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Scott Benner 0:00
Here we are back together again, friends for another episode of The Juicebox Podcast.

Tess is the mother of four children, one of them who has type one diabetes. Her kids play a ton of travel sports, and her son's diagnosis was missed by their pediatrician.

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 health care plan or becoming bold with insulin. When you place your first order for ag one, with my link, you'll get five free travel packs and a free year supply of vitamin D drink. AG, one.com/juice, box. Don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order at cozy earth.com. All you have to do is use the offer code juice box at checkout. 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/juice box 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. Today's podcast is sponsored by us Med, US med.com/juicebox you can get your diabetes supplies from the same place that we do. And I'm talking about Dexcom, libre, Omnipod, tandem, and so much more us. Med.com/juice box, or call, 888-721-1514, this show is sponsored today by the glucagon that my daughter carries. G, voke hypo pen. Find out more at G, VO, glucagon.com. Forward slash, juice box. I'm having an on body vibe alert. This episode of the juice box podcast is sponsored by ever since 365 the only one year where 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

Tess 2:27
My name is Tess, and I have four children. I have a 15 year old, a 13 year old, an 11 year old, who is my type, one diabetic, and

Scott Benner 2:39
an eight year old. How'd you mess up the spacing on the last one? What do you mean? I messed it up. They're all two years apart until the third, right? Until the one's three years apart, right? Well, to get tired a lot.

Tess 2:53
Yeah, three's a lot, actually. When I told my parents, who helped us that out a lot, it's the only reason we have four kids. When I told them I was pregnant with the last they were just silent, and I had to tell them, You're supposed to say congratulations.

Scott Benner 3:05
They were like, but we're never gonna stop watching your children. I think, right. Well, I just figured you were considering getting divorced. Now you decided not to. That's where the extra year came from.

Tess 3:19
Nope. We always wanted four. Actually, my husband would have way more if I let him, but kids are expensive, so

Scott Benner 3:25
really, your husband would like more children. Yes, he loves kids. Can I ask? Is he one of those people who loves kids but it's not that involved? Or is he really super involved?

Tess 3:34
No, he's really involved. He's their coach. Half my kids coaches for all their sports and and he loves babies, kids. He just loves kids. I do too, but not like him wreak havoc on your body. So I was done after four.

Scott Benner 3:49
This is like, I can't do this again. That's enough. Was he in for another one? Yeah, oh yeah, he would be. He said something like, he was like, Hey, do you think we should have five kids? Yeah. Oh, you say Get away from me. And then you struck him with a bat. Is that correct? Correct? And now that bat is now leaning on your side table of your bed, exactly. It's over for you, buddy. Get back. That's amazing. Well, congratulations on I mean, I'll do what your parents wouldn't do. Congratulations on your four kids. Like, was there any indication that type one might be in your life? Is it, you know, in an extended family, or anything like that? Nope, no indication at all. We have no one in the family with it, no one. No one just hey, congratulations. Here it is. Gotcha. What about other stuff? Meaning, celiac, hypothyroidism, anything like that,

Tess 4:43
nothing. I don't know. Does eczema count? Yeah, two of my kids have kind of dry skin like, that's about it.

Scott Benner 4:50
I count eczema. It's not a big one, but, yeah, sure, right, then, that's it, gotcha, that's it. Don't be damn All right. Well, lucky you. Yeah, right. How did. How did it happen? What was the first sign? Because if you if you weren't looking for it, you don't know about it. I'm interested in how you figured it out.

Tess 5:06
Yeah, his story is kind of interesting. So in June, 2020 he was six years old, almost seven, and he wet the bed one night. And I was like, well, that's strange. You know, he never wets the bed. So the next night, Hey, buddy, you gotta go to the bathroom before you go to bed. And he did, but he wet the bed again, like, all right, this is weird. So the next night, all right, you're not drinking anything after 6pm and he did not wet the bed that night. But for the next few weeks, he was wetting the bed like three to four times a week. And I was like, This is strange. Like, this is this kid, once he was potty trained, that was it. He hasn't went to bed, you know, really, ever. Maybe the first couple moms said he was potty trained at three. So I decided to call the pediatrician, and I made an appointment. And at this point, I had checked with Dr Google, and of course, Dr Google will tell you that bed wetting is a sign of type one diabetes. I had a friend whose teenage son had been diagnosed about six months ago, so I did call her up and just ask. And she said, Well, it's, you know, it's very simple. The pediatrician will have you, you know, pee in a cup, and if there's any sugar in his urine, they'll they'll probably send you right to the hospital. I made the appointment. I packed a hospital bag because I really thought it might be that I didn't tell my son. I didn't want to scare him, so I put it in the back of my husband's car. I sent my husband because he is much better with doctors and hospitals and needles and all that stuff than me. And I was waiting for his call, and he called me up. I was out on a walk with my other son, who was three at that time, my husband called and said, Doctor says he looks great. Urine is fine. Vitals are good, you know? And I remember just bursting into tears of joy, like so happy that it wasn't diabetes. I did say, though, why is he wetting the bed? And the pediatrician had told my husband, well, you know, COVID had just shut down the whole world a few months ago in March, and this was beginning of June. And so the pediatrician had just said, you know, the kids, all their schedules are off, everything, their whole worlds have been rocked. You know, school shut down, everything shut down. He's probably just wetting the bed because of that so, well, great. You know, I don't have a kid who's a type one diabetic. That's wonderful.

Scott Benner 7:27
He's just peeing in his bed. And he's a little too old for that, but, okay, right? But

Tess 7:32
he just, you know, diabetes, COVID, yeah, that was like, in the middle of the week. And then that weekend, we went to the beach for just a little little getaway couple days, and my son was walking towards the water, like in his bathing suit, away from me, and I could see every rib in his back. And I thought, he's a skinny kid. All my kids are thin, but I'd never seen his ribs from the back before. Yeah. And actually turned to my friend and I said, Gosh, like, you know, just something doesn't seem right. He just doesn't seem well to me. But that pediatrician checked him out, said he was fine. So what do I know? I'm not a doctor. I

Scott Benner 8:09
have a friend who's a pediatrician who would tell you he's not a doctor, he's a pediatrician. But go ahead, interesting. Here's how he here's how he told me, one day he goes, my father's not a doctor, he's a dentist. I'm not a doctor, I'm a pediatrician. And I don't know if that's like a professional joke or not, but anyway, go. I apologize. You're talking to your friend on the beach. Your kid looks very thin. What'd you figure

Tess 8:30
out? Yeah, well, so we go home and he's still, you know, he's kind of wetting the bed, but that was really the only symptom at the time. You know, he did, he wasn't, didn't have the extreme thirst yet? Well, obviously, me seeing the ribs in his back indicated he was losing weight, but he was, he was skinny anyways, so I didn't notice it, you know, a drastic change. So we get home, my gut just said, just, he's not well. And so I called the pediatrician again. I called like the nurse line, just left a message. It had been one week, and I said, you know, he was checked out in the office last week, but I just some he just doesn't seem that well. By now, he was asking to take naps, which was very strange for him. He hadn't nap since he gave them up at two years old, so he was really tired. The nurse called me back and she said, Hey, I talked with the doctor, the pediatrician, if you will. And he said that, you know, everything was fine, but since you're still worried, he'll go ahead and order some blood work just to make you feel better. So she sent the orders over that Friday afternoon, and I went online to make an appointment. And again, like diabetes was out of my mind now because, you know, the doctor said it wasn't that so what was in your mind at that point? I really didn't know. Okay, I really wasn't sure, but I knew, like, something is very wrong with him. And so I went to make the blood work appointment. And it was Friday afternoon. I was gonna wait till Monday, and something in my gut said, don't wait till Monday. See if. There's appointments tomorrow morning, Saturday morning. So I checked and there was an appointment. So I booked it online. Saturday morning comes. I send my husband, because, again, I don't, I don't do that stuff. You know, he's, he's more calm than me with you

Scott Benner 10:13
wanted all these kids go to the blood work exactly.

