Scott Benner 10/19/23 Scott Benner 10/19/23

#1044 Glucagon Story: Heather

Heather's child has type 1 diabetes and this is their glucagon story.

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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 1044 of the Juicebox Podcast.

Today on the podcast we're speaking with Heather. She's the mother of a 14 year old child living with type one diabetes. And Heather is here to tell us their glucagon story. 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 are becoming bold with insulin. If you'd like to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com, all you have to do is use the offer code juice box at checkout. I get my joggers, my sweat shirts, my sheets and my towels all from cozy Earth. They have something for everyone. It's quality, it's comfortable. And it's 40% off with the offer code juice box. It feels like everybody's using a G one. And if you're thinking about starting when you use my link, you'll get five free travel packs in a year supply of vitamin D with your first order that link drink ag one.com forward slash juicebox. And don't miss the completely remastered diabetes Pro Tip series. It's right back there and your audio app. It begins at episode 1000. You can also find it at diabetes pro tip.com and juicebox podcast.com. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by us med us med.com forward slash juicebox. Why would you go there to get your free benefits check and to get started with us med You can also call 888721151 for Arden gets her Dexcom and on the pod supplies from us Med and they have much more. We'll talk about that just a little later.

Heather 1:56
I'm Heather. I'm the mom of a type one diabetic diagnosed. It'll be three years ago in August and he will be 14 in September.

Scott Benner 2:05
Your son was diagnosed when he was 11. He's 14 now. Yes, sir. I'm asking the same question of I'm doing this four times today I'm asking the same question every time at diagnosis. Yes. What was explained to you, if anything about glucagon?

Heather 2:23
That it was for emergencies. Um, if you know his sugar was really low, he was unresponsive. And we had to do something right away. That was about it. Okay.

Scott Benner 2:34
Did you get the caveat at the end? But don't worry, this will never happen?

Heather 2:39
Oh, well. Yeah, of course.

Scott Benner 2:41
Not great. It's like they say to you, Hey, listen, these are the pedals in your car, the one on the right makes it go now the one in the center makes it stop. You'll probably never even need that like, right, right? Like, just if you take your foot off the gas quickly enough, you'll just cruise into like I don't. So my point around that always is to give me something and say this is very important. You might be in a life or death situation, when you need this. It's incredibly important for you to have it on you and for you to understand how to use it. But don't worry, because that'll probably never happen. And I get it. You know what I mean? Like I get that they're trying to like assuage your fears. But for me what that did was it when Arden had a seizure, I was like, I don't know how to use this.

Heather 3:24
Right, right. Well,

Scott Benner 3:26
he said we were never gonna need it.

Heather 3:28
So well. Yeah, like at this but at the same time, they kind of tell you like it's not this big a deal. You're not going to need it. But then also they terrify you of Lowe's. Yeah. I mean, I was terrified what I was going to do if he ever got low,

Scott Benner 3:41
the messaging is inconsistent as what I'm saying. Yes, yes, I would agree. Not helpful, but you did. You did? Sounds like you got a clear explanation of it. Yes. How long after that explanation? Did you receive glucagon in the house?

Heather 3:59
Like that we actually got the prescription and carried it Yeah. We I think we went home from the hospital with it.

Scott Benner 4:06
Well, okay, great. So you've got it right away. Do you have enough? Is it like spread throughout your life once at the school once in the bedroom? Or do you have we had

Heather 4:15
to, and so he kept one in his bag that he kept on him at all times. And then we had one at school.

Scott Benner 4:23
Did you spend any time explaining it to other people or did you find yourself thinking that's never gonna happen? It's okay.

Heather 4:29
Nope. I never explained it to school. I mean, obviously he knew how to use it. But if he was passed out that wasn't going to be very helpful. Yeah, no, I never explained it to anybody.

Scott Benner 4:42
What kind of glucagon that they give you in the hospital.

Heather 4:45
His was the in like, injection like we didn't have to mix anything.

Scott Benner 4:51
Okay, was it G voc or was it a different brand?

Heather 4:56
I think it might have been G voc.

Scott Benner 4:58
So they gave you Jeeva Could at the hospital? Is that the one you had with you when the event happened? Yes. You told me about that.

Heather 5:08
So he had taken too much insulin 70 units too much to be exact. Well, hold

Scott Benner 5:14
on, let's slow down. How did that happen?

Heather 5:19
So he, I, whether he was really, truly trying to overdose or not, I don't really know. But he was very frustrated, he'd been high, we couldn't get it down. He suffers with a little bit of anxiety and depression anyway. But you know, we've never really had an issue with it. And he was just kind of going through a lot of different stressors. And so we were at home, and I was actually supposed to go to dinner with family. He was going to go with us, but didn't want to. And so I was like, okay, cool, you can just stay home. And then he got really upset about that. And I'm, I probably check stuff too much. So like, I kind of always have a pretty good idea how much insulin is in his pump. And so I knew that he'd had about 70 ish units in his pump. And I decided not to go to dinner again, have no idea why just kind of that feeling that I shouldn't leave him alone. And then about 1015 minutes later, I heard his pump beeping. And so I went in and asking, you know, why was your pump deepened? And he told me because it's out of insulin. I said, What do you mean, it's out of insulin? You've had 70 units in there? And he said, Yeah, I know. I took it all. Oh, wow. And so you know, he has a 25 unit Max Bolus. So that means he had to, you know, multiple times put that in. And at that point, that was not important. What was important is I had to figure out what to do about this 70 units of insulin he had just taken. And you know, he's a teenager. So his ratios are pretty high. So I mean, I think I figured out that, like his carb ratio at the time, I think was around like seven or eight. So you know, I did the math figured out how many carbs would have to account for 70 units of insulin. And I just started shoving stuff in him, he'd had a bottle of Gatorade, a bag of Skittles, I literally gave him a spoonful of sugar at one point. And we were still double arrows down. And so I was like, I don't I don't know what to do. And I didn't want to take him to the hospital. One because, you know, was he going to make it to the hospital before something happened. And I felt like I could maybe manage this at home. I am a nurse practitioner. So maybe sometimes rely on that a little bit. But then I remembered I had a glucagon. And so I pulled it out. And I was like, we're gonna see if we can figure out you know, like, how many points glucagon will raise your, you know, your sugar or whatever. We never did figure it out. But I figured the worst thing that's gonna happen is if you go too high, then we'll deal with it. But I'd rather that be the case, then, you know, yeah. So I mean, he was still awake and talking and he was alert, and, you know, he knew what was going on. And so I injected him, actually, and I think I did it in his arm. And it stung really bad. And, you know, that it helped pretty significantly, I did have to give him another bag of Skittles. And about three hours later, he ate an entire pizza without taking any insulin. Because even after we had leveled out he kind of started to drop again. Yeah.

Scott Benner 9:14
Like a hole like I'm sorry, like a, like a pizza pie from like a pizza place pizza. Well,

Heather 9:19
it was a frozen pizza. Like, yeah, yeah. So and again, teenage boy, that's not a ton of food for him.

But yeah, I mean, he, he had to eat a whole pizza. We, I think by the time it was all said and done, he'd had like, two and a half bags of Skittles, you know, a couple of Gatorade. Like I said, a spoonful of sugar, the glucagon and a pizza.

Scott Benner 9:48
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Heather 11:53
Yeah, that was part of it. Yeah. All right.

Scott Benner 11:55
Did you ever figure out why you did it?

Heather 11:58
Um, so after everything kind of settled down, and I knew he was, you know, alive and going to be okay, we kind of talked about it. And what he verbalized was, he just wanted a break. He, he didn't want to die. He just wanted to go to sleep for a little while and not have to deal with any of it with diabetes with what's going on in his life. Like, just, you know, many of it.

Scott Benner 12:25
Was he not aware of what would happen with that much insulin? No, I

Heather 12:29
think he could we talked about that. And I think he thought that he would just go to sleep for a little bit. Like he would just kind of, you know, pass out for a little bit and he'd wake up and be fine. I don't he didn't realize that. He he literally could have died from it. Yeah, this

Scott Benner 12:45
is something I um, I think that we don't do enough. But I gave a talk recently to 400 adults, 200 of them were poor type ones. And the other half of them were their spouses. And I was doing a talk about supporting your spouse with type one. And I started just talking about like, you know, just make sure you know how to handle emergencies was another good thing to do. And I was just like, it just made sense. To me. I thought it was a throwaway line, like, you know, make sure your kids know when to call 911, stuff like that. And the number of people in the room who are like, whoa, whoa, what do you mean? It shocked me? Yeah, like, you know, like, I'm like, Well, you know, insulin can make your blood sugar too low. And if, if you have too much insulin, it could take all the glucose out of your blood. And that glucose is what your brain runs on. And your brain will shut off like a light switch and you can't turn it back on again. And right. And people were just like, why? And yeah, it just it, it resonates with me. I wonder how many people don't know that. We're had that thought of your son like, well, I've heard they said, I'll pass out. That'll be nice. I'll pass out first, right.

Heather 13:56
Yeah, I mean, that's really kind of I mean, you know, obviously after that, like, he did, you know, we went and saw a psych doctor, and he went to therapy and all that. And that kind of the conclusion from that was is that it wasn't a suicide attempt in the sense that he was consciously trying to end his life, but it was a I'm just tired of dealing with this, and I don't want to deal with it anymore. I just want a break from it. And him not realizing that that would have killed him. That's amazing. That's like, I mean, I, I, you know, not so much anymore. But when this happened, it's been a little over a year ago. I just kept going over and over in my head. What if I would have left and gone to dinner? Yeah.

Scott Benner 14:42
No, I mean, I don't want to tell you but he would, right.

Heather 14:45
Yeah, yeah, I know what would have happened. And you know, that I've been in that situation multiple other times, and I've always left like I've always just been like, you're fine. You can stay home because he was kind of thrown a fit. And so I was just like, you know, Any other time I would have been like, I'm still going to dinner like you're not going to ruin my plans. But for whatever reason that night, I didn't, I stayed home. And I mean, thank God I did.

Scott Benner 15:14
No kidding. Good for you. That's, that was well done for the whole thing he of course, I mean the glucagon and the way you walk through it and he did the math right away, which is something I don't think people think to do. They just I gave myself too much insulin. Instead of going, this is how much insulin I gave myself, and my insulin to carb ratio is this. So this many carbs will cover that insulin like?

Heather 15:36
Yeah, I mean, he and I, together, sat down and figured out like, you know, this is your carb ratio, this is how many carbs we need to make up for, you know, 70 units. And, you know, because he was a little high, so like, some of that was probably needed, you know, but definitely not 70 units

Scott Benner 15:52
in that sounds like, Wow, you did a great job. Good for you. He now what happens if his blood sugar gets too low?

Heather 15:59
He does. Yes. He. I don't know if it's because of that. But now he tends to run higher than I would like. I think, you know, because he doesn't want it to get low. But you know, it's the it's that balance, trying to find that balance. It's not, it's not easy.

Scott Benner 16:19
I think back all the time on to a story that I was told very, very early on, when Arden had diabetes. This woman's fairly younger child, you know, like, if I'm remembering, right, like eight, nine in that range, has type one, she has an older kid at 1516. And the child gets insulin for dinner. And she has to leave, can I forget she going shopping or something like that? She says to the older one, hey, remember, he's got to eat all that food, make sure he eats all that food because he's got insulin for Right. And, you know, the mom leaves, and the kid doesn't want to finish the food. Well, the 16 year old is doing their best to get the kid to eat. And it's not working. And so the kid kind of like, goes, you know, a little over the top and says, Look, you have to eat that or you're going to die. Right? And the kid goes, What do you mean? And he's like, we gave you insulin. If you don't eat the food, then the insulin is gonna kill you. And that was the first time that child ever heard that.

Heather 17:22
Yeah, yeah. I mean, definitely with my son. I mean, that was it never occurred to him that it could kill him. Yeah. I mean, you know, this is his medicine. This is what he takes to save his life to keep him alive. Right? It never, you know, occurred to him or really, I guess any of us to tell him that also, the opposite is true to do much of it can also kill you.

Scott Benner 17:44
You don't imagine your your Flintstones chewables are going to come to life and Right. Right, right. So yeah, the end of that story is the mother gets home from the shopping trip and the kids in a ball on the floor. Just inconsolable. And why did you never tell me this? Right, like so. I think we've always been very honest with Arden upfront. And and you know, we don't scare about it, but I just think she needs to know it would be like, I don't know, it'd be like putting someone in a car for the first time and telling them like, don't worry if it hits something, it'll bounce off. Like, cuz then you're like, oh, let's go. So well. Yeah. Wow. We did come through on a story. Jeez, that was great.

Heather 18:27
Thanks, it was, it was not fun. We are able to joke about it. Now. I tell him all the time that, you know, he has to be nice to me. I saved his life. And, you know, he's a he's a pretty good sport about it. I do still to worry sometimes. You know, I tell people like he walks around with a deadly weapon strapped to him. 24/7 like, you know, I know that sounds overly dramatic, but it really does.

Scott Benner 18:54
Yeah, I think there needs to be glucagon in places where you stop. You know, I think of schools a great example where you sleep on your person are these are places that I would want them to be. And I would also want people in those situations to understand signs, symptoms and how to use it.

Heather 19:12
Right? Yeah, yeah, I mean, it would be it would be nice.

Scott Benner 19:16
How did you find Chico crypto pen as a user to be?

Heather 19:21
I thought it was easy to use, but again, you know, I'm a nurse and so I'm familiar with how to give an injection and all of that. You know, I don't know how it would have been if I wasn't I mean, it's pretty simple like you just uncap it and darling.

Scott Benner 19:42
Yes. And then dark him.

Heather 19:45
Yes. And then he yells at you because it burns but yeah, I mean, I thought it was pretty easy. Obviously nasal spray the whole lot easier. Which we have also, you know, since this has happened When he got his nasal spray, like, we learned how to take it out and how to give it and I've made sure school knows how to give it and know,

Scott Benner 20:09
I think this thing is, like just part of it like, apparently, if you inject if you see the vaccine in your nose burns like hell on your nose to like, yeah, I

Heather 20:19
guess just Yeah, glucose in general like just so you

Scott Benner 20:22
know it's not glucose in the in the injection, you're not you're not injecting glucose, you're injecting something that makes your liver give off the storage that it has.

Heather 20:38
Okay, I don't think I knew that. So here, I've been a nurse 20 years and have a kid with type one and did not know that

Scott Benner 20:44
it's a completely common misconception, you are not injecting glucose you are injecting, I'm going to I'll actually get the breakdown. And I'll put it in this episode so people can really hear it. But you're injecting something that tells your liver Hey, you've stored glucagon in here, glucose in here and let it out. And that's what it does.

Heather 21:02
Yeah, that great, isn't that? Yeah, that is crazy. I mean, it's also good to know. But, you know, it makes you kind of wonder like, how long does it take your liver to figure that out?

Scott Benner 21:13
Well, the stores to how much does it take to like that, because you can't do it forever because of that, right? Because your liver will run out at some point. So and then it has to build back up again. And I don't know the answers to those questions, but I'll find out.

Heather 21:25
Yeah, yeah. Cuz I mean, I did you know, we had two pens. And so I did tell him that night, like, if it continues to drop, we're gonna have to do it again. We did it. We you know, I think all the food and pizza and all that kept him up. But

Scott Benner 21:39
you can definitely you could definitely do it twice. I mean, the last person I interviewed It was once, then twice more when EMS came. Wow. Yeah. To get them to get back to where they needed to be.

Heather 21:52
Yeah, I'm glad that I'm glad that I didn't. I'm glad we didn't get there. Right. Did you think that would have been scarier?

Scott Benner 21:59
Yeah, no kidding. Well, I appreciate you sharing this with me, that was a brave thing to do. And it's gonna help people obviously, understand better about why they want to have glucagon with them. So thank you very much. Absolutely. Talk to me. Alright, hold on, Heather. I'm recording again. Say that again.

Heather 22:15
Okay. I hesitated to use the glucagon. Because I thought this was only to use if he was like, passed out and couldn't talk to me. Like I had a moment where I thought I shouldn't give this to him. Because that's not where we're at. Very, but I didn't add, you know, I decided to, I'm just going to deal with whatever happens. I'm giving it to him. This, this is an emergency.

Scott Benner 22:41
I'm so happy you brought that up, because I have to jump on another call. And I'm glad we caught that. So thank you very much. I appreciate you going back

Heather 22:47
no problem.

Scott Benner 22:54
Well, first of all, I mean, we have to thank Kevin for coming on the show and telling us that story. If you have a glucagon story that you'd like to share, reach out to me through the website juicebox podcast.com. Another big thank you to us med us med.com forward slash juicebox number one specialty distributor for Omni pod dash and so much more always provides 90 days worth of supplies, and they have fast and free shipping. So I guess if you want your supplies, and you want them quickly, and you want to just click on an email to make them come 888-721-1514 or us med.com forward slash juicebox get started right now

I'm just gonna say this again. I'm now out of glucagon stories. I have a couple more people on the books but I found these to be very interesting conversations. If you'd like to be on the podcast, have a short conversation about a specific glucagon story please do reach out through juicebox podcast.com Don't forget to check out the private Facebook group Juicebox Podcast type one diabetes there's over 42,000 members in there at this point. fantastic resource. Don't forget the diabetes Pro Tip series has just been remastered it runs from Episode 1000 to 1026. There's actually a special add in there from should I tell you I'll just tell you a Sensia diabetes. You might not know that name but they make the contour meters. So contour next gen sponsored the remaster of the Pro Tip series. There's a really cool offer in there just for Juicebox Podcast listenership you got to check it out. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast.

