#1686 Different Isn’t Less Than

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Jessica shares her journey raising a young child with Down syndrome, autism, and type 1 diabetes—covering diagnosis, daily care, therapy, community, and resilience in a candid, powerful conversation.

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

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

Jessica 0:14
My name is Jessica, and I have a four year old daughter named Kay who has type one diabetes.

Scott Benner 0:20
If this is your first time listening to the Juicebox podcast and you'd like to hear more, download Apple podcasts or Spotify, really, any audio app at all, look for the Juicebox podcast and follow or subscribe. We put out new content every day that you'll enjoy. Want to learn more about your diabetes management, go to Juicebox podcast.com. Up in the menu and look for bold Beginnings The Diabetes Pro Tip series and much more. This podcast is full of collections and series of information that will help you to live better with insulin. 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. 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. This episode is sponsored by the tandem Moby system, which is powered by tandems, newest algorithm control iq plus technology. Tandem Moby has a predictive algorithm that helps prevent highs and lows, and is now available for ages two and up. Learn more and get started today at tandem diabetes.com/juicebox the episode you're listening to is sponsored by us Med, US med.com/juicebox or call 888-721-1514, you can get your diabetes testing supplies the same way we do from us. Med, the show you're about to listen to is sponsored by the ever since 365 the ever since 365 has exceptional accuracy over one year, and is the most accurate CGM in the low range that you can get ever since cgm.com/juicebox

Jessica 2:23
My name is Jessica, and I have a four year old daughter named Kay who has type one diabetes. Kay

Scott Benner 2:30
and Jessica, okay, Jessica, you have any other kids?

Jessica 2:34
No, she's my only one. Okay. Are you planning on having more? Maybe depends on what the future holds. I wouldn't mind another kid, but I'm also content with having just k were you planning on this one? Yes, I was. I've always wanted to be a mom, so I was definitely planning on this

Scott Benner 2:49
one. Awesome, awesome, very cool. So she's four now. How old was she when she was diagnosed?

Jessica 2:54
She was three, so actually just June of last year, July, August,

Scott Benner 2:59
September, October. Wow. 16 months, yeah, yep, gosh, other autoimmune in your life, anything else in your family, line or father, or anything like that,

Jessica 3:09
we have type one diabetes in the family. Kay's dad's mom is a type one diabetic. And on my dad's side, I have two uncles and two cousins with type one diabetes.

Scott Benner 3:22
Kay's dad's mom,

Jessica 3:26
yes, meaning that her grandma, yeah.

Scott Benner 3:29
So what you're telling me is that one day I'll be dead, right? But like, there could be some, somebody could be like, Oh, my mom's father had, oh no, or even go further than that, it'll be, it'll be like, Oh, my mom's mom had type one, and they'll be talking about art in one day, right? Yep. And that's like one two. That's like two more baby makings away to get to that situation exactly. Okay, wow. That'll be a long time for me. I will definitely be, you know what? I might make it forever though, Jessica, don't you think you might never know if the universe is going to pass it on to somebody? I say, why not? Me? Right? Where would you be with living forever? Jessica? Are you a yay or nay on that? Right out of the box? I

Jessica 4:13
probably say, I don't know. That's a hard one. I always think about that, like vampires, you know, things like that, like eternal life, I don't know. I feel like I might get bored, but maybe not. It does sound kind of exciting.

Scott Benner 4:26
I'm in for the risk. Sounds better than the ultimate right? Yeah, yes. So I'd rather be bored, I guess, than nothing true. Yeah, no, yeah, I agree. Yeah. I could get a lot of places. I could maybe finally get good at that Madden game. I'm terrible at it, right? Haven't played, haven't played in a long time, but I if I had a couple dozen years to figure it out, I think I could really dig into it. How do you see Kay's diagnosis coming? Is it all at once? Is it a slow burn? What gets you there?

Jessica 4:53
Honestly, it was all at once. She wasn't she isn't potty trained yet. She also has Down syndrome, so we are still working. On potty training. And with that, I had noticed that she started wedding through her pull ups within like 30 minutes, just soaking up to, like her knees, like her kneecaps, and like mid stomach, just soaked, which isn't like her usually, you know, she's pretty good about telling me when she has to go. So that kind of threw me off, and she was very irritable, just not herself. Just seemed kind of off, not like too lethargic, but just different than how she normally acts. Okay, and she had recently had an ear infection, so she had been on antibiotics for that. I had also started to notice a rash in her diaper area, but knew it was different than a typical diaper rash. I had called her pediatrician and told them, and they're like, Okay, well, let's just bring her in make sure the ear infection is gone. Kind of take it from there. So I bring her in and they check her ear infections gone, but she has a yeast infection, which they said can happen when she's on antibiotics. And so they're like, you know, that's fine. They kind of were ready to just kind of move along, and they were going to give us some cream, but I told them that she was also wetting her pull ups, and just like, soaking the bed overnight, and just even within like 30 minutes, I did tell them that there is type one in my family. And I asked them if they had any sort of test in office where we could just see, you know, I was like, I don't know for sure, of course, but do you have something? And they said, Yes. So they took a urine sample, and they were like, Yeah, you got to go to the hospital right now.

Scott Benner 6:31
Wow, geez, yeah. How soon do you know in a pregnancy about the Down Syndrome? Is it like, during, like, while you're pregnant, is it at the birth like, how does that work?

Jessica 6:42
Yeah. So I actually found out when I was pregnant with her, I went to the anatomy scan. I believe I was about maybe 1819, weeks along. And during the anatomy scan, they checked, like, the long bones and, you know, all the whole anatomy. So as they were kind of scanning, the ultrasound tech was just doing her job, scanning over things. And she got to Kay's neck and kind of just kept scanning over that, remeasuring and just scanning again, remeasuring. And she told me, okay, hold on, like, let me get the doctor in here. He comes in, does the same thing. I'm like, laying there. You know, it's been a few minutes, they're looking and looking and looking. And he looks at me and he says, you know that we believe that your baby has Down syndrome, and what happens with that is the skin of the neck is sometimes thicker, and that's one of the signs that they look for, really, as well as, like, your long bones being a bit shorter. So with those two things, he believes that my unborn child has Down syndrome. Are you by yourself during that test? Yes, yeah, it was during covid. So I was by myself. Oh, gosh.

Scott Benner 7:55
And then are there? I mean, so I have so many questions, I guess, how do you feel psychologically in that moment? I was scared.

Jessica 8:06
I was definitely scared, just because there's a lot of unknowns. You know, it wasn't necessarily the fact that my child may have Down syndrome, it was just, you know, I'm sure there was other health complications that could come along with that. And I always wanted to be a mom, so I just wanted my child to be healthy and, you know, just safe.

Scott Benner 8:27
What does the OB offer you then at that point? Like, is it maintenance about your expectations and getting ready for what it means? I mean, I don't, I really don't know another way to ask this. I know that you're farther along. Do they do they offer to terminate the pregnancy? Like, what's the whole conversation like? Yes.

Jessica 8:45
So the basically, the next step was that he told me, I should get a amnio. And basically it's where they stick this, like fine needle into my stomach and take some amniotic fluid, and then that will tell them, you know, a higher chance of if my baby has Down syndrome or not, and then they kind of go over next steps. Along with that, there's a risk of miscarriage, because you're sticking something foreign inside your body, and it could, you know, try to reject it, which in turn, would reject the pregnancy. But he was very adamant. Told me that there's one doctor in town that's really great about doing these, and I need to go over there right away. He had made an appointment. A lot of people don't do this because of the risk, but I was, I wasn't sure, you know, I was just throwing all this information. And so I did it. I went over there, I did the procedure. And, you know, luckily, there was no complications from that. And it was about maybe two weeks later, I had got a call from the office, and the woman had said, you know, so sorry your daughter, you know. Or she said, I'm so sorry, your baby has Down syndrome. And then she said, You want to know the gender? And I said, Yes, and she said, it's a pre. Girl, and then she said that we have to ask. But you know, there are options if you would like to terminate.

Scott Benner 10:05
So then there's my question, like, why get the test if you're not considering that, right? So was that in your mind?

Jessica 10:11
Right? No, no. Honestly, I think really what I wanted to do as far as, like, getting the test was just so I could be more knowledgeable, and I would know what's coming. I'm big on, you know, support groups, like when she was diagnosed with type one. I joined, you know, bunch of support groups and the Juicebox podcast group just so I can get more knowledge. And I did the same thing when they told me about her down syndrome diagnosis.

Scott Benner 10:38
Okay, so you didn't say to yourself, well, let me get this test, because maybe I'll, I'll terminate if it's so you were just doing it because you were a little maybe flustered, and they were directing you towards doing the

Jessica 10:49
test, right, right? Yeah. It was just very like, let's go. Let's go right now. You know, urgency, hurry up, type of deal. Yeah, you're single. Mom. Are you married? I am not married. I do have a boyfriend. Katie's Dad and I aren't together. We split when she was about three months old,

Scott Benner 11:04
but at the time you're of your pregnancy, that wasn't the case. So do you go to him? Does he get a vote in all this? How does that

Jessica 11:10
work? Yeah, he does. He actually wasn't concerned at all about her having Down syndrome. We were both, you know, very okay with her being born with Down syndrome. I was just, you know, worried, of course, as I think most moms are, would I be capable of giving her what she needs? But I at no point thought that I, you know, didn't want to have

Scott Benner 11:31
her. Okay, well, it's an interesting, forward and backward looking question. What does that mean, giving or what? What is the need, and are you able to give it to her now that it's, it's a reality,

Jessica 11:41
yeah, so, you know, I just knew that with her having Down syndrome, she could have a lot of complications right now. I mean, she's still in physical therapy at four years old. She's in occupational therapy, speech therapy. I knew, you know, in a way, that those things were a possibility. There was a lot of unknowns, so I just wanted to make sure that I could just give her every opportunity to succeed. And like everybody else,

Scott Benner 12:11
when you start digesting the information around all this and you're understanding what things might be like, or what the needs are going to be, did it make you consider the termination or no? No, no, okay, you have four years of hindsight now, yes, such a ridiculous question, because I'm asking you if you would throw your kid out a window, and you obviously wouldn't, if you could take yourself out of your situation, and, let's say, put you over the mom who's getting similar news, but now you're you're there to help her through it. Would you tell her terminate? Or would you tell her, no, don't

Jessica 12:50
I would tell her no. I mean, ultimately, I am always going to be pro choice, so I would just give them the knowledge that I have and what's helped me, because every child, you know, Down syndrome or not, is different with, you know, being possibly being born with health complications. Okay, so I would look at it like telling her all the knowledge that I have, all the resources that I found the community. And then, you know, go from there,

Scott Benner 13:15
from there. Is it as difficult as I'm imagining, or is it not as difficult as I'm imagining to raise her,

Jessica 13:21
it can be only because she she's talking more at four. Sometimes it's still hard to understand her. She does get frustrated with things easily. It's still hard for her to learn and grasp things. A lot of times it feels more like she's maybe two than four, because I still can't, like, leave her alone for one second without her grabbing something or, you know, running away, especially in public. I have to have a tight grip on her, otherwise she runs off. She doesn't understand, like, stand right here for one second, you know. So that can be a little hard.

Scott Benner 13:56
Yeah, I feel like I'm asking you a ton of difficult questions. And we just, we just started talking. I'm okay. All right, thank you. Yeah, you're good. Did that have an impact on your relationship, like did that boy? Could he not handle it or or what happened does, I guess, does that have anything to do with the disillusion of that relationship? When you think of a CGM and all the good that it brings in your life, is the first thing you think about I love that I have to change it all the time. I love the warm up period every time I have to change it. I love that when I bump into a door frame, sometimes it gets ripped off. I love that the adhesive kind of gets mushy sometimes when I sweat and falls off. No, these are not the things that you love about a CGM. Today's episode of The Juicebox podcast is sponsored by the ever since 365 the only CGM that you only have to put on once a year, and the only CGM that won't give you any of those problems. The ever since 365 is the only one year CGM designed to minimize the vice frustration. It has exceptional accuracy for one year with almost. False alarms from compression lows while you're sleeping, you can manage your diabetes instead of your CGM with the ever since 365 learn more and get started today at ever since cgm.com/juicebox one year, one CGM. This episode is sponsored by tandem Diabetes Care, and today I'm going to tell you about tandems, newest pumping algorithm, the tandem mobi system with control iq plus technology features auto Bolus, which can cover missed meal boluses and help prevent hyperglycemia. It has a dedicated sleep activity setting and is controlled from your personal iPhone. Tandem will help you to check your benefits today through my link, tandem diabetes.com/juicebox, this is going to help you to get started with tandems, smallest pump yet that's powered by its best algorithm ever control iq plus technology helps to keep blood sugars in range by predicting glucose levels 30 minutes ahead, and It adjusts insulin accordingly. You can wear the tandem Moby in a number of ways. Wear it on body with a patch like adhesive sleeve that is sold separately, clip it discreetly to your clothing or slip it into your pocket head. Now to my link, tandem diabetes.com/juicebox, to check out your benefits and get started

Jessica 16:19
today. No, I don't think so. Honestly, he was truly very open and accepting of her being born with Down syndrome, so that really had nothing to do with our relationship ending. Okay,

Scott Benner 16:29
okay, I guess is a forward looking what are your expectations like? What are your goals like? You know, you talk. I just got it's so by the way, my life is strange because I just got done recording with somebody. It was such a silly, giddy conversation, and then I didn't read the notes about yours, then you jumped on. I was like, oh, that's sobered me up pretty quick. Was like, okay, but I found myself talking with her about her concerns about what's coming, about diabetes. So I mean, splitting these two things apart for a second. Yeah, what are your long term goals and concerns around the Down Syndrome?

Jessica 17:07
My long term concerns, I just want her to be at least semi independent, like I'm not unrealistic with the fact that she'll probably live with me forever, which is fine. I just want to teach her what I can to be, you know, semi independent, to where if I need to just run to the gas station or run to the store for a couple items, you know, when she gets older, she's okay to, you know, get a snack or make an easy lunch or, you know, something like that. And I want her to still be involved within the community and have friends and, you know, do other activities.

Scott Benner 17:47
Okay? So you just want her to have as normal life as possible with an expectation that maybe five or six minutes you could, you could stop for for a little bit. Yeah, correct. Correct. Yes. You ever notice in public when you see adults with Down syndrome, and they're with their parents that their parents look like they're 1000 years old and would have died years ago if they could have but they just don't feel like they can.

Jessica 18:08
Yes, yeah, I do, yeah. No, it's not, you know, that's that is. I think a lot of parents concerns. To be honest, I see a lot of posts about wondering how their child is going to be as an adult when they're gone, you know, like, who's going to take care of them? Are they going to be able to even live in, like, a, like an assisted living home, or, like a, like a group home where there's, you know, like the little apartments in a community, like, Can they do that? And would they make it without me? It's, it's a huge concern, right?

Scott Benner 18:38
I've brought this up a couple of times in the podcast over the years, because it really is, I'm not joking. I really get that feeling like, I don't honestly know if that's what's happening, but yeah, do you see those parents and you're like, oh my god, like their son is 40. You know that lady's 85 she shouldn't be at the mall. And yet, there she is. And it almost like it gives you that feeling from a third party perspective, of like she knows she can't stop and right? And it almost feels like it keeps her alive, like it's a very I don't know, like maybe I'm wrong, or maybe it's just me being weird or pushing my thoughts on the situation. But really has struck me that way a number of times my life. Yeah. And do you have that feeling of like, wow, I have to take good care of myself? Does that all strike you?

Jessica 19:19
It does, yeah, especially because I don't have, you know, any other kids at the moment, I'm not sure if I will so, you know, in hindsight, I don't know if there will be anyone else to help take care of her when I'm gone. So absolutely, it is, you know, important that I try to, you know, be there for her as long as I can.

Scott Benner 19:38
If you had another baby, and you know, it didn't have any issues at all, even just just having a baby with, you know, no extra stuff. Would that tax your day in a way that would be difficult looking

Jessica 19:51
at it right now, possibly, of course, I would figure it out. You know, as people do, they would just make it work. You know, when you really want another child, you just kind of figure it out. Out, and it gets added to, you know, your daily routine, yeah, currently, right now, yes, it would, just because she has therapy two or three times a week and, you know, just other activities. I try to take her to doctor's appointments. And then, you know, you throw in management of type one diabetes. So then it's a lot. It can be, yeah,

Scott Benner 20:18
yeah, no, I imagine, does it leave any time for you to look for relationships? You've probably heard me talk about us Med and how simple it is to reorder with us Med, using their email system. But did you know that if you don't see the email and you're set up for this, you have to set it up. They don't just randomly call you, but I'm set up to be called if I don't respond to the email, because I don't trust myself 100% so one time I didn't respond to the email, and the phone rings the house. It's like, ring. You know how it works? And I picked it up. I was like, hello, and it was just the recording was like, us, med doesn't actually sound like that, but you know what I'm saying. It said, Hey, you're I don't remember exactly what it says, but it's basically like, Hey, your order's ready. You want us to send it, push this button if you want us to send it, or if you'd like to wait. I think it lets you put it off, like a couple of weeks, or push this button for that. That's pretty much it. I push the button to send it, and a few days later, box right at my door. That's it. Us. Med.com/juicebox, or call 888-721-1514, get your free benefits checked now and get started with us. Med, Dexcom, Omnipod, tandem freestyle, they've got all your favorites, even that new eyelet pump. Check them out now at us. Med.com/juicebox, or by calling 888-721-1514, there are links in the show notes of your podcast player, and links at Juicebox podcast.com to us, med and all the sponsors.

Jessica 21:47
Yeah, actually, so my boyfriend who I'm with now, he actually has a sister who's 21 that also has Down syndrome, so that worked out perfectly.

Scott Benner 21:56
Is that how you found each other? Yes,

Jessica 21:59
yeah. Actually, I met him through our local GGS Playhouse, which is a Down Syndrome Achievement Center. So I met him through that, and it's been great. It's super helpful that he and his family understand Down syndrome. And you know, there's no,

Scott Benner 22:13
yeah, you almost have a relationship. That's also a community, right?

Speaker 1 22:18
Exactly, right. Oh, isn't that interesting? And then

Scott Benner 22:21
it worked out you actually liked each other romantically too, right? Exactly. Yep, good dumb luck. Also, I would imagine probably, probably would have given you a little extra time. I would have been like, look, I don't feel great about it right now, but I'm going to hang a little longer and see what happens. Because you're pretty good match. Can you join forces or the age difference of your kids. Is it too different?

Jessica 22:44
It can be too different. As far as that, Kay loves, you know, hanging with his sister. And they get along, you know, great. And you know, she'll play dolls with her and entertain her in ways, you know, where Kay just has so much fun, yeah, certain activities, you know, I mean, his sister doesn't maybe want to go to, like, a lot of littles play groups and stuff, but we make it work.

Scott Benner 23:06
His sister, it's not his daughter or something like that, too, right? Right? Exactly. She's not his daughter, right? Okay, all right. I feel like I have a pretty firm grasp of this. So you're making your way through this life, and then the diabetes comes. Now there. Tell me the first time you break down and and run into the garage and start talking to yourself.

Jessica 23:26
I mean, to be honest, I think honestly, in the hospital, I just we know the first time I was able to kind of come home and nap, I think it was like the second day my parents came up there, and my dad's like, you're too tired to even drive home. He's like, I'll drive you home. You can take a shower, you know, have a take a nap and rest, and then I'll pick you up in a couple hours. And I think it was just then that I just, you know, had my, my breakdown. It was a lot, you know, and I'm just thinking about the future. And, you know, my concern, of course, is, is she going to be able to self manage even a little bit, you know, as she gets older,

Scott Benner 24:02
she's too young for you even to have an answer to that question yet, right, right? Yeah. So it just hangs over your head and you just get to wonder about it, awesome, right? Yeah, just awesome. Thanks, everybody. Yeah, going great. It's going great, wow. So realizing you can't even get home from the hospital to shower yourself, you're like, oh, how is any of this gonna go your dad seems like he's paying attention. Sees what's going on. Are they still involved? Like, does this become a kind of a takes a village, kind of a situation?

Jessica 24:30
Yes, yeah, actually, and thankfully, we do live with my parents, so they help me out a lot. You know, I've taught them enough, at least enough about diabetes, to where, you know, I can go out with friends or go to dinner or what have, you take a break, and then they're able to manage it just fine. That's lovely. How old are you? Did I ask? No, I am 3333

Scott Benner 24:50
Okay, so this happened in your late 20s. Gotcha, do you think you'd live with your parents if Kay didn't have Down syndrome?

Jessica 24:57
Honestly, probably not. Not just because right now, with all her needs, it's been hard for me to kind of work full time, so I'm thankful that they've allowed me and Kay to stay here. And, you know, I can work part time and, you know, take care of the things that I need to while also taking k to her therapies and appointments. But I do believe if she did not have Down syndrome, I probably would not be living with them. No,

Scott Benner 25:22
okay, are you angry about that? Long? Did you have feelings about it?

Jessica 25:26
I do wish that there wasn't, maybe so many complications as far as, like, you know, with now, what's the type one diabetes? And then, you know, her having Down syndrome. And you know, I could stop all the therapies, but I wanted to keep those going at least until she went into kindergarten next year, to give her the best opportunity, you know, that I can. So part of me, you know, I do look at my friends who, you know, have typical children, and, you know, wonder, but I do love Kay, and honestly, I mean, I wouldn't change anything, despite all the struggles. Yeah, I

Scott Benner 26:01
don't mean to say that you would. I'm just trying to, I'm just trying to, yeah, figure out. I mean, I'm trying to pick through your life in an hour. You know what? I mean? Like, yes, I know it's a little ham fisted sometimes, but yeah, you got to get to it a little bit. Will she go to like, a regular public school?

Jessica 26:15
Yes, yeah. She's actually currently in pre school at our public school, and so she's doing that in a general education classroom currently. So she loves going to school, and that's still the plan. I'm not you know a parent that will try to force the school to keep her in general education if it doesn't fit her needs, if she's struggling and maybe needs that more, smaller, like environment to learn. But for now, it's working out really well. Okay, great.

Scott Benner 26:42
I wanted to know if her speech is on schedule for somebody in her situation, or if it's behind,

Jessica 26:48
I'd see for someone in case situation, it's about on schedule. She's doing pretty well.

Scott Benner 26:54
Awesome. And then so your expectation is that at some point you guys will be able to communicate pretty well? Yes, exactly. Awesome. Well, that's really cool. All right, why did you want to come on the podcast?