Tess 10:18
That's his job and this relationship. And so my husband took him and my little, my little six year old going off to get blood work. He was scared, but he was so brave. And so my husband called me when he's done, he said, Oh, he was he was so brave. He did such a good job. I'm going to take him to 711 to get a Slurpee to celebrate how brave he was so perfect. You can imagine what, what a Slurpee does that night, my son got very sick. I ended up sleeping with him in his bed, and he was like smacking his lips like and his lips were all dry. Looking back now, he was severely dehydrated, and he was waking up to urinate every hour and a half. And I laid there and listened to him peeing, and I could not believe how much urine was coming out of that little body. I thought, how, how can he be producing this much urine? Yeah, he's tiny, and he just peed an hour and a half ago, and then he was going to the sink and just gulping water. And I knew, I knew he was so sick, but again, I what diabetes was out the doctor said. But I laid there that night thinking, I should, I should get up and take him to the hospital now. But again, I don't. I don't like hospital. So to been my, my husband's job, and he's not a middle of the night person. So I said, oh, we'll wait. We'll wait till the morning. No one gets

Scott Benner 11:33
sick at night here, we don't let that right? You can't, you can't. You know, I've had people on the podcast who discussed one person was diagnosed as, like a baby, and their family found them drinking out of

Tess 11:44
the toilet. Oh, I remember that. Yeah, that's, that's the

Scott Benner 11:47
draw. And then you were restricting his his liquid there for a little walk. Imagine how like, thirsty he was and how compliant he was to listen to that's really, yeah, okay, I'm sorry. Go ahead, poor kid. Yeah, look at you. No, I'm just kidding.

Tess 12:03
Why'd I have a fourth after that? Now it's Sunday morning, and now my son's vomiting. I call the pediatricians, obviously close, but I call the on call doctor. It's a large practice, so there's many pediatricians there. I leave a message. I explained, you know, he was just seen. It had been exactly 10 days since I had had him in the office. He was just seen. He checked out, but he's really sick now. I explained, what's going on. I explained that he had just gotten blood work yesterday morning, but I didn't know if blood work, you know, came in on Sundays or whatever. Right left the message. Got a call back within 10 minutes, and it was a different pediatrician than the one I had seen 10 days prior. And she said, I just saw his blood work. His blood sugar is extremely high. You've got to get him to a hospital right away. And she said, and I looked back at his urine sample from 10 days ago, and I'm not sure how my colleague missed it, but there was glucose in his urine back then, oh, we've got

Scott Benner 13:01
Yeah. So we got somebody who put their glasses on before they look at your stuff. That's nice, good. Did you say yeah? 10 days ago, I tried to tell you all this, nobody listened to me. Yeah. I'll wait to hear what happens next. Does it have something to do with you? Throwing something because I can't wait. I'm excited. Go ahead. No,

Tess 13:17
no. So, of course, I say it's also COVID, so only one parent is allowed to go right to the hospital. So guess who goes? Because, yeah, like hospitals, and I wanted to go to the local one, like, you know, the county one, because it's just closer. And the on call pediatrician said, Oh no, you need to go downtown, where there's a, you know, to a big university that has a pediatric endocrinologist, you know, on staff at all times. So she gave me a couple of options. We have some world renowned hospitals right in our area, here on the East Coast. And so I picked the one that I had heard of the most, and sent my husband off. And they got there and they said he was a few hours away from the ICU. He did not need to go into the ICU, but I suspect it may be because it's such a big hospital. They have an entire pediatric endocrinology floor alone, and so I'm thinking maybe they were just better equipped to handle it because he was so sick he was in DKA,

Scott Benner 14:20
yeah, maybe his blood gasses were on the right side of horrifying that they were able to manage it somewhere else. Who knows? They didn't tell you, right? Yeah,

Tess 14:28
no, they didn't tell me.

Scott Benner 14:30
Can Can I stop you for a second? Sure, nobody likes hospitals. Why do you extra not like them?

Tess 14:36
I'm not calm, like my husband has a very calm demeanor. I get very anxious, and I was afraid, like my son would pick up on that, and wouldn't, I wouldn't be calm for him and my husband has the more calming presence when it comes to, like, scary stuff like that, like hospitals and stuff. Do you think

Scott Benner 14:54
people come on the podcast intent on naming their episodes because I'm not calm? Is a strong contour. Under for you, like a wonderfully declarative statement, because you're very You seem very calm now, and you're like, I'm not calm. And I'm like, oh, okay, so you were worried that you'd freak the kid out.

Tess 15:12
Yes, exactly okay. And I'm more calm now, Scott, because after my son's diagnosis and being completely on edge for about six months, I had to, had to go on a little medicine to help me be a little calmer. Oh, you're calmer now, yes, because every blood sugar alarm had me, you know, quaking and so do you

Scott Benner 15:31
get that adrenaline kick when you hear it?

Tess 15:33
Yes? And like, scared, yeah, in the beginning, yeah. Would

Scott Benner 15:37
it not go away? Then

Tess 15:38
it depended how bad the low blood sugar was. We had some scary lows in the beginning. I

Scott Benner 15:44
say, Okay, we'll hear about that later. Okay, sorry, back to the hospital. You and that guy that wanted all these babies are yes, you know, you split up the duties. You've got the three sleep. Did you have only three kids at that point? Or do you have four at that

Tess 15:57
point even? No, I had four. The fourth one was about three years old. Okay, so you're

Scott Benner 16:01
at home with your the other he's at the hospital. They move him and what do they what happens? Because I feel like something's about to happen.

Tess 16:10
Yeah, this, this is the, this is the punch line, I guess. So, the next day, Monday, my husband gets a call from the pediatrician who had missed the sugar, the glucose in his urine, and he apologized profusely. He did not make any excuses. My husband said he was very sincere. He said, You know, there's no excuse. I simply missed it.

Scott Benner 16:33
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Tess 17:37
and I'm so sorry. I was devastated when I heard that you guys were in the hospital with this, and here's the kicker, he said, and I should have known, because I'm a type one diabetic myself, and I was diagnosed around six years old when I started wetting the bed.

Scott Benner 17:52
I don't know why. I didn't think of it, right? That sounds so familiar. No, no, no, I think he's fine, right? Did your husband laugh at him?

Tess 18:04
I think my husband was more pleasant than I would have been to me. That's even worse, like, you know this disease,

Scott Benner 18:10
I know for certain, my response would have been, get the out of here. Look, that's exactly what I would have said if you said that to me. Oh, my God. Well, that's crazy, but okay, yeah, and it was nice of him to be so direct, because I think in a litigious world, people don't usually admit that they don't do anything, right? So that was, that was kind of him. You guys were accepting of his apology, or did you go toilet paper his house later? So

Tess 18:34
we actually had, you know, I knew from here on out, you know, he's my son would be seeing a pediatric endocrinologist quarterly. So we still needed a pediatrician for the minor illnesses throughout his life, and I didn't want to see that man ever again. And my husband said, well, don't you want our son's pediatrician to have the same disease that he has and really understand it? And I said, Oh, you have a point there. I'll tell

Scott Benner 18:59
you what I would have thought, I would have thought he's in our debt now he's going to try extra hard for us. That's how I would have thought of it.

Tess 19:08
That's true. I didn't think of it like that, but I my husband. I was like, alright, you have a point.