#1043 Cruising with Rayma

Rayma has a daughter with type 1 diabetes and a son with five anti-bodies.

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Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends, and welcome to episode 1043 of the Juicebox Podcast.

Rhema is the mother of a child with type one diabetes and the mother have another child who has been called stage one type one by TrialNet. And on top of that Raima was misdiagnosed with fibromyalgia for 12 years when what she really had was something completely different. While you're listening today, 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. We're becoming bold with insulin. 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. When you use the offer code juicebox. At checkout, you will save 40% off of your entire order at cosy earth.com Get your clothing your towels and your sheets from cozy Earth and save 40% with the offer code juicebox. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by touched by type one, and their dancing for diabetes event is on sale right now touched by type one.org. Do you love dancing, the love helping people with type one diabetes, you're gonna love this touched by type one.org. Click on the Events tab, get your tickets, they will go quickly touched by type one.org. The podcast is also sponsored today, by the contour next gen blood glucose meter contour next.com forward slash juicebox. Get the meter that my daughter uses the one that has Second Chance test strips, the one that's incredibly accurate. Get the contour meter contour next.com forward slash juicebox.

Rayma 2:18
My name is Rima. I have a daughter who was 10 years old who has type one, she was diagnosed when she was four, I have a seven year old that TrialNet calls stage one type one. And he was 18 months old. They told us he you know would he had the highest likelihood of also getting type one and he's seven now and still has regular blood sugar. So we're talking to the endocrinologist about is it to live to live mass

Scott Benner 2:50
plasma, which I think is now 10 plays a map, which is called tz old now.

Rayma 2:55
T zeal that's a lot easier, actually. And so you're just about talking about that.

Scott Benner 3:01
You and I are talking on the same day, I put up an episode with a mom whose child was went through the whole Teasle clinical trial. I have to listen to that. Yeah. And back when they didn't, I believe it was double blind. So she didn't know if they were really getting the medication or if they were getting a placebo. You know, the kid had like some pretty amazing results. So she's pretty sure he was on the medication. It's interesting.

Rayma 3:26
We're really interested because he has normal blood sugars right now. But he has all the antibodies. And so technically, from what we've been told, when he turns eight, he'll be eligible. So it'd be like a real true prevention type of a situation versus early intervention.

Scott Benner 3:44
Yeah, they were just on I wouldn't usually do this. But last week, I have to find it for you. Episode 842 842.

Rayma 3:52
Okay, let me definitely listen to Lenny Ramos

Scott Benner 3:56
came on she's the CMO of prevention bio, they brought the drug to market and she talked all about it. They're doing talks about how they're going to use it or how they want to use it. Other studies they're trying to do like all this stuff, so might be interesting to

Rayma 4:12
Yeah, that'd be great. We're kind of like, we go back and forth. Because you know, you don't want to he still has normal blood sugar. So you just don't, you know, ya know, but everybody tells us it's just inevitable, it will happen, you know, sometime. And then to make things worse, we just all we avoided COVID This whole time until right before Christmas, and so he just had COVID as well. So I know that can be a trigger. So we're just trying to do all we can my daughter's diagnosis was a real blessing for him. And so many ways of him being able to know what his risks are and and since he's been three years old, I've been I've had him on Hydros, vitamin D and Dr. Sears omega threes that they use out of the study in Miami, and nobody else can come up with why he would have been able to lasts this long without

Scott Benner 5:01
getting it? How many of the antibodies does he have? He has all

Rayma 5:05
five right now, wow, at at 18 months old, he had three of the five, in the first one, he had two of the five, then he had three of the five and four of the five. And then through COVID, we stopped doing trial net, plus they got a little, it got a little hard for him once he was old enough to be aware that we were going in for the IV and all of that and just kind of the balance of being traumatizing for him plus the risk of getting COVID Going into the, you know, into the Children's Hospital. We just stopped and then because there's something to do now, what's the easy word for it t, tz yield, a tz yield. The my theme endocrinologist that's his daughter has started to see him. And so she's running the antibodies and everything. There, she just prescribed us a Dexcom for him. So we could see exactly what was going on. But I tested him, you know, periodically. And so far his blood sugar's have all been normal.

Scott Benner 6:03
Yeah. What is, I guess in your head? And you're married? Right? So, you know, the, the two of you when you're laying in bed at night, and the lights are off? Like, what's it like? Like, knowing like that, I mean, with pretty, pretty reasonable certainty, right? Your son's gonna get diabetes. So like, do you talk about that?

Rayma 6:25
Okay, so what's it like lying in bed? For for the two of us, Jason is, that's what he is asking. I worry, for sure. And I think about it, and I read a ton of what to do. And I think that's where I landed with the vitamin D and the Omega threes, it's the only thing I really looking at the studies have felt comfortable with, especially because he was so little, you know, I would go into the pediatrician. And they would ask me, you know, I tell him about him. And they would all look at me like I was crazy. And I even had to at one point had the trial net doctor called the pediatrician, because they were telling me like, I was giving him toxic doses of vitamin D omega three, they just thought I was nuts to be able to predict the fact that he would get it. Oh, I think they thought like, I was just projecting or something. But that's interesting.

Scott Benner 7:17
So your your pediatrician thought, like, there's a, there's a mom that comes in here. And she's, like, freaking out that a kid's gonna get diabetes, but how would she know that?

Rayma 7:28
Yeah, kind of they're like, Well, no, you can't predict that it's not genetic, you know, they weren't very knowledgeable, give it I do love the pediatrician and the office. But when I brought my daughter in, I had had her in multiple times over probably like the seven to eight months prior to her diagnosis for UTIs. And stuff like that. I mean, she was, you know, three and a half. So it was hard to, you know, at that point, it was hard to, you know, they would say, Oh, you have a new baby at home, and she's just wetting the bed because of you know, motional stuff or and I was traveling a lot for work then. So I sold pharmaceuticals and at some point genetic testing, and so I was gone a lot. And so people would say, Oh, the you know, she just hard because mom's gone a lot, you know, all the mom guilt. And then, right when we had, they're only two weeks apart, three years, but the two weeks apart. So we had a birthday party for both of them. She threw up that night, and it was like, three o'clock in the morning. And it was actual cake still. And I knew like I knew enough about medicine. I'm not a medical person, but I knew enough from always been in the medical field, selling things, you know, for almost 20 years. At that point, I knew enough to know like, you should digest your cake, you know, by then. And I just googled and googled and Googled, and the only thing that came up was Taiwan. So when I took her in for her four year checkup, I just was like, Please test let's just, you know, and I didn't realize at that point, it was just as easy as like me buying a glucometer and testing for blood sugar. You know what I mean? Because I was, wasn't as knowledgeable and, and they really pushed back and said, No, she's too young. We don't have anybody to sage in the practice that's diagnosed, and I just kind of said, Look, you're gonna put me out of my misery. Like, either you're going to test her here today, or you're going to tell me where to take her because I gotta go back to work tomorrow. And I can't keep thinking, right, you know, like, put the crazy mom at her ministry. About a half they left us in the room for about a half power. I was there with both kids by myself. And then they came in and she was like, Oh my gosh, you were right. And it still took me two or three minutes to understand. And I remember asking her, wait, are you telling me she has diabetes? Like they're Yeah, you know, you got to go home pack a bag and go to Chela.

Scott Benner 9:51
There's a an entire conversation to be had around the idea that someone at some point said your three year olds pee in the bed because you had have a job. And that's emotionally difficult for her. I'm like, That was fascinating.

Rayma 10:06
It was really, there was a lot of mom guilt in there. Yeah, a lot of people had a lot of opinions about that. But

Scott Benner 10:16
wouldn't it be nice diabetes? Yeah. Wouldn't it be nice if people's opinions were based on something other than the little thoughts in their head?

Rayma 10:23
Yeah, yeah. My mom and my mom and mother in law both had opinions that were sad. And you know, just a lot of friends said, people can do that, or and you go, and you take your kid to the doctor. And they say, well, sometimes their bladders just aren't that big. And I was like, but she was potty trained before. Yeah. And she was, she's very articulate extremely smart. So she always had been a good communicator. And sometimes she would tell me, like, I still wanted to stop playing, you know, and, and I had an accident, but then sometimes you could tell it, she just couldn't help it. And that's when I would take her and I was like, well, maybe she has a UTI. You know?

Scott Benner 11:01
I mean, in your story, the one assumption I kind of understand is, hey, listen, this lady's while their kid has diabetes. Now, she's freaking out that the boy has it. But But I don't Yeah, I don't know how the next thought isn't. But you know, she was right about the kid and the kid, then the daughter does have it. And it is a, you know, a thing that runs in family lines. So why don't we, it just everyone wants the same. Everybody thinks they know something. And they always want to say no and be right. It's not in

Rayma 11:31
this isn't a giant pediatric office. That's a really good very recommend. I really like my pediatrician there. And now they test every well check. All the way down. I think, too, because I was like you're doing cholesterol on these kids like the dragon testing for Taiwan. And I really pushed back like, come on, you're already pricking their finger.

Scott Benner 11:54
The cholesterol test on a little? Yeah, I'm

Rayma 11:57
like, This doesn't make any sense, you know, instead, but I did have to have the trial that Dr. Cole and I did have to bring studies in. And then they wanted, of course, to test him for levels. But I was already testing in various levels to that grassroots. Yeah. And so I knew like, that's how I figured out how much because I wasn't given a man, I still am given him a lot of omega threes and vitamin D, but his levels are in the high end of the range, not above the end. And you know, so far, I see only thing I can attribute because we've not done a carb low carb diet we've not.

Scott Benner 12:30
Well, you know, what's interesting, too, is when he gets COVID, I have to assume that you guys just go into a corner and go okay, well, this is it. Like,

Rayma 12:40
immediately. Yeah. And I've got my husband's more level headed and more calm. So he, he was like, it'll be it'll be fine. And hand foot and mouth was Hannah's trigger. My daughter. Oh, that's what my daughter had. Yeah, so that. That's stupid coxsackievirus. But they trialed it did call us. I think it was like March 3 of 2020. And said, essentially said hi to him. You know, he's little, and you don't have to have him in preschool, pull him out. And keep them at home. Because this has a high likelihood of triggering. So I do have to say that trauma out of Atlanta, and they were very doctrinaire, there was very thorough and called us from his cell phone on a Sunday.

Scott Benner 13:22
Oh, and was just like, hey, roll that kid up in a blanket, put him in the closet, because

Rayma 13:26
pretty much and then we just hid. And I, I had already been homeschooling my daughter. And so we just homeschooled and hid. And luckily, we had a great environment to do that. And then they got vaccinated. And we did that. And then we got that we, we thought, I thought we were good. I have autoimmune disease that we know now to which was fiber called fibromyalgia, by the doctors for 12 years until I had a first degree relative with an autoimmune disease, my daughter, and then all of a sudden they ran the right testing. And sure enough, it's autoimmune. And so, you know, her diagnosis is devastating, so many ways, but really has helped and been a blessing

Scott Benner 14:07
shined a light on it for a number of other people, right? It gets everybody thinking in the right direction.

Rayma 14:13
Well, and then all of a sudden, you're like, Okay, autoimmune disease. All right. Yeah. Well, my husband and I both have autoimmune disease on our sites and family. They're just not type one.

Scott Benner 14:22
Right? Right. Right, you know, then it all starts to make sense that you you have the fibromyalgia diagnosis for 12 years and what was really wrong,

Rayma 14:32
psoriatic arthritis and something called pots pots for that postural orthostatic tachycardia. Yeah. And I didn't know what was wrong. It took a number of doctors and a lot of time and effort and I don't work anymore because of that. But even when I was having a hard time staying with work, I didn't know how to articulate what was wrong because I had been misdiagnosed so many times and it wasn't to like really got it with the right doctors, but Yeah, her diagnosis really led to a lot of knowledge for myself for my son.

Scott Benner 15:05
We figured out my wife had hypothyroidism because Arden had diabetes. Yeah, she has a thyroid issue too. Right? rd. Arden does too. Yeah, yeah, actually, my family does but me my son has Hashimotos and Arden and Kelly that everyone takes a thyroid medication. As you heard earlier, this episode of the podcast is sponsored by the contour next gen blood glucose meter. But when you get a contour meter, what you're really getting is their test strips. Contour next test strips feature remarkable accuracy as part of the contour next blood glucose monitoring system. They're the number one branded over the counter test strips. And they of course have Second Chance sampling. Second Chance sampling can help you to avoid wasted strips, contour next.com forward slash juice box. Near the top of the page you'll see a Buy Now button it's bright yellow. When you click on that, you'll get eight options of places online to buy contour meters and test strips walmart.com Amazon Walgreens CVS pharmacy, Meijer, Kroger target Rite Aid, these are all links you'll find my link linking the link links below blink blink, blink blink. I'm just getting head over there. Now, won't you please listen, the contour meters are incredibly accurate. They are simple to use. They're easy to hold, easy to read, and they have a bright light for nighttime testing. Part of me wants to say that the second chance sampling is the biggest deal. But honestly, it's the accuracy. These meters are accurate. And I know a lot of people like to think well, I have a CGM. I don't need a meter. You do. You need a meter. You need to be accurate. You deserve it to be accurate contour next.com forward slash juicebox. Take a look at the contour next gen and the other meters available from contour. We use my links you're supporting the production of the show and helping to keep it free and plentiful.

Rayma 16:59
Oh, wow. Yeah. It's amazing how all of a sudden, it's like a light shines on it. And you go to the right doctor, and they're like, oh,

Scott Benner 17:06
yeah, when they start telling you like, exercise more eat right, do this. And you're like, I don't think that's the problem. Like, I'm just like, I'll tell you. I mentioned this to somebody the other day and I don't know if I talk about it enough but ardent takes T four and T three. Yeah, that you're brilliant to figure that out. Because Oh my god. We had to figure something out. She she couldn't stay awake. Like no kidding. In her in her year, her her high school yearbook we, you know, you buy a page to like, say congratulations to your kid, or maybe your kids are too young. But one day that school is going to hit you up for 100 bucks to put a picture of your kid in the yearbook when they're senior. And there's a really beautiful picture of her in the center of the page. And then all around her like nine different images are just cell phone pictures of her passed out on different odd surfaces. Like, like, face down on us, like on a stone countertop dead asleep. Or in the fetal position.

Rayma 18:05
That's real fatigue, like, yeah, people who have not experienced that don't understand that that's a level of fatigue, that's totally different.

Scott Benner 18:13
Art is not a like for anybody wanting to think that like art is not a lightweight. Like she's she's, uh, she battles. And so she'd make it all day through school, and then come home and sit down and just pass out, like for hours at a time. And you know, she would sleep all day and she couldn't get up early in the morning, all this stuff would happen and, and we figured it out once. And then she had a side effect from something else. And we attributed it as my fault. I attributed it to the T three by mistake. And so she stopped the T three for a while until we figured it out again and put her back on it but I'm going to tell you right now like she shuts off like a wound downclock without Saito mill. It literally is the only reason why she can she can do anything. So

Rayma 19:03
that's why it's so good that she's able to live a full life

Scott Benner 19:06
now. College she's going crazy. Yeah,

Rayma 19:10
I wish there was a like an actual auto immune doctor, you know, that is that would be more comprehensive because I think it's really frustrating to have to go to multiple different doctors, and then try to put the pieces of the puzzle together yourself. Yeah. And that is the parent. Well, that's

Scott Benner 19:26
definitely the game. The game is definitely you have to figure it out for yourself.

Rayma 19:31
People don't understand that. Like I'll talk to people that don't have autoimmune in their family or that have a simple auto immune Marcin bought immune and they just they think I'm not so I just don't talk about it a lot. Yeah. Well, here's because and then having multiple autoimmune diseases like how could you have all these and I'm like, wow, yeah, sucks. But it is what it is. You know, it's true.

Scott Benner 19:54
Yeah. And by the way, most of them have overlapping symptoms. So Yeah, fatigue is a huge one, you can look at the symptoms and be like, This could be any number of a half a dozen things. You know,

Rayma 20:07
I don't know how many times I was tested for thyroid, that was the only thing that they really looked at. But I was active. I was working, I was traveling, I had a successful career, you know, all of that and had autoimmune disease. But I would crash I would go Go, go, go go. And then I would completely crash.

Scott Benner 20:24
Yeah. Sometimes you will yourself a little bit. But it's even when you're doing it. You're exhausted. And exhausted. Yeah. And exhausted in a way that I don't think people understand. It's not like you worked all day and you're tired. Like it's a different. It's a different thing.

Rayma 20:39
I call it it's the all just take a little tiny nap while we're stuck in traffic right here. You know, like the irrational thinking you're on the freeway. stop and go traffic. You're like, I could just sleep for just like, you know,

Scott Benner 20:51
yeah, I'll shut my eyes while I'm driving. I'll be okay. Yeah,

Rayma 20:54
it'll be fine. It's like all this irrational, because you're like, well, well, well, well, yeah, that's probably not gonna be alright. If people have been fatigued when they're pregnant. It's like, just a ton of people. It's pregnancy tired. Like, it's really tired? Like, you can't? Well, are you willing to sleep anywhere?