Jessica 27:06
I enjoy listening to all the episodes and everyone's story, and I don't know. I just wanted to, you know, be able to have a chance to tell my story and talk. And I just thought it was really fun and exciting moment to share my life. Well, I

Scott Benner 27:18
appreciate that. Awesome. Thank you. Well, I've asked as many questions that have popped into my head. But what should we know about Kay, about living in the situation you're in? What do you imagine people don't understand?

Jessica 27:30
Hmm, you know that, honestly, Kay can live a typical life like you and I, it just may take a little longer for her to reach, you know, certain goals or milestones, she does have to work harder for certain things. She didn't start walking until maybe a week or two before her second birthday. So that took her a little bit longer. She's recently, within the last year, learned how to jump, which is really excited about. You know, it's just the lower muscle tone takes her a lot longer with talking and running and jumping and everything. You don't think about how much our muscles impact our daily life, especially with eating too, you know. So I just want people to know that, you know, she's still capable of doing everything that she wants. It just may take her a little bit longer.

Scott Benner 28:22
Okay, what's the physical therapy like? Is it literally like physical therapy, occupational therapy, or is, or is it? Do they give you home things to do, like, How involved are you in it?

Jessica 28:33
When she was younger, I was back in the same room. I was watching what they were doing. But as she got older, I was more of a distraction, so I'm able to kind of just sit in the waiting room and wait for her. But what they are working on is walking on like a balance beam for balancing and walking upstairs, climbing ladders, jumping over things, anything that could help her, you know, in her typical life of, you know, just even playing on the playground at school, safely, anything like that. Feel

Scott Benner 29:03
like we all know, you know, you say Down syndrome. I think I feel like we have, like, an image in our head of what that means, right, right? If you had to explain it to somebody who had no concept of it at all, like, would you go back to, there's chromosomes and, you know, would you start there? Or, like, how would you explain it to a person who's listening right now and goes, I really don't know what that is,

Jessica 29:24
yeah, so I would probably honestly go from the beginning. You know, actually this month is Down Syndrome Awareness month in October. So every day I've been sharing a little fact about Down syndrome, or, like, Miss for people. So I love doing that and advocating, and it's just a lot of fun for me. So typically, if someone's like, you know, I've never encountered anyone with Down syndrome. I don't even know, you know how it occurs. I would just honestly start from the beginning. You know, it's down syndrome. You have a third copy of the 21st chromosome, and you know, that's how it's created. You. You know, they all have similar features, but studies have actually shown they do still look like their family as well.

Scott Benner 30:07
Is it in your family at all anywhere? Have you traced it back? Has anybody else had a baby with Down? No, no, no. Is it something that has to do with the mix of you and that boy that that's not around anymore, or is it? Is it not about that?

Jessica 30:22
Yeah, actually. So there's three types of Down syndrome, and the most common is Trisomy 21 which is basically the medical term for Down syndrome. And then there's also translocation, that one is genetic, so that one typically can be traced back to genetics. And that's actually the type that Kay has, and she inherited it from me.

Scott Benner 30:44
Oh, so that's the thing that you had, but it wasn't, how did they, I don't know the word. It's not a dog,

Jessica 30:50
yes, yeah. So basically, when she was born, they tested her blood again, just so they could tell me what type of Down syndrome she had. And then when they discovered it was translocation, they tested me and her father and I have what's called balanced robertsonian translocation. It's a lot, but basically, whatever you know, chromosome mishap I had, it didn't impact me physically or anything, but it made it like a higher chance to pass it on to my future child, which is what happened with

Scott Benner 31:27
Kay, yeah. And so you have no like, there's nothing about you, the way you look, the way you talk, the way you act, anything I would have no idea that you're carrying this right? No idea that's something. Yeah, I'm looking here at Trisomy 21 95% of cases, every cell has an extra 21st chromosome. Stop me if I'm wrong here, translocation, three to 4% a part of a chromosome. 21 attaches to another chromosome, and then there's mosaic. One to 2% only some cells have the extra chromosome, leading to milder effects.

Jessica 31:59
Yeah, yeah. Mosaic. You usually with mosaic, you can, you can't really tell it all, even physically. Actually, I read a story a couple of months ago about this woman around my age who had, I think, like two or three kids with Down syndrome, and they finally just did further genetic testing, and she had mosaic, and she had no idea. You know, it's no idea, so it's crazy.

Scott Benner 32:21
Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, I see what you're saying. She probably said, I'll have one more. This won't happen again, right? Right, exactly. Yeah, she was a Down Syndrome factory, and didn't know it. Yes, yeah, yeah. About that? What about some of the health concerns that can come along with them? Hearing, vision, yeah, heart defects, like that kind of stuff. Is that worth worrying about? Or how do you track it? How do you stay ahead of you mean, because, I mean, I got leukemia on this list as well, and a number of other things.

Jessica 32:47
Yep, yeah, all of that. And that was my concern, too. Like when I was pregnant with her, as I mentioned, I joined all the support groups. I joined a pregnancy group, and that was hard, because there's also a higher risk of stillbirth. And so then, you know, sometimes that parent would post that they lost their child even before they were born. And you know, that's always like, sitting there, like, Oh, please. You know that? I you know, it's horrific, you know, and you just don't want that to happen. And there's so many, you know, health issues, like heart issues, that Kay had a smaller hole in her heart. I forgot the technical term, but luckily, that closed on its own, so she didn't need any intervention with that. She does have hearing loss in her right ear and but so far, no vision.

Scott Benner 33:31
Oh, that's great. I mean, you know, anything, anything that's positive, is positive. I think, right, exactly. Yeah, weird question. It was a comedian named Shane Gillis, yes, yeah. And he does a bit about, is it his nephew or his cousin, his uncle? His uncle has has Down syndrome, right? Yeah, yeah. So, you know, I don't know one person personally who has Down syndrome, and I find his bit amusing, right? Yeah, right. Not only that, but I actually think he's doing a pretty good service by he says to people all the time, like, my uncle's the happiest person I know, right? That guy is always happy, I think, is how he puts it right when you hear that. I'm so interested, because I'm going to expand this in a second. But like, insulting, upsetting, amusing, normalizing. How does it strike you with him?

Jessica 34:23
I think you know he did go on to positively say that, you know his his uncle's happy. I can't remember the full bit, but I know he said something in there that like upset the community, including myself. And I'm trying to remember what it was, right, right, yeah. And I'm trying to think of, what about that? Because whatever it was, I do remember, I watched the skit and, like, the even the crowd was, like, quiet for like a second, and then he was like, Oh no, he's great, you know, he's the happiest person I know. You know, kind of like rebuttal, you know? And I can't, I can't remember what interesting,

Scott Benner 34:57
because it was upsetting, but it didn't stick. Yeah. Okay, right? Yeah, it's,

Jessica 35:01
it's hard because, like, I try not to, like, let all that sit, you know, in my mind, but I know in the moment, you know, there was a lot of comments about about what he had said.

Scott Benner 35:13
I mean, he did it on, I'm sure in his stand up, like, whatever you're in a club, you expect it, but he did it on Saturday Night Live, right? He did, yeah, I guarantee it was shocking, because nobody expected him to talk about it. Him to talk about it. Think maybe the funniest part of it is he's like, he always has a cheese sandwich with him or something like that. Or like, yeah, yeah. Not why I bring it up. Why I bring it up is because I hear people have these reactions to when somebody makes some dumb joke about about diabetes, and usually they don't say type one, right? They make and I see the reactions from like, oh, you know, that was funny to listen. It wasn't funny, but I don't have a problem with it, to this is upsetting, or it feels like an attack, like it's a spectrum of reactions people have. And, I mean, this is just a specific one that I guess looking for how, like, if you How hard is it to see the humor in something that is like so, I mean, obviously impactful on your life and on your daughter's life as well. Like, I'm trying to see everybody's perspective. I'm actually asking you this to try to figure out the perspective of the other people with the type one thing, I guess, is where I'm digging.

Jessica 36:16
Yeah, I think, honestly, it depends on what they say and how they say it, because, you know, we know comedians are going to joke, like special needs, unfortunately, you know, has always been a joke. And you know, like you said, Now, I've also realized type one, you know, has been jokes, and comedians line up and stuff too. So, but, yeah, I think, to be honest, it really just depends on how they say it and like, what they say, right? You know, because, like, his whole bit of like, oh yeah, he's the happiest person I know. Like, yeah. I mean, that is the whole you know, statement and joke kind of as well. Overall is that, you know, people with Down syndrome are always happy, and that was actually something I posted about this month. Like, you know, they have emotions, just like you and I, and I can tell you, Kay is not always happy, but, you know, I feel like they do see the world differently than us, and they don't notice all the horrific things. You know, they can happen, or that does happen. I think that does help, though, in turn. So I think that's kind of where that line that they're always happy comes into play.

Scott Benner 37:15
That's great that you said that. So the idea is like, I don't care how, how it appears to you from the outside, like she is a person and she's having a full range of issues and emotions too. Yes, yeah, oh, I'm glad you shared that. It's awesome. But the other side of it is, is it at no point is this, you know, is Gillis, like, uncle, worried about, like, global politics or something like

Jessica 37:39
that, right? Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah, yeah. That's the beauty of it. You know, they don't, you know, you worry about that.

Scott Benner 37:45
I don't know. I don't care about what the data centers are going to do the electrical grid. Be honest with you, don't even know what you're talking about. Like, I'm not gonna lie to you, like you're in a tough spot, like there's nothing you don't know. But, like, I do, yes, very aware. I'd like to acknowledge it, I guess is what I'm saying. And you seem very upbeat around the whole thing and and that's why I asked you the other question. I want to see what you I just wanted to see what you would say. How do you stay upbeat like that? Is it? Is it a struggle too? Or is it not?

Jessica 38:15
It can be, yeah, it definitely can be a struggle. There are probably more days where, you know, at the end of the day, I'm just mentally exhausted, you know. Kay, actually, about maybe a month ago, was also diagnosed with autism, so, and I've noticed, like, a lot of sensory issues, mood changes, you know. So that's been hard to navigate, because I, just as I mentioned in the beginning, I want her to have every opportunity and to try to, you know, best, learn to communicate with me and everybody else so I can give her what she needs and what will help her. So some days, mentally, yeah, by the end of the day, I'm just, I'm exhausted.

Scott Benner 38:51
We're holy. So is there autism in your family?

Jessica 38:54
No, not that, not that we're aware of, no. But when you also have Down syndrome, you can also easily get autism. It's a very common dual diagnosis. Oh, gosh,

Scott Benner 39:05
oh, geez. Did that add another layer, or did it just explain things?

Jessica 39:10
I think it just explained things for now, I'm not really doing anything extra at the moment as far as, like, regarding autism specifically, but it definitely helped explain things a little bit better. Examples of things like irritability, you know? I mean, she's also a toddler, so I do put that into play. And to be honest, a lot of times when you bring up extra concerns with mood, or even medically, a lot of doctors are like, Oh, well, she has Down syndrome. Like, that's to be expected. You know, that was also a concern of mine too, because I'm like, Okay, does she have autism? Does she have ADHD? She could have that too. Like, she's very particular. Like, if the door is open, she wants to shut it. She gets mad if it's, you know, not shut or the cabinet, you know, I think that's the biggest struggle. Is when you go to a medical professional for help, a lot of times they're like, Oh, well, it's just because she has. Down syndrome when you know that's not that's not always the case. You know there could be underlying problems, because she has Down syndrome, but it's not the answer to everything, and it doesn't mean that something else shouldn't be looked into.

Scott Benner 40:13
Yeah, I'm looking at it here, and I don't know that they completely understand the connection, but it does say, where is it at here? Roughly 15 to 20% of individuals with Down syndrome also meet the criteria for autism, which is higher than the general population, where autism affects about one in 36 children, or 2.8% Yeah, wow. I think this is the point when I ask if you're okay. Are you okay?

Jessica 40:39
Yeah, I'm okay. I'm okay. Can I send somebody to give you a hug?

Scott Benner 40:44
You know? Yeah, you know, that should be a service, by the way,

Jessica 40:47
should be, to be honest, you know, I've, I've, like, I've, I don't know, it's hard. I've looked into anxiety meds, you know, because, of course, adding on type one to all of this, now I just feel like, you know, there's definitely a percentage of us, I'm sure, that has developed anxiety through all this. For sure,

Scott Benner 41:05
let's go through all the stupid things. I'm about to say, hey, my chat GPT must be like, at the end of the day, must be like, This poor guy has so many problems, because I don't say I'm talking with somebody, and I need to ask a question, probably just like, I think he's got like, 1000 different things going on. Would it be crazy if we started an add on to DoorDash where the door Dasher gave you a hug at the end, like, an extra two bucks for a hug, like, you know, I mean, and you could decline it if you want to. Can you imagine the guy's like, hey, the person who sent you the food also got a call. You're like, No, thanks. Yes, right, right, not from you, but no, thank you. There's the boy that's, you know, like, you know, when, like, a service dog comes to a hospital. Can we start sending people to people's houses? If somebody wants to donate a large amount of money, I'll start that right now. I'll just send people out to people's houses with type one who asked for it, and they can just give them a hug. And you can, like, say whatever you want to them. And, like, they bring a punching bag if you want to hit it. You know, whole thing happens on your front step. It's really nice, yeah, oh my gosh. Have you considered therapy or, like, I mean, I mean, honestly, seriously, Jessica, you're young, yeah, I know, yeah, it's fun to Fun. Fun is the wrong word. It's interesting. It's interesting to sit here and philosophize about, like, living till you're 90 because you feel like you can't go anywhere. Blah, blah, blah, blah, but that's a lot of time between now and then

Jessica 42:29
it is, yeah, yeah. I mean, and I've, I've looked at therapy. I did actually do therapy when she was first born. She actually we had, she was stillborn, so I had a very traumatic birth where she was breech, and I had her at 36 weeks. I had no idea that I was in labor. I just thought it was Braxton Hicks. The basically the ambulance. We called the ambulance. They came to pick me up and take me to the hospital. And by the time they had got to the house, Kay's foot was already out. So the paramedic was just like, Hey, you want to do this. We can do this. Like, let's do this on the way to the hospital. And so I was like, Okay. Like, sure you You seem to know what you're doing. So I started to labor and have Kay in the ambulance, but when we got closer to the hospital, I stopped contracting and her head was stuck. So we, like, rushed into the hospital, and they put us in this tiny closet room, the first room they had available, all these doctors and nurses were surrounding us, and the I remember the doctor, he stuck his hands inside, he's like, flipped her and pulled her out, and she wasn't breathing, and so they had to resuscitate her, and they had to do it a few times before she was able to be brought back. So that alone. After all that, I was like, Yeah, I need to, yeah, that's enough. I need to talk to a therapist.

Scott Benner 43:49
Yeah, I'm good adult times over, yes, you just taught me something. I really want to pre tell you how much I appreciate that. I just assumed stillborn meant a death. But yeah, stillbirth is when baby is born with no signs of life, meaning no breathing or heartbeat or movement after 20 weeks of pregnancy. In most countries, they use 24 weeks. It's different from a miscarriage, when a baby dies before 20 weeks need a neonatal death is when the baby is born alive but passes away shortly after. So the medical definition of stillborn baby is one who has already passed away before or during delivery. But it doesn't necessarily mean they can't get you back from that. I didn't, it never occurred to me that's like a real miracle.

Jessica 44:27
Wow, it is, yeah. I mean, yeah, go ahead.

Scott Benner 44:30
Oh, I'm gonna give you the there's anything going right? Could you make a list? Yeah?

Jessica 44:37
Well, actually, yeah, Kate has a service dog as of like, two months ago for her to diabetic blur dog. So that's going great. So yeah,

Scott Benner 44:44
you know, I mean, once you said about the silver thing, I was like, actually, here's what I thought, Jessica. Let me be clear, in my brain, I went, Oh, really. I didn't say that out loud, but

Jessica 44:55
let me tell you, yeah, punch

Scott Benner 44:58
you in the face. Face, like,

Jessica 45:01
yeah, you know, anytime I tell people like the full thing and everything, they're just like, Oh my gosh. You know, it's crazy.

Scott Benner 45:11
Well, listen, people probably high five you for getting dressed. They're probably like, Look Jessica, she got dressed. She took a shower. She's doing great. Looks good today, this whole thing has lowered the bar for you extensively. You're succeeding no matter what, every day,

Jessica 45:27
right?

Scott Benner 45:28
Does it feel like you're having to set like, short term, accessible goals to keep yourself motivated or upbeat?

Jessica 45:36
Yes, I think that, that you know, definitely helps. Because I feel like if I look too far into like long term goals or the future is where I feel like I can get stuck. So I do look more towards like short term goals or fun things that are coming up, something to keep me positive about everything.

Scott Benner 45:55
Yeah, no, I bet you're super excited for that new Spider Man movie next year, right? Yeah. That little boy is marrying that girl from the dune movies. Isn't that nice? And they're going to be in a spider man again? Yep, I guess I'm joking, but I'm serious, like I as I'm listening to you, I keep thinking that there's very little value in you trying to prognosticate out 510, 20 years, like I would, I would do not that you're in like, survival mode. I don't think it's that. I mean, you really do have a good way about you talking about this, like, unless you're pretending I'm happy for you, and if you're pretending, I would understand that too. I really do think, like, you know, what can we get done this week? What would be happy, exciting, joyous for us this week. I think that's what I would do if I was you, I guess is what I'm saying, yeah, yeah. And

Jessica 46:46
that's, I mean, that's what I basically do. It works well, you know, like you said, you can't honestly look too far into the future and think about, you know, what ifs a lot of the Down Syndrome support groups, some parents are like, what's your child's adult life look like and, you know, will my child be able to do this? And a lot of them are like, you can't. You can't even think like that. You just have to live it day by day, because you don't know, you don't know what they're going to be able to do, or if they're going to live on their own, independently, or if they're going to live with you, if they're going to get married, you know, any of that stuff. So a lot of times it's like, just take it one day at a time, enjoy your baby, you know, live life.

Scott Benner 47:22
Yeah, no, I can't agree with that more. I don't think I mean, in a world where, like, a company has good news and their stock falls, I don't know how to guess what your daughter's life is going to be 20 years from now, right? Too many variables that are unknown to you. And if you're going to sit around and try to figure out what each one of them is, so that you can, like, put this together in some Machiavellian way. I think you're crazy way before she's 20 years older, right? Exactly. You'll make yourself nuts. I would think, I mean, just again, going off the conversation I just had. This mother is just worried about, like, How's her kid going to be with diabetes when he's 21 and maybe living on his own and and the human mind almost can't, like, wrap itself around all the possibilities there to come to an answer. And it's making her it's making her nervous. And yeah, no, you're doing the right thing. You smoke a lot of weed. No,

Jessica 48:12
actually, no, I don't, you know. Well, I try, I tried anxiety beds, but it made me sick. So to be honest, by the way,

Scott Benner 48:23
that's pretty par for your life. I would imagine you're like, oh, this medication will make me feel better. Nope, god damn it, yes.

Jessica 48:29
Literally, like I went to my doctor is like, Listen, you know, it's already, you know, she's already, like, take a half a pill. It can make you nauseous. I took a half of a half of a pill, and I still felt sick. And I'm like, please. Like, what else?

Scott Benner 48:44
Yeah, no. Also, I don't see how you can be high all the time and take care of your daughter. I think that would be insane. I'm also not impossible. I was joking, but no, I know. I said, you go out with your friends sometimes, right, right? But, like, do they have kids? Yeah.

Jessica 48:58
So, you know, some of my friends have kids, some some of them don't, you know. So sometimes we go out, we go out to dinner, go out for karaoke or something. But, you know, it is hard to, you know, go out, because I am, you know, the sole, you know, caretaker for Katie. My parents work, so I'm not gonna, you know, ask them, oh yeah, after you're done working all day, like, can you watch her all night? You know, so

Scott Benner 49:22
are you able to partake in those conversations, like, openly, or do they complain about, like, their kitchen paint being the wrong color? And you're like, oh, go yourself. Like, how does that like, Yeah, is that tough for you?

Jessica 49:33
I mean, I feel like I can openly talk about my struggles Now, whether or not somebody may fully understand it, you know, it's same thing. If you talk to somebody else who doesn't have a child, what type one, you know, you can explain it and but, and they may just be like, Wow, that sounds rough. Or, you know, how do you do it? But they don't, you know, fully understand, which is why I'm also glad I have a lot of moms within the Down Syndrome Community locally and not locally, that totally understand. You know, least the aspects of Down Syndrome and what that can entail. So that helps a lot, too.

Scott Benner 50:06
It seems really important, because at the very least, when you're when you're conversating with them, and they walk away, they don't turn their back on you and go, Oh my god, poor Jessica. Like, you know what I mean? Like, because your friends, your friends might be like, they might have so little context for what you're saying that you know, your situation probably sounds even more dire to them than it actually even is, you know. And so Exactly, yeah, and then you must not be unaware of that, right? Like in so you don't, and you don't want to be pitied, I would imagine,

Jessica 50:38
right, yeah, right, yeah. I mean, it's yeah, like you said, I don't want to be, you know, pitied. I mean, there's been times where me, or even, like my parents, have told me they've, you know, talked to friends or met someone out in public, and they're, you know, they're not shy, like, they're like, our granddaughter has Down syndrome, and they'll be like, Oh, I'm so sorry. And they're like, why? You know, we're not, like, it's fine, you know. So that's, I think that's just an automatic reaction to, what would

Scott Benner 51:01
you prefer in that situation? Like, instead of somebody offering their their I'm sorry. I mean, am I handling it better than that? Like, I try to just treat it like it's normal, like in like, everything's normal. But you used a word earlier where everyone else would have said normal. You said typical.

Jessica 51:18
Yes, yeah, we don't like the word normal because then it kind of like separates our children for like from the rest, which is what we don't want to do. Normal makes it seem like, you know, healthy. I said that too, and that's kind of like a fine line as well. It's so hard, because everything is about verbiage and how you say things. So you don't, you know, offend anyone. Or, you know, even, like, now, like the word disability, they're trying to, like, kind of move away from that and be, like, differently abled, you know. So it's just, there's a lot of verbiage changing, but yes, we definitely prefer typical. So, like, you know, your typical child versus, you know, this child is normal. You know what? I mean?

Scott Benner 52:01
Yeah, I just thought I was really struck. I didn't mention at the time, but I thought I loved the way you said typical there instead of normal. And I didn't even know why exactly, I'm starting to wrap my mind around it more and more as you're speaking. And I would even tell you that I'm sure there are people listening to this who have already shut it off because they think I'm being insensitive or like I'm joking through it, but I really believe this is how you would prefer to talk to somebody about

Jessica 52:23
this. Yes. Yeah, right, exactly. Yeah. Because, you know. And to answer your question of, like, what would I prefer someone to say when I tell someone that my child has Down syndrome, what do you say? You know, it's hard, like, I'm trying to put myself in their shoes. What do you say to that, other than, you know, so, sorry, like, okay, like,

Scott Benner 52:39
you know, well, it's a good point, right? Like, there's, what are the other responses? Like, you know, like, I say Mazel, tov. Like, it's not, like, you know, I'm like, congratulations, awesome. Like, none of these are reasonable responses, right? And I'm sorry it's not either. And like, so I think where my brain is is the reasonable response is to treat you like a person and go, Oh, what's that?