Scott Benner 19:14
Who won this little battle. So we did stay with

Tess 19:17
him. He was he was older. He was in his like, 60s, I think. And so about a year and a half after this is interesting, he announced his retirement. He wanted to spend more time with his wife and kids, and we my son was pretty healthy, other than the diabetes, so we didn't have to see him a lot, but he was kind of interesting at the practice. He was didn't have the best bedside manner, but all my friends whose kids went to this practice. We called him the MacGyver of doctors, because he was the guy who could figure out the most obscure things, like he was really good at that stuff. I had a friend whose son was sick, and he figured out, I want to say, f pies. Have you heard of this f pies? Yeah, I. Gets like an allergy to the protein and meat. I don't know I I could be wrong every maybe you need to Google it. Scott, it was something strange, and he figured it out when, like no one else could, he couldn't figure out the his own disease that he had when it was staring him in the

Scott Benner 20:18
face. But maybe his blood sugar was low while I'm just looking at it. Well,

Tess 20:21
I figured if he was in his 60s, he was he had diabetes for over 50 years, so I can't imagine the, you know, the changes he saw over his lifetime.

Scott Benner 20:30
No, I see he saw a lot of changes. And now you would wonder, did he go with them or not? Because sometimes people don't.

Tess 20:36
He did show my son. Our first meeting with him was like a zoom call, I think, after the diagnosis, and because it was still COVID, and he did show my son, I think he had the tandem pump, okay, yeah. But after he announced his retirement, and two months later, he was in a single car accident and was killed, oh my god, yeah. And to this day I wonder, like, was it a blood sugar issue? You know? Horrible. Yeah, Jesus,

Scott Benner 21:05
I came out of nowhere. Jesus, right, if I told you what I was what thought I was pushing out of my head when you told me that poor man was killed in a car accident, I can't even tell you now because it's too inappropriate. I'm going to tell you when we're done recording. Remind me, hold on a second. I literally can't, because I don't know how other people's brains work, but while you're talking and pausing, my brain fills in what I think you're gonna say, and I start writing around that. But once in a while, like the humorous part of me fills in stupid instead, instead of like, conversation, thank you. No, that's lovely. Except you were, like, we were on a zoom call, and he was, he showed my son, he showed my son his and you kind of like, and I just kept thinking, Do you know what I was thinking? I'd let it go, like, oh my god, this really went off the rails, because that happened a lot during zoom. Guys were like, not sure their cameras were on. You know what? I mean? Oh, yeah. Also, what are guys doing while they're working? That's another story. There were one too many of those, like news stories

Tess 22:11
during COVID. Yeah, I heard a few after the first

Scott Benner 22:14
one came out. I was like, All right, now we're all being extra careful now, right? No, no. Okay. Anyway, I wasn't thinking that we'll move on. The poor man died in a car accident. That's horrible. Did you just tell me that to shock me, or does that advance the story somehow?

Tess 22:29
No, that was it like it was just, it was a wild diagnosis story, for sure. And that was, like the culminating event that was like, Wow. You know, he just retired to spend he had sent a letter to all his patients. You know, I'm gonna spend time with my more time with my wife and kids. And

Scott Benner 22:45
could happen so fast. I had a small accident recently while we were on vacation, of all things, and it was a split second, like, just nobody's fault, craziest, little weird thing, like, you know, it was, like, kind of a low speed accident. Nobody was hurt or anything like that. But as I've, I've as I've looked back over like, 1000 times in my head, I'm like, like, my god, like, that's it felt like I was like, walking, and I stepped off a cliff, like it came out of nowhere. And as it was happening, I'm like, Oh, it's too late now, whatever's gonna happen is gonna happen, and that's that, you know, so just really, I mean life, I don't wanna say life is fragile, but it is, and, like, the fragility of it is it shouldn't be lost. Like, I'm gonna go home and spend time, like, imagine he was able to retire in his early 60s. He was probably so excited.

Tess 23:38
Maybe he was older than that? Yeah, I don't know. I mean, 60s or 70s definitely had all white hair, but, um, yeah, it was sad. And I wanted to ask some of the other pediatricians there, but that was their co worker and colleague, and I didn't want to ask, what happened? Hey, like, what do you know? What? Okay. I mean, I found the article online, and I just know it was like a single vehicle. So it made me think, gosh, did it? Was it related to, like, a blood sugar or something? Somebody

Scott Benner 24:04
I work with passed away recently. There's part of you that's like, I wonder what happened. And then there's like, the common sense party is like, do not ask. It's none of your business. You know what I

Tess 24:13
mean, right? I'm always curious, though. I always want to know that the details like that,

Scott Benner 24:17
Tess, you're kind of a party. I can tell in the first 20 minutes here, I think you're I think you're the mom at the ball field who is a bit of a problem. Am I wrong? This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the ever since 365 get 365 days of comfortable wear without having to change a sensor. When you think of a continuous glucose monitor, you think of a CGM that lasts 10 or 14 days, but the ever since 365 it lives up to its name, lasting 365 days. That's one year without having to change your CGM with the ever since 365 you can count on comfort and. Inconsistency, 365, days a year, because the ever since, silicon based adhesive is designed for your skin to be gentle and to allow you to take the transmitter on and off, to enjoy your shower, a trip to the pool or an activity where you don't want your CGM on your body, if you're looking for comfort, accuracy, and a one year where you are looking for ever since 365 go to Eversense cgm.com/juicebox, to learn more. If you take insulin or so faucinyas, you are at risk for your blood sugar going too low. You need a safety net when it matters most, be ready with GE voc hypo pen. My daughter carries GE 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 kypo pen can be administered in two simple steps, even by yourself in certain situations. Show those around you where you store jivo kypo pen and how to use it. They need to know how to use jivo 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 called a pheochromocytoma, or if you have a tumor in your pancreas called an insulin Oma. Visit gevoic glucagon.com/risk, for safety information. No,

Tess 26:43
not me. No, no, I'm on the straight and narrow. Okay,

Scott Benner 26:47
I think you have punch with you during late games, but your son's diagnosed. He was six at the time, right?

Tess 26:56
Okay, he was let out. He was diagnosed on Father's Day. My poor husband, I sent him off to the hospital on father's day, June 21 2020

Scott Benner 27:05
Wow, to go pick up your kid. Yep, to go and

Tess 27:08
and then my son turns seven, a little like a like, about two weeks later, did

Scott Benner 27:14
he have to stay by himself at times in the hospital because of COVID? Or were you able because somebody was with Arden? We were there for five days, and Kelly was always with her. And then, if not, it was me, but were you not able to do that?

Tess 27:28
Yeah, someone was with him at all times. But actually they wouldn't discharge him until they watched both parents, like, give him an injection. So I had to come to the hospital one day. You know, every time the the diabetes educators came in, I would have to get on Zoom, and my husband would get me on his phone and not zoom, but like FaceTime, and my husband would be and he'd like angle the phone at the diabetes educator so I could be in on the education. But I did have to go to the hospital the one day, and I remember, like the security guard at the bottom, like, you know, she could see, she was like, there's already an adult up there. And I said, Well, I have to be up there. And they're like, only one adult allowed, you know? And I had to explain, like, no, no, I like, I have to go up there because they have to watch me give my son an injection before they will discharge him. Yeah,

Scott Benner 28:19
I know this isn't your fault, but you're making this worse. Please, let me go upstairs, right? Yeah, those COVID rules were fun. Are you? Is your I was gonna say your glitchy nature, but I don't know where that came from exactly. Did it not allow you to help with the diabetes? This end up falling more to your husband? Oh,

Tess 28:37
no, I That's when I found you. I I'm gonna research. I'm gonna I dived in head first. Dove in, I should say. But I didn't love giving the the injections, so when my husband was home, I'd have him do that. I didn't change a Dexcom deck. I hated the noise that the g6 made, and so I did not change the Dexcom for probably the first year my husband did that, but it was COVID. So my son was home with us for an entire year like I didn't have to worry about, you know, sending him off to school, like we had an entire year where he never left us. Was that about to learn about it? Yes, absolutely. A silver lining for us of COVID Was he was with us for a year straight.