Scott Benner 21:09
Very recently, I compiled a list of autoimmune issues from listeners, which is extensive, and you'd be like, shocked at some of the things that people are like, Oh, I have this and you think like, I've never heard of that before. And, you know,

Rayma 21:26
there's like 100, and something different autoimmune disease, right? There's so many, and they can be as you know, as some things that are fairly benign, and some things that are life threatening. It's really a scary

Scott Benner 21:36
Yeah, Jenny and I are gonna do like a defining series about them. So that, you know, if they feel like, Oh, I'm having these symptoms, they can move to that episode to try to like figure it out. Because I don't know another way you're supposed to figure it out. I spent so many years and so much time, like sitting in this chair, staring at this wall thinking like, Okay, what's happening? This is what's happening to her and Googling and reading and looking at symptoms again, and asking her frequent questions and just, you know, it's a it's not a great way to have to live. So,

Rayma 22:08
no, it's a little obsessive. I totally hear that. And I still do I read everything about prevention. I read everything about causation. I read everything about strong management, and we do a lot with management. Having good numbers.

Scott Benner 22:23
Hey, for fun, I'm

Rayma 22:24
pretty obsessive about

Scott Benner 22:25
that. Tell everybody what the noises are back home where you are.

Rayma 22:29
I'm on a cruise. And I'm sorry about the noise. They're filling the bar. I found a quiet spot to sit but they're getting ready. It looks like to open the bar at noon here. So

Scott Benner 22:39
no, that's okay. I don't I wanted to I wanted people to understand what like what you went through to be on the podcast. So thank you.

Rayma 22:46
Yeah, we're in. We're in Jamaica right now at Port.

Scott Benner 22:50
Oh, nice. That sounds lovely. Is it?

Rayma 22:53
Well, we're not gonna get off the boat. But it looks lovely. And it's nice and sunny and warm. So I use your whole family on the cruise. It's just you and your husband? Oh, no, that would be so great. No, it's all of us.

Scott Benner 23:04
No kidding. So yeah. So you did not end up like, keeping your son in the closet. He's He's allowed out now.

Rayma 23:12
He's in the kids club. Yeah. Well, he had COVID. Yeah, we take care of it at that point. We've just had it. You know, within the last really what happened was we planned this for Christmas for the kids. Because we got no, we ended up getting COVID right before Christmas. So it made sense to, to go out and venture figuring we've all been fully vaccinated. And we've had it so we probably have a few months at least. You didn't get it again.

Scott Benner 23:40
Oh, I don't know if that's how viruses work. But good luck. And I but I think I do want to ask you about that, though. So sure. I mean, obviously you did everything you could, right. Like he's got all five autoimmune antibodies, like these markers are sitting there telling you this kid's like getting type one diabetes at some point. And you're doing what you can Yeah, you're supplementing the best you can COVID comes around, you're like, oh God get in the house. Like, you know, that kind of thing. At what point? Do you just like, is there a point where you just say to yourself, like, what are we doing? Like if he's gonna get him? Like, do you ever have that feeling? Like if he's gonna get it, let him get it or, or do you? Or what's my question?

Rayma 24:23
No, I think what you're asking is like, okay, maybe this answers it and if not, you can ask it a different way. But I think we figure everyday will prevent them from getting it is a is a win. And it's so labor intensive. And once it's there, it's there. You know, I guess we've resigned to the idea that all the prevention is worth it. If he buys him more time. Right now we have to he has to be eight before he can we yeah, we got to make it till May. But I think you know, my daughter goes through so much match, you know how it is especially, you know, between Dexcom and pumps, and then they, there's always problems. And so then you're doing shots, and you're up all night and all that stuff. So I think, I think that, you know, everyday that we can save him from having to go through that as

Scott Benner 25:20
you're just trying to you. So it is as simple as you're just trying to create more days without typing.

Rayma 25:25
Correct? Yeah, I just I think that's where I've landed. And, you know, it hit me really hard at our last endo appointment. She's great. We, I really love our, our endocrinologist. And she kind of said something to the effect of, I've just, I've never seen anybody go this long with antibodies and not to diagnosed. And it was like, really a positive. And then afterwards, it hit me really hard. And I really emotionally had a hard time for a few days, you know, just with the reality of it.

Scott Benner 25:55
Yeah. Is that because it felt like there's no way we can keep this going much longer if that's her feeling?

Rayma 26:02
Yeah, I was like, for lack of a better way. It was like, you know, sucks. Oh, I knew it sucked. But denial is a is a wonderful coping mechanism. And it was a compliment. I mean, she didn't mean it in a negative way. No. But but it was still like, afterward, I was emotionally like, like, my cousin had called me with something else emotional. And I just had to tell her like, I can't even talk to you. I can't even articulate what's going on with me right now. But I'm not going to handle anything emotionally. Well, for right, a couple days.

Scott Benner 26:32
If you're looking for support on your thing, all you're gonna get is the crying person on the phone. So please,

Rayma 26:38
it was exactly it was like, I'll apologize. And then I'll just start crying. Mad any like, please, in a couple days? I'm sorry. I didn't mean to make you mad do. Please. How much? Does that understand?

Scott Benner 26:52
How much of your bandwidth do you think you're giving up to keeping your son as safe as you can?

Rayma 26:58
I think autoimmune disease in general takes up the majority of my bandwidth just between myself, you know, Hannah, and Alan. But I think for him, I mean, I'm giving him the vitamins every day, we're constantly washing. I kept him homeschooled, you know, not because I necessarily wanted to, but because I felt like it was better for him with COVID and everything else. So I'd say maybe 20%. And then another probably 40% goes through type one,

Scott Benner 27:33
all I can think about is here's the one I'm imagining you've thought about this? Awesome. I'll tell you what I'm thinking about, you'll tell me if you've considered it, that there are so many people walking around who have not had antibody testing, who will one day get diabetes, but might not. But I've spoken to people who have gotten it in their 50s and in their 40s in their 30s. And like, Do you ever do that? I know you said earlier you think that the the efforts worthwhile? But do you ever think about what if this is in his head for the next 30 years? And he doesn't get diabetes till he's 40 years old? And we spent all of this time?

Rayma 28:11
Oh, yeah, we talked about all the time. And then I have a lot of friends who haven't antibody tested their families at all, and they have siblings or themselves. But I'm a I'm a like to know person. And I believe in science. So I you know, I sold science and genetic testing and everything. And I believe in it. You know, so I am a want to know person. And that's what I figured out over the six plus yours is because you know at first I was like What do you mean, you're not going to test your family? Like what do you mean? You have a younger siblings, older sibling, like it just seemed crazy to me. But then I figured everybody's personalities are a little different. And, you know, respecting those boundaries, but we just set. Somebody sat behind us at lunch yesterday and he was diagnosed at 44. Right? He's wearing a Dexcom and MDI, because it's not quite ready for the pump, because that's how I was like, well, when were you diagnosed? Because he said he's not ready for a pump yet. That's like, okay, so it had only been a couple of years, but he's not carrying around a glucagon. He's not carrying around. vaccine. He, you know, he's got chocolate chip cookies for his lows. So my eye twitch, you know, my eyes twitching while I'm talking to him. You know, and I'm writing I'm Tom texting them our cabin number. You ever ever an emergency starts throwing up through that? I've got got back see me and my room.

Scott Benner 29:33
Well, everybody manages differently. Everyone's understanding of it is different to I mean, honestly, if you can catch a low with a chocolate chip cookie, you I mean, my like, my first guess would be that he doesn't drop fast a lot. So yeah, maybe he's not on MDI, too. Well, maybe he's not using that much insulin. Like maybe yeah, maybe

Rayma 29:54
he's running high. Yeah. A lot of people run real high and that's, you know, different to I tend to I try to keep her no more on range. So we tend to have more lows.

Scott Benner 30:07
I'm certainly not here to tell anybody how to live. You can keep your blood sugar wherever you want to. But I also have had, you know, 100 conversations with people who thought that at 1.2. And now wish they could find a time machine. So, you know,

Rayma 30:22
well that and I figure she's gonna learn, you know, four years old, she's gonna learn how to manage, from how we manage. Yeah. And so I want to try to set the right example, you know, I mean, I know she'll rebel at some point, but hopefully she'll swing back to, you know, I want my one C to be as close to six are, as we can, you know,

Scott Benner 30:41
now, I know earlier, you said that. One doctor told you, they can't believe that your son's had these antibodies for this long and hasn't been diagnosed yet. But, but has anyone like from trial net? said how? Like, what's the longest they've seen somebody with five?

Rayma 30:58
No. And they're always like, they're always shocked when we talk to them, you know, because they gave him the highest percentage at 18 months old that he was greater than 50% to get it in the next five years. And that was when he was 18 months old. And that's the highest percentage, they'll quote. Okay, so they kind of just said he will. And you know, what he keeps asking like, well, when do I get a cell phone, and we always say, Well, when you get diabetes. So we tried to make it positive. There's any positive part in

Scott Benner 31:31
you know, kids getting into Instagram along with this diabetes. So

Rayma 31:36
Hannah's had a phone such an iPhone since she was five. So it's a little bit different, you know, of a thing. So 10 years old, she's pretty good with their phones, you know, and we just tried to make anything any positive joke we can make out of it for him. And, and when he says, No, I did diabetes, we say, well, we don't know, buddy, but you know, chances are really high and your sister gave you a great gift of knowledge. And we're gonna, that's why you take the vitamins, we're gonna keep monitoring you. And that's why you get blood draws, you know, we just try to be as honest as we can, so that he can be mentally prepared.

Scott Benner 32:13
But so by being positive, but how well do you think he's acting? Do you think he's handling it?

Rayma 32:18
Fine. It's the only life you know. So like, he doesn't, you know what I mean? We've been talking about it for so long. And he watches her and sometimes he pretends to have died. You know, he wants to be like his sister. So, you know, if there's an empty pen he's carrying around pretending he's giving themselves shots. He asked to put the Dexcom Yeah, well, okay.

Scott Benner 32:39
Sorry, that was that ice?

Rayma 32:41
Yeah, totally try it the guy. But the you know, I think he doesn't know any different. And, you know, he knows he doesn't want to get it. But at the same time, he pretends he has it. So do you think he pretends

Scott Benner 32:53
because he's trying to prepare himself like practice for what he's gonna need to do?

Rayma 32:57
No, I just think that you always want to be like your older sibling. You know, little.

Scott Benner 33:01
I don't know. I never watched my brothers want to be like me. So I'm not sure.

Rayma 33:06
I don't know. I'm the only child so I can't really talk about it. But I see that a lot of a lot of kids just really want to be like their older siblings. So here's my take. That's what I attributed to

Scott Benner 33:16
knowing that we're on a on a phone call with a guy climbing bottles behind us and I don't know you take all this with a grain of salt. But you're kind of tight Bay, right? Sure. Yeah. Like, like prepared and together. Yeah. I'll tell you right now. We'll never know. I think he's practicing. It might be Yeah, I feel like yeah, that sounds that's what it says. I mean, listen, obviously, I have no idea. That's how it struck me. Like, oh, he must be

Rayma 33:41
smart, too. So he might, you know, he might be subconsciously doing that. He's real smart. He's a little reactive. And you know, hard to handle. Sometimes there's always listen, but he's real intelligent. So

Scott Benner 33:51
he's a boy. He was a boy. Yeah, pretty

Rayma 33:55
much. Yeah. He's a boy. He's but he's real smart. I mean, and he gets things, you know, he's intuitive. Yeah.

Scott Benner 34:02
I like how we've, in the last 20 years, decided to label everything to the point where, like, people like, like, they're like, my son's got like, a lot of energy. And he's hard to handle. I'm like, yeah, yeah. Yeah, that happens a lot.

Rayma 34:19
It's true. It's really true. You know, we try to be patient with it and everything, but it's a lot harder than my daughter.

Scott Benner 34:29
Gotcha. Hey, did he just kill someone with a bottle of vodka?

Rayma 34:32
Now he just took his cart and walked out a little quieter until he loads up for the next round.

Scott Benner 34:39
I was like, he definitely he just comes someone over the head and he's dragging the body out now.

Rayma 34:45
That's hilarious. There's nobody back here yet. So we weren't able to find like a quiet ish place.

Scott Benner 34:51
No, that's fine. Also, you sent me an email that I never saw, which I'm assuming during that email, you might have gone like, you know, can we move this to another date and I just never respond. Aditya so I apologize.

Rayma 35:01
It wasn't a big deal because I knew from the other episodes that you don't respond to your email. So but and I understand that feeling of being overwhelmed by email, so I didn't really think about it. But then when I got the confirmation email yesterday, I was like, oh, okay, we'll try it.

Scott Benner 35:19
So you said you're not getting off the boat? Where all the boat going? And do you get off anywhere?

Rayma 35:25
We're thinking about maybe getting off tomorrow in Haiti, cuz they have their own little private island like beach, we just really wanted to get warm. Get out of the cold weather. And then, since we just had COVID, we wanted to do something, you know, because we had been so limited. So and we'd like to travel. So this seemed like we would try a cruise and see how the kids did. Or you liked it? And

Scott Benner 35:51
are they liking it? So far?

Rayma 35:53
Yeah. Yeah, we're just kinda like, eating, I'm happy not to cook and swimming. And like kids enjoying

Scott Benner 36:00
Can I tell you one of my activities, I have a cruise experience that I'll never forget. And it's the only memory I have of the entire time we were on that ship. It's a kid took us a baby pool. And then everybody packed up and ran away. And they drained the pullout, some poor guy had to wander in there and retrieved the poo. And then they cleaned it and filled it back up. That's my only memory of that trip. So that's for days. And as I think back on it, I can only remember that, but again, nothing else. I hope you have a Pat was the I hope you get a better indorama point. Yeah, better enduring memory than I have.

Rayma 36:47
Yes. So far. It's been good. We've got a couple more days and a nice kind of getaway for everybody. Yeah.

Scott Benner 36:54
Does your daughter have any, like, reactions to the idea that her brother's going to get diabetes? Does she ever talk about that?

Rayma 37:03
No, not really, you know, we've talked a lot about her, her giving us all the gift of knowledge, you know, kind of kept her positive. She really did. I mean, give him the gift, the knowledge so we could try to intervene and change some of the course of my, what I was diagnosed with and how my treatment and management went. So yeah, we just really try to keep it focused on that. And

Scott Benner 37:28
okay, no, I was just wondering if, if like it because if she had concerns, if she had concerns or thoughts about him, I would, I would jump to the conclusion that that would mean that those are the things she thinks about for herself. So I was just wondering if there any of that ever happened, was looking for some No, no, no.

Rayma 37:45
Okay. Nothing that she's verbalized. I mean, I think she has said to him it, you know, it kind of sucks. But then she's pretty quick to talk about then you get a cell phone and you get to eat all these treats. And there's always candy around because we didn't do any candy. We didn't know juice. None of that before. Oh, I just figured they didn't need to. They were little kids. And we ate really healthy.

Scott Benner 38:10
Do you still it just there just happens to be candy now?

Rayma 38:14
I'm mostly Yeah, I mean, we still eat pretty healthy. But we do. I feel like we're much more liberal now. Because I hate to say no all the time about food and make it even more weird. Because I think that you already have a weird relationship with food. When your family's rushing in the middle and I'd be like, Please drink this juice or hurry this yogurt, you know, and they're asleep. Like what? Who would have won the world? Nobody? 99% of everybody else like no, you can't have anything to eat till breakfast. We're like, just do.

Scott Benner 38:49
And most people will never eat a yogurt in their bed at 3am. That's for certain.

Rayma 38:54
Yeah. Or have your parents like be like, Do you drink this juice? If you don't drink this juice? I have to shoot you with this needle. Please drink that. Joe,

Scott Benner 39:02
do you have a lot of lows like that that are like, panicky or no.

Rayma 39:07
We do. We manage tide. And luckily, she's never had any adverse events like from having a low blood sugar. So she'll be you know, 40s and we'll just be up for a couple hours making sure it comes. Is that like just happened to us?

Scott Benner 39:26
Is it a fast drop to 40? Or is it a slow? Yeah, it is a fast drop.

Rayma 39:31
Yeah, like we've done something wrong. Like dammit, what did I do? I gave too much or something. But the Pannu pumps are great. I mean, yeah, I was

Scott Benner 39:41
gonna ask what gear is she using?

Rayma 39:43
She's using a T slim with the IQ control right now. She has an adhesive allergy. Okay, which makes things a little bit more complicated. So the small footprint of the T Slim is much better. Has the board Yeah, she tends to react for the awfully to the off In the pods, but we've used them all

Scott Benner 40:02
using control IQ.

Rayma 40:05
Yep. Which has been a game changer. I mean, turn it off for the lows. That's amazing, right? It was the first like, I think the first couple of weeks or the first good night's sleep I had had years and years where you actually were like, oh, it's in terms of it works like that. Hmm.

Scott Benner 40:23
So when you're talking about like a fast low, yeah. Are you talking about like miscalculating? Like, what what was eaten and giving too much?

Rayma 40:31
Yeah. Yeah, swagging it wrong? You know, that's usually what or for whatever reason her body metabolizes it differently. You know that that time but what what did we just figure out on the cruise here, there's like a thing of sugar free syrup and regular syrup. And she'd been using the trick sugar free syrup. But we had been dosing for the regular syrup, because you didn't realize it was sugar free. Well, then a little things

Scott Benner 40:54
like that. Yeah, that'll make yellow.

