabena 13:04
Because you know, when you're being a bed,

Scott Benner 13:07
not only that, but you read it. So you think, Well, this must be right. It was written in a book.

Sabena 13:12
Oh, absolutely. Yeah. And then you

Scott Benner 13:15
have a baby and you find out like, so do you ever? Do you ever listen to the episodes? I'm sorry. I don't know how much you listen to the show. But if you ever heard any of the episodes, like I do with Erica, the therapist.

Sabena 13:28
I've listened to some of them. Okay. It kinda depends. Like how said, like, I want, I want to get some time. Because

Scott Benner 13:38
my podcasts are supposed to make you sad Is it me said?

Sabena 13:43
No, it's like therapy. For me. It's finally finding people that understand, like, where I'm at. And so my my husband's family actually have type one diabetes has sustained has it,

Scott Benner 13:56
okay.

Sabena 13:58
And, like, I never understood, like the depth of it. And they, they are a little bit emotionally constipated. And they didn't kind of show up for us in a way that if someone that I knew got type one diabetes, I would probably help them in a way different way to them, that your show helped me in the ways that like, I had a poet like, they didn't come and see us when we were in the hospital. And in one time, Joey was really low when I tried to ring them to say like, Hey, what's like, helped me and she said, I'm sorry, I'm putting my child to sleep. And I just thought this is life or death, but okay, ignore my call.

Scott Benner 14:42
So your extended family, the one that knows about the diabetes isn't like emotionally available to you.

Sabena 14:51
And also not practically available, like there was a couple of times when, like Joey had a tummy bug, and so I didn't know what to do. So I posted on the Facebook group. And people immediately told me what to do. Like, you know, in that moment of panic because tummy bugs are really scary when, like you're newly diagnosed, and the Facebook community got me through them, not actual people that are my family.

Scott Benner 15:19
Yeah. It's funny, I'm enjoying talking to you. But we've gotten so far away of why I brought up Eric, I don't even know if I want to go back or not. I was just gonna, but let me do it. Because it's in my head. I'll get rid of it that way. I was going to say that we were talking about how things aren't sometimes the way they're supposed to be right? That you read something, you read something in a book that you went to apply it in real life and you you're like, oh, this doesn't actually work. And in practice, I always think that about I don't always think it, but I wondered about therapy, like when somebody says, you know, oh, I have anger issues. And a therapist says, Well, you should do X, Y, and Z. I think, well, that sounds great. But does that really work? And you know, like, is it a thing that people would really do? Would you really think to stop and do that thing in the moment? And is it actually you don't? I mean, is that is it? Is it functionally? Is it functionally something I can count on and sound? Or is it just something that sounds good when we say it to each other?

Sabena 16:21
I think you don't even know the magic you have. So like the way you talk and unpack things, is very therapeutic. But I also enter like all the woowoo stuff in these, uh, not related to diabetes. There's a lady called the holistic psychologist and lots of her stuff does work in the moment because you start becoming conscious of your triggers. And you realize, like how you're behaving, when you take a step away from the emotion even in the moment.

Scott Benner 16:55
Three, and I should have married you. Because no, no, no, you get well your husband.

Sabena 16:59
My husband thinks I am married to because I'll do the dishes with you on in the kitchen. He goes, Oh, that guy again.

Scott Benner 17:08
Well tell him if you say if your sister would answer the phone. Not with time I wouldn't never found the podcast. I just mean that the people in my family are less like me Arden's the most like me. But still, when it comes to like, the diabetes side of being in touch, she's still not like, she doesn't love it. You can talk to her about other things. And she can be more psychologically, like deep and available. But I appreciate what you just said about the way I unpack things. It's nice. I thought that was lovely. Thank you

Sabena 17:44
know, you really, you really do. And it's like, I am obviously because diabetes is such a journey in the numbers fluctuate so much like I've really listened to the protests multiple times, because you know, how you finally think everything's sorted out. And then hello, Grossberg. Even the way you able to unpack all of that is amazing. Like, I keep trying to tell people to listen to it. And I even told my sister in law to try and I said, Listen to the Juicebox Podcast, and she won't, and it makes me so angry.

Scott Benner 18:18
Don't be angry. Um, Listen, can I get we can be even right now. You can pay me back. Can you do me a favor? Yeah, say fluctuate again.

Sabena 18:29
That numbers all the people

Scott Benner 18:31
know the word. fluctuate. Oh, the first time you said it, it sounds like you said actuate. And I was having fun. It might have just been my dishes bit of thing. Because Oh, hold on. I have to just write down where I have to edit out where I said. Yeah. Where I said it again. There we go. Anyway, I love your accent. It's terrific. I like it when you say bitter instead of better. And a couple of other things. So it's a lot of fun. Have you Are you born and raised in? In New Zealand? New Zealand? Yeah. Yeah. That's amazing. Do you like it there? Would you or have you never been off the island.

Sabena 19:09
I've been to Australia. We lived in Australia for a little bit. I like it here. I like that. I don't have to pay $600 for my insulin. I'm so grateful for that. And we got Joey's pump for free. Well, like funded and stuff like that.

Scott Benner 19:26
So I'm on there right now.

Sabena 19:30
Yeah, we have Dick's home, but we have to pay for it. We're trying to like, get that funded as a like a community.

Scott Benner 19:38
What do you what do you pay for when you pay out of pocket for it?

Sabena 19:43
$400 a month. And that's

Scott Benner 19:46
is that three? Three sensors?

Sabena 19:49
Yeah, yeah. Spray sensors and then the transmitter every we never they seem to

Scott Benner 19:54
1600 a year basically. You know, compared to the cash price here, that's inexpensive.

Sabena 20:05
Is it 1600? A year? Was it two and a half? 1000?

Scott Benner 20:08
Well, I don't know. Is it $400? Oh, is it $400 A month? Excuse me. I was thinking, that's my fault. I apologize. Okay, so times 12. Okay. Yeah, that's a lot.

Sabena 20:24
But it's worth it. It's so worth it.

Scott Benner 20:26
And do you think that at some point, the I guess it's the government health system, right, you're waiting for them to avert? Is it happening? Do you think it'll happen?

Sabena 20:35
So, we are quite similar to Australia, and Australia has just started funding it. And so hopefully, we use a lot of the data. So hopefully, they will follow suit.

Scott Benner 20:47
Okay. Oh, good luck. I hope that happens. For sure. Yeah, that'd be a big deal. I

Sabena 20:51
hope it happens. I really hope it happens for the kids whose parents don't aren't able to afford it.

Scott Benner 20:57
Yeah. No, it's I mean, that's, uh, if you think about it, right. It's $100 a week. It's it's a lot. I mean, a day, what does that make it? Like? Hold on a second. Sorry. That's fine. I'm gonna use the calculator. Because I want to know,

Sabena 21:13
and I'm just desperately waiting for Omnipod to come here because we don't have Omnipod yet. What are you using? I'm on a T slim and we really liked the algorithm. But that the tubing,

Scott Benner 21:28
Ah, okay, but you'd like to get rid of the tubing. That makes Yeah,

Sabena 21:32
cuz he's, like a really active little boy. And, and also, not that it matters. But as he gets older, it would be really nice to be able to hide it if he wants to. Just because it's hard to be different sometimes as a kid.

Scott Benner 21:47
Yeah, I understand. So anyway, I've broken it down and you're using Dexcom at a cost of about $14 a day.

Sabena 21:54
Well, that's nothing when you look at it like that. I just wanted to

Scott Benner 21:57
bring it I wanted to make I wanted to make it feel easier for you here. How about this? It's only like 50 cents an hour. We go out even you're fine.

Sabena 22:10
My son has over 100 Hot Wheels, monster trucks because I used to have to bribe him for everything. So you know.

Scott Benner 22:22
Everything has its price. Do you? Were you bribing him for just anything? Or you were bribing him for diabetes stuff?

Sabena 22:29
No, it was just for diabetes. Like when he because he started on the library. So it used to be a Hot Wheels for like the big pack is what we used to call it. Quite a staple. Like it's like we only have the libre one here. Yeah, so he I used to have to bribe him for everything. But now I can do his site changes in his Dexcom in asleep.

Scott Benner 22:54
Let me just make it give me a second. I want to make a note to myself get hot wheels. Yeah, for Kelly are e big prick. Okay, got it. Thank you. If that works, I'm gonna give that a

Sabena 23:06
try. That has to be monster trucks. You can't just be

Scott Benner 23:09
what you want. That's fine. Monster Truck. Thank you for him actually worth that down. So. Okay, so you are you're you're like thinking about coming on the podcast was pretty simple. You're like, I just want to say how good the podcast is and how much it's helped me.

Sabena 23:27
I think I'm done. Now, I think that makes you sleep. Sleep.

Scott Benner 23:30
But you also talked about a couple of other things. So let me ask you about them. So I think the first thing is fairly centered to newer diagnose people? I don't know. But it seems to bother a lot of people that the rest of the world can't tell how hard diabetes is. Is that what you mean when you say invisible?

Sabena 23:55
Yeah, and, and it's the people thinking, Oh, you just do this. And that's fine. And it's also the misconception about type one and type two. And literally, it was only two weeks ago that my brother in law said, Ah, just as Joey not got it from eating too much lollies and I'm like, if my family can't even understand it, how can you expect the world to?

Scott Benner 24:22
And this is your side of the family?

Sabena 24:25
That's my sister's husband. I'm not claiming him.

Scott Benner 24:29
We are not married but we're not related by blood. Yeah. We're related by my sisters questionable decisions.

Sabena 24:38
Very Christian.

Scott Benner 24:40
I'm sure he's the lightful. What do you say? So I have a question. I have a question about this idea. So this is one of the one of the bigger things that I'm still unpacking about living in the diabetes space. And my daughter has had it now for Oh god. 16 years. I think yes, 16 years. I don't understand why that stuff matters. I don't. So let's go through it step by step, tell me why it matters to you. If someone doesn't understand what goes into managing diabetes?

Sabena 25:19
I don't know, I suppose it does matter less and less. I think because you do know that your child has a slightly harder life. And you want to hope that they're going to give them grace when they need it. But that's a really good question. Yes, really? It shouldn't matter

Scott Benner 25:40
what, it's just interesting. Because think about it, like just pick something else out in your life. It's difficult for you that none of us know about. Like, are you mad that people don't know about that thing?

Sabena 25:52
No, I think I'm just made because why did it have to happen to my baby? Yeah, you know?

Scott Benner 25:59
Yeah, Sabina, that's what I'm getting at it. I think people are just mad because they have diabetes, or their kid has it? Yeah, yeah. You know what I mean? And then you come up against some stupidity, which isn't even stupidly, it's, I mean, I've said it, I used to say it a lot in the past that I mean, the number of things I don't understand, you know, could fill up could fill an encyclopedia. And so, if everybody who had a thing that I didn't understand, expected me to understand it, I don't know what my life would be, then what would my life just be making sure I understand everybody else's life? And then if that's the case, are you gonna get to have a life? Because Won't you be busy understanding my life? And then isn't it just crazy that we're asking everybody to understand everything?

Sabena 26:45
Well, absolutely. But then I suppose you can also take it in and go through life, having a higher level of grace for people knowing that everyone is going through something.

