#1332 Sausage on a Stick

October 15, 2024Scott Benner

Andy had to figure out diabetes on her own.

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Scott Benner 0:00
Welcome back, friends to the juicebox podcast.

Andy is the mom of a child with type one diabetes. Her daughter was diagnosed at two years old. She realized that her daughter's health was not going to be okay if she listened to her doctor, so she went out on her own to figure out what to do. Please don't forget that nothing you hear on the juicebox podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your healthcare plan or becoming bold with insulin to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com All you have to do is use the offer code juicebox at checkout. That's juicebox at checkout to save 40% at cozy earth.com don't forget if you're a US resident who has type one or is the caregiver of someone with type one, visit T, 1d exchange.org/juicebox right now and complete that survey. It will take you 10 minutes to complete the survey, and that effort alone will help to move type one diabetes research forward. It will cost you nothing to help if you're looking for community around type one diabetes, check out the juicebox podcast. Private, Facebook group juicebox podcast, type one diabetes.

The episode you're listening to is sponsored by us Med, usmed.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, you can get your diabetes testing supplies the same way we do from us Med, this episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by the Eversense CGM, an implantable six month sensor. Is what you get with Eversense, but you get so much more exceptional and consistent accuracy over six months and distinct on body vibe alerts when you're high or low. On body vibe alerts. You don't even know what that means. Do you ever sense cgm.com/juicebox? Go find out. This show is sponsored today by the glucagon that my daughter carries, gvoke hypopen. Find out more at gvoke glucagon.com. Forward, slash juice box.

Andy 2:24
Hey, y'all. My name is Andy. We're from North Texas. My daughter, Lorelai has type one diabetes and celiac

Scott Benner 2:29
disease. Have we rescheduled this a number of times? No, we haven't. Your name reminds me of someone else's name then

Andy 2:38
you called us on Christmas.

Scott Benner 2:41
Oh, that's part of the reason, not the complete reason. Though I feel like it's been on my schedule forever. How long have we had this booked

Andy 2:47
for? I think I booked it in September of last year. Oh, wait,

Scott Benner 2:53
October, November, December, January, February, March, April. That was eight months ago. Jeez, I'm embarrassed for you know what? I'm not it's an embarrassment of riches. Let's call it that, that it takes so long to get on the show. Where do you find out it takes six more months for it to come

Andy 3:08
out? Oh, yeah, I know my husband thought this was live. He was like, Oh, are we gonna get to watch this? When I get home from work tonight, like, No, dude, you're gonna be lucky if it comes out in six months. Yeah.

Scott Benner 3:17
You gotta stay alive and healthy if you want to see this. This is like a Star Wars movie. You gotta willfully be alive for the next one. Okay. Andy, it's funny. So you have, let's see a child with type one diabetes. Yes. Lorelei, yes. And she is how old

Andy 3:35
she is about to be six. She will be six in June.

Scott Benner 3:38
Okay, how old was she when she was diagnosed, it was

Andy 3:41
just she was two. She was like, a week before her second birthday.

Scott Benner 3:45
Okay, the name is from the TV show or no, yes, and tell people

Andy 3:53
about six months after she was born. My husband's best friend sent me a Facebook message with a link to a song called Lorelei from the band clutch with a message attached. I think it's awesome that you named your daughter man eater. There's the PSA to everybody. Make sure you know what you're naming your children before you name them. Because Lorelei sounds like a beautiful name, but if you look up the the meaning behind it and the folklore or the Rhine River in Germany. It's not as, uh, pretty. It's

Scott Benner 4:24
not as much fun. But what TV show Am I thinking of? It's Gilmore Girls. I

Andy 4:28
make Gilmore Girls junkie.

Scott Benner 4:30
That's fine. I know a lot of ladies who are, don't worry, and a few guys, if I'm being honest, hey, that's awesome. Those guys are usually drug into it by a lady. But nevertheless, it's fine. I've avoided it. That's one I've that's one I've dodged. I dodged those and singing competitions.

Andy 4:47
Oh yeah, my mom and my sister into the singing competitions and like, the tattoo competition shows. I don't really watch those.

Scott Benner 4:53
I did love the glass blowing one on Netflix. I watched. Like, a full two, like, I feel like I watched two seasons of it, then it came out again. I turned it back on. I was like, Oh, I'm done with this. And I just completely didn't care after that, I

Andy 5:08
think we watched some of that. My husband does blacksmithing stuff as a hobby. He's a he's been a pharmacy tech for God, 21 years with a big box retail store. He took that up just as just something fun to do, and we watched that. What? It's a show. It's like fire and something that they do a blacksmithing competition.

Scott Benner 5:29
I think I've heard of it. Yeah, forged in fire. Oh, yeah, you're Yeah, you're exactly right. So he is a, what does he do for a living? He's

Andy 5:38
a pharmacy technician. He's a manager of the store that he works at,

Scott Benner 5:42
and it is free time. He makes horseshoes and other things like that. No,

Andy 5:46
he makes knives and swords, and he's an avid hunter. He does draw hunts. Him and his best friend and their family sign up for draw hunts in the state of Texas, and if you get picked, you go on random hunts. And he's been to the Lubbock area to hunt mule deer, and he was just down, I know I'm gonna say it wrong. It's down by the Mexican border to hunt Gator for manage, like wildlife management. And he just brought home an 11 foot, 348 pound alligator. What

Scott Benner 6:19
will you be doing with that eating a day. Imagine, yes, okay, yep, it's,

Andy 6:23
it's all processed in our freezer. And, you know, lorela has celiac, so there's a lot of things that we can't just go eat, because most restaurants don't, don't make that stuff gluten free. So when he gets a hold of an animal like this, like we'll have a big Gator fry, we'll do gator tail, and she'll have her own little gluten free plate.

Scott Benner 6:42
Well, it's lovely. I've had Gator nuggets. Yeah, before. They were not bad. They weren't exactly like people are like, it's like chicken. And then I bit, I was like, have you had chicken? This isn't exactly like chicken, but, but I didn't dislike them. Has he ever done or applied to be in one of those hog hunts? Because there aren't wild hogs like a real problem in Texas. Yeah,

Andy 7:05
pretty much if you have a lease or you have somebody that gives you permission to go on their property, I think hogs are year round because they're so overrun. It's just like coyotes, they're so overrun, and they they mess with livestock too. So interesting. That's those are kind of free game

Scott Benner 7:21
interesting. Okay, well, does he sell his knives?

Andy 7:24
No, it's just kind of hobby. He's made stuff for friends, like we run around with two of our friends that are married, and for their wedding, he made them His and Her knives, and he's made spears and stuff to do do some of his hunts. Let's

Scott Benner 7:40
hope they don't use those, his and her knives on each other when things get tough. I'm gonna make them listen to this now, what a story that would be like. Remember that lovely gift I gave them at their wedding? Well, one night, they got into a fight about 16 years later. Oh, they're not Canadian, though they're not Canadian, they won't stab each other. They'll, uh, Dear God, Canadians love to step Oh, that's just something I've heard. Alright, so I've spoken to you on the phone before. Yeah, briefly.

