#231 Diabetes Pro Tip: Variables

Diabetes Pro Tip: Variables……

Scott and Jenny Smith, CDE share insights on type 1 diabetes care

You can always listen to the Juicebox Podcast here but the cool kids use: Apple Podcasts/iOS - Spotify - Amazon Alexa - Google Play/Android - iHeart Radio -  Radio Public or their favorite podcast app.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

---

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

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello, and welcome to the next episode of my diabetes pro tip series with CDE Jenny Smith. This one's called diabetes pro tip variables. The episode is sponsored by Dexcom real good foods and dancing for diabetes, you can go to dexcom.com forward slash juicebox real good foods calm and use the offer code juice box to save 20% of your entire order or dancing the number for diabetes.com. To find out more. There are also links in the show notes of your podcast player, and at Juicebox podcast.com. In this installment of the diabetes pro tip series with Jenny Smith, Jenny and I are going to be talking about variables those things that you know, change, but impact your blood sugar. The stuff you don't always think about, like are you taking a medication? Is it allergy season? Has it gotten warmer outside or colder outside? Do you have road rage? Stick around Jenny and I are going to talk about it all. While you're listening. Please remember that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise. And always consult a physician before becoming bold with insulin or making any changes to your medical plan. Can I take a second to share something with you that I believe you have an incredible impact on. I'm talking about the popularity of this podcast. I'm looking right now at the total downloads for April of 2018. Versus April 2019. Back in April of 2018, I was incredibly impressed with how many people were listening to the show. And last month, three and a half times more downloads than the previous year. And as I'm editing this, and getting ready to put this up for you in May, I'm pretty confident that this month will be the most popular ever.

Easily surpassing April of this year, which as I said, is three and a half times more popular than April of 2018. So as we approach the 1 million downloads of the Juicebox Podcast, I have a small favor to ask of you that I really have no right to ask because you're already listening. And I love that. But could you just do me a tiniest favor, find one person who doesn't listen right now who's not a subscriber, a person that you believe would enjoy the show and introduce it to them, show them how to download a podcast app on their phone. Show them how to subscribe. And perhaps you know, just share with them a couple of your favorite episodes to get them started. My goal, of course is to limit the struggles and suffering of other people. You guys know how it felt before you found the show. I'd like it if you could help somebody else to get to where you are now. And with all the ads the asks and the excitement of the 1 million downloads out of the way. I think we should start the show. Hey, everybody, this is Jenny from integrated diabetes services. I understand a lot of you have been contacting me privately, which I think is a fantastic idea for any and all of you who are interested. Jenny, of course, has been doing the diabetes pro tip series with me. This was supposed to be the last episode. But I think unless Jenny has changed her mind, we are going to continue to add to this series throughout the year. Yeah, excellent. Jenny. I'm very excited about that. And today's topic is. So you guys don't really understand how all this happened. I wrote down what I thought were the tenants of the podcast. And I sent them to Jenny. And she put them in a different order and made changes to them. And she's like, I think this is how that this will work. And I was like that's great. And then we were supposed to Oh, well. You know what I was thinking Jenny's? We were supposed to record basically a like a menstruation episode but i think i but i think it fits really well into your idea for today, which is variable. So I think we're going to combine the two of them if that makes sense. You agreed? Excellent. Okay. Why don't you tell people what made you reach to me and, and suggest this

Jennifer Smith, CDE 4:05
the word variable brings in the whole topic of discussion, right? I mean, we're taught from the get go there are three main factors that really you know, you get educated about is impact on your overall blood sugar control. We've got an I kind of call them like the triangle of management of what you're told about to look for effects. Exercise, the medicine, you take and type one of course insulin Sometimes though, with the changes in some of the medicine now for type one use could be other medicines. And then you know, the third one is food. So you got exercise, medicine and food and you know, if you contain all of those, you're going to have diabetes success, right? If you just learned about all those little pieces when they're only three, so you're going to do awesome. Well, that's like baloney.

Scott Benner 4:57
I think there's so many more factors. To consider so many more variables or like icebergs, right? That can kind of come through the course of your day. I mean, some of them, you can sort of head off, you may know that they're coming if you know, to look for them, and that they could have impact on blood sugar. Again, the short list that I kind of came up with just to talk about today, cuz I know, we don't have like, four hours to discuss everything, I think I came up with, like 10 or 12, you know, variables that I could really think, affect most people, and that you really should consider. So, you know, I'm sure that you probably have some variables that you know, just with what you've seen with your own daughter's management, right? Absolutely. And, and to kind of tag on to what you were saying, I found myself this past Saturday at the dancing for diabetes touched by type one event standing in front of people telling them that insulin timing is the seed of the tree, that is your management. And as long as you know, we can always go back to that as the base is the root, right? But then eventually, you know, that seed grows a trunk and the trunk grows, branches, and the branches, grow leaves. And all of these different parts of the tree can affect your blood sugar and will sometimes, but you can't get caught in a problem. And staring at the leaf on the 77th branch and wondering what is that leaf doing to me right now, even though it is doing something to you, it's I like to look back afterwards and say what happened there and try to figure it out. But in the moment, as we say, here on the podcast in the moment, it just means you need, you know, you need to change, yeah, adjust, right, maybe that means more insulin maybe means less. The idea that bazel insulin is insulin too, and we always forget about it, everyone wants to set their bazel. And then think about Bolus, which just doesn't work, you know, you have to think about the timing of all of the insulin. And when one of these bazillions of variables comes into play, some of them being more constant in your life than others. They have requirements. And they require of you to, to resist, right? Like you can't just, you can't walk through a day when you're premenstrual maybe the same way you walk through a day when you're not. Oh, right. And so go ahead. Give me your first one. What's your first good one off your list?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 7:22
Cool. My first good one actually takes into account the three that I mentioned, right? exercise, medicine, and food. Each of those seems like a simple like one topic blurb word, right? It's if I figure out the medicine, but you brought in a good factor, it's the dosing the timing, the consideration of the medication itself. And again, with more medication being added to the list of potential use, especially with type one, you bring in more variable there. And so with the dosing and the timing, it takes evaluation, so that that variable can be I guess, better known for you. Again, you know, we all have your diabetes may vary, right? We all have our n of one life with our insulin that we use, and we learn how to dose it, learn how to time it. So that's, you know, one and then the other two, exercise has a lot of variables to it, you get the blanket statement from a doctor who says, just take your pump off or just, you know, do a zero bazel if you're gonna go and exercise. The world of exercise is not that simple with diabetes, but if anything, there are a million variables within just the topic of exercise if you consider you know, slow movement, like when I take my dog out for a 20 minute walk and he stops me pees in sniffs everything. My blood sugar could drop 50 points from just a dog sniffing walk.

Scott Benner 8:50
sniffing walk not to be confused with the brisk walk

Jennifer Smith, CDE 8:53
with a brisk walk. Exactly. So I mean, you know, things like that are all you know, going to like Disney World to walk around all day, that slow, consistent movement, you wouldn't count as exercise not like going to the gym and huffing and puffing and sweating to death. But it's a variable that in my experience, I've found I need to reduce my Basal about 20% for the full extent of the time that I expect to be at like a Disney park or someplace similar.

Scott Benner 9:23
Can I ask you a question about that? Yeah, we always say that and then we never sort of not not you and I just people in general, we always say like, you know, exercise can bring my blood sugar down. In I don't want to go too deep into it. But why? My question is, when my body starts moving, what does it do that makes my blood sugar fall? Is it using the insulin more effectively? Is it speeding up the like, that's what I want to understand real quick. Those of you looking for a diabetes organization to support should check out dancing for diabetes. That's it, no big sell. I just think you should Dancing for diabetes.com that dancing the number four diabetes.com. I was at their event, a couple of weekends ago, I heard Elizabeth talk about how she started the organization. Her words just made me so proud to be there and to be supporting what she was doing. And I think you would feel the same. Just check them out dancing for diabetes.com. That's dancing the number four diabetes.com.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 10:25
Yeah, so the exercise piece, if you consider I like to refer to it exercises like free insulin, really, it's some types of exercise again, you know, the low slow to moderate intense exercise, you really looking those cells, doors on them have, you know, little locks, right, for the most part, we used to use insulin to unlock the door to get the glucose to enter. When we exercise, the body is sensitized to insulin, and those doors open freely, because your body wants to incorporate the glucose into the cells to get used and to energize the body to keep performing. So if you've got and this comes into the first, you know, topic of medication and the timing, when you're looking at exercise, the timing of insulin is very, very important. And the dose and what you're coming into that x active phase with onboard, that's just it's huge. You know, so if you're looking at going into a five mile slow Temple Run with five units of insulin on board from the Bolus that you just took, think again,

Scott Benner 11:37
sizing, I just spoke to an adult woman this weekend, who still play soccer, and she said, you know, the advice she got from her doctor was to take her pump off, and she said, but then my blood sugar goes sky high, and I can't play. And I don't want to do that. And I didn't have much time to talk to her. But what I said was, I said in a very basic way, that everything I say on the podcast, works for activity, you have to wrap your brain around it. But in the end, if you're using the right amount of insulin at the right time and taking into account that this exercise is going to happen, that's it. And it's simple to say, well, you just turn your basal back an hour before and during or something like that. And that may be the answer in there. But there's an answer in there. And that is you have insulin needs. During the soccer game, you have less insulin needs. So don't give yourself the dog sniffing insulin when you're playing soccer.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 12:32
Right. Exactly, exactly. So yeah. And then you know, so then we, you know, take into consideration the adjustment for exercise, but there is also exercise on the opposite side that may require more insulin. Yes, because of adrenaline seems like you know, those who lift or do a lot of resistance training, or do HIIT workouts, you know, the high intensity interval training, where you've got a little cardio but these really like short bursts of intense exercise in some of my first, I guess, personal informative about intense burst exercise for my blood sugar control was when I was starting to train for my first half Ironman and my training routine had some of the running as sprint Hill sprints, where I'd literally like fly up the hill and then sort of jog back down and fly up the hill. Well, you know, I adjusted assuming that I'd have the similar responses other exercise where I would adjust the insulin and whatever, man I was high. I was like, you know, but adrenaline, you know, research adrenaline is kind of a component there to consider. The weightlifters that I work with, tend to find that they need to dose insulin before a heavy lifting session, they might need to take a unit of bolus insulin, they may need to do a temporary bazel increase those kinds of things. So exercise isn't as simple take your pump off and go and exercise. That's not it.