Scott Benner 26:55
Yeah, that's I mean, to me, that's obvious. The if people aren't. If, if when somebody says something to you, that sounds like I have this thing I'm dealing with, and it's difficult, and you don't respond with Oh, I'm sorry to hear that. Is there anything I can do to help not? I'm sure you did something wrong to make it happen, you know, or some other crappy response. I know that, Sabina, if you want to get together and make T shirts and start a group about being mad about something, I'll, I'll jump right on board with you there. You know, people's inability to be human, in obvious situations, is upsetting. But I don't expect anybody to understand diabetes,

Sabena 27:38
I suppose to the flip side of it. And this is just being human. And sometimes it's annoying to when you see, like, because obviously we all have our moments, but we pull out like we put our big girl pants on and we get on with our day. And it can be really frustrating to see other people not just suck it up other things and just get on with it, too.

Scott Benner 28:01
Oh, this is an interesting one. So let's see, we're gonna talk about something fun. So when you know how hard it is to live with diabetes, and have a newborn baby, by the way, who's attached to you literally. And then you see someone crumbling at the slightest thing. It's hard to fathom. Like, how they can't push through this this thing? Was that right?

Sabena 28:26
I feel like awful person. But yeah, sometimes there are people and you just want to be like, Okay, that's really sad. Let's have a cry about it. But yeah, let's, let's move on.

Scott Benner 28:36
We got to keep going here. Yeah, I am fascinated by that to actually the other day, because this happened recently. I brought this up on another episode. So I won't retell it here. Because for people listening six months from now, they'll hear it in succession. But Arden just started college, and a kid came into her room, just kind of panicking. And she's texting me and she's like, I don't know what's wrong with this kid. You know, like, like, we think the thing that they are out of their mind about she's like, it's so small. And, you know, we talked about it both ways, while we were texting. And I first of all, I said, Listen, it's terrible for them, be grateful that you're not overwhelmed by something of this size. And at the same time, I take your point, because you're in there trying to learn and this kids spinning in circles over. I mean, I guess to them, it's something big, but I mean, honestly, it's, it's a very, very, very trivial thing. And not an insurmountable task, not, you know, something life changing. And you just realize that there's, I mean, the kids got some issue. I don't know what it is. But it's, you know, it's burdened by it. And so in the end, we said, you know, I hope he gets help, I said, is a teacher helping him and then we made a terrible joke to each other And to like to lighten the mood, and then we moved on and I really genuinely hope but what I remember now from that is that I hope the kids okay, and I hope the teacher moved him in the right direction and got them help. You know, but it was it was, by most accounts, it was silly.

Sabena 30:19
I do think too, it's like what you've I don't know what episode you said it, but you were like, if there's a zombie apocalypse, you think you would survive? I would survive too. Yeah.

Scott Benner 30:29
Yeah. The only thing we can't get me is my knee. If my knee gave out I'd be in trouble. But other than that, I understand how to do things. Why are you What did you grow up having to get through?

Sabena 30:41
Oh, I think it's just a disposition thing. My oldest sister. Yeah, my oldest sister's really similar. Like we both just fake it till we make it. And like, keep moving. Have a cry, eat some chocolate and then figure it out.

Scott Benner 30:59
Sounds like a good plan. Yeah, dark chocolate. Milk chocolate. Sabina, which do you prefer?

Sabena 31:05
Milk chocolate? I don't want your yucky dark chocolate.

Scott Benner 31:08
Okay. Well, then, okay, I'm sorry. I will not I will definitely not. I was gonna put a piece of chocolate in with the new computer you were getting but now I'm not doing anything. Now that you've taken this harsh stance against dark chocolate, how much is your husband involved in the the diabetes stuff?

Sabena 31:30
Um, I would say maybe 5%.

Scott Benner 31:38
Why is that? Do you want him to be more involved?

Sabena 31:41
I'm probably a control freak. And especially once I heard the podcast about the don't die advice. He was quite happy to listen to the doctors. And we didn't have the best advice. It was the don't die advice. And I wanted to be bold with insulin and I wanted to fully like I just deep dived into everything and became a semi expert as much as you can when you're newly diagnosed. And he literally is only just now starting to listen.

Scott Benner 32:16
Are you bringing him along with the idea now? Is he I guess you're showing it to him right? You're showing him a difference and he sees it?

Sabena 32:24
No, I'm really bad for because there was a little bit of tension because I wanted to correct and I wanted better. And he trusted the doctors. I had to just do it myself.

Scott Benner 32:38
Did you do it? Oh, so did you decide that you would just take over the the management so that you guys didn't have to talk about it and there wasn't that tension, or did you do it behind his back? What are you saying?

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Sabena 35:40
He just kind of throw it at me and let me do it. He was easier. Like, okay, put it he was like, This is too hard. I can't understand this. You do it. So do I understood?

Scott Benner 35:53
So do you think that? Do you think that he really was okay with the advice from the doctor or the advice from the doctor was manageable for him?

Sabena 36:05
I think it was just easy. And I think when it has mum when his sister got diagnosed, his mom refuse to take on any of the care from her sister and just buried her head in the sand. And I think he just buried his head in the sand because he knew I would do it.

Scott Benner 36:24
But you don't. Okay, and you're comfortable with the arrangement or you wish he was more involved?

Sabena 36:31
I don't think he'd do it as well as me. So I would rather do it myself.

Scott Benner 36:35
We it sounds awful. No, it doesn't. We've just heard at its core boys and girls. That was great. He's like, it'll be fine. And you were like, No, it's not do it like this. And he's like, I don't want to and I said why don't you teach him you're like, well, he wouldn't do it as well as me anyway.

Sabena 36:53
But you'll be exception to the role. Got you. All for Adam.

Scott Benner 36:58
Yeah, I'm the exception to the rule. Because I was at home? Well, I don't know, I was at home by myself whether I didn't want her to be. I don't want her blood sugar to be high. You know?

Sabena 37:07
Yeah, absolutely.

Scott Benner 37:09
I don't know. I'll tell you what that story is why boobs exist? wasn't for that. I don't think we get anything accomplished at all. Seriously, really. And I wish I was making this up. I really think this, I really believe that if you don't have anything to entice a guy with it's hard to get them to go beyond the way their brain thinks you know what I mean?

Sabena 37:35
And it actually is absolutely true boys brain is so different to a girl's brain. It's unfair

Scott Benner 37:39
that we don't have boobs, because maybe he could maybe he could get you to be a little less controlling. Because, because, because think of it from his side, is it possible? And I have no idea, obviously. But is it possible he doesn't want to be involved? Because he knows that no matter what he does, it's not going to be good enough for you? And then he's going to fail in your eyes.

Sabena 38:04
Um, possibly, possibly.

Scott Benner 38:07
Do you think that right now there's like a large portion of the women listening who are like, Oh, geez, that might be true. So because I have that feeling, like when my wife when I do something, and it's not right for her, or it doesn't, whatever, I'm using the wrong words when it lets her down somehow, I feel terrible. And then sometimes when she asks me to do something that I know is going to inevitably lead to me doing something that she's not going to find, okay, I get mad at her for asking me to do it. Not because I don't want to do it. But because it feels like that her ask is eventually going to make me sad. And I don't and I am mad at her for making me sad. Does that make sense?

Sabena 38:55
Yeah, I think that you're gonna you're just converting him to want to listen to your podcast. Can you sell right your team husband?

Scott Benner 39:03
I can do I can do the other side of the arguments have been no trouble. No, no, no. Yeah. Good. Valid. Yeah. And so I don't know, obviously, maybe let me just say this. Maybe your husband's just a deck. I have no idea. But, but you know, seriously, like, it's just, we all feel the way we feel. And I think we all feel the way we feel partially because that's how we feel. And partially because we're having a response or a defense against what's happening across from us.

Sabena 39:35
That's, I definitely, I definitely think you're right. But I also think, and this isn't PSA, I definitely love our kids more than he loves them. So I think maybe I care just a little bit more.

Scott Benner 39:49
So you know, you think you love your children more than your husband?

Sabena 39:55
I think so.

Scott Benner 39:58
To revert back to what I said a few minutes to go, if it wasn't for boobs, we wouldn't even we wouldn't even know each other. You know what I mean? Like, we just we wouldn't even know we'd be off. There'd be like a collection of men on one side and a collection of women on the other side. That'd be it. Then we die off slowly, because no boobs. That's it. Whoever made the boobs knew what they were doing. I'll tell you that much. It's holding the whole thing together. It's the glue. Yeah. Isn't it fascinating? That it doesn't matter if they're good boobs or bad boobs or small boobs or stretchy boobs or tiny big boobs? Nobody cares. Doesn't matter.

Sabena 40:36
Well, that's what makes sense why he keeps telling my daughter. Those are my toys You're ruining then.

Scott Benner 40:42
Stop, stop. Stop chewing on my toys and leave it on there in that sweatshirt. Yeah. Did you breastfeed your older one?

Sabena 40:54
Yeah, I received I breastfeed him till he was two and a half.

Scott Benner 40:58
Oh my god. Really? Yeah, that's amazing. Good for you.

Sabena 41:03
I want to kick this baby off, but she won't leave me.

Scott Benner 41:10
I don't know. I think it takes a in a world where there are other options where you can go to manmade options. I think it takes a lot of stick to itiveness to continue to breastfeed I'm I'm very enamored of of the effort that it takes. I think it's amazing.

Sabena 41:26
I also think so Joey was always like the sick, a really sick kid. He always had bronchitis and all sorts of stuff. And I really think because I breastfeed him so long, that their diabetes didn't trigger it until it did. I really think I shouldn't say this, but that's how I felt because he was so sick, but it never triggered and then once he was weaned, and he was beggar, the natural good. I have all sorts of crazy theories, though. So I'm probably wrong

Scott Benner 41:53
against the being of boobs saved the day. They do. That could be the episode title boobs save the day. I think it has to be the episode to think about it and get back to it. Okay, so what have we established? So far? Your husband doesn't love your children isn't? What do you mean, your husband doesn't love your children as much as you do? What do you mean by that?

Sabena 42:16
I think we all have different capacities for stuff. And no, I just think it and I feel it's

Scott Benner 42:26
do you? Do you think my wife thinks she loves my kids more than I do?

Sabena 42:32
I don't know your wife and I just listened to the way you talk about Adam. And I just think God, you're such a fabulous dad. He must really love.

Scott Benner 42:42
What if my wife just has great boobs and she's holding them over my head? She's like, you have to love these kids. Alright, put these away. What is it that? You know, for the record? Can I say my wife does have terrific boobs. I just want to put that out there. But that's that's not why I brought him up. I see because I'm I was trying to lead you to the idea that I bet if you asked her who loves the kids more you or me she'd say her? Because she thinks she has that mom connection. And the dad thing can look disconnected at times.

Sabena 43:18
I'm saying to though we grow them in our body. They always else and especially if you breastfeed them I don't know. I think this might get too political. I just think I love them more than

Scott Benner 43:32
Sabina. I had to live with her while she was growing that baby. I should get points for that. Don't you think?

Sabena 43:40
No barking up the wrong tree. Oh, no, no.

Scott Benner 43:44
I've gone to the wrong side of the argument for you now.

Sabena 43:49
So you can go on an island was my husband.