Scott Benner 29:20
For me, my silver lining of COVID was not going to restaurants save so much money. I was like, Oh, my God, how much are we spending at restaurants? Exactly, right. But no, I like that idea of not being rushed back to work and everybody kind of being able to be around and but do you have like, were you anxious before this? Yes,

Tess 29:40
like, on and off, it's not terrible, but when it comes to health and medical things, that's where I get

Scott Benner 29:48
pretty anxious about for you and your husband, or more about the kids. It

Tess 29:52
definitely got worse when I had kids. Yeah, I don't care as much about him or I, but you know, you have these little kids and, like, they're your life. Test.

Scott Benner 30:00
Why couldn't you just say I don't care that much about him, and then not say where I because it would have been hilarious.

Tess 30:05
I was just trying to be diplomatic. I don't

Scott Benner 30:07
really care about him. I mean, me a little more so. But um, have you stopped and thought, what if something happens in one of these other ones? I'm not gonna be able

Tess 30:17
to manage? I think now we could manage because we're four years in I have had it on my radar to do the trial net. I actually said something to my oldest, who's 15, almost 16, my daughter, and I said, you know, I think I want to get the rest of you tested. And she got very upset and said, I don't want to know. Oh, and I thought, Well, I see that side too. Would you want to know you're gonna eventually get some life altering disease. I don't know. I mean, I think

Scott Benner 30:44
we can make the argument that that doctor would have liked to have known if he was having an accident, right? Yeah, but she's old enough to decide. Also, I mean, I guess you could do the blood work and not tell her, that would be weird, yes, yeah. Also, if you want to know where I'm going to get notes from woke people there. It is going to be right there. It is my duty to let you know that children are autonomous. I'm like, I know. I'm just, I'm just telling you, the woman could get a blood test for her kid and not tell her the alchemist she wanted to. It's completely,

Tess 31:11
I was actually thinking of it, because she just had her like, 15 year well, visit, and they ordered just routine blood work. And I thought, well, contact, try on that and just say hey. And, you know, take a little more blood and send some of it off, or try on that some blood over,

Scott Benner 31:26
of course you did, because it's a thing you want to know. Is that, right? Yeah,

Tess 31:30
well, and I listened to some of your episodes about T Z, o, t Z, yes. And so that seemed very promising. I just don't love that it's an infusion right now, I keep thinking maybe it'll eventually be a pill or something easier for kids to take, but

Scott Benner 31:49
I just interviewed somebody who did it recently. They had nothing but good things to say about the process. But in fairness, they had to relocate to a hotel for like, 14 days, go in every day and get the infusion. Now the mom said, she said one of this episode's not out yet, but she said one of the Silver Linings for her was, she's like, my kid is older. I was never going to spend two weeks with him the way we did, like playing games and like hanging out and stuff. And she's like, it was kind of nice. So, you know, you can find a silver lining a lot of things, right? Right? But I have to tell you, if my I'm gonna sound like a hypocrite now, but if my 15 year old told me I don't want to know, I'd say, Okay, well, then we're not gonna look you wanna respect that? Yeah, as much as it's fun for me to play both sides of the of the coin when we're talking here, I would, I would respect what they said for sure.

Tess 32:37
The other side is like, if there's something out there that could delay the onset and eventually, could it? Could you keep getting the tea sealed and it will keep delaying it eventually, like that, you never get it. Like if I could do something to prevent another one of my children from getting this terrible disease, then you would, right? Yeah. So yeah, it's

Scott Benner 32:59
yeah, be a tough lesson to learn in hindsight, that's for sure, right? Exactly, especially if you're only 15. So then go back to my old argument of, what else would you let a 15 year old decide about, right? Yeah, nothing. Right, yeah. So what if you told the kid like, look, we'll test, and I promise not to tell you, you know the answer of the test. Of course, if there's nothing wrong, you'll never know. But that, even that doesn't make sense, because if there is something wrong, you are going to bring it up. So it's not like you're going to find out that they're, you know, in stage one, type one diabetes, and not say anything, right? Yeah, so her, her argument doesn't hold a lot of water, does it? No.

Tess 33:40
And then I thought, well, I should just take all of the all the other kids, like everyone has to go. I believe they will test parents as well, right? Of type one diabetics? Maybe, yeah, trial net. So I'm like, just make it a family affair, and everyone's got to go give blood for this. Also

Scott Benner 33:57
that new sponsor screen for type one. I think that if you go to screen for type one.org, is that what it is? Yeah, you think right now, they're like, Oh, good, real happy. We bought that ad from you. I'm like, Well, I'm like, I think it's this sorry screen for type one. Give me a second. That cracks me up for some reason. Let me find it real quickly. They're probably like, wow, money, well spent. This guy, this guy finally brings it up in a casual conversation. Can't remember the link. Yeah, I take their point if that's what they're thinking right now, screen for type one.com, there's links in the show notes to it, so you can learn more about it there. I agree with you, because if she's gonna get it, she's gonna get it. Now, what she's saying is, if I'm gonna get it when I'm 27 I don't want to know when I'm 15, right? Which I get? Yeah, what you're thinking is, if you're gonna get it next year, and we could do something about that, why don't we do that and make it take two years? Maybe you know something, right? She didn't like that argument. We

Tess 34:55
didn't really delve into that. She was, she kind of shut it down. I would. I would, I would want to know, yeah, I think for any of my kids. But again, I've been thinking about it for two years. I still haven't done it for any of them. Well,

Scott Benner 35:07
you went on the anti anxiety medication. Now, if you went off that, you'd get it done tomorrow, right? You're

Tess 35:12
onto something. Scott, what'd they give you there? Well, Bucha, no, I don't even know what it is. It's just a, I think it's an antidepressant

Scott Benner 35:20
test. The amount of people who say to me, Oh, I take a thing. I don't know what it's called, floors me. It really does, like, you really don't know what it's called.

Tess 35:27
It's a it's a law. It's hard for it to pronounce, slight syllable. Scott, yeah, come on. Did

Scott Benner 35:34
it have any other like effects that you didn't want, or did you just see a benefit from it? Nope.

Tess 35:40
I just noticed, like, if my son was having, like, a low blood sugar, I, like, I could feel my heart wanting to start racing, me wanting to get so worried. But, like, it couldn't, like, it was blocking that, like, flight or fight response.

Scott Benner 35:53
We didn't help. I mean, did you try anything else? No, no, that was the first thing you tried. Okay, yeah, that worked, huh? All right. Like, well, right on. I'm glad you found something that helps. There's times when Arden's like, alarm will go off overnight, and my wife is like, Arden is Arden, okay? And I'm like, wow, hold on, I'm not even awake yet. Let me figure it out. And then I'll look and I'll say, oh, you know what? It's just a compression low and, you know, don't worry about it. And, like, I go back to sleep in 15 minutes later. I'm like, what is that light? That light is Kelly on her phone because she can't go back to sleep. And I'm like, Hey, we already looked and she's good, go back to sleep. She goes, it's not that easy. And I'm like, oh, okay, so

Tess 36:30
I'm with Kelly, yeah, I'm gonna stay up and watch it, make sure it's a compression low for at least 20 minutes before I'm gonna go back to sleep. It

Scott Benner 36:38
ruins the next two hours for her. She's just like, she's like, my heart, my heart is pounding, so I feel her, yeah, I think it's that thing, like, whatever happens the first time the kid comes out of the hoo ha whole like, it definitely throws you guys off. Yeah, it does, really. It turns everything into, like, high intensity that keep the baby alive. Like, guys have it too, but we like it comes and goes. You know what? I mean?