Jessica 53:02
Like, yes, yeah. Like, how old are they, you know, like, what's their name? You know, just yeah,

Scott Benner 53:08
they have a favorite movie. Like, yeah, move past it, or at least address it head on, right? And not walk around it and act all weird. And, you know, whatever else probably happened. I'm sure you've had some run ins with

Jessica 53:23
people, yeah, yeah, yeah, I've had that. And some of your podcast episodes, I've heard people struggles with, you know, educators for type one diabetes and medical professionals. And it's the same way with Down syndrome, you know. So, I mean, I've definitely had my fair share of encounters with that. Yeah,

Scott Benner 53:40
Has anyone told you that if someone was going to get down syndrome effect, I'm glad it was Kay, because you're strong person, you can take care of this. Has anybody hit that one yet?

Jessica 53:49
Yes, yeah. We always, like, there's even, like, just a running thing of, like, you know, you were meant to be a special needs mom, and it's like, no, you know, I didn't, because I had to, yeah? Like, you would too, you do the same thing. Like, there was no, it wasn't the chosen one, you know. Like, I just, it just happened.

Scott Benner 54:08
God knew Jessica, that you could handle it, so he gave you a daughter with Down syndrome. Well, awesome.

Jessica 54:14
Yeah, all the time, all the time. I'm like, no, no, I

Scott Benner 54:19
don't think that's right. Yeah, I don't think so. Martin tells me that that sentiment, she doesn't really get jazzed up about a lot about diabetes, but that sentiment she finds infuriating.

Jessica 54:30
Yes, yeah. It's like, you know, it's, it's tough because you're, it's like, they're saying I couldn't do what you do. And sometimes I do hear that too. It's like you could, and you would, you'd figure it out, you know, just like I did. Yeah?

Scott Benner 54:44
Because five minutes before this happened to me, I didn't think I could do it either. So exactly, by the way, I don't know if I'm doing it, but I'm staying alive, yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all language and people getting uncomfortable and then not knowing what to say next. And I think I'm gonna give myself a little. Credit here, which I didn't mean to do, but it's going to happen anyway. Again, the way I'm handling this conversation, I think most people find this uncomfortable. I think this is the right thing to

Jessica 55:08
do. No, I think so too, you know. And because sometimes you know, like I said, when you go into a conversation and you, you know, say that your child has Down syndrome, and, you know, all these other complications are like, wow. Like, they're either like, Wow, I'm so sorry, or just wow, and they're speechless and they don't know, you know, how to handle it. I'd rather be open and candid and have, like, a fun, you know, conversation in, you know, even joke about it, rather than it just be serious all the time.

Scott Benner 55:36
Don't treat me abnormally. Yes. Also, let me be clear, if I wasn't interviewing you for a podcast, I wouldn't have asked you if you consider terminating your pregnancy. It's not like I would do that, like, if we bump the dude show that the 711 I wouldn't be like, hey, that's interesting. Let me ask you a question. Hey, Kay, don't listen to this part, right? Right? Yeah, this is a very specific scenario, by the way, because I've asked people that in the past, and some people say, yeah, I really did consider it, and I think that's a brave thing to say out loud,

Jessica 56:03
yeah, I agree. Like I said, I'm, I'm totally pro choice, you know. And it is a very brave thing for people to be like, you know, I did consider it, like, Wait, all the options. And that was a consideration. And I know people who have, like, a birth diagnosis, I'm sure they get asked that too, like, oh, yeah, would you have terminated if you found out earlier? You know? I mean, it's, it's a question, you know, that gets asked. So let

Scott Benner 56:26
me ask you, I wondered this twice now, like, when you say I'm pro choice, you're saying it more like it's a moral or religious or some sort of, like, it's just how you like, you wouldn't have terminated any pregnancy for any reason. Is that? Right?

Jessica 56:37
Right, right, right, yeah, yeah. Unless they were like, oh, you know, it would, it would just vary. They'd have to be like, Okay, well, I don't think that this child would survive, like, an hour after birth. It would just be a very different circumstance for me. But it doesn't mean that, you know, I don't want everybody else to have the choice that you know. No, no, you know. Yeah,

Scott Benner 56:57
yeah. Just make an outlandish, like statement to see like they run that test, they're like, Hey, your baby's actually a tree. There's a squirrel living inside of it, its arms coming out of its foot. Would you like to terminate the pregnancy? What would you have said? Would you have said, no, okay, you don't have to answer. I just want to understand where you were coming from. Okay, yeah, yeah. You know, when Kelly got pregnant with Cole, we didn't do it on purpose. We were married for a number of years, but we didn't get pregnant on purpose. We didn't get pregnant on purpose. That's the most modern thing I'll ever say in my life. I didn't knock my wife up on purpose. That's what I should have said. And we got into this conversation pretty quickly, because I said, I gosh, I hope you know, I don't know we were talking about the health of the baby. It's what you do in the beginning, right? And I said, if there's something really wrong, you know, will you have an abortion? She's like, No, not at all. Like, my wife would never. And I was like, Oh, right. Oh, I never thought of this before, because I would, if you put it up to me, I'd do it like, you know, I mean, like, it's just worth talking about, because I think it's a hard thing. People don't discuss it. And this is a good opportunity to say out loud, like, I don't care what you how you feel about it, I don't care what you would do. I'm saying you should talk about it, because it's a thought everyone's got to go through who finds themselves in that situation, and it's a disservice to people when we don't talk about stuff, because then they feel alone, and they stay quiet and they don't talk to anybody, and then they don't have anybody to bounce stuff off of, and some of this difficult stuff needs to be hashed out. And without you getting mad at somebody, like, you know, I agree, yeah, absolutely, that's all. I'm not running around like, you know, you know, I wouldn't be like, Oh no, I heard the baby's gonna have brown hair. Let's get rid of it. Like, I'm not, like, I'm not saying that. I also want to say that, generally speaking, like, I don't, I'm not looking for babies to be aborted. You didn't mean, like, that's not a thing. Like, exactly, yeah, okay. I just want to make sure I understand this. Later, somebody will tell me I shouldn't talk about any of this. But I don't know what to tell you about that part. I had a person tell me yesterday I said something on an episode that I recorded yesterday that you guys probably just heard. And you know, the person was like, thanking me for talking about it, yeah, and, and I really, I really tried to hear what she was saying. Like, she's like, this is the thing, not nearly as important as this thing we're talking about right now. But like, this is a thing no one would say out loud. And she's like, you just, like, said that, admitted to it, then talked us through it. And she's like, I think that's really valuable for people. And I think this too, like, you know somebody, a lot of ladies listening to this, are going to get pregnant, and some of them are going to be in some cold, sterile room where somebody they don't know turns to them is the same. So sorry to tell you this, and then they're going to say something that nobody wants to hear and you should know that. Like, even if you think about it for five seconds, it doesn't make you a bad person. Like, you know you mean, like, I mean you're going through the checklist of trying to figure something out at that point. Yeah, exactly, yeah. Okay, good. Well, I'm making a lot of sense there. That's awesome. You are. Yes, I don't know why. I mean. I had some caffeine or something. I'm all life focused. We didn't talk about the service dog.

Jessica 1:00:04
Yeah, so honestly, through social media, I follow a lot of families with younger kiddos who have service dogs who are type one, and I just started looking into it. I did research on I looked up different, you know, service animal diabetic, their dog companies, and filled out applications and just kind of started the process. I wasn't even sure how long it was going to take, like, how funding would work, you know, because they're so expensive, so you got to think about all of that in a timeline. And I just thought it would help, because, you know, Kay can't tell me when she's feeling, you know, low, or if she's feeling sick from a high blood sugar, and she has a Dexcom g7 and she wears an Omnipod five. And those, you know, are definitely helpful. I know everybody's like, well, you have technology. Why do you need a service dog? And to be honest, I mean, we've had this dog for about two months, and she's alerted me, like, 30 minutes before a high or low, and is very persistent, yeah, so, I mean, it just helps me in that aspect, too, especially just because she can't tell me how she's feeling, and I don't know, like our previous conversation, I don't know when or if she will ever get to that point. So it's been really helpful. How did you end up paying for it? We started a GoFundMe, which I've never done before, and I was kind of, like, hesitant, you know, how some people feel about GoFundMe and all that. So we started that I posted on, like my facebook and shared it with my family and friends and, you know, just kind of put information out there, like, why a diabetic alert dog? And, you know, we have two other dogs. Why can't we train them? You know, just like questions I feel like people would ask, and so I would just post as much knowledge as I could. And actually, we got really lucky. One of the local news stations, the an anchor had commented on the GoFundMe and said, like, Hey, I'd love to talk to you about your story. And, you know, my mom and I looked, and I'm like, It's not legit, like, you know. So we, like, looked on Facebook, we looked on their website. They're like, yeah, she's real. She's real. Like, we're like, let's message her right now. Yeah, they actually did. We see three stories on us, and one of them, they have what's called the surprise squad. And so they come out and donate money to you. And so they donated, was five grand towards our GoFundMe as well. So yeah, I mean, just honestly, the exposure, and I think to having people see the stories, even in our own personal life, really was like a hold at your heartstrings kind of moment. So that helped out a lot. My dad's in the union. So his union actually created these little metal pins in the shape of like a dog that you can wear on, like your shirts and hats. And they sold a bunch of those and donated money to us through that. We did a few other fundraisers. So yeah, we were just doing whatever we could, but I think the exposure helped. Yes, you know,

Scott Benner 1:03:00
you just gave me an idea because, you know, the way the world works doesn't make any sense. I'm gonna start a GoFundMe for me for a yacht. And like, I was just thinking, like, you ever noticed no one does that? They don't say, by the way, they shouldn't. That's not my point. But like, nobody ever does anything outlandish and ridiculous, and it's like, I want to buy a Lamborghini. I have plenty of money. I can pay my bills, but I can't afford a lamb. Afford a Lamborghini. But if you all throw in $1 I'll be able to get one like I can't believe that the jackasses on the internet haven't done something like that yet. Maybe they have, and I don't know about it, yeah, we just haven't come across it. Yeah, no, I'm glad that worked out for you. That's really awesome. What kind of dog is it?

Jessica 1:03:38
She is a Great Pyrenees and standard poodle mix.

Scott Benner 1:03:42
Nice. Yeah, awesome. Hypoallergenic or no?

Jessica 1:03:46
Yes, she is, Yep, definitely. Yeah. Both our other dogs are poodle mixes, so no shedding here, which is good.

Scott Benner 1:03:51
Oh, very nice. Yeah. I just, I just brushed out that little dog we have the other day, and I was like, even the short haired dogs, you're like, well, where's all this coming from? You know, cool, cool. Anything we haven't talked about that we should have, anything I missed, or that you'd like to bring

Jessica 1:04:08
up, I don't, I don't think so. I mean, you know, just in general, like, I I've listened to a lot of the podcasts, and I know a lot of families don't find out about their kids type one until they're in, you know, DKA, and that's a lot of times, because the medical professionals, they don't test for that. You know, we've talked about that a lot, like, on all of your lot of your podcasts, you know, have talked about that. And, you know, I'm just super thankful that her pediatrician's office was like, Sure, we'll throw you a bone. We'll test it, you know, like, because otherwise, had I not asked they, they probably, you know, they wouldn't have there's no way, you know. So, I mean, when she was diagnosed, her a 1c was like 9.6 which, I mean, is high, but I just pretty early still, right? Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:04:51
yeah. I mean, I just with her situation, it's possible you would not have noticed if you didn't notice, and maybe something dire could happen.

Jessica 1:04:59
Yeah. Hmm, yeah, yeah, exactly, yeah. Because, again, I mean, she can't tell me if her stomach hurts or how she's fully feeling, so I was just kind of going off of her mood and other symptoms. And the, of course, you know, there was the excessive drinking as well. She's great about drinking water in general, but she was just demanding water like she had not had water for days. So that was, you know, with all of that, I mean, I'm lucky, because family history, even though I didn't grow up around them, and having a type one diabetic dog is different, but I owe it to him a little bit too. He has since passed, but he was a diabetic about the last year before he passed away. And I, you know, he always wore diapers because he peed a lot and drank a lot of water. And with those two things, I was like, you know, there's something going on.

Scott Benner 1:05:44
Well, that's an interesting way to come to the idea. I know. I know. Yeah, listen, I'm glad you should be impressed with yourself that you figured it out that quickly. Yeah, really, yes. The podcast. Do you think of it more as community management? You have you used it for a mix of things that, how does it, how does it work best for you?

Jessica 1:06:04
Yeah, I, you know, I've used it for a mix of things. To be honest, I do like it a lot for the community and hearing other people's stories, and knowing, you know that some of the feelings I have or some of the things that I go through, they also experience as well, you know? So I'd use it for both. Yeah, I like the specialty episodes about dosing for certain things, and then I just like hearing people's stories. Too

Scott Benner 1:06:27
cool. I'm glad. How'd you find it Facebook?

Jessica 1:06:30
I was searching on Facebook, and I'm trying to think of how exactly I came across it. I don't know if I was in like, another smaller group, and then somebody had posted about it, which is probably most likely what happened. But then I came across the Juicebox podcast Facebook group, and I started listening to the podcast. And, you know, I mean, that's been an extreme help, you know, mentally and just dosing for certain things as well. Just, you know, plethora of knowledge for sure.

Scott Benner 1:07:00
I'm glad to know that. I'm happy it helped you. And thank you to all the people who run around sharing it all over the place too.

Jessica 1:07:06
That's Yes, I always see it shared, and I do the same thing. Anybody's like, hey, my child was newly diagnosed. Here's the link. Check this out.

Scott Benner 1:07:13
Like I got tagged in something today, and I tried to thank the person. I was like, I and I realized that go. This is a private group. I'm not even Oh yeah. I can't respond to this. You know, I thought, Oh, I wonder how often that's happening in places I

Jessica 1:07:27
don't realize. Yeah, a lot. It seems like a lot. Yeah, I'm sure it's really

Scott Benner 1:07:31
nice. I thank everybody for sharing. Look at it. Found Jessica, and it's been valuable for her and and hopefully for you guys too. Jessica, I have a call in 45 minutes, where I have to make sense and be professional, and I haven't eaten yet, so I'm gonna go and eat something and then come back. And I don't even know what these people want for me. Actually, this is gonna be, oh, I'm looking this is gonna be one of these. I don't know how many of you have jobs where people pretend to be professional, like, where everybody's sitting up straight. And, you know, they're all like a bunch of idiots that like, don't want to act the way they're acting, but we're all acting like, and then I can't keep that going for more than a couple of minutes, so I give up on it pretty quickly. And then you can see which ones on the call are like, Oh, good. We're not going to pretend. And then there's always somebody who just says, setting up really straight. They're like, I'm not breaking character. I'm gonna keep saying things like, you know, out of the thinking, out of the box, and stuff like, exactly. It's very funny. Anyway, I gotta go do that. So thank you so much for doing this and for being so good natured. And I love your attitude. I wish you a ton of success. I think you're on a good path. It's very possible that the sky's the limit for the you two. I think you guys are maybe a little little unstoppable force over the two of

Jessica 1:08:44
you, yeah, well, thank you. I appreciate you having me on. It's I, you know, it was fun. I like talking to you.

Scott Benner 1:08:49
It was a pleasure. I'm glad you had a good time. Hold on one second for me. Thanks. Okay.

Arden has been getting her diabetes supplies from us med for three years. You can as well us med.com/juicebox, or call 888-721-1514, my thanks to us, med for sponsoring this episode and for being longtime sponsors of the Juicebox podcast. There are links in the show notes and links at Juicebox podcast.com to us, med and all of the sponsors. The podcast episode that you just enjoyed was sponsored by ever since CGM. They make the ever since 365 that thing lasts a whole year. One insertion every year. Come on. You probably feel like I'm messing with you, but I'm not. Ever since cgm.com/juicebox head now to tandem diabetes.com/juicebox and check out today's sponsor, tandem diabetes care. I think you're going to find exactly what you're looking for at that link, including a way to sign up and get. Started with the tandem Moby system. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The Juicebox podcast. If you're not already subscribed or following the podcast in your favorite audio app like Spotify or Apple podcasts, please do that now. Seriously, just to hit follow or subscribe will really help the show. If you go a little further in Apple podcasts and set it up so that it downloads all new episodes, I'll be your best friend, and if you leave a five star review, ooh, I'll probably send you a Christmas card. Would you like a Christmas card

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#1685 Blind Electrician

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

A blind Florida electrician shares his remarkable journey through diabetes, vision loss, and a lifesaving kidney transplant—delivering hope, humor, and hard-won wisdom.

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

Scott Benner 0:00
Welcome back, friends to another episode of The Juicebox podcast.

John 0:13
Hello. My name is John Wells Slager, and I'm from Clewiston, Florida, and I've been a diabetic since 1988 or 89 starting to lose a little bit of track on that glad to be here on the Juicebox and talking with Scott this morning,

Scott Benner 0:31
when I created the defining diabetes series, I pictured a dictionary in my mind to help you understand key terms that shape type one diabetes management, along with Jenny Smith, who, of course, is an experienced diabetes educator, we break down concepts like basal, time and range, insulin on board and much more. This series must have 70 short episodes in it. We have to take the jargon out of the jargon so that you can focus on what really matters, living confidently and staying healthy. You can't do these things if you don't know what they mean, go get your diabetes to find Juicebox podcast.com go up in the menu and click on series while you're listening. Please remember that nothing you hear on the Juicebox podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan, or becoming bold with insulin,

the episode you're about to listen to was sponsored by touched by type one. Go check them out right now on Facebook, Instagram, and of course, at touched by type one.org check out that Programs tab when you get to the website to see all the great things that they're doing for people living with type one diabetes touched by type one.org I'm having an on body vibe alert. This episode of The Juicebox podcast is sponsored by ever since 365 the only one year wear CGM. That's one insertion and one CGM a year, one CGM one year, not every 10 or 14 days ever since cgm.com/juicebox Today's episode is sponsored by the tandem mobi system with control iq plus technology, if you are looking for the only system with auto Bolus, multiple wear options and full control from your personal iPhone. You're looking for tandems, newest pump and algorithm. Use my link to support the podcast, tandem diabetes.com/juicebox,

Unknown Speaker 2:34
check it out. Hello.

John 2:36
My name is John Wells Slager, and I'm from clueless in Florida, and I've been a diabetic since 1988 or 89 starting to lose a little bit of track on that glad to be here on the Juicebox and talking with Scott this morning.

Scott Benner 2:50
John, how old were you in 88 or 89

John 2:53
so I was 24 or 25 years old.

Speaker 1 2:57
Okay, I'm excited. I'm sorry. Is there somebody else talking. I'm sorry, that was my phone. Oh, take that in the other

Scott Benner 3:05
sorry about that. No, it's a good way for us to explain who you are. Maybe, right. Certainly. Yeah, you were 2589

John 3:15
okay, yes, yes, I was diagnosed with type two in 89 so I wasn't diagnosed as a type one, and I started on that for me,

Scott Benner 3:26
how long did that diagnosis stick with you and that management

John 3:29
style probably until around 2004 Wait.

Speaker 1 3:34
8999 almost 15 years. Yes, 15 years. You're a type one.

John 3:40
Well, good question. Okay, I asked my my general doctor, who I have a story about as well later on, that very question about six, eight weeks ago, and she said, I'm probably a 1.5 so whatever a type 1.5 is, is probably where I'm at. I feel I'm pretty insulin dependent right now. I'm on a pump right now, and have been since 2004 but what type am I? I don't really know.

Scott Benner 4:12
Isn't that really something? Yeah, John, you use a regular GP for your care, or do you see an endocrinologist? Both. Okay, both beginning was it just the GP?

John 4:24
No, in the beginning, it was an endocrinologist. Oh, but I didn't follow up very well in my 20s. So I was, like, I said, I was 2425 and, you know, I was, you know, back then, it was, you know, I listened to your podcast, and I listened to your guests all the time and and the awareness that that younger folks have now when they are diagnosed, especially with type one, seems night and day to the late 80s to me right now.

Scott Benner 4:53
Yeah, take me back there. What was told to you back then, and what was your process,

John 4:57
my thought process when I left out of there and I. Couldn't even tell you my doctor's name right now, I can't remember. I know it was a man.

Speaker 2 5:03
It was here take these pills and stay away from sugar kind of thing.

John 5:12
That's it, yeah. And I really didn't follow up with any kind of dietitian or anything like that. I was always pretty fit. You know, in my 20s, I was, you know, I worked out quite a bit and and I was fit, but so I stopped eating stuff with sugar in it, you know. But, you know, I may have some chips and stuff though, that doesn't have sugar, right? So that carb awareness was not even in the picture for me, okay? And that obviously is not a good situation for somebody dealing with type two diabetes, that's for sure, let alone a type 1.5 or whatever I eventually morphed into, you know, right as my pancreas slowed and almost to a stop, my opinion right now, you know,

Scott Benner 5:58
just metformin and and some diet considerations. That was what you were doing.

Speaker 1 6:03
Yes, okay, and that was what I was doing, like, 14 years.

Scott Benner 6:10
Yes, what were your a 1c during that time,

John 6:12
Scott, I couldn't tell you. I didn't follow up, like I said, as I should with my doctors in those days. You know, I moved here to clueless. Then in 1996 I came to Florida. I'm originally from Maryland, and I was diagnosed in Maryland a girl I was dating. Then, basically, during my diagnosis, she she basically said, she said, I saw a flyer where I work, and it said, If you pee a lot and you drink a lot, you better watch out for diabetes. And she said, You pee all the time, and you drink all the time, and I'm an electrician. I was, you know, in the field, a lot, out outside, a lot. And I told her, I was like, you know, I'm thirsty because, you know, I work outside and those kinds of things, and, and I pee a lot because I drink a lot, you know, that was my thing. So I got one, I got one of the little test strip things, and, you know, you peed on it and it turned whatever color it turned instantly, blue, orange, whatever it was. And so that's kind of how that went, you know. So again, as I went through those 1415, years, I took those pills and I did the best that I could, I would check my sugar, but not regularly. I asked my wife, Chris, actually, yesterday, I said, Do you remember early on when we met, and as I was, you know, on the oral meds, I checked my sugar much, and she basically no, which I didn't, you know, and obviously my fault that I didn't check it. When I checked it. It wasn't like it was 500 or anything or high, you know, I never blew those kinds of numbers. It was, you know, a lot of times in the upper one hundreds, and, you know, in the two hundreds, sometimes, okay. And, you know,

Scott Benner 7:53
were you not checking because you were lazy about it? Were you not checking because you didn't think you needed to, like, were you ignoring some direction, or were you lacking direction?

