Scott Benner 9/25/25 Scott Benner 9/25/25

#1637 Over Producer

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Alex, 33, diagnosed T1D at 11, shares scoliosis, teen diabulimia, and lactic acidosis. Now a nurse, witnessing NICU outcomes reshaped her care and motherhood plans, rejecting blame.

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Scott Benner 9/24/25 Scott Benner 9/24/25

#1636 Premature to Postponed

Laura, 45, a social worker and mom of two, shares her oldest daughter’s type 1 diabetes and celiac diagnoses, premature births, and a birthday spent in the hospital.

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Scott Benner 0:00
Friends, we're all back together for the next episode of The Juicebox podcast. Welcome.

Laura 0:14
So my name is Laura. I'm from upstate New York, and I have two beautiful daughters. My oldest daughter is type one diabetic, and I am a social worker.

Scott Benner 0:25
If this is your first time listening to the Juicebox podcast and you'd like to hear more, download Apple podcast or Spotify, really, any audio app at all, look for the Juicebox podcast and follow or subscribe. We put out new content every day that you'll enjoy. Want to learn more about your diabetes management. Go to Juicebox podcast.com. Up in the menu and look for bold Beginnings The Diabetes Pro Tip series and much more. This podcast is full of collections and series of information that will help you to live better with insulin. Please don't forget that nothing you hear on the Juicebox podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan or becoming bold with insulin. This episode of The Juicebox podcast is sponsored by the Omnipod five and at my link, omnipod.com/juicebox you can get yourself a free, what I just say, a free Omnipod five starter kit, free, get out of here. Go click on that link, omnipod.com/juicebox check it out. Terms and Conditions apply. Eligibility may vary. Full terms and conditions can be found at omnipod.com/juicebox links, in the show notes, links at Juicebox podcast.com today's podcast is sponsored by us med. Us, med.com/juicebox you can get your diabetes supplies from the same place that we do. And I'm talking about Dexcom, libre, Omnipod, tandem, and so much more us. Med.com/juicebox or call 888-721-1514, the episode you're about to enjoy was brought to you by Dexcom, the Dexcom g7 the same CGM that my daughter wears. You can learn more and get started today at my link. Dexcom.com/juicebox dot com, slash Juicebox.

Laura 2:23
So my name is Laura. I'm from upstate New York, and I have two beautiful daughters. My oldest daughter is type one diabetic, and I am a social worker.

Scott Benner 2:33
Nice to meet you. Thank you. Thank you for coming on and doing this. Absolutely. Two kids. How old are they? Two kids.

Laura 2:41
They are seven and nine. Seven and nine.

Scott Benner 2:44
Wow. How old are you? 45 congratulations. That's a lovely little family. Yeah. Thank you very nice. How old was the one who got type one when she was diagnosed?

Laura 2:56
So it would be the nine year old, and she was actually it was her third birthday. She spent her third birthday in the hospital. Oh, gosh, six years ago. Yeah, almost

Scott Benner 3:07
seven. Almost seven. Okay, yeah, yep. What precipitated the hospital visit the typical

Laura 3:14
signs like drinking a lot, using the bathroom a lot, soaking through her diapers and the night before we actually took her in, I was like, telling my husband, because I'm, like, a big Googler, so I was like, Don't Google it, because it says diabetes. And we kind of like, chuckled, because I'm also like, I think of the worst case scenario. So in that case, it was actually right. But so we took her in. The next day, I think I was going to take her to the walk in. Yeah, I was going to take her to the walk in. And she was with grandpa, and grandpa was like, she's complaining her legs hurt. She's not acting right. So we took her to the doctors that day, and they did a urine test, and the doctor came in and was like, What's up with her sugar? It's It's really high. And I was like, what? Oh, my goodness. The rest was kind of history. So next thing we know, we were actually, I think I must have been in denial, because I went back to work, and my husband took her to the emergency room, and they did the blood test there, and her blood sugar was 978, oh my gosh, yeah, crazy. So they ended up going to the nearest Children's Hospital, which was an hour and a half away, and he's trying to contact me, and I'm a social worker, so I was in sessions, and I didn't check my phone knowing all of this was going on. I think I was like, in a state of denial. I was like, No, it's not, she's fine, and then he's like, we're an hour and a half away. What are you doing? So I had to go up to to go join them, and that was kind of the start. And that was like, right before her third birthday. So she was in the hospital for her third birthday.

Scott Benner 4:57
Was your youngest even around at that point?

Laura 4:59
Yes, she. Was Yeah, so I had to make arrangements for her.

Scott Benner 5:03
Yep, she's a baby, right? Yeah, oh yeah, not that the three year old is not a baby, still, but yeah,

Laura 5:08
wow, yep, she was very Yeah, very little, yep.

Scott Benner 5:12
There any sign of other autoimmune issues or type one diabetes in your extended family?

Laura 5:17
Well, my husband side has Hashimotos. My husband's celiac. My daughter's also celiac as well. And on my husband's side, there's also Graves disease.

Scott Benner 5:30
They have graves Hashimotos and celiac.

Laura 5:32
Yes, yeah. I wish I would have known that before I married them.

Scott Benner 5:36
Laura's like there were other boys talking to me,

Laura 5:39
yeah, and I didn't know that until I started listening to your podcast, though all these things, I was like, Oh my goodness. It was like, just waiting to happen.

Scott Benner 5:47
Yeah, I'll tell you right now. If you've got type one and your boyfriend's family is running to the bathroom after they eat, just pick a different guy, right?

Laura 5:54
Yeah, absolutely, yep. Very true.

Scott Benner 5:59
What's your remembrance of the time in the hospital.

Laura 6:02
It's okay. I was trying to sit down last night and think about things, and I think it's kind of a blur, because there's a lot of medical stuff that I can even talk about prior to the to the type one. So we had been at the hospital, like, a year before, when she was almost two, she had to be airlifted, actually, from our local hospital because she had a respiratory virus that sent her like took her to the walk in, and her while we were at the walk in, her lip turned blue, and all of a sudden, we're in an ambulance. They're bringing us to the hospital. It was crazy, and she ended up being intubated when she was almost two years old. Oh, good. And airlifted so that it was the same hospital. So here we were, like, a year later, you know, with a new diagnosis, you know, diabetes. And I was like, Oh my goodness. So it was a little bit traumatizing just being there after, you know, a year prior, we had this, you know, helicopter experience that we were later had to fight a bill of like $65,000 which we got all of that resolved. But, you know, it had just been a long year of trying to fight

Scott Benner 7:12
that it cost $65,000 to fly on a helicopter.

Laura 7:16
Yeah, apparently, yeah. That seems crazy. Yeah, yep. My husband's a very low key kind of guy, but he panicked. He's like, How the heck are we gonna pay me $65,000 for this, you know, Air flight? And I was like, we're not, we're gonna fight it, you know. And we did, and it took a long time, but so it had been a whole year of just getting over that that was very traumatizing, you know, just that whole experience. And then here we are at the same hospital, you know, doing something different. And I was glad that she went because, I mean, she wasn't, thankfully, in DKA, but I think she was in the start of it, because her a 1c was like, 12.4 they told us,

Scott Benner 7:55
so, wow, no kidding. Yes,

Laura 7:56
I know. Yeah.

Scott Benner 7:58
What were her symptoms that day? Like, the day you were like, hey, something's wrong.

Laura 8:03
Well, grandpa was saying her, she was complaining her legs were hurting, okay, but it was just leading up to it, you know, just a lot of the excess thirst, yes, like, and then soaking through her she wasn't potty trained yet, but just soaking through her diapers.

Scott Benner 8:19
Wow, that's something. So, yeah, so they get her straight, right? How long she in the hospital for

Laura 8:24
was only a few days. Yeah, we actually had, my other daughter was getting baptized that Sunday, and I think she was in the hospital that Thursday, so we were there Thursday night, Friday, Saturday, and they, they released us Saturday, you

Scott Benner 8:41
still did the baptism. Oh, yeah, we did. Yep, we sure did. Are you Catholic? My husband is the most Catholic thing I've ever heard in my life. Yeah, we Yeah.

Laura 8:51
Well, you know, the endocrinologist said, Go do it. Just do it. Live a normal life. So there we were, you know, and we went out of the hospital. We were MDI for probably about a year. So we were giving her shots, poking her finger, doing all the things. Like, newly diagnosed was kind of a crazy, yeah,

Scott Benner 9:08
go live a normal life. Like, oh yeah. I don't know if you realize my three year old just got type one, yeah. Not gonna be all that normal. But okay, thanks, yeah.

Laura 9:16
And I remember being at the hospital, being very overwhelmed, like, just throwing all this information. I'm terrible at math, and I remember we were trying to do the numbers, and I kept getting it wrong. And I wasn't too happy with the diabetes educator that we had. She, I thought was a little harsh in the hospital. Yeah, yeah. She wasn't my favorite. But what struck you as harsh, I think because, first of all, I was hungry, so I felt like my blood sugar was dropping myself because I hadn't eaten in a while. And I was like, Can we take a break? And she's like, No, we have this allotted time. You gotta do it, you know? And she just threw a lot of information at us. I felt like in not in a very kind way either, you know, it was more informational. But there. Didn't feel like there was any sensitivity to the fact that, like, we just threw all this, yeah, right, it felt cold, yes, yes, it did definitely.

Scott Benner 10:09
You're like, I need a hard pretzel. And she's like, too bad lady, we got 45 minutes, right, right? Yeah. Tell you a bunch of stuff that you're not going to remember that's not going to end up being that

Laura 10:19
helpful anyway. I know, right? It's very true. Yeah,

Scott Benner 10:23
you said you like to Google. So six years ago, how did you launch into all this? It's not from what she talked to you about, apparently,

Laura 10:29
no, and actually, it took me a while. My husband took on a lot of the care initially, I think because, you know, I had a baby. When my daughter was initially airlifted. I was pregnant with my second daughter, and while we're at the hospital, I was like, Gee, something doesn't feel very right, so, but I was like, I gotta just, you know, be here for my older daughter. And so then I got back after she was, you know, finally getting better, and I went to my OB, and I found out that I had low amniotic fluid, so they ended up sending me to the hospital a few days later, and I was on bed rest at the hospital for two weeks before my second daughter came, who came

Scott Benner 11:14
that like making pasta with not enough water in the pot. Like, how does that work? Like, what happens?

Laura 11:19
Yeah, well, it's just so I had what's called intrauterine growth restriction for both of my girls, both of them were born early. The oldest one, who has diabetes, was was born four weeks early. She was very sick from the very beginning. She was in the NICU for 30 days. How premature was she? Four weeks, four weeks, yeah, so she, yeah, I think she was, like, four pounds and so many ounces, yeah, just little, but not as little, actually, as my second one. But she had a lot of respiratory issues from the very beginning, the first couple days of her life, we couldn't even, like, touch her. She was so fragile that they put signs, you know, in her little incubator, thing that said, please do not touch because she was so fragile.

Scott Benner 12:08
Wow, when you said she was sick from the beginning, what else happened?

Laura 12:12
Well, it was, it was basically the respiratory stuff. So, right? So I pretty much went to my normal OB appointment, and I was getting an ultrasound, and the lady's like, when are you going to go see your doctor? And I was like, Well, I think I have an appointment in a couple of days. Next thing I know, my doctor comes in and is saying, Nope, you got to go the hospital right away. So it was, Everything happened so fast. It was an emergency C section, you know, they took her, then she ended up being in the NICU for 30 days. So it was a lot of back and forth. You know, 30 days of not being able to bring your baby home, which is heartbreaking, and not even being able to touch her the first few days was also very hard.

Scott Benner 12:53
Yeah, other women in your family have trouble giving birth. There's no thing there. No, yeah, were you older than you would have liked to have been when you got pregnant? I don't like what's the math on that? Is that part

Laura 13:05
of it? I was 35 Yes, yeah, my husband, we'll just throw him under the bus for everything. He'll love it when he listens to it later. No, my husband's a little bit younger than me, like, four years younger than me, so I wanted to get married and start a family, and he was, you know, a little bit younger. So I think we dated probably four years before he proposed, and that probably was a little bit longer than I would have liked.

Scott Benner 13:28
But your good years is that what he does?

Laura 13:32
Yep. So I had my first one at 35

Scott Benner 13:35
see how smart that is of him. He holds you a little I almost said, past your expiration date, but I don't mean that he holds you a little longer, so you're limited in your options now you have to say yes to him when he asked you smart, yeah, yep.

Laura 13:52
Then I should have asked him his family history, because then all this comes out.

Scott Benner 13:56
No, why does your uncle's eyes pop out like that? I need to understand a little better. Oh, well, how about the you know, the six years since, like, since the diagnosis, has she been on a better track, or she's still been suffering with issues? The Dexcom g7 is sponsoring this episode of The Juicebox podcast, and it features a lightning fast 30 minute warm up time that's right from the time you put on the Dexcom g7 till the time you're getting readings, 30 minutes. That's pretty great. It also has a 12 hour grace period so you can swap your sensor when it's convenient for you. All that on top of it being small, accurate, incredibly wearable and light. These things, in my opinion, make the Dexcom g7 a no brainer, the Dexcom g7 comes with way more than just this, up to 10 people can follow you. You can use it with type one, type two, or gestational diabetes. It's covered by all sorts of insurances and, uh, this might be the best part. It might be the best part alerts and alarms that are customized. Possible so that you can be alerted at the levels that make sense to you, dexcom.com/juicebox, links in the show notes, links at Juicebox podcast.com, to Dexcom and all the sponsors. When you use my links, you're supporting the production of the podcast and helping to keep it free and plentiful. Today's episode is brought to you by Omnipod. Did you know that the majority of Omnipod five users pay less than $30 per month at the pharmacy? That's less than $1 a day for tube free automated insulin delivery. And a third of Omnipod five users pay $0 per month. You heard that right? Zero that's less than your daily coffee for all of the benefits of tubeless, waterproof, automated insulin delivery. My daughter has been wearing an Omnipod every day since she was four years old, and she's about to be 21 my family relies on Omnipod, and I think you'll love it, and you can try it for free right now by requesting your free Starter Kit today at my link, omnipod.com/juicebox, omnibus, Omnipod has been an advertiser for a decade, but even if they weren't, I would tell you proudly, my daughter wears an Omnipod. Omnipod.com/juicebox Terms and Conditions apply. Eligibility may vary. Why don't you get yourself that free starter kit, full terms and conditions can be found at omnipod.com/juicebox

Laura 16:22
Oh, yeah. So she had, well, she's very small, so she has some growth issues. Which part of that they say comes from the intrauterine growth restriction that I had. So basically, that's you, your baby just can't grow in the womb. And that was a big part of why they had to take her out, too, because I had low amniotic fluid with her, like, severely low with her as well. So she's very tiny for her age. And we've, you know, talked about maybe doing like, a growth hormone, but you know, for right now, we're just kind of letting her be, and she doesn't mind being so small. So you

Scott Benner 16:58
contextualize that for me, how, like, how tall is she? Well, so she, she'll

Laura 17:02
be in fifth grade. She looks like she's about in second or third grade. I would say,

Scott Benner 17:08
okay, is she thin on top of being short?