Rayma 40:56
Yeah, yeah, you're destined for like straight corn syrup. It's not, it's not there. So then you're like, hurry ice cream, at least at that breakfast. So it's not overnight. And then on the cruise, like he just, you know, you're kind of estimating everything she's eating and guessing. And I'm really we're doing a lot of transition for her to her own management at 10. She's getting ready to go to public school. So, you know, I want her to be able to do her own management and she's going to diabetes camp, but she's also going another camp this summer. That isn't type one. So did you also kind of transition so a lot of times we'll let her does herself, which also makes that but she's on a really hard like, she's on a six to one carb ratio, too. So it's really easy to make a

Scott Benner 41:46
mistake. what's your what's your Basal setup?

Rayma 41:50
She's around her Basal setup around just under 50. Right now she's getting she's she's doing a ton of insulin way the day. Yeah, she's doing I think it was 44.6 or something when I just, of course, the pump just went in the ocean. Right before we're going on the cruise. And I had to get a new pump. overnighted. So I just did all the settings again,

Scott Benner 42:14
through the pump in the ocean. Not on purpose, I assume?

Rayma 42:18
No, she ran in the ocean with it on. Oh, it was supposed to you know, and then double down on the sand and it was done. Can I get the malfunction code?

Scott Benner 42:27
I have to ask you. If you don't have to answer me, but she's 10. Will you tell me how much she weighs?

Rayma 42:35
about 120 pounds? Like an adult? Yeah, like she's the same size as I am.

Scott Benner 42:41
Does she have periods or anything like that?

Rayma 42:43
Not yet.

Unknown Speaker 42:45
Wow. Okay,

Rayma 42:46
lots and lots of insulin. We put her on a little bit of metformin to try to help with sensitivity. really help didn't help. Not really just for whatever reason her body needs ton of insulin. And I think maybe because she was diagnosed before she had no honeymoon period at all. That meant she was dying. When she was diagnosed. She was about 500 So it wasn't you know, I caught it early enough. She seemed a lot insulin. So it only okay, we're trying not to resist. We're trying not to restrict food. Yeah, you know. So

Scott Benner 43:20
she have a like a, like an activity level. That's like she moving around every day. Is she hydrated? Like all those little things are like covered just hydration. There's that stuff?

Rayma 43:33
Well, the hydration is hard because it's a constant nag. But pretty good. I mean, I'm I make them fill up their water balls in the morning. And, you know, they can't have any other drinks till the waters gone. And you know, I'm a little bit of a Yeah, around some of that. But, you know, the hydration is hard with kids. They don't want to drink water they want to play.

Scott Benner 43:54
You know, it has her has her thyroid. I'm sorry if I've forgotten. Does she have thyroid issue?

Rayma 44:00
No, not that not that's ever shown up on bloodwork. But we constantly have checked for that. And I think she has a gluten sensitivity but not celiac. I certainly do. And I noticed that if we don't eat gluten, the numbers are a lot easier to control but then somebody because it's like super easy to control. And she's never over 200 And then some days it's like we can't beat it down with a stick.

Scott Benner 44:22
Hold on one more. I have a couple more questions. So where's your TSH when they test it? I'd have to look

Rayma 44:28
but it's like mid range, like in the fight even on the hi. Hi and yeah,

Scott Benner 44:34
okay, so I'm gonna tell you right now you should medicate anything over a two over a two. So I'm gonna guess that's gonna help with your insulin sensitivity.

Rayma 44:44
Is that the same? Like you'd go to the same endo and talk to them about it?

Scott Benner 44:48
Yeah, I mean, I have an episode you can listen to with Arden's integrative endocrinologist who handles the thyroid of all the people in my family and now a lot of people in the world have heard her talk about it. She would Medicaid over a two, a five a five is? I mean, I would think

Rayma 45:06
her like she's 2.9. I feel like that's the number I'm thinking.

Scott Benner 45:10
Okay, well, that's still that's still, I think that's still needs T three, or T four. Excuse me. Before

Rayma 45:19
I have to push on my endo with that, or I'll have to find another one does to treat.

Scott Benner 45:24
You have any other symptoms of thyroid? Like, do you think she's carrying more weight than she should be?

Rayma 45:31
Yeah, but I think that's part of her genetics. Takes after dad's side of the family, so she kind of hold it a little more. And she loves to eat.

Scott Benner 45:40
Yeah, yeah. What about energy? pretty energetic.

Rayma 45:43
Although she started hit those teeth, like preteen years or she wants to lay around

Scott Benner 45:49
and sleep mood swings, like moody.

Rayma 45:53
No, no. But I definitely think it's worth looking into. Yeah, well, I mean, there's got to be some reason for the the need of so much. And

Scott Benner 46:02
I'm a little like baffled that your endo knows that your 10 year old using two units of insulin an hour as as basil and sees her TSH at a three and can't put those two ideas together and make a decision. Like that's a strange. A strange thing. presser Yeah, and with all the autoimmune you guys have going on. Do you have like you said your husband's side had it too? What? What does he have going on over there?

Rayma 46:30
Um, like lupus and what is the MG Mastis? Okay, so yes, right. saying it wrong. And just what about you're not a ton? To be honest. I'm kind of the only one that I know of besides my cousin. I think she retired issue.

Scott Benner 46:54
Okay. I don't know. Like that. Just seems that seems reasonable to me to look into also. Yeah. Do you think she has trouble with digestion? Yes. 100%. All right. That's gonna be the other piece of it then. So

Rayma 47:09
yeah, yeah, that I've looked into those things over the years. What are your thoughts?

Scott Benner 47:15
Alright, so I just put an episode out about this, because one of the things we figured out for Arden after a long time of thinking, so I'm googling hos.

Rayma 47:26
I was gonna gastroparesis.

Scott Benner 47:28
No, no, your your pancreas has two things it does. It makes insulin and it aids and digestion. And so

Rayma 47:37
emmalin or whatever, right? That's the other one that kills off Amazon. Yeah,

Scott Benner 47:41
there was a while back where people were talking about like taking a drug to help with it. But let me see if this sounds like something that's happening for you. So Arden was not digesting food properly. And she was not going to the bathroom very frequently. Like not not eliminating every day. Does that happen on your on your side over there?

Rayma 48:01
Yes. And that's been since she was like an infant. Yeah. So type one.

Scott Benner 48:06
Right. Arden had that problem for a long time. Does she not go for days and have diarrhea?

Rayma 48:13
No, it's just not that I know of now at 10

Scott Benner 48:16
She don't tell you don't talk to you about her poop. Yeah,

Rayma 48:18
she won't. Yeah, everyone you talk to her. But I think before what would happen it was just she would have stomach ache. Be bloated and and then you'd go in and people would be like, oh, yeah, you know, this is just like school.

Scott Benner 48:33
So we intestine so ardent takes a digestive enzyme and every meal now, just a little tablet that helps you digest your food. Her stomach doesn't hurt anymore. And she added a magnesium oxide to help her go to the bathroom. These are

Rayma 48:51
magnesium, zinc, magnesium oxide, and what's the digestive enzymes.

Scott Benner 48:54
So the one Arden's using is just from a local health food store. So I can't tell to you because unless you live in like my town, you're not going to find it. But I saw how it was helping her and reexamined some of my own issues. And I started taking it too. So I was in a situation where I had to take fiber every day, or I was in trouble. And now I don't have that anymore. I'm using a company called Pure encapsulations digestive enzymes

Rayma 49:25
ultra pure encapsulation, digestive enzymes and

Scott Benner 49:29
there are certainly other competent there are certainly other companies that make it I take one at a regular meal and I take two if I'm eating something high in protein or fat, Arden's doing about the same thing. This is keeping the digestion moving, then the magnesium oxide and be careful because there's different magnesium as you want oxide. And I'm trying to find the dose I

Rayma 49:54
tried a bunch of magnesium all the time. Yeah, well I made I ever doesn't seem to do any different.

Scott Benner 50:00
no fiber is a matter of fact, when your digestion screwed up fiber can back you up more because it also can't digest the fiber.

Rayma 50:06
Yeah, I remember before the type one, we take her into the petri dish and explain it. And they were like, we'll just give her more and like Josh, and I haven't given her anything but fruits and vegetables for days, like, you think like, I'm, I haven't tried all that stuff at home before I came here. Like, I'm here because none of this other stuff is work. And then they said from you relax forever. But then if you read about that, over time, that's really not healthy for you.

Scott Benner 50:28
No, no, that's that those things are supposed to be there fixes for a problem like you think MiraLAX if you get into a bad situation, right? You want to be taken every day. Listen, I'm not a doctor. I'm almost an idiot. But if you had a digestive enzyme to that kid, and the magnesium oxide to get her going, I would be surprised if that didn't also change her insulin needs.

Rayma 50:56
Well, we're definitely going to try that. Yeah. Because

Scott Benner 50:58
that because the food because the food sitting in her longer, that's impacting her blood sugar longer,

Rayma 51:05
right? And sometimes, you're given the insulin and it's too it works too quickly. Do you want me

Scott Benner 51:12
because she's not digest her body has been digested it Yeah. And then on top of that, you're and this is as close as I get to sounding granola, but then your stomach becomes an inhospitable place, and your gut microbiome gets all thrown off. And that does impact a lot of things in your body. So her guts, probably a cesspool in there. And then, you know, she's, oh, my God, I think I think it's possible you sent me an email, like a week from now. And you're like, wow, things are so much different. Because you'll be surprised how quickly the enzymes and the oxide together make the system flow properly. Sorry for the word flow. But like, yeah, so be careful when you start doing it. Like, really, I would start with meals that are not as intensive, like, need their need for insulin, because I don't want you to get into a situation where you're, you have way too much insulin going. And you could you could see that. So well. That would

Rayma 52:09
make sense. Just because if everything else starts working better than you don't need lessons.

Scott Benner 52:13
Yes, yeah. Just, I would keep your head up for that. I'm glad we spoke. I can't tell you how many people I've heard back from after these episodes have come out about how they've tried this, and it's worked for them. So

Rayma 52:27
awesome. Yeah. Well, we would love any help. I mean, it just, I think I don't think people understand like, what a 24/7 365 You know, pain it is to try to figure everything out and, and to do a good job with it all. It's really hard, I think for us, and I feel like, it's a blessing for me to do it for her in a lot of ways until she's older. Do it on our own, because it's a lot to do on your own. Especially like in the middle of the night and everything else.

Scott Benner 52:59
I was gonna say there are some things but I think there are more than some things that I've only been able to figure out because of the podcast because I'm talking with people and somebody will say something I'm like, but that makes sense, like you'd like and then I can incorporate that into my thinking. And I think we came to a number of Arden's like, resolutions. Because I've had so many of these conversations, and I've been getting like hearing people's stories where you're like, Well, you don't digest food, right? You don't Your stomach hurts like, okay, like, the key is to not get like locked into like, well, this happens to people. So I guess this is what's going to happen to her. I was always, always coming from the perspective of I'm going to find a way to figure this out. So

Rayma 53:40
Well, that's the whole idea behind the podcast, right is to like, share the experience, like you're so popular and why people like it so much is that it's like shared your experience. gives you other things to think about. And like you said before, everybody manages differently. Yeah. So you've learned about how other people do things, and what they go through and how they figure things out.

Scott Benner 54:01
It's also about having real conversations, and not just like, going through a bullet list of things. You know, I mean, we've all heard other like media somewhere where you just realize like the person who's there as the guest came in and said, here's the things that I want to talk about, then the host isn't really a host or just reading questions. They're going back and forth. And it's all kind of canned and pre planned. But we don't get to your daughter's stomach issue today. It's not on the list of things that you told me about. Like we don't just have this like conversation. Like I hear things and I'm like, Wait, that doesn't make sense. Like, listen, there's no shame for how much insulin you need. I don't I don't subscribe to that. But it does not make sense that your daughter's using 50 units of basil a day. It just doesn't Yeah, there hadn't hasn't been a

Rayma 54:47
long time. Yeah. We're just talking about it with her Endo. You know, recently she double checked the thyroid. So I'll have to go back and double check that again and see. Yeah, and then I'll try the digestive enzymes.

Scott Benner 54:58
Digestive enzymes, the magnesium oxide and their thyroid, and I'm boy, I want to hear back from you send me send me an email, I'll actually pay attention to it. I swear. Originally, oh, sorry, you didn't I didn't see that last time. I apologize. That's

Rayma 55:13
okay. You're busy. It's a good sign of success.

Scott Benner 55:17
That's really lovely. Well, I, I'm gonna say thank you very much for for giving up an hour of your vacation for this and sharing a interesting perspective of obviously some, some different ideas and things that a lot of people, you know, don't go through. The thing with your son's antibodies is just, it's I'm sorry, it's his life. But it's fascinating to listen to, you know?

Rayma 55:43
Yeah, it should be interesting to see if we can, like if he's in the age of where medicine has caught up with us just enough where we can actually prevent it for him

Scott Benner 55:52
would be interesting. I'll tell you Yeah, like, I know, it would mean a lot to you, even if it got put off for a year or something like that, like, you know, but you know, I asked the question, well, if you go listen to that episode, with Lenny Ramos, I said, Do you have any, like hopes that this can work longer for people? And she can only answer what they've what they've said publicly and what they've, you know, what the FDA has cleared them to say about the drugs, so she can't answer. But I thought, like, I wonder what her real thoughts are about, like, how long might this be able to work for people?

Rayma 56:30
Well, I did listen to another podcast. And I'm trying to think of what the name of it is. But it had one of the researchers that was involved with the clinical trial. And what she did was did data meta analysis, I think it's called where she went back through all the data points. And she was suggesting that you would use it kind of like cancer treatments. So you would give a dose and you would monitor the antibodies. And as the antibodies started to creep back up again, and increase, or a once they started to increase or whatever, you would give another dose. Yeah. And that you would kind of keep it at bay? By managing it that way. And, you know, it seems like a lot because it's what an 11 day and fusion. Yeah. Every day, and you know that, but really, if you think about it, if you only had to do that once every few years, then it would be a lot better. Yeah. What the hell you? Yeah, management of diabetes, you know, you're 65 24/7. So we might be on the edge. And then that might, you know, what, if that prevented it for him, you know, for his whole life. And that would be totally worth it. And they're talking about even having home health. Because we don't live that close to our window. You know, the idea that somebody would just come to the house and do it for us. Seems pretty darn cool. Also

Scott Benner 57:54
seems very reasonable. There's, I mean, there's private companies now that are doing hide, like, like IV hydration is in people's homes. It's like, it's like an expensive boutique thing. But my point is, is it's possible. So

Rayma 58:06
well, I've done it for my pots. So I mean, I know you could do it. Cuz hydration is a huge part of that. And I go every week for infusions. I go into the hospital, but you know, to get the the hydration, because that's keeps the pots at bay. Okay, at least a lot of the symptoms. Yeah. And so like, before I had it covered through my insurance and had gotten the doctor went for it and had like conceded to doing that. I would go into the IV fatigue, like, right before I go do something like on a trip like this, or I did it last year right before going to Disney? You know, because I didn't think I could make it through.

Scott Benner 58:44
You kind of want to get checked back up again. And yeah,

Rayma 58:49
so I went in and had, you know, the two hour hydration. So I think I think we're getting there, you know, with the with being able to do things, but you have to be proactive. I think that's the biggest part that I've learned is that it does take up a lot of your bandwidth, like you were, you asked me before because it's, if you want it to go well, in any of these autoimmune diseases, you really got to be your own advocate. And, and that takes a lot of research. Like a lot of research, a lot of listening to thing love listening to your podcasts, a lot of reading studies, seeing what people are doing. And then the cost benefit ratios, you know, was it worth it?

Scott Benner 59:32
There's no written down answer. Like you're not you're not going to walk into a doctor's office to say I feel like this, this, this and this, and the doctor is gonna go Oh, amazing. That's this right here. It just doesn't work that way. It really had unless

Rayma 59:44
you've been figured out yourself or somebody else and you've been waiting on the waiting list to see that especially. Now that's the only time I've ever seen that happen. I rocked it and finally had saw the right cardiologist and he was like, Well of course you have this you know, but it took me a year to get in with that. And then he was like, it's just like every other patient I see all day long, have the same problems. And it's this. Like, oh, okay,

Scott Benner 1:00:10
but in a regular scenario just walking into your regular doctor, you're gonna get told like whatever's top of their mind or even kind of fashionable to be thinking about at the time. It's a lot of yeah, a lot of hit and miss.

Rayma 1:00:23
If you have pockets you're gonna get anti anxiety medicine right away because they're gonna look at your your heart rate and think, unless that's what happened to me you have fibromyalgia you have anxiety, work too hard here, take some Xanax, and then never helped.

Scott Benner 1:00:37
At one point they made Arden take a Potts test. Because it tilt table. Yeah, because of what ended up being put, she needed T three for her thyroid for

Rayma 1:00:48
it looks like a lot of things. That increased heart rate and, and it really wasn't it until I got on the right Madison, that my life changed, I still have to be really, really careful. And I still don't work, you know, which I miss a lot. But, but it's better. My health is better. You know, but it took forever. It took being intuitive and pushing and and I think a lot of it I owe to my daughter being diagnosed before with diabetes, and I'm trying to figure out why and what what was going on. And then with ln having the antibodies, and then having a background in influencing physicians, you know, hospital systems to change how they think it really kind of all boiled together for me, I'd be able to use for my own my own family. Yeah, cuz otherwise I don't. I don't know how people have the courage to push back on the doctor the way, you know, I had been trained to do for 20 years or two. Read the research papers, because they're hard to read and hard to understand.