Tess 37:03
Yes, yeah, yeah, my husband's much more calm with that type of stuff. I'm the one. If there's something small, I immediately think it's big. And he's like, No, it's not a big deal now. Now, when my son was diagnosed, he was still saying the day I was packing him off to the hospital. He was saying, I think it's just a stomach bug. And I said, No, we're

Scott Benner 37:24
also boys, so you can't He probably just like fell. So, right? Listen, I have that thing. Somebody last last night, I did a late night ask me anything in the Facebook group. You guys should all be in the private Facebook group if

Tess 37:39
you're not. I saw that, right? I was gonna write to you and say, Are you gonna make me nervous tomorrow when I record with you? That's not

Scott Benner 37:45
my fault. That's you. Oh, we already figured that out earlier. And so what did somebody say to me? They asked me, I forget what they asked me, but I ended up admitting if I let people down, it really bothers me. An example that would be like, kind of commiserate to how you or Kelly might feel in the situations you're describing. It's gonna sound silly, but Arden was leaving for college last week on Friday, and we had tickets Thursday night to see, like, the 15th anniversary showing of Coraline in the movie theater, which is, like my wife's favorite movie. And it was gonna be me and Arden and Kelly and one of Arden's friends. Why did Cole not go? I shouldn't say here, because he's an adult, but he saw it when he was young, and it scared the hell out of him, and he still doesn't want to see the freaking movie. So he's like, No, thank you. And I'm like, Okay. I'm like, you know, I'm like, you know, you're 24 now. And he goes, I don't care. I don't want to see this movie. So it's like one of those phantom events, things like, you know, like, it's not really through the movie theater, it's like a third party that sets it up. I bought these tickets months ago for Kelly, like, I saw that they were on sale. I bought them right away, and I knew she'd be super excited. And then it ended up being like, this weird thing where now we have to go the night before Arden's leaving for college, like, it just landed on a bad day, but whatever. And earlier in the day, Kelly's like, hey, what time's that showing again? I said, Oh, it's 730 I pulled out my phone. It's right there in my calendar. I touch the calendar thing, it launches the email shows the code. I'm like, Ah, I'm all set. This is perfect. We get to the theater, and I go back into my calendar, and I touch the link, and it launches the email, and the email won't open, and now I can't scan it to get in. So I'm outside, I'm calling my son. I'm like, Hey, can you go on my computer? Like, that's not working. The woman at the front's like, if you don't have this email, you can't come in. I'm like, but I have the reference number. She just doesn't matter. So I'm outside, I'm on the phone, and my daughter's friend, who I've known for since she was a little girl, like she picked a flower off a bush and she like, touched it to my neck. And Arden said, I thought you were gonna punch her like she came up behind me and touched me. She's like you reacted so harshly, and then I looked at you, and she goes, Dad, you. Face was purple, and I was like, was it? And she goes, dude, you looked like you could have run through a wall. And I And she's like, why were you so upset? I said I wasn't upset. And she goes, No, you were really, really upset. And I said I wasn't upset. I was sad. And she goes, what I said, I felt like I let everybody down. And she goes to go to a movie, and I'm like, Yeah, I probably have problems, but I felt like I let everyone down. And I I knew I could get us into that theater, but my wife was standing there and looking at me, and I knew I had to deal with it the way she wanted me to deal with it, because the woman at the front said, you can't get in without that email. And my wife's like a rule follower. So now that's the new rule we're doing. And I would have just gone and found the manager and been like, Listen, man, we bought these four seats. I have them right here in my calendar. We'll go sit in them. If somebody else shows up, just sit on them. Fair enough. I'll get up. But that's not going to happen, because I bought these seats. I would have talked my way into that in three seconds, right? So anyway, so I pulled myself like, I felt myself overreact to being touched on the neck. And I was like, Oh my God. Like, you're not okay. Like, so I, like, kind of took a deep breath. I went back to the woman at the front. I was like, Look, I have this reservation number. And she goes, Well, I can't get you into that. I was like, well, can someone else? And she goes, Oh yeah, probably the manager. I was like, Oh, do you think I could speak to him, please? So anyway, he gets us into 20 seconds with the, you know, the number, and as we're standing there waiting, somebody's in the bathroom, Arden goes, you okay? And I was like, Yeah, I'm absolutely fine. I know you think I'm upset, but I'm not. I'm not upset. I'm not angry. I was just, I just, I felt like I let everybody down. And she's like, No man, we're good. And I was like, okay, she goes, you know, we could have just bought four more seats and gone in. It wasn't sold out. Anyway, I don't that's the closest I can come to understanding what you're talking about, yeah, yeah, yeah. Anyway, it's a long story that ends with people listening, going, Oh, wow, his parents did get divorced. I really do think it's like a I think it's a side effect of that, to be perfectly honest, yeah, yeah. But nevertheless, at least, you know, I'm not going to let you down if I'm with

Tess 42:22
you. I know Scott, you probably don't remember this. This was something else I wanted to mention. But a year after my son was diagnosed, we were at the beach again, and it was late. He his blood sugar. He was in the 40s, and we had pumped him full of so much sugar, and he was like, physically sick. Could not eat any more sugar. And I appealed in your Facebook group. Just what do I do my son, you know, he won't even take any more sugar. And I get message from you from Juicebox Podcast, and it just has this long number, and I write back, and I say phone number question mark, and I said, I'm on the East Coast too. Like you, Scott. I know it's late. It was like, two in the morning. I was like, did you want me to call you tomorrow? And you wrote now,

Scott Benner 43:08
oh, that was I do. Go ahead. Keep telling the story, yeah, because I think I come off like a hero in this Go ahead. Go ahead. Yeah,

Tess 43:15
like, 2am and and I was like, oh my god, Scott. Scott Benner wants me to call him. And I had gotten my by now, like, my son's asleep, his blood sugar was, like, steady, at least in like, the high 50s. And I was like, Oh my God, you let me call you and help me walk through it. And I remember joking. We were joking, if my husband came out, he'd be like, Who are you talking to? And I would have to say Scott from Juicebox. And it sounds like that's Jake from State Farm,

Scott Benner 43:45
exactly. It's that State Farm commercial, like, Who are you talking, right? And my husband say,

Tess 43:50
well, he sounds hideous. I don't know if you remember that commercial, but it was so funny. I remember

Scott Benner 43:55
very I guess, too well, actually. And why did they get away from that? Just to give Patrick my homes all that money, I guess. But it was a great commercial. Hey, I don't want to die. I don't want to go too far into the State Farm commercial thing. But I was personally embarrassed for Andy Reid when they made him say nuggies in a State Farm commercial. I just want to say that that was horrible. I agree. Anyway, we're on the phone. What did I did I say anything helpful? Or did I just act like a sounding board so you could relax.

Tess 44:22
You were like a sounding board by then, and like his blood sugar. And you were like, Well, what did he eat? And I was like, wow, you know, or at the beach, he had pizza and I went for ice cream. And you were like, you don't go on vacation anymore. That just messes everything.

Scott Benner 44:37
Rock solid information for me,

Tess 44:39
right? But no, I think, you know, it was just all the physical activity, like on the beach and stuff, was just we needed to way adjust his, you know, his car ratio and and things.

Scott Benner 44:51
You don't realize that the first time, you know, like, you're seeing all that food, and you're like, I'm gonna, I know how to Bolus for this. I'm gonna do it. And. Don't take into account the running around and the heat and the swimming and that late and low thing that happens at two o'clock in the morning for some reason, and you know, all that other stuff, you figure it out that. Mean, have you figured it out now you go to the beach now without trouble? Yeah.

Tess 45:14
But you know, he my son, he's always been very sensitive to insulin, so it just, I just still don't feel like we have a, like, tight control, like it's just, it's so unpredictable with him. He's a he's a big athlete. He plays travel baseball and travel ice hockey with his sports and activities. He's a very active kid. It just affects his insulin needs, but it's just so unpredictable. So, you know, I hear a lot of your guests, and after they've been listening to you, you know, their a one, Cs are awesome in the fives or sixes, and like, we cannot get him, he's right around seven. And I cannot one one time about a year ago, dropped to 6.9 but I just, I want better for him.