Scott Benner 13:54
That's the do. No, that's do not die advice. That's advice that won't kill you. It's definitely not going to help you. Right, right. Exactly. And the example that I use over and over again, in my talks in here is the idea of Arden showing up for basketball at a great blood sugar and then running around which makes you think blood sugar would fall but then would go up. And then we figured out that she was competitive and she wanted to win the basketball game. So her gitelman spiked up

Jennifer Smith, CDE 14:22
and difference there you probably found from her game to her practices. Yes. Which is very common for any athlete who is in a competitive anything. I mean, I found that with my running races, I could go out for my nice runs and for my training and have great management knew what I was doing some of my first five K's man, I was astounded at the rise in blood sugar as soon as I got in the car to head out. Yeah,

it was like a drift off. It was like

Scott Benner 14:53
play competitive sports or have been around it this this might make sense to you. My son always echoes this back to me that it's true. He said, it's kind of impossible. They always tell you to practice like you play. And he said, it's kind of impossible to do. Because when you're practicing, the game's not there. Like, right like there's these the same intensity is not there the same desire is not there. You can't You can't duplicate the feeling a feeling like you're going to lose, or let someone down or lose your spot on the field or some something like that is like you can't you can't make that up in your head while you're practicing. No. So your your insulin needs will be different because your brain is thinking differently about what you're doing. Wrong. It's very interesting.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 15:37
Yeah, yeah. So those are, you know, all even the time of day for exercise could make a very big difference for how you strategize adjustment. I know my morning adjustment for exercise is very different than my mid to late afternoon or evening exercise. Very different just based on again, the sensitivity and all of that kind of stuff.

Scott Benner 15:56
So, and Arden, as an example, closes her eyes to go to sleep and her blood sugar goes down. It happens almost instantaneously. So it's not a huge job. But that girl goes to sleep and the I don't know what you would call it the day life. Right? The anxiety and knowing like a release of Yeah, she relaxes. And when she relaxes, her body's not forcing her blood sugar up in the same way. And it starts to drift down. Yeah. Wow. Okay. Jenny, let's on that list. Now.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 16:27
The next one, again, of the three, the third one was the food, right? And we think okay, and we talked about this in one of our other, you know, just master carb counting and you've got it like figured out you've got it totally nailed, you'll be clear and beautiful post meal blood sugars, right? Well, again, I kind of Kanan takes into consideration, type, amount, combination of food, what went into the meal, if you sit down and you eat, like, you know, a three cup jar of peanut, versus a three cup plate of white rice. carbs are there in both pictures. The coverage of them, however, is very different. So those variables that kind of come in with food, we know now, thankfully, in the past, I would say five D, maybe even 10 years, we've become much more aware. and educating people a little bit better about it's not just carbs, it is the fat it is the potential protein. And with some of the I say newer, they're not technically new, they just have gotten a lot more media is things like the Paleo kind of diet or the keto diet, those kinds of path plans or you know, eating habits, they require you to figure out the impact of the food in a different way than just carbohydrate.

Scott Benner 17:49
I know I think I've said here before, but I was with a person eating no carb at a meal. And we went into a restaurant sat down, hi, Vicki, Vicki ate food. I feel like we sat there for a half an hour and talked, we got in the car, we're driving away, and she pulled out her PDM for her ami pod and gave herself insulin. And I was like, what was F word she goes, the protein is gonna hit me. So that's it, that's it. I don't think she ate one carb while we were where we were. So different ways to wrap your head around different things. And I have it, you know, again, I just this is fresh in my head because I just got back from a talk. But there's a slide that goes up that says all carbs are not created equal. But you have to you have to write you have to believe that 10 unit, you know, 10 units away, I cannot talk about grams, 10 grams of rice and 10 grams of watermelon or grapes are not going to impact you in the same way or for the same amount of time. Okay, if you don't know that, then you'll struggle. You know, you can't just you can't just count your cars, put your insulin and eat your food and go away. If it worked like that. Well, then you're and this probably would need this podcast

Jennifer Smith, CDE 19:03
would be perfect for all that's exactly right. Well, and then the other factors, you know, that will kind of, I'll touch on as we sort of go on here. But factors of food impact, you may get many of your common things figured out as I think I said in one of the previous ones, you know, if you figure out the 2025 most common foods, meals, things that you eat, that's like 80% of your management, if you kind of nail those, figure them out from the protein, carb fat impact, awesome. But then we bring in all of these other potential variables, like you mentioned, initially, you know, the menstrual cycle for women. Well, you may have all those wonderful things figured out and then in comes the three to seven days before your period is supposed to start. And if you haven't been told that there is an impact on blood sugar, and you just think that gosh, it must be my insulin or it's a bad site or something crazy is going on, you get really annoyed and confused. And for women, that could happen every single month that you're getting annoyed and confused. And unless you start to track things,

Scott Benner 20:12
you'll remain annoyed and convenient. I try so hard to tell people, I don't want you too. I don't want you to completely forget about the possibility that your insulin went bad, or that your infusion site suddenly stopped working. But if your blood sugar was at all day, and then all of a sudden it jumps to 150. And it won't move. It's probably not your insulin, you know, but you see so many people, they hyper focus on the physical things, they think they can see that they that they can they can believe might be the reason, right? And I you have to be able to kind of look back a little bit and say, okay, it doesn't make any sense that my blood sugar was doing what I expected it to do. Suddenly didn't, why am I thinking of the pumps at fault? Like why am I thinking the insolence of fault that insulin has been working for a day and a half, you know, or that vials been working for two weeks, or whatever it ends up being? You really sometimes just have to think it's probably the stuff I can't see. And then I think and then I always think too, and then don't spend too much time on it. Bring it down, drop it. Yeah. And here's a great variable, say your candle is loose and you're leaking. And you're not getting as much insulin as you believe when you push the button. Still, in the end? The answer is, you're not getting enough insulin. The reason is mechanical. But the idea is still the same. If you were getting insulin, your blood sugar wouldn't be that high.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 21:38
Correct? Absolutely. And when we take into consideration, you know, cycle changes, if you start to track things as a woman, and you do have a cycle, and you're not on birth control that completely, you know, cuts your site off entirely, and you just don't have it anymore. If you're having a cycle, start to track things, because that's a good way to figure out some of that variability that a woman will have has nothing to do with the male at all diabetes management strategy. So if you're a woman listening, and you're within the time period of potentially having a cycle, and you're not postmenopausal, or anything, start to track your cycles and evaluate, usually, for most people, they see a rise prior to their cycles starting, as soon as their cycle starts usually needs dip back down, up until about oscillation for women can be anywhere between day 11. And day, like 18, give or take. That could be another rise in hormones, it's usually shorter, it's only about two or three days. And then things kind of drift back down again, typically before that three to, let's say, five days before your period starts again.

Scott Benner 22:49
So we have this continual roller coaster of hormones through the course of a month. And if nobody's kind of clued you in to pay attention to it, you may just feel like there are variables that you just don't know what's happening. It just seems random if you don't think I'm not aware that that's an impact. And they're, by the way, they're fantastic. I happen to know, trackers like different apps you can get for your phone to track your period with it's it was only a period tracker, there you go. And it was only uncomfortable for me like the third time I asked her Can I see the app that tracks your period real quick. You know, she said she was like, Okay, take it. But it really is spectacular. And in the end again, you need more insulin, you need less insulin, you need the regular amount of insulin, you know, once you recognize that it's happening, and you don't spend a day and a half wringing your hands wondering what's going on and you just stay fluid and do what it asks, then then then it's not a burden anymore. It's just I need more insulin, but our brains get stuck. You know, you and I talked about this before we started recording. But Arden's looping now and I'm seeing with her bazel, that how much more basal insulin the loop can use. And I thought back to when I used you know, I had ardens bazel, before the loop set up at like 1.4 an hour and to double it to 2.8 to me seemed like all the insulin in the world. And now I'm seeing the loop do it too, sometimes four or five, six units, and not for a full hour. But it's still it's I realized I was stuck in the number the idea of the number and that can happen to you too when your period pushes up your insulin needs. And you think that's crazy. Let you know on most days, I use 20 units all day between Basal and Bolus 40 is going to kill me. Well, it's not that day because your needs are different.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 24:35
She needed it. Right. Right. Absolutely. Absolutely. And that I think you bring into, you know, you lightly touched on, like the site or the pump or you know, those as being variables, but they certainly are. I mean, you have to know when to definitely address it as a potential site issue. You know, if you're in the time period of, let's say, your mom or your man and you shouldn't have hormone issues and you've got you been floating along beautiful for, you know, weeks and weeks and weeks. And now all of a sudden you've got this like, high blood sugar, you know, you're usually up to like 140, maybe after your breakfast, and now you're at like, 300. Clearly, that's not normal if another variable isn't there, right? So, you know, you address things you say I'm Hi, let's address the Hi, but why is it happening as well? Could it be the site, check your site? You know, those kinds of things? Could it be the insulin think about, you know, if it's brand new vial, probably not. But if it's a vial that's getting close to that, like, end of life, like it's almost empty, or you've, you know, you don't use very much insulin, so you're getting to kind of that 30 ish days, especially this time of the year and through like fall, where if you keep your open vial of insulin out of the refrigerator, temperature changes will affect insulin. So it's really an important piece to consider, maybe you just need to change the insulin out. So those as you know, potential site issues, the other site issues would be the site itself. Have you used this site over and over and over and over? And finally, it's gotten to the point of just you can't use me anymore?