Laura 17:11
No. I mean, she's actually at a good weight. It's more her, her growth, that they're just kind of watching. So she has had some growth testing done, okay, you know? And I mean, they said she was at the very lower end, but like, her growth hormone does appear to be working. So that's a positive thing. Also, the celiac can affect growth as well, so

Scott Benner 17:31
hard to take in nutrients. Yes, yeah, yep, any Hashimotos or anything like that,

Laura 17:37
just so far so good. Yeah. And how about your other

Scott Benner 17:41
one? Is she? Is she small too? Yes, she's yep, yep, same thing. Are you

Laura 17:47
I am. Yes, I'm tiny as well. Yep, you're Italian. I'm Italian. So Well, my father was born in Italy, so my dad's side were all very small.

Scott Benner 17:58
No kidding. Oh yeah. You know, it's funny. I remember when, when my son was young, there was this 10 year old boy on his baseball team, and he was a monster, and, like, just so much bigger than the other kids, and stronger and everything taller. I remember saying to his dad one time, wow, man, he might really pop up. And the guy his absolute quickest right off top is that answer, he goes, No, we're Italian. That's as big as he's gonna get. Well, gonna get. And I thought, like, oh, I don't know what that means, like, you know, because I have a lot of context for it. But no kidding, I met that kid eight years later. He did not get much bigger, right? Yeah, right, yeah, yeah. Really something else. He's now the smallest adult I know, yep, but he was the biggest 10 year old I ever seen in my life, right? How do you manage with diabetes? Like, are do they give you a set of instructions and some like, I don't know, they give you a pen. They give you CGM. Like, what do you know about it? What? How do you learn more?

Laura 18:53
Right? So we initially were MDI for about a year, I would say, and a lot of that was our insurance. We were trying to think last night when she got the CGM, I would say, probably about six months, because I can remember doing like, finger checks in the middle of the night for quite a while. And we were actually just looking at my husband had recorded some of her when we had to log it on the little logs, like, some of her numbers. And we're like, Whoa, she was high a lot. We were like, but you didn't know, like, you know, like, in the middle of the night, you know, you were just like, saying, oh, things got better. We didn't know in between what was happening, you know.

Scott Benner 19:31
So you wanted to CGM, but your insurance was stepping in the way even, think we even knew really about it, yeah. Well, what do you think was holding you back then? Like, just the general knowledge, like, so you were like, Hey, I have a meter and I have these pens, and this is what

Laura 19:44
diabetes is. Well, right? Because I'm a rule follower, so if they were telling me to do this, you were gonna do Yeah, and I think they were saying your insurance will let you, like, in six months, get us and then get a pump after so we didn't even, we didn't know, we didn't know anybody with type one. We didn't question anything. Yeah, you know, so we just went with it.

Scott Benner 20:03
How do you figure out the next steps? Is it just that time passes and they offer you a CGM. Diabetes comes with a lot of things to remember, so it's nice when someone takes something off of your plate. US med has done that for us when it's time for Arden supplies to be refreshed, we get an email rolls up and in your inbox says, Hi, Arden. This is your friendly reorder email from us. Med. You open up the email. It's a big button that says, Click here to reorder, and you're done. Finally, somebody taking away a responsibility instead of adding one. Us. Med has done that for us. An email arrives, we click on a link, and the next thing you know, your products are at the front door. That simple us, med.com/juicebox, or call 888-721-1514, I never have to wonder if Arden has enough supplies. I click on one link, I open up a box, I put the stuff in the drawer, and we're done. Us. Med carries everything from insulin pumps and diabetes testing supplies to the latest CGM like the libre three and the Dexcom g7 they accept Medicare nationwide over 800 private insurers, and all you have to do to get started is call 888-721-1514, or go to my link, usmed.com/juicebox, using that number or my link helps to support the production of the Juicebox podcast.

Laura 21:34
Yeah, I can remember being at my daughter's Halloween parade and my husband's like they just said, we can, you know, schedule our pump classes. So I'm gonna do it, you know. And and then, like, shortly after that, we had the pump class, which I didn't even go to. I think he went to that one. And then there we were, is

Scott Benner 21:53
that the setup for the family in general? Like, is he a little more hands on? Like, do you have a busy job? Like, you, I mean, it's weird, yeah, yeah, you know, I'm just wondering, because you've said twice now,

Laura 22:03
yeah, no, I think because I was just in this state of there was so much that had been going on, like, medically, you know. And I had my kids, you know, and then I had, you know, some, probably some postpartum issues, I would say. So I think I was just kind of met with it for, like, several years, you know, it was like I got pregnant, had a baby, and then was nursing and all the hormones with that, and then, like, a year later, get pregnant, and then, like, starting again, you know, and then when I had, when I was pregnant with my second one, I ended up Getting a blood clot in my leg, jeez, I know, yeah, and it was all this was all after the older one had been airlifted, right? So all this happened within like a month. It was just crazy. So I had to deal with that, you know. So I think it was just all of that, you know, we were just kind of surviving all of this other Yeah,

Scott Benner 23:00
if I asked your husband, do you think he'd say, look, I couldn't have given her one more thing. Like, yeah,

Laura 23:06
yeah, yeah. So he was the one a lot of times. Now it's kind of reversed. He was the one staying up in the middle of the night, you know, and just checking your finger a lot of times, you know. And just, he would go to all the all the appointments, you know, and for a while there was covid, so only one of us could go. And so I didn't really get involved as much. I knew the basics with her diabetes, I would say, until probably halfway through, you know, we're moving on to seven years now. And then I started really getting invested into it.

Scott Benner 23:40
Do you think you just kind of lifted from a fog or I

Laura 23:42
think so really, yeah, yeah. My other daughter ended up having hip dysplasia as well. Jesus, because I know it was like all this stuff. She both of my girls were breech, and so we had them just evaluated, like through early intervention, because they were premature. And the physical therapist that was doing the evaluation actually noticed her hip and was like, did they ever have, you do a, you know, a hip X ray? And I was like, No. And they're like, well, they should have, because if she was breech, you know, breech babies are more likely to have this. And I was like, oh, so then we had her x rayed, and then, yep, she had hip dysplasia, so she had to have this big spike of cast for quite a bit of time, and then we had to follow an orthopedic, pediatric orthopedic doctor, and then it didn't stick. So then we had to repeat the spike of cast, like, a year later. So there was just, like, a lot going on, like all the time that I think I just couldn't take on all of it at once, you know.

Scott Benner 24:43
And you're a social worker on top of that. So you're also, yes, you're professional, you're taking on everybody else's problems

Laura 24:48
too. Yeah, it's very true. Yes, yep, yeah.

Scott Benner 24:52
The breech birth brings on the possibility of, like, dislocated hips. So I asked, like, what else does it do? It's interesting. Birth. Injuries, risk of broken bones, dislocated hip, nerve damage during vaginal delivery because of the head comes out last umbilical cord issues, it can become compressed or prolapsed. Head entrapment, some possibility, oxygen deprivation, hip dysplasia, respiratory problems and deliveries. If delivery is prolonged, the baby may inhale fluids or struggle to breathe right away. Wow, crazy. Yeah, why did they come out? I wonder why. I'm asking

Laura 25:27
you, I know, right?

I don't know. I'm like, geez, I guess my that's why I'm like, I'm done with after two. Because I was like, geez, there's no more. Who knows what will be wrong with this if I had a third one ever?

Scott Benner 25:40
We're getting a cat, that's it.

Laura 25:43
Yeah, yeah.

Scott Benner 25:44
Factors related to the baby, I because I asked, like, why to breech birth happen? Prematurities, one rarely issue, although abnormalities rarely issues with babies brain, spine or muscles, can affect movement and positioning. Excessive or limited movement. Some babies just move differently. Too much or too little activity in the uterus can affect the uterus can affect the positioning on the mother side, uterine shape or abnormalities. Placenta previa. If the placenta is low lying or covering the cervix, it can block the baby from moving into the head down position, oh. Amniotic fluid levels. Too much. Fluid gives extra room for the baby to move. Sometimes, leaving them in Bridge too little restricts the movement. Oh, so maybe when it's time to go head down,

Laura 26:26
there's not enough room or something, yeah, yeah. And that's something who

Scott Benner 26:30
would know? Well, I mean, I know. Who would know it's the internet knows.

Laura 26:33
Apparently, yeah, wish I would have, like, done my googling while I was

Scott Benner 26:38
I'll be honest with you, that was AI, that wasn't Google, yeah, yeah, okay. Well, she's doing well, you're alive. That's good news.

Laura 26:46
I know Yes. And so the older one also has one more thing to add to it. I don't even know how to pronounce it, but I'll give you it's e, o, e. So if you look that up, it's like, basically inflammation in her esophagus.

Scott Benner 27:00
Oh, yes. So long has that been? That's been

Laura 27:05
a few years. So she's had five, I can never say if it's an endoscopies. She's had five of those. She now takes, like an oral steroid that we like mix in with some applesauce that like sticks to her esophagus. And right now her like, inflammation levels are pretty much non existent, so it seems to be working, but the oral steroid can also cause some growth issues too.

Scott Benner 27:32
Oh, that's unbelievable. Yeah, yeah. EOe, yes, yeah, I'm looking at it right here, chronic inflammatory condition of the esophagus, common symptoms, trouble swallowing, especially solid foods, food getting stuck in the throat or chest, chest pain or heartburn, not relieved by typical reflux treatment, abdominal pain, nausea or vomiting in children, feeding difficulties, failure to thrive, picky eating linked to food allergies can also be influenced by environmental allergies, not caused by one single factor. Jesus, I know, right, yeah, yeah, no wonder you're not all right. I know. Hey, being being a social worker, yes. What's it like professionally, understanding the things you're going through personally.

Laura 28:22
It's crazy. I could say that, yeah, well, it it makes me first of all appreciate what people go through, but also recognize how important it is to take care of yourself, you know. So I've had to do a lot of my own work, you know, in order to be like a better social worker for other people. But can

Scott Benner 28:41
you see yourself in the moment? Like, can you not always? Yeah, right, yeah. It's not like you're going through something. You're like, oh, what would I tell another person who's experiencing this right now?

Laura 28:50
Right? Yeah, yep, yeah. Well, that sucks, yeah, yeah.

Scott Benner 28:54
It's like being a mechanic that can't work on their own car, but a waste, right? Oh, wow. And that must be frustrating, because I imagine at some point you have a come to Jesus, and you go, Oh, this is what's been happening to me. I can't believe I didn't see this sooner.

Laura 29:09
Yeah. Oh yeah. Absolutely. They make you

Scott Benner 29:11
feel like a fraud a little bit.

Laura 29:12
Oh yeah, sometimes, yeah. But now, now I feel like I'm taking the steps that I need to to really, you know, get myself together. And I think one of the things I wanted to talk about for me was, I think for me, the grief with the diabetes came later. I think because I was in such a fog initially, with everything that it didn't hit me, probably to, like, three years later, when I really had to come to terms with, like, this diagnosis, interesting.

Scott Benner 29:41
So 36 months, three years into your kids type one diagnosis, you think the weight of it just started to

Laura 29:49
impact you? Yeah, definitely.

Scott Benner 29:52
You said earlier, like, you're like, she got that diagnosis, I think I was in would you say denial, because I went back to work because I was.

Laura 30:00
Worked a whole day. Didn't even, like, think about it, you know. And and my husband's like, calling me, leaving me messages, like, we're going to the Children's Hospital an hour and

Scott Benner 30:08
a half. Okay? You're like, I got work, buddy, it's Wednesday. No, it was very

Laura 30:12
bizarre, you know. But that must have been my coping mechanism at that point. I think

Scott Benner 30:18
so, when it hits you three years in, What's that feel like? What's the experience?

Laura 30:23
It was very overwhelming. Yeah, I think, you know, as she got a little bit older, too, just realizing, you know, if you go to a birthday party, or just sometimes the differences in things, you know, or all that, just all the stuff you have to bring, you know that I'm like, Ah, when I take my other child places, I don't have to, you know, do all of this, it's such a weird feeling. Like, if I take my younger daughter, you know, to go out to breakfast, I'm like, Oh my gosh, we don't have to pre ball list. We don't have to, like, keep an eye on that. Like, it's just, like, a weird feeling, you know, that

Scott Benner 30:57
happens. I try so hard not to live in it. Yeah, you know what I mean. You know, like, I know what you're talking about. Like you head out for something and you don't have a bag with you, or you're not, you're not thinking, like, is there a Juicebox in the door of my car?

Laura 31:11
Weird feeling. It's a very weird feeling, right? Yeah,

Scott Benner 31:14
I, for me personally, like I never wanted to feel like that was better, right, right? You know,

Laura 31:19
it's just different. It's just a different Yeah, right,

Scott Benner 31:23
yeah. So you're having kind of a delayed reaction to the type one absolutely,

Laura 31:29
yeah, yeah. Have you

Scott Benner 31:30
done this with anything else in your life? Don't think so. No, no, yeah. Do you think of yourself as a as a person who's easily knocked down by problems, or do you think yourself is more resilient?

Laura 31:43
I think that's a good question. See, now you're gonna therapy

Scott Benner 31:48
me. I'm a, you know, just a podcaster, but

Laura 31:51
yeah, no, I think I have some patterns that are more like catastrophic in that. So I'm always thinking like the worst case scenario of things and an urgency sometimes with things that aren't always needed at times. But I think in the moment of things, like when all of this was happening, like with my daughter, I don't think I didn't panic, like it wasn't like a panic all the I think in the moment I can handle it. It's like, afterwards, you know, would you

Scott Benner 32:26
call that compartmentalizing? Yes, oh, totally right, yeah. You know, if people, if people are listening closely, like, I am Laura, you said in the very beginning, like, don't google it, because it's going to tell us she has diabetes. Yeah, yeah. That's a very strange way to think of problem solving. Because what you might want to say is, hey, why don't you go do the research I just did, because I think you might come to the same conclusion, and then we need to get her to the hospital. Yeah, right. But you were like, no, don't look. If we don't look, we can live here longer. Yeah. Yeah, right. Yes. Really is something okay. So what would you tell a person who came to you and said what you said to me?

Laura 33:08
First of all, trust your gut, right? So I think another thing that's been an issue for me is when she had her respiratory issue and then she had to be airlifted, I had thought in the middle of the night, something's not right, like, we had been giving her the nebulizer, and I was like, she should be getting better, and she's not, you know. And so we had come to the decision, oh, it's your first baby. You don't always know what to do, but we came to the decision that we would wait till the morning, you know. So I have a lot of guilt about that, because I think what if we would have taken her like right in the middle of the night, instead of waiting so many hours to take her to the walk in when her and then her lip goes blue, you know?

Scott Benner 33:50
Well, what? What do you think going earlier would have garnered accomplished? I don't know, right, just it could have been something. It could have been, right?

Laura 33:59
My brother in law is a doctor, and he said it, you could have still been in the same position, like, we don't know, you know. So try not to be yours. I think it's, you know, being a mom, I have a lot of guilt about that, which I think has transferred sometimes with diabetes. Like, now I'm like, I can't let this happen. So we gotta keep our numbers really in control. You know, it's like more of a control thing suddenly, again, a delayed response, because I wasn't that way initially.

Scott Benner 34:27
Yeah, no, you were trying to, I don't know exactly. And people online have pointed out that I'm not a therapist, and I'm not saying I am. It feels to me like maybe you were just trying to not make it real.