John 8:05
Probably a little bit of both. Okay, I was a very active person. And, you know, an electrician is a very active career. You know, lot of walking, a lot of up and downs, lot of exercise. And then I also worked out quite a bit. No excuse to not really check my blood sugars and mind those. You know, you know Scott, you know it's always What if I'd never look back. I'm not that kind of person. But if I could go back to 1989 with the knowledge that I have today, I would say, I don't want those pills. I want to be on insulin or something. What else do you have? Yeah, and you know what I mean, but we cannot go back. No, of course. So I think a little bit of both, though, you know, I would say, you know, did I just ignore it, or was I unaware of it? Probably a little bit of both. I would say, kind of through those years.

Scott Benner 8:59
Yeah, so we don't know what our a one sees we're not taking the world Med, exactly like there were supposed to be correct. Do you have an expectation back then about what you're doing to yourself? You know what I mean? No,

John 9:13
not necessarily. Okay, I can tell you this. When I moved to clue, I moved to Clewiston. I met my wife in 94 and I moved to Clewiston, America's sweetest town, by the way, right on Lake Okeechobee. If you don't, anybody knows where Clewiston is. It's a very small farming community in South Central Florida, okay. But I moved down here and I got up with a doctor here, a family doctor that my wife had gone to for years and years, delivered my wife, actually, and an old country doctor, if you will, accepted payment with vegetables and and actually, my wife's birth was probably paid for by watermelons and tomatoes. So that kind of doctor, a good, excellent doctor, though. And Scott what he told me the very first. Time I went to see him was, you know, you need to try to try to keep your sugars, 150 or better. He said, If you keep your sugars, 150 or under, you'll never have a problem. And this was 1996 when I established care with him. Okay, he is. He has since passed. But, and then, you know, obviously the knowledge that I have now, you know, I look at 150 and do that little conversion everybody does on the internet, and that's a seven. That's where everybody tells you to be right, seven or better on an A 1c kind of thing, you know, like a target for diabetics. Yep, Doc Forbes knew what he was talking about. You know, I continued to do the best that I can on those oral meds.

Scott Benner 10:41
So you were shooting for that seven just with the way you were eating. Is that? I mean, he's telling you to take the oral meds, which, right, weren't getting taken every day. Is that correct?

John 10:50
No, they were getting taken. They were okay. They were they were

Scott Benner 10:53
but we weren't tracking outcomes to know if the medication was enough for doing anything, not specifically. And meters, you're not, you're not testing on any, yeah, I

John 11:03
had, I had, basically, you know, your blood glucose meters. And I was testing, you know, but not every day, not religiously, like, got it. I should have been, yeah.

Scott Benner 11:12
Okay, so what's the first time that you I mean, there must be something that happens that makes you think I need to be paying closer attention to this. Like, what was, what was that thing?

John 11:23
Yeah, that thing was a job site in South Tampa in October of 2003 like I said, I'm electrician. We used to do a lot of Lowe's Home Improvement centers all over the state. So I was traveling out of town quite a bit, you know, for three, four months at a time, while we built, built these, these buildings, and I was in charge of them. And many, on many occasions. And Scott, you know, like at a Walmart, places like that, they have that big, huge light poles in the parking lot, real bright, right? Like a stadium, of course. So probably about noon one day, we were just getting the power turned on in the building, and I turned all the breakers on to make the lights come on. And I walked out there to look at them, and I will never forget the day. And I looked up to see if they were coming on, and I saw, like a big brown splotch run across my left eye. My vision in my left eye was like a little floating blob looking thing. Okay? I was like, Oh, wow, that's probably not good. This is 2004 I am 40 years old. 2003 39 sorry. So I, I went to the job trailer, and I got a yellow pages and and I called an eye doctor. I went that day to eye doctor in Tampa, Florida. He did a retinal examination on me, and he said, You need to go to a retinal specialist now. And I was like, well, it was like a Wednesday, Scott. I could be called a workaholic, I think. And I told him, I said, Well, it's Wednesday. I mean, could it wait till like Friday? You know, I'm up here working. And he said, No, you need to go like today, you know, I called my wife, and I headed back to Clewiston and had an appointment the next day, and went to a retinal specialist in Fort Myers. And that set off a course of events that lasted about a year. Had my first eye surgery in April of oh four, tax day, actually, April 15 of oh four on my left eye. I know that you use Google a lot. Scott, check out a vitrectomy. Vitrectomy. I think I've seen it before. Yeah, yeah. You don't want to see it too much. It's a pretty, rough looking, I think, for somebody that would watch and see exactly what they do. But I had that surgery April 15 of oh four. The results weren't real good. So when I took the patches off, I saw fingers. Could see fingers kind of, you know, real close, within six inches of my face, but that was about it. Basically, my retina had detached. They tried to put it back on, and it didn't work very well. It's all went that. About six months after that, I continued to work with one eye. Basically, I could see a little bit out of that left eye, but not much. It was October 21 of oh four that after some troubles with my right eye. I had my first eye surgery on my right eye in October of oh four, when they pulled those patches off, the next day, had pretty much a similar result in that eye. Very limited vision. I could count fingers, that was about it. So basically, after that surgery to my right eye in October of o4 I was pretty much blind. After that little bit of vision, not a whole lot. Definitely couldn't walk around by myself. And subsequently, after that, for about two years, I went back and forth from Clewiston to Memphis, Tennessee. Seeing the specialist that I was told by the guy in Fort Myers, the only guy that could help me was either in Memphis or at Bascom Palmer in Miami. The gentleman from Miami was out of the country for three weeks, and so I established with a guy in Memphis. Crisscrossed from here to Memphis for two years, eight more surgeries, pretty much has left me totally blind since then. So basically, I'm coming up today is October 9. So here in about 10 days, about two weeks, it'll be 21 years.

Scott Benner 15:33
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John 17:44
to get started. No, I'm black. Blind. Scott, okay, I don't see anything. I tell people a lot of times. I'll come home from work and and I'll be sitting here my wife, beautiful wife, Christine, you know, she may be working late or something, or out with some friends, and if I come home, say, at five o'clock in the afternoon, you know, I don't turn on any lights. I don't really need them. And Chris will come home maybe, maybe she gets home at eight o'clock or something. She comes in, she says it's dark in here. It's like, oh, is it? You know, because I don't need lights at all,

Scott Benner 18:16
John, they don't tell you. The The upside of losing your vision is that your electric bill goes

John 18:20
down, not with my beautiful wife. She loves lights. But you know what the joke in this house is, Scott is I tell her all the time, Chris, you're not allowed to rearrange furniture. It's not allowed in here, and if you do, I'm gonna turn all the breakers off in the house, unscrew all the light bulbs, and so

Scott Benner 18:38
that fixes that I have to ask you said you come home from work, What work are you doing? I

John 18:42
am an electrical contractor. Still, yes, before I lost my sight, I was an electrician superintendent that would work in the field. I would be in charge of those larger projects that I referenced, right? You know, used to do Walmarts and lot of box stores like that. Is what they call them, retail, you know, large, you know, pretty good size retail projects. So I was in charge of 15 guys, 20 guys, whatever it takes to get the job done. And so that was kind of what I did. Had became the vice president of the company that I was working for here in clueless and more of a supervisory role when I lost my sight, but I would still be out on projects a lot of times, guys, you know, would need some help. And, you know, I would tutor them along, if you will, and that kind of thing. So after I lost my sight, if you're an electrician, kind of hard to do anything out in the field or physically you're doing the electrical. So I had a very, very, very gracious boss at that time who basically made a place for me in the office, being that that tutor to some of the younger guys as they were coming up and learning how to run work and how to manage people. Since I had done it for a while, I, you know, I was very accustomed to that kind of thing. Yeah, so, you know, but answering the phone. Those kinds of things and and getting used to a computer, which was a four letter word for me back then, kind of still is, depending on the day, as you saw, my technical issues here before we got started, but I learned how to use a computer blind. Once I lost my sight, they sent a gentleman from the Division of Blind Services to basically show me how to

Scott Benner 20:24
work again. That's really impressive. And do you read Braille?

John 20:27
Now, no, I never learned how to read Braille. You don't really have to learn now,

Scott Benner 20:32
okay, I guess everything can talk to you at this point, right?

John 20:35
Yeah, yeah. Everything you know, like, you know, my iPhone and and my computer, I use a program called JAWS on the computer and stands for Job Access with speech. It's a pretty powerful program. A lot of visually impaired people use it. You know, that enabled me to start communicating in a management role at my office with purchasing and management. You know, I'd never sent an email before I lost my site. No, Kevin, no, no. And again, you know, the one thing I did on the computer with my site, I wanted to surprise Chris with tickets to like Kenny Chesney or Brad Paisley concert. I don't remember which. It was a country artist, and by the time I got our tickets, because those things time out, like if you're picking your seats and stuff like that, I don't know if you're familiar, but I am. We were in nosebleed section, dude, by the time I was able to get everything in there, and so I despised computers.

Scott Benner 21:36
You didn't care how far you were from the stage. Your wife probably didn't like it so much,

John 21:40
right? Right, right, yeah, but, uh, but actually, that was before I lost my sight.

Scott Benner 21:45
Oh, you were that bad. I didn't realize that's what

John 21:50
I'm getting. That's what I'm getting at terrible on the computer. But anyway, once I learned how to do the computer, navigating that again or not again, initially, I would say, because I didn't use a computer, you know, I was able to start, you know, accessing a National Electric Code, which is kind of the Bible for electricians, and establishing myself a little bit in the office where I could, I was able to do a few things, you know. And, you know, God blessed me with a a very good memory and a ton of patience. Those are key to being blind. Scott, I would imagine, just imagine, you know, I mean, you got to have, you have to have a lot of patience, because you're always waiting on a ride, or if you need some assistance getting somewhere, or these kinds of things. And the memory, you know, think about it. When you know, where are your keys? You know, where'd you, Where'd you put the food for your iguanas in there? If you set that down, you don't remember where you put it. The iguanas are gonna get hungry, man,

Scott Benner 22:49
go on, and it's gone forever, right? You have, yeah, yeah. You have to add, yeah. You probably make up a lot of systems, I imagine, for things too,

John 22:57
yeah, yeah, a lot. I i put stuff in the same place all the time, right? You know, when I eat my drink goes to the right, upper right of my plate. You know, there are systems. Scott, you brush your teeth every day, right? Couple times a day, probably, yeah, close your eyes and put the tooth paste on your toothbrush next time you do it, challenging, challenging without getting your fingers messy, right? Interesting? Yeah, every little thing. But if you squirt the toothpaste in your mouth, you don't have to put it on your toothbrush. Oh, little little easier, right? So, there's just different little things when you're blind, but John,

Scott Benner 23:34
that's a better idea. What else are you doing that I should be doing? Oh, well, you drink coffee. No, I don't, I'm sorry. Okay, it's quite all right, yeah, I

John 23:44
drink it. I love it. Well, when you can see, drinking coffee is very easy. You put the amount of cream you want in, you pour it to color, and you drink it. Yeah, right. So when you're blind, you have to use four senses instead of one to make a cup of coffee. You ready for this? Yeah, I am number one. You open the cream and make sure it's not sour. You can do that with smell, all right. So then you put the cream in the cup to make sure how much cream is in there. You use your finger in it to see how much cream you pour it in, right? That's two. That's touch. Then the second, the third one, I'm sorry you pour your cup. You don't want to use your finger to see how much coffee is in there, because you'll get a burned but you listen and the pitch changes as it fills. That's three and then obviously you give it a taste to make sure you have it right. That's four senses to do, what one used to do,

Scott Benner 24:57
where you used to just pour it till the color looked right. You were done perfect.

John 25:01
You know it's gonna taste good. You don't have to smell it. You look at the label on the cream to make sure it's not bad.

Scott Benner 25:06
John, when this happens to you, do they say this is from, like, mismanaged diabetes? What do they tell you the the reasoning

John 25:15
for this is, yeah, diabetic retinopathy. Okay, so my vision loss was caused by diabetic retinopathy. The reason I had 10 eye operations Scott is because during the healing, once they reattach your retina, which is a very small membrane in the back of your eye that basically connects to your optic nerve to allow you to see the scar tissue from the healing process was ripping my retinas back off so my body, the miracle of my body, was trying to heal, but it was being too aggressive. The scar tissue there from the manipulation in the eye surgeries was grabbing the retinas and pulling them back off and detaching them again, and then I had to go back and they reattach.

Scott Benner 26:09
Is there any conversation with endocrinology about Well, obviously, things aren't going well. We need to do a better job for you.

John 26:17
Yes, okay, yes. After I lost my sight, I went on insulin.

Scott Benner 26:21
Okay? I mean, there's people that come on here all the time and talk about balls that are dropped by physicians, and then you have to go back in, and they're, you know, they're basically like, well, oops, you know, but the oops doesn't usually end with you not being able to see correct. And I mean, I realize you have your part in it as well, but, you know, along the way, if someone would have put you on insulin. Maybe this doesn't happen. Maybe you're tested your C peptide or, like, you know, whatever. I don't know, what else could it be done? But it doesn't sound like any of it happened. So is there, I know you said you don't look back, but is there anger there from you?

Unknown Speaker 26:55
No, no, no,

John 26:56
no, because why? I've never been angry because of God. Okay, so not

Scott Benner 27:03
because you feel like it's, it's your fault, or like, no, no, no,

John 27:07
okay. I don't think it's anybody's fault. I see, I think our God has a plan, and this was all planned. That's how I feel. Okay? Now I've discussed this with a lot of people. There's a lot of people that say, Well, how do you have that attitude? If that was me, I'd put a gun in my mouth.

Unknown Speaker 27:26
Well, about that was me. People say that to you,

John 27:29
yeah, really, I've had employees say that to me. You

Scott Benner 27:32
know, when you hear people say, like, Oh, I could you got diabetes. I could never give myself a shot. Is that their version of that? Oh, you're blind. I couldn't live that way. Yeah. Oh, Jesus. It's

John 27:42
very sad. Yeah, it's very sad in today's world. I think vision sometimes can be a detriment. I think that vision, lot of times, people are crippled by their vision, because they come to conclusions about things before they even let those things happen. They come to conclusions about who somebody is because their eyes are lying to before they even know that person.

Scott Benner 28:07
I thought you were crazy when you started saying that, but let me tell you something that I just shared probably with only one person outside of like, you know, my family. I don't look at people when I'm recording with them on purpose, because I don't want to make a snap judgment about them. And you will, you can't help it. It's human. You can't help that. Yeah, people are all the time like, why don't you have a camera? And I'll say, like, oh, it's not on video. It's not necessary. And some people say, well, it's easier for us to talk. If I hear when you stop and start, I go, Oh, don't worry, you'll get used to it. It's like talking on the phone. The real, honest to God truth is, is that I found in the past that if I put my camera on, I make some sort of like a micro judgment about the person that changes the conversation.

John 28:49
Yeah, yeah. That person may look like somebody that you don't like. Well, that reminds me of my cousin, that that rascal, yeah, and boom, now you're always thinking what your cousin did to you, or something silly, you know, just silly stuff like that. It happens, right? Just does, yeah, again, my, my attitude is, I really don't think about being blind. Don't get me wrong, those first few years when we were, you know, fighting for my sight, and going up to Memphis and fighting with insurance companies. And, you know, Chris, she was absolutely crying one time when we were up in Memphis, because they said that they're, they wouldn't cover the surgery and this and that, you know, you know you're talking to somebody like that, and they don't understand what you're going through, you know? And that's, that's what's tough. I mean, it's, it's like that with everything. I mean, I hear you talking about, they don't want to give you a pump, they don't give you a Dexcom. You got to test your sugar for two months before. You know, to make sure that you're diabetic or whatever, you may get better from type one. I mean, come on, give these people a Dexcom, man, right, right. You know, instantly you gotta, you gotta have it. You know. Why are you gonna make that? Those people struggle through that? It doesn't make sense. It's, it's all about money, and that's a shame. You know,

Scott Benner 30:02
once the pivot happens there with your with your diabetes, like, where does that new information come from? The new focus? How do you, how do you figure out how to take care of

Unknown Speaker 30:11
yourself? Little bit of a challenge.

John 30:15
So first I was on the insulin pens. I was on a 7030 mix, I believe was one of the things I was on. I think that was the first one I was on. The pens weren't too bad, you know, you click them. You can listen, you know, I don't remember what dosages or anything was 20 years ago, but click it, you know, however many units, and stab yourself and go with it wasn't long after the pens, though, that I got introduced to an insulin pump, probably about, I've probably been on a pump about 20 years. Okay,

Unknown Speaker 30:46
yeah, I use a mini med pump.

John 30:50
He has the physical buttons on it that you can, you know, listen and count, count the audio beeps and those kinds of things got introduced shortly after that, probably during that process your podcast. And I told you this when I initially emailed you, in the last years, it's changed the way I manage completely. Don't get me wrong, I have a really good endocrinologist, and he told me, but he did not stress the Pre-Bolus to me enough and just some of the tools that you you have introduced to me, you know. And I think I told you that I had a kidney doctor tell me, I don't know about it. Six, eight months, 10 months ago, whenever I come on to your podcast, or found your podcast, I think I was a 7.4 a, 1c, is what I had. He said, you need to do better than this. So I started Googling a little bit, and I found your podcast, and just some of the, you know, the Pre-Bolus changed my deal. Man. The reason why I was 7.4 I had, I had a really bad low, probably about, I don't know, two months before that kidney appointment. Okay, a real bad one. And it was all about pizza. It was, it was a pizza low man. And I hit it perfect. I thought I had it perfect. I've heard you guys, you and Jenny and them, talk about that. That how pizza, you know, in rebound and jump on you. Yeah, it jumped on me that night. Chris wasn't there. I don't know what happened. Okay, she, she kind of shook me out of it. I mean, the lowest I saw was 40, but I think it was lower than

Speaker 1 32:24
that. Did you pass out? Did I pass out? Chris, close. You said,

John 32:29
close. Did you see? I wanted to completely out. I beg your par. Did you have a seizure? No, no, no, no, no. I was just, you know, I'm good, I'm good. And I was watching it. It it was 60, you know, 70 something. And then it was 60 something. And I had some more Skittles, and then it was, you know, yeah, 62 and the last time I remember, it was like, 62 or 60 or something like that. And then she's shaking me. She's because you get out of she's putting, you're saying, giving me coke. She's like, you're saying off the wall stuff. And, yeah, yeah. She said, I'm not myself. But, you know, I think everybody gets like that when you get into that state. You know, of

Scott Benner 33:10
course, hey, I'm embarrassed, John, John, I'm embarrassed to tell you that you made me think, like, maybe I'll get a pizza tonight for the Eagles game.

Speaker 2 33:17
I'm telling you, I don't do you're not eating pizza anymore.

John 33:24
No, man, I kind of avoid it. Stem from potassium. My potassium sometimes gets a little high, so I kind of stay away from a lot of tomato stuff and potatoes things like that. So basically, I was, what had happened with that 7.4 I was, I was scared to death. Yeah, the Bolus right to you know, I mean, I didn't mind 150 up, that's good. Good enough. I'm good. And, you know, then I started listening to your podcast. There's just so many things in your podcast that are so important. I've shared your podcast with so many people over the last six months, everybody that I talked to, my doctors, all of them, I appreciate it. And, yeah, man, it's, it's, it's a life changing thing. You know, Pre-Bolus, the bump and nudge the it's not stacking if you need it. And you know all of them, all, all of your your pointers, man, are are just spot on. They work perfectly.

Scott Benner 34:21
I appreciate knowing them. Yeah, yeah. I have to tell you, the most fun thing about going back and forth between you, you know, and me and email is that you pretty consistently refer to yourself as a blind electrician. You're like, it's John the blind electrician. Like, I get that, like, that email from you a lot, and I tell you, for the last six months, you know, I just been thinking, like, I can't wait to find out if he's still an electric electrician or not. Because, Oh, yeah. I mean, what are you, you know what? I mean, you'd be, you maybe be a surge tester at this point. Like, just reach out if John yells, don't do it. Yeah.

John 34:53
Yeah, yeah. So, I got curly hair all the time, right? But, uh, so. But. Anyhow, so I am an electrical contractor, yeah, yeah. So I wound up taking that certified electrical exam blind back in oh seven after I lost my sight, me and my wife decided to try to buy my boss's business, which we subsequently did. So I sat a state certified electrical exam blind up in Orlando back in those seven Oh, and yeah, that was very interesting as well. Were you the first person to ever try that? I don't know if I was the first person, but when I got the call that I had passed that exam from the people from the state, you'd have thought they were related to me. There was two or three ladies on there. They were so fired up, yeah. So I was blessed and able to pass that exam, and, you know, so we wound up buying our business that I had been working for for 810, years from my boss back in oh eight, and then also, and we've, we've been running it ever since. So I just feel super blessed to be able to continue working. You know, I don't know what I would do if I couldn't work. You know, I'm 61 years old now, and, you know, people talk about retiring, and it's like, and I think I'd get bored. I really do, you know, I mean, there's only so much you can do blind. I mean, I've golfed a few times blind and fished and, you know, those kinds of things. But, and I like to write, you know, I'm kind of an amateur writer. I wrote a book back in 2020, okay, so I have, you know, a few things that I'm interested in, but, you know, my work is what I love to do. You know, I'm an electrician. I'm a blind electrician, but I'm, I'm still electrician at heart, you know, so and my memory allows me to work with the folks that you know work for us, and, you know, help them along when they have questions and stuff like that. And I have some really, really, really, really good people that have helped me along the way. Talk

Scott Benner 36:55
about that a little bit beyond your wife and your boss. Sounds like he made a job for you in the beginning, and then you grew into it. But he did, what about day to day stuff like, where do you count on other people?

John 37:06
I count on so many people, Scott, I mean, our town, small town, like I said, on Lake okoby. And I could call literally dozens of people right now if I needed a ride to go somewhere. You know, I don't do public public transportation at all. I have so many friends and family around here that help me out. You know, if they're in town, you know, though, they can, can help me do this or that. My staff is awesome. I have gentleman, right hand man that's working with me, that's been here since 2002 he's been worked for our company for almost 25 years now. You know, he'll do anything for me, aside from work, if I need something. You know? Yeah, you're my boss. Is my next door neighbor. He's still we live right alongside of each other. When I say my boss, the gentleman that I bought the business from, got a great church family. You got it? Yeah, this little town is something else. I'll tell you. It's there's nothing like it.

