#990 Accidentally Amazing

Both of Aimee's daughters have type 1 diabetes and are neurodivergent. Paw Patrol!

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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 990 of the Juicebox Podcast.

On today's show, I'll be speaking with Amy. She is the mother of two amazing young girls who have type one diabetes. 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 health care plan or becoming bold with insulin. If you'd like to save 40% off of jogger sheets, towels and all kinds of comfortable things, go to cozy earth.com and use the offer code juicebox at checkout to save 40% Are you looking for a Dexcom go to dexcom.com forward slash juice box use my link check it out. And don't forget the 1,000th episode of The Juicebox Podcast is coming up very soon. And we'll be marking that special day with a rerelease of a remastered diabetes Pro Tip series, completely remastered for audio and released at episode 1000. Don't miss the juice box series that started them all the diabetes Pro Tip series completely remastered and coming soon at episode 1000. If you're like me, you may be concerned that you're not getting the vitamins that you want every day. That's why I drink ag one. Every morning I get up I take one scoop of ag one, put it in with some water cold water, shake it up and drink it down. That's how I get my day started. You could to drink ag one.com forward slash juice box. Use that link to get five free travel packs and a year supply of vitamin D with your first order. Drink a G one.com forward slash juice box. today's podcast is also sponsored by touched by type one. This is a wonderful organization helping people living with type one diabetes. And all they want is for you to learn more about them go to touched by type one.org or find them on Facebook and Instagram. Honestly, I don't know why I said or do all three Facebook, Instagram and touched by type one.org they're genuinely doing good things for people with type one diabetes.

Aimee 2:29
My name is Amy. I am mother to Zoey and Riley. They were diagnosed with diabetes in 2021. Type one. And yeah, we are huge listeners of Juicebox Podcast and it's helped us a bunch so we thought maybe we could connect and share some of what we've learned a little bit about our story. Thank you so much for having us.

Scott Benner 2:55
pleased that you're here. Can you do me a favor? Yeah, give me one second. It's gonna be noisy for a second. I'll be right back. Sure. I promise noisy there that was my son was applying for a job. And he used my desk. So we moved everything off of my desk, including my whiteboard that I use while people are telling me their children's names and things like that. And I just had to bring it back and wipe it off and Okay.

Aimee 3:35
He did have a cheat sheet two,

Scott Benner 3:36
he got the job by the way. Oh, yeah, it's exciting. Except it's he's gonna have to move to take it. So

Aimee 3:43
remind me what field teason he has a

Scott Benner 3:47
bachelor's degree in quantitative economics with a minor in mathematics that leans in statistics direction, but he got tired.

Aimee 3:55
My brain just like zoned out what you were saying? Yeah.

Scott Benner 3:59
But here's the thing. He doesn't want to really work in an office too much. So perfect. Perfect job. So looks like he's gonna take a job doing some stuff. He's trying to get into pro sports and do data analysis in pro sports. So it looks like Oh, getting getting in that direction. Wow. Yeah. Wow. Amy.

Aimee 4:19
How old I mean, particular sport. Baseball. I know. I'm interviewing you now.

Scott Benner 4:24
No, it's fine. Baseball if someone's weren't listening right now and they're the lead data analysis person for like, you know, I don't know the Rockies for the Phillies or something like that. They should. Or any of them he'd go anywhere. He's gotten it's probably the one

Aimee 4:40
sport we don't watch in our house. He's gotten I was hoping you'd say football.

Scott Benner 4:45
Do you know someone who works in professional football?

Aimee 4:47
I don't. I was thinking the other way around. Like when he gets in. He can be my connection.

Scott Benner 4:54
Yeah, I don't think that's gonna work out UBC Get maybe you wouldn't be surprised. But the people who listen to this podcasts have been incredibly helpful. Lining him up with just conversations to have with people trying to meet people, stuff like that they've been really, really wonderful. He's had a number of really great phone conversations in industries where I don't even know if he was particularly interested. And it gives you an insight into who's listening to the podcast. So yeah, he had, I think I can just say it like roundabout, but he had a phone call with someone from the Secret Service, to see if he would be interested in that. He's had a couple of other companies that I don't think he would have had a connection to, if like, lovely people from the podcast wouldn't have reached out and said, hey, you know, I know that the hiring manager here or if you, you know, I don't think I could get him a job. But here's the person if you spoke to could really help him understand how to apply his degree better. And what's amazing, lovely woman named Michelle helped him completely revamp his his resume, which was a big help. Because he put it together and more of a hip way. Even in the house for like, I don't think I do that. If I was, you know, applying all these jobs, I'm never hearing back. I'm overqualified. For some of them. Like it's your resume. And he's like it's not. And then Michelle came along and took his resume, like literally for free on her own time, and revamped it, contacted and spoke with him, told him how to fix it. And he started getting like phone calls. Right. As soon as she did that,

Aimee 6:31
I swear that writing resume is like putting it together. It's like an art form. Because there's so many intricacies and like things to it that, you know, could be interpreted so many different ways by employers too much of this too little that can just they won't even take a second look at it. So it's it's really, it's interesting. Yeah,

Scott Benner 6:48
even just the format of it, I guess maybe they scan them and computers look at them first. So they sort of have to fit a format for the computer to be like, this one's viable. So anyway, yeah. Anyway, that's not we're not here to learn how to get a job. So you know, let's go meet somebody.

Aimee 7:05
I'm sure that he's not going to be the first that I'm sure people in the group help each other out so much. I'm sure he's not the first to hope to be helped out. Like, in that

Scott Benner 7:13
sense. Yeah. Yeah, we did a thing the other night, all this together online, I can probably just say this a lot better. The internet, like certain companies don't like it when you give things away, especially medical supplies. But oh, yes,

Aimee 7:29
I did see that. Yeah,

Scott Benner 7:31
I just I was in a very festive mood the other night, and I had a lot of medical supplies that we didn't need anymore. So my intention was to go online, find somebody who could really benefit from them and give them to them. But then the people who were like, Hey, you don't usually do this, but I have 40 of these or 10 of these or whatever. And I basically just set up a swap meet for a forum for about an hour or two. And we must have covered like, 20 families with stuff.

Aimee 8:01
I didn't realize it was that many. That's awesome.

Scott Benner 8:03
I sent my stuff. I split my stuff up between three different families. Wow, there's a family with a small kid now who's gonna have an insulin pump for like, let me do the math. Honestly, might be able to use an insulin pump for like six months for free, because there's somebody I hooked them up with those. Anyway, it made me sad because I thought there's so many people in this group. We could be doing this all the time, but it opens you up to scammers and like, yeah, it's, you know, anyway, it's a thing I have to avoid. But it was nice.

Aimee 8:35
Yeah. There's another group that I'm in as like a, you know, a backup group to the jukebox. Maybe they did something similar recently. But they ended up having a post like we can't do this anymore sort of thing because somebody did end up getting scammed out of like, $250. Yeah, and it was just so sad because it's literally the person who needs it the most the person who can't afford to be scammed is the one who gets scammed. Well, I told everybody so heartbreaking

Scott Benner 8:59
over and over again, if anyone asks you for money, don't give it to him and ask and tell me right away, you know, so. But that was my full time job, I probably could sit there and run it like a swap meeting and let people help each other. It's the it's the scope, the group is so big, that you there's always someone there to help. You know what I mean? Yeah. Anyway,

Aimee 9:18
I mean, I know you've got a lot on your plate. But you know, as as the group continues to grow and stuff, maybe down the line, you could set it up as because I know like when all this stuff started happening over in Ukraine, there were a lot of organizations, nonprofits that were able to kind of gather the supplies from everybody themselves. And then they distributed from there to make sure that nobody was getting scammed, and that everything was getting where it needed to go. So maybe, you know, not anytime soon, maybe down the line, you can do something where everybody just kind of donates to you in one place. And then you have volunteers from within the group that you trust to kind of disseminate the supplies where they need to go.

Scott Benner 9:55
You don't know how old I am. Amy, I know that when you say that, you don't know how

Aimee 10:00
No, I do because I have so many ideas and so many helpful and thoughtful intentions like that. But I don't have the time, or the mental capacity at this moment in my life to do them. Yeah. So I completely relate to just because it's a great idea doesn't mean it's always possible right away, but maybe with the right people, you can, something you can explore. It's a

Scott Benner 10:19
money thing, honestly, right? Because if there was enough money, you still have to ship everything. Yeah, you can hire somebody, you could hire a person who could do it. And you could, you know, you could afford the shipping because that's the other thing. You can't say to somebody, like, I ship the stuff out to three families yesterday, on my dime. And I think it cost me like, $65 to ship everything. So like, Yeah, you get involved in that. And then, but it's, it's funny, we were just talking about this today and on Facebook people, I left a curse in a in an episode by mistake. So somebody's like, Hey, you left the F word here, if you wanted to take it out, then starts a conversation where inevitably people are like, I would pay if you just put up episodes where you left the cursing. And I'm like, okay, but here's the thing. Like, I can't, you know, like, I would like, first of all, I don't curse on the podcast, and I bleep out the cursing, because it limits the some countries that I can put the show in, if you hearse and it limits people. And you might not know that as a person who, you know, if you're a person who doesn't care about dropping an F bomb once in a while, but there are people who send me notes are like, Listen, you said F and didn't bleep it out. I'm not listening to the podcast anymore. And they're not kidding, you know what I mean? So like, I don't want to eliminate those people. If I go to a pay model and say, Look, there's episodes over here that say don't have ads on them, and there's cursing and etc, the advertisers aren't going to be thrilled to know that I'm splitting up the listenership and take people away that might hear their ads. And so there's just all these. So the idea is, and if you just charged everyone, and don't think this hasn't like crossed my mind, because it has like this, this year is a great example. 2022 you're recording like right before Christmas with me? The podcast has 5 million downloads this year. So you don't need to be a mathematician to know that if I charged 50 cents for a download, I would have made two and a half million dollars this year. And you think and you think oh my god do that. Except that's not really true. Because if I charged 50 cents a download, I wouldn't have 5 million downloads this year. Exactly. you'd stop people from getting to the information or from the comfort or even just the entertainment of it. And there are people who would look and go, you know, $4 a month seems reasonable, but I'm not paying it. And now, there's some kids sitting somewhere where for $4 times 12 for $48 a year that kids a one sees a point and a half higher than it would need to be if their mom listened to the protest series, for example. And I can't wrap my head around doing that. So here we go. So there's no, there's no bigger ideas getting built. Because I think the big idea is reaching as many people as you can and helping them.

Aimee 13:04
Yeah, absolutely. Anyway. Absolutely.

Scott Benner 13:07
I mean, 12 minutes later, how old are you?

Aimee 13:11
Whatever I was born in 87, don't whatever that makes sense that correct. I'm, I'm that person. I'm the person who has to take out the calculator every time someone asked me, because I'm just my brain doesn't do that. It doesn't retain my age. I think I'm 30 530-536-3587

Scott Benner 13:29
You were born Junior two years before I graduated from high school. So you're 35 Oh my God. You're 35 Give me your kids names again.

Aimee 13:38
Riley. And so we Riley is five she just turned five. And so we just turned three.

Scott Benner 13:45
And we don't care about your husband right now. Right?

Aimee 13:49
You know, he's always telling me everybody's gonna think you're a single parent because you never talked about me on social media. That's my husband's voice right there that I just did. So I have to mention him. Because otherwise I'll I'll hear about it later. So yes, my husband's name is Chris.

Scott Benner 14:06
Was that you just doing a Caucasian dialect by the way?

Aimee 14:09
Yes, it is. Can you tell I was gonna ask you. Why sound Hispanic? Because I don't think I sound Hispanic people tell me I do. And then obviously you just heard my voice change. And that's my, even though he's not Caucasian. He's also Hispanic. So I don't know why I did that voice you

Scott Benner 14:24
did, though. You made him like a white guy in your story. You're like, you did I know. You

Aimee 14:31
think what it was is that's more my stern voice and I associate sternness with old white men. Oh, that's why it went that way.

Scott Benner 14:41
Do you sound Hispanic? Yeah. Yeah. At the ends of your words a little and when you speed up when you speak a little bit, but I've met you I've met you and Chris in person. Yes, Chris paths is easy. Yeah, yeah. You not so much. Like if you were like, if you were like I'm Irish. I'd be Like, No you're not. But I think Chris,

Aimee 15:03
Chris has like the lighter here and the lighter guys. He's very, I think my thing is I'm like super white. And then when I have my hair like my funky colors, like if I do pink or green or whatever, then I think I pass a little bit more. Just like for general American, like just white person

Scott Benner 15:20
trying to name your episode general American. No, no.

Aimee 15:26
I think we, I think a couple of months ago in in a an Instagram DM, we we discussed that it should be something like, like, do I live near a nuclear plant? I think was was what you had said. And I said, Oh, that's gonna be the name of the episode call you name it that

Scott Benner 15:40
call you The Simpsons or something? So Riley has type on?

Aimee 15:45
Yes. So Riley has type one. So we also type one.

Scott Benner 15:50
When was diagnosed first,

Aimee 15:53
Riley was diagnosed first. So she started having symptoms, which I didn't really think of as symptoms of weirdly enough, because my sister is also a type one diabetic since we were children. And it just didn't really occur to me, it occurred to me sister, she asked me, she said, Well, you know, I told her, Ryan's been drinking a ton of water. Recently. Actually, the way that it happened was I had a friend with a daughter Riley's age, and she was drinking a bunch of water. And she was feeling like lethargic, and all these things. And I said, Oh, that that sounds kind of like diabetes, let me put you in touch with my sister and kind of testing you can have done because I wasn't familiar at the time with things like trial net, but I knew that they existed. So I said, let me just put you in touch with my sister. And then through that conversation, I started noticing, well, you know what, Ryan's actually been drinking a ton of water recently, too. But I didn't really notice anything else that really, you know, was like, oh, diabetes, diabetes. So I kind of just put on the backburner. And then she sort of phased out of it for a little bit. So that was like October 2020. And then, April 2021, things started to kind of ramp up again, I started noticing that she was having a lot of bruising, like really easy bruising. And she was sleeping a lot, she would have like massive ravenous appetite. And then the next day, it would be like she didn't even want to look at food. So that's something was going on. But my mind, I was thinking more like a urinary tract infection or something because she was also saying Ouch, whenever she was wetting her diaper, okay. And then she started wetting the bed a lot overnight. Like I'm talking like a human sized puddle in the middle of the bed, just like the whole mattress wet. And so at that point, I took her into the pediatrician. The funny part of the story is that I took her in for a sick visit. And her sister was due for a wealth a wellness check, like her yearly exam. So I took them both in the same day at the same time. And they check them both over, they told me come back on Monday with Riley so that we can do a urine collection. But nothing was mentioned about tea Wendy or anything, they said more they were thinking like something like anemia probably UTI something along those lines. So we went home, I brought her back on the Monday, so April 5, and I was supposed to collect the urine sample at home. So I started loading her up with apple juice. We get to the pediatrician, they take some blood work, and immediately come back in the room and they're like, hey, so you might need to sit down. Don't freak out. I need you to have your husband pack a bag. And if you can't drive come and get you but you guys need to go straight to the hospital. Because Riley is diabetic. And I have a very strong feeling that she's about to be in ketoacidosis. And I was like, Oh, I know those words because of my sister. And I just My reaction was I started laughing because I was like, There's no way this is happening. And it just That's my reaction. I was just giggling nervous giggle. We went to the hospital. And sure enough, she she was diagnosed there and they put her on some fluids. Thankfully, with the blood of gases and all the stuff that they check, they figured out she wasn't in DKA. But she was like right at the edge. So I believe her a onesie in the ER was like 13.8 13.7 or 13.8. Okay, so at that point, then we started realizing, oh, some of this stuff now makes a lot of sense because she was having like random napping when she hadn't been napping. You know, we had eliminated that from her schedule for months. And just all of these things kind of lining up. She had been having blurry vision, which we didn't think was we didn't put that together because Riley is also autistic. And so she does a lot of what we call stimming which is just like sort of like, I guess like these tics and different things that give her like sensory input. So recently she had been like taking her fingers and like squinting her eyes and opening them like really wide and just making different shapes and we thought that was just her I'm having a new stim. And after the diagnosis, we realize, Oh, she's now that her sugars are in control stop doing that. We really think that that was now in retrospect her, like having blurry vision from the high blood sugars and just trying to actually open her eyes more so she could see better. And that was like a real interesting thing to look back on and realize because it was like right there in front of our face, but we didn't. We just didn't put it together. You know,

Scott Benner 20:28
stemming repeated repetitive behaviors or noise is often associated with autism. Stemming describes self the accumulation stimulatory. I don't know why smart people can't just talk like everybody, but okay. Stimming describes self stimulatory behaviors that involve repetitive movements or sound, commonly refers to behaviors displayed by people with autism, such as flapping, rocking back and forth. You don't have to be autistic to stem for example, tapping your foot when you're nervous could be an example of it. It does look different, though, when it's a sign of autism. For instance, behaviors like finger flicking and twirling can become excessive and or obtrusive, and someone who has autism.

After you're done listening today, please head over to touched by type one.org. Check out all the good things that they're doing it touched by type one, there's the big conference coming up that I'll be speaking at that in a couple of weeks actually getting close now, I think it's sold out, but you can check touch by type one.org. And by sold out, the Tickets are free, I just maybe the tickets are gone, you can find out what else they got the big dance recital coming up all kinds of stuff, touched by type one.org. This is a great organization helping people living with type one diabetes, learn more about them, and follow them on Facebook and Instagram. There are links to touch by type one in the show notes of the podcast player you're listening in now. And at juicebox podcast.com. You'll also find links to all kinds of other things there. Like my next sponsor, ag one, I began drinking ag one because I was concerned about my gut health and my vitamin intake. And now I use ag one every day. It's a foundational nutritional supplement that delivers comprehensive nutrition to support your whole body's health. I heard about ag one on a podcast, just like you're hearing about it now. And I clicked on a link and you can use mine. Drink ag one.com forward slash juice box. It took me a little bit of time to move ag one into my morning ritual. But after a few days, it just became a habit. Get up, get your ass go downstairs, grab the jug of water, grab my ag one shake, shake, shake. Next thing you know, I'm doing something good for my body. And what keeps me doing it? Well, it's how I feel. I just feel better drinking ag one. Drink ag one.com forward slash juice box links in the show notes links at juicebox podcast.com. If you can't remember, drink, ag one.com forward slash juice box. When you use my link, you're also going to receive five free travel packs and a year supply of vitamin D with your first order. So if you want to take ownership of your health, it starts with a G one. Try ag one right now with my link, drink ag one.com forward slash juice box. When you click on my links, you're supporting the podcast and helping to keep it free and plentiful.