Scott Benner 26:13
Why would you switch to a new site expected it's possible that you need lesson so and then you needed prior on the old practice? Maybe that sites working better? Correct. And for all my talk about don't beat yourself up about it's probably the pump it's probably the pump once you decide it's your it's your site, it's you know, it's the pump. And nobody bails on a pump site faster than me once I believe it's the site, you know, I'm like, okay, off gone. And that's that, you know, and you if you're newer to this, by the way, this all seems I try to bring this up on small talking about things on the podcast is an exploded view, right? Like you're really stretching things out to see in your regular life. It's not going to take the last five minutes a Jenny and I talked about this for you to make that decision. You know, you've heard me say before, like about cgms. People, like how do you know how you can trust your CGM? Like you can tell. They're like, What do you mean? Like sometimes it's 30 points off, which by the way, you know, 30 points off a 10 year old meter. I don't know why we're believed in the meter before we believe in the CGM, but neither here nor there. My point is, is that if you have some experience with this for a while, you know what's real, and what's a ghost, you know, and you can, you can look and say to yourself, alright, this is clearly the site, this is going, you can look at your CGM and say, I don't think it's possible. My blood sugar has been at three for six hours, maybe I ought to use my meter to see if that's right. And those decisions become very easy over time. You may be thinking, but Scott, you just got done saying that diabetes technology is not perfect all the time. Why would you put the ad for Dexcom? Right here? Are you aloka? No, I'm not crazy. I'm confident. And I love the Dexcom g six continuous glucose monitor. It is of course, at the very core of all of the good decisions that we're able to make moment to moment, day to day, week to week, year to year, we're helping my daughter live well with Type One Diabetes, nothing is perfect. But Dexcom is as close to perfect as you can currently get. The only thing that's ever going to be more perfect. Then Dexcom g six is whatever the next version of Dexcom is. I mean, that's my guess. Here's what you need to do. dexcom.com forward slash juicebox that's how you get started. You want the Dexcom because of its predictive nature, because it can tell you not just what direction your blood sugar is moving in sure it's going up. Yeah, of course it's going down. But how fast is that happening? Am I falling so quickly that I need you know, an emergency infusion of juice or some sort of a carb? Or is it just kind of drifting down? Am I maybe able to watch it for a second see what's gonna happen? Is my blood sugar jumping up right after a meal? Maybe I didn't, you know, use an offense on the things that you're wondering while your blood sugar is doing what it's doing the next context the Wonder out, it shows you it replaces wondering with wonder, like wonder like, you know, fireworks like whoo like that. Our results are ours and yours Of course may vary but my daughter's a one C has been between 5.2 and 6.2 for over five years, largely because of the information that we get back from her Dexcom g six, go to dexcom.com Ford slash juice box to get started today.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 29:30
You know another one that

is this time of the year in consideration of like insulin and viability and all that stuff. Another one that a lot of people don't realize is this time of the year of could for many people bring in the variable of allergy.

Scott Benner 29:48
Okay, how would so right just because because that's almost an infection

Jennifer Smith, CDE 29:54
causing yeah causes kind of like that histamine reaction in the body which causes an inflammatory respond, you know, that's the reason you get all Flemmi. And you know, bleary eyed and like whatever is coming out of you desperately to push out

Scott Benner 30:07
the dust

Jennifer Smith, CDE 30:08
push out the nastiness, right, exactly. I mean, unfortunately, my husband has nasty allergies in this time of the year. He's just like full of sneezing and like runny eyes, and you know, that kind of stuff and it stinks. But when you consider diabetes, insulin needs with this as a stressor on the body, we talk about stress as a variable to allergies could be a stress variable. And so your insulin needs may very well go up in this time of the year. Because of that type of, you know, setting now, if you use some medications to help deal with the allergies, it's always important as a medication kind of component or variable, check the label, or ask the doctor, make sure any of those medications that you may take for, you know, an allergy won't necessarily have impact on blood sugar, some of them have a steroid base to them. And steroids, as we know, will usually raise blood sugars as well. So you could have kind of double impact and medication impacting as well as the allergy itself impacting Do you have pain on your list? plan would be another stressor within that like, kind of body sort of? Yeah, absolutely.

Scott Benner 31:21
People don't think about but I've seen it happen so many times that you can't not trust I saw Arden get hit in the knee with a softball once. And her blood sugar immediately started going up and stayed up. State her insulin needs remained high for days while the pain in her knee subsided. It was a significant pain. Yeah. And so let me ask you if I have a headache, would that push up my blood sugar?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 31:45
It could if it's a if it's a bad enough headache, especially those who may have like migraine issues absolutely could be a variable. Sometimes too, you know with that as as effect. Sometimes if you notice the rise in blood sugar, you take medication to offset the pain itself. If the pain isn't felt anymore, blood sugar's should or could very well come down. And so you do have to be kind of cautious with the adjustment in insulin. If you're doing something to cover the pain, you may find that correcting the high blood sugar drives it down more than you expected, because you're not feeling the pain anymore. So

Scott Benner 32:23
funny. My next question was going to be to say I'm in a road rage situation. And because I'm all dialed into my diabetes, and I've got a dexcom I see my blood sugar goes from 80 to 140. I don't want a bolus right away, right? Because my bazel because that that burst of adrenaline is going to go away quickly. And then my base, my Basal is going to crush that number again, most likely,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 32:45
most likely, I mean, Basal never meant to essentially bring blood sugar down. But once the stressor is gone like that a quick impact kind of thing. Typically, your blood sugar should start kind of coming back down. And if it doesn't, it just means obviously that you are thinking about it and continuing to like dwell on the problems right? You have extra road rage

Scott Benner 33:05
is when

Jennifer Smith, CDE 33:06
you have extra road rage Exactly. Go home and you tell every neighbor about what happened on the way home and you know, you continue to perpetuate the issue. Bolus Ford

Exactly. Yes, exactly

Scott Benner 33:18
is a quick burst of adrenaline the same as a lollipop. In that it is it does hit you but that it can't sustain the rise. Is that a similar idea?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 33:29
kind of similar idea. It's kind of a good way to

Scott Benner 33:32
know something, you know, doctors used to and I I'm sort of against the idea of talking about free foods. I don't I don't really think there's free foods in general. But But I have seen it with Arden and I've always wondered, is the fact that like she put a lollipop in her mouth and her blood sugar went up a little bit and came down is that because a lollipop is a quick hit that goes away? Is it a free food? Or is it because I've got the balance over insulin so wrong that it's able to handle carbs? I haven't like haste to think about that when she was younger. Like Am I really like did that really not have an impact or like, you know how we talked about if you know, I was explaining to people this week and I said look you have to Pre-Bolus you can't be scared of it like insulin works the way it works. It does not work the minute you put it into your body if you Pre-Bolus and two minutes later your blood sugar starts falling the Pre-Bolus did not magically start working you probably

Jennifer Smith, CDE 34:25
were falling already

Scott Benner 34:27
yes you were falling already or you did something hours ago that is impacting now that you're unaware of. And I always wondered about that like when we'd give our like little bits of candy my jet was I just premature like what I just holding up a low that was coming anyway.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 34:42
Could be the factor and that's also a kind of brings up a good point while it's not really a variable but it might be if you consider it. Lows when you treat a low we recommend treating with simple sugar, right? When you treat with simple sugar, that simple sugar is really, its potential impact lasts an hour to 90 minutes. And thus the age old recommendation, if you have a low blood sugar, treat it, it comes back up if you're not going to be eating a meal or a snack within the next two hours, treat or follow up that carb sugar with a snack that includes protein. And the reason was to sustain the blood sugar than because that quick glucose like you just said, it goes in it does its job, it gets things up, but eventually the bazel it's there that's supposed to be right. That's sugar, it will overpower it. There's not enough laughs really, if it's working the way it's supposed to. So yeah, absolutely adrenaline and a lollipop.

Scott Benner 35:46
So the numbers not really the power without the way it's just a simple sugar, you have to give it a protein or a fat to actually add the, the weight to that number that

Jennifer Smith, CDE 35:59
so that knowing something slower digesting you know, if you consider something like you know, keen raw or like a piece of sprouted grain bread or you know, something longer sustaining. It's got the carbs, probably more than the lollipop does. But you're going to get the rise it's going to be a lot slower, but it's also going to be a lot more sustained.