Scott Benner 43:52
Thought you already live on an island. Those true little islands next year Island. Um, yeah. Did you see that about my Rolland? Did you say they were thinking? I don't know what a kiwi is. Is that a that's a bit Oh, that was like I don't know if that's an animal or racist reference the people. I couldn't tell what was happening. But did you? Did you see that? I think a couple of years ago some major map was made that completely omitted New Zealand and it really did you did you see that in the news?

Sabena 44:32
I did. But if if the world like ended, we have so many resources down here. People out people are building bunkers. They want to be in New Zealand without clean water.

Scott Benner 44:41
I do like the idea of the clean water. So you said can I come there and live or do you have all those deadly animals like the Australians have?

Sabena 44:50
No we have no yucky deadly animals. We have no snakes, no poisonous spiders. New Zealand is actually really lovely.

Scott Benner 44:58
How is that possible? That's amazing, but how is that possible? Not that you would know. But does that mean somebody introduced them on on Australia at some point? And then

Sabena 45:14
I don't know I we've, we've got quite different environments like the quite deserty and we're, I don't know.

Scott Benner 45:22
Listen. I don't know what you know exactly, Sabina, because I'm googling here New Zealand soul venomous spider is the stuff of legends.

Sabena 45:32
Well, what spider is this,

Scott Benner 45:34
I'm looking for Hold on a second. Well, almost free because the Legendary Cat tipo is the sole native venomous species living in New Zealand. It's a small but mighty critter with a bite that can pack a serious punch. Now I don't want to subscribe to your newsletter. Oh, a second. With just a few 1000 left in roughly 50 areas of northern of the on the North Island, and eight on the South Island. These dangerous little beauties are rare, rare than a kiwi or the Kiwis where

Sabena 46:11
I think they're endangered. But that's probably just shows how good the education system is. Because I didn't know about.

Scott Benner 46:18
Maybe your mom just told you don't worry. There's no dangerous spiders here. There's no white snakes. Oh, I hate snakes. But spiders too. I don't know. I'm sure there's spiders here that'll kill me. I just you know, America. So I think it's better.

Sabena 46:36
Or even your guys. Big gun control? Probably more likely to.

Scott Benner 46:42
Oh, my God. Sabina, do you want to hear a story that has nothing to do with diabetes? Absolutely. Right. So let me sit up. So we I sat back, I was getting so comfortable with you. We took Arden to college. We're driving home. My wife has her car, I have my car. My son's with me. It is midnight as we're driving home, and my car breaks down. And I'm able to get it off the highway. But when I get off the highway, this is in Virginia. There's nothing like just no place to pull over. So I just I kind of inch along while the cars just kind of inching along until I see these motels right across the street from one another. Now imagine a motel from an Quentin Tarantino movie where they're going to like a hooker is going to kill a drug dealer. Okay, like that kind of a hotel situation. One level, probably the kind of thing where people live and you know, it's not it's not the, it's not the Holiday Inn is what I'm saying. Okay, so I they're literally directly across the street from one another. I take the one on the right side because I'm on the right side and it seems easier to pull in. I come to a stop. And within 30 seconds, I see a drug deal happened in front of me outside of a lovely BMW. Now the rest of this place does not look like it supports BMW. It's very rundown and dirty and scary. I know I have a tow truck coming but it's going to take 90 minutes. My son has a friend who lives like 40 miles from there. So I we had already contacted him. I was like look, just call your friend have him come get you I don't want you to stay here with me. I'll stay and wait for the tow truck. So I don't know 10 or 15 minutes later, my son's friend comes. takes him away. As I drive away we we joke I you know if I live through this, I'll see you later. And you know about an hour or so later the tow truck arrives and I flashed my high beams like so he can see where I'm at. He flashes them back and as he's making his way over to me, and I'm not kidding. Sabina pop three gunshots I'm like what is happening? Right? So I look up and the crazy thing is is that prior to my son leaving I said do you think we should go across the street it looks more lit up over there. And we decided to stay where we weren't the gunshots came from across the street. So now cars are pulling off in all directions. People are running into the woods and I swear to you a pregnant woman waddle runs across the street to where I am. And I'm trying not to laugh but she looks ridiculous. So it's so it's a very serious situation obviously, because people are shooting each other. And in the middle of it. I'm giggling because she is just not in the condition to run but she is just and she's wearing slippers and she's just going as fast as she can. So then the tow truck driver pulls up completely oblivious. He gets out of the car. He goes Hey, are you Scott? His name was Alex I go not now Alex. Like well I said, there was just a shooting across the street. And he goes when I went. Now, it just happened now. And he's like, Oh, he puts the gate down on the back of the trailer. And we like together, jam my car up on it. And, and like go flying out of there. And that was it. So anyway, gun control. Yeah. I'm okay, obviously. But seriously, an hour before that I had given serious consideration to crossing the street and going and staying over there instead. So it is,

Sabena 50:38
what would all of the diabetics do if you had died? Scott, we can't have that

Scott Benner 50:44
you wouldn't have been you would have just thought I was at a drug deal or something? Probably you would have been like, Oh, my God, I've been following this guy's podcast forever. And it turns out, he's a heroin addict. Because you wouldn't have known about the brokedown car and all that stuff. You would have been like, Where was he killed? What motel Oh, that's shameful. Anyway, cars fixed and everything's fine. That's neither here nor there. Why the hell are you on the podcast? Besides to be delightful? You want to talk about things? You said you were having some trouble and you want to talk about them? Do you still have those issues?

Sabena 51:17
I'm not not so much like we, it just ebbs and flows. So right now we're in a good place, but I essentially had to double like all of his basals Okay, and it took me like a month to figure it out. And it made me feel really stupid, because I was like, of course, if we continuously going high after the meals, like in between the meals, of course, it's the basil, but sometimes it's just hard to remember that.

Scott Benner 51:46
Okay, and so what happened? He was honeymooning, do you think, and then he wasn't?

Sabena 51:53
I'm not I think there was some honeymooning. And then when we transition to our pump, we had a couple of bad batches of the insulin that we got. So we changed insulins. And also it was really hard to transition from a pager. Because we were manually injecting a pager for meals. And we had to get rid of that because you can't have that and the T slim and transition to the human log and it just doesn't work the way the pager works.

Scott Benner 52:19
Okay. And you're using a pager now?

Sabena 52:23
No, we can't have it in the T slim.

Scott Benner 52:27
subpoena why? I think that what they say? I don't think you're supposed to. I don't think you're supposed to use it. Omnipod either.

Sabena 52:40
Oh, okay. Um, I'm picking out what you're putting down. That's the truth.

Scott Benner 52:46
I think what happens is that people make devices, which is very cool. I think they then put them through the different health authorities. And they do testing so they can say, hey, we did you know, we use the Nova log and this pump and it worked fine. They probably picked Nova log because it's used by more people. And then they say, you can only use they don't say you can only use Nova log and the pump. They say we've tested the pump with Nova log. That makes sense.

Sabena 53:19
Sort of like I thought that someone said that the pager like clocks or something or goes away.

Scott Benner 53:26
I've heard people say that too. I don't know. Arden's been using a pager with Omni pod for like, a decade probably.

Sabena 53:34
Suppose like, we knew how the pager worked. It worked fast. So if he's going high, sometimes we'll just do a manual shot of the pager? Because it's just so much faster. Yes, to bring him down.

Scott Benner 53:46
It's a good plan. It works for sure. Look, I don't know if it'll work in your pump. Maybe the heat is different, where you are, etc. I don't know. But I mean, I've heard people say to I tried to use it in a pump, and it didn't work. And I've heard him say that about other saying other things, and I don't know, I do what works. And this works for us.

Sabena 54:07
I might try that. Yeah.

Scott Benner 54:11
You know, it's very similar, like in the US, where a device will come out. And they're like, it's been FDA cleared for children like six and above, for instance. And then people like, Well, my kids five I wanted to use that they're all mad, but a doctor in the United States can write a prescription for anything they want off label. So if a pump, you know, says six and above and your kids for the doctor has autonomy to just write you the script anyway. As a matter of fact, there are drugs that are I mean, I think a good example would be Metformin, right? People use that a lot for type two diabetes and insulin resistance and stuff like that. But there are diet doctors who write Metformin for weight loss. So you know what I mean? I actually think an erection medication that does something else. I don't know what it is. Right now. I don't use erection medications. I will be your next. Sabina married. I don't need an erection. Let's see, hold on a second

do other things. Good? What do you want to say?

Sabena 55:23
isn't really good? These are the little tips not the erection tip.

Scott Benner 55:29
Little tip after I made a penis jokes, what's wrong with you? Oh my God. You are from New Zealand. I should know but I listen. I can't tell you if it's going to work or it's not going to work. But I can tell you. It works for some people. Okay, I can't tell you to try it. I mean, nothing you hear on the pod?

Sabena 56:00
I know. I know.

Scott Benner 56:01
Okay. So yeah, see what you can do. Okay, so you, you made big changes to insulin, that fixed your problem. So where where do you see stability at when his blood

Sabena 56:16
we sit between? Because it's quite hard because I have to fight the algorithm, because it's he's got the Basal IQ. So he sits between four and eight and a half usually, if I can, you know, if I've got him if other people he's not usually with other people, but with other people. They don't know how to. It's really hard to articulate because I do I try and do what you do, where you say you look like a plate of food. And you know how much more based on the how much units you'd need rather than carb counting? Yeah. So like, because carb counting doesn't work in the sense that if you had 15 grams of juice or 15 grams of potato chips, that's hard to quantify. Rather than looking at it unit wise. Yeah,

Scott Benner 57:14
I understand. So you have trouble explaining to other people?

Sabena 57:18
Yeah, I do actually. Okay.

Scott Benner 57:22
Between, by the way, between four and eight for people listening is between 72 and 144. In America,

Sabena 57:29
yeah. That's our main goal in these times. So if we're at daycare, because he comes to daycare with me. If there's say an icebox, I won't make him Pre-Bolus at daycare in a time like that, because I don't want him to like, feel different. Thinking about the mental health side of it, as well as the physical health. Yeah.

Scott Benner 57:54
What do you mean he comes to daycare with you do work at a daycare?

Sabena 57:57
Yeah, I'm, I'm qualified ACA teacher. So luckily, he got to come back to work with me. So the control freak keeps to I get to keep being controlling at work as well. That's nice. There's

Scott Benner 58:08
the baby come with you as well. Yeah, yeah, we all go. Nice. Oh, that's a good, that's a nice setup for you. How do you think he'll do when he moves on to school?

Sabena 58:19
So he could technically go to school in December, but in New Zealand, you can stay in early childhood till you're six. So he's going to stay with me for another year. Just because boys don't need to go into formal education. There's lots of research that their brains just need to go on Play. So I don't know what that's gonna look like. I'm really anxious about that. And it's a whole year away.

Scott Benner 58:43
Well, your husband with the school younger and it didn't help him at all right? How long do you think you're getting until you're getting divorced? Exactly. Do you think it'd be five years? Oh, no. Well, I, I'm so interested. I know your husband is probably not the kind of guy that wants to come on a podcast, but I would love to spend 15 minutes with him. Explain to me how he feels about your kids. I bet you ever asked him? Don't you think his love is just different than yours?

Sabena 59:23
Don't you think some people love some things more than other people?