Laura 34:38
Yeah, right? And I also didn't know enough about it, you know? I mean literally at the hospital, they're like, she can eat whatever she wants, you know, you can live a normal life, you know. Just give her insulin, you know. But nobody again, was telling us, like the impact of food and like, you're gonna need a crap load of insulin sometimes, for certain things, like, nobody taught. Us that, you know. So I think I thought we were doing we'd go to the endocrinologist, and they were like, you're doing a good job. I didn't, we just didn't know any better until I started. I think what hit me was like, if something happens to my husband, he's the one doing the majority of this, we're doomed, like, I need to know what I'm doing. So I started reading and, you know, really educating myself, and that's when things really started to kind of shift, I would say, even with her diabetes care, because then I would pass the information along to my husband.

Scott Benner 35:33
Your husband's gonna love this. When he listens, it's like, all right, you just woke up one day and you're like, Oh, what if a safe balls on his head, like in one of those Road Runners, and then I'm gonna be stuck here with this kid I don't know anything about. I I'll go figure it out. Then, did you explain to him? Then he was doing it wrong?

Laura 35:49
No, I don't think so. I think I I just sometimes I talk, I get excited about things, you know. So if I like, listen to the podcast, I'll like, tell him. And sometimes he's just like, stop talking about diabetes. He would definitely say, I talk about diabetes too much. You know? What would you say? I would say, sometimes I do, but sometimes I'm excited, like, if I learn something, or I like, am following the trends, and I'm like, Oh, I think I finally, like, it took us a long time to figure out breakfast. Like she would go high constantly after breakfast, and I finally figured it out. And like, I was so excited, and now that she's doing amazing after breakfast, so I get excited. So I like want to tell people like we did it, we figured it out. Like, you know,

Scott Benner 36:35
I think of that excitement as the one step closer to it being less of a front and center in your mind, less of a burden? Yes, yeah, if we could figure out all these different things, then maybe it would actually feel normal, the way people are. People saying that it could feel normal. Because, right? What they Oh, you can live a normal life. Well, it's a normal life, but you're going to be managing diabetes, so not, uh, not completely normal, right? I get what they're saying, like, there's no reason you can't have a job or, you know, like, something like that, or do something that you wanted to do, and I completely agree with all that, but it's still not normal to have to take a bag with you everywhere, or not normal to have to tell your kid, like, hey, like, you know you're gonna have to take insulin because you're gonna be gone for five hours and you're going to be too far from home, like, that's not normal. It becomes, becomes normal, right? Yeah. So I would think that that excitement, like for me, would mean maybe we're one step closer to this not being as front and center in our head all the time.

Laura 37:37
Yes, yes. That's very much it, yeah. And just like, figuring things out, I think because my brain works much differently than my husband's, you know, so I'm trying to figure this out, like, so I'll take it on as a project, and, like, okay, breakfast was like, my baby, because I was like, we're gonna get it, we're gonna figure it out, you know, my husband would be like, yeah, it's not so bad. And I'm like, Nope, we're gonna get there. We're gonna, you know, and and even with that, you know, it's like, this morning, I'm like, okay, brand new pump site. We have to do a little bit more than normal, but sometimes the pump sites seem to be working really well. And if I do the normal it's almost a little bit too much. So it's almost like, like, my brain wants it to be. Every day we do the same thing over and over again, but it's just, it's certainly not that, right? I've learned so there's so many variables, you know, and it's like, ah, sometimes I'm just like, I don't want these variables. And sometimes I don't even know what these variables

Scott Benner 38:30
are. So how much of it is, like, also, you're a little older too, yes, yeah, right. Like, so you start getting into that. I mean, I feel you on that, like, I'd like this not to be so much work all the time. Yes, yeah. I don't mean the diabetes. I mean being

Laura 38:45
alive, yeah, oh yeah, yes, yes, absolutely, yeah.

Scott Benner 38:49
The part where this is, like, fun or right, or easy once in a while, and I know, for me personally, like, I don't want that to be when I'm 70, right, sure. Like, I'd like to wake up one day and, like, just have, like, a free and easy day. That's, you know, enjoyable by Scott, who's fully mobile and can grasp the world.

Laura 39:08
Yeah, yeah. And that's, I think, one of the things when you have kids a little bit older, like, you know, you're wiser, but like, you're tired. Like, I always tell me how I'm tired. Like, my little eight year almost eight year old wants to be running around. I'm like, I'm tired like

Scott Benner 39:23
that. I find that stuff insane. I was talking to somebody recently who had a baby around my age. I was like, I don't even, I don't even understand, just tired, yeah? Like, Hey kid, here's $50 like, good luck, right? Yeah, don't buy crack with this. And then I Daddy's gonna take a nap. I did the last night thing, I didn't go to bed till late, but I got tired early, even that's weird, like, you know, like, yeah, oh yeah. At 10 o'clock, I was like, I should go to bed, yeah. And then I couldn't do that because I'm an adult and I've got responsibilities. I was still working. Like, you know what I mean? Like, after I got done working, I was cleaning things up. Like, you know, I other. Stuff I needed to be doing. I'm doing that. Yeah, my wife's still working. Like, you know, it's like 1030 my wife's working, and I'm cleaning something up. I should have cleaned up six hours prior. Arden's out with friends saying goodbye, because they're all heading back to college. Yeah, you know, my son's in the basement lifting, you know, everybody's like that. We have a dog. The dog has to go out. And all I could think is, I should go to bed. Yeah. And then by the time I got through all the things I was supposed to be doing, and everybody got back in the house and was kind of settled and everything, I wanted to watch an episode of Mr. Robot. I'm trying to watch Mr. Robot. It's 1230 like, am I gonna sit in my bed under a blanket like I'm 10 watching an episode of Mr. Robot on a right? I guess I am. Yeah, no. I just feel like once you start getting older, like you said, again, like your mind, like your thoughts are clear, Yeah, but you're like, you're like, why couldn't I have been this clear minded when I was, like, had the energy of a 25 year

Laura 40:53
old? Yeah? It's very

Scott Benner 40:54
true. Yeah, sucks. Everything's backwards. I see what you just Yeah,

Laura 40:57
thankfully, my husband has a lot of energy, so that's helpful, yeah? Except he cannot. He does not hear the alarms a lot of times at night. I even bought him the sugar pixel, and I have seen him just hit the button and or unplug it and then just go back to bed, and he doesn't even remember a lot of times that he's done that isn't that interesting, yeah? Whereas me, I'm, like, a very light sleeper, so I am like, up constantly, I hear a little noise, and I'm like, I think it's just a mom thing. I don't know.

Scott Benner 41:27
How's that ego boost getting a younger guy? How was that? It feel good?

Laura 41:31
Or no, no, because he, you know, I wanted to get married. I knew going into it, I'm ready to get married. I want to have kids, you know. And he what? How he was 25 I think when I met him. So, you know, we were in different life stages, but you take advantage of his exuberance. Yeah, now it's, you know, a good thing probably is, you know, maybe he'll live longer than me. I don't know. We'll see

Scott Benner 41:56
Jesus. Laura, you are a bummer. What are you always worrying about the worst thing that's gonna

Laura 42:00
happen? It? I, I'm working on it. How about that? I'm trying to work on that.

Scott Benner 42:05
Is that since, is since the Life Flight, or is your whole life?

Laura 42:08
I would say there's been some patterns in my family that have been that way, you know? So probably some modeling. Yeah, everything's always terrible, yes. But the other thing is, yes, the Life Flight really, like, shook me up, I think, in ways that I didn't even realize.

Scott Benner 42:26
Maybe it took those feelings that you're you grew up with, with your family, and made them feel like, well, yeah, see Yeah, if they were right, bad

Laura 42:32
stuff happened. Right? Yes, yeah. It was like, I think that realization that, like, yes, bad things in my mind before, like they could happen, but now they were, and it was, like, constant, like, every time I turned around, I'm like, now I have a blood clot. Now we have this. Now I'm like, Oh my goodness. You know, it was crazy.

Scott Benner 42:52
Would it not help you if you could think of those things not as bad things happening, but that every day in life isn't perfect, and you just gotta bob and weave a little

Laura 43:02
Yes, yeah, I think I'm trying to again. That was another thing I wanted to talk about. Was like, just some perfectionist tendencies, which I didn't even realize I had until, you know, I suddenly became involved in this diabetes world, and my husband was the one that pointed it out. He's like, you're trying to be perfect with her numbers, and this is driving us crazy,

Scott Benner 43:24
you know, you didn't know that about yourself.

Laura 43:27
I didn't know because I wasn't like the kid in school, like I was fine if I got, you know, an 82 or something. I did terrible on tests. Like, to me, it was more important to be around people, you know, I just wanted to be with my friends, be involved in things I didn't have to have, like straight A's. So I think in my mind, that's what I always thought, like a perfectionism was, you know, and I wasn't that way of my work either. It was just suddenly that

Scott Benner 43:53
person's healthy enough, that's good, we're done, right? Yeah, did you call an 82 a terrible grade?

Laura 43:59
No, I didn't. Yeah, no, that's a great grade. Yes, yeah, other people might think, right? But, you know, my sister was very, you know, book smart. She, you know, very intelligent. Her grades were very important. I was just different, like, to me, it was, you know, I wanted to do well in school, but I also wanted to play sports and have fun, and so it wasn't like top priority for me.

Scott Benner 44:22
Did your perfectionism show up in other ways through your life? Or do you think that you had a touch of it and then the mom guilt, plus the medical stuff equals where you are now?

Laura 44:34
It just plowed through with the diabetes, like my husband was, like, all of a sudden, like she used to be 350 and this was never an issue for you. Why? All of a sudden, you know, she's 180 and you're freaking out, you know, like he's trying to, like, wrap his mind around, like, the change, you know,

Scott Benner 44:51
was 350 not a big deal for him. Or is he trying to say that back before we knew this was a problem, right? Yes. But then the simple. Answer to his question is, well, now we understand it better.

Laura 45:02
Yes, right? And that's what I try to say all the time. Like, now we understand so now, you know, we just didn't know before,

Scott Benner 45:10
and now we know that's a problem, so now we need to stop it. Yes, boys are confusing. Yeah, I don't understand boys. Sometimes I do the same, by the way, I'm lumping myself. I do the same thing. Like, like, the things that like don't occur to me. I'm like, oh, like, when I look backwards, I'm like, how did that not strike a chord quicker? You know? Oh, by the way, I just noticed Laura. My calendar on my whiteboard says 2024 and it's, uh, August of 2020 Oh,

Laura 45:38
my goodness, yeah, right.

Scott Benner 45:41
That's funny. So much writing on the board in other places, but I apparently never changed the date. It's staring right at me. How did I never notice that before? Oh my gosh.

Laura 45:49
Oh my goodness. Oh. And I I thought of one more thing that she has too. So she also has a severe peanut tree nut allergy, right? So we have an epi pen, the oldest one. Yeah, both of them do, actually, so, but that's interesting with celiac, because a lot of celiac items have, like, is made with almond flour, so we have to always, you know, inspect and make sure there's no almond flour in it. Gosh, I now have a nut allergy. I have a tree nut allergy, but I can eat peanuts. Okay.

Scott Benner 46:21
Is anybody impressed that I haven't made a joke about my wife sometimes having a nut allergy? Oh yeah, I'm personally impressed. I just want to say, oh my gosh, I don't know. Jake, what do you guys like? Live in a bubble? What do you do? I know is that how it feels like, like, because with the allergy and the inflammation in the esophagus thing and the diabetes, and now you layered over top of your newfound anxiety about the entire thing, right? Sure, you sound like a person who's trying to put yourself in a controlling situation, like position, like, how do you accomplish that?

Laura 46:52
Well, now I feel like more confident with diabetes, like we've educated ourselves, you know, we've spent time. We worked with Jenny, who's phenomenal, you know. So we're in, like, a much better place, you know. And all the podcast episodes have been very actually, we've I found the podcast when we switched to Omnipod five. I had never heard of it before, so the first episodes I listened to were like the pro tips on the Omnipod five.

Scott Benner 47:20
Oh, awesome. They've been very, very, very popular. Yeah, yeah. As a matter of fact, if everybody downloaded all the episodes the way they downloaded those, I'd probably be in an I don't know, yeah, I don't know. I think there'd be a lot more people listening.

Laura 47:36
Yes, it's very true. And I always want to tell people like that system, I know gets a lot of slack because it's a little more conservative, but I've studied it and get your settings right and, like, it makes a phenomenal difference, you know, we've gone to the endocrinologist, and they're like, You guys are like, killing it with the Omnipod five. Nobody else seems to get it, but you guys are doing it, you know. So it's very manageable. I think

Scott Benner 48:01
you're having good success with it, yeah, yes, yeah, yeah. Overall.

Laura 48:06
I mean, there's still days where I'm like, Ah, you know, if it suspends the the insulin going into a meal, you know, paying attention to that, I think, is a big,

Scott Benner 48:17
big key. Well, let me say this to you at clinical trials.gov if you look up something called Omnipod smart adjust 2.0 system compared to Omnipod five system in individuals with type one or type two diabetes, strive, you will see that this was last updated on June 11, 2025 and the Study overview says the goal of this multi, centered, randomized cross over study is to evaluate the safety and effectiveness of the Omnipod five smart adjust 2.0 system in individuals with type one or type two diabetes. Study participants will complete about five in person visits and be expected to treat their diabetes per their usual routine using the system at the lowest available target settings. Each participant will begin to study using Omnipod five smart, adjust 2.0 or the Omnipod five system for four weeks period one, and then switch to opposite system for the next four weeks. Everyone will use the Omnipod five smart, adjust 2.0 system for at least four to six weeks during period, three participants will have a goal of administering no more than three meal or snack boluses per day. The official title of this here, blah, blah, blah. What I'm seeing here is they're testing a different version of this algorithm. Yeah, that'd be great. So maybe, maybe all that, you know, I wish it was a little more aggressive.

Laura 49:40
I yeah, that's my only complaint. Is that at times, and I look and it's, it's usually when it says suspended the background, I'm like, oh, here we go.

Scott Benner 49:51
I've been corresponding with somebody whose kid is in the trial, uh huh. And I don't know how much about that I'm supposed to say. So I'll hold on to it. I think the target, it's giving you a lower target. I think that's one of the things that would be great. Yeah. I think there's more coming. Yeah, yeah. I don't think that person wants to talk on the podcast yet.

Laura 50:12
Yeah, yeah. That'd be great, though, that's really my only and I'm learning to adjust. Like, now I'm like, Okay, before she eats a meal, let's, let's look and see how much you know has been paused before the meal, because we got to add a little extra, you know.

Scott Benner 50:28
But what did you do? Did you kind of take your knowledge of how the Omnipod five works, and then listen to the podcast about using insulin, and you're combining the two ideas,

Laura 50:37
yes, and then working with Jenny too has been helpful, too, yeah,

Scott Benner 50:41
and yeah, what would you say that overall you've learned that's been most valuable?

Laura 50:47
Well, I think how food impacts your blood sugar, definitely, I think again, especially with celiac, because a lot of the foods, like the celiac stuff, it hits harder and processed foods, I think, like, we've changed a lot of how we have eaten, which has been wonderful, even for myself, because I used to have higher triglycerides, yes, tri cholesterol, all of that. And mine has significantly come down because just of some of the changes that we've made from eating. You know, just watching her numbers, like, I think just watching the Dexcom when she eats certain things. I'm like, Whoa, what's, you know? I know my pancreas is working, but I'm like, wow, that's got to be doing, you know, wreaking havoc on my body too, you know. So, like, maybe I shouldn't be eating all this stuff sometimes, too.

Scott Benner 51:36
Yeah, yeah. I think if you're paying attention, you there's probably benefits for everybody in the lifestyle and the understanding of how to manage your diabetes,

Laura 51:45
yeah, yeah, yeah, it's been definitely incredible.