Scott Benner 1:01:53
Yeah. Nida Podcast Answer Rhema that's the issue. You just need somebody else to figure out and tell you so

Rayma 1:02:00
well. That's why That's why your own podcast has been so great. Thank you. Yeah, it's been like, it's only been what, maybe five, eight years since podcasts are really popular. So it's just like the internet like prior to that we were all just lost in our own little silos. It's amazing how beneficial it is to be able to share your experience and hear from other people and be like, Oh my gosh, that's exactly what's happening to me. I'm not alone.

Scott Benner 1:02:27
No, I believe in it. I really do. So. Okay, well, I'm gonna say thank you. And, and I'm gonna jump off now I have to do another recording in a little bit. But, but this was really nice to do. I seriously, I'm assuming it's nice and warm up on the deck of that boat, and you're in that bar. So I appreciate this very much.

Rayma 1:02:47
Well, no problem at all. I'm headed there now. And I appreciate you and thanks for having me on. And I'll keep you updated on how things go with everybody. And thanks for the suggestion.

Scott Benner 1:02:56
I would appreciate that. I would really love to know. Yeah, yeah,

Rayma 1:02:59
maybe you'll maybe we'll have more to share with you after Owen goes through the the prevention to we'll see

Scott Benner 1:03:06
great, let me know I'm interested. Okay. Thanks, God appreciate you. Have a great day. Have a great one. Bye bye.

I want to thank the contour next gen blood glucose meter and remind you to go to contour next one.com forward slash juicebox. Get started today may even be able to buy online right there with my link and your stuff could be cheaper in cash than it is. Through your insurance. What do you think of that? Don't also forget about Don't also forget about that's not English, touched by type one.org. Go get your tickets for the upcoming dancing for diabetes event. Thank you so much for listening. And thanks to Raymond for coming on the show and giving us this fantastic story. I'll be back soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast.

If you're 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 Understanding. This 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 that you'd be incredibly interested in. So don't wait. So don't wait. Check out the bold beginning series today and get started on your journey. Episode 698 defines the ball 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 780 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

#1042 Type Two Storie: Abbie

Abbie has type 2 diabetes and is in alcohol and drug recovery.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends, and welcome to episode 1042 of the Juicebox Podcast.

Today I'm talking to Abby, she's 27 years old, has had type two diabetes for 16 years, and has quite the story. Abby comes from a family that has problems, and she is a recovering alcoholic and drug addict. Her parents were married and divorced three separate times, and she has an estranged relationship with both of them. While you're listening today, 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, you could go to cozy earth.com You could buy a bunch of stuff like sheets or towels or clothing all very comfortable and high end. And then you could use the offer code juice box at checkout to save 40% off of your entire order. That's cozy earth.com. use the offer code juice box to save 40% And if you want to start with ag one you can with my link drink ag one.com forward slash juice box. Using that link will get you five free travel packs in a year supply of vitamin D with your first order. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by Dexcom dexcom.com. Forward slash juicebox. Get yourself a Dexcom G seven or Dexcom G six right now today, this minute this instant, maybe an hour from now when you're done listening to the podcast@dexcom.com forward slash juice box. This show is sponsored today by the glucagon that my daughter carries. G voc hypo pen. Find out more at G voc glucagon.com. Forward slash juice box.

Abbie 2:04
The name is Abby and I'm from Texas.

Scott Benner 2:07
Abby, you are on the show today because you have a wicked case a lumbago No,

Abbie 2:14
no, I have type two diabetes. I've had type two since I was 15. I was diagnosed in 2011 or 2012.

Scott Benner 2:25
You woke me right up with that. How old are you?

Abbie 2:29
I'm 27. Snap

Scott Benner 2:31
as the kids say 15 years ago? Sorry. 15. Is it in your family?

Abbie 2:40
Oh, yeah. Ramping. Really? Yeah, side, sides. Both sides. Both sides. And it's tough to on both sides.

Scott Benner 2:49
We'll start here. Your mom has it. My mom and my dad and your dad, their parents. At least one of both of their parents, siblings of your parents.

Abbie 3:00
Siblings on my dad's side. Nobody confirmed on my mom's side.

Scott Benner 3:04
Look how easily you can rattle this off. Do you have siblings?

Abbie 3:08
I have one brother. He does not have diabetes. We

Scott Benner 3:10
call him lucky. Okay. How about the dog? No dogs, the diabetes? Cats? No, I asked because one time I was talking to a person and their pets had diabetes too. And I was like, what is happening? I was like, get out of the house you live in. But wow. So is it fair to say that if we sat here and kept doing this, you could keep counting cousins? Like that kind of thing? Oh, yeah. Wow. Okay. Can I ask your background?

Abbie 3:41
Um, yeah, so my family's Hispanic. My mom's side is Caucasian and Salvadorian. And then my dad's side is Mexican. And that played a huge factor.

Scott Benner 3:56
The Mexican side, both because my

Abbie 4:00
mom would cook very traditional, like Hispanic food. And when I got diagnosed, she was primarily faulted for me having diabetes

Scott Benner 4:11
by the physician. Yeah. Oh, at 15. Like, I'm looking at you today. And you look like a regular person. Like, like an average person is what I'm saying. Obviously, I mean, size wise, you're delightful and beautiful and all that stuff. But you look like an average sized person. Was your mom or dad Well, overweight.

Abbie 4:30
So my mom got gestational diabetes with my brother and she was I believe around 300 pounds when she delivered him. Okay, and she's, I think five one or five two. So she was pretty big.

Scott Benner 4:44
never really got past it, or did she lose the weight?

Abbie 4:47
So she lost some of the weight and then I think like maybe three years later, she was diagnosed with type two.

Scott Benner 4:55
Okay. Wow, is your father shorter?

Abbie 5:00
No, he Well, he's fine. He was five, seven. And he, when he was younger was pretty big. And then when he was 27, I think was when he was diagnosed, and he lost a bunch of weight just out of nowhere.

Scott Benner 5:15
Okay, so before he was diagnosed, the weight came off. Yeah. Probably from high blood sugars. Oh, yeah. Yeah. What kind of work did he do?

Abbie 5:24
He was working in warehouses. He was manager kind of stuff.

Scott Benner 5:30
Yeah. But he was moving in a warm place to Yeah, okay. I don't know why that matter to me. But it's it. It's fun to ask questions when you don't exactly know what you're talking about. It really does. Like, it's like the thing that pops in your head. You're like, is this something? Wow. Okay, so can I ask what you waited? 15

Abbie 5:50
I believe it was around 130 pounds. And you are how tall? I am 14. Okay.

Scott Benner 6:02
I don't know how long since

Abbie 6:03
I was like 12. Remember,

Speaker 1 6:06
it's also a curse of some Italian men. Shoot, right? Shoot right up to a height that like at when you're young. You're like a giant around everybody. And then everybody grows past you and you never get any taller. Yep. So I don't know another way to ask this. So I'm just gonna come ask it the way that it occurs to me that 130 pounds. Does it look right on your frame? Or how did you feel about it?

Abbie 6:32
Yeah, um, 120 to 130 is a very comfortable weight for me. I currently weigh 145 250. I fluctuate a lot. But I am a little chunky.

Scott Benner 6:48
Do you say that with love or do you want to lose some weight?

Abbie 6:51
I'm uncomfortable. Like, it's not a huge deal to me. But yeah, I would like to lose some weight. Okay.

Scott Benner 6:56
i The reason I asked is just because I'm trying to, I'm trying to paint a picture in my head of you at 15 years old. You know, and so, at 15 years old, you're like, I felt like I looked the way I want it to look like my body composition was there. Oh, yeah, absolutely. How did it with hindsight? I mean, you're, you're eight years older now. How did you eat when you were 15? And up until you were 15? Was it? Like, did you think of it as like, a nutritious eating style? Where did you know? You know, you knew?

Abbie 7:28
I knew, Okay. All right.

Scott Benner 7:31
Go over it a little bit. Like, like, shut your eyes. Make yourself 15. And like Monday night, what do we have for dinner?

Abbie 7:37
Oh, I can tell you. So we, my parents, they were divorced and married three times to each other. And so we went through, sometimes the poverty and there were a lot of nights that we would eat email, which is like noodles and sauce. It's a Mexican. Like really cheap meal. One cheetahs, which are just like macaroni noodles, with meat and sauce and other Mexican meal, a lot of spaghetti, a lot of sandwiches. Tuna, sandwiches kind of stuff. My favorite snack if I had money, because I've worked since I was 14. If I had money was like gas station chips and an Arizona Tea.

Scott Benner 8:25
You were living then? You're like looking at us. Big night. Yeah, I don't know if I want the ruffles or the regular. Stand there for 10 minutes. Go on like, Oh, I was broke, by the way. Abby, so I'm commiserating with you. I would have if people have heard me talk about working at my uncle's sheetmetal shop when I was a young person. And I would go to a 711 at lunch. And I only had a few dollars to spend. So I would buy like a 99 cent cinnamon roll, which was mostly sugar, a drink of some sort that definitely had sugar in it. And then something else like whatever else the money could shake out, like trying to get out there for like $3 was kind of the idea because I was only going to make Gosh, this dates me more than anything else. I thought it was going to make me sound sad and broke. But I think it just makes me sound old. I was making $4.50 an hour. So you know, eight hours 35 bucks, taxes off? Why would they tax me by the way? Child labor, we need his $3 So the whole thing's gonna fall apart. So they take the three bucks off my day or so I can only spend about $4 on lunch. Then I gotta buy gas. I make like $27 That day, like for eight hours in a were in a in a sheetmetal shop. It's just insane. Like see there was never a thought of like I'll buy something like forget like Knowing what healthy was, if I knew what it was, I couldn't have afforded it. Right. Like, that's kind of where I was. Sounds like,

Abbie 10:07
oh, that's even a thing for me now.

Scott Benner 10:09
Yeah, did it stick with you?

Abbie 10:12
I have huge food insecurity, like, with I live with my partner and my brother, my brother works on the road as a welder. And my partner and I, we split groceries and he, you know, will shell out whatever kind of money I need to go grocery shopping. But I have such a problem feeling like, there's just not enough food in the house. Yeah, we're gonna run out of food. And so, and even with the food that we do, buy, it's so expensive to eat healthy consistently. And so, in our town, there's a place where you can go get produce, once a week, and, or once every couple of weeks, I think, and I go pick up produce, because it's free. Yeah. And it's a ridiculous amount of produce, but I store it and I freeze it, and I can it so that we have it

Scott Benner 11:10
good for you. That's great. I was walking through I gotcha. I realized I was gonna say something. And then I realized it was going to be talking about the end of my mom's life, which I didn't mean to do, Abby, but I was walking through a hospital the other day, and there was a table with brown bags on them. And it just said, like, free food, take one. And I would walk in in the morning and the table was full. And when I left in the afternoon, it wasn't. And I was like, Oh, wow, like it really struck me. I was like, that's something like I thought, Oh, that's nice. Maybe someone will walk by and need this. But that wasn't it. It was it was needed and absorbed every day. And I I don't want to lie to you like I can afford to eat now. You know, but I still watch my wife and I. The last place we still look poor, is at the grocery store. We still sometimes like if we don't stop ourselves when we shop like to rubes who found $200 on the ground. Like Does that make sense to you? Yeah, exactly. Oh, wow. All this resonates with me so much. Okay, so she's like, people seem to like these. I'm like, do we want that? She's like, I don't know. But they're selling and we can afford it. I'm like,

Abbie 12:30
and my brother he is a brand whore he he you know it has to be hidden valley. It has to be craft. It has to be the brand name and I buy generic everything. Yeah, the generic it's going to my basket.

Scott Benner 12:46
I think if we took your brother to Nobu. He'd be like, I don't want this garbage.

Abbie 12:52
would tell him he got all the good jeans. And that's what he's like that.

Scott Benner 12:55
That's something so he's more Wow. Does it affect your palate? like growing up like that? Do you have like a taste for sugary or pasta? Like that kind of stuff? Bread. Do you lean that direction when you're eating?

Abbie 13:10
Oh, yeah. My my boyfriend makes fun of me. Because between like lunch and dinner or dinner in bed, I'll tell him like I need to sweet. Just like to go find something. Yeah,

Scott Benner 13:22
a little treasure hunt.

Abbie 13:23
Yeah.

Scott Benner 13:25
All right. Okay, so when you're 15 you know, let me just say this, Abby, before we move forward. You're shorter on time today, or I would spent Wani solid minutes asking about your parents three marriages and divorces to each other because I know someone they were not. I know somebody who did that. And they were crazy. So I was like, like these like, like whirlwind kind of romantic things, these horrible fights, and then I can't believe we're not together and then it happens again. And then you're like, oh, and then they do it again. It's like, I don't know. I don't know what it's like. It's like watching an animal step in a trap. Getting out of it finally and running right back over it, like stepping on.

Abbie 14:07
Yeah, that's exactly how it went. And by the time I was in high school and then divorced the last time I was just like, I'm done with both of you.

Scott Benner 14:17
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Abbie 16:07
I'm sorry, I've lost it for a while. For both of them actually had they know this, but I had genuine hate for both of them for the way that we'd grown up and the way that things had turned out. I I didn't want anything to do with my family in general. And my mom and I have worked really, really hard on our relationship. We're in a really good place now. A lot of what transpired in our relationship had a lot to do with my addictions. I was I'm an alcoholic and a drug addict. And I'm in recovery. I am right. About to be must be 16 months sober.

Scott Benner 16:54
Oh, good for you. Congratulations. That's excellent. All right. Well, we've

Abbie 16:58
done family therapy and just worked on a lot of things. So her and I are in a really good place. My dad actually passed when I was 20 years old. I'm so sorry. Thank you. Um, so we didn't never get to that place. Um, I did what I could for him when he was sick. But we just, it was never,

Scott Benner 17:19
that's hard. No, I that happened to me too. So you're not in a healthy relationship with a parent as they're dying. But you're not going to ignore their health. But you're in a room. It feels like you're helping a stranger almost, doesn't it? Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's something. How did your dad pass?

Abbie 17:38
So he passed from complications of diabetes and alcoholism? How old was he? He was 40s. Sir 47.

Scott Benner 17:51
I don't know your dad, are you and that almost made me cry. Oh, God, I'm sorry. That's because my mom just died. Sorry. I'm not laughing. I'm still. I'm surprised the things that are making me sad over the last couple of weeks. And they come out of weird places. Like I did not connect my mom to your statement. It was just that when you said it, my eyes filled up. When I got in the car the other day. Arden wanted to go pick up groceries. Oddly. She got in her head to bake something. She's like, I'm gonna make shortbread cookies. We're like, okay. And she's like, but I gotta go to the store. Come with me. She says, and I'm like gay. Yeah. Which I now realize is code for come pay for the groceries. I never like followed that before. But we get in the car. And she's driving. And she says to me, which grocery store should I go to? Because we're sort of in the middle of like two of them. You can kind of make a left and go to one or a right and go the other one what she was really asking us which one is closer? I start crying. What grocery store? Should we go to my eyes burst open waterfalls out of them. I'm upset. And I don't know why right away. Then it hits me. I call my mom every time I get the store and go shopping. Like and because I'm like I work in the house. Like, you know if we need a thing for tonight. I bet go I'll run to the grocery store. I drive back and forth to the grocery store. Three or four times a week. You also all know me pretty well. Like I could probably go fewer times if I took a list but ruins the fun. I am now crying and she goes What's wrong? Like she knows my mom passed away like two days before that. But she's still like, where did this even come from? And I had to sit there for a minute to figure it out. Like I pulled myself together very quickly. And then I was like, Why am I crying? Why and I makes me sound unstable, by the way. And I'm like, Why am I crying? Why am I crying? I'm like, oh, it's the I would I would have gotten in this car and first thing I would have done was call my mom and then we would have chatted I might have put my earbuds in and kept talking to her when I was in the grocery store and then come home cuz I'm always working. And it was it was always a good free time to call her. Anyway. I'm sorry for your loss. That's terrible. I do want to pick through a couple things quickly though. Complications to type two diabetes. Yes. What did it like? What was it on paper? What got him heart.

Abbie 20:21
So, really, they didn't clarify. It was a bunch of things that had kind of spiraled he first had Mersa and then had gangrene and one of his toes. And they had to amputate the toe and he decided he did not want to go through physical therapy. And he quit walking just gave up.

Scott Benner 20:44
Or your dad gave up at 46 years old. Yeah. What was this drink of choice?

Abbie 20:51
Um, mostly beer.

Scott Benner 20:53
Okay. And when did you start drinking?

Abbie 20:58
I started drinking. I had my first drink when I was like, 11 or 12 years old

Scott Benner 21:03
through your parents or other media? No, not through your parents. What drugs did you start with?

Abbie 21:11
I started with marijuana when I was 11. It didn't my drinking didn't get really serious until I was 16. And I tried cocaine while I was in high school wasn't really for me. And then when I was in my 20s it just my drinking was at an all time peak. And I was hooked on cocaine.

Scott Benner 21:35
Wow. So you didn't like the Coke, but you liked what it did? Or yeah, so were you drinking?