Scott Benner 59:28
I don't think so. I just think it's different. I mean, I mean, a person who doesn't love another person. Yeah, that would be a bad comparison. If I asked somebody like do I love my daughter more than a stranger does? I would love her more. But I just I don't know. I just always think that people either show or don't show things differently. What they think of his love can sometimes be different, but I don't know the amount that they love. I don't know how anybody would measure that besides them, if that makes sense.

Sabena 1:00:04
It does make sense.

Scott Benner 1:00:05
Okay. I know you're joking a little bit too. But I also think you're serious. So

Sabena 1:00:11
you, you actually have lots of sage advice you should go. And if you don't want to do diabetes anymore, you should go become a therapist.

Scott Benner 1:00:17
I don't know Do you really is I don't want to disregard what people understand when they become licensed therapists. But it just seems to me that I bet your husband just feels differently, but equally as strong. I mean, here's an example. Sometimes I don't hold eye contact when I'm talking to people, even people in my family, and I feel bad about it all the time. And I will sometimes imagine a day when my son moves out for good that I will look back and think of all the times that he was in the same room with me that I wasn't looking at him. And I It makes me feel like I'm wasting time. So that's, that's me. Being sad about like, love that I have that I feel like I'm not giving properly.

Sabena 1:01:11
Yeah, that makes sense. Right.

Scott Benner 1:01:13
And so I mean, it's a little idea, but you but my wife would not know that. I feel that way. There'd be no way for me to explain that to her.

Sabena 1:01:24
That makes lots of sense.

Scott Benner 1:01:26
I don't know. I'm just thinking he's probably like, is he at work right now? Look, let me but let's make sure I understand this. He's not at a bar face down. Is he right now? He's getting ready to go to work. No, he's asleep and beard. But is he gonna go to work?

Sabena 1:01:41
Eventually, yeah, it's only 530. I know.

Scott Benner 1:01:43
But he'll he'll you're fighting me on this Sabine. I'm not sure why he's gonna go to work and make money and come home and all that stuff, right.

Sabena 1:01:50
He sure is gonna go to work and make money and come home.

Scott Benner 1:01:54
Maybe sometimes. I think that's how men show love to.

Sabena 1:01:59
Yes, I think you're very

Scott Benner 1:02:00
right. Right, Sabina. Look at me. No, I

Sabena 1:02:03
really think you're right. I just, if you ask anyone in my family, I'm not good at admitting when I'm wrong.

Scott Benner 1:02:09
Oh, well, that's fine. You don't have to we're not here to fix everything. So also, I think in a not for nothing situation, you have just had a baby, and you're still breastfeeding it. And you're probably as far away from feeling romantic at this moment. As a person could be. Am I right about that? Absolutely. Right. He looks better when you're corny. Right, Sabina?

Sabena 1:02:37
No, because it just gets us more kids.

Scott Benner 1:02:41
There's ways to do without kids, you know? Do you need me to explain them to you? Or do you? Do you know that?

Sabena 1:02:48
I think I think I've gotten

Scott Benner 1:02:52
all right, because I mean, I'll go over them with you if you want. But I'm gonna have to bleep out a lot. There's ways Yeah, I mean, there's tons of ways around it, actually. How long have you guys been together?

Sabena 1:03:08
I'm, like, 17 years. 14.

Scott Benner 1:03:12
Just sick of him. I understand. Now I just understand now you're just sick of each other? How old? Are you?

Sabena 1:03:21

3227. So maybe it's even time maybe it's like 15 years? That's 18. Yeah, that

Scott Benner 1:03:29
seems like a long time. It is a long time. They say if you can make it past 20, you'll be okay.

Sabena 1:03:37
We go. I think also when you have diabetes in your life, it does take away from being able to do other things and send a light in terms of checking at night and doing site changes at night. And we've had a really hard winter in New Zealand where there was so much sickness, and both of my kids have pretty much been sick for like three months.

Scott Benner 1:04:05
How cold does it get there in the winter?

Sabena 1:04:08
Oh, it's not super cold. It's just that there's that whole theory that we were in lockdown with COVID and so we haven't really had sicknesses for the last couple of years because we were quite lucky. We did a lot of lock downs and didn't didn't have COVID the way America had COVID I don't think

Scott Benner 1:04:30
I've never had COVID I'm bragging

Sabena 1:04:32
I've I've had COVID But I was fully vaccinated. It was the most recent recent strain

Scott Benner 1:04:39
Okay, so kind of a light cold went away in a couple days.

Sabena 1:04:44
Yeah, it wasn't too bad but who's to say like, weapons now? Next and options played and stuff. Do

Scott Benner 1:04:51
you think it do you think it rewired your brain into thinking that some people love people more than other people?

Sabena 1:04:58
Maybe Do you think that's what Big Pharma want to be your thing?

Scott Benner 1:05:02
I think if your husband had boobs, we wouldn't be having this conversation. What do you think of that? You just be like, boobs make me happy. And that'd be the end of it. And that's what happens to me. I can't. There's nothing you could say to me that you couldn't fix with with Kelly's boobs. I can't even think of anything. I mean, like World War, I still think well, if we're gonna die soon. We should probably say those boobs well. I don't know. Just make sense to me. But that's fine. Yep. Isn't it interesting, Sabina? I must be crazy for you. I'm actually a boy. And I have all these feelings that you don't attribute with men.

Sabena 1:05:47
You do. I think you're a unicorn, though.

Scott Benner 1:05:49
You think so?

Sabena 1:05:51
I think so. I work. My boss is also male. And he's a unicorn too. He often cries at work.

Scott Benner 1:06:00
You're sure he's sure he likes girls. The whole thing?

Sabena 1:06:04
It was quite excited about the fire. I mean, coming to visit us the other day. So maybe, you know, boats?

Scott Benner 1:06:11
Oh, I don't mind. I'm just saying like I was I was trying to make the point that I'm incredibly heterosexual. And at the same time, I have. I have a lot of what I think most people would attribute as like, feminine feelings and thoughts.

Sabena 1:06:29
I think it's more you just a conscious you have consciousness?

Scott Benner 1:06:32
Maybe? I don't know. Boobs are terrific. We start talking about it. I'll get lost in it. I really will. I got theories about all kinds of things. Seriously, when we're done here, if you want I can tell you what's great about boobs can probably give you like a 10 minutes a little way about them.

Sabena 1:06:52
I think my toddler could tell you what was great about Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:06:55
it's mostly Sabina. It's mostly the it's mostly the weight of them.

Sabena 1:07:05
Say she would say the milk. It's about the milk. Yeah, I

Scott Benner 1:07:08
don't have that experience. So I don't know what to say there. Also, she can't talk. We have no idea what she would say. What if she said I don't know. It's the weight. I love the weight of them.

Sabena 1:07:19
I think she says the milk, milky glitter in the face.

Scott Benner 1:07:25
So do you think you'll have more kids?

Sabena 1:07:28
Um, I don't know what's really scary to think that I'd have to do the diabetes again. You know, I don't know if there's other people that feel like that. I mean,

Scott Benner 1:07:39
diabetes stopped us the two kids. So I understand.

Sabena 1:07:45
Because it's just like now we're at this point with Joey, where it's not a big deal. But it was really heartbreaking having to train his body to hold all that trauma and all those needles and all of that stuff.

Scott Benner 1:07:59
Ya know, especially for the way you were planning on raising him, it must have been tough for you to to kind of have to feel like you were giving up on your idea before you ever got it started. Really?

Sabena 1:08:10
Yeah, like a girl that I worked with. She said it first when I said I think Jody has diabetes, everyone laughed at me and said, You're crazy. And then after it, she said, You're the worst person to do this. Because it's really hard for me to be firm. I'm always trying to find like a way around or like a compromise, but you can't compromise with insulin, injections and stuff. Do you

Scott Benner 1:08:37
know why that is? Are you were you raised by somebody who was kind of firm and you didn't like it?

Sabena 1:08:44
Um, I don't know. I think it's just like, in my job, we do a lot of like woowoo stuff in our training, we do lots of reflection and just thinking about the main thing comes from how you would want to be treated. And when you start thinking, even the way people view children and how they speak to them or don't speak to them. Being able to have empathy and put yourself in someone else's shoes, it automatically shifts the way you would do something.

Scott Benner 1:09:15
Well, let me ask you this. If you had diabetes, and you weren't able to help yourself with it, would you not find it loving for someone to help you?

Sabena 1:09:24
Absolutely. I am. There's a lady that I listened to her podcast. She's a parenting person. Her name is Janet Lansbury. And she actually had a podcast about diabetes. I couldn't believe it. And she gave me some language and the language mainly helped me I would say, Joey, Mommy has to take the best care of your body. I have to keep you healthy and just having a little mantra like that. When I did it to him, helped me and then it helped him.

Scott Benner 1:09:52
It's good. That's excellent. Yeah, I listen, I agree with you about the way children are treated or not treated and And that, you know, your goals. I think your goals are terrific. I just don't think you having to take care of the diabetes means you're not being empathetic.

Sabena 1:10:09
I think it was just that for a little while. I he couldn't comprehend why I was inflicting pain on him. Yeah. And at what pain and he wasn't really really sick. When he got diagnosed, we knew that we knew the signs and we got him tested. Like we checked in his HP once he was only like eight.

Scott Benner 1:10:31
But you knew because your husband's family? Yeah,

Sabena 1:10:34
we saw the like frequent urination. And that was probably the only thing that we saw.

Scott Benner 1:10:41
Is there any other autoimmune stuff and either side of the family

Sabena 1:10:46
has sister that's type one is also gluten, celiac, but nothing else.

Scott Benner 1:10:52
Okay, no thyroid stuff. No. Yeah, well, are you gonna get your daughter tested to see if she has antibodies?

Sabena 1:11:04
The doctor said that actually, we don't have a right to test her because she can't consent to it.

Scott Benner 1:11:14
That's hilarious. Does she have consent that anything happens to her?

Sabena 1:11:18
Well, it was just like, it's a medical decision, but they won't lead us to stew.

Scott Benner 1:11:25
All right now might be a weird Island thing.

Sabena 1:11:29
I think it was a we got a really bad doctor. He was very weird.

Scott Benner 1:11:33
Okay, yeah. Try it again. That doesn't make sense. Like what do you mean? Like your kids can't consent anything there? He's she's a year old.

Sabena 1:11:43
Right? Well, he, he said that these like ethical ramifications and blah, blah, blah. But I just thought but what if she gets sick? And we could prevent, like the dka sickness?

Scott Benner 1:11:56
Well, that sounds like bullshit, Sabina what he said. So I'd go to a different doctor and ask again, if that's what you want to do. You know what I mean? What ethical problems are there?

Sabena 1:12:08
Oh, he just said that. It's not my decision. And what if she doesn't want to know? What

Scott Benner 1:12:16
was he? Hi, when he said that?

Sabena 1:12:21
I think he was one of those doctors that it was really intelligent, but not emotionally intelligent.

Scott Benner 1:12:28
He looked like he was on a pill or anything like that. Maybe just taking a little pain pill. Like to get through the day? Anything? No.