Scott Benner 51:49
Yeah, good. I'm glad for you. What do you see as next steps, I guess? Like, where? Like, she's nine now, obviously at this point, like, you have a fair amount of control, but like, that's going to change as she gets older, right, right? What are your goals for the next few years?

Laura 52:05
Well, I think to continue to just manage it the best that we can. You know, I think she'll probably be later with puberty, so that probably gives us a few more years, but hopefully, again, there'll be more like some of the systems, because I do worry about, like, puberty with the Omnipod five. But again, it's just trying to manage, you know, when she's sick. You know, we do different things when she's sick, so just trying to manage some of these situations that come up, you know, yeah, and I think for myself, to just try to enjoy life a little bit more, and that, you know, make it all the time about diabetes and keeping I'd like to keep her under control, but sometimes I think it drives other people crazy.

Scott Benner 52:49
So how does it impact her? Like, what's her response?

Laura 52:54
She's like, a rule follower, like me. So she, I mean, she's amazing. She really is, like, such an amazing kid, like she went at the end of the school year. They went to, you know, baseball game, and this was the first time that I wasn't going to be or my husband, or somebody in the family wasn't going with her. They had the nurse go. And of course, it was, you know, the first day of the Dexcom. So all the numbers were a little wonky. And she's like, Don't worry, Mom, I'll make sure before all the other kids eat, that they Pre-Bolus me, you know. And I was like, Oh, that's so amazing. Like, or she'll tell Grandpa, I'm a little bit high. We should probably, you know, give me more insulin, or wait a little bit longer. Of a Pre-Bolus, like, she's picking up on some things, which I think is, you know, great,

Scott Benner 53:40
okay, okay. Where do you see yourself? Then how do you feel like you can pass on more to her, take some off not maybe not even take it off of you, but come to a balance where she's knows what she's doing and you're at the same time not as

Laura 53:54
involved, right? Well, I think also I need to work on my reactions. Sometimes, you know, like if she's going higher or I still get nervous sometimes with some of the lows, so I might get a little panicky. So I I would like to see for myself, because I know she's watching my reaction to be a little bit more neutral with my reaction to things, you know, and also to help her just to keep understanding the knowledge and how food works, and pass some of that on to her without, I think, making it again too much of like a big

Scott Benner 54:27
thing. What are some of the reactions that you have? I do

Laura 54:31
panic sometimes. If I if she's like, dropping really, really fast, I think I get too panicky. I would like to just be a little bit more neutral. Or if she's like, high, I'll be like, like, the heck, you know, like, I just, I'll make noise. Or I'm just like, you're, ah, you know, like, yeah, my husband's very neutral about things. He's just like him, you know, we know now how to bring her down. You know, it used to be she'd be high for hours. We didn't know what we were doing. Now we're like, okay, something went. Wrong, you know, or she just needed more insulin. So we'll just give her more insulin. She'll come down, you know.

Scott Benner 55:06
Why do you think that happens? I've been talking to you for a while now. You seem like a reasonable person. How come you're like, Sure, why are you being dramatic when things are happening? I guess

Laura 55:14
I think it's just anxiety. It's like, Because anxiety gives you that urgency, that feeling, which it's supposed to do in an emergency, right? You're supposed to have adrenaline and cortisol levels shooting up so that you can escape danger. But, like, I have to remind my body that, like, this isn't always dangerous. I mean, you know, low blood sugar could be, but I I know the steps. We know how to handle this. You know, so being confident in the fact that, okay, we can, we can handle this without, like, the panic,

Scott Benner 55:45
yeah. Well, what's stopping that from happening for you?

Laura 55:49
I think it's just the way my brain kind of it just goes into like, emergency mode. So I try to tell myself, like, Okay, this is an emergency. We can figure this out.

Scott Benner 56:00
Yeah. Can you just, I mean, listen, people's reactions, are the reactions, right? But, but, I mean, it would seem to me, because this happened to me too, like, where something would happen, and I my wife said you'd always be like, like, she's like, You said, so much, like, you know, and it's upsetting to hear, but it's a long time ago, she tells me this, right? Okay, so I stopped trying to think about it. And what is it I'm faced with over and over again, is that you put so much work into this and it didn't work out? Yeah, or, geez, it feels like a failure. Like, it's like, how do I not understand this? I thought I understood this, like, you know, like, that kind of thing. But, I mean, listen, once she pointed out to me, she's like, it's upsetting to other people, like, it always seems like something's going wrong. It could even be making Arden feel like she's doing something wrong. And I was like, okay, and then Laura stopped doing it. Yeah, right. So what's stopping you from just never doing it again?

Laura 56:58
I think again. It's a pattern. It's just something that shows up for me, like, it's like an instinct, but I have to interrupt it. I think that's what I need to do. I need to just be more aware of it. Take a pause. Yeah, you know, one of the best pieces of ice that, you know, somebody told me before, like, her numbers are just, it's data. Like, just look at it as data to try to figure out what you need to do next. Not like, oh, I screwed this up, or it's, this is all my fault, you know,

Scott Benner 57:28
I I'll tell you that I think one of the more difficult things to learn for me was just slowing down. Yes, a little bit like that. You Yeah. I mean, you can tell, like, even just in the podcast, right? Like, if you say something to me, anything like, if you just pivoted right now and said something completely that had nothing to do with what we were talking about, I'd be able to answer you, like, and so it's a strength in parts of my life, right, that I hear something, I form an idea. It's usually pretty cohesive, and I can start sharing it right away. But in that situation, that's not a virtue, right, right? Yeah, situation where you just need to wait a second pause, like, yeah, like, that's not a virtue. I and it's not a thing I was doing on purpose. Like, I think, I think my wife was like, Well, I don't know why you're being so like, defeatist right away. And I was like, I'm not like, I'm just like, I'm already working through the problem again. Like, Oh, we did this. This happened. I didn't want that to happen. And now I'm past this already. Like, I've said it, like, that's me almost pausing and going, Okay, that didn't work. What do I do next? I'm already thinking about it, while I'm thinking about what to do next time they're back there going, like, Oh, this is such a bummer, right, right? So, yeah, once you learn to just shut up.

Laura 58:46
Yes, I need to do that. Yeah, because that's how my brain works. I want to know, what can I do different next time? But I I process things like out loud a lot, right? Which drives people crazy, especially my husband.

Scott Benner 58:57
I gotta be honest with you, I do that. That's not fun for people who don't like that, right? Exactly, you know, yeah, there's people who think out loud, and there are people who don't, and the people who don't don't enjoy it when someone who does

Laura 59:11
right, and you're like, you're saying the same things over and over again, like, that's the way I'm processing that my brain is just like, What can we do differently? Next time, you know, have

Scott Benner 59:19
you ever heard me say that? My wife said that I say no to everything? Yes, yeah. It's because I work backwards from now, yeah. Like, I start with why this won't work, and if I can get to why it will work, then it usually works, right? And if you can't get there, then it might not be possible, right? It feels like, yeah, doing it. Opposite is Pollyanna to me, like, oh, everything's gonna be fine. And then you like, get through it in your head. Not actually gonna be fine. It won't work. Yeah, I prefer to go like, here's what's wrong. Here's all the things trying to stop me from making it right. How do I get around those things? Awesome. I got around them. We won, right? Yeah, I don't see that as negative at all, right? But if. You're a person who's just like, you know, yes, we can then you know, like, you're going to be like, Why are you being so negative all the time? And to me, it's just, it's just the thought process. But doing it out loud, yeah, Laura, doing it out loud. They hate that.

Laura 1:00:12
They do, yeah, people. So I need to write it down. I am big about, like, writing stuff down, so I need, that's why I said might need to next time, maybe write some of this down. Instead of, you know, say it out loud.

Scott Benner 1:00:25
We can pause. You can say it in your head, right? And then think, like, how would, how would these people prefer to hear this and then say that way? Yeah, although you know what I will say this, you notice they don't care about us. Like when they're all quiet and thinking in their heads and then coming up with what they want to say and then saying it. Like, do they know that during that time, I'm sitting there going, like, are you hearing this? Are you part of the conversation? Like, I'm thinking, I'm like, thinking, why don't we talk

Laura 1:00:52
about it? Yes, yeah, that's very true.

Scott Benner 1:00:55
Yeah. No, I don't know how the opposite would go. Like, if you and I were married more, right? And something went wrong. Would it just be, like, this big, like, I don't know symbol loudness of just people talking back and forth till we came up with an idea, right?

Laura 1:01:12
That's true. And would we hate that, right?

Scott Benner 1:01:15
Yeah, would you and I be like, one of us has got to shut the hell up so the other one can talk.

Laura 1:01:20
Probably not a good combination. I

Scott Benner 1:01:23
know, like as much as I look at my wife and our personalities, and they're so different, yeah, yeah, we are pretty successful people, yeah. And I can look at her and say, she has gaps, I fill them. I have I have gaps. She fills them. But you know, what I've noticed is that nobody really sees it that way. Yeah, they just see it as like you're wrong about the way you think about this, right?

Laura 1:01:47
That's true, but you but you're right. If you look at it that way, it is true.

Scott Benner 1:01:51
You know, Laura, I say I'll say it again. Best part of my life, other people, yeah, worst part of my life, other people, yeah. All right, yeah. So what is this? This hour done? You feel good about it? Yeah.

Laura 1:02:08
I just, I hope, you know, people can learn a little bit of something in there. I, I always seem to find something in in the episodes, you know, even if they're random, people are talking randomly, like, I'm like, Oh, that's a good idea about this, you know. And I hope that people realize that, like for them, if, if their grief came later. Because, again, I think people think like, oh, it hits you all at once initially. But I think, you know, grief is so different for people that it can come out later on, or even even, like, I still have moments where I just feel a little sad, you know,

Scott Benner 1:02:42
sure, if you told me to, you know, re encapsulate everything I would have said. I hope people heard you say that, because I think that is something that most people would find crazy, like three years later. You know what I mean, but, yeah, but I don't think it's probably as uncommon as you think.

Laura 1:02:58
No, yeah, right. Just people need to, I think, talk about it, you know, you gotta

Scott Benner 1:03:03
have somebody to talk to about. Listen, my, my mom's been gone for a couple years now, and I texted my brothers the other night, like, we have a little group chat. And I just said, I miss telling mom about, like, how I'm doing and, like, what everybody's up to, you know, right? Yeah. Then I said, I just, I just really needed to tell someone that, like, you don't need to respond. It's just like, I'm sitting here, you know, at 930 on a Tuesday, and I'm like, God, let's call my mom, you know. Yeah, right. And then you just, you're, you're like, why? I can't believe it. This is a feeling I'm having two years after her, yeah, she lived into her 80s. It's not like she was taken prematurely or anything, you know. Yeah, right. So nevertheless, it's very valuable to say that you could be struck by things like that, many, many years past when.

Laura 1:03:56
Yeah, right. That's very true. Well, I

Scott Benner 1:04:00
think you, I think you lended the podcast a lot of interesting conversation

Laura 1:04:04
today. I really appreciate it. Yes, and I did want to say one last thing to you, please, because I, I was born near Philadelphia, so I appreciate how you say water instead. Thank you.

Scott Benner 1:04:17
People don't seem to make fun of me about it as much anymore, although I'll tell you, it's going to be forever. One of those words that just now, like if you said to me, say, you know, if you showed me a glass of it and said, say this correctly, yeah, I don't know which is the right way, yeah, yeah. I think people say water.

Laura 1:04:37
Yes, yep. That's how, now that I'm in upstate New York, we say water, but my my parents still say water, so I get glimpses of that once in a while,

Scott Benner 1:04:46
but I need to tell you, like, when I say water, it rattles through the front of my brain, like something's really wrong, right? Like it sounds wrong to me, and then, and then I say it, and then my kids are go, that's the right way. And I'm like, no. Think it's not, I doesn't sound such a ridiculous thing, you know.

Laura 1:05:04
Yeah, and we're going to see the Phillies in a in another month.

Scott Benner 1:05:08
So well, tell you right now. I said to my son the other day, is there a way we can get into a time machine and start the playoffs right now? Because we'd win this, win the World Series. Yes, they're so good at the moment,

Laura 1:05:20
they are. They're doing a little type one event. So we're gonna meet up with some we don't have much around our area for community, so I think that was another part of my grief, is that we just don't have much around here. So we're connecting with with some people from Philly.

Scott Benner 1:05:36
So wait, Philly's like the Phillies are having a type one event, or there's an

Laura 1:05:40
event, well, there's like, a

section for people, right? Oh, I know they do that every year, right? Yeah, so we're gonna go. I met some moms at a mom's night out last year at Cherry Hill, so some of us might meet up there.

Scott Benner 1:05:56
Look at you. Well, that's awesome. Yeah, good for you, yeah, well, and you'll see a great baseball game. I know absolutely one night when they suck, and you'll be like, how, I know that's very true. You ever did that? Like, if you finally have a moment and you've like, like, we have games on in our house constantly, but like, when I actually sit the watch it, I seem to be able to pick the one they'll win, like, three out of four, and I'll find a way to sit and watch the one game where everybody sucked. I don't know how I do

Laura 1:06:22
that, but we did that last summer. We went last August, and my daughter was so excited, and they lost, and she literally cried, like, yeah, she was crying. And I was actually happy, because it was so hot that day, I just wanted to leave. And I was like, if they start doing extra innings, I'm gonna die. It's so hot. Yeah? Daughter's crying, and I'm like, Yeah, we're done.

Scott Benner 1:06:44
I'm not gonna lie to you, it's hard. It's hard to go into that stadium July and August

Laura 1:06:48
sometimes, yeah, oh, it was so hot. Yeah.

Scott Benner 1:06:51
So weather's turning this, uh, it's getting cooler on the East Coast though, a little earlier this year. So yeah, we all have a great time. I appreciate you. I really do appreciate

Laura 1:07:01
it with me. Absolutely. I appreciate it definitely. Hold on one second for me. Okay, sure. Okay.

Scott Benner 1:07:14
The conversation you just enjoyed was brought to you by us, med, us, med.com/juicebox, or call 888-721-1514, get started today and get your supplies from us. Med, Dexcom sponsored this episode of the juice box podcast. Learn more about the Dexcom g7 at my link. Dexcom.com/juicebox this episode of The Juicebox podcast is sponsored by the Omnipod five. And at my link, omnipod.com/juicebox you can get yourself a free, what I just say, a free Omnipod five starter kit, free. Get out of here. Go click on that link, omnipod.com/juicebox check it out. Terms and Conditions apply. Eligibility may vary. Full terms and conditions can be found at omnipod.com/juicebox links in the show notes. Links at Juicebox podcast.com. Okay, well, here we are at the end of the episode. You're still with me. Thank you. I really do appreciate that. What else could you do for me? Why don't you tell a friend about the show or leave a five star review? Maybe you could make sure you're following or subscribe in your podcast app, go to YouTube and follow me, or Instagram. Tiktok. Oh gosh, here's one. Make sure you're following the podcast in the private Facebook group as well as the public Facebook page you don't want to miss. Please. Do you not know about the private group? You have to join the private group as of this recording, it has 51,000 members in it. They're active, talking about diabetes, whatever you need to know. There's a conversation happening in there right now, and I'm there all the time. Tag me. I'll say hi if you're looking to meet other people. Other people living with type one diabetes, head over to Juicebox podcast.com/juice, cruise, because next June, that's right, 2026, June, 21 the second juice Cruise is happening on the celebrity beyond cruise ship. It's a seven night trip, going to the Caribbean. We're going to be visiting Miami, Coco K st, Thomas and st, Kitts, yeah, the Virgin Islands. You're going to love the Virgin Islands. Sail with Scott the Juicebox community on a week long voyage built for people and families living with type one diabetes. Enjoy tropical luxury, practical education and judgment, free atmosphere. Perfect day at Coco Bay St, Kitts st, Thomas five interactive workshops with me and surprise guests on type one, hacks and tech, mental health, mindfulness, nutrition, exercise, personal growth and professional development, support groups and wellness discussions tailored for life with type one and celebrities, world class amenities, dining and entertainment. This. Is open from every age you know, newborn to 99 I don't care how old you are. Come out. Check us out. You can view state rooms and prices at Juicebox podcast.com/juice, cruise. The last juice cruise just happened a couple weeks ago. 100 of you came. It was awesome. We're looking to make it even bigger this year. I hope you can check it out. Hey, what's up, everybody? If you've noticed that the podcast sounds better and you're thinking like, how does that happen? What you're hearing is Rob at wrong way. Recording, doing his magic to these files. So if you want him to do his magic to you, wrong way. Recording.com, you got a podcast. You want somebody to edit it. You want Rob.