Abbie 21:43
I was bouncing against drinking. Okay. So

Scott Benner 21:47
I've had this explained to me before and make sure I have it right. You drink you get so drunk, you start to shut off the coke wakes you back up so you can drink more.

Abbie 21:57
That's how it's supposed to work. Okay, how to work for you. Um, I would usually get so drunk that the cocaine wouldn't do anything. And I would just be wide awake drunk.

Scott Benner 22:09
Oh. Oh, so you didn't get the you didn't get the zoom. But you're now awake. Yeah. Oh, is that a really strange feeling? People say that

Abbie 22:18
the cocaine is supposed to sober you up. And it never really sobered me up. But just yeah, it just gave me the high but the wide awake drunk. It started affecting my life because I I would go home and I would go lay in bed and I would just lay there until I had to get up the next day.

Scott Benner 22:43
Oh my God, just staring. Sleep. And then you know, you're awake for like, my eyelids. You're awake for like, 48 hours in a row kind of stuff. Yeah. She's dying to make you crazy to tell people because I don't think people believe it. Cocaine everywhere. Right? It's everywhere.

Abbie 23:01
Oh, absolutely. It's so accessible. I hardly ever paid for cocaine because it was just there. Wow. People will just hand it out to you.

Scott Benner 23:10
Not funny. No, gatekeeper. No. in other walks of life. That's a lovely thing. Not here. What happens? Well, I guess let me first ask while you're drinking and everything. You know what? I'm sorry. How the hell do you start drinking when you're 11

Abbie 23:27
my parents had alcohol in the house. And I had friends that would sneak it with me. Okay. And I did the water refill to keep it at the line that they had it that

Scott Benner 23:37
nobody know. Yeah. Interesting. Your mom drank too?

Abbie 23:41
Um, no, not really interesting. Okay. My mom's never been a big drinker.

Scott Benner 23:45
So you started with just the like, kid play stuff. Like, people would come over and be like, Hey, we could drink some of that. And then we'll refill the thing. And it'll be fun. But then you start. You escape with it. I mean, you did paint a picture. It would have been fun to make fun of your parents for being kooky. But you weren't in like a super stable situation, either.

Abbie 24:03
So when I was 16, my parents started letting me drink with them.

Scott Benner 24:07
Hey, special occasions or every day?

Abbie 24:10
Yeah, special occasions.

Scott Benner 24:12
I don't know why. Writing on the white meats, beef. Like it mattered to me. Where did they look at you? Was it like when I got my driver's license? I started driving when I was 13. So when I took my driver's test when I was 16. All I remember the guy saying yes, I exited the course and park and waited for him to tell me if I got my license or not. Because it feels like you've been driving for years. And I went, huh? Did your parents not noticed that you were like hanging and like it wasn't hitting you the same way or it's just part of life.

Abbie 24:44
Both of my parents were so I would I like to explain about my parents is that they were so wrapped up in each other. Okay, that we had everything we needed and most of what we wanted. We were just Hello, Anna there. Yeah, we had each other my brother and I, but emotionally my parents were just not available to us then. Wow.

Scott Benner 25:09
Okay. All right, I appreciate you going through all this with me. I really do. Because somehow to me it paints a larger picture. What are you doing for your type to at 15? What do they say to you? Like? Do you get the like, you gotta go for a walk? Or is it meant for men? Or what do they

Abbie 25:29
put me on that plan? And they gave me a meter. That gives me the Calorie King book. I don't remember what it was called. But it's that book where it's got all the calories from all the fast food places. It's like, compact.

Scott Benner 25:44
I know it. Yes.

Abbie 25:47
I think I just got rid of it actually recently. And then they Yeah, talk about some nutrition stuff. And that's really it.

Scott Benner 25:57
15 You're not being parented? Well. And now you're in a doctor's office being told this? Do you have that? Like, oh, I got the sugars like everybody else feeling? Or are you like, oh, I can fix this or beat this? Or like, what's your, like marching orders when you leave there?

Abbie 26:14
No, I kind of slept and was like, it's whatever.

Scott Benner 26:17
Wow. So I'm just gonna pop this pillow on my mouth. And not sometimes if I feel like it. Yeah, but not always. And you're not making any adjustments. It's still Arizona Tea and chips. If you've got a couple of bucks. Yep. I gotcha. Mom doesn't say, hey, we'll start making pasta every day. No, nothing like that. You just keep going. Do you know Do you know what your Awan sees where

Abbie 26:39
I belong. I don't know what they were back then. But it wasn't until my dad passed when I was 20. That I was like, I really need to do something about this. And I was living with a boyfriend at the time. And I took my blood sugar one morning, and it was almost 600. Wow. And I thought, Do I need to go to the hospital? Like, what do I do about this? I don't, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. And I called my mom and I said, What do I do? And she said, Do you feel okay, and I said, Yeah, but I'm pretty sure my sugar's probably been like this for a while. And she said, then you need to schedule an appointment with an endocrinologist and get it under control. But don't go to the hospital.

Scott Benner 27:29
So she knew enough to tell you to go to a doctor as a very Yeah. Do you do the math? Do you go 46 minus 26 equals I got 20 more years when you test your blood sugar that day, like what kicks you into gear, like your dad's passing like something got you to go right row. So you know what

Abbie 27:51
I think it was something in my grief was just like pushing me. So like how you talked about just like little things that you don't recognize or little things that you're not sure why they set you off. That's how my grip was at the time. And I didn't know why things were happening the way that they were happening, or why I was acting the way that I was acting. And I want to tell you, I'm also sorry for your loss. And thank you, you're you don't have to apologize for anything. Because I understand.

Scott Benner 28:25
You're trying to make me cry over you. It's gonna be pretty easy to do. It's only been a week. And I'll tell you so far, one of the blessings in the last week. And that's not a word I throw around lightly is making the podcast. Because generally speaking for an hour or so every day, I just like I get to go away in my head and just have like a very kind of intimate conversation with somebody and my mom does not come up usually. And so it's been Believe it or not, I don't know that it might be people may be able to figure it out. But there'll be an episode that will have gone up months before this one does. Maybe not months, where you'll if you listen hard enough. I'm recording that episode, because I know my mom's dying that day. And I am just trying to like be somewhere else in my head. So I did not cancel my recording the day my mom was in hospice and my poor brother was pumping morphine into her trying to help her. So

Abbie 29:27
I did the same thing. I went to work, the day that I knew my dad was going to die. And I actually was his next of kin. Because my parents were separated and or they were divorced. And hey, if they

Scott Benner 29:41
had more time they would have got back together. Yeah.

Abbie 29:45
He was on a ventilator. And they told me that I had to decide if he was going to stay on or if we're going to turn the ventilator off but he I had already known that he was gone and they told me he was brain dead and So they had put cooling blankets on his body. And then when they were trying to warm them back up, and it just nothing was working. So that Tuesday, I decided we weren't going to just stop. But everybody said their goodbyes and turn off the ventilator. So I went to work that morning, and I said, I need to leave by noon, and go to the hospital. And I did. I went to work, and just acted like it was a normal day.

Scott Benner 30:27
Yeah, I thank the woman at the end of the episode. I was like, You really helped me today. I say we had some, I don't know, conversation about something that I'm not going to remember till I listen back to it. And all I'm trying to do is like, keep my mind off of what's happening. So yeah. Anyway, I don't know how weird that'll sound in retrospect, hopefully, I pulled it off.

Abbie 30:49
And thanks. So yeah, we'll see. Yeah, the something you might grief was just messing with me about my own health. And my brother was 16. At the time, he had no health issues, so I wasn't worried about him. My mom, you know, her own diabetes was her own responsibility. And so I took my sugar that morning realized, we have a problem. My parents, they were both diagnosed in their late 20s. I was diagnosed 10 years earlier than them. Yeah. So yeah, it's gone through my head a lot. How long I have. And my partner and I have a lot of conversations about what happens when I go because I my life expectancy is much shorter than his.

Scott Benner 31:39
Do you think that or do you think there are things you could do? Like that would give you like, normalcy? Like, I see you wearing a CGM. Right, like, is that what I see on your arm? Okay, yeah, I wear a Dexcom Oh, cool. And you know how to eat now? Can you afford to eat better now? Not Yeah, better? Yes. Right. But not all the way. Not all the way. You have healthcare? That's excellent. What are you taking any medications?

Abbie 32:07
Yeah, so I'm still on Metformin, and then I take to jail. Okay. And I was taking ozempic I'll tell you a funny story about this. Um, I was having stomach problems for nine months. And it was debilitating. I was, I mean, glued to the toilet sometimes. And my stomach hurt so bad that I couldn't get out of bed. Or if I did go to work, I would be right back in bed after work. Couldn't get household stuff done. It was ridiculous. And I went to my primary, three different times and they said, We can't do anything for you. What's the bacterial infection? And they gave me antibiotics and told me to take them if it didn't get better, but like, no clearer instructions. And then I got with a gastro. I had to call for almost two months to get an appointment with a gastro. And then when I went to go see the gastro, they, I was really scared that this was colon cancer. Okay, or gastroparesis. And when I went, they said, it's likely a mix of gastroparesis and part of your bowels, and then severe IBS and the other part of your boss.

Scott Benner 33:29
did none of this exist for you earlier? No. But it was was it just the ozempic.

Abbie 33:36
So while I stopped taking, they told me at that, that appointment, they said, Well, your ozempic causes these symptoms and your Metformin causes these symptoms. I said, I've been on Metformin for 10 years. I've been on ozempic for three years. I've been on these medications for years, and these symptoms have been present for months. There's no way Okay, Okay, interesting. And there was epic, everybody, you know, there's that hype about ozempic and weight loss and insulin resistance. And I do you know, it helps with some of that for me, but it's not a huge, I don't see a huge difference. And my my personal body, I called and told my medical team that I was going to stop taking it because I needed the doctor to believe me. And so I stopped taking DSM pick and the symptoms didn't go away. And they tested me for a bunch of different stuff. I ended up having SIBO small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.

Scott Benner 34:39
Interesting.

Abbie 34:41
And I'm still pushing to have a follow up done for testing with a colonoscopy and endoscopy to find out if there is anything with to validate if there's gastroparesis or IBS

Scott Benner 35:00
Is your food digesting slowly so

Abbie 35:03
that because there's symptoms of slow digestion and accelerated digestion? It, you know, alternates on the days or like the times when I eat they're anticipating that it could be built.

Scott Benner 35:20
What are your blood sugar's look like?

Abbie 35:23
Right now? Not great. I did not wear index calm for about 10 days and my current blood, my current blood sugar is 245

Scott Benner 35:36
And have you eaten today? It's like you're in a different timezone. What's about 10 o'clock in the morning?

Abbie 35:41
15 right now. Yeah. I have not eaten. No, that's my fasting.

Scott Benner 35:46
Okay, all right. So you're on Metformin, your fasting blood sugar's 250. You were in a CGM. You have overgrowth in your intestines, which is probably from the higher blood sugars. Maybe you just have slow digestion, maybe it doesn't have to be gastroparesis. Okay,

Abbie 36:07
but I haven't always had these high blood sugars. So for a long time, especially. This is like, just currently my last a one C was 6.1.

Scott Benner 36:20
Okay. All right. Maybe it's an under Help underlying health issue that's pushing your blood sugar up. You get an exercise? Oh, no, I don't work out. No, I mean, go for a walk.

Abbie 36:34
I walked the dog. But I don't go for extended periods of time. I live in Texas. And it's like 110

Scott Benner 36:41
I've heard many new records in Texas the other day. Yeah. So I will not be going outside. Let me say this to just for timestamping. It's June 30. Today, and Canada. The smoke is back. I don't know what you people are doing. But it can't be that you have all that snow melted and put out the fire. Please help me. That's all now I cursed because of Canada. Let me write that down. It cannot possibly take this long to put out a fire camera. This is This doesn't look good for you. I'm outside. I'm outside again today. Like headaches, smoke floating through the air. It feels like somebody 20 feet from me put out a garbage fire with a bucket of water and the smoke is just sitting around my house. And I live in New Jersey. So come on Canada, please. Kevin's killing me. But you guys are working on your own hellscape down there with the heat. Yeah. So no outside it. You live in an apartment? Yeah. Okay. Isn't that interesting how these little things, these little things, you wouldn't even think of social economic. The way you grow up, like all that stuff. Like, kind of pushes you in a direction. You don't even know it. Like you don't I mean, you end up living a life that is more of the making of your influences and less of the making of your desires. So yeah, it's terrible.

Abbie 38:11
With I will tell you, I was doing a wellness program for a while and I was using my apartment gym. And I had to stop because with the so I only got the SIBO resolved. About two weeks ago, I went on antibiotics, and it cleared up and things are great. And I can move around and I can live my life. But right when that was going on, I was not eating. i If I could eat it was like very bland. Like minimal foods. And I had been put at one point on an elimination diet to see what foods are triggering these fits. Yeah. And then after that was eating FODMAP low FODMAP

Scott Benner 39:04
foods. Fine. Yeah.

Abbie 39:08
And in that time period, it was probably a span of two months. And my blood sugar was going low.

Scott Benner 39:18
Oh, really? Yeah. On this diet, so you can diet your way out of these blood sugars. If you eat cardboard. Yeah, yeah, that's what I think when I hear low FODMAP diet. Well, here's a question from just an outsider's perspective. If the SIBO is gone, why don't you go back on the ozempic

Abbie 39:39
so now I am going back on this epic but I have so I was originally on a two milligram

Scott Benner 39:48
we got a ramp to it prescription. Yeah, I

Abbie 39:50
have to start slowly because I'm I'll throw up on them.

Scott Benner 39:53
Yeah, no, it's uh, do they do point two 5.51. I think it started out at point five Point five then one, then two, then one, two. Okay. So and you have to do four weeks of each, right? Yes. Okay, so you're getting back, because maybe that's just why your blood sugars are higher because you're not getting the help from those epic deals. Right? Yeah. But you don't lose weight. So this is interesting. Abby, you listen to this podcast, right? Yes. Basically, I use ozempic Mines called V govi. I keep my head, I keep all my pens here to remind me that I shouldn't be eating a bunch of that's not good for me. And so I'm up to 1.7. I've done two injections of 1.7. I have noticed something. I'm at the point now, where I think I could overeat if I wanted to. Like if I made the conscious decision to do that. I almost I'm starting to think of it like when you heard about people getting like a gastric sleeves. And then you hear sometimes, like they figure like sometimes people get gastric sleeves and figure out a way they'll like liquefy their sugar or something like that. Like they like to, you know, get around this. I mean, went all that trouble, but I you know, like so. And I'm starting to get that feeling like we go V i don't have hunger, like I don't get hungry. My brain never tells me I'm hungry. And I very infrequently get any rumbling in my stomach that's like, oh, I can't believe I've eaten like, I don't know, it's magical when it comes to that stuff. And in the first few months, if I ate too much, I'd get like, like, like, oh, I should not eat that much. But I have noticed like, there are some foods I can eat more of than others. Like I could willfully eat around the window of you if I wanted to. And I wouldn't lose weight. But I am laser focused on doing this correctly. Like you see me I'm wearing a sweatshirt today. That doesn't fit me but it used to. And I'm almost wearing it to like remind myself of like, Yo used to fill up this sweatshirt, man. So keep going. You know? Do you have that with ozempic? Have you learned how to eat around it?

Abbie 42:02
I don't think I eat around it. I think with those Olympic I do have the repressed appetite. But I don't eat a lot in general.

Scott Benner 42:11
Okay. All right. So that's not your the it's the kind of foods that are available to you that are the bigger issue. Yeah. And how much? I mean, you said it earlier, but it's cultural. Right? And then are you is that it's difficult to get away from like you said, you're dating somebody? Is he have like a similar background as you? Oh, no. Okay. Would you do you get what would you pull? He's a white man. What kind of guy did you get? So your, your little Caucasian boyfriend? Is he? Is he dragging you in another direction? Like with food?

Abbie 42:50
Um, no. So he tries to be he's a power lifter. Okay. And so he tries to be but he eats so much more than I do. Okay. And so the types of meals that we make, like, he needs carb, I'm trying to stay away from a bunch of carbs. He needs very, like a lot of protein. And like, we have to divvy up like what we're eating. And the house that I grew up in. I could cook for, you know, 10 people, because my mom did that kind of stuff. And I've learned how to cook for one person. Now I'm cooking for two people. He's learning how to cook for both of us. I think we're just set a learning curve of what how to meet both of our knees in like a sustainable way.

Scott Benner 43:40
Yeah, it was interesting when my son graduated from college, and then he decided not to go to grad school and play more baseball. He got a job and he moved away. And he's teaching himself how to feed himself. And he says to me, one day, he goes, I don't I don't need all this size anymore. He's like, it's weird, but I don't need to weigh this much. Like I'm not trying to hit a baseball 400 feet anymore. Like I could, like I could lose weight. And he did like he lost. He dropped 10 pounds. Just by I don't think people realize like, in the the situation for your, for your boyfriend and eating to gain mass. Like it's a lot of food. He's like, it's so much better. He's like that I was eating food. Like I didn't even want it. I just like, you know, working out so hard and I'm playing so much. He's just forcing yourself to eat to keep your size up and he went from he was like 201 He's down to 190 and he's like six A's like six feet tall. But it was my point of bringing it up was it was interesting to watch him go I don't even need all this food. Like but he had been doing it for so long that it was just like you know, get up in the morning eggs rice. You know, put bread on it. Do this like give me more of something like he was so active like he couldn't be in bad shape, but it's you know, health wise So I don't know if it's still great for you or not, but he couldn't take in enough calories basically. Okay. Is your boyfriend ever like dead lifted you?