Scott Benner 45:57
What's the management style that you use,

Tess 46:00
he's on the Omnipod five, and that that has helped a lot. He was on the arrows at first, where it wasn't talking to the Dexcom, and we struggled a lot. Still, the Omnipod five has helped, but it doesn't seem to be able to keep up with his highs and his lows as well as we'd like. And it's interesting, when we talk to his pediatric endocrinologist, we actually see an NP who is in the diabetes clinic there at the big hospital. And she's always like, no, he's doing great. And I'm always like, I don't think I mean, he's doing good enough. And I imagine she sees so many kids who probably are doing a lot worse. So in the grand scheme of things, for her, he's doing pretty well. But

Scott Benner 46:48
yeah, he's doing well the Juicebox world.

Tess 46:50
I feel like we can do better, like so many,

Scott Benner 46:55
in a common sense world, like I think you're right too, because I listen, I just interviewed a woman the other day. She's an adult now, but she said from 13 to like 26 she was in double digit, a one CS, and for a couple years, had a 14, right? And if you're the doctor who sees that a lot, every day, you see a seven, and you're like, lady, I don't know what your business perfect, you know? And I get that perspective, but you're saying, you know, is there a way for you to help me get just into the sixes, even, like, so I would ask you, what do you think is happening? Is it excursions at meals? Is it highs two or three hours after he eats? Is he getting low and then you're correcting, and then it's popping up or like, where do you think you're like, where you want to trim from when you think of that a one say he tends

Tess 47:45
to go high at night, and the pump can't seem to like, bring him down. And we've adjusted, you know, he has practice between all his sports almost every night of the week. So he eats like a meal, you know, before practice. But when he gets home at eight or nine at night, he's eating again, yeah, but the highs happen hours after eating, which makes you think, Oh, is it a basal thing? But that's not something you really adjust on the five you should it should be adjusting. It

Scott Benner 48:12
makes me think that if he's eating late at night, then he goes to bed, your digestion slows down. That food sits in his stomach longer, and it's pushing his blood sugar up. That's what it makes me think. That

Tess 48:22
makes think. That makes sense because, because if we give him all of it, like up front, usually it's low, he will go low, and then he treats and then he goes to sleep and goes high. So wonder if we should, like, maybe how high between 202

Scott Benner 48:37
50, and how much insulin would fix it. That's the thing.

Tess 48:42
It's so unpredictable. One day one unit brings them down 150 and the next time it won't touch it. Does that have

Scott Benner 48:51
anything to do? Do you think with the density or the fat content of the food he's eating? Do you see what I'm saying? Like, if one day a unit works and one day units too much. Is that the difference between a cheeseburger after practice and a ham sandwich after practice, you know what I mean, like, like, is it just a grease and protein thing? Maybe I don't think so. We're,

Tess 49:14
you know, we, we tend to take that into account when we're dosing him. What

Scott Benner 49:19
about activity at practice? Is there any way to track if, if, like, are you talking about baseball or hockey right now both

Tess 49:25
he Yeah, he both is going on right now. Yeah, it's fall season for travel baseball and hockey season just lasts forever.

Scott Benner 49:31
How tall is he? He's short. Oh, I'm gonna try that hard. A lot of it's about how tall you are once you get to college. So don't tell him that now to crush him. But if I told my kid that when he was your son's age, he would have been like, it doesn't matter. And I would have been like, oh, but it's going to my first thought was, why don't you try to do I know it's on the pod five, so you can't do an extended Bolus, but why don't you do like a two Bolus thing, like Bolus enough to stop a spike when he eats that late night meal? Go and then wait 90 minutes and Bolus the rest of it and see if you can get ahead of that latent high. That's that's sticky with a with that. I mean, that might work. Yeah, yeah. We can try that. Yeah. I think you just have to spread the insulin out a little bit. Because, you know, with the algorithm, you tell it, it's 30 carbs. It goes in. The algorithm doesn't think, Oh, two hours from now, if you have like, a fat or protein rise, I'm gonna, like, treat that like it's just gonna, it's gonna do what it does, right? It's, it does this. This micro Bolus is the but they call it non, they pod five, right? There's those little micro boluses. And, I mean, really, that's really just a pushing up of the basal, which is not going to cut into, like, a significant impact. If there is one there

Tess 50:45
exactly, I find myself overriding the pump a lot and needing to give, like, a big Bolus, but like that defeats the purpose, like we should be able to get it.

Scott Benner 50:55
Yeah, now you're awake, so maybe, maybe that's it, like, spread the carbs out over a longer timeline. Maybe that'll help it. Yeah, we'll try that with the shot. Also, if anyone's listening, I don't know if that's actually gonna work or not. I'm just saying, like, it's what I think it's what I would do if I was in your situation. Yeah, thanks. We'll try that. Yeah, why not? Right? Did your husband just make all these kids to try to get one of them to play a college sport? Is that? What's really going

Tess 51:21
on here? Maybe but the amount of money we're shelling out, all four of my kids play two travel sports a piece, so the amount of money we're shelling out, I think, is going to end up being the equivalent of the cost of college. Holy

Scott Benner 51:32
hell. What do you guys have, like an AI startup over there? You're making a bunch of money. What's going on? No

Tess 51:38
report. So I had to borrow my neighbors these Apple headphones somewhere, and had to borrow them from my from my

Scott Benner 51:43
name. They don't know that you said that before we started recording. That's right, yeah, I will tell you my my son said to us once in college, like, because he got a fair amount of money in college, right? And he's like, and I saved this much money going to college because I played baseball. And I was like, Dude, you don't think we spent that money when you were like, younger, like, what do you think a trip to like, you know, Florida costs, you know, what do you think? What do you think? Like, travel ball costs like, I remember travel balls being like, $3,000 a season. And, yeah, I'm sure it's

Tess 52:16
qualified for a tournament in Canada.

Scott Benner 52:19
Oh, last year we can't come. That's what you would have heard from me. We're busy. To

Tess 52:23
Canada. Where'd you go? Sarnia, right up past Detroit.

Scott Benner 52:29
I feel like you're making that up. Isn't that a book where people live in a closet? Narnia, oh, that's probably the same thing. Yeah. No, I would have been like, we're busy that day. Sorry, I can't do that. I eventually figured out, and I would say this to anybody that's listening, the right travel team for your kid is one where they play, and it's not expensive. It doesn't need to be expensive. They just need to play. And you know, if you're on a great team and you're only playing half the innings or you're not a starter, it's, you'd rather be on a half ass team and play every day. It's about playing more.

Tess 53:06
So, right? Yeah, and I think just keeping them busy, they're busy with sports, they're hopefully less likely to get into meth trouble or other things.

Scott Benner 53:15
Yes, by the way, I bring that up because I was interviewing a woman the other day who was describing her life, her hell scape. I think it's it's out now. And she says, you know, at some point her parents get divorced. Her sister was, like, four years older than her, so she went to her sister for advice, who didn't live at home anymore. And you know what, her sister gave her meth. I was like, Oh, okay. Sometimes I think I said it to her. I was like, do you hear how crazy this is? Because I think sometimes people are in situations they don't even they don't hear it anymore, you know, right? It's so funny. Like, I loved the time that my kids played sports, and they they loved it too, and when they stopped loving it, we didn't like when Arden was like, I don't want to play anymore. We're like, Well, fine, don't you know? Like, I my feelings weren't hurt or anything like that. It's absolutely fine. There's no way to know at this age what it feels like when it ends and it just it ends so abruptly. It's horrifying, like you won't be ready for it.

Tess 54:15
No, that's why you keep having more and then always be another one in sports.