Andy 8:06
You posted something on Facebook. I think it's Christmas Eve 2023 post, post your information here, and I'll give you a call. I think we talked for like five minutes New Year's Eve. Maybe it's, yeah, New Year's, Oh,

Scott Benner 8:18
yeah. I get very bored on New Year's Eve. I hate it. It's like it feels New Year's Eve feels like a wasted day to me for some reason, because I don't drink and I don't care to sit up and watch Dolly Parton sing with someone else at midnight or whatever ends up happening, and so, but there's nothing to do because the world kind of closes down. Yeah. So I was like, I'm gonna call people from the podcast. Oh, I did that. How was I? Was I Okay, yeah,

Andy 8:47
it was great. Oh, well,

Scott Benner 8:48
you have to say great. But I just mean it wasn't like you didn't hang up the phone and then think, what a waste of time. We should not have done that. No. Oh, very nice. Okay, well, what makes you want to come on the podcast there, Andy, if you take insulin or Sulfonyl ureas, you are at risk for your blood sugar going too low. You need a safety net when it matters most, be ready with G Vogue hypopen. My daughter carries G voc hypo pen everywhere she goes, because it's a ready to use rescue pen for treating very low blood sugar in people with diabetes, ages two and above that, I trust low blood sugar. Emergencies can happen unexpectedly and they demand quick action. Luckily, jivo kypopen can be administered in two simple steps, even by yourself in certain situations. Show those around you where you store GEVO kypoped and how to use it. They need to know how to use GVO kypo pen before an emergency situation happens. Learn more about why GEVO kypo Pen is in Arden's diabetes toolkit at gvoke, glucagon.com/juicebox, gvoke shouldn't be used if you have a tumor in the gland on the top of your kidneys or. Called a pheochromocytoma, or if you have a tumor in your pancreas called an insulinoma, visit gvoke, glucagon.com/risk, for safety information. Really,

Andy 10:11
I just we're about 40, almost four years in, so June 17 of this year will make four years type one diabetes, and I feel like we've just moved so fast through all the information and all the technology, and just kind of sharing our experience with it, and also just, you know, no matter where you are in this journey, just maybe hearing that you can keep going, and kind of also reiterating the fact that groups like the juicebox podcast, that's where the hope lies. I think, our diagnosis, our story, my daughter's diagnosis story, it wasn't that traumatic. I don't think, I mean, it sucked, don't get me wrong. But it wasn't like she was moments from a coma or anything. But the overall, I guess, idea at the hospital is this is, is as good as it gets. Don't ask for more. I don't know if you've seen the movie, Forgetting Sarah Marshall, where Paul Rudd is telling Jason Siegel to pop up on the board, and then he does, and he's like, No, you're doing too much. Get down and he pop up on the board. He does it again, or he just sits there and he's like, No, you're not doing enough. Pop up on the board. That's what our hospital experience felt like. And I just, I've gained so much information and have been able to implement it that if I can, in turn, give back to at least one person with even just my voice, I'd love the opportunity to do it. Well,

Scott Benner 11:36
let's do that then. So you said you moved through technology very quickly. What does that mean?

Andy 11:42
So we did MDI for a year, about 13 months, six months into it is around the time that I found the podcast, and then simultaneously below carb group. And so I was using pre bolusing with lower carb foods, which allowed me it gave us a break. I feel like her sugars stayed notoriously in the four hundreds for the first six months. I mean, there was no there was just no break from it. And then we were just kind of damned if we do, damned if we don't, with long, lasting insulin, and that if I gave it to her at night, she'd tank if I gave it to her, if I didn't give it to her. Her blood sugar was 300 when she woke up. And so implementing a lot of the strategies from the Pro Tip series, bold beginnings and variables, and then the low carb community, it kind of gave me that time to practice with everything without it being intense. And then I was able to find I port because of the podcast Nice. So I jumped on that bandwagon. We actually got a call from Medtronic when Texas was in that apocalyptic freeze in 2021 I remember that. And I had a two year old new a two year old diabetic and a two month old newborn. My son, Eli, and we were at our neighbor's house because we were up without power for seven days. Oh, and Medtronic gave me a call, and they're like, Hey, we're ready to ship out your I port order. And I'm like, yes, yes, we need that. So going through using I port for about six, seven months, I was able to take some more information from the podcast and give the basal insulin in the morning, maybe an hour before we did her breakfast insulin, I was able to correct more and get her down to like an A 1c of 5.6 5.7 look at you. And then we moved to a pump. Had the same problems with the arrows pods that we did with MDI. She'd go to bed, go low. And it was probably two months of doing that that I jumped on the bandwagon with another person in the low carb community who has been a really big cheerleader for us to start DIY looping. And she helped us get started on that. From there, I haven't looked back. We we did the virtual machine, turning the windows computer into a max system. My husband did all of that, bless his heart. Then in 2023 they came out with browser build. And so then I painstakingly taught myself how to do that. It only took me four hours the first time.

Scott Benner 14:13
It's not bad, actually, I can't even take credit for doing it myself. I still lean on other people, I have to be perfectly honest. Yeah, I

Andy 14:21
messed it up so bad, and when we were building the caregiver app, because that was the one thing that I wanted for my daughter to go to kindergarten this year, was I'm not going to deal with the doctor's orders. You know? I know the doctors have to have some kind of system in place, and they can't have diabetics over here doing something and diabetics over here doing something else, and it can create chaos. I understand that, but their orders are conservative on the DMP, they don't want her corrected unless she's over 240 and they only want one correction every four hours. And I'm just like, man, nope. So we got help through the loop community. There's a. Moderator named Dan. I'm gonna give him a shout out, because he put up with me while we were trying to build the caregiver app. He was very gracious and kind. He's from Germany, and made time to to FaceTime me to actually get it all figured out. Well,

Scott Benner 15:13
when you say put up with you. Do you think, like, if he heard this right now, he'd be like, Oh, Andy, she was a pain in the ass, like, that kind of thing. Or no, no. He was

Andy 15:21
really, really nice. He was like, everybody thinks I'm like, a grumpy old man. He's like, he's really young. I think he's in his 20s. But if he doesn't have children, it's probably my fault, because both of my children decided to scream like banshees while I was on FaceTime with him, and it was nuts. Like, you want birth control call my house, because my two kids, as soon as I get on the phone, if they're here, it's like World War Three colors.

Scott Benner 15:45
I have always disliked ordering diabetes supplies. I'm guessing you have as well. It hasn't been a problem for us for the last few years, though, because we began using us Med, you can too us med.com/juice, box, or call 888-721-1514, to get your free benefits check us med has served over 1 million people living with diabetes since 1996 they carry everything you need, from CGMS to insulin pumps and diabetes testing supplies and more. I'm talking about all the good ones, all your favorites, libre three, Dexcom, g7 and pumps like OmniPod five, OmniPod dash tandem, and most recently, the I let pump from beta bionics, the stuff you're looking for, they have it at us. Med, 888-721-1514, or go to us. Med.com/juicebox, to get started now use my link to support the podcast. That's us, med.com/juicebox, or call 888-721-1514, this episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by the only six month wear implantable CGM on the market, and it's very unique. So you go into an office, it's, I've actually seen an insertion done online, like a live one, like, well, they recorded it. The entire video is less than eight minutes long, and they're talking most of the time. The insertion took no time at all, right? So you go into the office, they insert the sensor. Now it's in there and working for six months. You go back six months later, they pop out that one put in another one. So two office visits a year to get really accurate and consistent CGM data. That's neither here nor there for what I'm trying to say. So this thing's under your skin, right? And you then wear a transmitter over top of it. Transmitters got this nice, gentle silicon adhesive that you change daily, so very little chance of having skin irritations. That's a plus. So you put the transmitter on. It talks to your phone app, tells you your blood sugar, your alerts, your alarms, etc. But if you want to be discreet, for some reason, you take the transmitter off, just loop comes right off. No, like, you know, not like peeling at or having to rub off adhesive. It just kind of pops right off the silicon stuff really cool, you'll say it, and now you're ready for your big day. Whatever that day is. It could be a prom or a wedding, or just a moment when you don't want something hanging on your arm. The Eversense CGM allows you to do that without wasting a sensor, because you just take the transmitter off, and then when you're ready to use it again, you pop it back on. Maybe you just want to take a shower without rocking a sensor with a bar of soap. Just remove the transmitter and put it back on when you're ready. Ever sense cgm.com/juicebox, you really should check it out. Well, you know what you said that really just caught my attention. I mean, all of it was very interesting, but what just caught my attention is that you somehow married this podcast with a low carb lifestyle, and you did it really well in the beginning, right? I don't know if you still do it or not, does she? So,

Andy 18:54
yeah, hold on one second. The nurse is texting me almost what? Almost lunchtime. Read

Scott Benner 19:00
the read the text out loud, if you will. Okay,

Andy 19:02
her blood sugar's 83 and the nurse is asking, I'll just give half of the insulin, right?