Unknown Speaker 23:49
So

Aimee 23:49
yeah, so we kind of wrote it off as just, you know, it's probably a stem, it's, you know, we'll take her to the doctor, we'll get her checked out. But we don't think that all of these things were connected. And obviously, in hindsight, we can now see things like irritability was another thing we wrote off because obviously was was not obviously but with autism. There are a lot of triggers and triggers lead to meltdowns and different behaviors. And at that point in time she was in therapies and things like that. So we were working on a lot of those things. But she was also very expressive. And had we had noticed that she was super irritable more than usual. And so we just kind of wrote it off as Oh, she's she's in the therapy. She's working on things. It's gonna get harder for her before it gets easier. She's working through stuff. So we kind of just put it on the backburner. Didn't think about it twice. And definitely, with her being in the hospital, more so than the actual diabetes diagnosis, what worried us and what scared us and what really shook us was this idea of how is she going to deal with this as an autistic person because is a lot of the autism centers around, like I said, triggers which can be physical triggers things like, you know, the poking of the fingers and the shots, we thought that was just going to be impossible for her because, you know, sometimes she just gets like completely naked around the house because she can't stand the feeling of the clothes on her skin. So now imagine thinking about her future of constantly having to be touched and prick them prodded. And then when she gets an insulin pump having to wear that all the time. And so we were were more nervous and more, just, like really scared of how all that was going to affect her more so than the actual management of the diabetes. So

Scott Benner 25:41
how well, okay, so that's a lot. Let everybody soak that up for a second. Yeah. How old was Riley when you realize she had autism.

Aimee 25:49
So she was probably about, I think she was like six months old. When we started noticing that she wasn't meeting these standard milestones that they give you from the pediatrician, the CDC lays out, we knew that she was physically delayed because she had plagiocephaly, which is basically when the head kind of gets like slightly misshapen from tightness in the muscles. And that typically occurs when an infant can't lift, like they don't do enough. They don't spend enough time on their stomach. Yeah, or they spend enough time on their stomach, but they just don't have the strength. So they end up having to do physical therapy, which is what she ended up having to do. She had to wear a little baby helmet, which was adorable. But she had to wear this little helmet. And she had to do physical therapy for like nine months, in order to properly learn how to lift her head and then eventually crawl and then eventually sit. And then once she was able to be sitting, then she kind of the next couple of milestones she made up on her own and she was fine. Like walking, running, things like that. But But yeah, so I started, those were the first signs. And then speech delay was the next thing that was really big for her. She she didn't, she would babble a lot, but she couldn't really, she really, she had to mode she would either babble a ton and repetitively. So not really actually communicating. Or she would completely shut down and just not speak at all, which led to a lot of like frustration and tantrums and things like that.

Scott Benner 27:19
I have a question going back to the, to the wearing the wearing a helmet to stop the flat spot, which is called plagiocephaly. Yeah, all right. Not bad. If you don't address that, if you don't use the helmet. Yeah, what do they tell you is going to happen.

Aimee 27:36
So the head will stay misshapen. And those bones which are really soft, and kind of just migrating to, you know, because when a kid is born, the the cranial bones are like really soft, and they are not quite fused together so that the infant can pass through the vaginal canal and all that stuff if you're burning. So once they start fusing, they're gonna fuse into whatever shape so if a kid spends a lot of time, you know, in a in a swing, for example, or you know, like their highchair, whatever, they can develop these flat spots, and then their bones will actually fuse like in that shape. And that can lead or cause pressure on the brain in areas where there shouldn't be excessive pressure, which can lead to like problems with vision, it can lead with problems with the sinuses. For Riley, she had like her cheekbones actually were like, too high up, because her face wasn't like it wouldn't expand the right way because of the plagiocephaly. So, yeah, we were the little helmet. And then they they did, it's called a doc band, if you want to look it up, they do like a before and after. And they show you the different shape of you know, the facial features and everything. And it was insane to me, like her head is still a little bit you can tell it's a little bit differently shaped. Because for her, the first round of the helmet didn't work as well. So she had to wear like two different rounds. And by the second round, a lot of her bones had already begun to fuse. So you can still tell that there's like that difference in her head shapes. Yeah, but even just from the before and after pictures, you can see what a difference it made, like her whole facial features, like they changed because of her cheekbones being able to drop down and set where they where they shouldn't be pretty interesting. It's

Scott Benner 29:24
amazing, actually. Yeah. So for you. And I mean, I'm looking at the numbers here. So you're in like your early 30s. And you have a baby and then the baby, you know, started showing the signs. What's what's the, the impact on you personally in your relationship at that point,

Aimee 29:44
honestly, I mean, so a lot of how we reacted to it goes back to the fact that I myself have a lot of health issues and we weren't even able, we weren't sure if we will be able to have like our own kids. So when We started noticing the signs, you know, obviously, there's a part of you that's just kind of like, oh, you know, I don't, I would never choose to have medical complications for my kid, or differences because we kind of come to, we've come to see autism is just like we're differently wired versus it being like a defect. So it does present challenges. But a lot of those challenges come from the fact that our society is not designed for people who are differently wired, not so much that they've been differently wired causes an issue in and of itself. I don't know if that makes sense of,

Scott Benner 30:36
so what are some of your health issues.

Aimee 30:40
So I have lupus, I have systemic lupus. So that's like, it involves all the systems of the body, which is an autoimmune disorder. And then I also have Hashimotos thyroiditis, and endometriosis, which is a gynecological disease. And that I don't know if you know anything about that. But basically, it's tissue from inside of the uterus, or tissue similar to that of inside of the uterus ends up in places of the body where it shouldn't be. And then whenever your hormones change throughout the month, that tissue like contracts, and it can basically choke out or cuts like blood supply off and cause scarring and damage to wherever it's attached. So if it's attached on the bladder, or the bowel, different places, it causes a ton of pain. And then it can also affect your your ability to it affects fertility a lot.

Scott Benner 31:34
And Riley has autism and type one. Does she have anything else?

Aimee 31:41
Oh, no, no, she is. Yeah. So far. So good. She'll be getting as she ages, she'll get like the testing done for lupus because? And for endometriosis, because there is an increased chance for both of those things since I do have them. But that will be something that usually that manifests itself like in the teen years, late teens, early 20s kind of thing.

Scott Benner 32:02
How about Zoey, does she have anything? We want to talk me? She has type one, obviously. But is there anything else happening?

Aimee 32:08
Yeah, no, she is she is going to be evaluated pretty soon for sensory processing disorder, which is it falls like within the realm of autism and like what they call the spectrum. There's a lot of back and forth within like the community for autism about like, like preferred language and, you know, like how these sub conditions are like described and things like that. So I think you had an episode that aired recently with another parent with an autistic child. And she kind of touched on a lot of those things like how even within the community, we're not really sure how we're what is appropriate, or the appropriate way to talk about it or explain it. Yeah. But yeah, as of right now, it's considered like a subset of autism. But basically, it manifests itself instead of like, affecting cognitive abilities, it manifests itself more physically. So do we need like a lot of stimulation, or having too much stimulation will send her like into like a tantrum or be really upsetting for her and difficult to deal with? So lots of noises or physical input can be really overwhelming for them both.

Scott Benner 33:14
Is it frustrating? That, I don't mean that the community doesn't. can't settle on, like, agree on things, because you see it in other communities, too, right? If there are people tell you like, I wish it wasn't called type one and type two diabetes and stuff like that, like, everybody has their thing? I don't mean that. But I mean, is it frustrating that it's not like you go to the doctor and doctors, oh, you have the flu? And this is how we treat the flu? Is that part hard? Yeah.

Aimee 33:43
It is it because so much of it is so subjective. And because of the nature of autism specifically being like, it's technically a neurological quote unquote, disorder. That means that it's hard to separate, what would be considered the disorder from what could just be considered quirks that are just a personality, like personality quirks? So and especially at their ages, where they're just developing their personalities, it's really difficult to be like, is this toddler behavior? Or is this something more than I need to be a little bit more flexible on because she has a need that's not being met with autism and stuff? How old was so it is kind of I wish it was just like really straightforward testing kind of thing. Just be like, Okay, this is it's like any disease like that has any subjectivity to it, it's you, you get diagnosed and then you take a medication, and there's always some give or take, and you have to be fluid about certain things, but for the most part, a lot of these things are very straightforward. And with mental health and cognitive and neurological things, it's not quite that way.

Scott Benner 34:51
Yeah, it just it to me it feels like there's things going on in your life constantly. Mostly, you're probably wrong about them. You're trying to figure out what they are, you know, but but it least you can kind of say put it in a box and, and call it something so that you know what to do or how to deal or whatever. But it just I don't know, it would be it would sounds fresh frustrating to me.

Aimee 35:12
I'm going through that. Now, I don't know if you remember, but I going through the process of being diagnosed myself with ladder. Yeah, sir, or type two, we're not sure at this point, which is very much to the point of what you're saying is I just kind of want it to be defined already. So I know how I can approach it because I, I am the type of person that the enemy I know is is easier to deal with than the unknown. Even if it's bad news, and they tell me you're you're gonna have to take insulin, the rest of your life, whatever, I'd rather know that than be in like this limbo, that it seems like I'm going to be stuck in for a while because it's such a slow onset. And there's no real way for them. They're like, well, you don't have the characteristics for type two. But you also don't have antibodies yet for type one. So we're not sure if it's Latta or if it's this or, you know, it, there's so much unknown there that I'm just kind of, like really frustrated with the whole process.

Scott Benner 36:09
I think I understand. Okay, so how old is the only when she's diagnosed? Type one.

Aimee 36:14
So she is 17 months old. Okay, well,

Scott Benner 36:18
overachiever there on that one. And then, okay, and the other diagnosis stuff is happening now. And she's three. And let's just to round out the story. Before we move forward. Your sister has type one as well.

Aimee 36:33
Well, let me let me finish on Zoe's Go ahead. Yeah. Yeah. Because they're, the unique thing about them is they were diagnosed 14 days apart. So Riley was diagnosed on April 5. I told you the whole story. We ended up in the hospital, we were there. We got our learning, we went home. So we're back at home like around the 10th. I think it was, and we're getting Riley into her routine. She's doing her fingerprints every morning and she's getting used to everything. And 17 month old Zoey comes trotting in one day, and she's just like, sticks her finger out. And she's feeling left out. And she's feeling sort of like, I want to know what's going on my sister, I'm concerned about this do me and she sticks her finger out. And she asked to have her blood, her blood checked before meal. And this is breakfast. So they hadn't eaten anything yet. And I prick her finger. And I'm all excited because she didn't cry and all this stuff. And it took me a second to actually realize what was happening. I looked down at the meter, and she's over 300 Oh, my God. And I'm like that was my sister was with us because she and my mom came to stay with those right after Riley's diagnosis to kind of give a lending hand and help us adjust. Yeah. And so my sister just kind of like her, she starts laughing because she's like, there's no way there's just no way. There's no way that you have hit this jackpot of both of your kids being diabetic. After everything that's been happening. There's just no way. And so I called a pediatrician, and they told me to come in, in the afternoon or that evening. So we take her in. And when we take her in her blood sugar is back to normal. She's like in the 80s. And so the lady is kind of giving me a hard time because this is not our normal doctor. This is the after hours doctor. And so she's given me a hard time about this, like, oh, well, ad is perfectly normal. She probably just had like her finger wasn't clean. I was like, I clean her finger with alcohol. My other daughter is diabetic. Like I know, we're new to this, but we're not that new to this that, you know, we would make a mistake that would give us that number and then we freak out. Yeah. So I'm trying to kind of like advocate and I'm like, can you please just do like a pee test? There's, there's it's so non invasive, just do the pee test. So she does the thing. And of course it comes back Oh plus like three or something like that for ketones, and she's got spillage of glucose in the urine. So then at that point, she's like, okay, yeah, you guys need to go to the hospital. And she's like, but I think you can wait till the morning so we put in the call to our Riley's endocrinologist at this point. And we're like, Hey, we're gonna be there tomorrow morning. And, and just have everything ready. So they take us in and I believe Zoe's a one C was seven 7.6, I believe is what it was when they did it. So we caught it like, like right there early enough. She didn't need to have like insulin right away. But yeah, that's that was the it was sort of interesting, because then like all the people that had just seen as a couple of weeks back, we're like, Wait, why are you back here? And then we're like explaining. And at the time, she was the youngest that they had had on the ward. 17 months old was the youngest that they had had since they opened up that wing for the hospital. So

Scott Benner 39:44
yeah, they get a plaque or something. They name a wing after you know nothing, nothing good.

Aimee 39:51
No, but she did have the did have us teach the nurses how to dilute the insulin. because prior to us being there, they hadn't use diluted insulin for somebody around Zoe's age. It was mostly like kids like in elementary school level. So they would always just get it compounded, like get it at a pharmacy, but with Zoe's age and her needs changing and stuff. I said, Well, I wanted to be able to mix the insulin and myself so that if we need to adjust the strength for the dilution, I can do it from home, and not have to constantly be running out to the pharmacy whenever we're tweaking her dosages and stuff, right. So they actually had us go down to the clinic, we learned how to do the dilution, and like all the math and all that stuff. And then when we got back upstairs because this was in the the endo clinic is within the hospital, when we got back upstairs, they had us the nurses come by like one at a time and had us teach the nurses so that they could learn, and they could begin mixing it on the floor. because prior to that, they would have to wait for the pharmacy downstairs to mix it for them.

Scott Benner 40:55
That's unreal. So yeah, yeah. Wow. Okay, so I mean, now there's two of them. And you, I mean it, honestly, do you think about going to the mall and coming home, like doing the old like, I gotta go get milk? Chris. I'll be right back. And then you just or I mean, what are you just so focused on handling things that you don't have time to freak out?

Aimee 41:19
Yeah. So I think I've had enough trauma in my life that I kind of am like, I'm a good man in the storm, I guess is the phrase that I've heard, that probably explains it best. Don't panic. Don't freak out when, when something like crazy out of the norm happens. Just because I've got like, I don't know if it's, it's not thick skin. But it's just I have like this. It's like a fight or flight kind of thing. And I just I focus on what needs to be done in the moment. Rather than dwelling on how did I get here? Why did this happen? Not to say those things aren't valid feelings to have. And of course, I've had them before. I can't tell you how many times I've just sat there in the shower and cried. But also,

Scott Benner 42:00
to stand in the show does nothing for me. Maybe that's why you're crying? Are you doing it wrong? You're supposed to have a shower. Kidding. Oh, yeah. I mean, you know, maybe

Aimee 42:10
not, when not when you have lupus, sometimes you have to sit in the shower.

Scott Benner 42:15
Or you see, yes. I can't show you at all. You got too many things going on.

Aimee 42:21
You can joke. I mean, it's that's how I get through it. You gotta laugh about it. And you gotta make jokes, because otherwise, it's just plain sad. How do you man? And that's not me? I don't know like that.

Scott Benner 42:30
Yeah, how do you manage lupus, there's something that you can do to help yourself.

Aimee 42:34
There are it just, it really depends on how progressed it is. And Lupus is a disease that has periods of of activity, and then periods of remission. So like right now, for example, I'm in like a massive lupus flare. And so during the flares, I'll get steroid steroid medication, and that will help calm like the inflammation and reduce the damage that the inflammation is doing to my body, basically, but I can't be on steroids, you know, 24/7, because then that will cause its own issues and its own problems. Yeah, so it's kind of just managing like the flare ups as they happen. And then, you know, the longer you have it course, like I've been told, eventually, at some point in my life, like there'll be lung involvement, there'll be different things like the kidneys is usually one of the big ones, where you start having decreased function and things like that. But there, there are things you can do to kind of just manage each of those symptoms, like separately, there's not really any way to stop it. Unless, I mean, some people get chemo because it's, it's a, it's an autoimmune disease. So basically, if your immune system is so overactive, that you're constantly attacking your own body, then they'll do chemo and that will basically blast your immune system. So now you have higher risk of things like infection and stuff, but your body is no longer has an immune system to activate in order to attack you. So technically, your disease would be in remission at that point. What does that that's reserved for the most of your cases?

Scott Benner 44:01
What's a flare up look like? For you.

Aimee 44:04
So it can vary with this one, it the most basic symptoms of it are like flu like symptoms. So a lot of like, aches, pains, joint and muscle aching, a lot of inflammation, mostly around the joints, all the joints, I'm talking like, like the littlest joint in your pinky finger will, it'll literally just, like swell up. It's also very different, like from person to person. Yeah. And then you get like, there's like skin symptoms. So I'll get like this rash that goes across like the bridge of my nose and my cheeks. It's called the butterfly rash. And that'll just, it's not itchy or anything, but it's just a lot of swelling in the face. And it'd be very red sun sensitivity issues with like maintaining vitamin D levels, because you can't be out in the sun and your body doesn't synthesize the vitamin D as well. So which is very similar with diabetes. They have that issue as well. So it's a lot of things like that digestive issues. It just depends what system of the body is being actively attacked at that point.