Scott Benner 54:20
What a plan pass. I didn't think of it that way. If I just made 17 kids, I'd always be at a baseball game, right? Have I ever talked on the podcast about my son's last college game? Not that I remember, oh my god, he came up the bat in like, the seventh inning of a double header, and he was hitting well in the game, and you could see him, like, you know, how baseball works, like, first he got it, you know, he walked, and then he's, like, in a single, like, you could feel it coming, you know, and in the seventh inning, and he leads off the inning, and it's college baseball. I'm talking about, like, dead center. It's 400 feet dead center, like, right? Like, it's a, you're. You're playing in a professional size baseball stadium. And first pitch, he hit that ball dead center, and the and the kid in center field caught it with his back up against the wall and his hand up in the air, like he just he missed, he missed the lead off first pitch, home run by three feet. It was such a good ball. And I remember thinking, man, his next at bat. I can't wait to see his next at bat. And then they lost that game, so the second game of the double header was inconsequential. So the coach sat the starters and let everybody else play. Oh, that's tough. And I sat there like thinking, like the wait that was it, like, it's over, you know? Like, he was just like, right? He just like, he's so close, like, today, and like, he just needs one more, like, one more at bat. He's gonna, he's gonna go crazy. And as I'm feeling that, and then I'm like, oh my god, it's not over today. It's over, over like, there's no next week, there's no next year. There's no reason to, like, we could throw his baseball glove away right now. That kind of over, oh, that's so sad. Oh, Tess it. That's not the sad part. The sad part is that when I looked for him, like, once, I gathered myself, like to make eye contact with him to see if he was okay. I couldn't find him. He wasn't in the dugout, he wasn't on the field. It was in between games. He had probably just heard he wasn't playing in the second game. And I couldn't visual I couldn't locate him, and so I started walking around, and he was maybe 75 yards from the field, sitting in a piece of grass by himself, like, just sitting there. That's heartbreaking. And he's like, grown now, you know what I mean? Like, he's six, six feet tall, he's 210, pounds, like he's a he's a grown ass man, like, and he's sitting there like he's four, and he couldn't find us in the mall, you know, and, oh, you're gonna

Tess 57:01
make me cry, Scott, that that's so sad. I have the image in my head.

Scott Benner 57:05
Oh, you should have it's that exact image. So now I'm looking at him, I'm 75 yards from him, and I'm going, I should go hug him, and then I'm like, I should leave him alone. And I didn't know what to do. And so would you do? I got out of his eye line, and I just watched him to make sure he was okay. Oh, and then I cried a little bit, and I wondered if he was crying, but he was too far away for me to know he wasn't. By the way, I know him better now i don't i He might not cry if he got shot, which is so weird because I'm crying now. Yeah, I'm close. And so he sat there 20 minutes, and then he just stood up and, like, kind of straightened up his uniform and fixed his hat and went back and sat in the dugout for the second game. Wow. And I was like, and I sat there and I watched that second game, but it was just the it was the craziest thing. So then we have to leave him like he's in college, like he's not coming home with us. So he went back to school. We went home, and I woke up incredibly early the next morning. I got my car and I drove and I don't know where I was going, but I ended up at his little league baseball field, and I sat in the stands and cried like a baby for like 20 minutes, and then I pulled myself together and got my car and left. And I have never been back to that field. Well, that's a lie. They asked me to come back and announce a game last year. I did it for the girls, but it was the first time I had been back there in years. I came home, I couldn't go inside, so I just started, like, pulling weeds outside, like, just doing the most random things outdoors. And my wife came out, and I couldn't make eye contact with her. I was just like, don't like, I can't like, not now, like, I just can't. So I was just really, and it's because you do this thing over and over again year after year, it feels like your life, right? No, it is, yeah. A couple years later, I don't think about it anymore. It's really interesting. Wow, I just all

Tess 59:07
four of mine play, um, oh, the girls play softball, and the boys play baseball. So we are at the ball fields constantly.

Scott Benner 59:14
Yeah, no, I have, like, freckles on my cheeks from sun like that I didn't have when I was younger. You know, like, it's I spent a lot of my life standing there, sitting there, walking back and forth from driving to I have one thing, like, on my desktop, I have the video of his last home run in college. Every once in a while, I'll just, like, click on it, let it run for 20 seconds, and then I just shut off. And that's it. I probably shouldn't. He should never know I do that. But

Tess 59:47
does he listen? I

Scott Benner 59:49
can't imagine. And he'll never know. My wife doesn't. I'm like, I'm like, did you hear that thing today? She goes where I'm like, on the pocket. She goes, I listen to your podcast. And I go, Okay, I. She's like, I get enough of you here. I was like, All right, what have we not talked about that we should have? I think that's about it. Yeah, yeah. How close are you to me? Close,

Tess 1:00:11
yeah, like, outside, outside of Baltimore. Oh, okay, yeah. In fact, we're in New Jersey all the time for baseball tournaments. You guys have a lot of baseball up there. We

Scott Benner 1:00:23
do. I tell I'll tell people a secret. During COVID. New Jersey ran college baseball for like, basically disenfranchised college players, because everybody got sent home. And oh, my son later told me he goes that summer. I played during COVID. He goes college, not college, anywhere else he goes. That's the base best baseball I ever played. And he didn't mean him, he meant the competition. Because what happened was, is all the players got sent home from college, but the kids who were really good didn't stop playing, and they all got together in this one league, and it was legit, like my son played on a team that year where he was in the outfield with three center fielders, one from Penn, one from Duke, one from his school, one from the next school. Like their starting pitcher was like, I think from North Carolina. They had a kid that was throwing for Duke out of the pen, like they were a d1 baseball team. They were crazy. It was like an all star team, and then you show up and play another all star team. It

Tess 1:01:27
was awesome. Wow, yeah, yeah, there's some great facilities up by you, for sure. It was the

Scott Benner 1:01:31
best baseball I ever saw, too, and everybody got better. It was pretty awesome. But he actually remarked he went back to college, and he was like, this is not nearly as good as that. Basically thrown together league I played in in um, during COVID. So, wow, it was weird. We all sat very far from each other. Even though we were outside, we didn't realize at that point that being outside kind of fixed it so. But anyway, this is really cool. What are your other kids play? Three of mine play ice hockey, which so expensive, isn't it? Yeah,

Tess 1:02:05
although my one daughter, who the only one who doesn't play ice hockey, found the sport that turns out to be more expensive than ice hockey. What is it? It is competitive, hip hop dance. What the hell

Scott Benner 1:02:21
not real. Is that real? It's real.

Tess 1:02:23
She doesn't like the other styles of dance, but she's really good at hip hop, which is funny, because my husband, I have no rhythm at all, not sure where she came from, but

Scott Benner 1:02:33
that's awesome. She's good at it travel. Why? What makes that expensive?

Tess 1:02:39
Choreography fees, costume fees, the traveling on the weekend, the competition, competition fees, the monthly fee of going to the classes, you know, four hours of class each week. Wow, it's pretty amazing. Older, congratulations, she did it.

Scott Benner 1:02:56
Yay. Is that a thing she can get into college for? I don't

Tess 1:02:59
know. I don't know much. We're two years into the dance world. It's a new world for me. Yeah, do

Scott Benner 1:03:05
you think any of your kids will play in college? Have you noticed it on them, like the 15 year olds, old enough that you could smell it on them a little bit now, right?

Tess 1:03:13
She she's a really good softball player. She plays ice hockey. I'm not sure about college. I don't know that she even wants to my, my 11 year old son, the type one diabetic. He's a really strong athlete, but he has not hit his growth spurt yet. So I'm hoping you know he's smaller. So he's got kids on his baseball team that have 3040, pounds on him, and they can, they could crush the ball. I mean, he for his size, he can hit, yeah, I'm waiting for him to get, get go through puberty, so that I can see what, we can see what he really does. Do you

Scott Benner 1:03:45
have his thyroid tested? Yeah, they test that, actually, I wrote it down. They test that, like once a year. They do blood work on them once a year. What's this? TSH, is that, is that? What would say, thyroid? Yeah, I don't give access to oh two, yeah, it's good. He's good. Yeah. I only asked because when Arden's thyroid was managed, well, she got I've said this before, but Arden was probably the smallest person in her school, and now she's five seven, wow, yeah, but that all came after her thyroid medication.