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Scott Benner 9/23/25 Scott Benner 9/23/25

#1635 This Just In

Andrea, 59, newly diagnosed with LADA, shares her late-onset journey, family ties to autoimmunity, and finding community after isolation.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello friends and welcome back to another episode of The Juicebox podcast.

Andrea 0:12
Hi Scott. My name is Andrea, and I am 59 years old, and I was diagnosed with LADA. I call it just auto immune diabetes, but usually for people who don't know about diabetes, I say type one.

Scott Benner 0:30
I am here to tell you about juice cruise, 2026 we will be departing from Miami on June 21 2026 for a seven night trip, going to the Caribbean, that's right, we're going to leave Miami and then stop at Coco k in the Bahamas. After that, it's on to St Kitts, St Thomas and a beautiful cruise through the Virgin Islands. The first juice Cruise was awesome. The second one's going to be bigger, better and bolder. This is your opportunity to relax while making lifelong friends who have type one diabetes, expand your community and your knowledge on juice cruise 2026 learn more right now at Juicebox podcast.com/juice. Cruise. At that link, you'll also find photographs from the first cruise. 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. This episode of The Juicebox podcast is sponsored by the contour next gen blood glucose meter. Learn more and get started today at contour next.com/juicebox com slash Juicebox. This episode of The Juicebox podcast is sponsored by the twist a ID system powered by tide pool that features the twist loop algorithm, which you can target to a glucose level as low as 87 Learn more at twist.com/juicebox that's twist with two eyes.com/juicebox. Get precision insulin delivery with a target range that you choose at twist.com/juicebox. That's t, w, i, i s, t.com/juicebox. This episode of The Juicebox podcast is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes and their mini med 780 G system designed to help ease the burden of diabetes management, imagine fewer worries about Miss boluses or miscalculated carbs thanks to meal detection technology and automatic correction doses. Learn more and get started today at Medtronic diabetes.com/juicebox

Andrea 2:41
Hi, Scott. My name is Andrea, and I am 59 years old, and I was diagnosed with LADA. I call it just auto immune diabetes, but usually for people who don't know about diabetes, I say type one, three years ago, three years ago and change. So this is all new to me.

Scott Benner 3:05
Yeah, you're 56 when you're diagnosed 59 now,

Andrea 3:08
yes, correct. I got it pretty much right before my 56th birthday. Happy birthday to me, happens more than

Scott Benner 3:15
you think. Question is, Do you have children? Yes or no?

Andrea 3:22
Yes, I've got two grown children, okay, and lovely,

Scott Benner 3:26
a mom, a dad, aunts, uncles, extended family. Do any of these people have type one diabetes? Nobody.

Andrea 3:34
In fact, I have never, since diagnosis, I have yet to meet a person who has type one out in the wild. I met people on, you know, Facebook groups and and stuff like that, but I have not yet met another human being with this even though I live in a very populous city, I worked with a woman a long, long time ago who has type one, or had type one, that was all new to me then, and and I still haven't met anybody else, yeah,

Scott Benner 3:59
but since you're diagnosed, you haven't met anybody, right? Yeah, right? Of that large group of people, your children, your extended family. Does anyone have celiac hypothyroidism? Do they have, I don't know, Crohn's disease? Do they have anything that relates to inflammation at all? Yes.

Andrea 4:20
And, well, it's funny, like looking at the tree, you know, the family tree, Nobody that I know. I mean, my dad had type two diabetes. He danced around type two for a long time. Nobody I know had that had anything like that. But one of my daughters has Crohn's, and the other one. It turns out that when I found out that I had type one, I also found out that I have antibodies against the thyroid, so Hashimotos and my my other daughter has that as well, even though we're both asymptomatic with that.

Scott Benner 4:58
Okay, so you have. Have the antibodies, but you don't have symptoms. You're not, let's see, right? You don't have trouble getting rested. You don't feel tired, your hair doesn't fall out. You know, a problem with your fingernails. Periods aren't none of that happens to you. No. So they, at least not that I've noticed, yeah, yeah. So they only checked because you got Lada type one.

Andrea 5:21
Yeah, yeah. I'm guessing. I can't remember them having checked before. Yeah, it never came up as anything abnormal before. What made them check your kids, my daughter, the oldest one, she there's like this whole push to try to find people you know, before they develop any symptoms of diabetes, you know, to see if it can be, you know, sort of stopped. And so, yeah, there's sort of a push to test your children and other family members to see if anybody has auto antibodies to, I guess, beta cells and all the other stuff. Gad 65 but also, because I had Hashimotos, they tested her for that too. And turns out she had that too.

Scott Benner 5:58
She's also asymptomatic. Doesn't have any sense. Yeah, she is. Did you get found by like, trial net, or screen it, like you mean it, or one of those things for

Andrea 6:09
trial net, that's the one I found. But, but I told my daughter, just go to the when next time you get a check up, go to the doctor and tell them that I was diagnosed and to please check you. Yeah. So she did what

Scott Benner 6:21
else, like any other autoimmune stuff that you've seen throughout your life, vitiligo, anything at

Andrea 6:26
all? Yes, I was just about to say vitiligo. My daughter, who has the Hashimotos, also has a little bit of vitiligo, you know, just a little bit, just a touch. And my sister has that also, you know, both my mom and my sister had thyroid issues. I don't know if it was ever the Hashimotos. My sister had thyroid cancer, and my mom had to take thyroid medicine, medicine for hypothyroidism at some point later in life. But I don't know if it was Hashimotos or not.

Scott Benner 6:53
Well, I'm gonna guess that maybe it is interesting. Okay, now we have a little bit of a background. Now you're, I mean, more than chugging along 56 years old. Had you had any major health issues through your life?

Andrea 7:04
No, no. And, you know, it's funny, because I always considered myself pretty healthy. And, you know, you sort of pat yourself on the back, and you're like, Hey, look at me. I must be doing something, right. I've never, you know, never had any kind of health issues. But a friend of mine called it the sniper alley of the 50s. And I don't know how old you are, you know, in the 50s, like all sorts of weird things started happening to random people, like a sniper alley. You don't know who's going to be hit. People get MS, people get cancer. And this sort of, you know, came to me, and I was just like, wow, you know. And so going from patting myself on the back for, you know, doing such a great job at keeping myself in good health. I was like, wow, what did I do wrong? Oh, and then I thought, well, you know, it wasn't anything I did wrong. I don't think,

Scott Benner 7:49
yeah, you know, it's like everything else. Like, if you're going to take the compliment, you have to take the blame. Is that how they think people think about it? Right? Exactly. So you're busy being like, I'm healthy because I'm doing something, all you had to do was give that away. Just say, Look, I'm lucky that I've been healthy this long and now you're not well.

Andrea 8:05
That's right, yeah, that's, that's exactly what it made me think. I was just like, hey, roll of the dice, you know, genetics or something that you catch, or, you know, just whatever you know. I mean, sure, there's some things that we can do to control our health, but, but there's a lot that we can't.

Scott Benner 8:21
Yeah, I'm, you asked me how old I was? I'm 54 and in your 40s, a couple of people you went to high school with die, and it's usually a heart attack, right? And then in your in your 50s, a couple more get it and and it's, it's more like what you're talking about, like a cancer or something really like feels very random happens to them, and it does feel like, it feels like you're those metal ducks at the at the fair, and you're just rolling along. You're like, Oh, I'm good, I'm good. And all of a sudden you're plink, and then you're gone, yeah? And you do imagine all the other ducks looking over, going, Oh, it wasn't me. Awesome. Yeah. It's funny. I used to tell my wife when we were I've been married a long time as we were married in the first five years, the first 10 years, for 15, the first 20 when people would get divorced, I'd always say to my wife, I'm like, you know, the more people that get divorced, the better chance we have not to be and she goes, how do you figure that? I said, we all can't get divorced.

Andrea 9:20
That's right, somebody has to be in the 50% that stays married.

Scott Benner 9:24
Yeah? Well, I'm not saying we're doing anything right. They're doing anything wrong. I'm just saying math. You know what? I mean? Like, like, you know when you do you enjoy baseball? Do you watch baseball?

Andrea 9:32
No, whole lot. Okay, but we can talk baseball if

Scott Benner 9:36
you want. No, no. I'm just saying 160 some games a year. You're gonna lose some of them, yeah, yeah. And you can be on a run like nobody's ever seen and then, you know, show up on a random Thursday evening and play some terrible team, and they hand you your and you say, like, and everybody wants to go, like, oh, they didn't play as well as they could tonight. I always say the same thing, like, now the numbers caught up with them. You weren't going to win them all. Right? So, right, yeah. Last guy.

Andrea 10:00
Do you remember when sky lab was falling from the sky and it was going to break up? It was like some satellite that was, you know, like, I don't know. We must it must have been in the 70s, maybe the 80s, and sky lab was going to fall, and nobody knew where it was going to go into the atmosphere. And some people started wearing hats, because, you know, the chances of sky lab hitting you are pretty small at but the chances of them hitting you, if you're wearing a hat, are even smaller. I don't know, a little faulty logic. No, you

Scott Benner 10:27
and I have a lot in common. I used to tell people all the time, did you know that frozen urine falls out of airplanes? Have you ever been hit with frozen urine? Never in your life. You never will be ice Yeah, exactly like so you know, I'm with you. I, as I get older, I my kids, what's the last thing they came to me, where I was like, Are these kids stupid? Like, you know, I mean, it was the, it was the drones over New Jersey thing, where my where my son, like, seriously, asked me, like, Should we be leaving? And I was like, Listen, man, Everything's fine. Everything's always gonna be fine. I said, when it's not fine, you'll know. And trust me, when it's not fine, you won't be able to prepare for it. So just, yeah, enjoy your life until the frozen pea falls on your head, and then, then we'll start worrying about how to handle it.

Andrea 11:13
Yeah, you're like, I don't know if that's comforting or not. It's like, enjoy your life like an ostrich with your head in the sand, because something's coming for you well, you know, but you know, it's true. You can't walk around worried about everything all

Scott Benner 11:25
the time. That's the way I think about it, like it's not that, it's not that I don't think it's like that might be real or that it might not be worth you know, if I was in charge looking into it, but I'm not in charge, and no one's listening to me, and most of the time this stuff works out fine. So I'm just going to pay attention to the things that I actually have control over, and the rest of it I'm going to pretend doesn't exist, because most of the time the pee doesn't fall on me. So I'm good, but so my point is, is that if you, if you go along that way, then you're allowed to say, hey, you know what? Life's random. And I've been randomly healthy for 56 years. What a great thing. Knock on wood. And now I have diabetes. It's not because I did something wrong. It's just because sometimes you can't, you can't beat the Marlins for some reason. It's just they're a bad baseball team, but they show up and they kick your ass, you know? And it's just it was, it was your day, I guess.

Andrea 12:14
Yeah, yeah. And, you know, I'm really grateful that, that I got this as late as I did. You know, it's like, yeah, it sucks to have this, but, but I just look at, you know, like young kids who get this, infants who get this, who don't get to spend 56 years enjoying really good health and and not worrying about being their own pancreas. Or, God forbid, you know, like you're a parent, like, like you are with a with a child, where you have to be their pancreas for them, and then until they can figure out how to be their own pancreas and, and then I think about the people who've had this for like, 57 years, or, you know, 60 and when the technology was just insane, like you had these needles that were like, huge, and you, you, you had To wait two hours to get your, you know, you have to pee on a stick to get the result on what your blood sugar was doing, you know, two hours ago and and then you have to give yourself insulin two hours figuring out what you might want to eat and whether or not you were going to eat it or get it in time. It's just like, Wow. This is, you know, this sucks, but it could be. It could suck a whole lot worse. Like, I guess

Scott Benner 13:24
that is more than a valid perspective that I agree with and and I would also tell you that the people who are on the flip side of that coin, like you said, Well, what about the poor kids that? Like, you know, my daughter was two when she got it, like, yeah, there are things that my daughter will experience and have the opportunity to understand in life that you won't get because you were super healthy for 56 years. Six years, 50, you know, whatever, and like, so everybody there's, I don't want to say there's like, a high side to diabetes, but there, there are things that you can get from it that are positive. You just have to be on the lookout for them. And it's not like, Oh, poor them. It's you just being like, I gotta look up here and see the the good stuff that's come to me and and something was gonna have I always think something's gonna happen eventually. I think if you think you're gonna, like, live till you're 98 years old and, like, you know, randomly, like, drop dead because you choked on your bubble gum, but everything else went perfectly for 90 I don't think that's gonna work that way for I mean, maybe it will for a couple people. They end up on the cheesy local news, but it's not how everybody else's life goes, you

Andrea 14:25
know, right? And then you have to play the hand you're dealt. You have no choice, right? You have no choice. You got to do

Scott Benner 14:31
it. So let's find out about the hand you were dealt. I first of all, how did you figure out that you were not feeling well? What came first? Today's episode is sponsored by Medtronic diabetes, who is making life with diabetes easier with the mini med 780 G system. The mini med 780 G automated insulin delivery system anticipates, adjusts and corrects every five minutes. Real world results show people achieving up to an 80% time and range. With recommended settings without increasing lows. But of course, Individual results may vary. The 780 G works around the clock, so you can focus on what matters. Have you heard about Medtronic extended infusion set? It's the first and only infusion set labeled for up to a seven day wear. This feature is repeatedly asked for, and Medtronic has delivered 97% of people using the 780 G reported that they could manage their diabetes without major disruptions of sleep. They felt more free to eat what they wanted, and they felt less stress with fewer alarms and alerts you can't beat that learn more about how you can spend less time and effort managing your diabetes by visiting Medtronic diabetes.com/juicebox the brand new twist insulin pump offers peace of mind with unmatched personalization and allows you to target a glucose level as low as 87 there are more reasons why you might be interested in checking out twist, but Just in case that one got you twist.com/juicebox that's twist with two eyes.com/juicebox. You can target glucose levels between 87 and 180 it's completely up to you. In addition to precision insulin delivery that's made possible by twist design, twist also offers you the ability to edit your carb entries even after you've bolused. This gives the twist loop algorithm the best information to make its decisions with, and the twist loop algorithm lives on the pump, so you don't have to stay next to your phone for it to do its job. Twist is now available in select areas, so if you'd like to learn more or get on the wait list, go to twist.com/juicebox. That's twist with two eyes.com/juicebox. Get on the twist wait list and be notified as soon as it's available in your area. Links in the show notes, links at Juicebox podcast.com.