Scott Benner 36:17
Jenny, you're not from where you live. Are you? Like were you born where you live? Like Jenny's? Like I'm from the Midwest. And still, I'm still you said qinhuai as an example of that was really interesting. Oh, by surprise, I was like, Oh, we get fancy Jenny must have been burned somewhere else that moves where she lives.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 36:39
Oh, no, not at all. I'm just you know, I am a dietitian. Oh,

Scott Benner 36:43
okay. See?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 36:44
all the fancy foods I guess I

Scott Benner 36:46
should know about right. I haven't I haven't read your bio in a while. I don't worry. I just I usually do it before the episodes when I'm putting the episodes together. You can well I got me by surprise. If this was a regular episode. I would totally title this episode. Keane was just so you know.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 37:02
Funny,

Scott Benner 37:03
so many people. So many people came up to me this weekend and said, Can you put any more effort into making the titles match what the episodes are about that is like No, probably not just listen, you'll figure

Jennifer Smith, CDE 37:13
you can title it the variable of keywords that

Scott Benner 37:20
attract what's next on your list.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 37:22
The weather. As we consider temperature changes, I've got you so many people in I noticed myself I've got really good friend who notices as soon as March hits. And you know, here in the Midwest, March may or may not be warmer than the winter has been. But she's like, as soon as Marcus, it's like a switch in her body goes off. And it's like, it's spring, hey, let's dial down the insulin needs. And she literally has about a 20% decrease in her basal needs, from March all the way through, like, you know, October ish, when it starts getting a little bit cooler out, then across the board rule. For the most part, the warmer the weather, the more and the more time you might spend in the actual warm of the warm weather. You know what, what is warm weather do it increases the like, your body needs to cool itself off. And so your vessels come closer to the surface of the skin. So you can cool yourself by sweating a little bit more that like increase in in the vascular nature of the underlying tissue brings vessels closer to insulin, and you absorb faster.

Scott Benner 38:31
Plus and this isn't physical but physical in terms of inside of your body. But you probably become more active when it gets warmer to

Jennifer Smith, CDE 38:38
right. Absolutely do more things. I know myself I you know here and my husband talks about it all the time. He hates the winter weather and everything and he's like, let's just move someplace much warmer all the time. So we can always be outside. And quite honestly, if that was the case, I probably would have lower insulin needs throughout the whole year because warm weather comes I'm consistently at the park with my boys or and go and doing my normal exercise. I mean, I don't even consider that exercise that's just part of our normal daily when it's nice outside. So yes, we become more active.

Scott Benner 39:12
When it's nice enough to be active more often outside. I think what Jenny's saying is if you're thinking of relocating to a warmer place, and you feel like you can't afford it, don't forget to deduct your savings and so on. Right, there you go. You might be able to afford more rent because of a go. All the diabetics are gonna live in California now.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 39:33
Right, right. And the opposite of that, you know, the cold weather, you need to stay inside more oftentimes, cold weather means you're eating a little bit harder your food, you know, to kind of sustain and back up or kind of plump up almost. You eat more like stews and things that might be a little bit more protein and fat Laden, just heavier meals in general. I mean, nobody eats well, maybe some people do but nobody eats like a rockin hot. chili, dinner in the middle of July summer. at certain times, no,

Scott Benner 40:05
I get that you're more sedentary in the in the winter anymore

Jennifer Smith, CDE 40:08
more sedentary. Exactly. You may get your exercise, but it may be shorter, you know the, though it's not as light outside anymore in the wintertime. So all of those kinds of things as far as the time of the year allergies, whether cold, warm, they can all be a variable. So I have a variable for you. Is it possible? It's more of a question that you may be able to tell me to shut up? But

Scott Benner 40:33
do some of our bodies react differently to Calculus than others? Like Like this? Might this gives a possible that? Because you're because that candle goes in? Right? It's seen as a foreign body immediately. Do some people see a third day on an insulin pump less effective, but some people can make it longer or shorter? But yeah, okay.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 40:56
Yes, absolutely. And I think that's part of the reason, you know, Omni pod, especially did their 72 hour or up to 80 hours of, you know, exploration, essentially three days on the pod, because the studies have actually shown that longer than three days with a site inserts to impact the absorption at the site. So if you think of the consistent drip, drip, drip, drip, drip, and then these big boluses, I mean, if you don't use a lot of insulin might be two units. For every Bolus, if you are some of the team guys that I work with who are eating, you know, 100 plus grams of carb per meal, and the ratio is a one to three, you've got huge 20 unit bolus going into a site and that site gets, it gets saturated, it can only absorb for so long. So some of it may not necessarily be canula. Some of it may be how long and how much is going in at the site. For the people that are sensitive to different candles, though. It could be the angle, some people do much, much better with the angled type of canula. Other people do much better with the 90 degree canula. I myself found no issue with Omni pod at all. I mean, I was a long time user before I started looping about a year and a half ago. But once I started looping with my Medtronic pump, I actually found the angle candles were horrible for my skin, they did not work. And I found the 90 degree plastic canula also wasn't something that my system seemed to really like. Whereas the steel canula that goes in in a 90 degree angle. It's kind of like a foam tap. You just pop it right in. That's awesome. It is like my go to set now. It's fabulous.

Scott Benner 42:38
Just t slim have steel and plastic. They do. Yeah, I see people a lot talk about the people who struggle on the T slim move to the steel Canyon that sometimes helps.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 42:52
Yep, the one for t slim is called True steel. And the one for Medtronic is called the shorty. Okay, they're both steel, they both they work. Lovely. I would say for most people that I've encountered who have that kanila kind of issue. Yes. And you know, as a variable, those may be things to evaluate and say, I know it's not the darn insulin, I can give an injection with the same bottle of insulin and my blood sugar moves the way that it's supposed to, let's change the site. It's not necessarily the site, it could be the canula, we change the canula. magically, things look better, sometimes we even need to go down in the insulin needs because you're responding better. So

Scott Benner 43:32
I would have to say at this point that when you buy a pump, you're going to get instructions from the pump company about approved sites to use. Keep in mind that the pump company had to get the pump through the FDA process. And every site they wanted to test took more time. And that took away time from them getting it to market for you. So had they decide had they had the luxury of more time, they may have tested more sites and the FDA may have said hey, this data proves that you can use it here too. I'm now not saying anything else about that. Other than you should consider that. Correct. That's all.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 44:15
Yes. And even some of those approved FDA sites don't work for some people at all.

Scott Benner 44:21
Just because it doesn't make them good for you.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 44:23
Doesn't make them good for you. That's exactly right.

Scott Benner 44:26
not approved doesn't make them not good for you. All we always take into account the photograph on my blog that Chris Freeman, the Olympic skier allowed me to use of him wearing his pump on his pictorial. I believe the man has the same body fat makeup of this metal microphone that's in front of me. Yeah, I think

Jennifer Smith, CDE 44:48
many women use jet fighter as well, even though they don't technically have. They've got pectoral muscles. They're just hidden underneath a breath. I

Scott Benner 44:55
love when someone shares like a cleavage picture with their pump on them. My daughter and she's like, never, never. And I'm like, Okay, I'm just saying this lady says it works really great. I can't wait for me.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 45:06
Right, right. Again, all those variables to definitely consider.

Scott Benner 45:12
You know where else variability exists in the foods that people enjoy eating. Some of you, for instance, just rocking it eating as many carbs as you can jacking up that insulin going crazy, but some of you are like, Hey, you know, I would like to have a slightly lower carb option without sacrificing taste or choice. And luckily for you, this is an ad for real good foods and they have just that not only do they have it, but they're offering you 20% off with the offer code juice box. Let me tell you more. First thing you do is go to real good foods calm there's a link in your show notes. But if you type it in your browser, it's all the same. Then you go to their products. Chicken crust, pizza, cauliflower crust, pizza, breakfast sandwiches, both sausage and bacon, and geladas 3d different flavors. Italian entrees have been added. And of course the poppers that everyone loves. Those of you who are already enjoying real good foods, they have a VIP text club list for exclusive offers. All you have to do is text RGF 2474747 to be added. Are you kidding me? You love texting people? Wait RGF 474747 you can do that. But you got to go check them out. Their foods are low in carbs and high in proteins and delicious. It's amazing what they've done. They've taken you know, the treats that you love and made them fit into your low carb lifestyle to amazing without sacrificing taste and I don't honestly know how they do that. It's probably Voodoo. I'm not a very like food sciency kind of guy so I'm just gonna go with it's possible there wizards real good foods comm use the offer code juice box at checkout to save 20% on your entire order. And considering their free two day shipping. That's a great deal. What do you see how it shows up? Like they send you an igloo in the mail or something very cold, chilly. Ooh, where

Jennifer Smith, CDE 47:06
are we talking about location here, I clearly had location for a different reason being a variable, location, being like travel. Travel is a variable. If you notice, changes in your blood sugar. When you are flying or traveling long distance, we usually find that over two hours of sedentary travel will usually require more insulin because of the sedentary nature and the potential bit of stress that travel brings in.