Tess 1:04:17
I wonder if kids like, if my son, I don't know how to explain it. Like, was his growth stunted, or his like, when he went undiagnosed for who knows how long, and now he's just behind, but eventually, like, maybe he'll catch up.

Scott Benner 1:04:31
Yeah, I don't know. Like, I don't know like, if art and his thyroid was always an issue and we just finally figured it out, or if it was an issue around the time she was going to grow, and then it kind of slowed her down. And then when we got it straight, she, you know, picked speed up speed again. I don't know,

Tess 1:04:48
yeah, although my husband, he's like, six three now, but he was always the shortest in his class, he said, through middle school, and then he grew like, three or four inches, like in one summer. But. Before he started his freshman year of high school. So maybe my son will just be later like him, yeah, but my other son's taller. He's almost as tall as my the eight year old's almost as tall as the 11 year

Scott Benner 1:05:10
old. How tall are you? I'm 43 Wait, you're 43 Yeah. How tall are you? Five, four on a good day. Okay? Because you I said, How tall are you? And you told me you were 43 and I was like, I don't understand. Is that metric? She went to Canada one time, and she's using the metric system now. I thought you said, How old are you? No, I recognize like, why is doing how old I am? I just want to say this. I had to drive through Baltimore two weekends ago during that horrible rainstorm, and I almost died. I'm not even kidding. We had to go get Arden stuff. I'll leave you with this. This seems to be a story episode, so I don't know if I said this on the podcast directly or not. Arden is not going to the Savannah College of Art and Design anymore, and so she came home after her sophomore year, and she said there are a number of reasons why, but I do not want to go back there at the top of her list were very poor teaching. That was her biggest complaint. She went into one of her core classes this year, and on the first day, the teacher said, I've never taught this before. I've never done it professionally. If you have questions, do not ask me. And then gave them a YouTube blank. So that didn't go well for her and many other people. And even though she ended up with a good grade, and like, figured her way through the grade, she did not, she doesn't have the skill. And she said, if I go back there without that skill, I will tumble behind very quickly. And she's like, and this is not like, an isolated problem. This one teacher, this place, is like, I've never seen something go downhill as quickly as I've seen this. I'm gonna leave. I'm gonna go back to my other option coming out of high school, and she's now, at the moment, like, signed up as a psychology major, but she's looking very closely at pre law and being an attorney someday. Okay, so she's off at a university doing that now, but she made that decision after she came home from Savannah, and her stuff was still in Savannah, so we hustled around. She got accepted to a couple of schools. We figured out which one that she wanted to go to, got her all set up in a very short amount of time over the summer, this was not easy, and then my father in law got sick and passed away right as we were going on our first family vacation in six years. And we had two weeks during that time to retrieve art and stuff out of her place where they were going to trash it, because we only had the place to a certain day. So we went on the vacation, buried my father in law came home, Arden got sick. She got strep throat. We doctored her up as best as we could, and then she and I drove down to Savannah and got her stuff. We drove Savannah and back, 1400 miles in about 48 hours. And so, gosh, and then we got home, and then we had four days to take her to the next school. So we're coming home from Savannah after all this, pretty exhausted, and though the skies just open up and we're about through DC, which is the worst, yep, you know, but, but we're, we're, we're in that gap there. We're coming up in the Baltimore DC thing. And as we're going through Baltimore and all that construction, you just can't see. And so I'm in the left lane at times. I One way I drove was there were light poles overhead on the left side. I think I was in like, the express lane, yes, and I couldn't see the curb or the or the lines or anything on the left like so I just, I lined the corner of my car up with the lights over my head, and I kept them on the corner of the car. And there was a ton of pressure, because Arden was behind me in a different car, driving. Oh, it's so, like, scary. She's just like, I crashed. She's following me because she doesn't know what. She can't see shit either, right? This goes on for hours, and then it finally stops, or it slows down enough and we're like, oh my god, I can't believe we're alive. Like, we stopped and, like, regrouped, and we were like, I can't believe we didn't crash. We were doing like, putting down our sun visors to limit our field of view so our eyes wouldn't get distracted by the rain, as much like we were using all these little like, internet tricks, staring at the road like it was really insane. Wow. And we drove about an hour or so, and it was all good. Then we got to the Delaware, which is that Delaware Memorial Bridge maybe, yeah, yep, and it's just crystal clear, as we're like, two miles off the bridge. And I called her, and I was like, hey, looks good. Like, let's speed back up and get home, because it was getting late, you know, I swear to God, as I hung up the phone, the sky opened up again, and by the time we were on the bridge, there was air. The wind was blowing. Everything was going sideways. The cars were getting pushed. We were going 15 miles an hour. There were standing. Water. People were giving up and pulling over. You could not see anything going over the bridge. But I called her, and I was like, Do you want to stop? And she goes, just keep going. Then I was like, Okay. I said, Can you see anything? She goes, I can see you. And I was like, Oh, great. So this is on me. And so, like, so we're going over the bridge. And she goes, whoa. And I'm like, what? She goes, I thought the car was gonna blow off the bridge. I was like, Okay, great. This went on for like, 45 minutes. It was insane. And you could, you couldn't see but just as I said to her the second time, I'm like, there's an exit coming up, like we got over the bridge. I'm like, do you want to get off the road? And she goes, I don't think this is ever going to stop. I think we should keep going. So we kept crawling along and crawling along. And then it just it ended. It was just over. And I called her back and I said, Is this gonna sound counterintuitive how I usually talk to you? I'm like, But drive as fast as you can. I was like, because I said, this is on our it's to the west of us. And I was like, and I think we have to beat it, or this is going to happen again. I actually think we're better off driving insanely fast than letting this rain get to us again. So then we raced the rain for like, the last hour back through New Jersey. It was really crazy. Sounds like a fun trip? It wasn't. I thought I literally, like, it was the first time in a while. I was like, Oh, this is it. This is I'm gonna die, and it's gonna be my fault that art and follows me right along into a concrete wall or something like that. Anyway, people are like, you could have pulled over. I was like, yeah, maybe Tess, thank you. I appreciate it. I like that you shared your story. I'm glad you found something that helps you. I didn't ask you if the podcast helped you with the kid, but it sounds like it did. So I didn't want to sound like a, you know, like I was like, fishing for a compliment. No,

Tess 1:11:43
it definitely did

Scott Benner 1:11:44
good. I'm glad. Can you say for like, was it bold beginnings? Was it Pro Tip series? Was it just hearing conversations like, quickly? What was the best for you?

Tess 1:11:55
Definitely the the bold beginnings and the Pro Tip series, just in the very beginning, just learning it all and just being like, No, I'm not going to be okay with a $300 I mean, 300 300 blood sugar. You know, Scott says if the blood sugar is high, it means you need more insulin. You know, we were given the typical, you know, don't give any corrections. You might stack the insulin. And it was time to just say, No, we're gonna I know enough now to take matters into my own hands, from what I learned from the podcast, to try and get a little bit better. You know, control over his diabetes,

Scott Benner 1:12:31
that really is the big deal is having the confidence to make adjustments, right? I think, like I think, that when it boils down to it, once you have the confidence to make adjustments, whether it's the settings or to blood sugars, that's kind of the beginning of your path of you know, like getting there. I'm glad it helped. I really am. Okay. Well, thank you so much. Can you hold on for one second? For me, Sure, thank you.

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