Andrea 16:53
Oh, so I just come back from visiting one of my kids. It was like in the middle of covid, and one of my kids went abroad because she thought her university would go on lockdown. And she started college, you know, in 2020 when it was on lockdown. And so she was and it was a horrible experience. And so she thought her school was going to go back on lockdown in like 2022 and she decided to nanny for three year old twin boys in Switzerland, it's like best birth control ever. And so I went to visit her, and I, when I came back, I just started feeling all these like I had a yeast infection, a yeast infection that would not go away, and that had never happened to me before. I went to my OB GYN three times, my eyes started popping in and out of focus at weird, you know, random times, like suddenly I could see and then suddenly I couldn't I was exhausted. I was losing weight, but I was eating like a horse, and when I started waking up in the middle of the night dying of thirst, just felt like my mouth was completely, like desiccated, like it wasn't even thirst. It was just like cellular, you know, like I had, like, no moisture in my mouth. When I started doing that, I was like, oh, man, this is probably diabetes, and you knew that quickly. Or somebody had to tell you, I knew that, because I am actually a health journalist. And so I write about that. I write about, you know, wellness stuff, you know, I don't write about, in depth about diabetes. But, you know, I've been a health No, you don't know. I've been a health journalist for about 30 years. And so I knew, you know, this is, like, one of the basic things. But I just, you know, never thought it would be type one, right? Because it was covid. I, you know, it was like 1920, 22 and I hadn't been, I hadn't gone to get a checkup in a, you know, since 2019 let's just say, you know, up until that point, I hadn't had any problem with, you know, my fasting blood sugar levels or anything. And I had no idea what my a 1c was, because, you know, my my fasting blood glucose was fine, so nobody ever had to measure it. But I made an appointment with my primary care doc, you know, I told him, I just felt horrible. And I also noticed I had like a ring around my neck of like a darker skin, and I was like, Oh, I know what that is. I even woke up one time in the middle of the night, and I smelled something crazy and fruity in my room, and I turned on the light to see what it was, and it was nothing there. And so I turned off the light and fell back asleep. And then later on, in retrospect, I think, Oh, my God, that must have been, you know, yeah, like that fruity breath thing, you know, precursor to DKA or something. So anyway, I went, made an appointment to see my primary care, and he texted me the next day that, oh yeah, my a, 1c, was 11.3 and my fasting blood sugar was, you know, close to 400 and that's why it felt like like crap.

Scott Benner 19:55
Did they think you had type two immediately? Yeah. Contour, next.com/juicebox that's the link you'll use to find out more about the contour, next gen blood glucose meter. When you get there, there's a little bit at the top. You can click right on blood glucose monitor, and I'll do it with you. Go to meters, click on any of the meters. I'll click on the Next Gen, and you're going to get more information. It's easy to use and highly accurate smart light provides a simple understanding of your blood glucose levels, and of course, with Second Chance sampling technology, you can save money with fewer wasted test strips. As if all that wasn't enough, the contour next gen also has a compatible app for an easy way to share and see your blood glucose results. Contour next.com/juicebox and if you scroll down at that link, you're going to see things like a Buy Now button. You could register your meter after you purchase it. Or what is this? Download a coupon. Oh, receive a free contour next gen blood glucose meter. Do tell contour, next.com/juicebox head over there. Now get the same accurate and reliable meter that we use.

Andrea 21:07
I was going to New Orleans to visit my my my daughter at her college, and I was bringing my nephew with me. And so he, he just yeah, he assumed I had type two, and he put me on Metformin. So I picked up my little prescription before the trip my brother in law and I remember actually asking my doctor, I'm like, shouldn't I get, like, a little kit to measure my my blood sugar, to see and he's like, no, no, don't worry about that. But my brother in law, who has type two, said to me, Here, take this extra kit I have. You know, I have many of them. And so I took it and I started measuring my blood sugar while I was on that trip. And you know, if you know anything about New Orleans, you know, the food is really, really good. And even though I was trying to eat, you know, sort of what I thought was healthy, because I really didn't know how to control this. I mean, I wasn't eating dessert, but I had no idea about carbs and stuff. And I was measuring my blood sugar, and it was all over the place. And so I'd send him a message on my chart, saying, okay, my blood sugar was this when I woke up, and this during the day, and he's like, okay, double your Metformin, you know, still wasn't moving the needle. And then the next day he'd say, okay, take one in the morning, and, you know, one at night, and then double that, and it was just not moving the needle. So I sort of live in two different cities for reasons that are just complicated and whatnot. But I got back to the other city where he is not and I started calling around endocrinology practices, and I'm like, I need to get in to see somebody, because this is, this is crazy. And people are like, yeah, we can see you in three months. And I'm like, I'm going to be in the ER, in three months. We need to, need to do this before, you know, yeah, and so finally, somebody got me in on a zoom call, and a nice doctor, and I chatted with her, and she had me come in the next day and taught me how to use insulin and did a bunch of tests, and then was like, Yeah, you have type one. You have auto antibodies. So you

Scott Benner 22:59
live in two cities for reasons that are difficult to explain. Are they that you're a spy or nothing cool like that?

Andrea 23:06
If I tell you, I have to kill you? I was hoping it

Scott Benner 23:09
was something fun, but it doesn't sound like it. It

Andrea 23:12
is fun. One of the cities is New York, and I love New York, and I love to you know, New York is so much fun. And the other one is Atlanta, and Atlanta is sort of like the antidote to New York. It's a lot of fun, but it also has much more sunshine, and so I need a little bit of both. So, yeah, do you follow the weather? Do I follow the weather? Yeah, you know

Scott Benner 23:30
that, are you up here in the summer and down there in the winter? No,

Andrea 23:33
no, no. I mean, I just thought, I thought you meant, do I follow it on, you know, like, my app? No, no, that'd be crazy. Yeah. I just basically commute every couple of weeks. You know, I go back and

Scott Benner 23:42
forth to get a different look nice. That's awesome. I would love to do something like that. It is nice. I want to dig in first. I'm going to get back to your to your story. But I want to hear about like, how are you a health journalist for 30 years, and how has that changed in the last five or six years?

Andrea 23:58
Oh, well, that's such a big, broad question. I think media in general has changed a lot. You know, like, magazines have died. We have more than, you know, three networks. We have the internet. All these things happened. You know, while I was a journalist. I mean, when I started, we almost didn't even have computers or the internet, which is crazy. I mean, like, how can you be a journalist without that? But I feel like the things that have changed more recently, you know, it's like, everybody can put up a blog, everybody can, you know, be an expert now, which is, which is great, but it's also not great, because then we have people who, you know, sort of spread misinformation and and, or build themselves a certain way. So like, sort of the guard rails in that respect flew off, yeah, taken to the other extreme, it's like, well, it's a good thing. We don't have to have license, a license, to be a journalist, and we can just, you know, do our jobs without that, because then somebody could take that license away and if they don't like what you're saying, right?

Scott Benner 24:57
Or they could own the only way you could get your information. Out the world and just keep

Andrea 25:01
you absolutely so, you know, there's, there's a balance. But I think right now, we're in a place of a lot of Miss and disinformation. And, you know, as, I guess as a journalist, you feel like a sort of responsibility to get it right. You know, you got to get it fast, but you also have to get it right and and now there's even a distrust on what getting it right means, like the studies that I used to read and rely on, a lot of people now go, you know, that that's fake science, and that's full and that was, you know, blah, blah, blah, and, well, I still happen to believe in all of that stuff, you know. And I believe in the FDA, I believe in the CDC, I believe in the HHS when they're not politically weaponized, right? You know, when they're not weaponized. So that's my little soapbox, right? I should stop now.

Scott Benner 25:47
No, but how do you make a living after the democratization is over? Like after? It's not just like I have to work for a newspaper to get my thoughts out. Then it's, well, maybe I could work for a newspaper, or I could work for a magazine. Now, it's not even that, you know, it's not even like there's a radio station. It's going to let you sit down and give like your and give, like, your health note for five minutes or something that, like, how do you still do that for a living at this point? Like, I mean, I'm not looking for your your financials, but like, how do you, like, who pay who pays you for that? How do you make that work?

Andrea 26:14
Part of it is, throughout my career, I've gone back and forth into one company that which I love, and it's been great. And other times, I've worked at other companies. I even worked at a nonprofit for a while, on their magazine that, you know, you'd find in a doctor's waiting room. I've also freelanced, and you know, that's the rate. We used to get paid $1 a word, and now, you know, it's like, you don't get paid that. But I think people who want to do this and who succeed at the new way of doing it. It's a lot of social media, and they get sponsors and stuff like that. You spend a lot of time having to promote yourself, which is, I imagine, is exhausting. I have had the good fortune of working for a large media company that kept me with health insurance

Scott Benner 26:57
too. Yeah, yeah. The promoting yourself part is exhausting is not the right word. Even it's, it's, yeah, it's so frustrating, like that you spend so much time doing something where you're like, well, I could be working right now. Like, I could actually be thinking of something, writing something, recording something, having an idea, right? You know, instead I'm sitting here trying to think about, like, how do I what time of day do I post this so that enough people see it, so that enough people click on this, so that somebody will still buy an ad, so that I can actually go make the thing that I think is helping people. It's, it is really frustrating, honestly.

Andrea 27:32
Yeah, I'm sure, you know, it's like I was reading some posts that you put up about, you know, the cruise ship that you took. And I think right before you went on on this cruise, you know, people had said, and I didn't see the original post, but some nasty stuff, and it's like, you also have to spend time answering that, and you you better have all your ducks in a row if you're going to go in and be like, you know, no, because of A, B, C and D, and you've got to defend yourself. And that takes a lot of energy, too. A lot of energy.

Scott Benner 27:58
It's absolutely exhausting, because that your example. There is I'm I'm quite literally sitting at a gate waiting to get on a plane, to fly across the country, to climb up on a to go to a hotel, to spend the night there, to get into a car, to drive to a thing, to get on a cruise ship, to meet these 100 listeners and spend the spend the week with them, which is going to be awesome. And as I'm sitting there, someone not me, by the way, someone put something in my face and says, Hey, look, there's this person saying this thing about you. And I went and looked, and it was demoralizing, because I like that person a lot. Oh, I'm sorry. I can't even speak for them. I wouldn't know if they misunderstood something, or if it just has become advantageous to choose me as a foil, because that works well, because I have some popularity. Like, I don't know the where in the spectrum of of that that could have fallen, but I'm sitting there and I'm just like, oh, this is such a shame. Like, this person either believes this happened and it's such a shame because it's not what happened, and if I tried to explain it to them, they think I was lying to them. So, like, I can't, like, There's no way around it. You can't answer them directly, because now that's what they want. They're dying for you to come say something so that they can look like they're part of this narrative somehow and maybe prop themselves up. And in the end, it was just like, it was just sad. And I just, I sat there and I just felt sad for two minutes. And I was like, All right, fine. Now I can't not do something about this, because now somebody knows, and they're gonna move it around, and now I have to be on the record about it and like, it's just like, and then this is stupid. If on my deathbed I remember that five minutes, I'm gonna think what a total and complete waste of my time that was. And yet, here you are doing it, because in the moment, it's somewhat important because of the way this whole system is set up. Yeah, you gotta nip it in the bud. Yeah. I'm also not saying that it was perfect when, like, you had to work for the New York Times to get your opinion out. Like, I don't think that's I'm not saying that either, but I'll tell you the you know, it's funny, when I asked you about it, you went right to the idea of, like, well, who are we holding to account? Don't if nobody's needs to be accountable to anything, and they can just say whatever they want. That's not my first like Big Bad Wolf in that situation. The thing that frightens me the most is that I agree with what you're saying, that it's great to get other people's voices out there, but there's a tipping point where, if you over saturate it, you literally you kill the thing. You can't kill the cow that's giving you the milk kind of thing. There's an amount of people that will do a good job, and they'll put out good stuff for people, whether it's through a magazine or newspaper or, you know, a podcast or, you know, a blog. But if suddenly there's 10,000 people doing that, if suddenly, let's pick some abstract idea, if 20 really knowledgeable people are making videos about how to take care of your pets, and they start making a little money out of it, then what you're going to be sure of is there's going to be 10,000 people doing it two years from now. Oh yeah, sure. Then the information gets diluted. But what happens? I think the bigger problem, I think, is that the consuming audience sees so many options that they shut down and just stop completely, and then you lose the first 10 people who were really putting good information into the world, because they can't monetize it anymore, so therefore they can't spend time doing it. And now we all lose that's how I see it as being the problem,

Andrea 31:23
yeah, and it's overwhelming. If you know you're out there, we're all consumers of news, health news, let's say in particular, Tiktok, every day, has something about not every day, every second, many, many times a second, you know, like, what supplements to take, what to do, blah, blah, blah, this, that and the other. You cortisol, belly, blah, blah, and, and it drowns out everything. There's so much. Where do you even begin? Where do you even begin? Everything is wrong with you. Nothing is wrong with you. You take things because people say you should, and then you might be creating problems. It just and then the people who are doing good work do get drowned out. People are like, Oh, she works for, you know, big television station, well, must be false. Now they're spreading bad information. Well, no, these, these people do have, you know, they have standards and stuff like that. Yeah, I

Scott Benner 32:12
watched it happen very simply in diabetes blogging, 1015, years ago. Oh, really, really wonderful, like, focused, thoughtful, good writers who had a perspective, and they were sharing. And those 10 or 20 people turned into 100 or 200 people turned into 2000 4000 people. And then one day, I think everybody was just like, there's too much to read. I can't read all this. I'm just not gonna read any of them. And then that was it. People just stopped reading those blogs. Yeah, you know, you used to have a website. I won't say the name of it, but there used to be a website. It was for profit that had actual journalists who had type one diabetes writing stories about type one diabetes. And that doesn't exist anymore, because they couldn't make money in it. In when the paradigm shifted and 5000 people wouldn't have started up their type one diabetes blog, that thing would still exist. And so, you know, I can hear both sides of the argument, like, well, I should get a chance too, if they can be successful at it. Why? Why does that mean I can't be I'm American, I'm a capitalist. I agree with you. I'm just telling you that the end result is, when you flood a market, you kill it eventually.

Andrea 33:20
Yeah, chaos. People just are paralyzed by too much, too much information, you know, myself included, I'm like, Ah,

Scott Benner 33:27
of course. And the bad and the good both fall in the garbage together, and no one steps up to do it again, because, well, that's not how the system works anymore,

Andrea 33:36
well. And you see that with all the newspapers closing down all over the country. You know, it's like everybody gets frustrated when they hit a pay wall. If you're on, if you're online and you want to read something, let's say the New York Times. You know, you're just like, it's behind a paywall. How dare they? Well, they have journalists that they have to pay somewhere. They have cameramen. They have, you know, a whole infrastructure that that, but, but it's hard to monetize it. Like you said, how do you monetize it? And, you know, how do you separate yourself from others and and make it so that people want to spend $5 on your thing, your newspaper, on Sunday and whatever?