Scott Benner 38:08
John, let me. Let me share with you. I was flying to Orlando a few weeks ago to speak at the touch by type one event, and I overheard a guy talking on the plane, and he was flying from New Jersey to Orlando to help a friend of his just go grocery shopping and do some stuff that he needed. And he was a guy. He was in his 60s, but he had a friend that was much older than him, you know, probably 1520, years older than him. And he just the guy was it was getting tough for him. He needed help. He couldn't find help anywhere else. This guy got on a plane and flew down to help him. I was, that's amazing. Super impressed by that, you

John 38:43
know, yeah, it's amazing. You know, people, there are things Scott in this life that people do that you don't know about, right? And, and I, you know, I'm a Christian man. And I, you know, I believe God puts people in our lives, right? Things don't just happen they you know, I mean, just like my vision loss, that just didn't just happen, you know, there's a reason for everything in our life, I think. And, and I'll tell you, you know, you know, I had another, another health problem hit me a few years

Scott Benner 39:14
back. I wanted to ask you about the rest of your health, actually. So this is perfect. Tell me about that. Well,

John 39:19
it kind of ties into your your friend coming down from, yeah, would you say Atlanta, Atlanta? You said, Oh, they

Scott Benner 39:24
went from New Jersey to Orlando. Jersey, yeah, Wow, geez, yeah.

John 39:28
That's, that's a trip, man. That's, that's, that's awesome. That's love, right? There is what that is. I wanted to share with you about love, something that happened to me so I had struggled with a kidney disease now for 20 years or so, probably about the same time, I lost my sight, you know, I started to see a nephrologist and my my kidney function, had, you know? Had you know, was in like the 40% range there for years and years and again, you know, diabetes, long time diabetic. And you know, it started decline. And, you know, 15 years ago, you know, 35 you just sitting watching it, do the best that you can. You know, kidney function is all about blood sugars and blood pressure. If those get wound out, our kidneys don't like it. You know, I struggle with hypertension. I take blood pressure medicine. I have for years. So that's, you know, something else that I had have as far as a health situation. But anyway, so my my kidney function had declined, and it kept going down and and I remember, I go to that, down to Cleveland Clinic in Weston, and my kidney doctor, I don't know, about four or five years ago, I guess Scott, I was in the 25% range kidney function, which is, it's a GFR, is what it is, okay, that's the test. But I can't remember what it stands for. I should know anyway, that's, that's basically your function number, right? So I drifted down like 2423 for like, two or three tests in a row, two, I think it was two. He said, If you come in next time with with another sub 25 on that GFR, he said, you'd be eligible for a transplant. And my wife could tell you right now, if she was on here with me, I started sweating like crazy in there. I was like, oh my god, oh my god, this is real man. Yeah, I couldn't get out of that that doctor's office fast enough that day, it continued to decline. In 22 probably the summer of 22 it had gotten down to 15% function, and it was drifting around there, back and forth, 14, 1516, all in there, yeah. So I wound up getting on a transplant list. Well, you know, first, basically, you have to get tested for went through a whole bunch of tests, take a whole bunch of blood out of you and make sure you don't have cancer or something like that. That would disqualify you, right? And in the meanwhile, Scott, I was me and my mom were talking, my mom has helped me through me and Chris through so much, through my vision, loss and everything over the years. You know, moms are moms, right? And she's awesome. I was talking to her. I was like, I said, Mom, you know, they're talking about, you know, a living donor kidney is better than a deceased donor. You know, I was doing my research on it stuff, and how do you ask somebody for that? How do you ask somebody Scott for

Speaker 1 42:28
that, right? I don't, I can't wrap my head around it, actually, right? I know.

John 42:33
And she's like, well, you know, I've seen on the internet where people do the Facebook and this and that I'm not really a Facebook guy, what have you? I sat and thought about it for a little while, and I drafted a letter to my family and friends, basically explaining my situation, where I was at that kind of thing. I sent a mass email out to a lot of lot of my family and friends, nearly everybody I could think of, and I attached this letter, and I, you know, basically said, you know, hey, can you see my letter? I'm struggling with this situation in my life right now, and take a look at it, consider. And it basically talked about my the kidney disease and the function and where it was at, and how a lot of people get to that area. Now, I was not on dialysis. I was never on dialysis, okay, but I reached out to all these people, and it was the hardest email I push send on in my life, really hard. So I was going through all my tests at Cleveland Clinic. You know, that kind of thing, Scott, and one day I was at work, I got used to the Cleveland Clinic phone number 954-659-5000, by the way, so that number comes across on my cell phone, and I was like, wow, that's probably doctor wants something, you know, another test, whatever was the lady at the transplant center. And she said, You have a couple more take you got to get colonoscopy and this and that, we've had an overwhelming amount of people who

Unknown Speaker 43:57
want to give their kidney to you. Yes.

John 44:01
She said to me, we're going to list you today. Before these all these tests are done because we list only list on Wednesdays. It must have been a Wednesday we only put people on list on Wednesdays. Our committee has decided to put you on we've never seen anything like this. How many people? They didn't say they didn't tell you. They can't do that because a HIPAA, they can't tell you anything. I hung up and literally started crying.

Scott Benner 44:26
Yeah, you almost made me cry just now. Wow. That is love.

John 44:29
That is, it was unbelievable. The amount of how loved I felt, how how that makes you know, there's a God man, and I'm telling you, it was most overwhelming thing I've ever done, I've ever been through, yeah, so it went along. I had a couple of buddies, you know, I got a good buddy out in Oregon, kind of a hippie guy, and he, he was keeping me updated, wow, I'm calling every day, and they said that I'm not written, you know, they haven't put me in so, yeah, I knew he, he had volunteered. Right, right? And I have a very best friend in Maryland, and I knew he had done it. But aside from that, I had no idea you know who and what, you know what, not. So

Scott Benner 45:11
John, and that happened, you got that kidney. I did get that kidney. Yeah, yeah. So I want to know how that changed your life, and I want to know about the relationship with the person moving forward. So first, you know, obviously, what is it? What is the the new kidney mean for you?

John 45:26
It's a rebirth. I celebrate three birthdays now. I celebrate my birthday in 1964 March 17 of 23 that's when our kidney transplant occurred, and I now have our kidney in me, and I celebrate the birthday of my

Scott Benner 45:47
angel donor. Did it end up being a friend of yours or a family member or

John 45:53
not a family member? So very special friend of mine? Yeah, we go to church together, Scott. She is actually my general doctor as

Scott Benner 46:04
well. No kidding, yeah, did that strengthen your relationship over time, or was it already a really great relationship to begin with?

John 46:11
I think it was a it strengthened our it actually ties

Unknown Speaker 46:16
people together.

John 46:19
It's such a selfless act, sacrificing a part of yourself to save somebody else, sincerely. And does that sound familiar for a Christian person to say that? No, no, of course, sacrificing for somebody else,

Scott Benner 46:35
opening yourself up too to the possibility that, if she has a problem later in life now she only has one kidney, you're only putting your chips on the table,

John 46:42
yes, yeah. And she has, she has kids, so, yeah, that is a such a selfless act that, you know, it's still to this day is, you know, there's no way that I could ever repay that gift. It's impossible.

Scott Benner 46:59
Yeah, I did want to ask you, has it ever felt the gift was too big? Did you ever, do you ever feel like, what the word is here, like you ever feel like you're not deserving of it, or that, you know, you feel guilty that it happened anything like that?

John 47:13
No, I don't feel that way, because, you know, I know the heart of the person that shared this experience with me, okay, I'm good friends with her husband as well. And I was told once that sometimes some of the

Speaker 2 47:30
patients that walk into her office,

John 47:35
you know, you get to a point with some patients obviously, that you you can't help them anymore. I was told that this is something she can help. John,

Unknown Speaker 47:45
so beautiful.

Scott Benner 47:46
Well, it says a lot about you too, John, because a doctor intersects a lot of people with issues, and you can't give of your own body that many times. But, and I would imagine she's probably never done it before and probably won't do it again, but something about you motivated her to do this thing.

John 48:02
You know, I don't know what it is about me at all. I don't think it's me at all. I just think it's the heart and of the person that generously gave to me.

Scott Benner 48:13
Yeah, that's very kind of you to say that, but I'll tell you right now, nobody's given me a kidney. So like,

John 48:21
I think you'd probably be surprised.

Scott Benner 48:23
I could probably write a pretty good letter, and I bet you that people Oh, I didn't get that. I think it would have been my junk mail. So sorry.

John 48:30
Oh, yeah, our kidney is doing great. Things are good. I just feel blessed to be here every day. I mainly wanted to come on to let people know that, heaven forbid anybody have to go through complications from diabetes. But all complications don't, you know, don't let it limit you, like I've heard countless people come on with young people being diagnosed, you know, parents and even some of those young people, it doesn't limit you. And even vision loss that doesn't limit you, it doesn't make you who you are. You know, struggling with diabetes, that's, you know, that's just part of life. It happens. And, you know, dealing with those things is the Bible tells us that, you know you're going to have trials in life just the way it is. But God overcame all that. There's way more to it than me walking around here bumping into stuff. It's Hey, you know, everybody does that, yeah.

Scott Benner 49:27
Is there an ability for you to separate yourself from your religious beliefs? Like, do you have any idea what it is about your personality that even opens you up to the idea of being available, to the idea, you know, prescribed you by your religion. Do you understand? I mean, like, there's plenty of people who hear religious messaging and they still don't have your response to it.

John 49:49
Well, you know, I met with some guys just this week, and I was, I was telling them about this. There's a lot of Christians, Scott that have that exact day when they say I was. Because I took Jesus as my Savior on this date, and I was at this location, a lot of Christians, I think, had that testimony. I don't have that

Speaker 1 50:09
just always felt this way. No, no, I didn't.

John 50:13
I always believed, and I always went to church, maybe on and off, if you will, right? I sit here at 61 years old. Now I look backwards, my thing is, he was there all the time. I know it. I don't see to me a flesh and bones reaction to some of the things that I've experienced without something else being there. And I think about that footprints, picture and poem, you always see, a lot of people have them in their house, of course, yeah, you ever seen that one? You know what I'm talking I do know that reminds me so much of my life. How so well, because when you're carried and you don't have that burden, it's not hitting you right? Your steps aren't in that sand. You're not really walking through it now, why is that you're there and you're going through it? Right? That's all I can relate it to. I don't really have a perfect answer for that, but I just know that I was carried through a lot of these situations by and I don't want to just

Scott Benner 51:17
you're not dismissing people's effort or, yeah, I understand that's

John 51:22
not what I'm saying, not because I've had so much help, my gosh, but there are those times when you're quiet and by yourself, you know, yeah, I don't drift into that. Why me? And how come and why? You know, I could go back and my first eye doctor that I chose probably wasn't the perfect one for me. I think he might have made some mistakes. Scott, yeah, but I can't sit and thrive on that. What good does that do? It

Speaker 1 51:49
is definitely not gonna help you. No, it definitely is gonna help you.

John 51:53
No. So, so that's just kind of how I view things. And, you know, I tell people all the time, and my wife, I don't think likes it when I say this, but it's the truth, if God gave me back my sight right now, sitting right here in this living room, you know what the first thing I do, Scott, I wonder. Close my eyes.

Scott Benner 52:10
You really feel like you're seeing the world differently. Now,

Unknown Speaker 52:13
I do. Yeah,

John 52:14
I do. And think about it. You know, think about closing your eyes for 21 years, Scott, and then open it again. I don't even know how to imagine it would be sensory overload. Yeah, yeah. I mean, what are you 5354 I am looking for. Yeah, yeah. You ever go to like, a place that's like, way too loud, way, way, way too loud, sure, it gets a little too much, right? I see that times like 100 million open in my eyes, like, wide open right now, like I could see everything. It would be like I'd have to close them. I know I would, well, I'd want to peek them back open, obviously, you know, once I get that miracle. But yeah, and, you know, I believe miracles happens every day. I know I had one two and a half years ago when I was blessed with our kidney, your kidney, yeah. So, you know, I know they happen, so I'm if it doesn't happen in this life, that's okay, but I believe it still

Scott Benner 53:07
will, John, I feel like I hear you telling me that you're comfortable and happy where you are, like, that's pretty astonishing, because I don't know that people can say that, who can see all the time, well, is that fair? You're you? It's super fair. Yeah,

John 53:20
it's super fair. And, and, you know, again, you know, I listen and, hey, I'm not perfect. Nobody is right. And do I get in a bad mood? Yeah, not too often. On this, honestly, every now and then, my wife keeps telling me, you sound more and more like your dad every day. And I was like, well, that I think all of us are like that, aren't we? Scott,

Scott Benner 53:41
hey, listen, I do know from the grocery store sometimes, John, I'm like, we got to go. And at

John 53:45
54 you probably things just come out of your mouth. Now that might not have come out when you're 24 or 30. My

Scott Benner 53:53
wife's like, where are we gonna go? And I'm like, I don't know, but I just saw a little kid spit in a trash can. The dad didn't yell at him, and we got to go wherever. That isn't going to happen. I want to go to she's like, I don't think we're getting away from this. And I was like, okay,

John 54:04
yeah. And that's what, how it is. As you get older, you just say what you want. A lot of times, yeah, and no filter, my wife just said, and lot of times that happens. And that's, you know, I want to try to avoid that, but I'm Cliff wells leggers. I'm Cliff walls Lakers. Son, man, you know, I watched him for years. That's just how it is. It's gonna happen.

Scott Benner 54:26
I think sometimes you know you just you're alive long enough you gather up enough information, you know how you feel, and you know pretenses are are wasteful. As you get older, you realize that time's limited and you don't have a lot of time to apologize to everybody before you say something. So, you know, they can like it, not like it, whatever. That's all fine. But yeah,

John 54:49
even, I guess, over the last 30 days, I mean, throwing all political stuff aside, you know, the Charlie Kirk assassination really impacted me. It did hugely. It. It impacted me terribly. He was a Christian man, and obviously he debated for, I want to say, a living or whatever his movement was. I didn't know anything about him, honestly, okay, till all that happened, but I started listening to those kinds of talks, right Scott and then I listened to the how that man debated, right with folks again, forget politics. I don't care about that anyway, the way that he talked to people, interjecting fairness, but wanting to give his point, right? You know, at 61 years old, you know, I think he was 31 I almost feel like I've wasted time, by the way, sometimes I react, and really how the world reacts in, let's call it a debate situation, or any kind of, really interaction, right? What do you wish you would have done differently? Reacted different, responded different. In other words, yeah,

Scott Benner 55:54
disagreed with you. You, you wish you would have heard him out.

John 55:58
Yes, yeah, always. I think that's, you know, and I think, as I get older now, sometimes I have the propensity to talk over people, and I don't mean to Chris, reminds me that a lot think it happens and and again, you know, I'm just, I'm just trying to do better in in respect to that. And sometimes I lean on my vision loss to to that feeling. You know, it's just like you don't feel like you know, when we go out to eat, let's say me and Chris. They don't ever ask me what I want.

Unknown Speaker 56:32
They're looking at Chris.

Scott Benner 56:34
They talk to her and like you can't hear them,

Unknown Speaker 56:37
yeah, yeah, yeah.

John 56:38
I understand most people, very few, come across a blind person every day. Yeah, they just don't, they don't know how to react to them, you know. And I understand that. It's just, you know, sometimes it's like, hey, hey, hey, I'm over here.

Scott Benner 56:52
That doesn't change how you feel about it. Yeah, their misunderstanding isn't going to help you feel

John 56:57
better about it. Yeah, no, you know. I mean, there's but I mean playing blind is I'm telling you, man, it's sometimes it's just so funny. Man, I could sit here for two hours and tell you different blind jokes that have happened to me along the way. That's what I call them, blind jokes, and basically just things that have happened that are hilarious due to my vision loss. You know, there's so many stories. And you know, everybody has funny things that happen to them in life, but yeah, I've had my

Scott Benner 57:27
share. Well, John, I'll tell you, I it's not too late to start listening more to people and talking less. And you know, I mean, if you already know what you think, then telling everybody else what you think maybe isn't as valuable for you is hearing what they believe, and then, you know, see, if there's not, not a little bit of what they've got to say that you could blend into your thinking, is all and maybe not, maybe you'll throw it all away. Maybe you'll hear them and think like That's bullshit. I don't believe that, you know, and you'd be on your way, yeah. But every once in a while, I think it surprise you, somebody will say something. It'll stick on you, yeah,

John 58:02
for sure, yeah. And not, you know, that's, that's, that's kind of my things. Why I even said that? Because I know I need to listen more. I mean, you know, right? I read that and, no, sometimes I don't listen to it. We always want to try to get our point across right.

Scott Benner 58:17
I would also think that not having visual cues probably makes it difficult in a social setting too, because you don't know where to jump into the conversation, so you probably have to be a little more aggressive, right? You don't know when people are pausing all the time, and so maybe you're talking over people when you wouldn't normally if you could see their their physical cues. I mean, there's to be some of that.

John 58:37
That's 100% I mean, I don't know how many times, Scott, I've, you know, I may have a meeting in my office with some sales people or whatever, and they get ready to leave, and they've already turned and walked away. I'm standing there with my hand out, wanting to shake their hand. And, you know, we've, oh, I mean, yeah, no, I couldn't even count how many times that has happened. You know, it

Scott Benner 58:58
just makes sense. I mean, there's reason, there's some reasons, why you might end up doing that and being frustrated with how people treat you, is probably just one of them. And then this is another. There's stuff going on.

John 59:11
I mean, I, you know, and I don't get frustrated about it, you know, I'm a very humble person. Anyway, you know that most of it doesn't bother me? Okay, it really doesn't, I mean, you know, and there's a lot of technology now that, like at a restaurant, since I don't read Braille, you know, they have something called seeing AI on this iPhone, and you can take a picture of the menu, and I can listen to it with the voice over on the iPhone, and, you know, it's awesome. Figure out what I want. I'm not a picky, I'm not real picky about what I eat anyway. You know, I usually first from second.

Scott Benner 59:45
Yeah, that's pretty glorious John, that somebody could do that. You know what? I mean? Like, yeah, yeah. Especially, too, because it, you know, give you I mean, if there were carb counts listed on menus, you'd get those as well. Like, there's diabetes, reasons why you'd care. You know. The same money,

John 1:00:01
that's for sure, because it also has, like, a product, little area on it. That's product. You click on that, and you can look at the barcode, and it'll read you the carbs on, you know, container, can of whatever, that kind of stuff. So it's kind of neat, you know? So, yeah, there's a lot of stuff out there. Now, for the folks that can't see you, I

Speaker 1 1:00:22
didn't ask you, do you have kids? No, we don't have any kids. You don't

John 1:00:26
have kids? No, no, we have nephews and nieces that are grown now and then we're starting to watch their kids. So that's kind of how that rolls.

Scott Benner 1:00:36
Did you guys not want children? Or did it not

Unknown Speaker 1:00:39
work out? It

John 1:00:40
was kind of timing. Chris lost her parents when she was real, you know, pretty young, and in her 30s, early 30s. And you know,

Speaker 2 1:00:49
we got married little later. How old were you 2029?

John 1:00:54
She just said so. And then our her parents passed soon after that. And then, and, you know, which was around 2000 and then, oh, four, I lost my sight. And not at all times, just baby, just things just kept happening. I mean, you know, not things, just life, I guess, you know. And and again, you know, once our nephews came, came along, Chris's brother and his wife had had a couple of boys, and they came. They became like ours. They were here all the time. You know, we kind of have kids, but we don't. I understand

Scott Benner 1:01:29
that's lovely, by the way, you're making me think I would definitely watch a reality show of you raising a baby when you're blind. I think that would be pretty amazing. Well, I feel like you could

Unknown Speaker 1:01:39
figure it out. Doug

John 1:01:42
got the guy that trained me on the computer. He was blind as well. I don't know if I mentioned that, so that was definitely the blonde blind on that deal. But, yeah, but he was telling me he had, he have triplets, Chris, he had twins or triplets. No kidding. They were little, little, little kids. Yeah, he's blind. He was telling me one time he's like, I was I was bathing Jeremiah, or whatever the kid's name was, had the shampoo there and all this. And he said, I picked up the tube and put it in, rubbed it all in his hair, and I smelled it. He said, John. I put toothpaste in his hair, wash his hair.

Scott Benner 1:02:16
I was like, Doug, man. What are you doing? Probably bright and shiny. That's nice, though,

John 1:02:21
but I would imagine that it would been, you know, I would have demanded the kid, you know, they would have had have bells on their shoes and, you know, little things like that I had thought of over the years. That might not be beneficial bringing up kids and stuff like that. But, you know, but again, you know, those nephews, they were right there with me, and as I was testing my sugar, he would, because I have a talking meter, you know, blood glucose meter, yeah, say I wouldn't. The Lawn Boy would always say, apply blood now, you know, you know, because it was like a little robotic right voice on the sugar meter. And he would always mimic that when come running over to see how my sugar was, that kind of stuff. That's

Scott Benner 1:03:03
very nice. Have you mentioned living on with Lake? Ok? How do you say it Lake Okeechobee. Okeechobee is that? Is that the Everglades? Are you in? Are you in that part of the state? Yeah, yeah.

John 1:03:15
This is the Everglades. We're in the Glades. Basically the towns surrounding Lake Okeechobee are considered the Glades, if you will. Okay, so, yeah, Lake Okeechobee is the big, huge lake blue spot in the middle of the state there, out of the South Park, we're right between Fort Myers and West Palm Beach. You put your finger on the map, that's where our little town is. So, yeah, awesome.

Scott Benner 1:03:39
Yeah, that's it's really something. You've been there since you moved there from, from

John 1:03:43
Maryland, yeah, 1996 Yeah, when I came down here, wow, I originally relocated to the west coast in Bradenton, around the Bradenton area on the west coast of Florida in 1992 okay, but Chris and I got set up on a blind date. Yeah, that's right, a blind date. I wasn't blind then, but I knew what you meant anyway. Yeah, it was blind to me, though Chris had seen a picture, but anyway, whatever, she cheated a little bit. You bragging.

Unknown Speaker 1:04:14
I hear John, okay, yeah, man,

Scott Benner 1:04:17
how worried are we that being blind is not going to get you, but you're going to get snatched up by an alligator or a snake at some point. Is that a concern or?

John 1:04:25
No, not terribly. They stay over in the lake. Pretty much. We don't have too many right here by our house. There's a lot of canals that run up around Clewiston, you know that they bring up and down for the farming and stuff like that during different times of the years. And the Gators kind of hang out in the canals and stuff, but they don't venture out of those too much, you know, run around in people's driveways or anything. There was a black bear running around here, I don't know, six or eight years ago, running around town. People saw it in some trees and palm trees and stuff around town. Right now we have. Have a, we have a coyote epidemic here in town. They're killing a bunch of cats. They come out of the cane fields and eat up people's cats and stuff. So they're, they're trying to get rid of them.