Sabena 1:12:35
You never know. Yeah, even though

Scott Benner 1:12:37
just maybe an oxy. Just one. Just to I have to take away the takeaway how long the day feels or something? He didn't look a little glassy eyed or anything like that. I mean, listen, can I say something, Sabina? I mean this in the absolute worst? Possible sense of the word. But that's some woke bullshit right there.

Sabena 1:13:01
But we've just we've got a new doctor, and I will ask the new doctor. Yeah, but even they they don't want me correcting even now. They're like, they don't really want me correcting until he's 14. Like, I don't know what that is for you.

Scott Benner 1:13:15
I will look for you. Because I have on my website, juicebox podcast.com, a beautiful conversion chart where people can use it. I hear, you know, people send me notes something and they're like, hey, when you're making the podcast and somebody says, you know, one measurement, could you then repeat that measurement? In the other for us? Listen, and I hear that I go, Oh, no, I can't do that. That's I mean, the whole podcast would just be me doing like, you know, translations. A 14 is 250. They don't want you. They don't want you correct until 250. No,

Sabena 1:13:55
I just don't listen to them. Yeah, well,

Scott Benner 1:13:57
listen, I can't imagine you're listening to anybody.

Sabena 1:14:04
It's a little bit true. Now. I need to go do some work on myself. So no,

Scott Benner 1:14:08
no, no. I feel like yes, I mean, is the marching to the beat of her own drum over here. You've never told your husband that you think he loves the children less than you have you? I'm not sure. Oh, God, Sabina, have you said that to him? Maybe. No, you can't do that. That's not okay. You can't do that. There's like a few things you can't do. One of them is infer that his penis might be small. You can't say that. Okay, you can't. I knew that one. Yeah, you can't tell him like that. He might not love the kids as much as you. That's definitely what you can't do. And I don't think he's supposed to say anything bad about his mother.

Sabena 1:14:55
Oh, I do that. Oh, no, I am gonna get divorced.

Scott Benner 1:15:00
So when we get a few things you're not supposed to do your your mom's crazy not doing the first one. So wait the penis one. Was that during the penis? Was that it? Was that a humble brag about your husband's penis?

Sabena 1:15:18
Yeah, I'll put that in there a mason brownie.

Scott Benner 1:15:24
Well, then I take everything else back. He doesn't care what you say about his mom, if he's got a nice sized penis, he's okay. That used to be you know, what else are you doing that you need my help with? Me? Should we take a couple extra minutes? I thought we were at the end but I mean, do you need help with anything else? You're locking the doors? are you locking the doors at night? Right when you go to bed? Oh my god this morning. And the front door was unlocked have been Come on. You I haven't

Sabena 1:15:56
put them let's okay. She tells someone

Scott Benner 1:16:00
to make a list of things you're supposed to do.

Sabena 1:16:02
When you're done doesn't sound like I'm adulting very well does it when

Scott Benner 1:16:06
you're done at the stove. You turn the heat off all the time. Yes, I got that one down. That's good. You don't leave children near like bodies of water.

Sabena 1:16:15
Not my children's. The new year how much I love my children.

Scott Benner 1:16:19
Those kids. Nothing bad's happening to them all day. Okay, we do we drink and drive. We don't drink and drive. Right? These are simple ones.

Sabena 1:16:27
No, we do not drink and drive. That's nice. Great.

Scott Benner 1:16:35
What else to say? Like I now wonder what it is? You don't know. You don't even need to be worried for me. I mean, a little bit. Yeah. Especially now because it's early in the morning. And you're obviously sleep deprived, where you wouldn't have said half the thing. By the way. Everyone has to come on at four in the morning from now on, because they're way more honest at four in the morning.

Sabena 1:16:56
I'm always sleep deprived though. So that's neither here nor there.

Scott Benner 1:17:00
I just want to say legally if you email me later and say that you don't want me to air this. I don't have to listen to you. But, I mean, I would but please don't. Please don't change your mind about this. Fantastic.

Sabena 1:17:17
All right. No, I think this might convert my husband to listening to the podcast. Yeah, it's okay.

Scott Benner 1:17:23
Yeah, Jesus while him and his big penis. What's he worried about? How big is it? Is it like, is it just satisfying? Or is it like do you look at it and like have to take a minute to get ready. You don't have to answer that if you don't want to.

Sabena 1:17:41
It was just write

Scott Benner 1:17:43
perfect. Everything else about him socks, but that penis works. Really makes really cute kid. So you realize that inadvertently you've given a bad message to men just now. Right? Like, do you know what the message is here? Doesn't matter what they don't do? As long as they can lay it down when you need it. That's what you basically just said like, Look, you don't want to love the kids. Whatever. You don't want to take care of diabetes. I got it. Want to live in a house with the door unlocked? Nobody checks. It's no big deal. But when Mama wants her mama wants her happy. You just get over here. Everything else will be fine.

Sabena 1:18:34
I also have to have a job. Okay.

Scott Benner 1:18:36
Oh, please. That goes without saying sabina I didn't think that you were gonna let the penis anywhere near you without money and you girls that are having sex with guys that don't have any money. What are you doing? What are you doing? Jesus nature gave you all the things you need to be happy we have to change the name of the podcast the mama wants her happy by the way

Yeah, I very strongly believe that's gonna be the title. Yeah, cuz mama wants her happy is hilarious. And it won't come till the end and they'll have to listen all the way to the end to find out what it means. And by the way, this is an after dark now

Well, this was an unexpected treat for me today, Sabina. I hope you enjoyed it as well. If you didn't, I mean, I don't care honestly. I had a great time so but, but I really do appreciate you doing this. Is there anything we didn't talk about that you wanted to?

Sabena 1:19:45
Um, the only thing that I tell everyone newly diagnosed is usual ELO four finger pricks. It sounds really minut but there's no nerve endings in your ear lobe the way there is in your fingers.

Scott Benner 1:20:00
Hmm, that's a good one and heels. Do people use heels and toes but I don't know they they have nerve endings, though. But you're saying there's no nerve endings in your ear lobes.

Sabena 1:20:10
Always least like because it's just a piece of fit.

Scott Benner 1:20:13
Okay. Well, everything we've talked about today has been a piece of fat, but I understand what you're saying. It's always, I've never tested anyone's here low, but I take your word for it.

Sabena 1:20:25
Yeah, it's much easier and especially with little kids. They can't actually see what you're doing in terms of like the blood because it's on the yellow.

Scott Benner 1:20:34
Okay. I got you. I'm with you. That was it. By the way. Is there anything we talked about that you meant to talk about? The campy right? We didn't say anything you wanted to talk about? Right?

Sabena 1:20:46
No, but I got my free therapy session with you. And maybe I won't get divorced because I was such a

Scott Benner 1:20:53
never said that. I never said I didn't infer that. I don't I don't mean I don't think that. I'm just saying. Men and women see things differently. And often they don't see each other side is all I'm saying.

Sabena 1:21:08
And maybe I should bring my husband and kids as much as I do.

Scott Benner 1:21:19
Just tell him get your big penis over here and hug these kids. Really bad. Yeah, I'm gonna edit that out All right, hold on one second. I'm gonna stop the recording. But first I have to leave a note for myself. Definitely call this when Mama wants her happy. Okay, hold on. I'm gonna hit stop.

A huge thank you to one of today's sponsors, G voc glucagon. Find out more about Chivo Capo pen at G Vogue glucagon.com forward slash juicebox you spell that GVOKEGLUC AG o n.com. Forward slash juicebox. I'd also like to thank touched by type one remind you to go to touch by type one.org get those tickets for dancing for diabetes. And of course, Omni pod makers of the Omni pod five and the Omni pod dash head right now to Omni pod.com forward slash juicebox Get started today. You won't regret it.

If you enjoy this after dark episodes, there are plenty more where this one came from. Go into your podcast app and search Juicebox Podcast after dark. You'll see a ton of them. Honestly, there's a bunch there. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast.

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#780 Bold Beginnings: Treating Low Blood Glucose

Bold Beginnings will answer the questions that most people have after a type 1 diabetes diagnosis.

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

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+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

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

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends, and welcome to episode 780 of the Juicebox Podcast.

Welcome back everyone to the bold beginning series today Jennifer Smith and I are going to be talking about treating low blood glucose levels. At some point, in this episode, you're going to hear me tell Jenny that oh, this is the last one we're recording, but I might have made a mistake, so there's more coming. Anyway, you'll see nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan, or becoming bold with insulin. Remember that while you're listening, please. If you have type one diabetes and are a US resident, or you're a US resident, who is the caregiver of someone with type one, can you please go to T one D exchange.org. Forward slash juicebox and complete the survey. Just join the registry complete the survey takes fewer than 10 minutes. Absolutely HIPAA compliant, completely anonymous. Super simple answers to type one diabetes questions you already know the answer to your feedback helps other people living with type one, t one D exchange.org, forward slash juicebox.

Omnipod five is the first tubeless automated insulin delivery system to integrate with the Dexcom G six. And now it's available for people with type one diabetes ages six years and older. Wait till you see smart adjust technology in the Omni pod five. It adjusts insulin delivery based on your customized target glucose helping to protect against highs and lows both day and night. Anecdotally, I am seeing so many people in our private Facebook group using Omni pod five and loving it. If you're interested in automated insulin delivery, I'm talking about a system that adjusts with your blood sugar, blood sugar tries to go up, it adjusts tries to go down. It adjusts automatically. If that's something you're interested in, head to Omni pod.com forward slash juice box and learn more about the Omni pod five. If you're not looking for automation, right now, you're probably going to love the Omni pod dash and you may actually be eligible for a free 30 day trial of that dash. Again, head to Omni pod.com forward slash juicebox to find out if you are now if you'd love that, but you don't have a Dexcom this is easy to fix dexcom.com forward slash juice box head there now click the link get started with Dexcom G six today. What are you going to get with Dexcom? G six? How about glucose readings right on your smart device your Apple or Android phones don't want to use a smartphone no problem, use the Dexcom receiver along with those devices comes customizable alerts and alarms. So you can set your optimal range and then get notified when your glucose levels go too high or too low. You can even share that data with up to 10 followers. That's pretty crazy. Think about it like your, your mom could like you could be like 40 years old be like Mom, will you watch my blood sugar because at night I don't wake up. If you're planning on moving to an algorithm based system, you should really look at Dexcom or if you just want to be able to see your blood sugar, speed, direction and number again, Dexcom I can look right now. Boom, my daughter's blood sugar is 77. It's steady right now. I saw it that fast. Right on my iPhone, you could do that to Dex comm.com forward slash juice box, head to my link right now fill out a little bit of information and you're on your way. Thank you so much for listening to the ads. There are links in the show notes of your podcast player or links at juicebox podcast.com. If you're unable to remember Omni pod.com Ford slash juice box and dexcom.com Ford slash juice box. Now we're gonna get you to Jenny and I talking about how to treat low blood sugars. And there's no ads the rest of the way

I'm gonna hit record Jenny to tell you this little preamble bit that I normally would have said ahead of time, but what we're done, you and

Jennifer Smith, CDE 4:28
this is the last one we not yay, I should say, Oh no, we're done.