Scott Benner 34:13
So that's also a thing that I agree with, by the way, like, and I agree that it's a problem, and I agree with people not wanting to do it. I know that people don't want to pay for things like, I understand that, especially in a world where it feels like the answer exists for free somewhere, even though it's a little harder to maybe trust. But I had a company come to me a couple of years it's been maybe more than a couple of years ago now, and they were like, listen, we should just take your podcast. Here's what we want to do. We'll put it on a server, and you'll charge people for every episode, but it'll just be a very tiny little bit of money, and they'll pay. And how many downloads Do you have? And I forget at the time how many I had, but I'll tell you right now that I'm about to celebrate 20 million.

Andrea 34:55
Wow. Congrats. Thank you.

Scott Benner 34:56
It's very exciting, actually. Yeah. That's wonderful. Really proud of myself, but at the same time, imagine that company came to me today and said, Scott, listen, you have 20 million downloads. What if you just would have charged 50 cents for each of them? You'd have $10 million and that's the pitch they came to me with. And I responded back, and I said, No, I wouldn't, because no, nobody would pay 50 cents for an episode. And they said, Your episodes are worth more than 50 cents and easily. And I said, I agree with you. That's not the point. They won't pay for it. And then they pivoted, and they said, but some people would. And I said, Yeah, but then what about everybody else? Like, if I'm putting out content that I think is going to help people, how can I, in good conscience say, like, Listen, if this intersects 10,000 people today, I think it's going to be value. Going to be valuable to most of them, but I'm going to just have it intersect 1000 of them, but I'm going to make 500 bucks. Yeah, I exchanged $500 for 9000 people, not getting the content that day, just that day. And then don't, don't forget about back catalog and every other day. And like, we're really talking about hundreds of 1000s of downloads, like every rolling, like few weeks.

Andrea 36:06
Well, how do you feed your family then, Scott, I mean, seriously, you know, because you're saying that's true, you want to help people and and, and certainly, we are all worthy of being helped. And, you know, I probably would have been one who be like, No, not going to pay for this. You know,

Scott Benner 36:25
I want, I would be too. You

Andrea 36:27
spend a lot of time doing this. How do you feed them

Scott Benner 36:31
all my time? And Right, exactly. And then the other side of the is that, then I go, Okay, well, I figured it out, like I've made it so popular that it can support advertisers. Advertisers will pay to put ads on it. That's how I feed my family. That's how you don't have to pay for it. And most people at this day, in this day and age, are okay with that. Yeah, every once in a while you get like, somebody who's like, Yo, man, like you're I'm like, Yeah, listen, you don't i You sound like you might not have bills. Like, like, you might not understand all

Andrea 36:59
this. So broadcast TV. We used to have to watch commercials, right when we had just ABC, CBS and and NBC. We'd have to sit there and watch commercials. So that's how, you know, they got us their programs for free. Now we have to buy Netflix and whatever else is out there, HBO, Max and and we have to pay for it, but, but we don't get commercials. So, you know, pick your poison

Scott Benner 37:21
exactly well that, in the end, becomes the, I believe that the model I'm using now is the most viable in the current structure, and it's the one I'm the most comfortable with. And I want to be clear. I would love to be clear to everybody. I'd love to just give it to you for free, like, I think it would be awesome if, you know, if my bills magically got paid, and I could spend my time doing this right, but that's just not reality. So yep, and you gotta feed your family. Yeah, that's all okay, so sorry about that

Andrea 37:49
detour.

Scott Benner 37:50
Here you are. You have your you, you're calling it lotta. Does that mean that it's a very slow onset and you're not using very much insulin at the moment? Or just, are you calling it lot of because of the age you were when you when you were diagnosed.

Andrea 38:04
Well, I'm calling it lot of because, I guess technically it is lot of but I when I explain it to people, I call it type one diabetes, because most people don't even know what lot of is. I do use very little insulin. I'm still like, honeymooning, I touch wood, I consider it, but it was not slow onset. I mean, I just got really sick in a month. But the hard thing to know it really is how slow of an onset was it really? I got sick and all these crazy things started happening to me. You know, in the month of February and March of 2020, and suddenly my a 1c was 11.3 it was not like a slow rise. But I also hadn't been to a doc in like, three years. I try to think back, and I'm like, Did I have symptoms before? When? When did the symptoms start? What were the symptoms and and it's really hard to pinpoint, you know?

Scott Benner 38:53
Yeah, no, I know. So it's possible that any amount of time, over maybe 36 months, even you could have been slowly moving towards this, and then right all the sudden, in the last 60 days, it hit you really hard, right?

Andrea 39:06
I hit a tipping point, and boom, like whatever beta cells I had could not do the job, because I feel like there were some symptoms. I covid came. I lost one job because the magazine I worked for shut down, and I stepped into another position that was, instead of being every two month publication which I had been working on, I was working on something where things were happening every two minutes. So it was like, literally, fire hose in my face, and I was under a lot of stress, and I and we were all quarantining, and I was up in New York, and I'm, like, running around in my apartment trying to get the yayas out. And then I'm like, Was that just me having really crazy high blood sugar, or was that stress? Or what was that? And I don't know. I don't know. It's hard to

Scott Benner 39:54
was there any like, illness, like, prior to those 60 days? Like, did you get covid? Were you sick of. Or wise or just stressful.

Andrea 40:01
No, that's the crazy thing. So when I went to Europe to visit my daughter, we were still testing. I had to test before, before I could fly there, and when I got back, and we both got sick for one day, sort of in the middle of it, that could have been covid, I didn't test until, like, a few days later, when I had to get on the plane. And we were only sick for literally half a morning, and we had, like, the primary symptom of whatever wave maybe it was, I can't remember if it was the Omega or the alpha, the beta wave, or whatever.

Scott Benner 40:33
Which transformer, uh, bad guy it was, yeah,

Andrea 40:36
right, which transformer it was. But we both had a sore throat, and then it went away. That could have been it, I don't know, or it could have been like, I don't know. The thing, the point is, you know, I sort of tried to make myself a little crazy, really, trying to figure this out and and then being like, I am not going to have answers to this good. I am just, you know, yeah, I hate

Scott Benner 40:56
for people that rabbit hole where, like, why did this happen? I'm like, oh gosh. Like, so you're maybe the 20th person this week I've seen torture the cells over this and it's going to end with acceptance, and you not really knowing.

Andrea 41:06
So yeah. And the other rabbit hole is, can it be reversed? Is there anything you can do to save like, the other thing that I and I'm still a little bit on, is, can I I still have some beta cells that are functioning? Because, like I said, I don't have to take too much insulin. I take, you know, the basal insulin, and then i i Take just a bit of fast acting, yeah, but I also donate a whole lot of carbs. I keep on thinking, I've got to save these beta cells. What can I do to preserve these beta cells and and, you know, people are doing trials and stuff, but I have pretty much aged out of that. They're doing trials on, you know, kids and not older people.

Scott Benner 41:46
It's a tough moment when you realize you're not the you're not the group that they're like, oh, you know, we should spend a lot of time trying to elongate 56 year olds lives like, oh, it's not right, yeah, right, yeah. I take your point too about that. The Panic of, like, what could I be doing to just make this be easier for longer. Yeah, it's tough

Andrea 42:05
waiting for the other shoe to drop. I'm going to wake up one day, and I feel this is one of the big differences between people who you know are diagnosed, like your daughter was really young and in childhood, versus and I could be completely wrong, but from what I see on Facebook groups and and listening to podcasts and stuff like yours is that, you know, it's a much Wilder ride if you get it really young and you're pretty much, you know, no beta cells are left to produce any kind of insulin and and so I feel like it's a bit easier for for me, and if I just sort of take care of myself and not abuse the beta cells that I have and support them with exogenous insulin and and making sure I don't, you know, eat a plate of fries and birthday cake, you know, maybe I can extend this a while longer. But I also wonder, when's the other shoe going to drop? Is it going to drop, you know, right?

Scott Benner 43:01
And what if that was your last piece of birthday cake, too? I know, I know you ever listen to a song and think, Oh, I wonder when the last time is I'll ever hear that song?

Andrea 43:11
I never do. But thanks for the new fear unlocked. Sure, no problem happens

Scott Benner 43:15
to me all the time. Like it'll pop on. I'll be like, Well, I haven't heard that song in four or five years. And then I think I wonder if I'll hear it again. And then I think, ever, like, I wonder if I'll ever hear it again. Like, was that the last time I just heard Sam Cook saying that and or something to that effect. It's very upsetting.

Andrea 43:33
It is, it is I do something similar. I'm like, I wonder if this is the last time I'm going to, you know, see this person again. You know, like, every day I think about like, people walk out in the world and they don't think today I'm going to get in a car accident and maybe I'll die. You know, nobody thinks that when they step out the door today I'm going to go into d k and, you know, people don't think that and and so, but sometimes you kind of do. You're like, oh, is this the day that I'm going to step off the curb and be hit by a bus? But then you can't think like that has

Scott Benner 44:01
your diagnosis made you a little more pondering of things like that than you were previously?

Andrea 44:07
Maybe just a little bit, I find that a little bit pondering that kind of stuff will just, you know, it's a rabbit hole. It'll make you crazy. Yeah, I just can't. I've got so many other things to think about that are not philosophical questions that are, like real to really sit there, and I don't suffer from anxiety, and I think that that would be something that would give me anxiety.

Scott Benner 44:29
You know, it's so interesting, the way you just said that, like, you know, there's things I have, like real things for me to think about, not philosophical ideas. I was listening to, like a news clip recently, and I realized, like, while I was listening to it, I'm like, I find this interesting. I find the politics of this idea interesting, and I know how I feel about it. I'm interested in listening to somebody else how they think about it. And at the same time, none of this could possibly matter less for me to be listening to. I am not the position to do. Change any of this, I'm never going to be in a position to change any of this. Like, it's an interesting thought exercise, but yeah, it is an abstract idea for me. Like, and I think that we all can get caught up in that feeling of that our participation just by passively listening in on something else, like we're participating in it. And I don't know that that's true. Like, I'm sure it'll impact my vote one day on something, you know what I mean? And it is good for me to understand it big picture, but I didn't need to hear a 15 minute conversation about it, you know? I mean, like, I understood that the idea in the beginning, I knew both arguments, and I was like, here's where I fall. The rest of it is just, is me educating, and I'm making quotes around that myself on a thing that I'm never going to be asked about ever again. And is this just a waste of my time? And is there something that's functionally more important that I should be doing

Andrea 45:52
right now? Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was going to ask, were you procrastinating?

Scott Benner 45:56
I was probably in the shower. I do consume a lot of stuff in my free time, like when I'm not sitting here doing the making the podcast, as much as I miss music. If I'm in the car, I'm probably listening to somebody talk about something. I have a playlist that, you know, I listen to in the shower when I'm getting dressed like I try to cram as much information into my day as I can. I tend to believe that it's helping me to think about stuff that's actually impactful to me, but sometimes I find it valuable to listen to to abstract conversations about something I don't have input on, just to hear how people are thinking about it, to see if there isn't a slice of how they're thinking that I might co opt and bring into my own thoughts on something different that I think is valuable, yeah, like the news, for example. Like my son went to my wife one time. Like, I think it was during was during covid, and he's like, Listen, do you want to be happy or stop listening to that? And he's like, nothing's going to happen different for you, but you're going to stop worrying about this thing that you don't have any agency over. And it ended up being really great advice for so How old's your son? He's 25 now. Yeah?

Andrea 47:02
So, like, I was gonna say, sometimes you listen to things that that are just useless because you enjoy it. It's like the birthday cake that, you know, it's like, like eating birthday cake.

Scott Benner 47:12
Oh, man, no, don't worry, I have plenty of stuff like that. I do. Yeah, yeah. I've re watched a couple of shows more than I should have, and I am right now. I'm right now about halfway through the second season of Mr. Robot. It's been fun. I'm not without my my the things that I'm interested in that that are, you know, entertainment for me, I just think that it just was very interesting the way you said that. You know, that's not a thing you have time to think about. So anyway, yeah, what made you want to come on the podcast?

Andrea 47:39
I don't know. I just, I feel like, feels like, and this might not be your listeners, but a lot of people don't know that. People can get you know type one later on in life, that Lada even exists. I think Lance Bass the musician who was recently diagnosed with

Scott Benner 47:55
it. Are we calling Lance Bass a musician? Now? Okay, well,

Andrea 47:59
yeah, okay, he was a singer or whatever. It's so terrible. I grew up like a little bit before him, and he's his music is nothing I've ever listened to, but that I've been watching some of his little tick tocks, and they're really funny. And I think it sort of brings awareness to this. But, you know, I think also, like, I was looking up statistics for like, the number of people or the percentage of people who are diagnosed in different ages. And I'm going to pull up a study here that was published because I'm the good journalist that I am, that it was published in the Annals of Internal Medicine, and it found that 22% of people were diagnosed after the age of 40, of all the people that have type 120, 2% were diagnosed after 40. That's one in five. That's more than one in five. That's almost one in 457. Are diagnosed after 20. But the 43% are diagnosed, you know, from zero to 20 and you know, but that's a lot of people who are waking up one day and going, Oh, I did not know I can get this. This was not on my bingo card. You know, we all worry about cancer, we worry about heart disease, but this was not on my bingo card. It's was surprising to me. You know, my massage therapist said something to me. She's like, Oh, how did you survive this long without taking without treating it? And I'm like, No, I didn't have it this long.

Scott Benner 49:14
Oh, you met a person who thought, because it's type one, you've had it since you were a child,

Andrea 49:18
right? And she's like, how did you not know? How did you, you know? And I was like, No, it wasn't. I didn't always have it. I just developed it. And yes, you too can develop this, yeah, so that was kind of like the surprising, yeah. I guess that's why I wanted to come on and sort of chat about that,

Scott Benner 49:35
a terrible commercial, even you could develop diabetes,

Andrea 49:38
right, right? New fear unlocked again, kind of like that expression,

Scott Benner 49:43
no, yeah, of course. Because right, like you're, I mean, listen, you and I are about the same age, like it's you do get that unreasonable feeling like you hit a benchmark or a milestone, and you think, Oh, well, this can't happen to me anymore. Like I've been married for 20 years, I'm not getting divorced. Or I made it through my I made it through my 40s. I'm not having a heart attack like, that's when, you know, like, it's that kind of stuff that's not real. But I think we sometimes pin our our hopes on,

Andrea 50:10
yeah, well, it's good that we can, you know, change it. You know that we can by living well or exercising more, or eating right? You know, sure, all these things do help with that, sometimes you're just still gonna get

Scott Benner 50:22
it. Does everyone not learn when you turn the news on and like some long distance runner had a heart attack, and they no body fat, and they've been running every day their entire life. I just interviewed a guy a couple weeks ago. It's not out yet. Well, I guess by the time years comes out, it'll be out early 40s. Just had quadruple bypass, like quadruple, right? And he was, and he's a runner, but also has had type one diabetes most of his life. And the beginning part was harder going than the end, the part where he's at now, but when he had his like, first, like, Hey, what's going on? Moment, he really thought, like, This isn't me. I'm super healthy, you know. And so I think this stuff happens, you know, every day to somebody. I think it's important to bring up just like you're saying, Yeah, my gosh, yeah, you find the podcast or the Facebook group. How do you intersect me? Initially, the,

Andrea 51:13
I don't remember if it was Facebook group, probably first, and then that led to the podcast, okay, you know. And it's super helpful, you know, these fun tips and and your new beginning series. You know, I recommend, like, whenever I this other Facebook group that I'm on, I always recommend your podcast and the book. Think like a pancreas for anybody who is, you know, just recently diagnosed, and I remember took me like three months after getting this to finally wrap my head around, getting out of the house without thinking I was going to be stranded somewhere in New York City without access to the right food and water and everything. It just took so long to get my act together and you know, but I think that by informing and educating ourselves that can be cut short. And, you know, I sometimes read posts from people who have had this a long time, and they're only just beginning to understand either, because they didn't have parents like you who were really, really caring and hands on, and they were just sort of left, you know, adrift to figure this out on their own, and it's a hard thing to figure out on your own, and you don't need to, you know, nobody needs to figure it out on their own.