Scott Benner 45:04
Okay. Wow. Okay, well, do we just take a break? Should we sing? Like what do we do right now? I mean, is there more stuff we haven't gotten to so far? Well, yeah,

Aimee 45:17
I mean, you want to touch on my sister My sister was, was the first diabetic in the family, the first person that we know with autoimmune, anything autoimmune. And she's, I swear to you, you're gonna want to have her do her whole own episode, because her story is, is incredible. She was diagnosed in 1994. So she's been through tech, like having technology not having technology. She had insurance not having insurance. She was she lived through the era of when we have pre existing conditions on insurance plans is like a Yeah, yeah,

Scott Benner 45:51
I remember basically, I remember being worried about that when Arden was diagnosed, the idea of like, Arden has a preexisting condition, she won't be able to get health insurance. Yeah. And that kind of has morphed in, in how insurance works. But I remember being so scared about that, oh, yeah,

Aimee 46:10
it was such a huge, it was such a huge barrier back. I mean, not with diabetes for me. But with my other conditions, I literally went without treatment for so long, because I was constantly considered, I got I was that person that got caught in the cycle of get a job, have to wait two or three months to get the insurance then have to wait for the preexisting clause to be met the requirement for that. And then by the time that happened, my employer is so sick of me missing work, because I haven't been able to treat the condition because the insurance wouldn't cover it due to the pre existing clause, that now they fire me and I have to go find another job. And the cycle starts all over. And that was literally like my life for 10 or 15 years until everything kind of with the Affordable Care Act and all that stuff, kind of put a damper on put a stop to the pre existing stuff. But yeah, it's it's such a huge thing. And thankfully, and our kids don't have to deal with that now. Because I don't even I wouldn't even know where to begin if if that was still something that we had to contend with.

Scott Benner 47:11
No kidding. I mean, yeah, geez, imagine you couldn't get insurance that your kids wouldn't have insurance. Yep. And then, then you're then you're going to the lake, then you're gone to the middle or

Aimee 47:22
you're still paying for the insurance. You're just not covered for that condition. Which is even worse, because now you're having to pay for the insurance, and supplies and things that are out of pocket. It's still like it. Yeah,

Scott Benner 47:34
yeah. But it won't help you with the thing you actually need. I won't help you. Yeah. See? All right. My God. So your sister, I'm sorry. She's just diagnosed very young as well.

Aimee 47:44
Yeah, she was 11. So I was she's four years older than me. Okay. So yeah, she was like, right in the middle, like starting middle school. And, and witnessing everything that she went through was definitely put us in a place now as parents with two D, Wendy's, where we're doing everything possible to make sure that the kids have everything they need, not just supplies and things like that. But as far as like support and community and just making more decisions involving like the kids mental health, because I saw how much that not having that from her doctors back in the day. It was not mental health was not something that was talked about in 1994. And how much she struggled with it during that period of her life where she was literally like teenager, which is already a difficult time and then just diagnosed and, and she obviously we we were not well off as a family around that time either. So we had a lot of issues with her and the insurance and things like that. And she had to us you really have her on she went through rationing. There was a one point in time where she was taking like her Lantis shot like every two days, because she was just trying to ration it out. She's got a lot of a lot of interesting things that she can share. But she definitely impacted how we think about diabetes in terms of what we want to do, what we don't want to do and things that we want to focus on and what we think is important about management.

Scott Benner 49:11
Well, hold on seriously, your Can I Amy, can I say something? Yes, life is such a mess that it's making me dizzy.

Aimee 49:22
I am amazed that I am so well adjusted, considering everything that's happened and that my kids are so well they just did considering that they have me as

Scott Benner 49:33
your girls or your girls are lovely. And I wonder about please. So it's obvious. So let me let me let me ask you this, when all these things happen in your life, and it becomes obvious that your children are going to have things that they need to do and you know as far as learning and growing and health stuff. There's your life get on the line. mean here. Be careful with a microphone on your hair, by the way, but yeah, there's your time pulling it back. Does your life get smaller in scope? Like, like, when you're first married, you think like, Oh, we're gonna do this, like you have big ideas about like conquering the world kind of stuff, whatever that means to you. And then once it becomes obvious that your needs are going to be daily, and I'm assuming hourly, do you start to like, not? I don't mean like, close yourself off to the world. But you start narrowing your focus, you start thinking like, well, this is my life like this. You don't I mean,

Aimee 50:36
yeah, no, I absolutely, my husband and I drove down to Miami for an appointment over the weekend. And we were literally talking about that exact thing, almost the entire way down. We so for me, I had the benefit, I guess, would be the right term of having been sick myself and having to have adjust my head to adjust my own expectations prior to my kids coming along, and prior to them being diagnosed, so I already had to make huge adjustments as far as what I was what I saw for my life going, you know, into the future. So I kind of already was the head already been tempered down somewhat. I did have you know, I wasn't I went to college, and I was studying photography for a while. And then when I started getting sick, I switched over to pre med interestingly enough, because I started finding all of these doctors that I was interacting with. I found it so interesting. And I watched a ton of Grey's Anatomy. I mean, it definitely influenced it

Scott Benner 51:42
made me think I can be a doctor by the way. I'm gonna slip in sarcoidosis somewhere while we're talking. Whatever.

Aimee 51:51
So that's more of a house a house that is diagnosed. Yeah, right.

Scott Benner 51:55
Every everything they couldn't figure out was was Sark. sarcoidosis.

Aimee 52:01
It's never lupus though. Do you think?

Scott Benner 52:03
Do you think the doc did the writers just got like, they were like, Oh my God, we've been doing this for seven years. I just say sarcoidosis.

Aimee 52:10
Probably. Well, I always thought that was an interesting because so when I went to school, and I switched to pre med, I said, Well look, even if I can't physically work in a hospital, because now my my conditions are progressing. Maybe I can use this in like the way that you know, people work in Hollywood consulting on shows and consulting for, you know, movies and things like that to make sure they have all the medical stuff, right, I would totally love to do that. It's different, and it's fun. And then again, tempering my expectations as things progressed, that flew out the window and and then I just I became a stay at home parent, because it's much cheaper, we would have ended up having to pay more for like daycare, I would have not brought home enough money to cover daycare and still make a profit doing that. So it was just cheaper for us to have me be a stay at home parent. And then I was already in that position when we started discovering that the kids had these needs. So it kind of all just happened that way. But I would be lying if I didn't say that some days, I wake up and I'm just kind of like, I wish that you know, I was still pursuing, you know, photography and chasing this band across the United States and covering their whole tour. And because that's what I used to do as concert photography. I definitely do wake up some days. And I'm like, Oh, I wish that was still happening. But I also feel like my world has gotten bigger in different ways. As you know, we have a huge social media following over on on tick tock and we got on Instagram, we've got that going. We're starting YouTube. And it's something that I never would have seen myself doing back there probably would have made fun of myself, if like me from back then saw me now be like, oh, what you're like a, like an influencer now or something like I would have totally kicked my own butt. But I think that what we're doing definitely fills some of that, if not, in a different way, it fills some of that need and some of that desire that I had before of just like wanting to be important and do something huge with my life, you know, because we are we're not a doctor, and I'm not, you know, fixing anybody out there. But just being able to talk to another parent or even another T one D that's like, hey, you know, I've had this for years, and I've never been able to get over my fear of you know, poking my finger and seeing your kids doing it, you know, with each other and supporting each other has made me reach out and be a part of this community now that I'm finding for the first time. That's so like, huge. And I don't want to tell you, I mean, you live it every day. Having an impact on other people's lives is something that we didn't plan for. But it's not something that everybody can do. And we have to realize that we're we're kind of lucky in the sense that we get to do that.

Scott Benner 54:54
Yeah, I don't know if I feel lucky, but I understand. Yeah, I know.

Aimee 54:58
I think well, so that's where Are our social media name accidentally amazing comes from that it was this thought that we never would choose this even going back if we had three wishes, and we could go back and change the kids not being diabetic, of course we would in a heartbeat. But it's actually turned out to be accidentally amazing in ways that we never would have expected, we've been able to find good things about it to focus on, and more importantly, to help the kids focus on because whatever we model for them in terms of perspective, about their life and their conditions, and their challenges, is what they're gonna build their own perspective about themselves and about what they go through. They're going to build on that. So we have to do our best to set a good foundation for that. Yeah,

Scott Benner 55:47
yeah. I mean, I take your point. And I understand and I feel lucky that what I do during the day helps people a lot. Honestly, I don't feel lucky that you know, that auto immune stuff, found my family, but as long as it did, you know, dot dot dot, then then the rest of it does feel lucky. I was trying to be funny. And instead, I said something that you were like, oh, no, my bed. Okay? Is it intrusive? So these these platforms, they demand video. And what people might not know about them is you could build a massive following on Instagram, for example. And, and it could go away in a split second, like the algorithm could stop pushing people to your content. Or you could just get into a situation where you can't make something for a week or two. And people are just like, well, I'll go find someone else. And then you're gone. Once your momentum is gone, the whole thing's over. Yeah, the the podcasting has that similar issue. And I would be lying to you, if I didn't tell you that I worry about it. Like constantly. It's almost like feeling like you opened a donut shop. And then someone opened one up two blocks away, and you're like, No, no, no, no, no. Like, even if they go check out the donuts, they might never come back. Even if those aren't any better. Like, whatever. It's just, it's, it's that feeling of like, you've built a thing. And it feels like it's built on, I don't know, just straw and mud, you know? So like, do you feel a pressure to be constantly making stuff?

Aimee 57:24
I think I do, mostly because, you know, we're not really like monetizing, or anything off of it, we have a couple of like, partnerships, like within the diabetes space, which mostly is stuff that we do, because it helps us cover our own costs, where supplies like the extra stuff insurance doesn't cover. So by doing like content for them, you know, we'll get some patches here and there. And, and that goes a long way, especially when you have the two diabetics plus now myself, I wear Dexcom, as well. So it's a lot of stuff. But I don't feel pressure in the sense that I have to make the kids do it. It's more like they do it when they're up for it. And when they want to. And thankfully, it's something that they do, I feel like it's made their management a little bit easier. Because when a site change comes up, instead of it being like, Oh, I'm dreading the site change, what they're focusing on is, Oh, are we going to make a video about it? Because we want to, they get excited about making the videos, okay, so it's definitely helped us with the management. And we don't ever, it's, it's always offered, it's never something that we hold them to. So I do feel pressure on myself, when ever they're in, you know, like a phase where oh, maybe they don't want to make as many videos or maybe I've just have a lot of other stuff going on, then I do feel like, okay, I'm not. And it's more like I'm letting people down who are counting on us, if that makes sense. Because we're not even close to doing like what you do in terms of actually helping people understand like, day to day management and things that are actually gonna improve their health. But I think that what we do kind of gives it fills the space of the mental and emotional support that a lot of T Wendy's and a lot of kids and a lot of caregivers need. Yeah. And so like, we feel like we give a little bit of community. And we're kind of a sounding board, sometimes less about giving advice and more about just I hear you, I see what you're going through. Maybe this thing that we did this one time might help you and you can think about it this way. And so when we're not there to do that, and we're not being picked up by the algorithm, then I feel like oh, we're not going to be reaching that one person that might have really needed to see this video today. So yeah, definitely. That's definitely there.

Scott Benner 59:44
Yeah, it can be a thankless job and the and I'm assuming you don't make a living from it, right?

Aimee 59:51
Like, no, no, no,

Scott Benner 59:52
I mean, I would love to but you're doing it, you know, for for the response to that and for what it gives to other people.

Aimee 59:59
Yeah, exactly. I mean, it helps us maintain that, you know, the 10% discount here for our, for our followers 10% there. And I know that, you know, for some people that 10% could make the difference between them getting their kids the patches or not, or getting themselves the patches or not. And so if us, pushing ourselves to make content in order to keep those things going, is what's going to facilitate that, then that's for right now that that's enough, because I don't ever see myself. Like I said earlier, this was never something that I would have envisioned for myself. It's not like, this is my niche. And like, I've always been good at this or something. And, and it happened to coincide with us being diagnosed like, this is not something that every day I turn on my phone, and I have to teach myself, like a new piece of technology to keep up with what's going on.

Scott Benner 1:00:47
You're not a kid anymore, Amy.

Aimee 1:00:49
I'm not. And it's not always enjoyable. I mean, the editing of the videos and stuff down, it takes a lot. It's a lot of meaning to do with the podcasts and stuff and much longer format, obviously,

Scott Benner 1:01:02
I had off tomorrow. And I didn't block the day for some reason on my calendar. And the other day, this this kid, the kid, like under 18, like a teenager wants to be on the podcast. And as I go through the whole thing, I'm like, let me talk to your parents while I send, send her a link and I say, okay, look, you use this link. And but I'm telling you like, there's not going to be a day until like, I know, this sounds crazy, because December 23 won't be a day until like, I don't know, I mean, September or October of 2023, reconsent up a recording. As much as I tried not to bloat my schedule. I was like I tried. So I just screwed it up. And I just, I hear from people, I'm like, That's interesting. Let them come on. Let them before I know it, I'm full. And so I so she pops on. And December 21 is open. And she just and she just takes it. And I'm like my first like, I get the email and I'm like, I'll just email the person back say, hey, that day wasn't supposed to be open, just go pick another day. And then I looked at my salts this girl and she's younger, and she's excited. And I was like, oh, okay, I'll just do that. Or yeah, I'll do the try. And then my wife's like, what are you doing? And I'm like, I'm just gonna record she's like, we have a lot to do for the holidays. And I was like, I know, I'm like, but I'm gonna just record tomorrow for an hour, you know? And it's the editing part. There's no way anybody would understand. It's no, it's a massive chunk of my life. And it feels like, I mean, I'm sure all businesses are like this. And I hate to say that this is a business, but it is, you know, and it's a business that happens to be helping people. It's not selling people cars, but it's still it's a, you know, it is like I have to do things on a schedule. I have business relationships, I have to maintain, there's contracts,

Aimee 1:02:47
a lot of administration

Scott Benner 1:02:50
aspects who have no idea. And so you just feel like at any moment, I don't know, it could just disappear. I feel that all the time. And I mean, yes, you wouldn't want your business to disappear because you're paying your bills with it. But or maybe it's part of who you are, or a number of different reasons. But for me, I feel the same thing you're talking about. It's like, I know, somebody gets helped by this. And if I don't make this show, then that stops. And you might think, well, how does talking to Amy, about her and Riley and Zoey and her sister? Like how does that help people's blood sugar's get better? It does. It may be we say something today that helps someone's health. But more specifically, we might make a fan of the show. And then that person might then pick through the show more and go what is bold beginnings? Or what is the finding diabetes? Or what is it a protest, which is where you're going to get real, like management stuff that's going to really kind of pull it together for you. So it's not as easy as just saying, hey, there's 25 episodes here. They're called protests if you read if you listen to them. I mean, honestly, I just got to review the other day. Because I say sometimes listen to the protests, your blood, your agency will be in this in the middle of Texas. And I got a note from a guy and said, just like the guy promised, I listened to the protests. And this is my one say. And so like when you know what actually works. I feel there's a pressure and there's a responsibility. Yeah. And then when you know that the format you're using is social media based, do you think oh god, like? What if the algorithm comes from me and just stops telling people about the show? Or, you know, like, what if people just stop sharing or if it isn't funded? I try not to think about it, but it's there, you know? So anyway, yeah, that's pretty much it. I just complained about having a podcaster people right now there's some somebody right now is under a truck, taking off an axle and there's like, hey, this guy's life is terrible. He had to edit a podcast and he's worried about the algorithm.

Aimee 1:04:47
Well see, that's that's what I was saying earlier. It's not so much that we're lucky we get to do like that we have to do this or whatever. It's more like we're gonna be diabetic or we're gonna have diabetic kids or be diabetic, whatever. Regardless There's no way of changing that at least we get to have a voice about it and and do something, get squeezed something out of it. That is good in the end of the day.

Scott Benner 1:05:11
No, I'll please, I'm, it's, it's the greatest, most lovely thing I've ever done in my life. And I really hope to just do it forever, in a way that helps people. But I also don't want to be at the end, where I'm just like sitting back in this chair going like, so Amy diabetes haco. Had you talk, you know, I don't want to go, I don't want to get bored by it. And, and it stopped being? You know what it is? But I guess that people would sort me out if I did that.

Aimee 1:05:37
Oh, yeah, I'm sure they'd be calling you out. Yeah, that's

Scott Benner 1:05:39
what I need. Is there anything we haven't spoken about that you think we should have?

Aimee 1:05:44
You know, I didn't want to mention, because we were talking about insurance and all that the kids recently, were in Florida. And I'm sure this is different for every state. But in our state, we are, we're not well off by any means. But we do make more than what the threshold would be considered for SSI or disability. And, you know, we applied anyways, with the kids even knowing that we were just a little bit outside of that, that income range. And we actually were able to get thankfully disability for both the kids. And I think now, I'm not 100% sure if it's due to their age, because I've read in some places they say it's because they're under six. But even if just like one person out there is considering applying, but not sure because of either income or age or whatever, just do the application, I really wanted to put that out there because you never know, get on the phone, talk to the person explain your situation when you're going through the application process. And you might end up in a situation like us where you know, we were approved. And And now for the first time ever last week, we picked up our insulin for $0.00. And yeah, co pays for as you can imagine, with two kids, even on our insurance from my husband's job, we were still paying 65 $75 Each as a copay. Now with this, we still get to keep seeing our same doctors, but the the disability insurance or the Medicaid will act as a secondary and it picks up the rest of that copay. So now we just saw both of our we saw our endocrinologist on Friday, and $0.00 there. And it's just, it's work. And you have to have your ducks in a row, get all your paperwork together, you know, plead your case, but maybe you will get somebody who will listen to you and understand and do whatever they can to help push that paperwork through for you and and find yourself in a situation where you're a lot better off than you were before. So I just wanted to share that. Definitely.

Scott Benner 1:07:43
That's amazing. How long did it take you to like figure that out, put it into place, make it happen?