Scott Benner 19:08
What do you think

Andy 19:10
I'm telling her, Yes, give half. Okay, I have a series of alarms on my phone throughout the day. By the way. I'm not working home with my children, so for anybody that's working and it's like, God, how do you do all of this? Well, I I'm not. I don't have a job. I'm a bum. So her first alarm goes off at 1015 that lets me know lunch is coming up. 1045 that lets me know that, hey, if we've done a split bolus, I need to go back in and give her the rest of the insulin. 1145 that's just hey, check for fat and protein, and recess is coming up. See what her blood sugar is. We may need to turn her pump down. 1250 is, hey, we're going off to PE let's double check make sure pump is turned down, unless she doesn't need that. And then 145 is, Hey, make sure she's getting to the nurse for insulin, for snack. But as far as the low cost. Community, I was full force, low carb when it first, when I first started doing it, and it was just one meal at a time, one meal at a time. Practice it, see how it works. And the biggest difference for me was, if my kid isn't going to eat it, I'm not going to make her eat it. Okay, so we'll, we'll try it. But if it's something that she just won't eat, she's got to eat food I'm not going to, not going to break my neck trying to get her to eat something that she thinks tastes bad. So we started with like breakfast, like birch benders, waffles and sugar free syrup and things like that. And just really getting practicing the meal and getting the insulin dosing down and the timing down, and that works really great for probably six to eight months. And I mean, gosh, her her lowest, a 1c. Been a 5.2 but where it started changing flipping script on us was when she needed coverage for the fat and protein. And I didn't know how to do it. I attempted using the R insulin, the regular insulin that's just over the counter at the pharmacy, but there was really no method. And I say that loosely, because if you follow the low carb communities, you can figure out how to use it if you want to. But we had so many problems with basal insulin that the our insulin was kind of acting like that as well. She was going low, small body weight, right, right? Right. Yeah. She was 19 pounds when she was diagnosed. So by the time I started using insulin, she might have, or the R insulin, she might have been 23 pounds.

Scott Benner 21:27
Was there also a honeymoon in there. There was,

Andy 21:31
but again, it, it was very strange, because I felt like she just like, went full force into diabetes, to the point where a half unit of levemir was enough to put her in the 50s at night, but if you didn't give it, then she was three 400 when she woke up. Yeah, yeah, it's a tough time. We were just stuck between a rock and a hard place on MDI. Young

Scott Benner 21:52
kid still MDI, too much basil, one way, not enough basil the other way. But you're balancing a more lower carb lifestyle with the things you're hearing about on the podcast, and where does that lead to? So

Andy 22:07
that led us to finding out how to actually bolus for fat and protein without using our insulin, just because our insulin was just hard on her, just like the basal was. So we moved over to I just went back to the podcast, and I went to the search, the little search icon typed in fat and protein, and that led me to the episode, waltzing the dragon. And I, I listened to it. I'm like, Yes, this is exactly what I needed. This is what I was looking for. And I found that that protein calculator, and at first I started doing about 50% so like, I would type it all in, get that, what that carb count would be for the fat and protein, and then I would start giving her half, just to see how she would react to it. And then if I felt like she needed more, I would give that. But if I knew she was going to be super active, I'd only do the half, like the 50% once I got comfortable with insulin, just in and of itself, really just starting to say, You know what, hey, why don't we just try pre bolusing for dipping dots? Why don't we try pre bolusing for that little piece of cake or whatever? And it's taken a couple of years to really get me there. But fast forward to now. We went to her kindergarten field trip, and she had a low carb lunch. It was pre bolus for she did a lot of walking. Once we signed the kids out, me and my friend signed our daughters out. We went to the dipping dot stand. She got two units. We stood in line for 10 minutes. She sat down to eat her ice cream. She got three more units, and we walked out of the park and her blood sugar was 83 Yeah, well, you're good at this. Some days still suck, but that's just part of it. Yeah, no, it

Scott Benner 23:49
certainly is. And do you find that when it sucks, it's more of a learning experience than just a bad experience,

Andy 23:54
right? This whole week, she's been sick. She's had croup, so she's been out. I just got her back to school today. So sugar's been all over the place, and she thank god she's not been throwing up. Also, I'll take that. But as far as like, the fever, the cough that she's had, our diabetes week has been pretty hard. I think her average blood sugar's been like between 140 and 160 just trying to to keep everything together. And then she went to school this morning and threw a curve ball at me and didn't want to eat breakfast and ended up in the nurse's office with a blood sugar of 58 so we had to fix it

Scott Benner 24:29
so you bolus. And then she's like, No thank you. Yeah,

Andy 24:34
pretty much. I gave her a few grapes, and then we've kindergarten has turned into a one sees about a 5.9 right now, but she gets a lot of adrenaline the minute we walk out the door. And I know you've talked about this too, with Arden, we do a low carb breakfast, so ratio keto yogurt, but it's 15 grams of fat and 15 grams of protein that that converts into about two units for her. So I'll do the six, six carbs worth in the morning, pre bolus her that by about 15 minutes. Soon as she's done eating, I go ahead and hit her with the fat and protein. Okay, and then it really just depends on where her sugar's hitting. Sometimes, most of the time, she will go up and be 161 80 when we walk out the door, if I don't give her that adrenaline dose. So I kind of have to time that, essentially three units just to get us out the door in the morning, settings on loop or low carb. So we do kind of fight with that as well. I have to know how to dose for those higher carb foods with settings that are lower carb. But when we're at school, or it's a school day, breakfast, lunch, or typically low carb, and then at night, it's not a free for all when we come home. But if we're doing stir fry, she'll have rice. If we're doing pizza, we'll we'll make sure she's got pizza that she can eat that's gluten free. I'm just not going to send her to school with gluten free bread, like a gluten free peanut butter and jelly, because we have to dose two to three times more insulin for something that's gluten free than we do, than we would have if it was wheat.