Scott Benner 47:42
We on a three hour flight. We always have to Bolus our two hours into a three hour flight. I never thought of it before. But it's constantly that

Jennifer Smith, CDE 47:50
Yep, yep. So I personally have found that I use about a 20% bazel increase. When I fly I get to the airport I turn the Temp Basal on so that by the time we get on the plane, it's already like circulating at a higher level. I continuing until we get the notice of descent and then I cancel it. And that works really well. For me I do the same thing on long travel and when we lived in DC, and we would drive back to the Midwest to visit family. That's a long drive lots of sedentary sitting in a car, the stress of driving on the road and everything I would need a Temp Basal increase for that. So traveling it of itself can be a variable for those on tube pump. The variable could be the pressurization in flight. Many people find and there's actually some really good I guess, blogs on what people found with the tube pump in flight. So the recommendation now is to disconnect before ascent. Check the tubing Once you're at cruising altitude check if there are any bubbles, purge them out with a priming bolus and then reconnect. Same thing for descent disconnect once you land look at the tubing clear the bubbles if there are any. Some people have noticed that they get a bit of insulin bolus that won't show up in the pump because of pressurization of the pump and the reservoir and everything. Some people find that they've got this huge air bubble in their tubing. And so if they didn't look at it, they would get a huge missed amount of potential diesel or Bolus the next time their pump pumps out and that's something

Scott Benner 49:22
with the change of Evo elevation.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 49:26
Yeah, it has to do with the pressure pressurization within you know, the cabinet. Unfortunately, there's not a lot of In fact, there's nothing that I've seen in any of the tube pump companies that they talk about doing that, but it's something that we know is common

Scott Benner 49:43
to happen to

Jennifer Smith, CDE 49:45
an army pad obviously there is no tubing. I've had a random couple of people who've noticed that in flight they have these lows, having not bolused having not done anything different having sat at the airport for like an hour or two before their flight took off. Again, no boluses or anything, and they are low through the course of the flight. So I potentially I guess it could happen even without the tubing component there. I mean, the pod still have a reservoir. But I've really primarily heard it with tube pumps. I always wonder about

Scott Benner 50:18
you. Some people get like, like, we all most people have the same reaction, right? Nervous upset adrenaline, blood sugar goes up, but you do see sometimes, like people have the complete opposite reaction that you expect from them. And it's that's their norm, right? Or, like, here's one, how come when Arden has a head cold, it's like she doesn't have diabetes anymore. And other people say when I'm sick, my blood sugar goes through the roof. Arden gets sick, her blood sugar goes to 80 and sits there for days. It's far right. And it's just so the other variability that we haven't spoken about yet is you? Are you right? So your response? Yeah, your response to all of these things. So you know, the variables may treat you differently than other things.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 51:04
Similarly, I have my friend, who I have done races with in the past, not recently, but she actually has a considerable drop in her blood sugar once she gets to the race day.

Scott Benner 51:15
Okay, that's it. She doesn't have that adrenaline spike, she had the opposite. I mean, there's adrenaline there, but whatever reason it's causing her to drop. Yeah. And so for Jenny's friend, the the point here is, don't say, Well, I heard on a podcast that you know, when adrenaline hits your blood sugar goes up, and everybody online says it, but mine goes down. Don't don't bang your head against the wall. Just accept it. That's what happens to you and address it accordingly. Correct. There we go.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 51:40
Yeah, exactly. The other travel one was altitude. Many people don't consider altitude. And if you are someone who goes to Colorado skiing or somewhere fancy in Europe, and you go skiing, or whatever you do, you could notice that going to altitude, I noticed it when my husband and I took a trip to Peru, and we hiked the Inca Trail, which is we got to Cusco and we were like, Oh my god, can we just pleat the it like the altitude was like crazy, we felt like we had never exercised before. And my insulin needs go up about 30% for about 24 to 36 hours, once I get to altitude, and then they come back down. It's like my body just needs this like adjustment period. And then it kind of comes back, you know, to my normal. But that's a pretty common one to consider.

Scott Benner 52:32
And that is incredibly common. And even though it is incredibly common. There are three people that I know of right now listening to this that are thinking, I it's the complete opposite of what happens to them. I correspond with people who live in Colorado and are afraid they're going to die because their insulin just crushes them. They use the tiniest bit and if their blood sugar's falling constantly, they don't know why pumps injected doesn't matter. They just the elevation, that altitude just it wrecks them. So yeah, that's their that's their normal, you know,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 53:02
that's their normal. That's right, absolutely. So you know, all those, I guess, all those things to consider. You know, they're all there are lots and lots and lots of variables. What else is on my list? I have

Scott Benner 53:15
Jenny prepared for you people, I hope you appreciate that. I did.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 53:19
I did just because I was like, gosh, there's so many of them, I need to like make sure I get the primary ones that I talked to people about considering, you know, a variable I know we've talked about previously, when we're talking about like being bold with insulin is high blood sugar itself, like extreme high blood sugar can be a variable in how you expect your body to respond to insulin. Typically, when blood sugars are higher than about like that 250 Mark, which, huh? You know, they recommend testing ketones anytime you're higher than 252. Right. So along with that comes the consideration. You've got it all like squared away, you know, your bazel you know, your sensitivity to boluses to correct blood sugars, or carb ratio is all dialed in, and you feel like things are working and, wham, you're high now. And you take your correction and you're like, well, that looks like I've put water in my body. And it did literally nothing. It was sugar. So we've got this like, like this toxic state almost like they actually call it glucose toxicity that comes into play when you've got extreme high blood sugars, where you'll need more insulin than your sensitivity factor would normally cover. And

Scott Benner 54:37
that's what people commonly say, I'm insulin resistant when I'm high. That's the that's the common way that people talk about. So if you have that feeling in your head, this is what Jenny's talking about. Now, from my very non scientific perspective. I learned years ago and we've been talking about here forever, that bringing a high blood sugar down and coming in for that landing that you're hoping for And not a crash, right? it you have to In my opinion, it's a mix of Basal and Bolus. JACK, you don't just, if you're thinking, in my mind, if you're thinking it's two units to get this 300, back to 100. I like to find a good portion of that insulin from Basal. And I don't know why that makes more of a difference, but it certainly does. So

Jennifer Smith, CDE 55:24
it's also a, I call it a, let's say a safer way to also manage potentially, because if you've got a Temp Basal increase, going along with a part of a Bolus that you've used to address that higher blood sugar,

Scott Benner 55:40
the bazel can be canceled, right? You can always bail on Okay, once you see the

Jennifer Smith, CDE 55:44
movement that you want, you can bail on the Temp Basal, whereas if you've taken your rage bolusing you're like, it's telling me all you need two units, man, I'm gonna nail it, I'm going to get it down with like eight units and you like nail? Well, once it's there, you can't get rid of that eight units, it's, you know, whereas

Scott Benner 56:00
you just Pre-Bolus for your next meal, you better eat it at the right time.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 56:03
That's exactly right. So you know, if you do some of it as Bolus, like you said, and some of it is this Temp Basal insulin, you can cancel that town, you may need to cover a little bit, but at least you're gonna drift down better without a huge crash. And

Scott Benner 56:17
also, you can also cancel it and go back to it, which I found myself doing before, right? You're, you know, 300, it's now it's 280 is 250. And then you're like, Oh my gosh, it's two hours down, I'm shutting the bezel off, then all the sudden 220 levels out like, Oh, she left the bazelon. And you put it back on again. But at least you're in control of it to a degree, right. And you and you didn't just put in this giant like, you know, mallet full of insulin that you can't stop. It's hard to walk when you're done with it. Yeah, I want to say too, and this maybe doesn't fit here. But when you find yourself in those situations, I think it's incredibly valuable that when you cause that fall that that the sent in blood sugar, and you have to eat some food to stop. But at some point, I know everybody thinks of that as like some failure. But there's so much to learn from watching the food go in and watching how it affects your blood sugar on the CGM, that that that experience of stopping up drop like that will inform a lot of what you do in the future. Because just like you can see, oh, wow, I was 152 hours down. So I ate this. And I came in at at that knowledge. And I can't really explain to you how in the moment right now how in this example, but it will inform your understanding your greater understanding in a way that will help you in the future. It's absolutely very neat to see how the food affects the insulin.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 57:40
I see. So awesome. Yesterday, I talked to somebody who she worked very hard, you know, with strategy management, we knew something was kind of going on in the evening for her. So we said let's do like an evening bazel test, let's see what's happening truly behind dinner without the dinner, you know, being there. So she did this awesome bazel test, we saw the drift happened that we kind of assumed was from bazel. We, you know, could counter it, but she ended up having to treat the drift down and she didn't want to eat at 10 o'clock at night. So she just treated the low. She had three glucose tablets to treat it. And she thought, you know, all we're getting out of this is the bazel test. So we know where to change things. You know what? So we could actually get the evaluation of what the carb intake she did, how much of a rise did she get with it from it, because there was no other food, there was nothing I mean, the only other food she had in her system was from lunchtime at noon, at 10 o'clock at night, there is no impact of that whatsoever. She had no exercise, we treated the low it came up, we saw how much she can use, I pointed out she's like, wow, we got like more done than I thought we got done. She was so excited that she could actually see. And it was simple sugar, right. So she didn't treat with something that had the fat or the protein that would have later potential impact that you couldn't figure out. It was just glucose tablets.