Aimee 1:07:49
Well, so it was they were diagnosed in April, and we meant to do it right away. But between one thing or another, we got scared off of it. Just hearing people say oh, we were denied, we were denied or denied, don't even bother. So we did it. And then in August, we put in the application August of this year, and by September, we had our second phone interview, and we were approved on that second phone interview. And coverage started in October. So it was a couple months from start to finish. But once we were approved in October, the benefits were retroactive. So they covered us for the months leading up to it. So like Riley had been in the hospital with the stomach flu in September, and we just had to fit out a little paper for the Medicaid. And then they went back in and they covered what was leftover from that hospital bill. Even though it was from before the Medicaid it actually kicked in cheese. That's terrific. Yeah, it's it's fantastic. And it's it's not easy. It's tedious. It is time consuming to go through the process. And once you have it, you do have to get things like referrals and things like that. But it's definitely worth it considering how expensive you know, diabetic supplies can be especially Omni pod Omnipod. Five, the kids are on that now. And now we're getting it covered 100% as well for the new year with a prior authorization and the Medicaid. So there's, there's definitely something to be said about just going through the process. And the worst thing that can happen is you get denied, you still get an appeal, maybe on the appeal, you get approved. Maybe not. But at least you can say you've exhausted every avenue, you know, that's amazing.

Scott Benner 1:09:15
Good for you. Who who put you on to that you figure it out yourself? Yeah, sort

Aimee 1:09:21
of. So I had been kind of which I haven't done it for myself. Technically, I qualify for disability with lupus, but it's a very exhaustive process, especially for an adult. Okay, so I had kind of been thinking about like, Oh, I wonder if the kids qualify, and especially, you know, like with Riley being autistic, we thought, well, if anyone will qualify, at least she will but we'll apply for both anyways. And that will help us a lot because she has a lot of therapies and each one of those therapies is like 3040 bucks a week, etc, etc. So we said well, we'll just give it a shot and we'll try it out and and sure enough, we're getting getting ready to sign her up for equine therapy, because the Medicaid covers it so she'll have like You get to actually be like outdoor farm and have like horse riding lessons and get to be like with the animals and stuff like that something we never would have been able to afford or even think about. It even existed. But through this whole process, it was something that came to light. They had like art therapy, they cover swim lessons, tons of different stuff. And like I said, it'll vary state by state, but you won't know until you actually get on the phone and talk to somebody and go through the process of applying what you may. And if you don't qualify for that they may have other programs within the state that help that might help you cover costs related to the diabetes. So

Scott Benner 1:10:33
if you've ever ridden a horse, it's one of my life some sadness.

Aimee 1:10:39
Do they have horses? I'm gonna pull like a you know, you're always picking on the good. Do they even have horses in New Jersey? We have horses. Is that a thing?

Scott Benner 1:10:49
Yeah, the horses own their own guns and they run a mob thing. Obviously, because it's in New Jersey. New Jersey is a lovely place. Yes, a lot of green, a lot of trees. It's a lot of farmland, and it just it's got that nice, you know, the I 95 corridor or the were the turnpike. You know, everything that's sort of clustered around there. I think that's how people see the states. I'm learning this by the way by driving Arden to college, and back okay, so people are gonna you're

Aimee 1:11:24
only seeing like the stuff right off the highway when you're getting off a restaurant.

Scott Benner 1:11:29
I'm obviously a pushover because Arden's been in school for 10 weeks. And she's home now for the holidays. So I've now driven to where she goes to school, and back again three times, I went down once to see it right. So that we could like take a tour, we stayed for a couple of days, looked around the school, look around the town, that kind of stuff. So that was once down once back. I know I'm supposed to say that often goes to college in Chicago. But anyway, it was like, like 750 miles one way. So I didn't want you drive. Basically, if you just really hammer and don't stop, it takes like 13 or 14 hours to get there. Oh, and did it the first time. I was like, okay, she likes the school, whatever. Then the second time was to take her down. We obviously had to take her there. But art in traveled like the Queen of Sheba, which I don't know if he's even the thing you're allowed to say anymore, because I don't even know what it I don't even know what it means. It just feels like something that a group of kids at Stanford were telling me I can't say anymore. But anyway, I don't know what any of that means. I'm just, it's a colloquialism. And everyone has to live with it. I don't even know she was a real place. But the she, I'm just trying to say she had cars full of her belongings. And then when she it's time for her to come home for the holiday, she says I have to bring a lot of these clothes home. I'm like what she has some of them I don't need some of them are, you know, specific to certain times of the year? I just needed to get them home. You're gonna have to come pick me up, as I was thinking you'd get on a plane, you know? She's like, No, you have to come get me. So I drove again. 750 miles just be by myself. By the way, I was still sick. I basically got I got a steroid pack from the doctor. I was like, listen, in lieu of giving me like cocaine so that I can get through this. Can you just give me a steroid bag, so I don't die trying to drive to this place. And so I'm on steroids, I make it down there. Something happens with traffic. And I'm not going to I don't end up getting there when I expect to. So now I'm like going to arrive at like three in the morning. And I'm like, Well, what am I gonna just sit on the street in my car. So I stopped, I got a room, I slept for four hours. I got up, I drive like the last hour, and I pick her up. We drive home in one shot together. And now this is my third time going up and down to this, this this location. And I'm just like, I'm now driving like a lunatic when she's like, are you not worried about getting a ticket or us dying? I'm like, No, I don't even care anymore. So I think the next time I do it, I'm probably going to be going 120 miles an hour. Just because I'm like, I don't want to I don't want to do it anymore. But she has to go back in 1516 days. So I'm gonna have to drive down there again and drop her off. And then because she's gonna go with a different load of clothing. This is our fault for letting her do like, like a fashion thing in school.

Aimee 1:14:15
Just mail it it's Can you just for

Scott Benner 1:14:18
like $3,000 For what it weighs. I can probably ship

Aimee 1:14:22
stuffing, you stuffed it into space bags. You're

Scott Benner 1:14:24
not You're not seeing the picture me for what the picture is. There's there's like, there's, I'm worried that in the four years she'll be there. I'm gonna get too old to lift this stuff. What do you think of that? So, oh, I've kind of been like, hey, Arden maybe you don't need all this stuff. You know, like try to really ration this out a little bit. But I think I'm going to be picking my princess up in a state far, far away for the next three and a half years. I'm gonna need a new car. I'm gonna put too many miles on it. I gotta be able to. I don't know. I anyway, I'm happy to do it. I actually like it. It's The only time I take off, so it's like four days off for me. Because I leave and I drive down and my car is nice. I'm not working. And, you know, although I do miss talking to people, isn't that interesting,

Aimee 1:15:10
like when you're working like your work from home person or like a stay at home parent, how you don't, technically like you have, you can take time off whenever you want, not whenever you want, but it's a little bit easier because you don't have to submit something to a corporation to get approved for time off. Yet you almost never actually take time off to like just for you to relax.

Scott Benner 1:15:31
My spirit likes to different people, there are people who are constantly taking time off and saying they're working. And there are people like me who just like, I just never stop. And it's why I'm telling you the COVID thing. Like bringing people home from offices for a certain amount of those people. That's the worst thing that's ever happened to them in their life. Yeah, because they just don't know how to stop. So function outside. My wife's one of those people, she needs there to be an end to the day. Honestly, she needs somebody to say, time to go home. That and if she doesn't have that she just keeps working.

Aimee 1:16:07
Yeah, I'm like that. And I will just like all get fixated on like something a task, I'll always find there's always something to do. Like I have two modes I have lupus is acting up or my body isn't cooperating. So I'm literally like a potato, then I I don't even talk to me because I'm not even I can't hear you get just a sack of potatoes, or I have like super hyperactive cannot stop doing anything. I will be painting the walls of this house at two in the morning and rearranging furniture mode. that's those are my two extremes. There's no in the middle. It's one or the other.

Scott Benner 1:16:42
I really do. So anyway, I like going don't get me wrong, my son's getting ready to move away. We're never gonna see him again. And if he told me that every four months, I had to drive somewhere to pick them up. I I'd be like, okay, you know, so I was thinking about this the other day, you were talking earlier about how you and your husband were talking about like a thing. I was thinking the other day, I really am that person. Like in a perfect scenario. I see my family is gathered in the kitchen living area together. And it's not specifically doing anything, just sort of being in each other's like, orbit a little bit. And I realized that like that's, that's a good day for me. Like I don't I don't care that we didn't go somewhere or do something or climb a rock or I don't know, whatever people do. Some people do that. I would just never, I would never find out just so you know, like, oh,

Aimee 1:17:39
it's because do I owe you? Do I owe you money for being able to?

Scott Benner 1:17:42
Yeah, 50 cents an episode, you gotta buy all 12 or 16 a month, and it's $48 a year. And if enough of you do it, then I'll be rich. And then we can just make this pot,

Aimee 1:17:52
I can do the I can do like a bilingual version for you. Like you can charge like for the two separate, you have English cursing and Spanish.

Scott Benner 1:18:00
If I had, if I had a million dollars a year, I would, I would make I would first thing I would do is hire somebody to translate the Pro Tip series and all those series and stuff like that. But anyway, that's trust me. It's my idea. I've had it for 10 years, I bring it up every company I work with, they're like, that's a great idea. And I'm like you want to pay for it? No, not Not really. Oh, okay, great. Anyway,

Aimee 1:18:22
we don't have anything we can tap into. Like I'm saying we like if I'm part of this. You don't have anything anyone like you wouldn't want to tap into like the group and see if there's somebody was in the group. You wouldn't know,

Scott Benner 1:18:35
let me tell you something honest. Okay. Not that not to the rest of it hasn't been honest. But this is just gonna say it's gonna be beyond polite. people reach out to help me constantly. And many of them are lovely. And some of them are what my grandmother would call it, Nick. And, but they're still well, meaning next. Some people overestimate they let their excitement overestimate their ability to help. So they start off like shot out of a cannon and I'm like, great, you know, this, you know, do this. Can you make, you know, images for social media? And they're like, oh, my god, yeah. Like, there used to be this group of people who were like, We're gonna listen to every episode and do better show notes for you. Because your show notes suck, and my show has to suck. Here's what yours is gonna say. Amy has. Amy has lupus. Some other stuff wrong with her. Her kids have diabetes and autism. Like I'm barely talking about date, by the way, and I'm not going to like literally won't I won't do much more than that. So this like group of like, really motivated people. Like for like a month. They all took like 10 episodes of the podcast, they listened to them took notes and turned them into these amazing show notes. And then they just stopped and I was like, Okay, thanks, like, but now I have great show notes on 70 episodes. The rest of them are like Amy, Amy, as you know, and so Look, I'm because I can't do it. Because even when I'm talking to you, right, I don't know what the hell we talked about. You know what I mean? Yeah. And I can't go back and listen, just to take notes. Like, I have to have time to sleep. So anyway, people show up. Really wonderful people very well intentioned, they really want to help. But for the most part, I'm going to tell you that 98% of them, just thankfully, now, yeah, they flame out and very quickly, and it makes it just a waste of my time. So the people who have panned out so far are Isabelle, who helps with the Facebook page. And it's only because it's like, she and I have the same brain about this. Her first contacted me, she's like, I understand what you're doing. And I was like, Well, this is either going to end up with me being murdered, or me, you know, let me find out what it is she thinks I'm doing. But I'll be damned. Like everything I do, like even like kinda like the slick stuff that you don't see. Like earlier, I brought something up to drag the conversation in a different way. And you're like, it's funny, you brought that up? And I thought, No, it's not I did it on purpose. But But, um, but like little stuff like that, she sees it all. And she's the right age and the right temperament and the right intelligence, the right everything, she just fits. She doesn't want to be the person that she's not like, just gonna do one thing, and then send me a note and go, can you pay me because No, I can, if I could, I would have just hired you. You know, like, stuff like that. And there's a few people who help on the Facebook group as well. I don't know if they want their name, shout out. There's three lovely people that just kind of drop links in and help people when they ask questions. I've never asked them if they want their name on here, so I won't just say them. And there's a person right now who's, uh, who's helping me with a couple of specific tasks. And but she'll be gone pretty soon, too. And she's doing a great job, like putting together a survey for listeners and a couple of other things. But for those five people, it took me 10 years to find them. And there's 4050 I'm not, I'm not over exaggerating people who, who contacted and were very nice and wanted to help and then just sort of disappeared. So anyway,

Aimee 1:22:06
I don't think anybody really realizes like, what we're, we're touching on earlier how much work it really is,

and what it takes to maintain it. It's not just doing it once, and you get that, that excitement. And you Yeah, I did the thing. Okay, you gotta do it, like 800 more times.

Scott Benner 1:22:23
Yeah. It's just just what it is, you know, it's not a big deal. But yeah, but I put at least 70 hours into the podcast every week. And like, even sitting here right now, I'm, like, in the last hour and a half, like right before you jumped on. I'm asking people if they want me to be Hawking CBD oil, because some major companies asking me to be an ambassador and my friend, I emailed him back, I'm like, No, I don't want to please leave me alone. I don't want to do that. And the guy's like, Are you sure? Like, you know, your audience might really want it. So I'm like, Oh, I'll do a poll. I'll ask people if they want it. If they do that, I guess I'll do it. But I don't want to. I'm asking people if they want a holiday story read for the podcast, which is now a thing people are asking about. I'm thinking of doing a live session, like maybe on New Year's Day, or somewhere around around New Years, where I'm going to go online, and every 15 minutes, let a new person come on. And I want to see how long I can record with a different person for 15 minutes. Like, oh, that's cool. I don't know. But

Aimee 1:23:22
all that like a podcast roulette?

Scott Benner 1:23:25
Yeah, just keep going. You know. So anyway, and I don't know if I'll do that. I

Aimee 1:23:31
think we accidentally put a little bit more on your plate the other day with that there was a post in the group, where someone was kind of asking like how to swag like a certain meal, I think it was a Mexican food like dish. And then everybody was just going off on it. And then I tagged these events. And I was like, Alright, I tagged you as well. And I was like, you guys should make this like a weekly thing. Because people love this like that. You're like just being able to guess and kind of see everybody's thought process of how they chose and why they chose. I think it gives a lot of insight. And actually, it sounds like more work. But it might be less work, because I'm sure you guys get all the time like, oh, Scott, how do you dose for that? And why do you dose it that way? And I'm sure you get that question like, I mean, I get that question on our social media, we're not even out there giving this kind of advice. So I can only imagine, well, here's but that might be like a way to facilitate like the group to continue to help each other in a way where you're not necessarily having to be directly overseeing it. And like, you know,

Scott Benner 1:24:25
terrific idea. And here's why it won't work. And I can't put any effort into those posts pop up and get organic on their own. When you start turning them into a weekly thing or the thing that happens on Thursday, they die very quickly. Nobody wants to be told when to have a thought. And just because that thread looks so popular that day, you could have moved that that thread three days sooner, and nobody would have clicked on

Aimee 1:24:53
it and nobody would have seen it. Yeah, well, it's the algorithm and even within like the group itself, like how posts get organized and And, and how they show up is a lot. It's based on that too. So I imagine that would affect it a lot.

Scott Benner 1:25:06
I tend to think of it as an organism, that just, it does the things that the organism wants, when it when it needs. And you can't tell it what to do you know how many times people say to me, you should put up a post for every episode, so that we can talk about the episode inside of the post. So we so we do that? No, we do that. It's because everybody wants it. They are some of the least looked at posts that exist. Like nobody looks at them. Yeah, so everything I think they want. That's another secret about doing something for people do the opposite you well, they don't know what they want. If they knew what they wanted, they would need it. If that makes sense.

Aimee 1:25:46
Like so yeah, they would you they'd be able to just go and grab it. Yeah.

Scott Benner 1:25:51
Basically, part of my job is to know what you need, not what you think you need. And then and then the podcast because becomes an organism. So you don't think of it that way. Because you're not thinking of it like that. But the flow of every week, or every month or every year, I am sort of orchestrating that flow by putting it together. Like it's not as you know, I don't, I don't. Sometimes I do. Like sometimes I'm like, Well, this episode goes on Monday, because that episode will feed into this one. And this one will bring up this topic. And then next week, that topic is going to come up again. And it'll reinforce it. Like there's there's that going on. And also because I record an order, and then I put my stuff out in the order I record, you are basically getting my concept of diabetes in real time, six months behind when I'm having it. That makes sense. So anyway, there's a lot happening. And it's, I would love it if somebody could help. But the truth is that I think it works because it all kind of comes out of my head. Anyway, I can see that. And not because of me. But just because there's a fluid idea. And I don't have to go into a meeting and hear from five people who have a thought about so like this thing I'm doing right now I'm putting the survey together, it'll go out pretty soon it will be out for a long time, by the time somebody hears this. And it's just the ask some questions to kind of figure out where the podcast is helping people and, you know, etc. The person who's helping me with it said to me, this is the fastest thing I've ever accomplished in my professional life. And I said, Yeah, you know what this is right. And she goes, why I said, nobody else has an opinion, but me. Like we're not sitting in a room with six people are like, I don't like that question. And then we don't talk about it for an hour and a half. And then make another meeting three days from now to come back and look at it again. I go take that one out. Put that one in, say this say that this is what we're doing. Then I look at her go. What do you think? And she gives me her opinion. Oh, Val, you're right about that. Change that to that. Put this here. I don't agree with you about that. But good point. And now it's done. And yeah, you know it just when you don't have to? I mean, it's too many cooks, I guess is the easy way to say it. I think it ruins the stew. Yeah. All right. Definitely. Amy, tell your children that I personally, the guy from the podcast said hello to them.

Aimee 1:28:10
Oh, they know. They know Scott, in fact, well, they're out there somewhere in the living room. But Riley wanted to tell you this morning she woke up and she said I'm going to tell Scott my ABC was 6.40 me it's for a one. Oh,

Scott Benner 1:28:24
I took I understand. You want to get her into telling me before we're done?

Aimee 1:28:28
Yeah, I can do that. Let me see if she'll be up for it.