Scott Benner 26:16
Yeah, the gluten a lot of gluten free foods just they hit harder, right? Their glycemic load is heavier, right? And so what you're saying is that for most of the time when you're doing low carb meals, you have a ratio set up in your system. You have a basal set up in your system. It all works well with low carb but if you start adding carbs, or some of that gluten free food that that is harder to hit you basically do what a conversion in your head. Or do you just, like, do eyeball it. How do you do it? Um,

Andy 26:49
so if she eats an Applegate corn dog, those are 22 carbs. And I've learned this from the podcast just doing a search too, just on the Facebook page about just high glycemic like rice flour. And all the all the celiacs on there going, Oh yeah, you have to double dose. Sometimes triple dose. And some of the celiacs are like, I don't understand. That doesn't hit me that way. And I'm like, oh, what? You're lucky. But so for a corn dog, I will, I will look at her blood sugar. Say her blood sugar is anywhere between 90 and 130 I will throw the corn dog in the air fryer. It's 10 minutes. I'll go ahead and dose her the two units for the corn dog. Then I'll pull it out, let it cool down. She's eating, excuse me, within 15 minutes, and when she sits down to eat, depending upon where her sugar is, I'll go ahead and hit her with 22 carbs, two more units. And then I'll put her pump. I have little settings. One of them is just called rice flour, and it's like 50% more. It just turns bloop up by 50% okay? And I'll hit that for an hour, and then she starts eating. And typically she falls anywhere between 121, 50 by the time she's eating it. Andy,

Scott Benner 27:59
you figured this stuff out with the podcast, the Facebook group and what else. Where did you get all this information from to pull together and to help you make your decisions? So the

Andy 28:09
juicebox podcast, let me be 83 there's one that was recommended to me via the juicebox podcast, and it's parent, I think it's called parents with celiac and type one. Let me look at the Facebook page real

Scott Benner 28:19
quick. That's amazing. That's fantastic. Actually, taking like references from different places and blending them together to do a thing that works for you. It's

Andy 28:28
called empowering parents of children with celiac disease and type one diabetes. What

Scott Benner 28:33
a title. I don't want to be. Jeez. Who named that one?

Andy 28:38
I don't know. I go there. Well, okay, so here's the deal. She was diagnosed with celiac through blood work a year after type one diabetes, so still the middle of covid, and they couldn't get her in to do a scope until, like October. They get her in, they do the scope, they see the damage. They're like, yes, go gluten free. So we go gluten free or so, I thought I see somebody post on that celiac page. What kind of meat sticks should I eat that are gluten free? This is, like, a year after the celiac diagnosis, and I'm going wait, what the the person that helped us with, you know, watch out for toothpaste. Watch out for shampoo. You know, you're going to have to start really reading labels to watch out for Sealy or to watch out for gluten. Gluten. Uh, nobody said anything about processed meats having gluten in them. And so for a year after we got the diagnosis of celiac, I was giving her Slim Jims as a snack. Oh,

Scott Benner 29:37
so you thought you were doing it, but you kind of still weren't, because there were some foods that you didn't realize had gluten in it, right?

Andy 29:44
And somebody posted on that celiac group, and it just popped up in my feed on Facebook, and I was sitting there laughing, and my husband goes, What's wrong? And I'm like, mother, ever God dang it. So it's always some. Thing. But yeah, it's just all the information I found. I just encourage anybody. I'm not going to tell you what to eat. When I first started the low carb journey with my daughter, I was all for it. Gung ho. Oh yes, you should do this. Why don't they teach us this in the hospital? I will say that the low carb community can be a bit like Mean Girls. On Wednesdays, they wear pink, and you definitely need to know how to use the insulin the the hospital's failure is in that they can't be there to babysit you or to teach you all of these little things. And so they just teach everybody the same thing, stay alive. And then I think the low carb community can kind of take it too far, and it gets a little bit where they're like proselytizing, how you say the word, yeah, that's the word. We all have to make our own decisions. There's, there's a ton of crap food out there, obviously. And you just take all the information for what it is, and it's totally okay to take something from one place and use it, and take something from another place and use it. I'm, I toe the line, so I'm not going to tell anybody what to do. Good for you. Just use the influence.

Scott Benner 31:07
I'm very impressed with your ability to not pick a side. Like to look and say, hey, there was good information in a lot of different places. Like, why do I have to put on a jersey for one of these teams and root against the other team,

Andy 31:20
all the, all the literature that's out there too. Dr Bernstein's diabetic solution. I mean, at the time he was diagnosed with type one diabetes, he was like 12 in the 40s. He did what he had to do to live better than what the doctors were telling him he he would be able to Yeah, 1,000,000% Yeah. I mean, there's a lot of you like, like, what you've done here in building the podcast. You walked so that people like me could run for my kid. Oh, that's nice of you to say. I mean, that's the ultimate gift, and that's we just had a fourth grader at my daughter's school diagnosed with type one diabetes, and I wrote the juicebox podcast down on a sticky note, and I slipped it over to the nurse. And I'm like, I know you probably won't, but you should give this to the parents.

Scott Benner 32:04
Oh, that's, that's very it's very nice you to say and, and I'm just again, I want to say I'm very impressed with your ability to blend ideas, especially in a culture now that, I mean, honestly, like, the way we get our I don't want to sound like a broken record here, because people say this all the time, even though I don't think I've ever said this year, but the way people get their news is obviously very algorithm centric, like you get fed things that you are going to agree with, right? And and so that's kind of part of that's a little bit of the problem. The other bit of the problem is, I do think people like to be on teams, right? They like to root for their side, root against another side. That happens as well. I have no problem in the world with people eating low carb. Like I've never once had a thought in my mind, like no one should do that. There are days and that go into more days that art needs low carb for reasons of just, you know, taste and flavor and what she decides she wants to eat one day. I wouldn't think twice about it, but I got, by some people, I think I got labeled as like a carb pusher, because I was saying, and will continue to say, you know, you need to meet the need. There's an amount of insulin that that your body needs. You need to use that amount of it at the right time. And for my money, that was me saying, I would rather people understand how insulin works and be able to apply it to what they're eating, than to spend my time trying to talk people into eating a certain way. Because I just don't think that's a tenable idea. I don't think that I or anyone else could talk everybody into eating us. Like, like, let's, I guess, let's say that there was an actual right way to eat. Like, I don't know, Jesus knows that he shares it all with us, or she, or whatever. I don't care. And like, so like, this, this absolutely, this, absolute right. These are the right things to eat. Eat this on Monday, this on Tuesday, this on Wednesday. You're gonna, you're gonna be as healthy as possible, like that was the right way to eat, even if it was that, I don't know that you could make everyone do it. I actually don't think you could. And so in the interim, let's not see people running around with 350 400 blood sugars because they make less than valuable choices with their food choice choices, right? And I'm not saying that it had to be, it has to be low carb. You can eat a, you know, a diet that has 50, 6070, carbs a day in it, and be eating healthier foods, but you still need to know how to bolus for it. You need to know how to bolus for a Twinkie the same way you need to know how to bolus for a sweet potato, you know what I mean? Or, you know, you have to understand that there's carbs and carrots like stuff like that, or that you might eat meat and having completely low carb lifestyle, but still see some sort of a bump from the protein later, right? All these things are going to happen. You should know how to use the insulin for them. Now after that, if you want to move on to another person or an idea or a book or a podcast and figure out a healthier way for you to eat, then God bless, you'll know how to use the insulin for that too. You know that that's it for me, having said that, I haven't had as much problem with it over the last couple of years as that I've as I've had in the past, it almost seems like people have calmed down a little bit, if that makes sense. So I don't know if maybe, I obviously don't know the other side of it. I'm not in anybody else's Facebook group. I don't pay attention to what they're doing in the world. I don't actually know what they're doing, but just everybody seems a little calmer at the moment. I don't know if that's me being wishful thinking or if that's actually true, but one way or the other, I'm impressed with how you handled it

Andy 35:44
well. Thank you. I just think that the catalyst for all of this was really me, just I was listening to the doctor. I was being dutiful. I was doing everything they were telling me to do, and it was a dumpster fire every day for six months. On top of having a toddler with type one diabetes, I was pregnant with my son, and the the turning point was a sausage on a stick. Gave her the sausage on the stick. I dosed like the doctor told me to within 20 minutes, her blood sugar was 400 and she stayed that way for like eight hours, and it was the most miserable day and experience we've had the sport far with type one diabetes, and she's had stays in the hospital due to stomach viruses since then, but that was the moment I decided I wanted more, and I wanted more for her. We couldn't keep living like this. The doctors were just not giving us the information, other than just teaching us how to survive. And my mother in law was pushing me to find some kind of group, and I was just very I was against the idea of a group where everybody does the same thing and everybody has high blood sugars and there's no real growth. I just assumed that if the doctors didn't know any better, how could anybody else know any better? And she had probably said to me for the millionth time, Andy, find a diabetes support group. And I said, Fine, I'll just look one up on Facebook. And I just typed in diabetes group, and here comes the juicebox podcast. And I'm looking through everything and reading, and I'm like, What can this guy know?