Scott Benner 59:05
So there's so much to learn to learn if you just step back a little, and widen your vision. And and you know, and you have to get rid of that I failed or this is a mistake or a problem feeling. It's just data coming back like look at it and really accept what it is instead of being upset with yourself. Because you can't because I said it this you know, I say it a lot. But this weekend, I was really pointed with a pretty large group. I said, Every time something goes the way you don't want it to go. And you don't use that as a as a moment to collect the data and make decisions and, and and further your understanding. You wasted that moment. And you're going to have to have it again now because you didn't pay attention to what happened. It's just like, I mean, what's the saying right? Something about history doomed to repeat it right? I don't know the exact thing. Right? All of you who know it now are repeating it in your head in your car. But that's the idea. The idea is it's happening. Learn from it. Don't just read Your hands like I can't believe that happened. That sucks. I bet at this, you know, right. All that's true, but isn't going to help you the next time. So right, cool. Jenny Kiki, anything else? I mean,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:00:13
I yeah, I had two other one was something that I think is not addressed. Usually not addressed at all, unfortunately, health factors, I guess that we don't really want people you know doing really it's things like smoking. If you're a smoker, I'm sorry, but you know what smoking can have impact on on on blood sugar and some of the research that's out there that can actually show that smoking can have an impact by causing some insulin resistance, because cooking is it's suggesting inflammatory responses in the lungs,

Scott Benner 1:00:50
that make sense.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:00:50
So could have impact blood sugar wise, the other one would be drugs. Drugs can have impact potentially, on your diabetes management. You know, depending on the kind of drug that you're,

Scott Benner 1:01:03
you're telling me that if I'm sitting at home, really trying to figure out my insulin problems, and I'm not taking into account my heroin addiction, I make I'm leaving something out that's important to think about. Absolutely. Which which might be, which might be reasonable like that. I think that people compartmentalize their thoughts sometimes. And you really sometimes don't see where the impact is actually coming.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:01:25
Yeah. And as a variable, you may not be considering all of the things that you could be doing for your diabetes management. If you are utilizing a drug and it's, it's really your main like focus, right? Because diabetes isn't going to be a focus for you, then are you gonna say drinking next? Because I have one I

Scott Benner 1:01:40
wanted? Yeah, I'd say alcohol.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:01:43
Yep. Alcohol itself drinking, it's a big one that I discussed with, you know, my teens and my college. Because it comes into the picture it does. Learning how to do it safely, is an important thing, because the impact of the alcohol itself, you may have your fancy sugar, you know, juice sweetened beverage, the alcohol in it, however, is going to have impact later on your blood sugar. So what we find is that hours later, if you've had enough alcohol, it could cause a drop in your blood sugar.

Scott Benner 1:02:17
And and not for nothing. But when you're really loaded, you're probably not doing your diabetes, math as well as you probably could be wrong. Oh, is it fair to say maybe have a buddy with you explain to them why you don't just need a sober driver, you might need a sober bazel tester to watch these things just made me think of, because I just did an interview with somebody who's like clinically depressed and has type one. And to watch the cycle of how it hit this person over and over again, was just like, it's crushing, you know, to see, but for them to have to live with. So now I'm thinking, if I'm on a depression medication, is that affecting my blood sugar? Is it making my blood sugar higher? Giving me anxiety more that it's higher end, making me feel more anxious about you having to use extra insulin in what about just the, the, the physiological, and maybe you don't know, but experience of being depressed? Like does that have an impact on you?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:03:20
It's, well, depression as a stress, right? So it could be it could go various ways, if the depression isn't being managed with, you know, assistance, whether it's counseling, or use counseling, and medication or whatever it might be, you know, that in effect could be enough of a stress that it is bringing your blood sugar levels up. It depression can also mean that you're just, you're just not eating. So it could very well maybe bring insulin needs down because you're just literally not taking in anything through the course of the day. Now, some of the some of the medication, some of the oral medications will make you feel so much better, which is a purpose, right? That's the purpose. But some of them also increase appetite. If it increases appetite enough, and you're not cognizant that that's what's kind of happening and kind of rein that in, you could have weight gain that could impact your influence sensitivity.

Scott Benner 1:04:19
I'm gonna add a thought to this, because I had a conversation with somebody online, told me something I never considered. So this person was overweight. And eating was more than they wanted it to be. And so when they counted their carbs and went to give themselves insulin, they wouldn't give themselves all the insulin they needed, because it reminded them that they were eating more than they wanted to be eating. I know that's a real interest. You have to wrap your head around it for a second, but they were disappointed in themselves for eating that much. And one of the ways they pretended that it wasn't going on was to use an amount of insulin that a more normal meal would have been Yeah. So there's a lot of things I wrote, you know, as we started this conversation today, I wrote down life because the variable really is life. Right? Like, it's your living, and there are different things happening to you. And whether you're, you know, addicted to drugs, or you're depressed, or you just don't have your bazel, right, or, well, all the things that Jenny's brought up here today, really, it's just, it's, you're alive, and you have diabetes. And so they're going to be variable. So are there any more on your list? You're looking at the

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:05:28
only other one was a

growth cycle?

Scott Benner 1:05:34
Oh, growth, are you?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:05:36
And I think, you know, I mean, that is a it's a broad topic. So I bring it out as a variable. It may need full nother discussion, potentially, but it is it's, and people ask, and I work with a lot of kids, lots of ages. I mean, a little younger than two is my youngest person. And kind of up until like, the 70s is my oldest and but the kids have these variables of growth that just drive parents crazy. Because become, you know, we've got things smoothed out and beautiful in the biggest things I tell people is the needs will change. We'll get them figured out. They'll probably look like they're going along pretty nice and that you know, little Johnny is gonna burn up, you know, a half an inch and so for the next couple of nights, they may get these like, like you said, aren't goes to bed and her blood sugar, kind of like drops off in a growth spurt. Many kids go to bed as soon as their head hits the pillow pillow and they're snoozing, man, it's like a rocket ship to the moon

Scott Benner 1:06:42
blast off blood sugar is the worst part about growth hormone and children is that it happens while you're trying to sleep. That really I have to give Arden her balls really quickly. This one's gonna be easy, though. Because Arden's doing the loop right now at carbs. taco. That's it. Time 10 minutes from now

at carbs taco time, change time to 10 minutes from now, that isn't gonna make sense to you guys yet, but it will one day when Jenny and I talked about that and and Katie de Simone comes back on and tells me all the things I did wrong while I was setting up my Ardennes loop. And how good and how I could have avoided them.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:07:35
Yes, I get it. That's great. Cuz that was like laying last little tidbit of variable, which is a total different discussion. I'm glad you're going to have it with Katie. But you should discuss with her the looping variable. Because these all have different if you are using a looping pump.

Scott Benner 1:07:55
Jenny, this is going to come out before I talk to Katie. And so I'll just tell you now and then you guys can all hear it. Now then hear me talk about later with Katie. Every every thought I had trying to set up the loop was wrong. Like like you don't mean Up, down left, right? Like everything. If you asked me, you know, yes, though, I'd say yes. And you'd like to know, you know, I send genic effects. I'm like, I'm seeing this, should I move this up? She go no down. I'm like, how do I get that wrong? It's just it's so so all of us. Right now everybody who's listening. If you're being bold, if you're following along with this podcast, obviously, it works fantastic. And there's no you don't need to change. But if you go to looping at any point in your life, or into a closed loop system, the variables, the settings that allow the loop to think are counter intuitive to what we're all doing. We're not looping, but I am putting myself through this so that I can explain it to you all better. Because if you guys want to move to a closed loop in this future, I think that's not a bad idea. And I want to make sure you understand how to transition from being bold with insulin to being I don't know, bold with a blue,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:09:08
or how to maybe let loose Be bold with itself.

Scott Benner 1:09:11
Yeah, yeah, there's a way but trust me, I still only understand that about 65%. But by the time I'm done talking to Katie, and by the way, now that Jenny has been kind enough to say that she's going to continue coming on like this. I don't think we'll be putting them out like three at a time, but maybe once a month, or as often as Jenny can do it. And trust me, we're going to get about that as well. So thank you so much for doing this.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:09:33
Thank you.

Scott Benner 1:09:36
Wherever you are right now, I imagine you applauding for Jenny just a slow, deliberate and lovely clapping. That's how I feel every time she's on. Hey, how about that great news. Jenny is going to keep coming back on the show. The diabetes pro tip series is going to go on into the future non stop pro tips. Just for you guys for listening to the Juicebox Podcast. Don't forget to check out Jenny at Intuit. To diabetes.com there's a link to her email right in the show notes. Don't forget dexcom.com forward slash juicebox get started with the G six today, dancing the number for diabetes.com. And of course using the offer code juice box at real good foods calm. I love getting all of your ratings and reviews on iTunes. Thank you very much every time someone leaves a great iTunes review for the Juicebox Podcast. I don't know if you know this or not. An angel is completely unaffected, but I am incredibly happy

---

Please support the sponsors

The Juicebox Podcast is a free show, but if you'd like to support the podcast directly, you can make a gift here. Recent donations were used to pay for podcast hosting fees. Thank you to all who have sent 5, 10 and 20 dollars!

Donate

#230 Bri Not Brie

Lilah's School Aide also has Type 1……

Bri has so many different connections to type 1 diabetes.

You can always listen to the Juicebox Podcast here but the cool kids use: Apple Podcasts/iOS - Spotify - Amazon Alexa - Google Play/Android - iHeart Radio -  Radio Public or their favorite podcast app.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

---

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

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello and welcome to Episode 230 of the Juicebox Podcast. Today's episode is sponsored by Dexcom. makers the G six continuous glucose monitor by Omni pod, the only tubeless insulin pump in the world And who could forget dancing for diabetes. Find out more about all the sponsors at Juicebox podcast.com in the shownotes located in your podcast app, or by going to these links, ready, dancing the number four diabetes.com dexcom.com forward slash juicebox my omnipod.com forward slash juice box. Today's guest has a ton of connections to type one diabetes. I'm not going to spoil all of them here in the intro, but I'll give you a little taste. Remember when Lila's mom couple episodes ago talked about I was an aide at school? That's Breanna. That's right. Bree is our guest. Laila aid, embryos connections to type one diabetes don't end with Laila. Please remember that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before becoming bold with insulin, or making any changes to your medical plan. Hey, did you know you could follow the show on Instagram at Juicebox Podcast on Facebook at bold with insulin. And that podcast app users on iPhone can just scroll to the bottom and rate and review the show right there. That's right. If you wanted to give the show, say a five star review and say something glowing about it, you could do it right in the podcast.