Scott Benner 1:28:32
If not, then you know, don't worry. Yeah. Okay, hold on. Bonus coverage. People do want CBD oil. Are you serious? I thought this was a no. Oh, this person takes a quarter of an edible gummy. Severe pain. I use CBD for compression fracture my spine. I had a cat with skin cancer. She was on CBD oil. I do the legal kind of helps me sleep. I would like to learn more about it. I use it for my autoimmune arthritis. So a lot of people here but most people said no. But why in case you wonder. I'm talking to Donald Trump. Pick

Aimee 1:29:03
up the headphones. Okay, here we go. I'm not going to talk. You're not going to talk. You don't have to talk. Yeah, don't talk if you don't want to talk to headphones in your ears. You can hear Scott already

Scott Benner 1:29:14
is this Riley? This is Riley Raleigh. If you don't want to talk you don't have to talk. Okay, don't say anything.

Aimee 1:29:22
Yeah, now she got shy. That's okay.

Scott Benner 1:29:24
I'm waiting for that to happen. Does she remember meeting?

Aimee 1:29:30
She does. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:29:31
she does. Probably one of the best things

Aimee 1:29:32
she was Yeah, I'm sure she was remembering when we were having when you had the Zoom recently. Any any gave her her shout out that you said that there was a secret message for somebody in the room that only one person would understand. And then you said Paw Patrol. She got such a kick out of that.

Scott Benner 1:29:53
Paw Patrol. That should be my that should be my nickname. Honestly. I would.

Aimee 1:29:57
I should be the name of the episode. Yeah, you think so? Should I just need an episode you might have? Maybe? Probably not though. You're gonna you're gonna name the episode. Did I just need the episode?

Scott Benner 1:30:08
No, I was thinking Paw Patrol. Actually, I like how she's like, I'm not talking. That's enough of this. I believe in the room. Goodbye. Only Yeah,

Aimee 1:30:15
no, she's sitting here. She's She's sitting here baring her face in my arms and covering her ears. She's like, I don't even want to hear it. But I guarantee you the minute you get off of the call, she's gonna be like, I want to sing a song or she'll come up with something.

Scott Benner 1:30:30
Yeah. Well, I'm glad that her ABC was 6.4. Is that what it was? 6.4 her ABC

Aimee 1:30:35
was 6.4 or ABC. And so her and Zoe's was 6.2

Scott Benner 1:30:40
Wow, good job. That's excellent.

Aimee 1:30:42
Yeah, they're they're killing it. Because Mom and Dad do what mom and dad do. But honestly, if they weren't if they weren't on top of and open to things like having the Omni pod and and the constant finger pricks and things like that, that decks calm. Then we wouldn't be able to manage as well as we do. Honestly. What are you pretending? To some? Who are you going to talk to? Okay, but who are you pretending to talk to? You

Scott Benner 1:31:21
Hey, you know what, Riley?

Aimee 1:31:23
Mommy? Right. Let me let me unplug this. Maybe she can hear your voice. Okay, you're on speaker. Okay.

Scott Benner 1:31:30
Yeah, Riley you don't know this. But other people may podcast and they're pretending they're talking to some people too. Oh, no, that didn't work. No. Okay.

Aimee 1:31:40
Can you hear me now? Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:31:42
I made this silly. Silly. It was a mean joke, but not towards her. I said there are other people have podcasts and they're pretending to talk to people too.

Aimee 1:31:54
That is a means to true joke, but it's a mean joke. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:31:59
it's really true. You guys have no idea. Okay, well, I'm gonna let you go. And I'm gonna go.

Aimee 1:32:04
Well, last thing I need to say. Because I promised someone I would say go ahead. I promise guy that I would say how happy you are on a pod. Because you have to say Omnipod pod. And every time I say Omni pod, I feel like I'm saying it weird now because so many people say I'm no pod. So I told her I would say Omnipod and give her a shout out. If it isn't an omni pod. It is Omni pod. Yeah, she says Omni pod like with an A

Scott Benner 1:32:31
my my very close contact at Omni pod. He says on the pod. So really, yeah. Every time we're on a call, or I can I can hear his voice in my head right now saying Omnipod.

Aimee 1:32:45
So many people on Tik Tok and Instagram even I hear all the time. And I'm always like, maybe I am seeing it wrong. But then I look at it. And I'm like, No, it's got an eye. It's spelled with an eye. So it's Omni pod.

Scott Benner 1:32:55
Yeah. Would you ever hear Elon Musk say Tesla?

Aimee 1:32:59
I have not No, like Tesla. So Oh, like with the Z?

Scott Benner 1:33:04
I think it's the South African thing. But. But still, it's just everybody says stuff differently. Who cares? Doesn't matter. As long as they listen, as long as they go to omnipod.com forward slash juicebox to buy one. I don't care what they call it. Alright. Go ahead and live your life. I'm gonna go Christmas shopping. Excellent.

Aimee 1:33:20
Thank you so much for having us. And yeah, well, we'll just keep doing what we're doing, I guess, and just everybody manage your diabetes, to change your plans. It's

Scott Benner 1:33:31
a pleasure. You have a wonderful family too. And I want to I want to thank you for sharing with me, on occasion and with everybody else is very, very nice to you to be this open about it. I appreciate it. Yeah.

Aimee 1:33:42
Thank you so much. Well,

Scott Benner 1:33:44
Merry Christmas.

Aimee 1:33:45
Merry Christmas. Happy holidays. Have fun driving back and forth.

Scott Benner 1:33:49
Oh, it's gonna be the best. Hold on one second. All right.

I want to thank Amy for coming on the show today and sharing her story and telling me about her girls. I also want to thank ag one drink ag one.com forward slash juice box. Get that free year supply of vitamin D and five free travel packs with your first order when you use my link. And don't forget to check out touched by type one.org and find them on Facebook and Instagram and give them a follow touched by type one.org. If you're enjoying the Juicebox Podcast, please share it with someone else who you think might also enjoy it. And don't forget to check out the private Facebook group that now has 41,000 members in it. There is a conversation happening right now that you would enjoy being a part of Juicebox Podcast type one diabetes on Facebook, but let's be honest, I don't care what kind of diabetes you have. Everyone is welcome. The diabetes Pro Tip series from the Juicebox Podcast has been professionally remastered for better audio quality, and it will appear again in your podcast player at episode 1000 That's coming up in just a couple of weeks, the diabetes Pro Tip series, which is me and Jenny Smith, setting you up for success with diabetes. When it comes out if you've heard it before, listen again, if you've never heard it, I really hope you give it a try. I think it's going to lead to the kinds of successes that you're hoping for

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#989 Pecking Order

Kevin is 52 years old and was diagnosed with type 1 diabetes at 45 years old.

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

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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 989 of the Juicebox Podcast.

Today on the show, I was speaking with Kevin, he's a 52 year old. Kevin is 52 diagnosed at 45 with adult onset type one diabetes, and he tested negative for antibodies. And that's something Okay, he's healthy guy a hiker. He's blindsided by the diagnosis. He also has Raynaud's. And he farms his own chickens and pigs for food. I love this episode Kevin's terrific, you're gonna love it too. Arden calls in the middle of it. Don't think you hear her voice. What else? No, nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice. Medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan, or becoming bold with insulin. Don't forget to go to contour next.com forward slash juice box to get one of those contour meters and Second Chance test strips. use the offer code juicebox at checkout at cozy earth.com to save 40% off your entire order. And please find the private Facebook group for the Juicebox Podcast Juicebox Podcast type one diabetes on Facebook

this episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by us med you can get your diabetes supplies the same way we do from us med get your free benefits check now by calling 888-721-1514 Or go to us med.com. Forward slash juice box once again, that's us med.com forward slash juice box or 888-721-1514 Get your diabetes supplies the way we do from us med.

Kevin 2:04
My name is Kevin, I am an adult onset type one diabetic. I am antibody negative by a number of different tests. And a longtime listener first time caller.

Scott Benner 2:19
I don't think anybody's ever said that before. Well, okay, Kevin. So wait a minute. So how old were you when you were diagnosed?

Kevin 2:25
45

Scott Benner 2:26
Holy No.

Kevin 2:28
52 this year?

Scott Benner 2:30
Really? You look terrific. Well,

Kevin 2:33
thank you. Absolutely. I told the doctor, they had the wrong guy.

Scott Benner 2:38
I met you don't look like you're 52 or anywhere near and actually. But it is the it's the blessing of your hair staying dark. Yes, it really is. I have it to

Kevin 2:47
having a full head of IT. Yeah, lucky.

Scott Benner 2:51
People look at you. And they're like, What do you like? 40? And I'm like, Yeah, that's right. I'm 40.

Kevin 2:55
I'll take it.

Scott Benner 2:57
No problem. Sounds good to me. So you were born a year before I was. Okay. So what did you mean, you don't have any anybody's How have you been tested.

Kevin 3:06
So I don't remember the details it was seven years ago. But I remember having the standard antibody test. And I was antibody negative, which meant there were no antibodies present at the time of my diagnosis. The doctor or the endo said, Hey, there's another test that's more sensitive or more accurate or something. And I had that run. And that came back antibody negative again, and I want to say maybe a year later, they did it again just to check and see if anything had shown up.

Scott Benner 3:40
But they're very confident you're a type one.

Kevin 3:43
Yeah, body produces. You know, I had a little bit of a honeymoon period for a couple of years, but my body produces below the minimum recordable amount of insulin on the what is it the creatine test or whatever they do?

Scott Benner 3:56
See peptide. Yeah, sorry. Creatine, are you lifting for bulk as well? No. I'm not either. Was there any indication that something like this could have happened as far as like family history goes?

Kevin 4:11
I gotta tell you this really blindsided me and, and it's one of the reasons I wanted to come on the show because I felt so adrift and lost and clueless. So I really have no family history, a paternal great grandfather had what they called the sugars back, you know, at the turn of the last century. Yeah, right. Right. And that's the close and I have I have a cousin. That's a type one diabetic, but he has been since he was a kid. But other than that, like I've always been a really active person. I've always eaten better than most people. I know. I'm not like a food Nazi. But I always ate three squares. I always ate from the three food groups, right and I tend to be a runner hiker biker kind of person. I'm not you know triathlete obsessive person but I get my kicks and really enjoy staying active. I take the stairs two at a time I park as far away as I can walk everywhere. So

Scott Benner 5:11
at 45 Is it fair to say you hadn't been sick in your life much?

Kevin 5:15
Not with anything like this, I started getting some exercise induced asthma and my 30s and a little bit of Raynaud's because I'm an old Ice Climber. And I had froze my hands a couple of times. So two auto immune kind of things started popping up in my 30s. So yeah, this really hit me like a ton of bricks. I have no family history. I'm not like a soda or a junk food guy. Yeah, stay inactive. It was kind of crazy.

Scott Benner 5:42
And it's your I can tell by the way you're talking about your connection, like mentally to diabetes is around, like health and what you consume until this happens to you. And now I assume you think like, wow, yeah, yeah. I mean, it's autoimmune. So how about other autoimmune stuff in your family? Thyroid, celiac, stuff like that. So there is

Kevin 6:07
nothing, I think. I think there's a couple Yeah, my brother. No, my brother's good. My mom, I think has a slightly underactive thyroid, but that didn't happen until later in life for her.

Scott Benner 6:22
Did they ever tell her if hers was autoimmune? Do they call it Hashimotos?

Kevin 6:26
They did not know Hashimotos. And I don't remember her ever talking about it. Okay. I mean, the only the only the only other thing I could say is my dad got Alzheimer's, and I've heard that called diabetes type three, right? It's sort of an insulin resistance to the brain. I don't know how much that plays into things. Yeah. I

Scott Benner 6:46
mean, I've heard about it talked. I've heard about it talked about, like an inflammation issue too. So yeah, or so. It's there. It's just it's hard to see really. Now do you have children?

Kevin 6:58
I do. I'm proud dad for oh, my gosh.

Scott Benner 7:01
Well, your penis works on. All right. So

Kevin 7:06
well, if the first three were adopted,

Scott Benner 7:07
Oh, okay. Never. I'm sorry. I'm gonna be nevermind.

Kevin 7:13
It wasn't me. So they tell me but that's all right. That's

Scott Benner 7:15
interesting. You adopted three and then and then had one? Surprise Yeah. Oh, so it wasn't happening. You guys know what

Kevin 7:25
it was? And we kept getting pregnant, but it would never stick, honestly. And it was it was a tough road. And we thought we would always adopt but then we decided we need to adopt because we really wanted to be parents. You

Scott Benner 7:37
Oh, well. First of all, let me apologize for my snarky remark.

Kevin 7:42
It's funny. I get a kick out of it. That easy assumption to make right now. Yeah.

Scott Benner 7:46
Wow. That's interesting. So how old are your kids?

Kevin 7:49
I have the youngest is about to turn 11. I have twins that are 16. And my oldest just turned 18.

Scott Benner 7:57
Wow. Are the 18 is the 18 year old and the twins. Are they related? No, no. Okay. No. But the twins are definitely related.

Kevin 8:07
I'm just That's right. Our oldest was international adoption, and our twins were domestic adoption.

Scott Benner 8:14
Okay. Now, do you have your youngest tested for anybody's Have you thought about that? No. No. Okay. So I mean,

Kevin 8:23
we're, he's kind of young, we're certainly aware of it. And I think it's my wife works in the healthcare industry. She's a primary care kind of person, provider. And so I know she watches us, you know, health wise for all that kind of testing and so on. She's a big believer in early diagnosis.

Scott Benner 8:45
See you you mentioned at the beginning, then feeling adrift after all this happened. So I would like to hear about that.

I'm going to tell you about one of the better decisions I made. Last year, I switched Arden's delivery of her diabetes supplies from where we were getting them to us Med and US med is more than edging out the service that we were getting from that previous company. right from the comfort of your home or office, you can join over 1 million satisfied customers who rely on us med for courteous, knowledgeable and trained Customer Care, and their representatives are going to keep you up to date with your medical and diabetic supplies. All delivered right to your door. Us med.com Ford slash juice box or call 888-721-1514 To get your free benefits check right now. US med features, a litany of things that you're going to love. How about an A plus rating with the Better Business Bureau. They accept Medicare nationwide and over 800 private insurers. They carry everything from insulin pumps and diabetes testing supplies to the latest CGM like the FreeStyle Libre three, the Dexcom G six and a little bird told me the deck SCOM g7 coming very soon. They always provide you with 90 days worth of supplies, and fast and free shipping, better service and better care is what you're going to get when you go to us med.com forward slash juice box. On top of all of this US med is now dispensing Novolog insulin aspart and human log insulin lispro through their pharmacy benefits. What are you waiting for us? med.com forward slash juice box 888721151 For us med is the number one distributor for FreeStyle Libre systems nationwide. They are the number one specialty distributor for Omni pod dash. They are the place we got our hands on the pod fives from us med provides Arden with her Dexcom supplies. And they're the number one fastest growing tandem distributor nationwide. I mean, I guess I could say it again. But are you just already online getting it done? Are you even listening to me anymore? Or have you already called 888-721-1514 don't like the phone? Us? med.com forward slash juice box. The other day I got an email from us Med and it said are you You want some more supplies? I guess it was time. And I said yes. Click the button. And then they just showed up. You want to do it like that. It's pretty damn easy. Us med.com forward slash juice box

Kevin 11:28
Yeah, yeah. I mean, you know, for for about a year or so I just felt amazingly low energy which wasn't like me. Like I said, I tend to be a pretty high energy kind of go get him guy. excitable and all that. And I, I didn't know what was going on. We my wife would tell me I don't understand. You never want to do anything. You just want to sit on the couch. And I just remember being like, you know, maybe this is what people mean about getting old. This must be what the 40s is finally hitting me or you know what people talked about when once you turn 30 It's all downhill. I didn't know what people meant. Yeah. And, and so I started getting leg cramps, right? The billet waking me up at night, and I've run. I've paced people and ultra marathons in the desert. I know what leg cramps are. And I tried treating them with my normal little tricks have electrolytes and I'm always real good about hydrating and stuff. And they didn't go away after three, four weeks or waking me up. And I wake up in the morning feeling like I sprinted Hills all night long. I'm like, What is this? Yeah, and I went to the doc and they pulled some blood and they said, Wow, you know, your sodium is a little high. Your potassium is a little low or whatever, but they're within range. And, and what's crazy is your blood sugar. Your you got a 12.2 a one C? Oh my gosh. Yeah. And you need to go see the endocrinologist tomorrow?

Scott Benner 12:59
Yeah. Well, it's interesting. When you're a kid, they send you to the ER, and when you're an adult, they're like, just go find a doctor. Well, yeah,

Kevin 13:07
clearly if my once he was at high, had some high blood sugar for a little while. Yeah, you know, then things started making sense. You know, and initially, I was diagnosed as a type two because I wasn't antibody negative. And then I couldn't get like a CGM. I couldn't get a pump, and all that kind of stuff. So I changed then those and it did hit me hard, though. It was like what, you know, what did I do? I immediately thought I must have done something. Right. started trying to think about, you know, the hereditary side of things. Is it in my family somewhere that I haven't discovered? And that's when I heard about my great grandfather, but it was really. So I came home that night, the next day from the endocrinologist and I told my kids and I said, Hey, you know, this is weird, but I promise you pull up a chair and watch the movie, because I'm gonna kick diabetes ass. Alright, this is a challenge that I can manage, and, and overcome. So let's, you know, it's gonna be different for me, but then I remember for a while it would bug me like when the grandparents would give the kids the basket a candy when they showed up at their house. I'd be like, ah, what are they doing? And I grew up with like a scratch baking. Mom who worked in a third generation bakery, right? Miss my baked goods. And my wife's family was a they supply industrial bakeries. They ran a trucking company, right? She grew up baking and just she didn't get I tried to solve it. You know, nutritionally, I was like, Man, I'm gonna, I think I started on like, 12 units a day of like long acting insulin, and I do a little bit of meal time.