Scott Benner 4:32
We're done with the bold beginnings, then we will move on to the long list of things that I have to do with you for next year. So but I'm gonna throw a little curveball in here. So you and I were going to talk about insurance. And then we were finished but I'm going to bring somebody else in to talk about insurance. Cool. So because otherwise it would just be you and I you know talking about our experiences with insurance which might not have answer some of the people's questions.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 5:01
No, I think that's great. Because I think there are quite a number of people that definitely know more about the navigation. And I think in terms of this topic, it's more how to really nudge yourself into insurance and get what you need and get to be able to talk to the right person about it. Yeah. So I think that's great.

Scott Benner 5:24
Yeah. So you and I would have done, we would have had fun. And I would have told stories about yelling the F word into phones to get art and things. I can do that with someone else who can also hit the technical sides of it for us a little awesome. So instead, you and I are going to add our very last episode to the bowl beginnings series together about how to treat low blood sugars. Oh, right. Because you get diabetes. And nobody says to you, hey, you might get low. And the low might be slow. And it might be fast, and it might be harsh, and you might be dizzy. They just say if your blood sugar gets low, eat 15 carbs, wait 15 minutes. And then it

Jennifer Smith, CDE 6:07
might respond really fast. Or it might not resolve for a couple of hours. And you're thinking, Where did the food go? So,

Scott Benner 6:17
so I so I want to kind of talk through a number of scenarios. And I know, I know, I'm dropping this on you out of nowhere. And of course, is that is that anything new? No. But I don't have any notes whatsoever. Like we've been doing bold beginnings off of people's questions. So, you know, we might have gotten lazy because we're like, oh, we don't have to drive this conversation. I'll just wait and see what this person said.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 6:37
Well, I'm sure there are probably lots of questions that have come in about low blood sugars.

Scott Benner 6:42
There may have been but they were not. They were not called together for me for the situation. So we're just going to fly by the seat of our pants, which I think will be fine. Not like before. Alright, so let's think about this. Your newly diagnosed, and I guess the first thing we can consider is that you might be honeymooning, still true. All right. So if that's happening, if you're getting help from your pancreas that you don't expect, you might see protracted I saw somebody online the other day whose kids blood sugar was like low all day. And she's like, this has to be a honeymoon because like we're not doing anything different than we've done in the past. So I guess if you're MDI, and you start experiencing low blood sugars, that seem like they're being I guess, impacted by your pancreas, still, you can't cut off your your Basal insulin, because you've probably shot it already that day. Correct. But you could start limiting. I don't know, would you

Jennifer Smith, CDE 7:47
limit your Bolus insulin? Right? Right, or you could look at for that day, making your insulin to carb ratio, more conservative, you know, if you're floating around at a ratio of an in honeymoon, when kids and even some teens might be a one to 30 ratio, right? You could suggest one to 45 or one to 50. Or right if you know that you're floating, pretty stable when there's not food introduced, but the stable is low and you're having to give it a little bit of carb to keep it from like dipping, then it would be the Bolus is that would be the easiest to adjust in that day. And in looking forward into the next day thinking, this might be what it is. You could downplay your basil that day. Whether it's morning or evening time dose, you could take it down a little bit, and see if then the next day floats just slightly higher, and leaves you without having to add so much extra carb

Scott Benner 8:55
to treat. And on the day that you get surprised by it and your basil is already in. You can kind of feed the basil a little bit for the day. Yeah, right and bred out and spread out carbs to cover the timeline. But so this is where you need to understand the difference between like a faster acting car but a more sustainable impact, right. And so if you're being drugged down constantly over hours and hours and hours, a couple of skittles might stop it for a minute. But the minute you bounce back up again, and this extra Basil is there that you don't need you're gonna get drugged back down again. So you need foods that are slower to digest. Right? You start you start reverse engineering your problems from diabetes and using your problems as solutions right like, right if you ate pizza that might take that might sit in your system for hours and hours and hours impact you so what a great opportunity to have pizza a little bit of pizza or what are

Jennifer Smith, CDE 9:54
pleading some proteins with some carbs. Right. You might want to treat if you're done hoping or lower already. If you do, then knowing what you just said, you want some sustaining power after that to not drop yet again, you could do something that incorporates some fat and protein in it to hold things level because again, the other consideration that if if it is a honeymoon based, like drop in blood sugar, it could be that anytime your blood sugar does nudge up from what you treated with simple sugar, it could be that your betas are also like, Oh, look at that. There's a rise in blood sugar. Let's give some help. And it doesn't really know that you've got Basal injected, that's also there.

Scott Benner 10:39
That's C you know, isn't that interesting that you brought that up? It didn't occur to me that I've always just thought of it is like you're getting help from your pancreas, but your pancreas seeds the carbs and attacks them while the insulin you've learned the manmade insulin you've put in is also drawing your blood sugar there. Oh, wow. So you have dumb insulin and smart insulin working at the same time.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 11:01
Correct. And common time for that in honeymoon is overnight for a lot of people actually, where they may have corrections that work pretty well in the daytime, despite them being really tiny, you know, miniscule amounts of correction. But I've got person after person that says I can't correct unless my blood sugar's 300 At night, because if I correct with just a minor half unit of insulin, I'm sitting at like a 60 blood sugar.

Scott Benner 11:30
In this reason we're newly diagnosed people.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 11:33
Correct. It's specifically more honeymooning. I mean, you can even see it on nights where blood sugar is going up. You don't correct the high blood sugar because you have the hindsight to know what's coming. Blood sugar could hit 202 20. And it downplays in your wake up in a beautiful number. That's, that's not injected Basal that did that. Your body helped you?

Scott Benner 11:57
Yeah. Okay. So that's one kind of low, you could experience now another one might be activity, right? I'm trying to think of I'm trying to put myself in a newly diagnosed person's situation, right? Like, they go back to their life, like I have diabetes, diabetes isn't gonna stop me. And then they go play tennis, and then their blood sugar falls really quickly. There we need fast working sugar, correct something that's gonna hit you very quickly, and stop this freefall. So if you're in a freefall, for whatever reason, you can't eat. That's not the time to have a slice of pizza.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 12:36
That's not the time to have peanut butter cups, the slice of pizza, the nacho meal breaks, not

Scott Benner 12:41
because that's because you're going to keep crashing before it has an opportunity to start digesting and to stop you. You're looking for simple sugars. I mean, in emergency situations, I know, I know, people don't seem to talk about glucose tablets anymore. Like they've become persona non grata, right. Because they taste achy,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 13:01
they're not the greatest. I mean, they are they are okay. I think the greatest thing about them for me personally, is that I am never going to over treat with glucose tablets. Right? I mean, they do their job. They're doing the job that I want them to do. But they're not like a bag of I don't know, licorice, like licorice. I like black licorice.

Scott Benner 13:23
So you might be like,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 13:25
easy to keep eating with a low blood sugar.

Scott Benner 13:27
Well, that is one interesting thing that there's a plus for for glucose tablets, you will you won't eat them for fun, that's for sure. No. Gel. I mean, I don't even know Do people carry that still, they should write it,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 13:40
we should and or it's easy, especially if somebody needs to help you. Because you can just get it into kind of the gum line and sort of massage it in it. It does work really quickly. So if you don't love the taste of glucose tablets, the glucose gels might work really great. There's a nice liquid glucose that I just heard about two that I really liked. Okay, so

Scott Benner 14:04
but, but in general juice boxes, people are gonna use Skittles gummy bears stuff like that. Right? Correct.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 14:11
Exactly. But the another good thing as you bring up glucose tablets, glucose, or dextrose is the simplest form of sugar, right? So your body doesn't have to go through this breakdown of the structure of of sugar if you will. And so it gets absorbed really fast. So if you're looking for candy specifically, you really want to look for candy that has glucose or dextrose as one of the first two or three ingredients because it's going to have the fastest impact on a low or a really quick drop that you want to stop.

Scott Benner 14:45
Yeah, the timing so super important because I know a story about a person. I won't say their name, but they're an adult. And diabetes for a long time felt themselves getting low knew it. ate a bunch of carbs passed out And then just turned back on when the carbs hit them. They were just like, hey, I'm back. And so so there's an it's an example of having the timing wrong. Like you're falling at a certain degree of speed or rate of speed. And you need that sugar to come in, and to slow like a parachute almost to parachute that that number fall down and to stop it, you know, what a nice level sponsor don't go too low. So things need to work the way you need. I mean, that really is the message of this episode, right? Like if you're one if you're 120, and you're wearing a CGM, and you see this gradual fall, and you look back over at 90 minutes going down, oh, geez, like I Bolus for this meal, it clearly looks like it's too much insulin, I'm going to get low a half an hour from now. Well, there, you could just add some more carbs to your meal or have a couple more bites. Correct, you might stop that. But if that same 120 was falling quickly, you're in a different scenario, you need to use different carbs,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 16:02
you need to use quicker, exactly the simple carbs on a quick drop. If you've got a gentle sort of glide down something that's a little more complex, like crack, you know, something like peanut butter crackers, I hear a lot kind of get used, because there's a little bit more to the cracker with the peanut butter added to it, right. So something like that could use it down. But if you're really, really dropping, then sugar,

Scott Benner 16:30
yeah. And you have to, in the beginning, it'll be hard not to over treat a low. But that is a skill you need to learn. Because otherwise, the bounce comes and then you're like, I don't know what to do. I wish you have that fear from you've just been low. You don't want to Bolus like you get caught in that, that balancing rhythm. You don't want to be in that. So maybe you'll learn at some point to look at your situation and say, half a juice box here. Or, you know, take a couple of sips just have two Skittles, you know, I say to people all the time, just because you open the bag, doesn't mean you have to eat all of them. Right? Yeah, just eat what you need.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 17:07
All right, which is also why those little tiny bags, I mean, this is a popular time of the year for a lot of people to end up stocking up on simple car, because we have Halloween coming up. Whether you celebrate it or not, it's a great time of the year to find really little packets of somewhere between eight and maybe 15 grams of carb, simple sugar, Candy really prepackaged. So the whole bag of Skittles versus the tiny little packet helps you to contain things a little more.

Scott Benner 17:40
And if you're not lucky enough to have a CGM in the moment and you're just leaning on your, your finger sticks. How frequently do you tell people to after they think after they've identified a low or felt it and treated it? How often do you stick your finger and look, I find myself. You know what I mean? I use a lot more test strips in that moment than you do sometimes for the whole week

Jennifer Smith, CDE 18:05
you do but you can expect that even simple sugars going to take a little bit of time for digestion, right? So you're really not going to see much shift. If you do a finger stick, confirm your low, treat the low and five minutes later you're doing another fingerstick you're probably not going to see much of a difference, right? So that's where old school was that 1515 rule. 15 grams, 15 minutes while you might not need or take 15 grams to treat this low that you have. Waiting about 15 minutes to retest will give you enough information to say well I treated it. It doesn't look like it's come up but it hasn't also fallen. So that should give you enough to say it's not dropping. Clearly, digestion is happening. Well, let's give it another 15 minutes and test again.