Scott Benner 37:18
Huh? I know, right. Seems like an idiot, but go ahead, yeah. But I started

Andy 37:23
listening. And you know, the dynamic between you and Jenny, you as a caretaker, her as living with it and and taking care and helping people who who live with it, it's just such a great dynamic. And the information is so easy to understand. You just have to take the time to actually, you have to devote some of your time to it. And I've listened to a lot of the podcast, not all of it, by any means what.

Scott Benner 37:49
I'm sorry this interview is over.

Andy 37:51
Okay, you've got a lot of episodes. You push an episode out every day. I'm trying to keep up, buddy. Hey, I'm

Scott Benner 37:58
trying to keep up too. Don't

Andy 37:59
worry. No, you're fine. So one of the first things I heard you say on one of the I cannot remember what the episode is, I'm not Nico. I don't remember everything.

Scott Benner 38:09
Do you think Nico's freaked out? They used her name on the podcast?

Andy 38:12
I don't know.

Scott Benner 38:14
Actually, can I let's hold your thought for one second. Sure. I keep thinking while you're talking, why are you not a group expert in my Facebook group?

Andy 38:25
I have no idea. Think about

Scott Benner 38:27
that. If that's the thing you'd like to do, I'd like you to do it, but go ahead. So go ahead. You're not Nico. You don't know every episode, but I said this thing, what'd I say? You

Andy 38:36
said it's easier to ask for forgiveness than it is for permission. And I had forgot that before I had children, that was my motto. I lived by that. It was just I was a manager at Walmart for a few years in the optical department, and I lived by that with dealing with my market directors and trying to appease them all the time. I heard you, we were in the swimming pool, and I was listening to this episode, and I go, Oh, light bulb. I forgot. I can be an asshole. I forgot I can fight bag. I

Scott Benner 39:06
want to be clear. I don't see that as being an asshole, but I take your point that, yeah. I mean, the truth is, you're you get so busy trying to make everybody happy, you can't really accomplish anything. You know, your, your new job is, is the doctor happy? Is the school nurse happy? You know, is my is my spouse happy? Is this person happy? Am I doing everything that everybody expects from me? I How about just do what's right? And then, like, you know, if, if you get called out later, just go up, sorry, you know, like, just, it's just, it's it's obvious to me, you get put in this situation where, if I took you to four different doctors and asked them all the same question, you very likely would get four different answers. So now there, that means that there are four different groups of people out there living their lives the way their doctor spoke to them. And it doesn't say that any of them are completely right or completely wrong, but I think that there's a blend of right and wrong mixed through those four doctors and a Facebook group and ideas about eating low carb and how to use insulin and every you need to take all that stuff together and just turn it into your own, you know, into your own salad, and then use what works for you.

Andy 40:26
You know, a lot of the days just kind of run together as you start going through life. And you know, you have memories that stick out good and bad. And that day it was, it was lay down and just take it as it is, or do something it. It really was a hard day, and I'll never forget that

Scott Benner 40:43
it's so good that you just were like, I'm not doing this anymore. And this isn't good for this isn't good for her. Like, like, that's how I I mean, listen, when my kid was little, that's how it struck me. I was like, I How could I be doing what I'm being told? And my daughter's a 1c is in the eights, but a person who doesn't have diabetes a one season the high fours like, you know? And that doesn't make any sense. It just doesn't. It seemed like such a give up to me, and I just, I just wasn't willing to give up like that. I mean, try to amount like right now, Arden's at school. She's halfway She's almost done her sophomore year of college, and she's literally thriving and doing just everything that she thought she would do. But I mean, what level of illness would she have right now if I left her a 1c in the eights for the last for the last 16 year, 18 years,

Andy 41:38
as I started learning stuff, that was the biggest pushback from the endocrinologist. Mind you, we use Cook Children's out in Fort Worth Texas. The hospital group is amazing. I mean, we I had called the pediatrician the morning I suspected the diabetes. They didn't laugh in my face. They just said, Okay, you're not crazy, till we prove you crazy. Come in, we're going to check your sugar. They threw us straight onto Cook Children's Hospital. So we drove 35 minutes into downtown, but as soon as we got back to triage, the first thing that was ever said to me by a nurse, and I don't think she meant it in the way that it came out, we were all wearing masks, so it's not like we could read facial expressions. She looked at me and said, Don't worry, mom, she's not that sick. And now I understand that. You know, my kid wasn't in DKA, so she really wasn't that sick. But my response to her because I knew enough about diabetes growing up, because I have a cousin with type one diabetes, oh, it was forever. And so my response to her was, yeah, but it's a life sentence. And she just kind of cocked her head at me, and collectively our our experience with our endocrinologist and the physician assistant that works with her, they trust me more now than when we first started. But every every visit, every three months, I would come in with something, pre bolusing, the next step, the next appointment, I would say, How about low carb? And it was, you shouldn't pre bolus because you don't know how much she's going to eat, and what happens if the food at the restaurant comes out too late and she goes low. We would much prefer her blood sugar to be 400 for the sake of experience.

Scott Benner 43:20
I love people that always assume the wrong thing's gonna happen, and it's the only thing they can imagine. I'm gonna, like, listen, you're gonna pre blast and be like, great if they if the food doesn't come out in time, have juice with you. Yeah, all fixed. You know, you know, how is instead of a small fix like that, to an idea, how is the idea next? Just let her blood sugar jump up into the threes, the fours, and stay there for hours instead of just being ready if something should happen. I don't like people who plan for failure, you know? Yeah, that is a lot. What that feels like to me is just planning for failure. You know, I wanted to say because we're gonna get past it. Your idea that, like, look, it's a life sentence. That's a very realistic and honest statement, but again, there's more to say after that. Like, yeah, it's a thing we have for our whole life. But you know what? I think we could mitigate a lot of the problems I'm seeing with this instead of just making the first blanket statement that comes to mind and then just accepting that as reality from here forward. Like, I don't understand why people don't think they can impact something. You know what? I mean, like, like, and I don't begrudge you having an honest emotion and saying, my kid just got this thing, it's never going to go away. Like, that's a real, honest emotion you have to work through. It doesn't mean there's not more you can do, right? And it doesn't mean you've given up because you're being honest about the situation.

Andy 44:51
Am I right about that? No, exactly. We don't get to pick the cards we're dealt in life. I know that sounds maybe gimmicky, but. But it's true. I you can look at a situation and let it kill you, or you can get back up and keep going, but I refuse to take subpar care in it as well.