Scott Benner 14:57
That was the beginning. And you were where you are. limiting carbs,

Kevin 15:01
not not being they told you eat 30 grams a meal or something, I think is what I was told, right? I didn't, I knew enough about nutrition to understand what carbs were and what foods had them. I didn't understand sort of glycemic index and all that jazz. The way I do now,

Scott Benner 15:19
okay, when you sat the kids down, was it you just wanted to project? Like, don't worry about this? Or were you? Were you projecting it to them? Or were you projecting it for yourself? Like you don't? I mean, like,

Kevin 15:31
Yeah, good question. You know, honestly, with, with the three older kids being adopted, I didn't want them to feel like another parental figure was not going to be there in their life. And I think you're right part of it was also for me that I needed to kind of throw out the challenge and rise to the occasion.

Scott Benner 15:55
So how do you do? I mean, I don't know what kind of direction you got from your physician. But was it enough to get you going?

Kevin 16:04
Yeah, yeah. I mean, they taught me enough for the basics. And I wasn't getting the results I liked. I was like, Oh, this is kind of all over the map. I don't know how to do this. And I hadn't heard your podcast. Yeah. I was very sheepish about insulin. I was I was convinced that pump companies were, you know that the pharmaceutical industry did not have my best interests at heart, and that they were out there to just sell insulin and make a ton of money. And I still believe that to a certain extent. But I'm not quite as cynical about it. And, and so I was trying to minimize my insulin intake. And I started, I think I use the Zone Diet, because I heard that was a diet built to stabilize your endocrine system. And that was just like, always doing math always, like tons of nutritional research at every meal. It was arduous. So after about three or four months, keto had sort of started catching on, and I'm like, Oh, this is the answer. Why am I pouring gas on the fire? Okay, why don't I let the fire burn, but I don't need to add fuel to it. So I tried that. And that was cool. But that that was the hard part. Right? I never, that's when I started feeling really isolated, honestly. Because it was really this is, you know, six years ago, right? keto was was sort of a little bit of a blog thing. But it wasn't what it is nowadays. You couldn't find keto products at Costco or right. Yeah, you know, the supermarket or anything and, and I remember my wife looking at me, like you are crazy, and my endo telling me you know, you can't fast you're a diabetic you need to eat and it was just like, Man, this is bizarre.

Scott Benner 17:39
Yeah, definitely fast. That's yeah, I mean, if your insulin,

Kevin 17:43
you gotta know how you got to know how to do it, you can't give yourself insulin like you're going to eat. And then that's not the way I like to play.

Scott Benner 17:54
Take him. And you just said something that made me like, made me think about something I'd never thought about before. That, as an adult, you might look up and think, Oh, I see. Now I have diabetes, and the man is going to take advantage of me. And they're going to sell me their insulin and their pumps. And they're this and that. And I never, that's makes a lot of sense. And yet never occurred to me before that that would be a situation. But when you said it, I just thought I can see how someone would think that.

Kevin 18:25
I'll tell you a year into it. I was like, the ADEA is broken, modern endocrinology is broken, I can't believe they're telling me, this is such a terrible disease to have, feel bad for yourself, eat what you want, covered with insulin. And give you very little guidance around how to do that, right, like your podcast, not trying to plug you but I have to give you credit where credit is due. And it really helped me understand the basics of Pre-Bolus ng, it gave me the courage to be a little bold with insulin because you're like, man, unless you really mess up and give yourself like 50 units, you can always save yourself with a juice box. Right?

Scott Benner 19:06
Well, it just was pretty cool. No, I appreciate that. I think it's interesting that established lines of communication, establishment lines of communication, we'll say the first part that like, don't you worry, you just do whatever you like, don't change your life, like you can handle this with insulin, but then there's no second part that says, and this is how that happens. You know, they just they just say you can do it. And then knowing full well, by the way that most people are going to fail at it. When they're trying in the beginning. They don't know enough about it. Their settings are probably wrong. Like they're just they're too new at it to get it right. So you tell somebody, don't worry about it. You don't have to change anything about your diet. Just use insulin, but we're not going to tell you how to use insulin, then you have a failure and then there's a pathway you decide it's a fork in the road. Well, I'm either going to limit my carbs because that didn't work or I'm going I need to keep eating the way I was eating and just assume that well, this is just diabetes, my blood sugar is going to be high. It's just it's it's just interesting that they're willing to say so much of the first part of that statement, but not give you the rest of it. You don't I mean,

Kevin 20:12
yeah, I agree. It's, it's sort of a minimalist approach to the care that it takes to manage it. Well, they

Scott Benner 20:21
give you half the information. And it's the half that will hurt you if you don't understand the second half. But it won't hurt you right now to hurt you later. So that's not on them. But they won't tell you but they won't tell you how to Pre-Bolus. Because if you do it wrong and get really low, well, then you're gonna go back and say, well, the you know, this, these people told me to do this. And look what ended up happening to me. It's, it's half assed at best. So yeah, well, I'm glad it helps. So how do you find a podcast?

Kevin 20:48
Yeah, that's a good question. I can't remember where I heard about you guys, probably through Facebook or something. Okay. I honestly don't remember. I was listening to a lot of podcasts and stuff back then I might have heard your name through something else or a web search?

Scott Benner 21:05
What made you look for? I mean, what what roadblock Did you hit that you thought, well, I have to go find other people on Facebook or something like that.

Kevin 21:14
I live in a pretty rural part of the Northeast, I'll say, and, and so like, sounds like in our local system, there's a type two support group, you could join through the hospital. But there was really nothing for type ones. I didn't know any type ones. I felt totally like, Man, how do you do this? And I'm sort of a thirst for knowledge, kind of eternal student, mindset person. And so I was always hungry for knowledge, and figured out you know, that this is, I'm new at this, I gotta figure this out. I want to get better. You know, within six months, I think I had my one C down to five and a half. Well, and I generally, for the most part, keep it below six, right? Yeah. If I look at time and range stuff, I'm usually as far as the ADA standards. I'm I'm usually 90% range

Scott Benner 22:06
between 70 and 180.

Kevin 22:08
Yeah, exactly. And it takes a lot of work and vigilance. And it's like a part time job, you don't get a day off of the way I kind of see it. It's also made me a much healthier person. I'm super, super, you know, concerned with, I raise all my own meat. We Yeah, we raised our own pork chicken in Turkey. We have layer hens that give us eggs. And that's kind of fun. So I pay a lot of it's ate a lot of meat and vegetables, I still avoid carbs. I don't eat starchy vegetables are not much in the way of sugar. And I have to tell you in grains,

Scott Benner 22:49
I'm forever confused about how things come together. Yesterday, my interview was with a woman who owns a farm in Washington State. And, you know, cattle, pigs, chickens. And as she's saying that to me, I thought, Oh, that was interesting. No one's ever said that to me before. And 24 hours later, you're like, Well, you know, like, we raised our own poultry. I'm like, wait, what? How was that possible?

Kevin 23:16
Chicken are quick and easy. They're about 10 1011 weeks, and they're done. The pigs are about six months. I've never done beef because I don't. I'm pretty active in the winter. I love to snowboard. And when you want to grow beef big, you have to winter them and I don't want to spend my time mucking out stalls and taking care of

Scott Benner 23:33
doing all the big animals. Have you always done that? Like what else

Kevin 23:37
is new? Where I grew up in like the Metro New York area? I'm what you call a hobby farmer. I'm a Flatlander that moved to the mountains. And it's been about 10 years.

Scott Benner 23:47
Wow, that's crazy. So did you see when kids in the city and you moved everybody?

Kevin 23:53
We Yeah, we lived actually out in Utah for a while in the desert because there are bigger mountains out there and more snow and fun stuff and rock climbing and all that we moved back east to get closer to grandparents that we couldn't get to relocate. Right you spend all your disposable income visiting family and not vacationing, right? It's a different, right. So you came bearing fruit. So we came back and we're foodies. I'm married to. I'm married to a French Canadian, right? I'm Italian. It's like foods or religion in our house. And so I was at a friend's house and we had this chicken dinner. I was like, Damn, it's the best chicken I've ever had. Right? And it wasn't like the actual recipe. It was like, Man, this is like, tender, juicy and flavorful. And he's like, Yeah, we grow it. I'm like what? And he wasn't from like a farming background or anything. And I was like, wow, so I figured it out

Scott Benner 24:50
right now. My father would tell me that his dad worked at a place where at the end of the week, this is a long time ago. Obviously you if you were Well, that we your bonus was a live chicken on Friday. Wow. So my, my grandfather, who I'd never met would apparently come home, he tossed the chicken over the fence, like into the yard, and my grandmother would come out. And you know, these are not butcher it, they, she'd ring. She'd wring its neck and pluck it and make it. You know, my dad would tell me that, and we were just far enough removed. Like, I'm your age, I'd be like, I don't know what you're saying, man. Like, that's crazy. But it was like a regular part of his life. And so,

Kevin 25:34
I don't I do the butchering. I don't do the slaughtering. I hire a couple of people. I did slaughter my own pigs once or twice. It's a lot of work, honestly. And I'd rather be doing other things. So

Scott Benner 25:44
yeah, well, that's interesting. So you live in a place where you can have somebody come to your property to do it, or do you take the animals to them?

Kevin 25:51
You can do it either way. But I have people come to us and just take care of it.

Scott Benner 25:55
I'm fascinated by that. Okay. Alright, so how are you managing? What are you are using a pump? Um, yeah.

Kevin 26:02
So you know, thanks to you. Honestly, I found looping. Oh, no kidding. So I became a looper with the old Riley link with the little screw cap covers on him. Yeah. And then, so so that's what got me into the pumps, I found a diabetic educator that convinced me she's like, you might even be able to cut your insulin down with a pump. Because the long acting might, you know, my honeymoon was waning with the insulin production. So I started using this at the same time I found looping. So I'm like, I'm gonna do this. And all together. I got looping. And by then I the new, the new endo situation I was in, had classified me as a type one. She's like, you're just not producing insulin. So you might as well, I'm just gonna say you're type one. You're really a one and a half. Right?

Scott Benner 26:50
Did they use the word Lada? Yeah, they

Kevin 26:53
did. But yeah, so I've been looping ever since I'm on an orange link now. And I am just, I've been sort of off the reservation for a while, as far as looping goes for information. And I just realized, I got the email that the arrows is going away at the end of the year, they're not going to make it or whatever anymore. And I just learned that the what is it the dash, right means you don't need to carry the Reilly link or the orange line,

Scott Benner 27:22
you could you could get dash pods and loop three, and you'd be you'd be able to do it. That's what Arden's doing now.

Kevin 27:28
And I haven't updated my loop so long, because my, my Mac laptop got so old, it won't update to the new operating

Scott Benner 27:36
system. That way, you're gonna have to pack up the wagon and go into town and find another one.

Kevin 27:40
I have to well, you could I guess you could force update your Mac, it may run a little slower. But I've found that like I actually again, thanks to you, I hired Integrated diabetes to teach me how to use and set up my link. Really Riley in my looping because I didn't want to deal with it. I'm like, got too much going on. And for young kids and just life going crazy.

Scott Benner 28:04
And it was working. And it's working. Right. So yeah, it's

Kevin 28:07
working. Working. Great. Working. Great. Good. So I'm going to switch to the new loop three and the dash system and not have to carry the link around which will be nice. Yeah. And see how that goes. You know,

Scott Benner 28:20
you know, it's interesting, because you have a, you have a slower way of talking. So you're drawing me into your pace. And it's giving me more time to think about what you're saying. And this is probably more than you care about, about what's going on in my head. But there's a reason I'm telling you. I don't normally spend time thinking, oh, there's a guy and he has four kids and a wife, and he raises his own chickens. And his health is where it is partially because of something the podcast did. It's too heavy to think about. So I usually just roll through it. But I don't know there's something about the conversation with you that's allowing me to slow down and feel it and I'm having a much more like emotional response to what you're saying than I usually do. I'm usually just like, ah, yeah, that's great. Good for you. And we're happy. We're glad glad it helped, you know, I don't know what it is. Maybe also, I don't usually do video. So like looking at you is obvious, but like humanizing you more. And you know, yeah. And I'm and I'm sitting here and I'm like, Oh my gosh, like I did a thing and this guy's life is better. And it's just very it's I don't know how he's, I guess the only thing is I'm coming up with like, I'm having my having trouble. Like, you'd think that would be something I got past this is like the ninth year I've been doing this but

Kevin 29:38
yeah, I know. I look at a guy like you. I can remember hearing I think your podcasts I don't know, five years ago or whatever. When I started looping and you were like, I want to your taglines back then was like, I need you guys to do this so that I can stop doing this podcast. I forget exactly what you were saying. But

Scott Benner 29:58
well, yeah, you guys I'll figure it out, then I could stop doing this. And, but then more and more people came, you know, close to 300 people a week join the Facebook group. And they're just, it's just new people constantly, like coming in the podcast, it leapt up this, it's pretty consistent the way it happens, like you get a Well, not everybody does. But I get a surge in December. And then I get a leap in January. And so every year, it jumps up. But I swear to you that in 2023, I saw an increase of like, 3000 downloads a day, which is significant, you know what I mean? Like, just a Yeah, because I think what happens is, I think the end of the year comes in, everybody kind of gets into the holidays. And they say to themselves, like, I'm gonna like when the New Year hits the calendars a big part of how people help take care of themselves, which I know is obvious, because there's new year's resolutions. I never really believed in that till I saw how the podcast grows and where it grows. It's pretty interesting.

Kevin 31:01
I think, honestly, that's a historical thing. Right? Looking back, even even before New Year's resolutions, were saying, I think there were just celebrations at the end of the year that created feasts. Yeah, yeah. And there was tough times of the year when people were scrounging

Scott Benner 31:18
it's like, Hey, we got through, now it starts again. Now it's time for me to address things. So anyway, long way of saying, I don't see how I can possibly stop making the podcast. Apparently, I'm gonna have to make it, you know, right up until the end. But I enjoy it a lot. So that's fine. And we do find new things to talk about, like, I got a little behind on content for Jenny. So Jenny, and I are we're making a new series. So I don't want to start putting it out till I have enough of it where I know I won't miss a week. Right? So so I didn't have like a management kind of episode this week. And I contacted Erica, she's the therapist that comes on who has type one? And I said, Hey, can you come on and talk about guilt and shame. I have this post in the Facebook group where people have been really open about how they've experienced that, let's go through those. And so we recorded that yesterday, I put it up last night, which is not the norm for me. And this morning, there's a gentleman in there talking about like a revelation he had from listening to that, and it's just Oh, it's just very interesting to see that you're there are other ways to help people with diabetes that aren't necessarily, you know, Pre-Bolus thing and that kind of stuff.

Kevin 32:28
You know, I have to tell you, bringing up guilt and shame that I was certainly full of that, right? Because you feel like you're failing on your mission. If you throw yourself out there to your kids, I'm gonna take care of this and then you're not getting the results you want or you don't know what to expect. Right? I'll tell you one of the biggest things that helped me was stumbling into that diatribe organization. Sure. Right, and that Adam Brown had put that book out for free the variables book right yeah. Oh my word that so many so many pieces to that. I felt like how is every endo in the world not handing people this book? When you go in Bright's, why am I getting that silly food values book? I first get diagnosed

Scott Benner 33:19
he took him It took me a minute to come up with it. But Adam's book is called bright spots and landmines. That's right, right. And he's a type one he's been on the program he wrote the book and diatribe distributes it for free. I think

Kevin 33:32
they used to be amazed if they still didn't think you had to pay like four bucks for shipping on what did it I'm looking at right now. Really helpful. You know,

Scott Benner 33:41
free PDF on Amazon for six bucks Kindle for to listen to an audiobook audiobook free on diatribe or purchase it on Audible Amazon or iTunes. You they I mean are obviously motivated to just put it in people's hands. A same thing for Canadians, UK, Australia. There's links here diatribe.org gets right at the top.

Kevin 34:01
Yeah, that and reading, you know, just read them on their daily or whatever, their weekly email, there's always good inspiration that they've put out. But that book, more than anything, I think really helped me deal with some guilt and shame issues around it. That's excellent.

Scott Benner 34:16
Yeah, he loved to know that. That organization is run by some really smart people.

Kevin 34:22
I emailed him and thanked him and I even got like a list. I was like, I'm gonna try and help you put your book out there. I mean, do I can build email campaigns email and though offices and tell them about this resource. I you know, I started evangelizing it as best as I could.

Scott Benner 34:39
That's lovely. What do you do for a living like what kind of

Kevin 34:42
work? I am a corporate recruiter. Okay.

Scott Benner 34:45
So, you know,

Kevin 34:46
I was I was an old traveling sales reps in the outdoor industry for a long time. And when when the family started getting bigger, I needed to get off the road and I found recruiting

Scott Benner 34:57
so you know how to reach people digitally, and Yeah, it's not as easy as people think. No.

Kevin 35:05
It's usually a numbers game. There's a little bit of persuasion.