Abbie 45:11
He's never dead lifted me. He does pick me up. But

Scott Benner 45:15
it's all it's all I could think when you said he was a power lifter and that you're you're forefeet 11 Is that right? We're 10 for 10, not even for 11. And he's 640. That's what I was hoping. Yeah.

Abbie 45:29
And right when like the NK, like, problem was going on with inflation. Yeah, he was putting eggs on our grocery list and said, I need six eggs every morning for this meal and this protein. And I said, No, you're dating

Scott Benner 45:47
the wrong girl for that.

Abbie 45:48
Yeah. I said, you don't get eggs. We were buying egg whites, the liquid ones.

Scott Benner 45:54
Tell the chickens to make cheaper eggs? And then you can absolutely have them again. Yeah. So your management is a little up in the air right now. Because you're off. I'm glad that this CBOs cleared up for you. Do you do things like probiotics to try to keep your gut bacteria in a better direction?

Abbie 46:11
So I was directed not to worry, all of this was going on? Yes, the overgrowth?

Scott Benner 46:15
Right. What do they have you doing now that they think it's cleared up?

Abbie 46:20
Um, this doctor's office is not very communicative? So I have an advocate, nurse, and we're gonna figure out what we're gonna do.

Scott Benner 46:29
Was it not until your father's passing that you understood the impact of type two diabetes? Or did you know, and you didn't pay off in general, in general, you just thought like, I'm gonna live forever, because I'm young. And this is life. And that's how it works. Yeah. And that's something you never thought about the drinking or the drugs having a poor effect on you.

Abbie 46:50
Know, I knew they weren't good for me, but I didn't think that they would really be a big deal. I just thought, you know, it was everybody does it? Because that's who I was hanging around.

Scott Benner 46:59
Did you start paying attention to your diabetes, or your sobriety first, or did they happen at the same time? My diabetes, okay, so you're like, Well, I'm

Abbie 47:10
being a drunk diabetic, you don't take your medicine. So

Scott Benner 47:14
I love the idea of you're like, I'm gonna go get some of those good vegetables and candidum who's got the coke? I'm just imagining there was a day in your life that you went vegetable shopping, and got high on the same day? And probably Yeah. And you're like, Oh, I'm doing better. I'm being healthy. I'm having a salad. I mean, what is wrong with people? Not you, us in general? What is wrong? Yeah, what's been going on? I'd be on a health kick.

Abbie 47:49
Exactly.

Scott Benner 47:50
Oh, my God. I just, I see you over a coffee table explaining to people how you're getting your life together with your type two. And it's just it's really not like, I get him laughing. Because it's ridiculous. You know? Yeah. So what makes you go, I should not drink or get high anymore.

Abbie 48:08
I wrecked my car, and almost killed myself.

Scott Benner 48:11
And that'll get you. If you're lucky. I've heard people have done that and been like, God wants me to be alive.

Abbie 48:18
Yeah, no, um, I, I don't even remember this night, I went to a bar. And I was with people that I'd been hanging around for months and got into it with a guy that I'd been talking to got really upset. The bartender had lost my card. And so she'd been serving me free drinks all night. And I was ordering doubles at this

Scott Benner 48:42
point. If they're free. Yeah.

Abbie 48:46
So the last thing I remember is like storming out of this bar. Apparently, some people had tried to get me to get into an Uber and I screamed at them, stumbled to my car, got in my car and drove off. When I woke up the next morning, so this was March 4 of last year, I woke up the next morning, and I didn't know how I'd gotten in my bed. I was still in the clothes from the same night the night before. And my front door was unlocked. And I went to go look for my car, but I couldn't find it. And so I tracked it on my phone with my Bluetooth. And it was double parked, like diagonal in my apartment complex. And one of the, the, the axle in the front was broken in half. And one of the wheels was kind of angled like Lightning McQueen,

Scott Benner 49:47
ya know, to me.

Abbie 49:49
And then the tire on that wheel had a big huge bubble in it.

Scott Benner 49:55
Can I say I'm super impressed. You got it back to your apartment. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Because I

Abbie 50:00
don't know what I hit or where I hit it, but I didn't get arrested as far as I know, it didn't hurt anyone else. Anywhere. No good for you. I didn't hurt myself. And I called into work that morning, obviously, because I couldn't get there.

Scott Benner 50:19
I don't feel well, it's just it's probably a head cold. I'll see you tomorrow.

Abbie 50:22
I told my boss that I was having car trouble. You are in line.

Scott Benner 50:29
I'd say it's absolutely that's that's the most honest thing. You probably said that day. I'm having car trouble. I'm also cocaine trouble and alcohol. And yeah. So do you just sit there all day and think like, oh, God, I gotta fix this.

Abbie 50:43
No. So I came upstairs. My brother and I lived here. And I told my brother, I need you to come look at my car. And my family knew the kind of things I was doing and had already been on my sabbatical. And I came and got my brother. I told him what I had found, and I needed him to look at it. And he just ripped me anyone. Yeah.

Scott Benner 51:07
Word food. You can't afford a car. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Abbie 51:11
So I actually ended up selling that car to a mechanic. And that helped me get

Scott Benner 51:15
another one. Oh, wow. For parts.

Abbie 51:19
Yeah, no, we actually fixed it. We fixed it. And somebody drives it around my town. I see it all

Scott Benner 51:23
the time for people amazing. Wonderful. I gotta tell you, you describe the car to me that I would have gone man, we should take that to a junkyard. That thing is done. But somebody knows how to fix that. That's pretty cool. And that

Abbie 51:36
car was so just wouldn't die.

Scott Benner 51:40
Oh, apparently you're not going to either. You seem like you might have nine lives going. Yeah. Is it a great reminder to see the car bang around town? Like, yeah, I think it might be like almost like a little guardian angel that once in a while rolls by and goes don't forget not to use cocaine. You're like, no problem. I won't. Thank you, dad. No, that's interesting. So what are you gonna do? You gotta go to AAA you gotta go. Like,

Abbie 52:03
so I actually called My, my mental health physicians had been telling me that I needed to get clean. And then I said, Nope, I'm not going to. And I called my psychiatrist and I said, Hey, I need to get clean, but I'm not going to go to rehab. I don't have time or money to do that. So what's my next option, and she put me on naltrexone. And so I took naltrexone and I detoxed at home by myself,

Scott Benner 52:29
Oh, tell me about that.

Abbie 52:32
I didn't think I was gonna go through withdrawals. I didn't think it was going to be that bad. And because I didn't think I was an alcoholic, or an addict. I thought I'd do a little coke here and there, and I drink. But I don't drink like an alcoholic. And when I stopped, I had my friends come and get all the alcohol out of my house, and I started taking the naltrexone and I would go to work and I would have to walk out of my office, because I would start shaking so bad. And then at home at night is when it got really bad. I would toss and turn in my sleep, I would get cold sweats. My bed would be soaked.

Scott Benner 53:15
It was awful. How long did it go on for?

Abbie 53:19
I think my detox was probably right around two weeks.

Scott Benner 53:23
Wow. If I said to you right now, top of your head, the most important thing people have is what would you say? Their life? Yeah, exactly. It's, it's out. Great. Excellent. My son called me. He had only been out for a couple of months. And we were having this conversation about what's important. And he's like that stick up for me here. This is what's important. And I said call, it's just health. I was like, it's health. Health is the only thing and it relates to everything. Your health could be that it's 110 degrees outside, you can't go outside and go for a walk. Your health could be, you know, how you eat, how you, you know, feel in your mind. In the end, it's all health. Like, it's so easy to say, oh, yeah, sure, let's, you know, Triton. Anybody can say that. But I mean, my experience in my life tells me that if you don't have your health, you don't have anything. And your whole life is then focused on slowing this decline that is happening faster than it should be. And that's about being alive. So while you learned it early, that's great. Now what do we got to do? Do you need insulin?

Abbie 54:36
I take insulin Yeah, let's do is insulin. Yeah, but

Scott Benner 54:39
I mean, like meal insulin. No, I know you're taking a background but you said you've gotten low before too. So the Basal is enough for you mostly. Okay, how much do you take?

Abbie 54:51
Typically 20 units? If so, that's like my standard. And then if I am riding high like I am right now I can go up to 40. And then if I'm having lows are where I need to be the know kind of talk to my doctor in the portal about adjusting. Do you

Scott Benner 55:13
see a lot of spikes? Or is it just do you just ride higher?

Abbie 55:17
So no, not typically my, I would say my average blood sugar. My average fasting is probably like 110 120. Okay. And then like My average day like daily, like during the day is between 150 and 170.

Scott Benner 55:38
Okay, but I'm gonna do it when you're 250 There's no fast acting insulin they gave you like, if you have to get it down, like that kind of thing. Would you? Call on me? Yeah. Would you even be comfortable doing that?

Abbie 55:49
Probably. I think so. Okay,

Scott Benner 55:53
a lot of pump companies are coming out with type two pumps now that they're, and I've been

Abbie 55:58
offered a pump? Yeah. From my Endo. Yeah.

Scott Benner 56:01
What was your thought about it?

Abbie 56:04
I'm just not ready.

Scott Benner 56:05
Okay. Okay. So what is your plan? I mean, you've now you've proven to me that you can do a hard thing you've done a number of I mean, your whole story is you're doing hard things. So what's the hard thing you need to do for the diabetes? Because I want to say this, Abby, I don't think you're damned to dying early. Like, I don't think that's your, I don't think that's true. So like, what are the hard things you need to do that would get you to a better place?

Abbie 56:35
I think the hard thing for me with my diabetes, I know that. So I have a fatty liver. And with the extra weight that I carry on my body, I know that if I lost that weight, things would be easier. But like when we were talking about earlier, the extra 1520 pounds that I carry, I am very comfortable with that weight. Because the weight that I carry now has taken me through hard things. So I'm attached to this body. I'm gonna cry. I'm attached.

Scott Benner 57:16
I'm gonna cry. Abby, just let's be clear about that.

Abbie 57:20
And like my stomach, just in general, like, it's a comfort for me to like, be able to touch my stuff that's on hold my stomach. Do you know, hard?

Scott Benner 57:32
Do you know what happens? Look how it is like a teddy bear? Or like,

Abbie 57:37
I don't know, it's like, I don't know why it is. But like our Yeah, I will hold my own stomach or like, lift up my shirt if I'm home. And just like, let it be there. And I know that sounds so weird. But it like that's just how I've been for the past 10 years probably

Scott Benner 58:00
remind you of somebody. Something,

Abbie 58:04
I want to say that it's connected to like when I was little, I would take off my shirt as a kid and say like, I want to be like my dad. And then when I got older, my mom was like, Hey, you can't take up shirt anymore.

Scott Benner 58:16
Honey. It's over now. Might not be fair, but it's how we live this so? Well. Yeah. So you're working with a mental health person?

Abbie 58:28
Yes, I go to two different therapists, and then I see a psychiatrist as well.

Scott Benner 58:33
And this is not in my business. So you can this is not my business. Everything I've asked you is none of my business. So it's a weird thing for me to say. But I often find myself going this is not my business. A couple of therapists. So is some of it for the addiction stuff. Is some of it about how you grew up? Or do you have other like, mental health concerns that we haven't talked about?

Abbie 58:59
So one of them is talk therapy. And that's just like, whatever I need to catch up on whatever I need to work on. We also with that specific therapists, we do Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, or Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. And I have BPD. So we do that for my BPD. What is that

Scott Benner 59:20
bipolar disorder?

Abbie 59:22
I have bipolar disorder, and I have borderline personality disorder. Okay.

Scott Benner 59:27
How long do you feel like you've had those whole life? Like,

Abbie 59:33
I mean, I'm sure I've had bipolar my whole life. I just didn't know until I was probably a teenager, that it was an issue.

Scott Benner 59:41
Okay. Do you think? Do you think your parents have had it?

Abbie 59:47
I think my dad did. And then my neither one of my parents had been diagnosed with any mental health disorders. Okay, and so you There's not really a way to pin down where it came from. But bipolar is genetic. So how does

Scott Benner 1:00:04
it had to come? How does that impact your life? Like, what are the like real repercussions of it? Honestly, it takes over my life like it. It controls my life. Okay, for swaths of time, and then it doesn't or is it constant?

Abbie 1:00:22
I feel like it's constant. But there will be times where people will tell me that I'm doing well. And they can tell and they're proud of me. And like, right now, in my life for the past couple of weeks, like I've been trying to keep my together for other people, and just be there for my friends and be there for my family and do things for our household. And I was folding laundry the other day, and I looked at my boyfriend and I started crying. And I said, I need you to hold me because I'm about to have MTV. The bipolar has, because of the switching and the splitting. With my emotions on different people. It's affected a lot of my relationships. Yeah. And I, before the boyfriend I have now I could never sit in a committed relationship. I was always running. And then the borderline personality disorder, I I believe that it is a symptom of being raised in the household with someone who was a narcissist,

Scott Benner 1:01:32
and everything's so unstable, and moving around constantly, yeah, stability is so important for people. Wow. Okay, all right, Abby, this is a good time for us to take a breath. We've learned a lot. We've only been speaking for an hour. And we've gotten a lot out. Holy crap. You really stuck me for a second there. I didn't see that part coming. Isn't that crazy? I should have, by the way with the drugs and alcohol at the young age and your dad was drinking, I guess should have like, I'm almost disappointed in myself. I've been doing this for a long time. Yeah. Wow, you're very nice to come on this show and share this. Why the hell are you doing this?

Abbie 1:02:11
Because I want people to know that there's, you know, there's other people like them. And there's other people that go through these things. And my my road has been a hard road. But I feel like I have a purpose. And I want to share my story so that people know.

Scott Benner 1:02:28
Yeah, no, it's excellent. It's really lovely. It seriously, it's not lost on me that the podcast is like it's, it's, I mean, I could have made a podcast about management. It could be me and Jenny or me talking about diabetes a little bit, but it wouldn't be this robust if it was that it's people coming on. And I mean, this is the ninth year of this podcast, nine solid years, and pretty close to 1000 episodes. And I can tell you right now that on June 30 2023, if you said, Scott, I want to be on the podcast, I think I'd have to book you in February next year, like eight. So it's those people who I don't, I don't go find like they come find me. And we have these amazing conversations about things that generally speaking people do not talk about, but definitely live with. And I don't know, it just feels it's it just feels like I feel grateful that you're willing to do this is really cool. Do you use the show for management at all with your diabetes?

Abbie 1:03:35
I listen to some of the management podcasts and try to implement some of the like advice. It's just so hard to make it a habit.

Scott Benner 1:03:48
You see, I find that that's what the weego V is doing for me, by the way is Oh, first and foremost, it's helping me form a healthy habit that I was prior to this not I don't even want to say able to make. I don't even know that I was aware that I should make it like I didn't know anything. You know, I think in fairness, I didn't know anything was wrong. Like I knew my body didn't seem to work, right. And that I carried weight that like didn't make sense for what I was eating. Like I thought, you know, but I've just had an experience recently where I mean, I've lost 25 pounds in I don't know 16 pens. however long that is right. And in the beginning while the weights falling off, and in fairness, I'm a boy, we seem to lose weight easier. So you know, I don't think everybody's going to lose 25 pounds in the first couple of months. But I was so I adjusted how I was eating both, you know, because the medication helped me and because I wanted to and the weights come in and the numbers falling, right like so you're celebrating the number you're like, hey, A like, I don't care to tell you like I was like 233 that first day. And I'm like to, I don't even know what I am to haven't weighed myself yet. But I was to 10 yesterday. So I'm like, are 209 So I'm like 25 pounds down, and the numbers falling, its falling, its falling. You're like, I'm winning, I'm winning the numbers going down, I'm winning. And then I hit this, like, 25 number. And I like stood in the mirror. And I was like, Oh, damn, I'm still not in great shape. Like, and I used to tell myself forever, like, I just need to lose 20 pounds. Like, like, it's fine. Like, if I lost 20 pounds, I'd look like, you know, your boyfriend and his bodybuilding guy. And then I lost 20 pounds. I'm like, I'm just a smaller version of the mess I was before. Isn't that interesting? You know. And so for me, I thought, well, it felt like motivation, like, I'll keep going. But you know, yesterday, I or two days ago, I said to Arden, oh, we're waking up tomorrow before I record the podcast and going for a walk. And then we're going to do it again the next day. And we're going to keep doing that. Because this is not enough. Like just losing the weight. It's nice and close, like enclosed. Like, stand up, and I look so much better. And like the like, under my chin is going away, which was the thing that I've hated about my face for like my whole life. So but it's not the whole thing. Like that was like that was the crazy part. Like I looked in the mirror. And I was like, this is not nearly over. Right? I thought it was I thought 25 pounds. I'm good. Like, yeah, I want I want we go V like a bell was gonna go off or something. I got it, everybody, don't worry.

Abbie 1:06:40
I think the other piece too, is when I found a podcast, it was recommended by someone. And when I found the podcast, I found the Facebook group too. And I joined the Facebook group, Facebook group. And when I see people's posts, if I'm like, Oh, I've wondered about that, too. I'll go look in the comments. And though there are comments that I find helpful.