Scott Benner 45:12
Yeah, listen, Andy, there are people who have actual life sentences, like they get put in prison for the rest of their lives, and you can watch documentaries about some of them, they find a way to live the best life possible, locked in a cage. Yep, diabetes certainly is an incarceration like that. And you know, like everything, God, it does sound like you're like it does sound like you're in San Francisco, and everything smells like patchouli oil when you say something like this, but like your life is really what you make of it. Yeah, yeah. And everyone's not promised a rose garden. So some of us don't get roses, and some of us get roses with weeds in them, and some of us don't even get a garden. Some of us don't have a house. And everyone's gonna have so many different versions of their reality. But within most of those things, you can build a happy life now. Don't give me, you know, and I want to say I'm not, I'm not trying to say that if you're living under a bridge right now and into a paper cup that, like, you know, like some good feelings are going to pull you out of it, I do think, and this is a, you know, a fairly existential conversation at this point, but I do think there's a way to be a happy homeless person if you're absolutely stuck in it, maybe not happy, but happier than someone else who just says, This is my life and lays in a pile like so no matter what version of life you get, I think there's a spectrum of happiness to be had within that version of life. Does that make sense? I think that's as clear as I can say it.

Andy 46:43
You think about the pain scale at like a hospital, or like zero to 10, and I feel like, when you look at somebody's life, like the trauma, or the level of hard, this level of heart might be a six for somebody and a 10 for somebody else. But within those feelings, those that feeling is valid, but it's what you do in spite of that, and how you keep going. Yeah,

Scott Benner 47:05
it's not a loss till you give up, right? That's pretty much it.

Andy 47:10
I'm no I'm no stranger to to life kicking me in the ass. My mom was 19 when she had me, and we grew up in the Bible Belt, so, I mean, she was damned if she did and damned if she didn't. You know, if you wanted to be right for the hereafter, you better have that kid. But oh my god, you had that kid as a teenager, and you're a piece of trash that kind of trickled down, and she struggled with drug addiction throughout her life. She's full of tenacity and and grit, and that's definitely rubbed off on me. And

Scott Benner 47:44
I thought you were gonna say meth. I thought you're gonna say she's full of tenacity and meth,

Andy 47:50
she's gonna kill me when she hears this. Now, no,

Scott Benner 47:52
you know what? She's not. Because the thing you just said was really thoughtful, like being put into a situation when you're 19 and being told by everybody. Hey, you got yourself pregnant. Now, do the right thing and have the baby, and then the minute the baby comes out, they look at you, go, Oh, look at this hooker having a baby at 19 years old. You know what I mean? Yeah, exactly like they

Andy 48:14
are rocking a hard place, rocking a hard place, but I think I've learned a lot from her over the years, and she's definitely done so much to better her life. And even through all the pain she was she was in a really bad accident a year after my stepdad passed, where and my little sister is 10 years younger than me, and she was taking the death of her biological father really hard, and was in in the hospital trying to get help for some mental issues. My mom worked for a meat plant down south in South Texas, and was in a really bad accident, and lost her hand, lost her hand up to her forearm. Holy hell. And then in that time I did, I thought this was the hardest thing that I've ever dealt with. I was at work. Somehow my mom managed to call my husband at work and told him to go get me in the middle of her, you know, trying not to bleed to death. And I was stuck with fight or flight. Tyler called me, and I'm just standing in the middle of the Vision Center like I don't know what to do. I do. I go down to Brian, where my sister's in the hospital, and ask for a bunk bed so we can have more room for activities. Or do I try to make it to the hospital? I hope my mom's not going to die like at 25 years old, like I had no idea what to do. You know my dad, the only dad I knew, had passed away at 42 years old. And here's my mom's my mom's probably not going to make it. My sister's falling apart. What do I do? Yeah,

Scott Benner 49:47
no kidding. Hey, was this a workplace accident she had?

Unknown Speaker 49:51
Yes, so it was.

Scott Benner 49:52
So there's some meat that didn't get used that day. Is that what I'm hearing

Andy 49:57
my uncle got in the hospital. She when she came to you know, they had a nerve blocker, so when she woke up from surgery, you know, she wasn't in pain at that moment because she couldn't feel anything. And my uncle's sitting in the air in the in the room with us, and he goes, Well, you know, that batch just went to the trash can. And she's like, What the heck is that supposed to mean, and he's like, it's too fatty. The con the fat contents way too high.

Scott Benner 50:24
That's terrible. I love people who deal with pain with humor. My, um, my best friend's father passed away when we were younger. He he had cancer and and died pretty quickly the day he passed away. I mean, we knew it was coming, and the day he passed away, I rushed to my friend's side, and he's just as shocked as you could be. And at the same time, his mother was going through menopause, and I said, Is it possible your dad, like, cut himself and rubbed the cigarettes in the cut to get away from your mom?

Andy 50:54
Oh, my god, yeah, they're running. He just broke up

Scott Benner 50:58
laughing. And there was just one little moment of, like, levity in probably one of the worst days of his life. You know, I love your uncle doing that, like, oh, we had to throw away a bunch of hamburger today. Well, that's, did she get pulled into a machine?

Andy 51:14
She did. That's horrible. She got pulled into a machine. So the plate, like on a meat grinder, the plate has three holes, and part of the plate was actually broken. Is So the the worm that, like, rotates the meat through, and I'm sorry to anybody that's doing this that you know, go ahead, you're fine.

Unknown Speaker 51:32
I'm holding on to the chair, but go ahead,

Andy 51:34
trigger a warning, because I have all the pictures like, because we took pictures for legal reasons and things like that. The the machine itself that it's a circle with three holes. So the worm pulled her fingers in, and as it was twisting everything, the bottom part of the plate was open, and it just fed her hand through. Oh, my God,

Scott Benner 51:55
is she wealthy? Now, no, what? What's a what's a hand and an arm worth

Andy 52:03
so small company. She speak legal advice, and it just,

Scott Benner 52:07
oh, my god, don't tell me this. I thought your mom was the queen of Texas at this point. Like, no,

Andy 52:13
no, she's doing all right. She fell, I think it was the beginning in 2023 she fell getting out of the shower and landed on her elbow. And my sister's, my sister's 24 and still lives with her. And she came running because she hears my mom screaming, and my mom's butt naked in the floor, and there's blood everywhere, and my mom's broke her elbow, and the bone is sticking through, and this is on the nub that you know, you know, seven, eight years prior, she fed to a machine. So I am. I love my mom to death. She's a pain in my ass, and she just found out that she's type two diabetic, and I've been telling her this for, like, the last year and a half, and we just finally got her on Metformin. And she's lucky that she lives an hour away, and the doctor's not within my vicinity, because they've just been letting her sit at an A 1c of 6.4 and I feel like I'm having to pull eldest daughter tactics out on her, trying to get her to take care of herself, because I want her to stay here. Yeah.

Scott Benner 53:15
What do they have her doing? Metformin?

Andy 53:18
Uh, she just started Metformin, and I told her, you know, because you have one hand, you need to push for a CGM. I don't care if it's freestyle. I don't care you need something. And my mom has lost some of her attitude, I think, in her old age, She's nicer when it comes to the doctors, and the doctors like, well, your sugar's just kind of bouncing around, and I don't think a CGM would be good for your mental health right now. Or however, she worried,

Scott Benner 53:46
God, every again, the wrong answer to the to a reasonable question, Does your mom have any weight issues? Uh, yes, uh, yeah. Tell her to ask for a GLP that might really help.

Andy 53:57
And that's what I told her, too. I'm like, you know, I hear, I hear good things about metformin and not so good things about metformin and with the glps as well, with stomach issues. And I told her, I was like, you know, start the medicine, try it out. I was like, but for the love, if you start having issues, you call the doctor and tell them you want something else.

Scott Benner 54:18
Yeah. I mean, the GLP could easily lower her a 1c and help her

Andy 54:22
with her weight, right? And we have a history of type two diabetes in the in our family, one of my my step uncle, he's not blood, but my step uncle and my mom's brother, blood uncle, about the age of 3334 they both had massive heart attacks and ended up type two so and it was back to back on both of them. Jeez.