Scott Benner 35:09
Yeah. Yeah, with luck. I get cold emails all day long about everything. And there are we

Kevin 35:18
all we all do this you live in a cave for that life. I want

Scott Benner 35:21
to be on your podcast, I want to, I'm a coach, I have this, I have this, I want to sell it like I gotta get on. Do you? Can you? Can I have an ad? Can I do this? Here's what I want to sell. Like, it. Just it's and my point is that there are moments when I'm deleting No, man, I'm like, I feel bad for these people. Like, I know how hard they're trying and then and but you're just like, well, this isn't right. I don't even have time to tell them that. And then if you do tell them that they take that as like, like a crack in the doors. Then they come back and they sell you again. I'm like, Oh, God, I was just trying to be polite. Alright, I'll stop that. But no, that's so did you have any luck doing that like contacting officers didn't

Kevin 36:00
get far down the road. I was in between jobs on I had reached out to and I didn't get too far. I mean, with with all the all the endo people I brushed up against I think they were really excited about it. They had heard about it but didn't, you know, like you they get assaulted with a million promotional approaches people come here to hear my dear My take on it. And what a difference it made to me was was really I think

Scott Benner 36:32
it's personal. Yeah. i People say to me all the time, like you should get the Pro Tip series or the bulb beginning series and the like doctors hands on, like, you've you know how to do that. Go ahead and do that. I think I've come away understanding is that you mentioned, it's a bit of a numbers game. And you know, I believe in the rule of 10s. Now that I have a podcast a lot, you know, you've got to reach 100 people to get 10 people to click to get one person like that, I believe in more than anything, but also just that things are are spread most effectively by real people telling another person about it. It's just, it's just the way it works. So I don't think there's a shortcut where I think everybody would be everybody's business would be amazing. And everybody would be rich if there was a shortcut to spreading information. So anyway,

Kevin 37:15
yeah, absolutely. Well, I have to say another thing that brought me huge comfort was when I first got the CGM. I remember after like a week with that thing, I got a Dexcom. I think it was a G five, then I can't remember. And I'm on the sixth now. And I was just like, why isn't everybody given one of these upon diagnosis? This is the most educational piece of equipment in the world. Like it's almost, I was pricking my finger like 10 and 12 times a day. It's like you're creating biohazard blood, like, you know, like, this is disgusting. Who wants to be near me? Right? Like, this is crazy. And you know, I'm just trying to figure out what, what makes my stuff go up or down or sideways? Yeah,

Scott Benner 38:02
yeah, the finger sticks are like when you need an accurate number. There's nothing better than an accurate meter. But sure, you're just sticking throughout the day, you're trying to imagine what a puzzle looks like, and you've got 10 of the 100 pieces of it. And it just, it just ends up being more confusing. Right? You know, because then you see, shadows, you're like, why don't I was 180 here, and I'm 70 over here. And then you make assumptions about what happened in between? And you really have no idea. So yeah, it's tough. Well, I mean, cost is obviously, and the way the healthcare system set up, right, but I think you're right, like just from an intellectual perspective, like, somebody should say to you, oh, my God, you have diabetes, this meter that you attach to your body, this glucose monitor, and that should be the conversation right there. It's going to show you what's happening. And over time, we're going to learn how food and insulin impacts you. And we're gonna make adjustments based on this information. Nothing more important than this. And instead, it's anything but so, you know, for most people.

Kevin 39:03
Yeah. I mean, it proves to me like when I don't get enough sleep, how much more insulin resistant I was, I was suspicious of that. I had heard about it, but then you see the numbers and you can Are you and there are days that I'm stressed. I have a lot going on or whatever, right? Yeah. times in my life. When I'm more stressed out, I can easily track the insulin resistance. I'm like, oh, yeah, look at that. I gotta hit it harder.

Scott Benner 39:26
I think it's interesting for people to hear it spoken about, simply that way to just the idea of, like, you know, I don't know what happened. You know, you hear people say all the time, like, I did the same thing I did yesterday, and now today is different, but they don't see everything. Like for instance, yesterday, I slept eight hours and today I slept five hours or today, I'm afraid that you know, we're all gonna go broke and die because I can't afford that. Um, you know, work is stressful and you know, all the stuff that comes with it. And then you see a 40 point rise in your blood sugar. And, you know, I don't bet See, it's brilliant. Why are you able to figure all this out? Like, what is it about how your brain works that leads you to making these like leaps, and then trusting them because I think other people see this stuff, but they don't. Sometimes they don't put it into practice, or they don't believe it. I don't know the way to say that exactly.

Kevin 40:17
My wife told me early on, and the longer I've sort of been saddled and been a type one, I get, she said, You know, I don't think you understand how lucky you are. You've got resources, right? I'm not eternally wealthy, but I'm a middle class guy, and I've got decent insurance, and I'll pay the piper for the rest of it. And then I understand, I've always been sort of a closet nutritionist, and I've always been sort of a little bit fascinated by that. And I've always been into my lifestyle. As far as being active. One of those continual improvement, kind of, nothing's ever good enough personality. You're always trying to problem solve and make something 1% Better somehow or another?

Scott Benner 41:05
Yeah. Well, I think that for me, it's, I'm obviously was motivated by my daughter's health, but at the same at the same time, I'm not good at just like, well, I guess this is good enough. Like, I don't I don't have a, I don't think I have a mechanism that stops me and just says, you know, sit down now it's okay. You know, we

Kevin 41:25
could take the next year off. Yeah, we

Scott Benner 41:27
got three quarters of the way there. Let it be.

Kevin 41:30
I've touched a million people I skip, skip it. I just mean

Scott Benner 41:33
even in like in her in her personal life, like, you know, you have a problem and you get like, oh, like when I saw the a one see when she was little, almost touched nine. And then we got it from eight to seven. Like I didn't see seven ago I did it. I was like, Well, were six. And then, you know, when I saw six, I was like, well, where's five? Right? Obviously, what we're doing is working like, let's just keep tightening the screws and see what you know, see what we can make happen here. Whereas I think, Amy, you mentioned you know, like institutions, the other you know, recently too, like if an institution tells you a sevens okay, then you get to a seven you go good. I'm done. Yeah, that's it. You know,

Kevin 42:11
another thing that I had a big influence on me was I bumped into that Dr. Bernstein book, I forget the title of it, right. But he's a guy that sort of instilled in me, you know what? I might be type one. But I have every right and every ability to normalize my blood sugar. Right? Like, there's never been a better time. There's so much technology. I mean, there's ice cream that tastes like ice cream. Chocolate that tastes like chocolate. The sweeteners are better, right? Like, the technology can inform you, it can take care of you while you're asleep. I mean, there's so many, but I was like, I believe diabetics can normalize their blood sugar. Some of us it's harder than others, for sure. But it can be done. Right. You know, that's kind of my mission. Well, I'll

Scott Benner 43:02
tell you, early on making the podcast what, what I felt like I saw more than anything, was that I had to get the information to people. And they needed to hear it without hitting some sort of a roadblock that would make them say, we'll forget this. You don't I mean, like, and I hear and I chose the idea of understand how to use insulin, and you could probably Bolus for almost anything that is does not mean I think you should like eat a half a gallon of ice cream tonight when you're like I'm gonna have an after dinner snack. Like I don't eat does not mean that I think you should have nachos and burgers and you know, fry it and live and live off of it. Yeah, and live off it constantly. I think what it what it means to me in my heart is you have a burger, like an throw some fries with it. That's great. Not every day like like, you know, like once in a while. And so I think I got, I think in some people's minds, I was the guy saying, eat whatever you want. And here's how you Bolus for it. Which is what I'm saying.

Kevin 44:06
That wasn't that wasn't your tenant though. No, no, no, it was just

Scott Benner 44:09
understand how to use insulin. But some people take it as well. I can eat whatever I want. And you can by the way, but there are going to be there's retribution coming if you decide to eat in an unhealthy way constantly. And so when people I think there are some people listening to podcasts, who would have heard you say, Oh, I read Dr. Bernstein's book or probably thought like, oh, Scott's probably gonna say something that I don't give it. Like, if you want to eat low carb. I think that's, that's amazing. You know what I mean? Like, whatever works for you. But let's not lie to ourselves about what's working. That's all. Like, if it's working, it's working. But, you know, if you're, if you eat a giant pancake at IHOP and your blood sugar's 350 for five hours afterwards, then that's not working.

Kevin 44:52
You know, it wasn't because he didn't sleep last night. Yeah, right, right.

Scott Benner 44:55
And don't get me wrong. I can Bolus for IHOP I don't know when the last Some I've been there is but like, I could figure it out. And maybe maybe everyone else could to just don't settle for less than healthy and use some sort of excuse to make it okay.

Kevin 45:13
Yeah, I'm with you. What I figured out from sort of your messaging was you kept it so sort of elegantly simple was like, it's timing and amount. Right? If you read Adam Brown's book landmines, right, there's a million he's got whatever 42 factors affect blood sugar, which is great for inquiring minds want to know that. But when you simplify it, the two things, right? Most people can digest that they can figure out alright, well, I take a little more I take a little less, or I take it earlier. Alright, take it later. Yeah. What what do I do when I do take it later earlier? Kind of, it's my

Scott Benner 45:53
expectation that you can't just say, like, I'm sure that I could sit down and come up with a list of things. And if you did all of these things, you would have considered every possibility, but that's just not how this works. You know, they mean, like, can you imagine like unfurling like a, like a scroll at the, oh, you know, what this could be? I did have a cold last week, like, you know, you're getting so,

Kevin 46:17
right, right, you'd have some giant matrix of different influences on your blood sugar, right? So

Scott Benner 46:23
you put the things into the podcast, and so that hopefully, people sort of pick them up, almost unknowingly. And so that when they get into a situation, maybe it occurs to them, and they go, oh, you know what this could be I'm not hydrated, or like, you know, whatever, it ends up being like, I don't know, I'm stressed out, or blah, blah, blah. I just, I want to say, I want to say the things enough times, in enough different ways that as many people as possible have an opportunity to absorb it come away with something that will help them. So I don't know. Hopefully, that helps. Because you've said a couple of things in your conversation, that I was like, oh, that's important. And I hope people hear that. But I mean, if I if I got you, if I got a hold of you, and I said, Hey, Kevin, just come on for five minutes. Tell me all the important things, you know, you wouldn't write couldn't do the conversations, what leads to it? You know, so, anyway, how do I let's say I want to have a chicken and I want it to give me eggs. Is that the thing I can accomplish in my life?

Kevin 47:23
Easy. It's easy. It's so strange, right? So get this chickens are born with every egg they're ever gonna lay. It's all about how quick you squeeze it out of them. No kidding. They need a certain amount of daylight to do it. Okay, right. So if I don't have where I live is pretty far north. And so if I don't have enough daylight hours, I have to put a light source on farm. And it doesn't take much. There's you know, like even Hank Williams said, Oh, my cells, backyard. You know, backyard coops you could build a coop no bigger than a dog house. You know, each chicken lays roughly an egg a day and they're good for three to five years as far as mine.

Scott Benner 48:01
My neighbors aren't going to hate me. Not unless

Kevin 48:04
you unless you have like 20 or 50 of them, right? They don't smell that bad. They'll scratch around your lawn. We have a bunch of dogs. We love animals. We have three dogs, and three cats. They eat all the insects like we basically stopped getting fleas and ticks.

Scott Benner 48:19
No kidding. Kevin, what

Kevin 48:20
about ticks especially? Yeah,

Scott Benner 48:21
Arden's calling me and she's got to go to urgent care for something. Give me a second. I apologize. Hold on. Hey, how are you? I am but I'm paused. What do you need? There's a church across the street, apparently, where you can park. You might have to go around a big block and come back again. Just keep Alright, so put it back in your nav and follow it again. Okay, and there's no street parking. Then let's find the church address for you. Because maybe that'll help you get to it. Okay, and there's a church there and you can't just turn into it. To take your time. Okay. All right. All right. I'll be done recording probably like 20 minutes. Okay. Go get checked in. By. Sorry, Arden has. She's an art school. And she's been drawing for like a week straight. And she woke up yesterday and her neck was really stiff and her shoulder was stiff. And she's like, it was bad, but it was okay. And she's like this morning I woke up and it feels like there's a rock in my shoulder and I can't turn my head and we're like, alright, well, you might need like a muscle relaxers, something like that to help you out. So this is her going to urgent care for the first time on her own. And she's not good at street parking. So she's like, there's no street parking. I can't turn my head and the place across the street. They said we could park at the church I can't figure out how to get into and then just all of a sudden she goes oh wait, I'm in. I almost killed everybody. But I'm in here now. I'm like okay, she's having it now.

Kevin 49:54
It is it is beautiful to hear your little tales. I almost feel Like I've heard her grow up a little bit listening to the podcast for years. Right? And that's strange having an 18 year old, I totally get it. Yeah, it's they call you and they're like, What do I do?

Scott Benner 50:11
And it's this morning, the text comes this morning, Hey, are you guys awake? And I said, I am. Are you checking on us? And she goes, Oh, my neck hurts. And we're like, in that feeling, Kevin, like, she's, like, 13 hours away. She's like, you know, I know she can handle this, like, she'll be okay. But she's never had to before. So she's working that out too. And, and that, that horrible feeling of like, Oh, if I was there, I can help her. And so, you know, I've just been trying to walk her through it. And I actually had a moment this morning where I thought, I felt kind of grateful. Like, it's interesting. I have no, I have no religious background, but I'll talk. Like, you'll, you'll hear me talk and think that I must. But I felt really grateful this morning that just all this technology existed in regards to like communication, like how quickly we were able to talk to each other. And then, you know, if texting wasn't adequate, we could look at each other. And like, you know, it's just really, it's a big deal. Like, because it 15 years ago, my parents would have said, or excuse me, all those years ago, when I was Arden's age, my parents would have been like, I don't know, figure it out. Right? I don't know what to tell you. Get an Amen. Now. It's like, oh, do this. There's a place up the street, you can go,

Kevin 51:25
let me look on Google Maps, I see that green sign over there on the right, exactly the Street View, and

Scott Benner 51:31
she goes, but that they don't take insurance. I said, that's fine, just pay cash, and we'll submit it to the insurance later. And even that, like being able to say that is a big deal. You know, so, anyway, she's gonna be fine, but it's,

Kevin 51:45
it's like they need they need to figure some stuff out.

Scott Benner 51:49
Oh, 100% Oh, my God, that one, cuz that's the other side of all this is that this stuff can make everything so easy. That nobody knows how to like, get into a scrap and, you know, throw some hands with life and get through it. You know, it's been very good. I was even happy. I miss my son a lot. But I'm happy that he moved out because he's, he's having experiences and figuring things out,

Kevin 52:12
spread his wings and learn how to fly on his own. So

Scott Benner 52:15
what it is right now speaking of learning how to fly the chicken won't fly away. So that I don't know worry about but I do need a offense.

Kevin 52:22
Yep, you need a fence dairy, your fence needs to be about four feet high. I wouldn't put a rail on top of it because they'd like to perch and they'll fly up to the rail, okay. And they scratch around and they pack all the stuff eight little leafy green things and they eat little critters. And they fertilize, right, so you'll have beautiful green grass.

Scott Benner 52:42
That's it. And I get a free egg. Once did that. Yeah, that's right. That's right. All right. I'll do it. It's fun. What do I buy a chicken? Chickens are us that's not a thing, right? Does Amazon have them?

Kevin 52:52
There are places that mail order the chicks, you have to raise them or you go to like, if you Google feed store, I don't know where you live in. more rural areas have feed stores. If you have tractor supplies near you. That kind of store typically has like spring chicks that they sell. And they're only a couple of bucks each and you buy a little. You buy a bag of feed for them and you have a water and that's it. You feed water and make sure they got a heat lamp when they're little for a couple of weeks. And they

Scott Benner 53:21
can live in the cold in the winter and all that. Yeah, they don't need a living room or carpets or anything like that.

Kevin 53:28
No, though. I have a wood chip floor for them. They live in a barn. That's amazing. All right. Yeah. You gotta get your eggs sooner. Right? If it's gonna be below zero, you better go pick those eggs up before dinner. They're gonna free solid because they stopped laying on them. And then they go to roost.

Scott Benner 53:45
Oh, no kidding. And they're gonna like pull out their feathers and go crazy ever because I don't know what to do. If that happens.

Kevin 53:51
I don't keep roosters. roosters are the bosses. They tend to create what they call a pecking order. And they'll pick the less desirable ones. So I just keep a bunch of females around and just that's how we do it

Scott Benner 54:07
just occurred to me. I know what Tractor Supply is because of Yellowstone. Do you watch Yellowstone? Cool? I do not. They do not. Tractor Supply seems to be the biggest add supporter of Yellowstone. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah, that's interesting. Because you said Tractor Supply. And I'm like, I know what that is. But why don't I know what that is? Alright, it's fun. So Kevin, is there anything we haven't talked about that we should have?

Kevin 54:30
I don't know. I think we covered a lot of ground. I was just like I said, really grateful for what what you've done and shared with the world and how much it's made a difference to me and I just wanted to be part of that. Give back a little bit.

Scott Benner 54:43
It was very kind of you. I appreciate it. I find it in the end. Most people want to come on and just to spread what they've learned or what they've been through. And it's just it's really valuable. So I appreciate you taking the time to do it. Thank you.

Kevin 54:55
You bet, man. You bet. Hold on one sec. Thanks again.

Scott Benner 54:57
Oh, no, it's my good work is my My pleasure. Hold on one second.

About Kevin coming on and giving us that great interview. Thank you so much, Kevin. And thank you, us med for sponsoring this episode of The Juicebox Podcast once again 888-721-1514 or us med.com. Forward slash juicebox. Whether you use the phone number or the link, you're going to reach people. We're waiting for you Juicebox Podcast listeners to contact them. Don't let them just sit there wallboard. 888-721-1514. For us med.com forward slash juice box. If you're interested in what's going to happen on episode 1000s of the podcast, stay tuned.