Scott Benner 18:56
Yeah, you know, I have two thoughts. So one of them I'm going to make a note about and then the other one I'm going to say if you are wearing a CGM. Sometimes it will not register as quickly so you can see like a like, Oh my God, my blood sugar is 50 You know what I mean? And you take a bunch of carbs and and then there's this way to look at the arrow with the Dexcom at least I don't know how it works with libre, you'll you're stopping a low blood sugar, let's just say it's 60. And it's the arrows diagonal down and you take some carbs in and the next reading is 55 and the arrows still down. And then all of a sudden, the arrow will like sometimes disappear. Like almost like the algorithms like I don't know what's happening right now. But the number stays the same. Or sometimes the number or the number will get lower, but the arrow changes. And do you know what I mean by that? Yeah. And so your

Jennifer Smith, CDE 19:56
whereas if you were testing in a look then it said 55 with an eight Build arrow down, you've treated it. And now you can see it has a horizontal arrow, but the number is reading like 51 or 50. And you're thinking, Well, what that really indicates is the system has found a stability, even though the number has slightly nudged down yet, it's not dropping, what you've done is actually making some impact overall. So it's not really time to treat with yet another like whole box of juice.

Scott Benner 20:30
It's so weird. It's a weird moment because the CGM is a little behind. And what you did with the carbs is maybe more in the now, but you can't see it. And so there's like, there's like multiple things happening at once that the technology has, has difficulty showing you. But you can see that something's happening. And so that's when that's when I say to myself, Okay, now this thing looks stable. And we've gotten to, you know, readings in a row that say 50. But I want to know what's really going on, because either the CGM seems confused, and I didn't do well. And we're lower than we think. Or we're higher than we think. And I don't want to treat more, that's the perfect time to do a finger stick to me absolutely have to write

Jennifer Smith, CDE 21:14
Absolutely, especially for those. Those numbers where you're treating I say at a number less than 60. Honestly, if you're varying at all and decision about whether I should do a finger stick or not. If you're less than 60, and you've treated it and the numbers on the CGM just don't necessarily add up. Or you're mentally not quite like with it enough with a low blood sugar like that. Just do a confirmatory finger stick, because at least that's going to show you real time right now. Where is your number? Yeah,

Scott Benner 21:53
yeah. And I know we're trying not to over treat. But if you get caught and you don't know, like, this is the time you're going to hear me say I'd rather I'd rather just Hi. Yeah. Because Because what you're saving yourself from or saving another person from. We don't talk about very much like in diabetes in general, even on the podcast very much like it just doesn't get talked about very much. You're talking about becoming incapacitated. You're talking about having a seizure. You're talking about death, like you're talking about. There's a lot that happens between 40 and then I don't know how low anybody's ever been right. You know, but while they were still alive, I saw Arden's blood sugar. I saw Arden's blood sugar 22 once on a finger stick when she was really little, and she was okay still. And I was just like, keep eating, eat. Yeah, II keep going. And then all of a sudden, it was 30. And I was like, Oh, I might have tested moving, I might have tested her blood sugar 10 times in seven minutes. I was like, but But I mean, it's the truth, right? Like you, you have to learn to do this because you use manmade insulin and your blood sugar is going to get low. I just don't care who you are, it's gonna happen. So you need to know how to handle it or how to handle it for somebody else. And you need to know how to handle it without causing a problem in the future. Whether that problem is a high blood sugar, or calling an ambulance, like right, you're it's not. I guess we don't talk. It sounds scary. It's probably why people don't talk about it, huh? Yeah, yeah. So

Jennifer Smith, CDE 23:27
it's absolutely it's it's more around how to treat. There's not even an emphasis on like the overtreatment. It's just treat it. But why, right? Why is it so important to recognize a low sooner than later or deal with it sooner than later? Or stop it from happening? sooner than later? Because there is that scary factor of? I don't know. I don't know why some people can have a blood sugar. I might the lowest I was ever was 26. Yeah, I don't, I was fine. My mom actually thought the number had to be bad. I mean, it was really old. I mean, this was like 1988. So clearly, the meters were not what they are today. But she's like, that's got to be wrong. You feel good, right? We were camping. Did it again, it was like it was pretty much the same. Just like you need to eat. Here's the juice. Where's it? Where's the regular soda? You know, why could I be there? And fine when somebody else could be passed out, have a seizure, need an ambulance need assistance? When their blood sugar is 61 and low. Right? Right.

Scott Benner 24:36
Yeah, everybody's going to be different. And so so let me let me say a couple things here. I use a football analogy because it's football season, right? You can't like the reason the offensive linemen are these giant blobs of people is because they're trying to stop this insane force that's coming at them. Right? Correct. You can sometimes put carbs in and you I made such a mistake earlier in the day with insulin or, you know, there's just so much power on the side of the insulin. It's like the carbs aren't there, like you might as well not have anybody blocking because it runs right through them. Right? That's a panicky situation, the first time that happens to you, where you take in a juice box, and realize that it's, it's like you didn't drink it. If you're enjoying the Juicebox Podcast, and you would like it to remain free. Please support the sponsors. Today's sponsors are Dexcom G six dexcom.com, forward slash juice box, and Omni pod. Both the Omni pod five and the Omni pod dash are available at Omni pod.com. Forward slash juicebox. It's a hard moment, you know what I mean? Because this is what you know is going to work. And now suddenly, it's not working for some reason. And you're like, Oh, God, what do I do? You can't find yourself in those scenarios. Wondering what's in the cabinets? Or what's in my bag? Or what do we have in the car, like you have to be prepared? Correct all the time. Just, you know, anywhere you are. There are fast acting carbs. I don't give a crap. If you don't use them for six months. I don't care if they get stale, throw them out and replace them. If the juice, you know, in the juice box, get some spongy from being in the car in the heat. Throw it away, put another one in there. Like just don't. Don't ever find yourself in a situation where you're like, it'll be okay.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 26:30
Right? Yeah, right. I mean, It's fall now. and I were just like rotating through. We don't really have summer jackets, but like into fall into the winter jackets, we're kind of rotating them into the mix, right? So I bring up my winter stuff. And absolutely in at least like one, if not two of my like fall into winter jackets. Their old, nasty bad glucose tablets, like they've gotten the like crystallized sugar like dots. And like, if I had to, I would still use this. So like that juice box that's like nasty and squishy. If that's all you got, you use the squishy juice that

Scott Benner 27:09
spread them around your life, like your grandma's spreads around her reading glasses, do you know what I mean? There's just a pair in this room and over here, you need to be less ready, you can't be it's a weird scenario, you can't be scared, you can't live your life scared. You don't want to live your life with a 200 blood sugar because you don't want this to happen. Because also, that's not any safety from not being low. Right? As a matter of fact, that might put you in a situation where you're a little more frequently, but but I like to say about diabetes, that you don't learn these things. You don't prepare for these things so that you can stop a problem. The problem is always going to sneak through somewhere, it's never going to be where you think it's you know, because if it was where you think then you'd get ahead of it. Right. So you have to be ready for when it happens. And then the last bit of this is, if all else fails. I mean, please be carrying glucagon, you know, with you like not, it's in the cabinet in the kitchen. But we don't take it, you know, anywhere I left it in the car when I went pumpkin picking like it needs to be with you. Right. Yeah, exactly. So well, this is a fun conversation.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 28:14
Yeah, it's a harder, I think it's a harder conversation than you think about before. Because there's a lot of there's a lot more on the back end of not taking care of a low well enough. That is actually scary. Yeah, and it doesn't get talked about. We always try to like smooth it out like not to worry about it so much and whatnot. But in order to not really worry about it. Preparation is needed to have to have things in your purse or your car or your backpack or, you know, at your friend's your friend's house that you go to all the time or whatever it is. I guess it's like being a girl scout or a Boy Scout. Be prepared how

Scott Benner 28:57
to be prepared. Yeah. You know, when Artem was younger, she spent her whole day in one classroom, right where she went to art or something like that. So she had a bag and she took it with her when she hit middle school in high school, and she started having English in one room and math in another room and that started happening. We put supplies in each room. Like we didn't say to ourselves like she should be humping this stuff all over the place constantly. Let's put a little here there was a couple of juice boxes in every room. You know, it's interesting when you learn about your management to how come we're always restocking the English class. And never the math class. What's the time Yeah, it's the time of day we're doing something that's making a low around this time of day. It's actually an interesting way to learn a little bit about your management is where am I grabbing my supplies from? You know, do you think that do you think that every load is different? Because there's there are questions here from people that are like you know, after I stop a load with a fast acting, should I put a protein in every time time afterwards, but not necessarily.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 30:02
Yeah, no, I mean, the idea. Again, it's kind of an older concept. It's sort of like the 1515 rule, it's 15 grams, 15 minutes, and then you essentially may need to follow that up with a snack. But again, there's lack of enough information about why the idea really was simple carb will typically help keep your blood sugar up for about 90 minutes, give or take. Now, again, a variable in the picture is why was the low there, if it's excess insulin, you may actually need to treat with more than what you thought you would need. But the other idea is that the simple carb to keep your blood sugar up is it's meant to sustain you for that time period, before you might eat again. So if you treat a low blood sugar at, let's call it three o'clock in the afternoon, but you don't typically eat dinner until seven or eight o'clock at night. Lows can bring on another low they can. So if you treat the low, but there's something in the picture that's keeping you lower, could be honeymoon, it could be excess insulin, it could be more movement in the day, whatever. You may actually for longer than two hours before your next meal, it may be beneficial to have a handful of nuts a spoonful of peanut butter a piece of string cheese boiled egg, whatever it may be. The the idea there is that that's a little bit more sustaining and or a snack that might have a little bit more complex carbs to it long with some protein to sustain things. So you're right every low is not the same right?

Scott Benner 31:44
Art in tried art is a college right now. She tried to use a following blood sugar as a Pre-Bolus for her lunch. But it just didn't like she didn't time it well enough. So like at 60. But so listen, for anybody who's listening. Here's how I did it. Arden's in another state, she's 13 hours away. I'm able to look at her phone and see where it is. Right. So I use Find My Phone to see. Okay, she's in the cafeteria, so at least I know she's right. So now where she should be near food. I text her, Hey, what are we doing about this? Because she's got this like 70 that became 65 pretty quick. And then I looked at the arrow. And then I looked at the line and I thought this isn't stopping. Like this is not a low that's going to stop right like this is this is going to be negative 15 If we don't do something about it, right. What are you doing? I'm trying to like Miss like, you don't I mean, I don't want to be up harass Johnny. And at the same time, I don't need her dropping dead. It's College. Like I'm trying to find the middle. I'm like, Hey, what's up at nothing. Now I know she's with the food. So I'm like, you see this? Nothing. Art and I really need to know you're okay. I'm eating now. I'm like, okay, like the food's going in your mouth. Yes. But Jenny 6060 560-560-5550 5540. I'm like, Are you eating now? Yes, I'm eating. I told you. I was eating

Jennifer Smith, CDE 33:12
what are you eating lettuce leaves?