We have to get going sooner quicker, like quickly get started because now there's more story to tell than there was before. So, so before this, I'm going to leave all this and before I asked you to introduce yourself, you told me your name. You started telling me about your diabetes background, but instead just tell me your name. And how old you are then let me go two different directions. So go ahead.

Bri 2:15
My name is Bri and I am 26 years old.

Scott Benner 2:18
Okay. Now, Bri has type one diabetes, I would have let her tell you that. But that's not important anymore. Because what's important is that she and I tried to record this a couple of days ago, had all kinds of technical problems. And she went out and got a headset just to do this. So thank you very much.

Unknown Speaker 2:34
You're welcome.

Scott Benner 2:35
And on top of that, um, I don't know if you can imagine I record this at my house. So like today's Friday, my wife's working from home, my son still home from college. And everyone's just kind of like in a swirl in the house trying to grab food, get their laptops run up to their bedrooms and hide so I can record the podcast. And as that's happening, I get an email from Barry that says, I've locked myself out of my apartment and I'm waiting for a box.

Bri 3:04
Yeah, that happened this morning. That happens to me very often, honestly. Yeah.

Scott Benner 3:09
Put it What? How many times? Have you been locked out of your apartment?

Bri 3:12
This is like the third time in the past couple of months. So hopefully it's the last time Can we unpack

Scott Benner 3:19
this for a second and find out why are you secretly wish you were home living with your parents or

Bri 3:25
my daughter has like multiple locks and they all require different keys. So I only use one deadbolt key. And then I leave the rest of my house. So this morning I went to take my dog and I was like half asleep and I left the one of the door doorknobs locked all over the keys on my keychain, which I should have done a long time should have done at the first time but so

Scott Benner 3:49
you're all set now you've made the adjustments. I am

Bri 3:51
good. I am in my bed with my dog. I'm good. Yeah. Okay.

Scott Benner 3:56
Well, I'm fantastic. I'm glad. I'm glad you're never gonna be locked out again, hopefully. Oh my gosh. Okay, so let's just, it'll be a little clunky. But how old were you when you were diagnosed with type one?

Bri 4:11
I was 24. About to be 25. So I'm so yeah, it's been like a year and a half. Pretty much. Yeah, exactly. A year and a half

Scott Benner 4:18
is this is it? What month were you diagnosed?

Bri 4:22
I was diagnosed in June. June 16. of 2017.

Scott Benner 4:29
Yeah. Yeah. It really is a year and a half. Okay, so um, so expected like everyone in your family has type one and you were just like, this is gonna happen to me eventually. Or I don't

Bri 4:41
know. So yeah, no one in my family has it? Um, yeah, I went into the doctor. I just thought it was like lacking a vitamin or something. And I was like, I just need like, you know, some extra vitamin B in my system. And then they took my sugar they couldn't even read it because it was so high. They came back. They're like you have diabetes. I was like, Oh my god, this is so embarrassing. Like, I'm too young to have this. I must have ate too much cake the past week, like, I'll get rid of this not gonna tell anyway, like, no big deal. And then obviously, like, all the information started coming in, I was like, Oh my god, like, this is just like, totally life changing. Like, this is crazy. I thought only kids could get it right. To super educated as most people are on the subject, but um, yeah. How it happened.

Scott Benner 5:30
So that's interesting. Are you in the doctor by yourself? I assume you are. You're old enough like you.

Bri 5:33
I mean, I was like, literally on my way to work. And I like just walked into the doctor because I felt like crap. I was peeing all the time. You know, I had all the symptoms. And I don't know why I google everything. I'm like a total health freak. And it was like one thing. I didn't really go like all my symptoms. So Otherwise, I would have known

Scott Benner 5:52
that yeah, it was like crazy. So you're really just lacking vitamin insulin. So that Yeah, well, but it's such an interesting like, process through your mind, right? Like, I must just be you're young. So you're like, I must just need a vitamin of some sort. Because when you're young enough, and in your mid 20s counts at this age, you don't imagine anything can go wrong with your health, right? So you're just like, if something's wrong, it's got to be something like minor and weird. And then when you heard the word diabetes, you thought type two right away. And then when someone told you it was type one,

Bri 6:23
yeah, well, I didn't know that there are different types. I thought type. Well, I thought type one was like, the pre pre diabetes that you can, like, get rid of, you know, like, how that happens with type two, like, the doctor will be like, oh, like, you know, your blood sugar's looking a little high. But if you eat well and get your act together, you know, you can be okay. That's what I thought it was. That's what I thought type men.

Scott Benner 6:48
There'll be a moment today when you're staring at your phone, and you desperately don't want to go back to what you're doing. But you've run out of apps to check. That's when you go to dancing the number four diabetes.com and find out all about what that fantastic organization is doing. That's dancing, the number four diabetes.com. No kidding. So So for a couple of moments, as the doctor was telling you, you really were just thinking like, Oh, this is so embarrassing. I've like I've let my health Get away from me.

Bri 7:16
Yes. And I was so confused. Because I'm a total health freak. I work out way too much. So I was like, just totally like, What is going on? You know? Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 7:27
I know.

Scott Benner 7:28
Well, so you're in. You're in grad school right now? Yes. Do you can we say what you're trying to do with your life?

Bri 7:35
Yeah. So I'm in grad school for clinical psychology. So I'm getting my hours right now to become a marriage and family therapists.

Unknown Speaker 7:43
Okay, great. Yeah.

Scott Benner 7:44
And so how did you end up so now? Bree has a really interesting, here's how I'm gonna make sure I understand how you got to me. You work for the woman who contacted me. Is that correct?

Bri 7:57
Yes, Alina.

Scott Benner 7:58
Yeah. And she she was trying to tell me about how great you are because you're helping her to care for her daughter while her daughter's at school. Is that am I getting this? Correct? Okay, yeah. So let's do that first, because because you have another job, too. But but this one, but this one first. So what does that look like day to day? How do you how do you help this little girl?

Bri 8:18
Well, I go in during right before she eats pretty much. So she eats at 1130 i Pre-Bolus at 1115. And then I'm there until 230. So right after snack, that's just like three hours a day.

Scott Benner 8:30
So so but this is at school. This is a school aged child, right?

Bri 8:34
Yeah. So I don't work for the school. I work for the family. This is a first grader, okay.

Scott Benner 8:40
So you just you just roll up in the morning and be like, Hey, what's up everybody at the front office, go find her, give her insulin and then hang out not with her. But behind the scenes.

Bri 8:51
Well, I usually sit with her at lunch because she you know, she needs to eat all of her food. And she's a little chatterbox. So I that's usually my job for the most part is to make sure she's eating everything on her plate. And then after that I'm I'm in the so it's kind of complicated. Actually. The nurse has a phone and iPhone, I have my phone and then the teacher her teacher also has a phone, which stays in her like little diabetes bag. So everyone is kind of in contact with each other. So it takes a village. It's like we are you guys now. You know, give her a tab do this do that. So it's kind of like, you know, we're all able to communicate effectively, which is super helpful.

Scott Benner 9:30
Okay, and so she has she's using a glucose monitor.

Bri 9:34
She knows she has a dex comment Omni pod.

Scott Benner 9:36
She has Dexcom what do you do? Well,

Bri 9:38
I have ducks comment on the pod as well.

Scott Benner 9:40
Cheese. And okay, so there's no ads this week. Just everybody gonna dex commented on the pod. Yeah. There's links in the show notes. No, seriously. So, so she's a first grader do Witkin. I don't know how freely you're allowed to speak. But when was she diagnosed?

Unknown Speaker 9:57
I believe she was two or three

Scott Benner 10:00
And so is this a situation where they were having trouble at school or where they were trying to set something up that would work in the, you know, before trouble could arise? How did you how did you? How did they come to look for you, I guess I

Bri 10:13
started working for this family, when Laila the little girl started kindergarten, so she was like new to the school. And I think that they tried out, just having the nurse, you know, her going to the nurse, but it's like, She's so little. So she wasn't she's like five years old at this point. So like she needed like someone to walk her to the nurse, which is all the way across campus. It's just a total pain in the butt. And she does have a lot of lows. Some days, though, is just like totally complicated. So I think I don't know who suggested maybe it was the nurse who told the mom, maybe you should look into hiring someone you know, to be at school and kind of be her shadow. So that's kind of where I think she reached out to jdrf. And then jdrf, it must have been like a blast email or something to like, you know, people in their 20s or teens or something of you know, this mom needs a babysitter who has type one. So I reached out with like, hey, like, I'm in grad school. Like, that sounds like a good gig for me. So um, so yeah, I reached out. And that's how that

Scott Benner 11:16
you can tell me Is this something that's common at at her school? Like is it you and like, 12 other 26 year old people, like hanging out with like, the kid who needs an inhaler. And the kid is or like, like a ninja in the corner keeping peanuts away from one of the kids.

Bri 11:32
This is like, just you. Yeah, it's just me. Um, and that was the problem is the nurse also has the whole school to take care of. So if God forbid, there was an emergency, and you know, the nurse has like, 10 kids in her room, like she wouldn't be able to give Laila the highest care that she should be having in that moment. Okay, though. All

Scott Benner 11:52
right. So I'm trying to imagine this from everyone's point of view, who's listening, like I'm trying to, like, I'm putting myself in the, in the shoes of like, a 55 year old mom whose kids like 30 now, and she's thinking none of this is necessary. And like, and like somebody who's had trouble with their kid, you know, with Lowe's, and they've been really scared, or they're just general where people have not good nursing or whatever. And I can see, you know, I can see it from all the different angles, I think, if it's needed and valuable, that it's needed and valuable. Right. So how long have you been doing this with her?