I've been using an editor for the podcast recently. It just got so far behind and I found the perfect fit with a really professional, great person, somebody who's involved with type one diabetes, and just a great fit does wonderful work. Anyway, I was talking to rob one day. And I said, Is there anything you could do about the horrifying audio in some of the Pro Tip series actually, like the first 15 or 20 episodes are kind of janky. And Rob did an amazing job on them. So for Episode 1000, we're going to rerelease the Pro Tip series, the diabetes Pro Tip series from the Juicebox Podcast, starting in Episode 1000. And I'm gonna put them out in order 1001 23456 all the way up, there's 26 of them. Now I know what you're thinking, Scott, you're gonna release the podcast 26 days in a row like that. I'm not. But I do want to keep the episodes together, numerically. So what I'm going to do is starting with Episode 1000, I think for the first week, you'll get the first four or five episodes of The Pro Tip series depending on how the calendar lines up. And then when we get to the weekend, I'm going to put out all of the episodes over the weekend. So if we get out, you know, the first four then the next 21 are going to come like every couple of hours over the weekend, fill up your podcast player, you can listen to them or don't listen to them. But the idea is that in the future when people are trying to find them, and we're referencing where they are, there'll be together episode 1000 Episode 1026 Is the diabetes Pro Tip series. Anyway, the audio is way way improved. It's Rob's a magician. I think you're gonna love it. If you've listened to the Pro Tip series already. I'll tell you what listening through again, is never a bad idea. I listen to them. Sometimes. They remind me about stuff. And if there's a person in your life who you've been thinking about telling about the podcast, this might be a really terrific time to introduce them. Once there was a time when I just told people if you want a low and stable a one C, just listen to the Juicebox Podcast. But as the years went on, and the podcast episodes grew, it became more and more difficult for people to listen to everyone. So I made the diabetes Pro Tip series. This series is with me and Jenny Smith. Jenny is a Certified diabetes Care and Education Specialist. She's also a registered and licensed dietitian and a type one herself for over 30 years and I of course, am the father of a child who was diagnosed at age two in 2006. The Pro Tip series begins at episode 210 with an episode called newly diagnosed are starting over and from there all about MDI Pre-Bolus Singh insulin pumping, pumping and nudging variables exercise illness, injury surgeries glucagon long term health bumping and nudging how to explain type one, two, your family postpartum honeymoon transitioning all about insulin Temp Basal. These are all different episodes, setting your Basal insulin, fat and protein pregnancy, the glycemic index and load and so much more like female hormones and weight loss. Head now to juicebox podcast.com. Go up in the menu at the top and click on diabetes pro tip. Or if you're in the private Facebook group, there's a list of these episodes right in the feature tab. Find out how I helped keep my daughter's a one C between five two and six two for the last 10 years without diet restrictions. If you have type two or prediabetes that type two diabetes Pro Tip series from the Juicebox Podcast is exactly what you're looking for. Do you have a friend or a family member who is struggling to understand their type two and how to manage it? This series is for them seven episodes to get you on track and up to speed. Episode 860 series intro 864 guilt and shame episode eight six Denine medical team 874 fuelling plan, Episode 880 diabetes technology episode 85 GLP ones metformin and insulin and an episode 889 We talk about movement. This episode is with me and Jenny Smith. Of course, you know Jenny is a Certified diabetes Care and Education Specialist. She's a registered and licensed dietitian and Jenny has had type one diabetes for over 30 years. Too many people don't understand their type two diabetes, and this series aims to fix that. Share it with a friend or get started today. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast.

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#988 Diabetes Myths: You Have the Bad Kind

A brand new series examining the myths surrounding diabetes.

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 988 of the Juicebox Podcast.

Jenny Smith and I are back today with another diabetes myth episode today we're going to discuss the myth that there's a good and bad kind of diabetes. 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. If you'd like to hire Jenny, she works at integrated diabetes.com Set diabetes for 35 years she's a dietician a CTE, she's wonderful, you'll hear integrated diabetes.com Speaking of good deals, use my link drink ag one.com forward slash juice box. And when you do, your first order will come with a free year supply of vitamin D, and five free travel packs of 81. You can use the offer code juice box at checkout at cozy earth.com to save 40% off of your entire order. And if you go to us med.com forward slash juicebox you'll be getting a special link just for Juicebox Podcast listeners. And you can get started with us med Alright, let's get to the show shall we?

This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by touched by type one. Now touched by type one is a fantastic organization helping people with type one diabetes. And their big event is coming up on September 16. I will be speaking a number of times that day at the event as will Jenny touched by type one.org. And I believe there are still tickets available. The tickets by the way are completely free. Touched by type one.org. Head over there now. Get some seeds come out and says today's podcast is also sponsored by the contour next gen blood glucose meter contour next.com forward slash juicebox. Get yourself an accurate meter. Get yourself the contour next gen. Jenny Hey, how are you?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 2:20
I'm great. How are you?

Scott Benner 2:21
I'm ready to do another diabetes myth. This one is that you have the bad type. Oh, okay, let's figure out what this means.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 2:31
I'd also like to know what the good type is. Oh, great. I'll take that guy.

Scott Benner 2:35
I think the good type is the opposite of the bad type. There you go. Isn't it fascinating how people want to compare things? Right? It's everything is a comparison, if you have this kind of diabetes, and that person has that kind of diabetes, one of them must be better than the other one. Let's figure out which, by the way, I'm going to skip to the end for you. And neither of them are gonna type it. But let's find out what because you

Jennifer Smith, CDE 3:01
have to choose I guarantee 100% of people would be like, No, I'm not gonna choose either. Thank you for giving me an option. Yeah, I

Scott Benner 3:09
don't want either of them. Thank you. Okay, people ask me all the time. Do I have the good diabetes or the bad diabetes? And the next person says, so type one. Is that the good one or the bad one. So now people with diabetes are like, Well, which one do I? I didn't know. Okay, now. Oh, you're a type one. That's the bad kind, right? Because you can't have sugar. I could never do that. I hate needles. That's a whole quote from somebody.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 3:41
That one just drives me especially when it comes from. I've had a lot of parents who have actually brought that up, you know, where a friend or somebody has said, Well, you know, good for you. I'm so glad that you can do that. I totally, I couldn't take that needle. Or I, I couldn't do that to my child. I'm like, Well, you know what, you worked really hard, hard to have this wonderful little person in life. I guarantee that if they said that you had to like jam a needle into the kid's brain every day to live. You would do it. Yeah. Yeah. Right. I mean, you would

Scott Benner 4:14
do exactly what everyone else does go into a private room, go like this for a second. And then walk out and do it. Like and then Shaklee shuts your mouth and get going. My boss said to me, Oh, you have the bad kind of diabetes. And this person is a type one. And they said the first thing that popped in my head was Oh, I thought I had the good guy. And he goes I'm just kidding. But that's a thing somebody like just felt comfortable saying to them. When I was misdiagnosed as a type two, the doctor said at least it's not the bad kind.

The contour next gen blood glucose meter is at During an easy to use, it has Second Chance test strips, which help you to not waste strips, these little beauties, these little second chance test strips, like try to imagine you touch some blood. And I'll know your hand slips. And then you're like, Can I do it again, you can second chance, go back and do it again. So if you don't get enough blood the first time you go back and get more second chance. Now why is that a big deal because it does not affect the accuracy of the test, or waste those test strips. Contour next one.com forward slash juice box. Now here's the kind of the great thing about contour. These meters very well may be cheaper in cash like just out of your pocket than they are through your insurance. Which means you can just go to my link contour next.com forward slash juicebox. Click on the Buy Now button and have a have a meter and test strips just sent to your house and save money. Money savings, get out of here. Why would we want to do that? You may be thinking but Scott, I have a CGM. What do I care about my meter? Well, my daughter has a Dexcom G seven. And we use the contour meters every week. Contour next.com forward slash juice box. And I know you can just think I got a meter I don't care. But accuracy is super, super important. Especially you might be I don't know you might be calibrating your CGM. You want that meter to be accurate. Maybe your CGM got knocked off or it's busy warming up or something like that. You need an accurate meter forget need it, you deserve it. All meters aren't created equal. But you have a choice, you get to pick the one you get, you don't have to take the one that doctor gives you use my link contour next.com forward slash juicebox, go check out the full line of contour meters, they're all so accurate, easy to use, they have a bright light for nighttime viewing, you're gonna love them, we've been using them here forever.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 7:01
And I wonder if that comes from comes from the idea that maybe type two is still seen as the potential of lifestyle management where it doesn't include medication or injections or pomp or what appears to be more work than someone with type, right type one versus type two. But we know enough today to say that both of them can be very difficult to navigate. Both of them include really hard things to learn about managing and navigating this kind of medication versus that kind, you know, food and life variables, they cross over from type one to type two. So again, we all know there's not one good and one bad type. But

Scott Benner 7:56
I'll say this too. And this is where it becomes really dangerous. If these are physicians saying this to you, then their expectation is if I'm sussing through all this correctly, if you don't have to take insulin, then it's better. Except I just got done editing an episode that's going to go up soon with a type two, it's going to just be called type two stories, Nancy, and in and Nancy is 58. And she's had type two for a very long time. And what we figured out while we were talking was that if a decade or more ago, someone would have given Nancy insulin, her life would have been significantly better. Right? Probably and and just her story went that way, right? But if a doctor is thinking, that whole thing, like if you're not shooting insulin, it's not as bad, then that's why I think at times, you get the idea from people that using insulin is giving up when you have type two. Like don't give up and use insulin. Do another sit up, have another watercress salad, you know, like, like, be miserable for another year, don't lose any weight and have your a one C not go anywhere. And then I'll just tell you it's diet and exercise when it's over. All right. Yeah, I think that's maybe the biggest problem that comes out of this that I mean, besides saying to somebody, Oh, do you have the good kind or the like, can you imagine going up to somebody and saying cancer? Did you get the good one or the bad one? Like no, it's cancer. Thanks. Yeah.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 9:19
It's almost it's that's not a terrible comparison. Because as we know, today, there are many cancers that are more likely respond to treatment and more likely to definitely, completely, you know, deal with and navigate and you end up on the other side without cancer any longer, right. And then there are cancers that are more difficult, but if you look at the broad scope of cancer, like cancer is crap.

Scott Benner 9:46
Yeah. The way I feel like it's like if I had a car if you and I were in a car together and we had an accident, and I broke my leg into places and you broke your arm in one place, would someone stick their head in the car and go Oh, you got the good brake and He got a bad break. I mean, we're all we're all in the same goddamn car accident. Again, this is terrible, thank you, it doesn't need to be judged against itself, which is, which is really over and over again, what pops up in some of these episodes is just people's desire to make something bigger than the other thing faster than the other thing worse than the other thing like it just play, I gotta look into that. Is there like a real like, psychological thing that people? Why do people want to make comparisons all the time, I'm sorry, you talk like,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 10:29
Oh, I was actually going to say use, you just mentioned the mental component. And I was going to bring up the fact that what they're looking at from an outside perspective of not having lived with it, is the idea that again, type two may look, quote unquote easier, because they see less technology in use, they see less rules, so to speak in management, than somebody who has the pump or the insulin pen or the injections to do or you see them doing a finger stick or whatever it might be. But the mental management of diabetes in general, is not easier in either capacity. It's not easier in either case. Right? So I think that's a misunderstanding, again, from the general public of easy versus hard. diabetes is a struggle.

Scott Benner 11:25
Yeah. Well, listen, my brother has type two diabetes. And until recently, he has been doing everything a doctor has been telling him and it's not going anywhere for him. And it's been incredibly frustrating, and difficult, and all the things that you would consider. I mean, you could apply to type one, like I've heard people with type one, say the same things that he said, Just because he doesn't need insulin, or I don't know, he can't get low, you know, it doesn't mean that it's not a horrible struggle for for somebody else. Right, by the way here that I'm going to, I'll talk to Erica about this and one of the Mental Health ones, because I think that this comparison thing, it needs to be looked into a little bit. So I mean, not that it's, you know, a great surprise. But, you know, there's a lot of research here from psychological institutions about why people compare themselves and other things to each other. And

Jennifer Smith, CDE 12:18
I think that would be a great conversation with her. Honestly,

Scott Benner 12:21
I'm gonna do that. Anyway. Neither of you have the bad kind of diabetes. And both of you had the bad kind of diabetes. I mean, like you, if you're just pregnant, if you just get gestational for a few months, and you make a baby and boom, it goes away. Right? Did you not have a bad kind of diabetes?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 12:43
100% 100%, you had a kind, that still meant that your pregnancy experience was shifted in a way that it would not have done. So for that duration of time, you had a lot more to navigate and take care of does that make it the better kind? Because technically, for the majority of women, it does go away. Post delivery? Yes. Again, just a it's just a crappy thing to say to somebody. Just don't say it. What was your

Scott Benner 13:15
lips? You and I talked before we started recording, I'm gonna fold in something we said into here. Sure. So we were talking about you know, people having different issues and finding fixes for them, maybe a supplement or something that they could take that really helped them. And we started kind of philosophizing between each other about why some people bemoan that, oh, I have to take this every day now. And why some people think, Oh, my God, I found an answer to my problem. Right, like, and so I think that's kind of like that mindset is important to add into this episode, because you have diabetes, type one type two, lot of just it doesn't matter. You have diabetes, to think of it in any way, shape, or form as the bad kind, I think is, is not good for you

Jennifer Smith, CDE 14:08
know, from a mental standpoint. No, it always makes you feel like as you said, I take a supplement to help with this problem. Oh, my gosh, I have to take the supplement. My My opinion is, gosh, I take supplements for things. I'm glad I found something that works. I'm like, great. I'll take the supplement exam to deal with whatever this was, right?

Scott Benner 14:28
Because the the alternative is to say, and you and I, we talked about this earlier, like I don't know where this idea comes from. But people expect perfection. They expect these they expect things to work the way they were promised. God knows who's promised that to them. Right? But like there's this expectation of there's a pristine kind of health and if I don't have that it's something's been stolen from me and everyone else has it. But I mean, how long do you have to pay attention that nobody has it? Like, everyone's body is not perfect. And so yours. Yes, diabetes is like, I'm not trying to minimize what diabetes says, obviously. And it's a lot and it can be difficult. But if you can find the answers to it, I think the next kindest thing you can do to yourself, is to stop saying good or bad in your head. Just absolutely, yeah, this is my graduation. And this is how we take care of it.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 15:20
And I think, you know, we talked previously, too, about the idea of a pump fixing everything, right. And I think unfortunately, sometimes the idea that that idea of perfection, may start from some clinical professional, being able to say, hey, you know, let's look at starting a pump, because this will take care of this, this and this, their perspective is lacking the day to day with what it really takes to have diabetes and navigate it. Yes, a pump may help. It may make things more positive and a little bit easier and whatnot, but it's not going to be perfect. So I think that needs to also be understood in terms of there is, there's nothing that's perfect.

Scott Benner 16:08
Yeah, I guess I'm gonna take I was joking earlier, I'm just gonna take it back. You don't have the good time. You don't have the bad kind. You have diabetes. This is what it requires. You are, I think, lucky enough to live in this time. Because, you know, you don't have to go back 100 years, it's 100 years ago, this would have just killed you. You wouldn't be alive. 110 years ago, my daughter wouldn't exist. All these people listening wouldn't exist. And now you do. It's insane. Yeah, I mean, it's, it's really, it's a wonderful gift to live in this time. If your pancreas is gonna stop working so far in history.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 16:42
Right now is the time for that to happen. Yeah. And obviously, hopefully it doesn't. But if it does, yes, absolutely.

Scott Benner 16:48
And I think it's hard to keep that in mind. Sometimes when you think, well, this isn't what I expected, or what I wanted. And it's not a you know, it's not perfect, but you're, you're alive, and you know, you're functioning and you have every opportunity. And I know that the big stuff is the doesn't get explained correctly by some people's doctors, and they struggle, but that's why we put all this here. So hopefully, that doesn't happen to us, you know, as few people as possible. I didn't mean to bum us out at the end here because No, the bad kind is. I mean, what people say is so ridiculous. It almost borderlines on funny. So anyway, I appreciate you doing this with me,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 17:24
of course yes.

Scott Benner 17:34
I want to thank Jenny for coming on the show today and remind you that she works at integrated diabetes.com. And of course, let's thank touched by type one, not just for the good work they do. But for sponsoring the Juicebox Podcast you really should even if you're not coming out to the event, go check out what they're up to at touched by type one.org and find them on Facebook and Instagram. Lastly, I'd like to thank the Contour Next One contour next one.com forward slash very informative page. easy to navigate. To find out more make your purchase right

if you were a loved one has been diagnosed with type one diabetes. The bold beginnings series from the Juicebox Podcast is a terrific place to begin listening. In this series, Jenny Smith and I will go over the questions most often asked at the beginning of type one. Jenny is a certified diabetes care and education specialist who is also a registered and licensed dietitian and Jenny has had type one diabetes for 35 years. My name is Scott Benner and I am the father of a child who has type one diabetes. Our daughter Arden was diagnosed in 2006 at the age of two. I believe that at the core of diabetes management, understanding how insulin works, and how food and other variables impact your system is of the utmost importance. The bold beginning series will lead you down the path of understanding. The series is made up of 24 episodes, and it begins at episode 698. In your podcast, or audio player. I'll list those episodes at the end of this to listen, you can go to juicebox podcast.com. Go up to the menu at the top and choose bold beginnings. Or go into any audio app like Apple podcasts, or Spotify. And then find the episodes that correspond with the series. Those lists again are at Juicebox Podcast up in the menu or if you're in the private Facebook group in the feature tab. The private Facebook group has over 40,000 members. There are conversations happening right now and 24 hours a day. You'd be incredibly interested in. So don't wait. So don't wait. Check out the bowl beginning series today and get started on your journey. Episode 698 defines the bowl beginning series 702, honeymooning, 706 adult diagnosis 711 and 712 go over diabetes terminologies. In Episode 715, we talked about fear of insulin in 719 the 1515 rule, Episode 723 long acting insulin 727 target range 731 food choices 735 Pre-Bolus 739 carbs 743 stacking 747 flexibility in Episode 751 We discussed school in Episode 755 Exercise 759 guilt, fears hope and expectations. In episode 763 of the bowl beginning series. We talk about community 772 journaling 776 technology and medical supplies. Episode Seven at treating low blood glucose episode 784. Dealing with insurance 788 talking to your family and episode 805 illness and ketone management. Check it out it will change your life. When you support the Juicebox Podcast by clicking on the advertisers links, you are helping to keep the show free and plentiful. I am certainly not asking you to buy something that you don't want. But if you're going to buy something, or use the device from one of the advertisers, getting your purchases set up through my links is incredibly helpful. So if you have the desire or the need, please consider using Juicebox Podcast links to make your purchases

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The Juicebox Podcast is a free show, but if you'd like to support the podcast directly, you can make a gift here. Recent donations were used to pay for podcast hosting fees. Thank you to all who have sent 5, 10 and 20 dollars!

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