Scott Benner 54:42
I Yeah. I mean, I, first of all, this, the ladies got one hand a CGM is an obvious answer,

Andy 54:49
right? That's what I asked her. I'm like, what do they want you to do? Prick your toes? I'm like, Okay, do you like having your feet? Because maybe they should just give you a CGM.

Scott Benner 54:58
I mean, it would be fine to. Check your blood sugar in her feet. But, like, think about the like, she still has to take her shoes off, and she still has one arm. Like, it just, there's a lot. Why are you adding a level of difficulty to something when she could once every however many days? Gee, she could get the ever since CGM, and it's implantable for six months. I don't know if that's, uh, eligible for type twos or not, probably nothing's eligible for type two. So probably, right? And that's, you know, like, at least you put on a Dexcom for 10 days. One, you can easily put a Dexcom on with one hand, right?

Andy 55:30
Yeah, that doesn't I've been preaching it for a year and a half. I'm gonna get my way. I'm going to get my way with this. So she's going to be wearing a CGM, whether she likes it or

Scott Benner 55:39
not. You know, I hear stories like this and and I sit here, and there's part of me that thinks I can't possibly be that much smarter than everybody else. Like, it. Like, what is how does this happen? Like, how does someone say you don't need the stress of that? Like, you idiot. What a dumb thing. Whoever said that to her, You're a moron. Like, like, my god, you're a moron, and I don't know. Like, I don't know. I just sit here and I think, like, I know I'm not that smart of a person. Like, is like, How is this possible that other people can't keep up with these simple ideas? She

Andy 56:12
has heart issues. I don't remember what it's called, but when I was pregnant with Lorelei, she had to go in and have, like, the the sack of her heart, like the electrical component there was, there was too much misfiring going on, and so they had to burn part of it, an ablation, yeah, like an ablation type thing. And, I mean, it was, I mean, it was a big deal, but not, not a super big deal. They were able to fix it, right? But in her time of going to the cardiologist and seeing the doctor and them doing blood work hurt historically, her a 1c been at like a 6.2

Scott Benner 56:47
for oh, and nobody said anything. The whole time,

Andy 56:49
nobody said anything. And then she goes to this PCP, and they're like, oh, you're a one sees a 6.4 and when she told me her a 1c was a 6.4 I laid into her not about her diet and her eating habits, but about, okay, we need to start medication. We need to get you on a CGM. We need to start monitoring this so it doesn't get worse, because you can live the rest of your life on the medication and understanding maybe some some diet changes, but just knowing the trend of your blood sugar when you eat certain things. This is doable. This is so doable. And she went to the primary care and they're like, well, you're pre diabetic. You're not diabetic. So it took her a 1c getting to a 6.9 before they'd be like, Okay, well, here's some Metformin.

Scott Benner 57:36
Oh, that's a common story for type twos. They sit or I just the number of people I've been talking to who are point one away from getting a GLP, and their doctors are telling them, well, you just first, you got to get type two diabetes, then we'll give it to you. And they're like, you know, I'm this point four, and this point five would have made me a type two. And they go, no, sorry, so that's an insurance thing. Yeah, most definitely. But that's still, like, it's a system. It's set up. It says, Look, we could stop you from getting sick, but we're gonna wait till you're sick, and then we're gonna see if we can't get it backwards for you. Like, it's just fascinating. It really is. Everything is fascinating. Uh, is there anything we haven't talked about that we should have?

Andy 58:19
No, you didn't ask me if there was any history in my family. Oh, hold

Scott Benner 58:23
on a second. Is there any history of type one diabetes in your extended family?

Andy 58:28
Yeah, that and other autoimmune diseases.

Scott Benner 58:31
Please do tell me about that. Andy,

Andy 58:34
my cousin, was diagnosed in 99 I was nine. He was like 17, and shortly after, he was diagnosed with Crohn's disease, and then PSA to anybody playing with Ancestry DNA tests, if you don't want to clean skeletons out of your closet, so don't take them, because I found out who my dad was at 29 years old, and he had lupus and sarcoid it alone.

Scott Benner 58:56
Sarcoidosis. Yep, another sarcoidosis. Wait, what were you doing on, like, ancestry.com were you just trying to find out if you were, like, you know, Persian or something, or what were you doing? I

Andy 59:08
was trying to see, like, what kind of European mutt I was. I took it just out of fascination, and then I did. I did both. I did the ancestry and the 23andme and I found first cousins with so there was, I was told growing up, and I grew up with dad a being my biological father, and he was not the best. We'll leave it at that. And then I overheard a conversation at 12 about Dad B. So I always knew that there was a possibility, but nobody would ever give me that validation, and so I took the test. I found some first cousins. I reached out to them. They were able to tell me how we were related. It did lead me to Dad B. I was able to reach out to my brother and sister that I didn't know I had.

Scott Benner 59:56
Jeez, why is everyone's life so confusing? Listen, can I get. Some advice here. Complete a sentence. Don't just say, Oh, well, what if they don't eat? Then you've pre bolus. Like, actually think it through and tell people the truth that really should fix most of everyone's problems. Like, like, I mean, how is it possible that so many people have your story? Because your story is not uncommon. That story is not uncommon at all. I've heard about it, and somebody talked about it, but nobody would really tell me, and I had a feeling, but no one would say and holy hell, everybody's making this all a lot more difficult than it needs to be.

Andy 1:00:33
No My mom did jump in and help. We found my grandfather, and I did a lab core grandparent test kit with him, and it came back positive. And then I did Ancestry DNA. It took my sister and my grandmother about a year and a half after we reached out to him to actually reach back out to me. They were grieving the loss of their son and their dad. And, you know, there was a lot of Skeptic like, you know, speculation is Andy telling the truth? Does she just want money? And I'm like, Y'all ain't got no money. I just want to know where I came from.

Scott Benner 1:01:08
I want 23 of those. $45 I know you've got your pocket,

Andy 1:01:14
but I talked to my sister. So side note, I have a sister named Katie, and then my brother's name is Johnny. And then my my mom's other daughter is named Caitlyn, and she goes by Katie, perfect. So I have two sisters named Katie, and they're both blood, you know, they're bullet related. Once my dad's kid wants my mom's kid, every

Scott Benner 1:01:33
one of my wife's side of the family is named Mike. Oh, dear God, my niece just started dating a guy, and it seems like it's probably going okay for the moment. So I bothered to ask what his name was. I said, Hey, what's this guy's name? You're dating? She just started laughing. I was like, Oh my God, is it Mike? You guys got to travel outside of, like, the sphere you live in, and look for other people. I don't want to kid you. My father in law, his name is Mike. His son's name is Mike. They had a baby and named him Mike. He's got a daughter who who married a guy named Mike, and then they had a baby and named it Mike. Oh my god.

Andy 1:02:11
Our neighbor's name is Mike on the right. Our neighbor's name is Mike on the left. And then my best friend, who moved to Minnesota, her husband's name is

Scott Benner 1:02:19
Mike. I don't understand it's not listen, it's not a bad name. But what are we doing? There's others. I

Andy 1:02:25
didn't appreciate it when I was little, because my name is Adrian Estelle, and I was nicknamed Andy. So I didn't even know my name was Adrian until I started school that growing up, I was always called Andy Rooney by my family or who Andy, where's Opie. And then, you know, starting school. And then high school, I started getting the Adrian from Rocky, but I appreciate it now, because at least it's not, you know, Brittany or Ashley or something like that. Oh, my God,

Scott Benner 1:02:58
your life is a CW TV show. That's why you love Gilmore Girls so much.