Scott Benner 1:05:10
So my last little like, throw away question that I've been wondering the whole time is, what kind of farming goes on there?

John 1:05:15
Sugar cane. Sugar cane. Yeah, it's America's sweetest town. Is coolest in

Scott Benner 1:05:20
Florida. Say that before. Okay, all right, yeah,

John 1:05:23
that's why. If you come into Clewiston from pretty much any direction, Scott, all you will see is sugar cane fields, basically real tall, Leafy, I don't know if you wouldn't know what sugar cane looks like, but it's like a tall, leafy kind of plant that you know, it's kind of pretty when it's blowing in the wind, yeah, you know, you come down just it, just fields and fields full of it. And you've probably seen pictures of of, you know, they they burn it before they harvest it, to get all the leaves and stuff off, because the stalk is where all the cane is, where all the sugar cane stuff is. They have big fires every now and then, everybody's, yeah, a lot of people that don't know anything about it be like, Oh my god, the whole place, they're basically controlled burns, you know, that kind of thing.

Scott Benner 1:06:11
John, I actually have a meeting. I have to jump on but I want to tell you first that I don't know. Did you hear episode 1591 it was called the sweetest irony. It was Renee. Her father was a Louisiana sugar cane farmer.

John 1:06:24
I don't think I have, I have to go back and check that one I

Scott Benner 1:06:27
grew up on a on a sugar cane farm, and has type one now, yeah, I'm sorry to tell you like I do have to get to a meeting. No problem. No, no, I want to thank you. This has been really lovely, and I appreciate you. I know it was, you know, more effort for you to come on the podcast than it is for a lot of people. So thank you. Thanks. Thanks to your wife, your lovely wife, for setting things up with you and everything as well. Oh, yeah,

John 1:06:51
no, I appreciate your time. And you know, just encourage people you know that are listening. If you you know, if you get any complications from this disease is not the end of the world, and just trust things will go your way and keep pushing on, and everybody keep that trigger under control. It's really important.

Scott Benner 1:07:10
John, I appreciate your message and sharing what went right and what went wrong for you, too. I think it's really valuable for people to hear

Unknown Speaker 1:07:17
yes, sir, no, for sure.

Scott Benner 1:07:18
I heard Chris the back, by the way, I heard Chris in the background. She's not wrong. You do have a passion for this that is commendable, and I really do hope people heard it like the way, the way that I did today. So thank

John 1:07:29
you, all right, thank you, Scott, and I appreciate your podcast and everything you're doing, you're changing lives, man. Thank you very much.

Scott Benner 1:07:37
Awesome. You're very kind. Hold on one second for me. Okay, you

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#1684 What Are You Running From?

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Natalie, 47, shares her decades with type 1 diabetes—from ketone strips to pumps and GLP-1s—pregnancy pressure, endless hunger, exercise obsession, and finally learning to truly thrive.

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

Scott Benner 0:00
Welcome back, friends. You are listening to the Juicebox podcast.

Natalie 0:13
Hi, Scott. My name is Natalie. I'm so excited to talk to you today, I feel like I'm talking to a celebrity, actually. So I'm 47 I live in Canada. I'm a type one diabetic. I have been since I was 10 years old, and I like to think of myself as somebody that's learned to really kind of thrive with diabetes as much as I can, because I don't see there being any other way. But it didn't, didn't always start like that, and I think that that's kind of what I want to talk about

Scott Benner 0:42
today, just in time for the holidays. Cozy Earth is back with a great offer for Juicebox podcast listeners. That's right. Black Friday has come early at cozy earth.com and right now you can stack my code Juicebox on top of their site wide sale, giving you up to 40% off in savings. These deals will not last, so start your holiday shopping today by going to cozy earth.com and using the offer code Juicebox at checkout while you're listening, please remember that nothing you hear on the Juicebox podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan or becoming bold with insulin. This episode of The Juicebox podcast is sponsored by us Med, US med.com/juicebox, or call 888-721-1514, us, med is where my daughter gets her diabetes supplies from, and you could too use the link or number to get your free benefit check and get started today with us. Med, 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'd 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

Natalie 2:27
Hi Scott. My name is Natalie. I'm so excited to talk to you today. I feel like I'm talking to a celebrity, actually, and from our little conversation we just had, though, I have to say one thing, it feels weird to hear your voice norm, like normal, and not sped up because I listened to so many podcasts, and I want to get all the information in, so I listened to them on like 2.5 sometimes. So talking to you right now was so weird for me.

Scott Benner 2:50
I hope it gets more normal as we're going

Natalie 2:54
right exactly. So I'm 47 I live in Canada. I'm a type one diabetic. I have been since I was 10 years old, and I like to think of myself as somebody that's learned to really kind of thrive with diabetes as much as I can, because I don't see there being any other way. But it didn't, didn't always start like that, and I think that that's kind of what I

Scott Benner 3:15
want to talk about today. No, that'll be exciting. I'd love that you listen to a lot of podcasts. I

Natalie 3:19
listened to a lot of podcasts, and I really got into yours about two years ago, and then I got very obsessed. And anytime I could listen, I listened in the car. I listened while I'm cleaning. I'm listening at work. I'm listening on my walks all the time. And like I said to you earlier today, too, I learned something new every time that I listened to your podcast. So it's been really inspiring for me. It's been really helpful for other people as well, people in my life, people that I'm trying to get to listen to your podcast as well. And just this chronic thing that we have, and we'll have for the rest of our lives is never ending. Like as far as learning goes, there's something to learn all the time, and I found the best way in my 36 years of doing this is finding you guys, finding your podcast. Oh,

Scott Benner 4:06
I'm so happy. Aside of my show, what other kinds like you don't have to give me the titles, but what other kinds of topics do you like to listen to? Oh, lots of

Natalie 4:15
other fitness and nutrition kind of things. Lots of wellness podcasts I also listen to, like Joe Rogan, like, I feel like you're like the Joe Rogan of the diabetes space. I listen to a lot of political things. I listen to a lot of parenting things, just a lot of everything. If I want to learn about something, that's where I go, is to podcasts first, because I know that's where I'm going to find anything out that I want to find. Natalie, I'm going to

Scott Benner 4:38
ask you a question. Okay. Yeah, I've heard that said about me, and people have meant it nicely, and people have meant it terribly. How do you mean it?

Natalie 4:46
Well, I mean it like, I feel like for you, you're a truth speaker as well. You're not afraid to say things that people don't want to hear. You talk about things that are what's the word like you're gonna get you? Mail about, and you're going to be like, I can't believe you're pushing this and stuff like that, kind of like the GLP one space, which I'm thankful you started talking about, because I've been doing it now for over a year, and you're the first place I heard it from. So, you know, just things like that, I guess. And I really like that. You're also very sweet, you know, like, you just come across as really empathetic to people, and it's just a good podcast. Even if you're not diabetic or know anybody, it's a good podcast.

Scott Benner 5:25
Oh, I appreciate you saying that, especially from a person who who listens to a lot of different kinds of podcasts. I really, I take that as a big compliment. Yeah, it's funny, like, I don't have a, I wouldn't care about, you know, somebody's politics or anything like that. But I think there are a couple of people who do it really well, yeah. And by, I just mean by storytelling and, you know, yeah, being interested in things that maybe sometimes people aren't really always interested in, and actually not pretending, but deeply being interested in even just, just, what was it this morning? Oh, quarterback, it's just probably going to not be on your radar. But this guy named Mark Sanchez, I think, drafted by the Jets originally, never really did. Well, bounced around a little bit in the NFL, you know, I get this, this alert on my phone the other day, he's been stabbed. I'm like, Oh my gosh, it's crazy, you know. And then I then, you know, a day later it comes out. It's like, he attacks somebody, apparently, and they stabbed him, apparently, self defense, or, who knows why? And hear the story, and it's building, and I figure eventually we'll get more and more of it. But what I'm most captured by is like, I'm like, I wonder why that happened. Yeah, sucks, that somebody had to stab somebody to defend themselves, or that somebody got into all that aside. Like, how does that happen? How does a guy who extensively, has enough money to live his life and seems to be gainfully employed and, like, does he end up in that situation? Like that, like, deep down, interests me, right? That kind of level of interest I try to apply to everybody I'm talking to, yeah, you know, and even when it's sort of small things that I think most people wouldn't even see that there's a conversation there. I sometimes even listen back to my own conversations that I'm having with people, and I think, oh, there was a sentence spoke right there, and that would have been a good 10 Minute U turn week. We should have split off there and talked about that more. And I'm just generally and genuinely, both very interested in people, so I appreciate you saying that, yeah, and I love getting information that way too, from podcasts. I'm a fan of you know, some people's YouTube content, and you're doing the same thing you're trying to just what I want to ask you here is, when you take in all this information, yeah, how do you parse out what's valuable to hold on to, what doesn't apply to you, and what's bullshit? How do you figure that

Natalie 7:42
all out? Yeah, well, I guess if it, if it really sticks, or if it's something that I'm like, oh my god, that was amazing. Sometimes I even write it down, just like I'm reading an article, and might highlight something, you know what I mean? So just little things like that, that really trigger something in me, yeah, you know. And also interesting when, when you talk to people, your podcasts are for me. Anyways, it's interesting, but light and easy to understand. You're not talking so medically, that somebody that doesn't know wouldn't know. You know what I mean, I don't. That's

Scott Benner 8:14
only because I don't know enough about it to talk about it. But I appreciate that too, because you know where I imagine some people would see that as a negative. I see that as as more of a positive. I think it makes ideas more accessible to people. It allows them to hear something that they maybe would be interested in, then they can go look into it on our own. Like, I It's can't be my job to sit here for 27 hours and explain everything, even if I did understand it, no one would listen to that, right? Like, that's the thing that I'm I'm 100% sure of, right? So, you know, you have an idea or a thought or a wonderment, you say it out loud and you just, you know, I don't, I'm sure I've said stuff on here that's bullshit. Like, I'm sure I've said stuff that if we go back and look at it, you'd be like, Oh, I wasn't right at all. Right? I also know that I've said things that have helped people. You know, I think Apparently you're going to get to it at some point too with the GLP conversation. But I had a man come up to me and hug me recently, yeah, I didn't know who he was. And he says, You don't recognize me. We met last year. And I said, I'm sorry. I don't know who you are. And he said, Oh, it's possible you don't know me because I'm 80 pounds lighter than I was last time you saw they started telling me about that, you know. So, yeah, nevertheless, I really appreciate that, that you're a connoisseur of audio and that you'd like this. So thank you very much. Yeah, you're welcome. Appreciate that. So tell me a little bit about this diabetes thing you're diagnosed. Would you say, like, when you were, like,

Natalie 9:36
I was 1010, okay, yeah, so, and luckily for me, because I did listen to the podcast the other day that broke my heart. Yeah, the man from England, sorry, I can't remember,

Scott Benner 9:47
John's story, came on and yeah, talked about his unbelievable Yeah.

Natalie 9:51
So I feel like I was lucky at the time, because in 1989 my uncle, who was 30 at the time, in the Navy. Got diagnosed, so he had to leave the Navy, and then he had this new life. And you know, when my symptoms started creeping up and stuff, maybe about six months later, my parents knew right away, and I was, fortunately not in DKA. Or, you know, I was sick, but I wasn't so sick that it couldn't be helped. Or I was only in the hospital for about a week, and I remember that first shot of insulin making me feel better, like I remember at 10 years old, how bad I felt and how good I felt after that first shot of insulin, really.

Scott Benner 10:34
Do you know what your E 1c was when you were diagnosed? No,

Natalie 10:38
you know, I don't remember. And I actually kind of went on a deep dive to try to get all my records and stuff, but it's a huge process here, and I just didn't want to bother after but I'm assuming it was probably like 12 or 13, and my blood sugar was probably reading off the Actually, no, back then, we didn't even have the machines. We put our blood on these little strips. They were called precision strips. We wiped the blood off after an hour, and compared the color to the color on the strip, wow, on the container. And I remember mine was very, very, very dark blue, and I had ketones that were very dark red.

Scott Benner 11:09
So, and as soon as that insulin hit you and started to bring your blood sugar down, a relief came over you. It

Natalie 11:15
was like a relief. I just remember, I just felt better. You know? I remember about a week before this happened, I was on a ski trip, and I was skiing, and I went maybe once or twice down the mountain, and I was with school, so I wasn't, you know, my parents weren't there to come and take me home right away, and I kind of laid in the launch most of the time and just drank water because I was so sick.

Scott Benner 11:41
Yeah, so it really is interesting, yeah. Really the most interesting thing you've said so far, and it has actually shocked me, is that you're trying to tell me that Canada has a navy. Yeah, I didn't know that. Yeah.

Natalie 11:53
So my uncle, you know, he had his whole life, like, 12 years or so, in the Navy, and then he got let go, so he had to take his pension and stuff and

Scott Benner 12:03
start a whole new career. Yeah, they was diagnosed, and they booed him out.

Natalie 12:07
Yeah, and that was in 1989 so, and I don't know if that's still a thing that they do, but they definitely did it. Then it's a

Scott Benner 12:13
thing here, for sure. Yeah, 89 the year I graduated from high school, yeah, oh my gosh. So, wow. So how is your uncle doing today? Well, my

Natalie 12:23
Uncle's not here with us anymore. I think he took that really hard, and he was a closet drinker, like we didn't actually know about his drinking problem until he died. So yeah, and he was very, very, very overweight and obviously didn't take care of himself. And that's what happened. That's what happened to my

Scott Benner 12:41
uncle. So sorry, yeah, but he had type one his whole life. He had,

Natalie 12:45
well, he had type one since about 30 and he died at 68

Scott Benner 12:49
Yeah, I don't know why I was confused by that. Yeah, okay, so, so he lived with it for 38 years,

Natalie 12:54
yeah, yeah, yeah. And as far as I remember, the only complication he had was that he was obese, but he didn't have eye problems, he didn't have kidney problems, he didn't have all the things that we were so scared of happening

Scott Benner 13:08
back then, right? Did the two of you ever talk about your diabetes together? Oh,

Natalie 13:12
a lot. And he always used to give me, Natalie, you can't be eating that. You can't be eating that. And then I find out later that he was a closet drinker, and, you know, but I think he was just trying to protect me, yeah?

Scott Benner 13:23
So, I mean, just because he maybe wasn't doing it doesn't mean he didn't know, right? Yeah, exactly, exactly. Yeah. I appreciate you sharing that with me. Thank you, yeah. So you start off with wiping your blood on strips, and look at where we are

Natalie 13:36
today, right? It's incredible, yep, and I'm thankful for these things, like, I can't believe how we used to do it and how we can do it now, you know, and we're still far behind. Like, living in Canada, I am still using, uh, the original Omnipod. We just got the approval for Omnipod five here in Canada, and I can't even get access to it yet because it's not approved in Alberta for the government program that covers our medical stuff. All that stuff is bullshit, all the bureaucracy and where we in Canada are probably the slowest to get all the things. We just got, the FreeStyle Libre, free plus, which I'm really thankful for. I love it,

Scott Benner 14:17
yeah. Well, yeah. So tell me, have you always used the libre, or have you used other CGM? Well,

Natalie 14:23
I've used the libre only because that's the one my insurance covers 100%

Unknown Speaker 14:27
okay. How do you like it?

Scott Benner 14:31
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Natalie 16:57
I like it because, like I said, we went from strips wiping our blood to, you know, blood glucose machines, and this, I mean, sure, it would be nice to have it all integrated into one, and hopefully, eventually I'll get that. But I love it, yeah, I have, I have no complaints, really.

Scott Benner 17:12
Perspective is decades long, yeah, yeah, that thing could, every three of them could fail, and you'd be like, This is the greatest thing that's ever

Natalie 17:21
happened, right? And you know what? I don't ever really get failures with those, like, I don't remember the last time I called them to replace one for me. So I've been either really lucky or just, you know, yeah, works well for me one

Scott Benner 17:32
way or the other. It's a hell lot better than wiping your blood on something and waiting to see what color it turns. Right? How did you even like I guess the management back then really was just about, I mean, were you like, regular and mph or something?

Natalie 17:45
Yeah, yeah, regular and NPH and then just counting our starches. And we didn't even really understand that, because I was thinking about it today, and I was like, you know, I remember we had like, three starch choices, and then we had our protein, and then we had our milk. But back then, nobody knew that protein contributed to glucose as well. And nobody knew that having a glass of milk with your supper contributed to your glucose outcome as well. You know, back then, things just were just not a lot of knowledge, and that my parents did the best that they could, but I don't think they really understood it. And I don't my mom is still with me here today. She's 78 years old, which I don't think she's still she doesn't understand, you know what I mean.

Scott Benner 18:22
So you think to this day she doesn't really get the whole thing. No, she

Natalie 18:26
doesn't. And she'll be like, Oh, I brought you a bag of cookies, Nat and I made the diabetic friendly ones. I'm like, Yeah, but Mom, there's still a ton of carbohydrates in these cookies. They're friendly. No, don't worry. Like, you should have just made them that not diabetic friendly ones, because then I probably know how to count for

Scott Benner 18:42
them better. Yeah, well, I mean that ship sales, she's not going to pick this

Natalie 18:47
up at that point. No, she means, well, you know what I mean, it does occur to

Scott Benner 18:50
me, as you're talking to the concept of, oh, I don't know what's happening with diabetes, like it's all just happening. Like, you know, back then, right? You were, would you say counting starches? Yeah, you didn't have good testing, and so you probably didn't even understand outcomes day to day, right? Like, what did you Oh, never, no, just this thing's the wrong color and what? Yeah, yeah.

Natalie 19:13
And I just knew how I felt if my blood sugar was low, or how I felt if my blood sugar was high, okay? And I also went through a period where I completely lied to my parents about everything I they'd be like, Did you test your blood? Because they kind of left it for me. So I was giving myself shots at 10 years old. I was doing this all on my own, and I'd be like, oh, yeah, I did. I checked my blood and it looked like it was about eight or nine, right? Because those colors had numbers too. So there was times that I didn't even do it for months and months and months and just lied for

Scott Benner 19:44
months. Yeah, yeah. But tell me something, if you got back a certain say you did test it and you got a reading back, did that mean that you bolused again? It didn't mean anything, right? It just

Natalie 19:54
meant that, right? We didn't, no, maybe it meant that I didn't eat one less or one starch, or maybe I went for a quick. Walk around the block and did some jumping jacks at home, like, okay, you know, because I understood enough about that that exercise is going to drop your blood. So if my blood sugar was a bit high, I'd go, you know, put on some Bon Jovi in my bedroom and dance.

Scott Benner 20:15
Bon Jovi. That's

Natalie 20:16
crazy. Yeah, maybe some poison White Snake Skid Row. I don't know I was really into that kind of music back in the day. So, so yeah,

Scott Benner 20:23
I want to tell you Arden met Bon Jovi's son somewhere recently. Perhaps the best gift that you can give to yourself or to a loved one is that of comfort. And this holiday season, if you use the offer code Juicebox at checkout at cozy earth.com, you won't just be getting something that's comfortable. You'll also be doing it at quite a discount. We can talk about that in just a moment. Right now, I want to tell you that I use cozy Earth towels every day when I get out of the shower, I sleep on cozy Earth sheets every night, when I get into bed, I'm recording right now in a pair of cozy Earth sweatpants. I love their joggers, their hoodies, their shirts, my wife has their pajamas. And I know you're thinking, oh yeah, Scott. Well, because they sent you a bunch of it for free, they did send me some for free, but I've also bought a lot on my own. So like I said earlier, Black Friday has come early at cozy Earth, and right now you can stack my code Juicebox on top of their site wide sale giving you up to 40% off in savings. These deals are definitely not going to last. Get your shopping done now or get yourself something terrific at cozy earth.com Do not forget to use that offer code. Juicebox at checkout, you will not be sorry, like a couple years ago before he's he's married to the Stranger Things girl now, isn't he? Yeah, but, but she, she, she met him somewhere. And I was like, and she's like, I almost had a shot with Bon Jovi's son. And I was like, Oh, what happened? She was, I don't know. It didn't work out. Were

Natalie 21:51
you a little bit disappointed? Could you imagine being like, sharing a father in law to Bon Jovi's son? How cool would that? I

Scott Benner 21:58
mean, either that or doesn't it's like, a lot of work on my part to, like, pretend, you know what I mean? Like, I gotta show up and pretend to be fancy, and then I don't know, or maybe not. Maybe it's cool. Who wouldn't know, right? That's interesting. His music is interesting, as it didn't leave the time that it was popular in, right? You know what I mean by that? Like, if you enjoyed it, then I'm sure you still enjoy it now,

Natalie 22:20
well, it's still played on the radio now, you know, it's one of those timeless things, I guess. Yeah,

Scott Benner 22:25
I just don't think that any 20 year old's gonna, like, decide to pick up like a Bon Jovi obsession at this point. Yeah, it's very specific. Anyway, good for them. I think they're having a baby or rented one or adopted. I'm not sure exactly what they did. Yeah. Okay, so you are growing up through that kind of like that thing. You're Yeah, you're saying, there's times for months you don't test your parents. Don't know, yeah, when you look up and technology shifts and all of a sudden you can test your blood sugar, and you're a little more day to day involved. Where were you at that point?

Natalie 22:58
That was about 2000 the year. 2000 that's when I remember using a Bolus for the first time. That's when I remember going to rapid insulin so, and that's also, I think, when I got my first like insulin pen, instead of using just needles. So that kind of started changing then. And also the blood glucose meters, they would be like a five second meter instead of a 32nd meter. So things like that. And then I had my son in 2010 so I went through my whole pregnancy in 2010 still like that. I didn't have a pump, I didn't have a CGM. I don't even know if they existed in 2010 like I was still using long acting and short acting and checking my blood sugar with a glucose meter, and probably about 20 times a day, because I was completely obsessed with having perfect blood sugars when I was pregnant, which I did. I almost wish now I could go back and have those good blood sugars again. My a 1c was 5.5 my whole pregnancy. It was

Scott Benner 24:01
amazing. So when there's the first shift happens in care, yep. Is that a moment to look back and say, Okay, well, here's what, what's been happening to me. Like, do you know what your a 1c was as care shifted right before it shifted, and what happened to it after you went to daily injections?

Natalie 24:16
No, you know what? The only thing I remember was before I was pregnant, because I knew that I wanted to become pregnant, I really started seeing my endocrinologist and the team that worked with her, and that's when I remember really being obsessed with my a 1c and trying to lower and lower and lower it. And I think when I got pregnant, I started off at an eight, and then, you know, within a month or two, it was right down to the fives, and stayed that way.