Scott Benner 33:17
What's happening? Like, you're eating like handfuls of sugar, right? Like, and so, but so I texted or test her. So then I sent a text to test her cognitive, like where she was cognitively. Right. And I'm just like, how do you feel? And she's like, I feel fine. And I'm like, Okay, have you been eating for a while? She said yes. So I said, Okay, I got it. There's food in there. It's working. The CGM hasn't caught up yet, but I had to stand there. for like three go rounds. That CGM watching that 42 Just sit there knowing she's not really 42. She's in the mid 60s already. I know. I know this. But I only know this from

Jennifer Smith, CDE 33:59
you. Because you've lived with her. You've dealt with it long enough. You knew the questions to ask. You knew how to get her to respond and whether or not she was going to answer you the right way. And that it takes learning

Scott Benner 34:12
Oh, it's yours. Because otherwise I would have been like drinking juice. I don't care if you don't drink the juice. I'm bringing you home. I'm not paying for college. Like I don't you know, like, you know, because the number because we've done everything's over come home and live in this room for the rest of your life. Because the because the number was so scary, right? But I was able to pick together enough information. I swear to God, that CGM. One more time went from 42 to 66. And I was like, Okay, I was right. But I'll tell you, you're like, oh my god, what if I'm wrong? You know what I mean? Like, I don't want to be wrong, but I might be the next thing I think we should bring up about Lowe's. Because we're in a we're in an algorithm world now right control like you on the pod five that thing that Medtronic makes i What is it? Which one is that? Let me learn the number Medtronic, don't they have an algorithm right now?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 35:03
They do. They've I mean, they've had an algorithm for a long time I use as a their CGM. Right. And I don't know that their, to their algorithm have a name likes me pod five, six. So their new their new one in the ISC. The number is what you're looking for 770 G. And I know someplace I don't know if it's here. I don't think it's here yet. 780 G, I know is available in some places in Europe already. But seven, seven D 780. Yes,

Scott Benner 35:34
I just I feel like they buy they buy ads for in pen. So I figure I, I owe it to them to learn the name. I just can't keep saying the thing that Medtronic has they're gonna be like, How about how about if you're not the podcast that we sell the embed on anymore? Like? Alright, so the 770 G, right. So yeah, so whether it's one of those algorithms, we all live in a new space now, where the algorithm sees a low coming, and it takes away and takes away and takes away your basil and takes it away. But it doesn't, it isn't always going to get it right. And so you might end up treating a low after a prolonged amount of time of not having any insulin. And then your blood sugar shoots back up very quickly, because there's nothing to stop it. And what does the algorithm do when it sees the higher number gives you more, it gives you more insulin, sometimes sometimes can happen. That's what I'm saying. It can happen that's a better way to and when that happens, here's what I know, for certain, yeah, gonna be low again later. Because because, you know, the, you know, when you're taking, you know, sugar in for a low, if you take in the right amount, you've been getting on a regular, you know, on a regular pump or on an MDI, you've still been getting your Basal the whole time. So you're, you're correcting that low more in real time. When you do it right algorithm, the algorithm thought it was going to stop you, it does not expect these carbs. And now you jump up and it Bolus is the number or it's pushing basil at the number that the other night. I guess I should have listed lupus one of those Arden had Jenny, I think it was around her period, and she was tired. She's rundown. And she's getting her period. At the same time, we had this whole day where she was a little too low. And it persisted into overnight. And so around eight or nine o'clock, we fixed the low and I said listen, take these carbs, go into the settings and shut off micro bolusing without carbs. I was like where this thing is gonna hit your your correction. And it's gonna push it back again. And she did that we went through the night really nicely. It was a nice learning experience for her because then she brought it up the next day. She's like, should I put the microbuses back on again? And I was like, Yeah, everything looks good now. So but anyway, you have to be aware of that. So I mean, I don't know what you do. Me.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 37:53
I mean, there are other you know, for other systems, you can certainly also navigate something like that. If you've treated a low, you know that you've overtreated it, but the system is going to give back eventually, and you know that it's going to be too heavy, similar to your scenario there. The other systems do have, I guess, adjustable targets or different targets that would be higher. So then it would adjust less, if you adjust the target up and say, Hey, I'm aiming for this now. So as my blood sugar is going up, it's okay. You don't have to give me as much because I want to be higher

Scott Benner 38:30
anyway. So like an example with Omnipod five, you might tell it to shoot for the higher range and that's correct. And yes, with I'll tell you what, in that exact scenario with Arden I said, I asked her what did you take for the low? And she's like, Oh, I had gummy bears. They hit her really hard. So I was like, Oh, crap, she's gonna jump straight up. But they don't hit her and hold her. They hit her and then they disappeared on her. So I was like, oh, no, no, don't let that thing Bolus again. Yeah, anyway, this probably all sounds much more confusing than it will be you have diabetes for a few months. It's all gonna make sense. Don't

Jennifer Smith, CDE 39:05
maybe know they will. Yeah. There's still some things I throw my hands up. And I'm like, oh, clearly, like Venus is not in the right place in the orbit of something because I I just I don't know right now.

Scott Benner 39:21
You're maybe just said Good. Luck is what I heard.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 39:25
That is so not the case. Not the beginning of this is what you want to hear. Yes. Forget the maybe. I shouldn't say maybe should be like the point 1% of the time. You know, it doesn't take much to learn, especially with CGM is in the mix. These days. It doesn't take much to learn how much is needed. And as you were sort of, you know, talking into the effective algorithms, you'll see, well, gosh, I was used to using this much. I probably need to use a quarter to a third of what I used to use to treat it when I didn't have system that was helping me You know,

Scott Benner 40:01
I saw a woman yesterday say, I don't know the exact numbers, but the gist of it was on control IQ I needed 14 or 15, carbs stop below and on Omnipod five, I don't need four or five carbs to stop below. So interesting that interesting. I found that incredibly interesting actually. So

Jennifer Smith, CDE 40:16
especially system to system, given the fact that they're both doing a given take of insulin, but they are, they are very different algorithms. Yeah. So that it does make sense.

Scott Benner 40:27
Alright, so check me on this. You need to know how to stop a low they're going to happen. You're not going to stop a low from ever happening. You need to understand the different impacts that these different carbs are going to have on your low blood sugars. After a while teaching yourself to stop a low without creating a high is a great tool to have. Yes,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 40:46
if you it will happen. Yeah, yeah.

Scott Benner 40:49
Oh no, you're gonna rebound high until you until you learn how to do it in a real panic situation. Screw everything else save your life. Correct. And that's it right? Have glucagon with you have snacks with you. Don't go anywhere without ways to treat Lowe's, the people who love you and are around you should understand how to help you if you're unconscious or unable to help yourself.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 41:13
And I think another thing as you mentioned, caregivers or loved ones or you know, whoever. I think within that for Lowe's is recognizing the like what you mentioned about cognitive when you're doing kind of a check with Arden the people that are around you enough, should be able to tell whether you're responding or or talking or whatnot, the way that you normally would. And in the case that your CGM is off, or you aren't using a CGM or technology, somebody who knows you well should be able to kind of chime in and say, Hey, are you okay? You know, and don't be angry at them for that. It's just a, it's a checkpoint to be able to keep you safe. So

Scott Benner 42:02
yeah, also for I guess, caregivers, low blood sugars could leave you with people who are difficult to YES to help, right? They could become combative, or and that's a real concern, especially as they become adults. And I There's one story that sticks out in my head all the time of this woman whose husband got low, and she just wasn't big enough to overwhelm him to do what he needed, you know. And she had to call 911 because of that. But yeah, I mean, the people around you just need to know. And people should be following you. If you have CGM. Like I don't know if liberi has follow like Dexcom does, but yeah, it does it. Okay. Arden is in a suite with girls. And the girl in the next room follows her on Dexcom Oh, wow, that's awesome. He only has a 55 alarm and nothing else. But we explained to her I'm like, if this thing's beeping, please go find Arden. And make sure she's okay. That's all. Yep. And it just, I don't know, especially for adults living by themselves or kids off at college, like somebody, you know, has your back because it also not everybody hears the alarms to like I had a low last night. It was only like 65. But I was sleeping. And in my sleep. I thought did I hear something? Like that was all I thought, right? And then I'm like, I woke up and I looked, and I was like, huh, yeah, I'm gonna watch that for a second. Because to be honest with you, it was a real slow drift. The loop had been taken basil away. I'm like, I think this is gonna bounce. Like, I think it's okay. I don't want to wake her if it's not going to be okay. And it waited and waited and waited. And then I was like, Oh, it is gonna be okay. It went back up again. But I talked to her this morning. And I was like, you know, you're a little last night. She has no idea. But since she had that seizure more recently, if you listen to her last episode, she will tell you about it. If she has a she experiences any kind of a quick fall while she's sleeping now. I don't know. I don't know how that rewired her brain but she's boom. I'm up. I drank juice. I'm good. Hey, Dad. I did this. Do you think this is enough? Like she never used to wake up. And now I know she's feeling the fall while she's sleeping right now. Which has only happened twice since she's been away. But anyway. Alright, Jenny. Did we know it? We did it? I think so. Yeah. Yeah. For us then. Yay for us.

Unknown Speaker 44:24
Awesome. Thank you. Oh,

Scott Benner 44:25
I guess we should say something like thank you for listening to the bold beginning series and I hope you found it like helpful.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 44:31
Absolutely. Especially in the beginning when everything is so new. So

Scott Benner 44:35
let us know if you want us to add to this series. If you go back and listen to it and find something that should have been in there that wasn't please send me a note. And Jenny and I will we'll add it if we think it needs to be added. Absolutely. Thank you. What are we doing? What are we best here so I

Jennifer Smith, CDE 44:53
got nothing else to know right? But just hang around

Scott Benner 45:02
Well, as I mentioned at the beginning, we've already found more stuff for bowl beginning. So this was not the last episode. Let me thank Omni pod and Dexcom. While I have your attention on the pod.com forward slash juice box, see if you're eligible for a free 30 day trial of the Omni pod dash, or if you're interested in the Omnipod, five, for full safety, risk information and free trial terms and conditions, you can also visit omnipod.com forward slash juicebox. And of course, thank you to Dexcom for being a longtime sponsor to the podcast dexcom.com forward slash juice box see blood sugar in real time, the speed direction and the number right there on your iPhone, Android, or on your Dexcom receiver. There's so much more I want to tell you but I'm on about day seven of this illness that I have and to be perfectly honest, editing the show together almost killed me. So I'm gonna go take nappy, and I'll see you next week with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast.

Test your knowledge of episode 780

1. What is the significance of blood sugar monitoring before exercise?

• It helps in preventing hypo- and hyperglycemia
• It has no impact
• It should be avoided
• It is only relevant for type 2 diabetes

2. How does physical activity affect insulin sensitivity?

• It decreases insulin sensitivity
• It has no effect
• It increases insulin sensitivity
• It should be avoided

3. What should be done if blood sugar levels drop during exercise?

• Stop exercising and consume fast-acting carbs
• Ignore it and continue exercising
• Increase insulin dosage
• Drink water

4. Why is it important to adjust insulin doses based on the type and duration of exercise?

• To maintain stable blood sugar levels
• To avoid taking insulin
• To increase blood sugar levels
• It is not important

5. What types of exercise are beneficial for people with diabetes?

• Only aerobic exercises
• Only anaerobic exercises
• Both aerobic and anaerobic exercises
• No exercises are beneficial

6. How often should a person with diabetes exercise to see benefits?

• Once a month
• Once a week
• Regularly, several times a week
• Every day, without rest

7. What should be considered when planning an exercise routine for a person with diabetes?

• The type and intensity of exercise
• The duration of exercise
• Blood sugar levels before, during, and after exercise
• All of the above

8. How does regular exercise contribute to diabetes management?

• It helps maintain stable blood sugar levels
• It has no impact
• It should be avoided
• It complicates diabetes management

Submit

Change Answers

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