Andy 1:03:04
Hey, most days are pretty mundane. I mean, just hanging out with a three year old and trying to keep the five year old alive in kindergarten. Well, it sounds

Scott Benner 1:03:11
like you're doing a very good job of that. Seriously, yeah. Well,

Andy 1:03:14
it's, it's not without the group that you've put together and all the people that have come together. It's

Scott Benner 1:03:21
yeah. I mean, I didn't want to say and I did it, but I mean, you're Yeah, no, no,

Andy 1:03:26
there's, there's thanks to be had for you for putting this all together, and then for all the people that have come on the podcast or just interact on the Facebook page. I mean, even if it's just one person that you help it, you don't realize that the catalyst that like, the trickle down effect that happens from one person to the next, if you really, if you really put in the work to get to this point, it's amazing. Well, you

Scott Benner 1:03:50
know what? I do deserve the credit because I, it really is me that started it, but, but, like, I don't, I don't deserve the ongoing credit in the same way as I do for starting it, if that makes sense. Oh,

Andy 1:04:01
yeah, no, that where credits do. It's just like, like I was talking about before all the literature that's out there. You Dr Bernstein, you know, think like a pancreas sugar surfing, all of those ideas, while maybe there's differences in them, it's created a voice for the type one community that without we would just be left with what the doctors have to say. And that's something against a doctor. I've, I've had doctors tell me that they felt like the juice box was Doctor bashing. And I'm like, but you're looking at it from your from your side of the street. Yeah, you need to come over here. You need to come over here, put my shoes on, and then listen to it, and maybe you'll your mind might be changed a little bit. Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:04:42
no, I agree. Listen, I also give a lot of credit to all the doctors who hear it and don't get their panties in a twist and then say, hey, it is possible that I'm doing some of the things that they just said. So you know, how can I make this better for other people? Yeah? I have, I have an episode called listen to the doctor with an endo who had the courage to come on here and say, I heard your podcast. And I thought, This is Doctor bashing. And then I kept listening. And then she said, I thought, I am doing some of this stuff. And now, because of the podcast, I give better care to people. And, you know, I I'd love you to listen to the episode, but one of the things she said into it was, you know, I spread this out through the staff, and a lot of the staff came back and said, I don't want to listen to this. He's saying we're doing the wrong thing. Like it doesn't feel good for me to hear this. But I would say to you, if it doesn't feel good to you to hear it, then maybe you should be examining why it is you feel that way, not what I'm saying. So, you know, all I'm saying is teach people how to take care of themselves, and don't let them sit around, you know, contented with a seven, A, 1c and eight, A, 1c try to actually help them. And if you're not willing to help them, then send them somewhere else and see if they can get the help somewhere else. But don't just capture them in your little in your little bubble and, you know, Doctor them into a into a grave, you know,

Andy 1:06:07
yeah, for sure. No, that's, that's the goal. We're gonna get my mom a CGM, whether she likes or not that doctor, whether that doctor likes it or not. Oh, she'll

Scott Benner 1:06:16
find it illuminating. My brother has type two, and he said, You know what you've heard so many other people say about wearing a CGM, but man, it tell it teaches you what you want to eat and what you don't want to eat, almost like, God, that's not even worth it. Like, if my blood sugar is going to go up like that, I don't want to eat that. He had a lot of moments like that wearing one, and it's been really valuable for him. And a GLP, by the way, his a 1c went down two full points on a GLP. Oh, nice. Yeah. Type Two. He's in the fives now. It's gonna fundamentally change his life. Yeah.

Andy 1:06:48
And then I've been listening to the episode like you had an episode about the teenager that's on the GLP and a chef's kiss. I mean, I if it goes the right way, I can definitely see this being something that a GLP being used in management for teenagers, because that's that's one thing that I heard being in the hospital with like Lorelei would get get sick, and we couldn't control it at home. So she'd go to the ER, get admitted to the endo floor. We had a round of Doctor around with a doctor, and then the nurses coming in, and they're so desensitized to everything, and the one thing that kept coming out of their mouths were, we're just used to bad diabetics. We're used to teenagers that don't take care of themselves. And I'm like, man, let me stop you. There is it that they're not taking care of themselves, or they don't know

Scott Benner 1:07:33
how? Yeah, because they're putting some effort in somewhere, and it's obviously not in the right direction. I fundamentally reject the idea that people don't care about their their health. I think that they that there's levels of effort you'll get out of people, but it also comes with levels of understanding and levels of direction. You can't just wake up every day and run into the same wall and expect that they're going to keep doing that. Eventually they're going to sit down and say, I'm going to stop running into this wall now. And if you don't show them where the door is, then that that's what giving up looks like. It's not because they didn't give up because they wanted to give up. They gave up because the effort they put out every day didn't return anything, right?

Andy 1:08:13
Yeah, and I, I could definitely see the GLP ones being used for teenagers, especially in in that heightened growth period where they're just so resistant to insulin, I'm

Scott Benner 1:08:24
telling you, I can see it being used for a great many people with diabetes. Oh yeah, type one or type two. So I have more people coming on. I actually have a doctor coming on to talk about, like, kind of really lay out what glps are. I have more episodes with people who have been using them and talking about the experiences they're having with them. So you know, I'm gonna keep talking about it awesome. Yeah, all right. Well, Andy, you were terrific. I really appreciate this. Thank you so very much. I don't know what to say. This is a fantastic conversation. I really enjoyed it. Awesome. I

Andy 1:09:00
did too. Thank you. Yeah, of course. Hold

Scott Benner 1:09:01
on one second. I want to thank the Eversense CGM for sponsoring this episode of The juicebox podcast. Learn more about its implantable sensor, smart transmitter and terrific mobile application at Eversense cgm.com/juicebox, cgm.com/juice box. Get the only implantable sensor for long term wear. Get ever since us med sponsored this episode of The juicebox podcast, check them out at usmed.com/juice box, or by calling 888-721-1514, get your free benefits check and get started today with us. Med, a huge thank you to one of today's sponsors, gvoke glucagon. Find out more about gvoke hypopen at gvoke glucagon.com, forward slash juicebox. You spell that, G, V, O, k, e, g, l. U, C, A, G, o, n.com, forward slash juice box, if you or a loved one was just diagnosed with type one diabetes, and you're looking for some fresh perspective, the bold beginning series from the juicebox podcast is a terrific place to start. That series is with myself and Jenny Smith. Jenny is a CD CES, a registered dietitian and a type one for over 35 years, and in the bowl beginning series, Jenny and I are going to answer the questions that most people have after a type one diabetes diagnosis. The series begins at episode 698, in your podcast player, or you can go to juicebox podcast.com, and click on bold beginnings in the menu. Hey kids, listen up. You've made it to the end of the podcast. You must have enjoyed it. You know? What else you might enjoy? The private Facebook group for the juicebox podcast. I know you're thinking, uh, Facebook, Scott, please. But no. Beautiful group, wonderful people, a fantastic community. Juicebox podcast, type one diabetes on Facebook. Of course, if you have type two, are you touched by diabetes in any way? You're absolutely welcome. It's a private group, so you'll have to answer a couple of questions before you come in, but make sure you're not a bot or an evildoer. Then you're on your way. You'll be part of the family. I can't thank you enough for listening. Please make sure you're subscribed, you're following in your audio app. I'll be back tomorrow with another episode of The juicebox podcast. Hey, what's up, everybody? If you've noticed that the podcast sounds better and you're thinking like, how does that happen? What you're hearing is Rob at wrong way recording, doing his magic to these files. So if you want him to do his magic to you. Wrongwaverecording.com, you got a podcast. You want somebody to edit it. You want rob you.