Scott Benner 24:43
Are you telling me that you know as regular and mphns, the shift to what I assume was maybe like Humalog in Atlantis? Yeah, it really didn't change a lot about how you thought about your health. It wasn't until the idea of a pregnancy that you drilled down so you had. The ability to drill down for that 10 year period, but you just didn't do it.

Natalie 25:03
And maybe because that's when I really started to understand things, yeah, and also that really put the fear in me about, you know, I'm going to be this mother now. I need to be here for at least the next 4050, years for my son. So I really started like, Okay, I I don't want any complications, you know, I want to be around and I want to be healthy. So that's when I really started shifting. And then a 2014 is when I finally got coverage for a pump, because in Canada, we have government programs that covers it 100% so that's when I finally decided, Okay, I'm going to go on to this pump, and I'm going to start using to start using the FreeStyle Libre too, and that's what I did. And that's when things got even better for me.

Scott Benner 25:47
Would you tell me how old you were when you got pregnant? 32

Natalie 25:51
so I wasn't a full grown adult. You know what I

Scott Benner 25:55
mean? Were you married at that point?

Natalie 25:56
I was married. Yeah, I'm married again now, but I was married.

Scott Benner 26:00
How long were you married before you got pregnant?

Natalie 26:03
A year like we wanted to have a son or a child. We do have, I have a son, but we wanted to right away, because the clock was ticking. And, you know, I was always kind of scared of being pregnant, because there were so many things that could go wrong with being

Scott Benner 26:19
pregnant. Yeah, this is what I wanted to ask you. How much of your fear of all that do you think impacted getting married later, etc?

Natalie 26:27
No, I think that was just timing. I didn't meet this man till I was 26 and then we got married at 30 and then I got pregnant at 32

Scott Benner 26:35
so and then you got rid of him. What six weeks later? How long I wish it was

Natalie 26:39
six weeks? No, it was two and a half years, but I married again to a wonderful man, and our lives, me and my husband and my sons, couldn't be better right now. So

Scott Benner 26:47
that's lovely. Okay, so when you get pregnant, you're able to, magically, you knew everything to do. You just how much does your effort have to shift to go from an A 1c in the eights to an A 1c in the fives, right?

Natalie 27:00
Well, it did. It shifted in I don't even know. I don't even know how to explain it. I know, I think just something in my mind was like, you have to do this. And you know, like I said, I was checking my blood sugar 10 or 15 times a day. I seen my care team all the time. I had the most fantastic OBGYN that I saw every two weeks throughout my pregnancy, and it was more of, I think, a mental thing for me to make sure that I was doing all the right things. And he said to me at one time, Natalie, you're doing better than most of my patients that aren't type one diabetic, so just calm down a little bit, you know, like he was so, so, so supportive of me during that time. But

Scott Benner 27:41
what's the difference in your effort from the higher a 1c to the pregnancy, a 1c like, did you like functionally do more, or do you think you were just same effort different, like, you're putting it in different places.

Natalie 27:53
More effort, more help. For sure, help and yeah, I think that

Scott Benner 28:01
help from help

Natalie 28:03
from the team, help from my endocrinologist, help from this amazing OBGYN that I

Scott Benner 28:07
saw. So the two week check ins, the two week check ins, were key to you, yeah,

Natalie 28:11
and he, himself has a son that was diagnosed a few years before he started seeing me as a patient. So he really invested in me. He really took interest in me, and you know, I think that that helped by having him as such a good doctor for me during that time. So when you're

Scott Benner 28:27
going through that process in that time, are you constantly learning new stuff? Are you like, are you looking up every two weeks, going, I didn't know that before. I didn't know that

Natalie 28:35
before. I didn't know that before, not really, but I just really paid attention and really made sure that my blood sugars weren't going any higher than, say, nine, because here in Canada, we do it differently. I don't know what a nine would compare to in the states, like 180 maybe.

Scott Benner 28:48
Are you telling me it's focused, then you're you shifted your focus to something,

Natalie 28:51
maybe my focus? Yeah, well, it probably was. It probably was like I was just really, really, really obsessed with doing it and doing it.

Scott Benner 29:00
Well, okay, so it was your focus, it was your desire. It was, is there anything you seem like you're a rather in touch with who you are person? Yeah, I'm making a leap. I think that's true. So so sorry to ask you, like, is there a reason that for like, self esteem, that you didn't care to do it for yourself earlier,

Natalie 29:18
before that well, and I think knowledge, and I think I just got used to just living, but not really, not that. I didn't care, but I didn't, I don't know how to explain it. Like, I remember, I've always been into the gym. I've always been the obsessive exerciser, and I still am. But I would go to the gym and my blood sugar would be 20. Like, that's probably what, 300 for you guys,

Scott Benner 29:41
nine is 162 20 is 360 there's a calculator at Juicebox podcast.com if you want to use it.

Natalie 29:48
Yeah. So I would go to the gym at 360 because I was scared to go to the gym any less than that, because I was scared of dropping low. So I'd go work out, and then my blood sugar would. Be half of that when I was done. And I lived that way for a long time. And I'm really shocked now that I don't have complications because of the way I lived. And I think I just got so used to what my blood sugar's being so high that I felt good. Because I remember during pregnancy when they did start to normal out and become, you know, normal in range, I felt like, Oh, I feel hungry. I feel low. I feel, you know, like my blood sugars felt low at a normal number, because I was so used to it running high all the time. It was easy to run high all the time. Maybe that's why I didn't really do anything. It's a lot of work to make it normal.

Scott Benner 30:36
Is it your expectation that if you were diagnosed now, that you would not have gone through the trouble you went through prior. I don't know You follow what I'm trying to get to Natalie like I'm trying, I'm trying to understand, once we figure out that that the how is not that difficult, right? It's, it's almost the the focus and the and the, I don't know, the specificity you apply to taking care of diabetes, like I'm always, I guess, enamored with type one has so much effort that goes into it. Whether you have a 10, a, 1c, A, five, a, 13, an eight, you're all putting a lot of effort into it. I'm hoping that we can put the effort in a place that ends up with the A, 1c, that you want, right, that you're looking for that the variability that you know you deserve and the stability of the number that you decide is good for you. Like, I'm not here to tell you what your blood sugar should be all day. Like, I have my own opinions, and you can do whatever you want, but I'm trying to get across to people that it's not harder to do better, right? This thing's as hard. It's always hard. It's just it's hard at every it's hard at every level, but it isn't harder if you have a 13 than it is if you have a five or vice versa, right? And I keep thinking that eventually someone's gonna say something that gets that across to somebody, right? You know what I mean, like, because, and then I started thinking about, like, the kind of person you are, like, maybe you're just like, you know, sometimes I It sounds like you listen a fair amount, right? So, like, sometimes I'll, I'll, I'll interview those I don't know, 1819, year old kids, and they're just, like, on it, right, on the ball, they've got it together, and you realize it's just who they are, right? Like, it's not, like, Yeah, but you try to pick out of them. Like, what is it about you that that makes this your outcome? Yeah, and that's what I'm wondering about you. Like, would a Natalie diagnosis 10 years ago with a CGM have just been a five, five, a, 1c, or is it something about the age you are now, coupled with your experience, coupled with the pressure of having a baby? Like, is it all the process? Maybe,

Natalie 32:37
right? Well, and yeah, I think who I am now. I'm a completely different person than I was then. Yeah, you know what I mean. And I was never academic. So maybe that has to do with it, too. I know the ones that you've had on the show that do really well, they're academic, like those. I remember the one little girl, she is gonna go far to do something with her life. I never went to university. I never did those things, you know, but I kind of figured it out on my own, I guess. And just some light bulbs went off and I thought, okay, like, I really have to do this, because I want to keep functioning as you know. I want

Scott Benner 33:15
to be healthy. So when you and that care team are thinking about your pregnancy, do you remember what they modeled to you to do. What did they tell you was important that led to that five? Five?

Natalie 33:24
Well, I guess just the changing insulin needs during that time, right? Like I remember I'm now, I use about, say, 20 units ish a day, and I probably did back then, even though I didn't really record anything or or whatever. But my insulin needs went to 100 units a day for a while in my pregnancy. So I just, I just remember how, you know how much it changed, and then it went right back down. And then, you know, and maybe that's kind of how I figured it out, yeah,

Scott Benner 33:54
you get the expectation of, Hey, your insulin needs are really going to go up, and they give you this low target that feels like it's not negotiable. So you use more insulin because your needs go up. You keep using that insulin till you get the target that you want. And then once the baby comes, now you have this new understanding of how varied insulin needs can be. And you continue to adjust as you go. Yeah.

Natalie 34:15
And I remember the day that I had my son, he was cesarean section. I was kind of fighting with the nurses, because they were like, No, you need to take this much insulin, because this is what it says here. And I'm like, Are you kidding me? Like I realized how quick my body went back to not having those pregnancy hormones, and I knew that I needed so much

Scott Benner 34:34
less. Would have crushed you if you took all that. Oh, it wouldn't be 100% it would have just the day after the baby boom, almost that

Natalie 34:42
day, just like starting the GLP one for me. Okay, I swear. I swear, eight hours later or the next day. Because I remember, it was an evening I took it. I was like, wow, I need a fraction of my insulin and I'm not hungry. For the first time in my life. It was amazing. Let me share

Scott Benner 34:59
something funny with you. I went out yesterday. I think I'm the grocery store bitch at my house. I went to the girl. Everybody gets stuck with the job in a family, it's me. I run to the grocery store with the goal of getting back before, I mean, if I'm being honest, I want to get back before the football game started. Football game with my son. Yeah. So I didn't eat before I left. And I ran out with the stores. Come back. I was driving home and I thought, oh, no, am I getting sick? My stomach hurts. And I'm like, I feel nauseous, like this is crazy. I hate the way I feel right now. I'm gonna be sick, like I'm driving and then it hit me out of nowhere. It was Sunday. You gave your shot. My shot was over seven days old at that point. And I was like, Oh, okay. I'm like, Oh, I'm just hungry, right? And I don't recognize what hungry feels like, yeah, and it really was that I was just hungry.

Natalie 35:50
And you know what, speaking of hunger, I think coming back to that question you asked me, what changed so much when I was a kid, from 10 years old until I started taking the ozempic. I was hungry all the time. And I grew up with a family that my mom was is Polish. She cooked good food. We had a lot of protein, we had a lot of variety. We had all the vegetables. But I was always hungry, and I'm lucky that I never ended up really overweight. So for me, taking that GLP one stop that hunger, and it still works for me, for that and I have relief that I never knew would be this good. You know what I mean? Like, I feel like I'm a normal person now, my hunger is normal, like a normal human being. I'm not just starving all the time.

Scott Benner 36:35
Yeah, there's, there's a lot of different reasons for hunger with type ones, yeah, and, you know, I don't, I can't just, like, rattle them all off, off the top of my head, but I even just, like, fluctuations of blood sugar, as simple as, like, 90 to 150 Yeah, that if you drop it, I'm sorry, vice versa, 50 to 90, you're dropping, like, your brain can interpret that as like, Oh, I'm like, hunger hormones will kick in, right? So if you're bouncing around all the time, there's a situation where that could, you know, could do the same thing. You got a bunch of, oh, I got, there's something about Lepine, like, there's a lot, I

Natalie 37:07
don't, yeah, five other hormones, I guess that play into that. And we, as a type one diabetes, as type one diabetics, we don't make insulin, but we also don't make those other hormones, as far as I understand. And once I started that, I just that is the main reason that I'll stick to it forever. Like, yes, I needed to lose 10 pounds. It was great. It helped out. Because I, like I said, I've always been in the gym. I've always been, you know, as an adult, a fairly good eater. And I perimenopause came, and that 10 pounds came, and so I got rid of that and the hunger, and I just won the I don't want to ever go back to that feeling again. I

Scott Benner 37:44
agree with you. Do you have anything else going on, like a hypothyroidism? PCOS, I'm trying to figure out.

Natalie 37:48
I don't think so. I mean, here we only get the basic thyroid test. We don't get, like, the full panel, like you could probably get in the States. My What's that other one?

Scott Benner 38:01
The iron, the Yeah, you're you're on, like, ferritin level, yeah,

Natalie 38:05
my ferritin, I think it's not high, but it's not low. So sometimes I'll just take iron for a couple weeks just to see if it helps any. But I think I'm okay, like my thyroid is on the lower end, okay. As far as I know, this, this for me will stay forever. And I almost wish that I had this option as a teenager, because when I was a teenager, say, from like, 16 to 19, I was quite overweight. Oh, okay, if I would have had that option, then I think it would have helped my blood sugars, and I think it would have helped the weight, you know, I remember, I look at pictures now of when I was young, and I'm like, How the hell did that happen,

Scott Benner 38:42
right? You know, but as an adult, you're only about 10 pounds overweight, yeah,

Natalie 38:46
but it bothered me because I'm, like, I said I'm, I'm an obsessive exerciser. I like to stay in shape, I like to look fit, I like to be that person. It's

Scott Benner 38:55
just who I am. Yeah, that's all cool. I was asking because I was trying to figure out, is it the exercise that kept the weight off you. So you gained weight as a child, you knocked it off with exercise. Is that right? Right?

Natalie 39:04
Yeah. And then it probably, that's probably what helped me, you know, till the perimenopause age, where I did gain a little bit of weight. But, yeah, because I exercise so much, how

Scott Benner 39:13
do you end up on a GLP? Then if, I mean, I don't want to say only I know if you only had 10 pounds lose it, and what was the pathway to it?

Natalie 39:19
So I went to my endocrinologist and I said to her, like, I'm listening to this podcast. I've heard other people's stories about how just taking a small amount of the GLP one for type ones could be super helpful with the hunger. That's what I set it for with the hunger. And sure, I want to lose a little bit of weight. My endocrinologist prescribed it for me at the starting dose, but I told her, I'm not going to take the starting dose, so I'm going to click that pen 16 times, which gives me half of the starting dose. And I did that, and like I said, it was immediate results. And I did that for about a year, until I started noticing the hunger come back a tiny bit, and then. Then I decided to go to the full point two, five. So the starting dose, wow. So now that's what I've been doing for about a year, and have no plans to go higher or no plans to go lower. You know what I mean?

Scott Benner 40:11
So initially, speaking, it quelled your hunger. You lost the 10 pounds. How quickly

Natalie 40:15
two months. I remember waking up one day in bed, and I was like, getting ready for work. I'm like, wait, clothes don't fit me anymore, right? Like, and it's not like, I'm super small now. It's just that that little 10 pounds of fluff that I got from perimenopause is gone, yeah. And I just feel better, because maybe if I wouldn't have done that, I would have had 30 pounds by now,

Scott Benner 40:38
yeah, very possibly, and your and your insulin needs have reduced by how much? What do you think

Natalie 40:43
I would say? I don't know percent wise, but I would say at least six or seven units per day.

Scott Benner 40:48
What's your total a day now?

Natalie 40:50
So about 20 to 22 ish, and you're

Scott Benner 40:52
thinking before it was more like 30, yeah, and

Natalie 40:56
the week before my period, because we all know that that week is horrible for us as women with type one diabetes, women or children even, because I was super young when I got mine that week before, my insulin was always like, tripled. Now, is a little bit more every the week before, but it's not quite as much as it was.

Scott Benner 41:16
So you didn't lose a ton of weight. That's not what we can lean on. Is it just hunger? Are you just eating less? Are you using less insulin? Or do you think you have insulin

Natalie 41:23
resistance, so I'm using less insulin? Yes, so I think I had a little bit of insulin resistance, even though I didn't need a lot of insulin, and the hunger, and I just feel like I spike a little bit less after meals.

Scott Benner 41:37
Yeah, correct? Then, no, you kind of got like a catch all effect from it, because you sounds like you lost a little weight, which helps with your insulin use. Sounds like you're eating less, which helps with your insulin use, and it sounds like you maybe had some insulin resistance, probably from the perimenopause, like time of your life, yeah. And it just helped you in those three different areas, and it made a big difference for you. Oh,

Natalie 41:57
I have one more thing to add to that before I forget, because it's very important. I had some shoulder problems, which is very common in type one diabetes, frozen shoulder. Yeah, I think I was heading there. It wasn't quite there yet, but I swear, a week after I started taking that, my shoulder pain went away, and it's still gone. And I had this shoulder pain for about a year.

Scott Benner 42:18
I love that. I don't know how to attribute it, but I could also tell you that I feel much better in a lot of ways that I don't know how to quantify.

Natalie 42:26
Yeah, exactly, because it's supposed to help with inflammation and stuff, right? So yeah, maybe there was some inflammation. Maybe my Yeah, frozen shoulder is a scary thing, so I'm glad that that helped with that.

Scott Benner 42:37
I had another person say to me the other day like, well, I don't want to use this forever. I was like, you think you're thinking about it wrong? Yeah, I think you're still thinking about it like it's a weight loss drug, right? Yeah, you gotta, yeah. You get to see the bigger picture a little bit. Well,

Natalie 42:52
in my my endo told me that day, if you start this, you're gonna have to use it forever. She said that because she's told me, if you stop taking it, you might gain that 10 pounds back, and then you might gain 10 more right away. So you're gonna have to use this forever. And I was like, Well, I don't care. I'm using insulin forever. Anyways, yeah,

Scott Benner 43:09
I was gonna say, was that said to you? Like, it was supposed to be scary or pejorative or

Natalie 43:12
No, I think she was just Woman to Woman, because we're about the same age. We were pregnant at the same time we you know? Yeah, she was saying, like, if you start this Natalie, like, just know that you can't just stop and expect that your body's going to be exactly the same, even though, like, I said I wasn't going to her saying I need to lose weight. I need to, you know what I mean? I really don't think that these GLP ones are just for people that need to lose weight.

Scott Benner 43:37
No, no, I don't either. I fantasize the other day. I want to make sure everyone understands this is a fantasy of mine, that they could put a tiny, tiny bit of it in insulin. You see, you didn't even have to microdose, that they just got a tiny little judge of it every once in a while, like, I don't, obviously, I'm just saying something that's probably never going to happen. Mostly, I don't imagine you could even mix them together. But I look at my daughter and I hear your story, yeah. And I think, like, like, look at you. You started with half of a beginning dose. And people should know that that beginning dose of, you know, we go V Witchers or ozempic. You out ozempic, it sounds like, yeah, right, yeah. The beginning dose of that is almost like, nominal, yeah, you took half of it,

Natalie 44:17
half of it. And I even had side effects, like, for the first few weeks, I didn't feel great, yes, I was not hungry, and that was great. But I was like, I don't know if I can do this for a long time, because I felt nauseous. I kept having a lot of low blood sugars and stuff, but I stuck it out. And after about that three month mark, I had no more nausea, nausea, I had no more, you know, of those side effects. And I was like, Yep, I'm glad that I did that, because maybe my body just needed to get used to it. Somebody

Scott Benner 44:47
in my personal life, so not somebody I spoke to through the podcast was telling me like that. They're like, Well, I've lost 25 pounds already, but like, I don't know, like I feel. And I was like, you will shut up and just keep doing it, yeah, because you're gonna come through the other side. Very likely and acquaintance of mine, somebody I knew a lot better when I was younger, probably three years older than me, went home the other night from dinner, ate dinner, stood up and died, yeah, okay. And you know, last time I saw that person, I did think like, oh, he's looking a little like pale, little heavy, little like something, and I'm sitting there all, like, thin and looking 10 years younger and everything, and he's like, Oh, you look terrific. And I said, I'm just using a GLP medication, yeah. And somebody at the table said, Oh, but aren't you gonna have to take that for the rest of your life? And I remember saying, there, well, it's better than the alternative, which is me probably having a heart attack right exactly now, six months later, he's gone like he was there while we were having that conversation, yeah? Such a hard thing to talk about, because I think we're not gonna have a full grasp of what it's doing for a really long time. And I think the full grasp is only going to come from conversations like this, where people are just telling you, hey, look, I'm seeing my shoulder stopped hurting, yeah? Or the people you want to tell you what the drug does, they're only going to do studies on it if they think it's, it's a valuable thing like and by that, I mean if they can get a lot of prescriptions out of it. So they're never going to do a study as to whether or not that major shoulder stop hurting, right, right? Yeah, that's not going to be a study if there were 80 billion people whose shoulders hurt, then they do a study on it and find out right away, because then they, then they could prescribe it for it, yeah. So a lot of this is going to be just, you know, people telling their stories, and that's what you're going to have to, that's how you're going to have to figure out what this does. But my point is, is that the dosing of it, that's frustrating to me, because Arden doesn't need a whole pen full of it. No, right? And so awesome. We can, you know, we figured out how to micro dose it for but even at that, like, I'd love to know is, like, there is there value in this being like, even less, but every day, like, I'm not asking her to take right seven, yeah, yeah, you know what I mean. But haven't you wondered? Like, yeah, how many are you? What do you shoot a week?

Natalie 46:59
Well, now I'm doing the point two five, which is the starting dose, the

Scott Benner 47:03
point two five. But imagine if it was in a vial and you took out, like, I don't know, a small percentage of that every other day. And what if it lessened some of your side effects, or whatever, I don't know. Like, yeah, I think there's so much ceiling there, and we're not going to get to it, because you can't study it that way, because then it's too variable, and if it's variable, then you can't prescribe it like that. Then they can't make right? They can't

Natalie 47:26
make any money. I look at it kind of like it's it's not insulin, but we as diabetics, we don't all have just one dose of insulin, right? That's prescribed to us. We're all so different with our metabolisms and with our needs, and you know what I mean? So I kind of look at it the same. Yeah,

Scott Benner 47:43
I agree. I think that it maybe is uniquely the people with diabetes are uniquely qualified to think about it, because they're one of the few people in the world who's accustomed to taking their medication, opening it up, and deciding for themselves how much of it to take.

Natalie 47:55
Well, exam that we know we're going to take it for the rest of our lives. So that's not a problem like that's not even a thought in my brain. It

Scott Benner 48:02
does really show you the difference between people who have to live with diabetes, or, know somebody living with it, versus somebody who doesn't because that, like, oh, but you'll have to take it forever. And I'm like, What do you care? First of all, yeah. Like, you can see where their consternation comes from. They're not accustomed to that at

Natalie 48:18
all. Right, yep. And for us, also in Canada, we're just, we're lucky, because it's not expensive here. I mean, I have to do it. I don't get it covered through my insurance, because it's, you know, I'm a type one, and that's not a thing yet. But I spend $270 for two months of two months of it. And I guess in January, they're going to start something here where they're allowed make it generically because of some sort of contract that went wrong. Yep. So they're going to be selling it for like 40 to $80

Scott Benner 48:46
a pen. You are going to start getting a lot of biosimilars in Canada. I think, I can't tell you why I know that, but there are going to be more biosimilar GLP medications in Canada in the coming couple of years. Yeah, yeah. I think it's going to become incredibly affordable. Yep, yeah, so that makes me happy. Yeah, no kidding. But even at this moment, what are you paying, like, 20 bucks a week for

Natalie 49:10
it, basically, yeah? Well, maybe a little more, yeah, because what's eight weeks divided by 270

Scott Benner 49:15
I don't know, but in today's economy, that sounds like a bag of Doritos. Like, what is things are so damn expensive now, like three gallons of gas or you Were you

Natalie 49:26
there when we still were allowed to have it compounded. I was getting it compounded, and it was a fraction of that price. So, but then they stopped that here too.