Scott Benner 1:07:02
Yeah. Oh, please, that Facebook group, like, I hope someone brings that up at my funeral. Like, I'm not kidding. You know, like, when people are like, Oh, he was good to the poor, I hope people I hope people go like he started a Facebook group. And I'll tell you what, it really helped people. That thing is crazy. Like, like, yes, the conversations are helpful unless the stories are helpful and blah, blah, blah. But you can be in the Facebook group and not listen to the podcast. And as a matter of fact, it happens, and vice vice versa. But there's nothing like it's not. It's not groupthink in a bad way, where everybody just gets together and agrees. And now we're all just believing each other's lies. Like it's a really interesting place where people come in and add their perspectives. And then you end up in every post having enough flavor from different perspectives where you can go, I'm going to that part seems valuable. And that part seems valuable. I'm going to take it over here and make my own thing out of it. Yeah, it's amazing. Like I really and I want to say again, I did not do that on purpose. Like once I started seeing what it was like, I put my effort into it. But in the beginning, I was just like, people were like, can you make a Facebook group? And I was like, Oh, like that, that Facebook group used to have one rule, it was like, I think it actually said in the rules. Don't be an asshole. I'll close this thing down. I don't want to be involved in this. But I'll do it for you guys if you want. But if anybody turns into a problem, like I'm shutting this off, and it's turned into, like a thing that I'm actually proud of. So yeah, more and more type twos are coming in every day, too. So that's really great. And it's it's the ecosystem is friendly. like nobody's like you have tight to get out of here. You know,

Abbie 1:08:51
the thing is, you've created a space and you've held space for people with type two.

Scott Benner 1:08:55
Yeah, no, it's crazy. And it's called Juicebox Podcast type one diabetes because and you know why honestly, because I've learned it doesn't matter what it's called. Yeah, like it's the way the word spreads is that thing could be called like, you know, Spearmint Rhino. Oh no, it that's a strip club and why is that in my head? Oh, I know why that's in my head. Not important and not not a dirty story. Just I just anyway, it could be called anything and the word would get around and people and people would find it and that's that to me the sign of something that's that's working Yeah 100% I mean, yeah.

Abbie 1:09:41
We won't go too much into this but um, somebody recommended this to the podcast to me on a

Scott Benner 1:09:48
work call. on a on a work call. Nice. I love where people get like from from doctors. I met a lady at Costco like I love reading the intake forms. I Read one, the essay that said, My child was just diagnosed with type one diabetes. My neighbor's kid has type one. She told me this is the only Facebook group worth being a part of. And I was like, Oh, that's really lovely. Yeah, I mean, 40,000 people grows by 300 people every seven days. So if the words out because you don't like you don't publicize the Facebook group? I mean, I guess I could, but seems like that's, you know, seems greedy. I mean, I'm already winning. How much do I want to win by? Well, you know, now there's a voice in my head saying that you want to win by more? Maybe I need a therapist. Is there anything we haven't talked about that we should have?

Abbie 1:10:46
Okay, so my other therapist, so I have the one for the talk therapy. And my second therapist is for EMDR.

Scott Benner 1:10:55
Oh, I was wondering if you do the rapid eye movement. Does that help?

Abbie 1:11:00
Yes. Yeah. For me, it does.

Scott Benner 1:11:02
I don't even think I need it. And I'd like to do it after hearing people talk about it.

Abbie 1:11:06
I actually don't do it for you would think I would do it for my childhood. But I actually do it for an abusive relationship I was in for four years.

Scott Benner 1:11:16
Wow. Okay. Is that a drinking relationship? So we were

Abbie 1:11:21
both drinkers. And I didn't stop drinking, but I minimized my drinking while I was in that relationship, because I felt like somebody had to be sober, or somewhat responsible.

Scott Benner 1:11:37
Well, that's how you know you're in trouble when you're like, I'm gonna be the responsible one in this situation. Well, holy hell, Abby. Thank you. For very much. I have to go to work. Right.

Abbie 1:11:53
I have about 45 minutes. I

Scott Benner 1:11:55
have a little time. Okay. All right. Then if you have a little more time, let me ask this question. I forgot about the timezone when I said that. What's it like trying to find a good doctor? Any kind, mental health endocrinologist general practitioner? How many of them varies.

Abbie 1:12:17
But like my endocrinologist, I went in, scheduled the appointment, I've been with him for seven years, I have not had any problems. They're literal angels. And I will never go anywhere else. They didn't, I said, they offered me a pump that they'll do whatever I need to manage my diabetes. At one point, I wanted children and they said, your diabetes will not hinder your ability to have children. So they are so helpful. My primary. I'm not going back there. So I will need to find a new one. I imagine that will probably be a pretty big task, the gastro that was not hard to find it was hard to schedule, because they don't answer their phone. And if they do, they don't have anything for six weeks. Yeah. And now it's just these follow ups that I need to get done are gonna take forever, but that one's graph of mental health. That's a show. Yeah. Because, and my, my, my boyfriend works in mental health. So I can I see what it's like, you know, firsthand because I live with someone who does that for a job. But when I was going to a certain clinic, I was not getting great care. They didn't really care what was going on with me. I ended up in the mental hospital. And when I was in the mental hospital, they asked me if I wanted to go back to the same physicians or if I wanted to have them schedule new appointments with new physicians. And that, you know, they didn't do anything right at the mental hospital. That was one thing they did, right. Okay. So they scheduled me with my talk therapist that I see now. The psychiatrist that I previously had I stopped seeing her though, because she recommended that I do ketamine treatments for depression. And I'm a recovering addict. I don't feel comfortable with that. Yeah. All of my mental health physicians are in the same office now. And they are all of them are pretty great. So I like how things are going right now. But that has been a journey of its own and mental health is finding people that know what I need to know how to do what I need.

Scott Benner 1:14:52
Yeah. So competency, not just talk therapy, but like real like dig down stuff and not that talk therapy is easy to do, but You know, you could

Abbie 1:15:01
taste it. Even the talk therapist, like can provide guidance and, and we do the DBT. In addition to but with a talk therapy, he can talk me down from things that I'm spiraling from, or things that somebody else has triggered. And they're not for me to hold on to.

Scott Benner 1:15:21
Yeah, go, that's excellent. But it's, I mean, I'm starting to even see, like, there's one doctor that helps my kids. And they're there. I mean, we, we give it to our insurance afterwards, and it's reimbursed, but it's a cash pay, like, and it's starting to turn into six, eight weeks to see that person. You know, and me used to be a few are paying in cash and happen faster. And now? No, you know, and it's worth the extra, it's worth the extra step. Because you do have to put the money out. You do. But we get, I mean, honestly, just about 90% of it back. So it's not really a problem. But, man, I just used to be that used to be like, fast track. You don't I mean, like, yeah, that's not even right anymore. Like, there are not enough doctors. And then you find them and they don't know what they're doing half the time or they're not valuable for you, and, and then you still have all these problems. And I think that's the thing that when people seem like they give up, it takes you two months to get an appointment to find out the doctor is not going to be valuable. And now you're back to like, I gotta go try to find a different doctor. I already thought this one was the right one. I'm wasn't right about that. I have to find another one. I have to wait two more months, then what if I get there and they're like, I don't know. I'm six months into this now. And that's a terrible, I've seen it happen to people along all kinds of disease states. And it's a real problem. Like the way the system is set up is monkeyed up somehow. It's worse than Canada, by the way. Where like, if you're not dying, you dropped to the bottom of the list. And then by the time they get to you, you're dying. You know what I mean? And so is something worse is happening. It's really sucks. You want to have kids. So with all you have going on, and you're just gonna say to get a cat

Abbie 1:17:22
I have a dog she's enough. Good enough.

Scott Benner 1:17:27
Yeah, but, but there is that drive? Right? Like, you don't? What made you change your mind about having a baby? Male? Yeah. You don't think you really don't think talk about it for a second, but I can tell on your face. You don't think you're gonna live forever? Like you you think your life is shortened? Yeah. What do you think is gonna get you?

Abbie 1:17:49
Honestly, that's not the diabetes. I think it's going to be cancer from like the food I eat or, you know, something I've put in my body that I shouldn't have.

Scott Benner 1:18:01
Well, I think the I think your body can rebound from the drugs and the alcohol you're still pretty young. I've seen people do worse themselves and and be okay. The food is financial. Or I completely think

Abbie 1:18:14
it's a I think it's a mix of financial and like knowledge. Okay.

Scott Benner 1:18:22
You because you don't know what to buy. Right? All right. cookies, crackers, white flour, No. seed oil. No. We're halfway there now. Okay. Okay, if you need oil, cold pressed olive oil, don't cook with anything else. butters better than canola vegetable, blah, blah, blah. Please don't cook with those oils. Go to coconut oil if you have to. Like for little things. That's the only oil that's in my house cold pressed olive oil that barely gets touched. Maybe just the wet a pan and coconut oil to make popcorn with those are the two things we haven't asked no oil. Did you listen to the episode with Jessie glucose goddess about the order to eat your food and to lower lessen glycemic impacts of food? No, I haven't heard listen to that one. I had her on because she was people are asking about her. She's like very popular. Online. I get a lot of feedback from people that said they've just reordered their meals type ones. They reorder their meals and they're seeing less impacts in places. So maybe just that might be easy to do. But white flour, noodles, bread. You know it's not really good for you. You wait you are you ate once and brought your agency into the fives. Yeah, Was there nothing in that diet you liked?

Abbie 1:19:52
I mean, is there so I think the thing about the knowledge now is I'm I I have the knowledge of what I am supposed to be eating for me. Okay, but then I have this six, four man who's 267 pounds, who is telling me what he needs to eat. And I'm like, maybe

Scott Benner 1:20:18
the girls again, if he's like, that's all. That's how I'd handle it. You guys, if I was a girl, I'd get a lot accomplished with my boobs. I'm just saying. I know why you guys aren't doing that more. I would say yeah.

Abbie 1:20:34
I think it's just the now it's the transition of what meals are we eating together? Because the all the meals that I can make myself, right, I know what I'm supposed to eat. But then we're eating together. And I'm like, he left those noodles in there. And I don't really want those to go to waste. So I'm going to eat them.

Scott Benner 1:20:52
So when it's in front of you, you'll eat it. If you don't have it, you'll avoid it. Right? I relate to that statement. If I if I live by myself, this house would have like some eggs in it. Like a couple of maybe like a head of romaine lettuce and some like, I don't know, rice crackers if I wanted to get crazy.

Abbie 1:21:11
You John salad. Yeah, I love salads and salads that are like, full of like, all the topping. Yeah. I love salad.

Scott Benner 1:21:22
So it would be malpractice for me as a podcaster. Not to bring this up. You are saying there's no way you can live longer because the way you eat, but then also saying that you are knowingly eating that way. Right? Yeah, yeah. Okay. I think you can do it. I think if you can stay straight for 16 months, and you can hammer your way through the relationship you had with your parents and are talking to your mom again. And it's and it's good. And you could make it through breaking the axle on your car and coming back getting yourself back together again. I don't see why you can't skip pasta.

Abbie 1:22:06
I'm going to tell you the other big thing. Okay. I am huge on helping other people taking care of other people. I have a really big family. As far as like, how close we are. There's 13 of us. We're super close, super tight knit. I have younger cousins who I'm very involved with. But if I'm taking care of other people and helping with other things, I'm not going to take care of myself. I'm going to put that on the backburner. Yes,

Scott Benner 1:22:39
that happens to people.

Abbie 1:22:42
But it's all I'm working on that you're working on.

Scott Benner 1:22:44
I know it's also a comfortable excuse, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. Because it's not like I don't do it because I don't care or I don't do it. Because I'm crazy. It's I don't do it. But it's because I'm doing something very important. Otherwise, yeah, like, That's the excuse. You know, when I

Abbie 1:23:02
was folding the laundry and crying the other night, I told my boyfriend, like, it's just so hard to have all of these moving parts. And to still, you know, take care of things at home and take care of me and take care of the dog and take care of you and take care of everybody else.

Scott Benner 1:23:21
I use a sliding priority schedule, which is not a thing that I'm going to generalize here. Now the thing I see ladies doing very often, I see ladies making lists in my life, and whatever got to be number one. always stays number one, even if number five suddenly became more important, when number five becomes very important. Instead of moving five to one, they go well now I gotta get done. 123 and four, so I can get to five. Does that sound? Like how your brain works?

Abbie 1:23:48
I do that. Yeah, don't

Scott Benner 1:23:49
do that. You want to know why boys look so carefree? is one of the reasons okay? If one was very important on Monday, but five is more important today. Five is one. That's it. I know that sounds ultra simple. But it you're you're, you have too much to do. We all we all have too much to do, right? In a modern society. We're all doing way too much. And that's not going to change. Like it's easy to sit around and go we should do less work. Okay, great. That's not going to happen. So like so when that's not gonna happen. Sliding priorities. That's it. My priority and for me for you, my health is first. Right? And then I think you know, eating is one in one A, one B. So the foods I choose my overall health, mental and physical, your relationships because I think you need strong relationships. If you're going to be able to keep up with your sobriety. Your sobriety is up in there. And then the rest is nice. Nice to have. Right? And you said it so casually earlier, like we had what we needed and most of what We wanted, I thought that was a very healthy like, state and I grew up broke. I know what you mean, like. And so yeah, to me, it's all about, it's about reprioritizing. Like, instead of looking and going, oh my god, number five just became really important, but I already wasn't getting done the laundry, like, I got to take the laundry and push it up, push it in the corner, and then do it tomorrow. That's it. That's what I got for you.

Abbie 1:25:27
The The other thing is, I've never I've never been one to ask for help. And with, like, trying to be, you know, taking care of myself and trying to be healthier and trying to be in healthier relationships. I was talking to my mom the other day, and I told her about all this stuff that was going on. And she said, she doesn't have a job right now. And she said, Well, I have time. And she offered to come over. And so she's coming over tonight, and she's going to help me clean.

Scott Benner 1:26:00
Nice. Don't let her cook. No, I'm just kidding. We saw what you did in the kitchen, you're good, clean something. Give me some more of that free lettuce. But stay out of the kitchen, please. Well, that see, that's terrific. Like, that's really great. Like, just do that. Like don't take advantage your mom, but like, you know, as like, continue to do that. Ask your boyfriend for help. At work, you know, there's so much of people taking on. They just keep taking a lot more work. And and now work just feels like it never ends. Do you work out of your home? Yeah, yeah, that's taken from somebody who's been doing that for longer than COVID. You know what I mean? It's tough. Because there are times the end of the day, you're like, well, it's nine o'clock. I'm not tired, but I couldn't go edit a podcast. And now I'm like just making this podcast constantly. I got to look a little right yesterday, you know, Isabel from the Facebook group. I texted her yesterday. And I said, I need someone to edit this show. For me. I was like, I am stuck in a loop. I want an editor, I desperately don't want to work with an editor. And I can't pay an editor. But I like like I just thought about if I can move this one thing off of my plate, how it would expand my life personally, and how I'd be able to put more effort into a lot of stuff for the podcast and grow other ideas that I have for people. And it's this one thing, it's the editing that's holding me back. Like it just is because like you and I are talking for an hour and a half, right? I'm gonna have to edit this. It's an hour and a half. So now your conversation is a three hour conversation. And then it has to be prepared. And I have to like, I have to do the thing where I sit down, I go I go. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored. And I got to do all that right? And like so I do that stuff and then the editing together and that happens every day. So like I never stopped doing that. And then she's like, get an editor and I was like I don't want somebody to screw my podcast up. Something's gotta give you know what I mean? So I love that you had your mom over to help you out. That's really nice. Well, maybe you could make something good for her to eat. And you guys could both feel better. Yeah, Abby, I really appreciate you doing this with me. Thank you very much. Absolutely. I had a lovely time. And I over and above appreciate that you came on as a type two. So it's hard to hard to get more tattoos. I try really hard. I get them sometimes. But your story is going to fit right in with the other one. So I appreciate it very much.

Abbie 1:28:46
Thank you no shame in my game. I was actually told at one point that I was like one and a half

Scott Benner 1:28:54
at 15.

Abbie 1:28:55
Probably I think I was 20 when they said this okay. They thought Yeah, because because of my diagnosis being when I was 15 Did you get nobody?

Scott Benner 1:29:05
Did you the testing the C peptide testing? No. No. They just use common sense when you didn't die without insulin. Eventually Yeah, gotcha. And your father I'd like to and everybody you've ever looked at as type two and it's it's not it's not wrong for me to say that like in a from your background type two stronger as well. Right? Yeah, it's food. It really is ABBY Yeah. Indian culture to a lot of tight to the it's just it's the food you're eating. Alright, well don't get chips in an Arizona iced tea but go get something different

Well, first, a huge thank you to Abby for coming on the show and sharing such a personal story. I also want to thank Dexcom makers of the day Dexcom G six and G seven continuous glucose monitoring systems. Get yours right now@dexcom.com forward slash juicebox. A huge thank you to one of today's sponsors G voc glucagon, find out more about Chivo Capo pen at G Vogue glucagon.com forward slash juicebox you spell that GVOKEGL You see ag o n.com. Forward slash juicebox

thank you so much for listening. I'll be back soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast. If you have typed to or pre diabetes, 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 869 medical team 874 fueling 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.