Scott Benner 52:29
Yeah, no, I am fully behind the idea that people should have good information so that they can find a way to educate themselves that jives with how they learn and how they think, because you're only going to make better decisions when you know, when you have more facts you know, and access to people who are willing and able to share with you in a way that is hopefully, you know, not one sided like I love it when people are just like, look, this is my finding. And here's 10 other people. This is what they found in this situation. Go through that and see what makes sense to you, and start like trying to learn for yourself. I agree with you completely. Yeah, it's really important. How old is your daughter now? Oh, she just a month ago, turned 21

Andrea 53:16
Oh, happy birthday to her. So what has been the hardest thing for you? Know, Like as you let her go and let her become the person she is, you know, developing into, especially with, with type one, what's been, you know, what? What's been the most challenging thing for you?

Scott Benner 53:34
Yeah, challenging. I don't know might be the wrong way to put it, but I just think that there's this moment where there's stuff you always knew, like, right? Like, you could sit down and be academic about it. While you're raising a young kid, you're like, you know, there'll be a day when they're gonna, you know, not want you to be as involved in this, or they're gonna, you know, maybe not taken as seriously as you do, or more seriously than you do. Like, I hear people say all kinds of different things, right? There's gonna be a moment where you're to be a moment where your kid starts to see this thing through their own lens, and isn't look and is and is looking to build their own identity around it. And you know it's coming. Like it's, I mean, if you're halfway reasonable, you know that's coming. If you've, you know, ever raised a kid, stuff like this happens every three weeks about something, yeah, so not surprising, and surprising would even be the wrong word, but the part that's most difficult when it begins to happen, and it's been going on in our lives for a long time now, but when it begins to happen is how connected you are to their good outcomes, the realization of that as she's building her own understanding of all this, she's going to go through speed bumps, just like I did when I was learning about it in the beginning, and I didn't realize that it was going to make me feel like she was in a dire situation. And the irony is, of course, she's not a dire situation like you know, she goes. Off to college. When she left for college, she probably left for college like a five, nine, a one, say, Nice. And when she was a year into college, she was doing more like a six two on her own,

Andrea 55:14
6263 still very decent.

Scott Benner 55:18
Yeah, exactly my point is that that's awesome, right? And if she has trouble and she her six two goes to six seven. Like, why would we argue about that? Like, that's amazing. Like, that's a 20, you know, 1920 year old kid in college with type one diabetes, keeping a six, seven, a, 1c, and I, and I did not initially see that as like, Wow, what an amazing accomplishment. This is like, instead, I thought, instead, what I saw was her a 1c was almost a point higher than when she left. And I didn't like go at her with that. It's it felt that way to me, and it took me a little time to recognize that this was really a great thing. Not like, we didn't lose something, we're winning something, yeah, and that's been, I guess that was probably my biggest hurdle during this time, and now still, like, you know, she, she'll go back and forth sometimes where she's like, you know, I need help with this. And then there'll be a day where she decides she doesn't want help with it anymore, but nobody sent me the memo, and I'll be like, hey, you know, did you take this or do that or whatever? And she's like, I don't need your help. And I'm like, oh, okay, there's that part of it. Like, if this and does, by the way, when this stuff kind of happens with your kids, with any other thing, any of the things that you expect it to happen with, you know, boys or girls, or driving or drinking or weed or whatever. The thing is that you're expecting to have these arguments with your kids about it's not until it's about what feels like their mortal end that you realize that it takes a lot of emotional maturity and self control to continue to be the person you are and that you're trying to be, when you feel like, how do I mean this? When she was first diagnosed, it felt like diabetes was trying to kill her, and that my misunderstanding of it was going to be the tool that it used. And then we we figured the whole thing out, and it it runs like clockwork. If I'm a little involved, it runs like clockwork. And then to watch that feel like it's going away, and now it's not diabetes trying to kill her. It feels like it's her trying to kill herself. But that's obviously not what's happening, because if you step back far enough, you realize that a 20 year old kid in college with a 678, 1c, is a absolute, like, it's a celebration, yeah? And anyway, definitely that, I think right there psychologically was the part that took a lot of bobbing and weaving for me to, like, really wrap all my head around,

Andrea 57:55
yeah, yeah. Because again, it goes back to that whole thing that you've been responsible for her health this whole time. And how can, how could she let it slip? But she's not, she's taking control of it, and she's learning how to, you know, and I'm sure she it isn't one moment where you hand over, you know, one moment, it's been like years in the making, where you're letting her have more autonomy with this and then, you know, then she's out of your house. And they always need you, right? They always need you at two in the morning, no matter what, no matter what it

Scott Benner 58:25
is. It's not a rom com. It's not one lunch and shopping montage, and then everything's okay afterwards, right? You're right. It's been years of like, slow hand off, yeah, yeah. And at the same time, you know, to say that it feels like, like, if she was listening to this right now, I would tell her like she's not trying to kill herself, and it doesn't feel like that to me, right? Good, right? It feels like she's putting together her own plan for this success and that, and I think it's going incredibly well and but when something like you said, what is it like? I don't exactly know what it's like, but it feels like you're a bystander. It's something that you know the answer to, and you speak up, and everybody goes, no, no, thanks. We're going to figure this out on our own. And you say, Yeah, but the basement's flooding, and I know how to stop it right this second. And they go, no, no, we'll get it figured out. And the truth is, they are going to get it figured out and it is going to be okay and and that you have to be willing to pass that knowledge forward, because if I don't pass it on to her, then it dies with me, and then she struggles forever, right? So I got, you know, it's

Andrea 59:33
part of maturing too for her, exactly, you know, aside from studying, right? I feel like my my younger daughter, the one that has Crohn's, you know, she looked at me before she went to college. She's like, I'm going to drink anyway, because we had this whole talk with, you know, the nutritionist about food that, you know, she should, shouldn't, whatever, eat. And she's like, I'm, you know, I'm about to go to college, I'm not going to not drink. And I like, I looked at her, and I'm like, it's your party. It's your party. You. You, this is your life. This is your life. You've got to live it the way you want to. There will be consequences and or, you know, maybe not that, maybe something else, but it's, it's your party.

Scott Benner 1:00:09
Yep, you know, yep. That's it, and that, and that's the thing you have to get over. Now, listen, if it's something like, your daughter's like, Hey, listen, I'm going to have a couple of beers at a party. And I know it's not the right thing for me to do, but I'm doing it anyway. That's one thing. If it's, you know, I'm gonna take a year or two to really pull myself together about how I Pre-Bolus and how I do things, and how I handle, like, you know, the stuff about diabetes, that's also fine. I don't think a, you know, I don't think a little bit of time of her figuring that out is gonna be the end of her. As a matter of fact, I think there are plenty of people who are living through much worse outcomes for many more years than that, and those people are, you know, sometimes seeing complications, sometimes they're even not so like, Am I worried about this time? I am absolutely not. You're not wrong, right? That it's still still happening. It can be tough to sit there and say, like, Oh, it's okay. Like, I'll watch you figure it out. Like I but it is there. It is absolutely their life and that, and that is the other side of it, right? Like, if my daughter decides to go out into the world and fundamentally not take care of herself and walk around with a nine, a, 1c, I'm maybe down to, like, 18, more, 24, more months where I have any sway over that whatsoever, right? So in the end, everybody is going to go be who they're going to be, and you're not in charge of it, and that goes for diabetes or anything else. And there's just days where I just feel lucky that I'm not having these conversations around some of the truly horrific things I hear people come on on the podcast to talk about, like, what if? What if? What if this conversation wasn't like, oh, you know, my daughter is thinking of having a beer. What if it was my daughter is, you know, shoots heroin, you know, or, or, you know, runs around. And my daughter really loves Robin, banks Scott. And she said, it's her life. And I said, Okay. Means like, yeah, yeah. As bad as this can feel sometimes,

Andrea 1:02:04
right? It certainly is.

Scott Benner 1:02:08
There you go. Raise a glass to that. That's awesome. Well, have I let you down? How is this going? How do you feel about it?

Andrea 1:02:16
I feel fine. I feel good. You've, you've put me at ease. I feel really good. It's been a really nice conversation. Scott, I really appreciate the you know, how, how flowy this has felt.

Scott Benner 1:02:28
Oh, awesome. I will say that you were like, let us tell people that before we were recording you said you were pretty nervous. But did that go away?

Andrea 1:02:35
Yeah, yeah, pretty much. I didn't, and I didn't even curse a lot. I don't think, yeah, no, was I okay? Did I say good things?

Scott Benner 1:02:43
You were awesome. I think you did curse once, but it was mild. Well, at the beginning you said, I have a good potty mouth, like I'll try not to use it.

Andrea 1:02:53
Yeah, yeah. I forget you forget. I forget that. People don't, yeah, the people, some people really get offended at the cursing and stuff, you know, yeah,

Scott Benner 1:03:01
oh no, I know. I've gotten plenty of I have this one email. I have a folder of people who, like, you know, complain to me. It's because I keep it for fun. And I still have a folder that's marked like, if I die, suspiciously, one of these people did it, but, but in my just like, for fun folder, there's this very passionate email from this person who tells me all the ways that the podcast has helped them, like their for their health to be better, and their mental health and their life. I mean, it's really, it's a lovely, lovely email that goes on for a couple of paragraphs and then in the last few sentences, says, But you said, God damn, so I can't listen anymore. I was like,

Andrea 1:03:38
Oh my gosh, I'm sorry. Whoops.

Scott Benner 1:03:43
I felt like responding back and going. I said way worse things than that. I was like, What do you like? There's tons of cursing in this thing, but that's the one that got to That's what God. I took the Lord's name in vain and they were out. And I was like, okay, yeah. So I was like, okay, yeah. So I, I tend to take the perspective of, I know what the podcast is doing. I know how many people it's doing it for. Everyone can possibly like me. I understand that. I'm not trying to make I'm not trying to make everybody happy. Like and I think if I did what you'd have as a podcast that nobody would enjoy, that

Andrea 1:04:13
wouldn't be popular at all. So and you'd be crazy trying to make everybody happy. I mean,

Scott Benner 1:04:18
how would I even begin to like, put a list together of everybody's desires and needs, you know? So, yeah, definitely, it would make conversation literally impossible. You'd just be standing there measuring every word as it came

Andrea 1:04:32
out, right, no, and it wouldn't. Nothing would flow. It'd be terrible. Yeah, yeah, you'd get, you'd get

Scott Benner 1:04:36
more unhelpful content, like exists all over the place. Now I'm not trying to not trying to be part of that.

Andrea 1:04:41
So, speaking of a fun content, there's a Facebook group called diabetes, but it doesn't have, it's like, got an asterisk in there somewhere, and it's all these memes, you know, fun diabetes memes. I get

Scott Benner 1:04:54
a fair amount of traffic from that. People must go in there and talk about Juicebox in there, because I get all. Lot of good traffic from there. So, oh, good, yeah. No, I'm glad you like that one. I have some pretty simple rules about how I create content. One of them is, I might be members and stuff before I made the podcast, but I haven't seen them in a long time. But I'm not a member of another private group. I don't look at other people's content. I don't listen to other people's YouTubes or anything. I try very hard to just assess my own situation and the situations of the people who are listening and, you know, make the podcast from here. I don't want to, I don't ever want to feel like I'm ripping somebody off or being led one way or the other by, you know, either I don't know, like positive or negative stuff that's coming from people. So, yeah, well, you guys that are talking well about the podcast out there, thank you very much. I'm talking about, like, some great places where people are really positive about it, so I appreciate it. Yeah, thank

Andrea 1:05:51
you. Oh, good. Yeah, no, thank you. Thank you for your dedication to this endeavor of educating us. It's my pleasure. It's so helpful. I mean, really, you're very, incredibly

Scott Benner 1:06:03
helpful. You're very, very kind. And I do, I do appreciate it. And like I said, it really is a, I don't know, like, I want to say joy. Like, it really is lovely to be able to get up every day and to be able to put some effort and thought into, like, I wonder what would help you, or somebody like you, or a person that said to me today her name was Ruth, she said, I wish I would have found this like 34 I wish this would have been available 34 years ago. And what I said was, I really appreciate that. I'm glad you found it now, and I'm going to do everything I can to make sure it's here for the next Ruth that comes along. So that's yeah, that's kind of how I try to think about it.

Andrea 1:06:41
But thank you. Oh, that's nice. Yeah, like, I guess you're a caretaker at heart, first, you know, with your daughter, and then the rest of the community extending out. So that's very,

Speaker 1 1:06:51
very nice. I feel like that might be the case. There

Scott Benner 1:06:55
are some days when I walk around, I'm like, I've listed things I should be doing for myself that I'm not doing. I'm getting better and better at blending it all together, so fingers crossed that I'll get it figured out before I'm done. Yeah, well, thank you so much. I really appreciate you taking the time.

Andrea 1:07:10
Thank you so much.

Scott Benner 1:07:21
Thanks for tuning in today, and thanks to Medtronic diabetes for sponsoring this episode. We've been talking about Medtronic mini med 780 G system today, an automated insulin delivery system that helps make diabetes management easier day and night, whether it's their meal detection technology or the Medtronic extended infusion set, it all comes together to simplify life with diabetes. Go find out more at my link, Medtronic diabetes.com/juicebox,

I'd like to thank the blood glucose meter that my daughter carries. The contour next gen blood glucose meter. Learn more and get started today at contour, next.com/juicebox and don't forget, you may be paying more through your insurance right now for the meter you have then you would pay for the contour next gen in cash. There are links in the show notes of the audio app you're listening in right now, and links at Juicebox podcast.com to contour and all of the sponsors. The episode you just enjoyed was sponsored by the twist a ID system powered by tide pool. If you want a commercially available insulin pump with twist loop that offers unmatched personalization and precision for peace of mind. You want twist, twist.com/juicebox, you Juicebox. I can't thank you enough for listening. Please make sure you're subscribed or following in your audio app. I'll be back tomorrow with another episode of The Juicebox podcast.

If you're looking for community around type one diabetes, check out the Juicebox podcast. Private Facebook group Juicebox podcast, type one diabetes. But everybody is welcome. Type one type two, gestational loved ones. It doesn't matter to me, if you're impacted by diabetes and you're looking for support, comfort or community, check out Juicebox podcast type one diabetes on Facebook. If your loved one is newly diagnosed with type one diabetes and you're seeking a clear, practical perspective, check out the bold beginning series on the Juicebox podcast. It's hosted by myself and Jenny Smith, an experienced diabetes educator with over 35 years of personal insight into type one, our series cuts through the medical jargon and delivers straightforward answers to your most pressing questions, you'll gain insight from real patients and caregivers and find practical advice to help you confidently navigate life with type one. You can start your journey informed and empowered with the juice. Box podcast, the bold beginning series and all of the collections in the Juicebox podcast are available in your audio app and at Juicebox podcast.com in the menu, the episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording, wrong wayrecording.com you.

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