Scott Benner 49:34
So my real hope is that it could be a daily pill at some point and work as well as the injectable. I don't know if that can happen or not, but I hope for that, because I do think you're also missing out a lot of people who are just like, wow, that's a needle, right? Exactly, even last night, I took mine last night and I got it out during the day. I usually let it come to room temperature before I put it in. And I don't even know if that makes a difference. I just think it's just the thing I do. And. I forgot about it, like, I didn't do it for a couple hours, and then yesterday I was kind of like, rushing around the end of the day and the pen sit, and I was like, Oh, let me just do this while I'm thinking about it, I didn't even have time to come up and record and do the whole thing I usually do for the weight loss diary, because also my journey through all this is, like, really changing now, like, I don't want to talk about it here, but you'll hear it at some point in that weight loss diary, like I've lost the weight now. Yeah, it's weird to be where I'm at right now. Yeah, I know I need the thing. And so I grab it, and there's like, a half a second where I hold it up and I'm like, I hope this doesn't hit, like a, like a blood vessel or something, or hurt, or something like that, you know what I mean, like, and I had that pause. I was like, Oh, don't hurt. Then I put it in. I thought, I wonder how many people are stopped by that who would take a pill? If, for sure? Yeah, if it existed, there's got to be a lot of them. Yeah, no kidding. I appreciate you talking about that. It's still a lot of people give people crap about it. So there's still people not wanting to talk about it all the time. So I appreciate that. So yeah, you talked about, in your note about, like, a constant learning and growth with type one diabetes. And I just, I mean, you've had it for so long, and you know, you're, like you said, Now, using a CGM and a pump and using a GLP, like, you're obviously on the cutting edge of this here. You're one algorithm away from being, you know, as cutting edge as possible. Yeah, tell me about the journey. Like, what sticks out in your mind when you think about it? About It? Well,

Natalie 51:23
I just remember so much about being a young adult and a teenager and how differently I lived to now, and I really am proud of myself. Where I, you know, where I've come like, and a lot of people that have issues, I, you know, they're complaining about it all the time, but I just choose to, like, Okay, if this is my life, this is how I have to live, and that's

Scott Benner 51:46
it. Yeah, was there a time in your life where you were complaining about all the time, 100 of

Natalie 51:50
course, I remember being a kid and telling my parents, I wish you guys didn't have me, because this happened to me. It's your fault. You know what? I mean?

Scott Benner 51:59
Awesome. Yeah, I bet you, they're thrilled

Natalie 52:01
well, and I'm sure that that happens with others. Like as a kid, you feel sorry for yourself and you feel you should because, well, not you should. I don't know how to explain it, but it's just, it's it's hard. It's a hard thing for kids. And I guess I'm kind of glad I was in the era of scare tactics. My mom used to tell me, if you don't take care of yourself, I'm going to be walking you down that aisle in a wheelchair. You know, I remember doctors telling me you're going to be blind by the time you're 30, you're going to lose your fingers and toes, like there was a lot of scare tactics. So I think that that's always played in the back of my mind too sticks.

Scott Benner 52:34
Did you ever develop any kind of eating disorders or anything along the way?

Natalie 52:37
No, not eating disorders, just that constant hunger. I think I maybe a disordered exercise. I think that I kind of am, but that's okay. There could be worse things to be addicted to. I guess I would eat and then go exercise as much as I could to try to try to make up for it. But I'm in the gym doing a lot of weight training now, because that's super important at this age. And also using a GLP one, you want to make sure to get as much muscle on your body as you can. But I went through the whole, you know, being addicted to running, being addicted to spin classes, being addicted to yoga, like just everything, and I couldn't really feel good about myself in a day unless I did that. And now it's more of a okay, I'm doing it because it makes me feel good, but also because I want to live long and and I don't have to worry about weight because that's taken care of. Yeah, you know,

Scott Benner 53:26
it's a beautiful thing to be lifted off your shoulders, too. Yeah, I can't tell you how much more freeing it is. I'm doing a talk in a couple weeks somewhere. It might be sooner than I think I haven't thought once about like, what I'll look like while I'm doing it, and that's such a great thing to not have to think about. Well,

Natalie 53:44
exactly that was like me. I was in Greece for five weeks this summer, and, you know, I'm 47 years old, and I didn't, at one time, ever think, oh, I don't want to put my bikini on and go to the beach like I was ready, you know, yeah. And that's a nice feeling to have at my age.

Scott Benner 54:01
I sat on the beach in a chase lounge this year, and Arden took my picture. And I didn't like, go, Oh no, don't do that. Yeah. It just happened. And I was like, okay with it, yeah. And I know that sounds like such a small thing, but you know, I think there are things that live in your head. I'll share this here. This happened this morning, yep. And I think people know that. You know, generally speaking, I don't count myself as a very like anxious person or anything like that, right, right? Oh, I see problems. I try to take care of them before that kind of stuff. I have two brothers, and one's five years younger than me, one's five years younger than him, okay? And the middle brother text this morning. We have a chain. We talk together and all the time, and he says he's been using the JLP. Now my brother had pre diabetes, right? As did my mom, my dad, so his mom, his dad, his grandfather, great grandmother. Like a lot of type two diabetes are in my family side. I'm adopted, but yeah, and so he was gaining weight. His a 1c was going up. She. Playing all this stuff. They got him on Metformin. It's making him miserable. You know, he's not his a one. CDE is not going down. It's not helping anything. They finally get him to start a GLP over maybe two years ago now, a year ago, he's talking this morning about, My God, my weights here. It's never been this low before. I feel terrific. Blah, blah, blah. I was finally able to get it for his wife. She's already lost 25 pounds, helping her with some other stuff. I'm just happy to see him texting that he's doing well. Our little brother pops in, congratulates him, etc. Two hours later, I'm doing the dishes and I'm wearing my headphones. I'm listening to a podcast. I don't know how the rest of you have your text set up, but my texts get like, announced and read to me while I'm wearing my headphones, right? And my brother, my youngest brother, has been in the middle of a reorganization of this job for a couple years now. His company bought another company, but somehow the company they bought, that's the leadership they were using, not his like. So his company bought it, but the leadership came from the place that was bought. So he was in a lot of flux. He didn't know where he didn't know where he was going to be with his job, and he texts that he got a job offer today, you know, which was a big deal, because they're going to move him into another position, but moreover, they're planning on keeping him. He was very worried that he wasn't going to get to stay. The text gets right into my ear, and I burst into tears. I don't mean like, a little bit like, I didn't have a tear come out. I got uncontrollably, started crying, huh? I realized, you know, in the in the half an hour afterwards, first of all, Arden walked in the room. Eventually, she's like, Were you crying? And I was like, I wasn't. I did tell her why. And I said, I think I've been worried about my brothers for 40 years, like, you know what I mean, and then in the last year, in the last two years, you know, the youngest ones, like, really worried. He's like, I think I might lose my job here, not even because I'm bad at it or nothing, but because, you know, there's going to be an overlapping and what if I'm not the guy they choose to stay and blah, blah, blah. And I've been worried about him, but I but if you would have asked me yesterday, are you worried about your brother, I would have said, No, right, you know what I mean, like, but I obviously in the background somewhere. I

Natalie 57:02
was, yeah, you weren't consciously aware. And then,

Scott Benner 57:05
I mean, honestly, like, my eyes popped open and water came flying out, and I was like, I had to, like, I was so grateful he was okay, yeah. And then I started thinking, like, how much other stuff in my life is it in there? You know what I mean? Then I started thinking about, God, imagine how much I care about these kids compared to my brother's like, yeah, background stuff that's pressuring you all the time that you never know about, like, what am I gonna look like when I get to this talk and I have to stand up on the stage in front of these right? I think you don't realize that that's probably with you all the time, and just that one thing being lift is really awesome,

Natalie 57:38
well, and it's okay to have those thoughts, you know what I mean, like, it's okay to want to look good and feel good.

Scott Benner 57:45
I do think we probably went through a social time where you weren't allowed to say that. You know, right exactly, but I do think that might be gone now too. Yeah, and I'm not embarrassed to tell you that this is better, Yep, yeah, for sure, for sure. I feel better now. So

Natalie 58:01
I have a girlfriend at work, same age, about the same age as me. She's not a diabetic, but she's wanting to help herself and stuff. And I convinced her to do what I did to start because she tried a GLP one before, and it made her really sick. So I'm like, why don't you try to do it like I did, stick to it. Just take a small dose for a few months, and I bet you, you're going to feel better a week later, she's already like, Yep, I can tell that I've, I've been using it, but I don't have that same sickness. So thank you.

Scott Benner 58:28
Yeah, to my sister in law, 2020, some pounds in like, three weeks. And yeah, and she had to really fight for it too, by the way, I still bumped into somebody the other day. Was like, Oh, are you taking that drug? Because you don't have willpower. And I was like, Wow, awesome. Yeah, just in this conversation, you the person you just told me about that you helped my brother, my sister in law, me, my wife, my daughter's insulin resistance, all the other little things. And trying to keep in mind the idea of, like, all the stuff that you're shouldering mentally that you don't realize from stuff like this, yeah, I don't think anybody could hear those stories and then be pretty about it later. Oh, right, of course. I just think they don't know when they're saying, oh, that's you took that drug because you don't have any willpower. Like, awesome, yeah, yeah, no kidding. Tell me a little more about your mental illness. You were saying about the running. I always think of people who run, oh yeah, yeah, as as hiding something or covering something.

Natalie 59:27
Maybe I was, and maybe it was just, I really do find that exercise gives me that drug that people talk about you get addicted to. It really does okay so, and I really got it with running, yeah, long distances or anything, but I would go push myself for, you know, five, seven kilometers, and be hitting really good times.

Scott Benner 59:47
You know, I like that. You think seven kilometers isn't a long distance, right?

Natalie 59:51
Yeah, but, you know, it for me, it wasn't, and it was great and, and I just find that now in a different way, that's not so so much. Cardio. I need that drug, and that's where I get

Scott Benner 1:00:02
it. Yeah, I'm not saying it's a bad I think exercise is terrific, and I do think it's a great way to, like, relieve stress and anxiety, and I think it does help people with their mental health to a certain degree as well. Yeah, there's a lady I can picture right now running around my neighborhood, and when she's running, I keep thinking, like, what's she running from?

Yeah, yeah. It seems like something.

Natalie 1:00:22
Maybe she's just happy she's not in jail. I don't know

Scott Benner 1:00:26
that'd be great if what she's thinking is, if I wasn't running like this, I'd be killing people. Yeah, my gosh. What else have we not talked about? Like, like, I really want you to, because you're a podcast person, you're gonna know if this sucks. No, I think we did really good. Oh, well, no. I mean, I did terrific, but I know you, you were excellent too. Like you could tell you really pivoted. Well, through this conversation, there's some people who, when I zig and zag, I can hear the pause like they're almost like, Oh, we're not talking about that thing anymore. But you did not do that once. You just kept well, that was awesome, but I don't want to cut you short, though, like, I want to make sure, like, you know, I understand why you came on. I understand your story, understand the value found in different things. Is there anything else to be if a diabetes a long time? Like, I don't want to say something cliche, like, you have a message.

Natalie 1:01:15
I want to kind of give a shout out to to the parents out there, like, this is crazy, and I want all the parents to know that eventually, if you're going through a rough time, it gets better. Like I went through all of that stuff as a teenager, and I kind of needed to figure it out on my own, and I did, you know, like you can't say anything. Like my mom told me, If you don't take care of yourself, I'm going to be pushing you down a down the aisle in a wheelchair? Well, that never happened, and I just had to figure those things out on my own. Yeah, yeah, the key

Scott Benner 1:01:50
to that, because I believe that's completely true. How do you give away the idea that, what if they don't get to it fast enough, or they have a real problem in between, like, how do I how do I keep them healthy now and let them have these experiences so that they can be healthy later as adults? That's like the it's at the million dollar question, right in there?

Natalie 1:02:08
Well, 100% because some of us maybe just had better or had good DNA, right? Like, yeah, maybe if I was somebody else, because I do know of a lot of people that have had things go sideways, maybe just my body let me live through all of that and still be okay. You know what? I mean?

Scott Benner 1:02:26
Yeah, it's funny, because this comes up a lot, and I'm always caught at the crossroads of this idea, like it worked out for you. So that's an easy thing for you to say. Right now, if I found another 47 year old person who said, Oh, you know, it took me 20 years to get to it, I had to it, I had to get to it on my own, but I got to take care of myself. I do have trigger finger now, neuropathy, and I'm starting to have a little trouble feeling my feet right. Yeah. Then all of a sudden, the how you receive that message is, is awfully different.

Natalie 1:02:53
Well, now that you bring that up, I will mention I have, I do have du Pre syndrome, and I've had many trigger fingers. I've had to have surgery on those, but it's been about six years now, and my hands feel great, and I attribute that to taking better care of myself and stuff too. So I think that some of the things that can that come up can be reversed or not made any worse. You know what I mean?

Scott Benner 1:03:19
Yeah, no, I appreciate so by the time you get to me, what do you need me for? Like, I know you enjoy it, but like, didn't you already have the information from the doctors and the pregnancy? Like, what do you take out of this? Then what do

Natalie 1:03:32
I have you for? Well, like I said, just those little tidbits of learning every day. Like, I'm inspired when I listen to the podcast, even if it's, you know, not relevant to my life, or just, I just really like it, and this is where I found most of the information that I enjoy getting. From a young age. I didn't like to go sit with a doctor, because doctors can be very, you know, gaslighting. They can be very demeaning. They can be very I'm sure there's some good ones out there, but I haven't really experienced any, even the one I have now, she's great, but she's very militant, and sometimes I feel like when I'm talking to her, I'm a child, and I don't really like that, you know what I mean? So that's important, and I just really hope that anybody that's struggling finds you and can help, that it can help them as well, you

Scott Benner 1:04:21
know. Thank you. So are you telling me that, like, it keeps you connected? Yeah, yeah. I guess, like, the pregnancy made you focus, and maybe this is keeping you focused. I guess, yeah. Isn't that interesting that you don't really I find that that's so fascinating because I don't know either like, I want to be, I want to be 1,000,000% clear to anybody listening, or to you, Natalie, that I am aware of how valuable the podcast is because of all the feedback that comes from it. Yeah, but if you told me to sit down right now and, like, write out a master plan of why the podcast is valuable, like, I don't know that I even understand that exactly right. You know what I mean? Like, so, like, I almost asked you guys the question, thinking one of you is going to explain to me what it is. I do well, because

Natalie 1:05:01
sometimes you're very hard on yourself and you don't think you do enough, but I don't think you really realize how much you've done for even the old school, you know, old school people like me, honestly,

Scott Benner 1:05:13
that's nice. I appreciate you saying that. You know, yeah, so I'm happy that the podcast I was thinking the other day, actually, you know what? It's super interesting that you're that you said that the way you just said it, because I just put up a post on Instagram, which, by the way, nobody will see because I'm old and nobody follows me on Instagram. But I put up a post. It's a review for the podcast from March of 2015 right along with a review for the podcast from like, two days ago, right? And the truth is, they're the same review, uh huh. And I was super proud of the consistency that I think I've brought to this, yeah, because it's 10 years later, 11 seasons of the podcast. So it's, it's, you know, 10 on the calendar, 11 for my life, making the show. And somebody had an experience two weeks ago that was incredibly positive and rooted in the same things that somebody had that same experience in March of 2015 and I thought, like, that's so cool, but I'm different now. Like, I don't do the podcast the same way as I used to. I'm I'm, I think I'm a better listener. I don't try as hard to be funny. Like, I think there's things I've done over the years that have changed this. But still, there's something at the core of it, and the reason it bothers me so much

Speaker 1 1:06:25
is because I do think we could bottle it right. Like I

Scott Benner 1:06:30
do think there's a way for other people who aren't podcast listeners or are never going to find this or whatever. Like I do think there's got to be like, you know, not your militant doctor, not your mom's trying to scare you like I think there's a mix of the whole thing, a potion that could be brought up, and I think that could be sprinkled over a lot of people, and they could have a lot of great outcomes. And I do think the answer exists inside of this podcast. I just don't know what it is. Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. And I think that when you hear me being hard on me, it's me trying to figure out what it is before it's too late. And too late can mean anything. Too late could be me getting too old to do it. Too late could mean podcasts stop being a thing. Too Late could mean the advertisers tell me to go to hell and I can't afford to keep making it like there's a lot of things that could bring this to an end that aren't my decision

Natalie 1:07:24
could maybe okay, but it's on the internet, so it's there forever.

Scott Benner 1:07:29
Yeah, I know, but that doesn't work that way. Because if it worked that way, we'd also be watching mash every night, because that show was pretty perfect, I guess. Yeah, if it worked, seriously, go right now and go watch mash. You'll love it. It's awesome,

Natalie 1:07:41
but nobody, no, I hated it as a kid when my dad would always put it on, but

Scott Benner 1:07:45
that's fine. I loved it. Okay, you go find another show that you loved 40 years ago, and I'm telling you, you could still watch it now, right? Yeah, yeah. We keep changing. So one day, this podcast will dry up and blow away like it just will, and there's going to be another person named Natalie who could really benefit from it, and they'll never even know it existed, and that that vexes me. So when you're hearing me be hard on myself, like some version of that story is what's in the back of my head, right? Yeah, okay, yeah. Don't think I'm magical or perfect or I am really trying to tell you that I don't know what the blend is, but the blend works. Yeah, yeah, but I can't remake it. It's almost like, you know, it's like me trying to remake my grandmother's stuffing, right? I don't think I'm doing it. I'm just, I'm just getting close to it, and I and I'm worried that, like, that's what's gonna happen to the podcast one day, is that other people will just be out there going, like, I think this was about what he meant, and we won't know. I don't know. It's a very weird position to be in to create something that's been this impactful for so many people, and that I can't really functionally explain to you what it is. Yeah, it's interesting. So well it it

Natalie 1:08:53
took a strong person like you to make it happen, so that we're all thankful

Scott Benner 1:08:58
you're you're like, Thank you. You're the celebrity of type one, Natalie, I would like it if you walked behind me and said something like that about every 45 minutes. That was nothing. Be Awesome. I'm gonna give you my phone number. You just text me inspirational stuff. That's only for me, right? Exactly, but that'd be a nice business.

Natalie 1:09:17
Well, I need to start my own business at some point, because I have a lot of things on my mind all the time. You know what I mean? I just need to learn how to, how to get it out there.

Scott Benner 1:09:26
I just, can I tell you what my first business idea was, that I'm so always going to be absolutely just distraught that I didn't try. What's that? Dirty greeting cards. Dirty greeting cards, yes, like, really filthy, explicitly not what you expect on a greeting card. Greeting Cards, right?

Natalie 1:09:48
Well, that you could probably still do

Scott Benner 1:09:50
that. Does anybody use a greeting card now? Well, maybe they can start. Can you really shock people at this point?

Natalie 1:09:55
Well, that's, that's, that would be the hard part. You're right. Yeah.

Scott Benner 1:09:59
I. I don't know my best I can't even tell you it's so disgusting. Natalie, never mind. But anyway, I thought they would sell. Like, great,

Natalie 1:10:06
yeah, yeah. Well, everybody, there's a niche for everything, right?

Scott Benner 1:10:11
Can you imagine that I just said I had an idea and I thought it was so disgusting I couldn't tell you, and I'm not telling you, and that the people who really listen to the podcast, like, usually he says that, then he says it anyway, but he's not gonna say,

Natalie 1:10:22
like, what is he? What is really underneath all of this? Let me just

Scott Benner 1:10:26
tell you what it was. It was, um, I can't, no, it was about Santa Claus and the frequency in which he comes to see you. Oh, anyway, yeah, that's funny. I made one by hand once and gave it to my friend for Christmas. Yeah, and we were pretty young, and his Mom hung it on the refrigerator because she thought it was hilarious, yeah, well, but when I came to the house and it was on the refrigerator, I was mortified.

Natalie 1:10:56
Yeah, that's funny. But did you know Santa only comes once a year?

Scott Benner 1:11:02
Yeah, that was the crux of the joke. There was more setup. The joke was in the setup. I don't really need to explain it all to you, but nevertheless, it was, I think, the greatest Christmas card ever, yeah, and although one year, I did take a classic manger scene and painstakingly photoshopped the faces of my family into the manger scene and sent it out, and it was a beautiful image, like, really, like a gorgeous, rich, lush image, and never told anybody that our faces were in it, right? And so some people noticed, and some people didn't, and it was absolutely fantastic. But my son was the, oh no, our dog was one of the, I don't know, burrows in the or something. There was an animal in the image, and one of them was our dog, and his face was on the animal. I think Arden was like the baby G it was the whole thing. But I really enjoyed the hell out of it. Some people, you're creative outlet. Some people were offended. I just want to say, all right, you're really awesome. I appreciate you doing this. Oh, thank you. I don't know what to call this episode. We didn't even make a name. Yeah, at one point I said, it's a million dollar question. I wondered how much that was in loonies. And then I thought maybe we could call it the whatever loonies question, or we

Natalie 1:12:20
could call it like Did my daughter almost Mary Bon Jovi son, I don't know.

Scott Benner 1:12:24
It gets very wordy. Yeah, Natalie, we can't do it. But hold on a second. How many loonies in 1 million US dollars? Let's see if this maybe it'll be

Natalie 1:12:38
not enough. And let me tell you I was like I said, just in Greece, and our Canadian money compared to the euro is terrible.

Scott Benner 1:12:47
But I could call this episode, apparently, the 1.390 Looney dollar question. You could here's where we do this. Natalie, watch this. This is what would usually happen after we pause the show and I say goodbye to you. But instead, I'll do it before I say goodbye. Okay, watch this. Hey, Rob. We cursed a number of times this. I said for sure. I said a couple of. I might have said bull. You'll decide if it flows or not. And I can't find a title for this one, so if you hear it, can you please pull it out and put it in the notes for me. That's what I would just said after I got done recording so Rob could hear it. Awesome. Yeah. All right. Thank you so much. Natalie. Hold on one second for me. Okay.

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