Bri 12:24
So last year, I was full time I was there every day. And then this year, I since I have clients now, I'm with my, the counseling center that I work at. I'm only there a couple times a week, and then I switch off with another girl who does the same thing.

Scott Benner 12:40
is the plan for the family. And you might not know, but is there a plan to transition away from this? I mean, the kids not gonna be like 15 hanging out with a 35 year old you, right?

Bri 12:49
Right? No, that's definitely the plan. And I'm really, really, really close with the other shadow. And we're like, super diabesity BFFs outside of our job as well. So we've kind of been working on transitioning Laila to, you know, giving her on boluses. And putting in her own cards, checking her finger, you know, so I'm kind of like, in the, I feel like she's in the training stage right now. Because eventually, she's gonna be like Arden, where, you know, the mom can just text her and say, you know, do this, do that, and she'll just punch it in herself.

Scott Benner 13:20
So that's what so this is, this is a stop gap between. So this is a person trying to kind of do what we talked about in the podcast. But because their child's so young, there's not enough. There's that you can't have you can't feel like Oh, she's gonna just see my text or not forget or not push the buttons wrong or something.

Unknown Speaker 13:41
Yeah, very cool.

Scott Benner 13:42
Now, what is this? I don't know what I want to know about this. It pays well enough for you to do it. Because you live in LA, right? are out in California.

Bri 13:55
Yeah, I live in LA, it's like 10 minutes from my house. Like, it's super easy. I get to do my schoolwork there, which is awesome. So you know, after lunch, and I make sure sheets are food. I kind of just go hang out the teachers lounge, get a lot of work done. If she has a low I text the teacher tell her to give a tab. So does she I mean,

Scott Benner 14:14
does she ever like a cool like, you're not there like you walk in and she ever just like, give you the shoulder like, Oh,

Bri 14:19
she runs away from me. And she thinks, oh, funny when the Omni pod doesn't connect to her.

Unknown Speaker 14:27
She's like, like, the wall and like, she's five.

Scott Benner 14:31
You must seem old to her. Like I just realized, like you I'm talking to you. And you're like, I'm stopping myself from calling you a kid. And, and she she's probably like, Oh, this giant, tall old lady comes and takes care of me.

Bri 14:44
The other day the kids were like, how old are you? Because I sit with all the kids at lunch and I was like, What do you think I am? And Lyla goes, I think maybe 60

Unknown Speaker 14:57
That's excellent.

Scott Benner 15:00
Further, I asked about where you live, because I just was trying to think about like commuting time, but it's close to your house, but commuting time and like, like, how much would I have to pay somebody to make this valuable to them? Because if you said to me, I had to go like, I'm not a grad student, but I have to take three hours of the middle of my day to go hang out with a, like a five year old and have lunch with them. I'd say, Oh, sure, I could do that. It costs a million dollars, you know, because I wouldn't want to do that.

Unknown Speaker 15:25
Yeah, but this

Scott Benner 15:26
is like a good side gig for you. Like it makes a little money.

Bri 15:28
Good. Because I'm just like the kind of person I get so distracted doing work in my own house. So I usually like end up going to a coffee shop or something. So it's just like, it's perfect, because like, I would normally just be somewhere else doing my work as well. So

Scott Benner 15:42
you might you might try spending some of your free time hiding spare keys around the neighborhood.

Unknown Speaker 15:47
Oh my god, I know, right?

Scott Benner 15:52
Yes, let's take a side trip for a second. How many times do you have to lock yourself out before you start thinking, Oh, my there's something wrong with me.

Unknown Speaker 16:03
This morning, I was like,

Bri 16:04
Oh my god, I can't believe

Scott Benner 16:07
I'm sorry. It's the most genuine laugh I've had on the podcast in a while. Know when you close the door when you came back?

Bri 16:17
I knew the moment I closed and I said a curse word. And I was like, oh god, my neighbor public just heard me and

Scott Benner 16:22
had to walk your dog which in by the way your dog appears to be in your picture on Skype. Is it a golden retriever?

Bri 16:28
Yep, I have a golden retriever Sawyer

Scott Benner 16:31
very cute. So you had to walk Sawyer the whole time go into yourself? I'm locked out my

Bri 16:39
I had my car keys with me it's just like that one key I did. I haven't like a my junk drawer because I never lock that.

Scott Benner 16:46
So yeah, you and so you're hung out in the car until the

Unknown Speaker 16:50
tree store

Unknown Speaker 16:51
did you do I'm sorry.

Bri 16:52
We went to the grocery store. I got I was a little productive during that show.

Scott Benner 16:58
I might have gone back to sleep in my car. I might have been like, I don't deserve to be inside even. So. Okay, so you have this this one job are you do you basically go in you? You know it's funny. You're I don't even know what to call you're like you're not even a like you are sort of a pancreas. Well, let me ask you that. How? How autonomous? Are you with her? Is it all on you? Or do you and the mother talk?

Bri 17:21
Sugar is dropping, I'll usually get a text from her and she'll say like, I'm paying

Scott Benner 17:26
you don't kill my kid.

Bri 17:28
She'll be like, is this low treated? Or you know, just confirming pretty much or if I see that she's dropping, and I'm like, Oh, you know, Lena might be getting nervous right now let her know that she's eating because I do like try to hold her back on eating before. You know, I try to wait till she's going down and insulin is hit. She's on fiaz.

Unknown Speaker 17:46
Okay, so, um,

Bri 17:47
I guess that's supposed to hit a little faster?

Unknown Speaker 17:50
I don't know. But I say that for sure. Yeah, yeah, I

Bri 17:53
don't know that. But but okay. I was like, 30 minutes before

Scott Benner 17:58
but but on a normal day, if you roll in there and her blood sugar's 120. You give her her Pre-Bolus you decide on what that is based on her meal and everything.

Bri 18:06
Yeah, yeah. And then I kind of am able to also dictate like, what she eats first. So I'll say like, save your food for last because I don't want her I don't want that hitting her at that moment. So

Scott Benner 18:16
that's always I gave up on that with Arden. I was just like, it's like, you know, sometimes you the heavier carbs first. She's like what? I said, the heavier like that. Nevermind. And just eat it. It'll be fine. I'll create. I'll create this big blanket of insulin that nothing can get through. And it's funny because it now to you. Before I tell you why it's funny. Do you listen to this podcast?

Bri 18:41
Yes, I do. I actually like put, I gave this podcast to like aleena. And she was totally into it. And then the other shadow and I told the nurse listen to it. Because I actually messaged you on Facebook. Because when I was first diagnosed, I was like, Oh my god, there's so much to learn. And so I literally like listened to your podcast, like in the hospital bed? And then, yeah, so that was me. And yeah, just like religiously listened. And it's so funny, because I'm the kind of person who never really talks about my diabetes. It's kind of just like, I don't want to be a burden on anyone. And I kind of just like, keep it to myself, because I'm an adult. And, you know, that's how that goes. I realized over the holidays, and I wasn't really listening to the podcasts like my diabetes, like my sugars were going higher. And I think it's because like I wasn't, you know, it wasn't like an active area of my brain being exercise, if that makes sense. It's kind of like, I don't even

Scott Benner 19:38
know it's kind of awesome feedback I've ever gotten like,

Bri 19:41
that's like I have to listen to you in order to keep my numbers.

Scott Benner 19:46
Everyone who's listening. That's a good point. You have to listen to the podcast every week or something horrible will happen to you even have to market it if everyone's scared then that everybody will get up on Tuesday. I have to download that show. Meanwhile, do I always put it out on Tuesday? I feel like I don't. Sometimes it's like later Tuesday or Wednesday, sometimes like, you know, Monday will be fine. I'm really not as well planned out. It's like you might hope. One thing that helps me not worry so much and not have to plan as much as maybe other people do is Dexcom. While some of you are busy, you know, counting your carbs down to the last half carb and figure out your ratios and just wringing your hands making sure that next bolus is going to be exactly right. Sometimes I just put the insulin in and you know if I'm wrong, I adjust. How do I do that? Well, I use the information that comes back from Arden stacks comm g sex continuous glucose monitor, because Dexcom tells me when Arden's blood sugar is on the move. Is it rising or falling? And how fast is it moving? Dexcom knows. And it tells me through its share and follow features. See Arden's at school right now. And her blood sugar is let me turn and look 101 she's actually been eating lunch now for about 25 minutes. But if that bowl is we did together doesn't quite work, and our blood sugar starts going up, we'll know before it's too late, and there's time to do something about it. Same if we kind of got a little aggressive with that bolus and later Oh, falling blood sugar. Don't worry, we'll find out way before it becomes a problem and address it with some fast acting carbs. Now, these are my results, and yours may vary. But I find Dexcom to be an indispensable tool in our day to day life with Type One Diabetes. And I think you would to check them out@dexcom.com forward slash juicebox. Start today with the G six have a completely new experience with your type one diabetes. You can find links in the show notes of your podcast player, or at Juicebox podcast.com. Okay, so that's amazing. So you found the podcast, listen to it, pass it on to Alina, but so she didn't know about it prior to us starting to work with her daughter at school. So Alright, so let's let's kind of like go a couple different ways. And if I've asked you questions about another person that you can't answer, just say, Scott, that's not my business. I can't say that. But so are you so far, you're using an omni pod index calm. And and I want to just say, while Bri has not said specifically she bought them because of the podcast. I do think I deserve more money for the ads, because she did buy them. So but but but no. But so you have you have you have a Dexcom and you have, you know, a pump? Or what was the first thing that you took from the podcast that made a big difference for you?

Bri 22:47
And I think just having the the CGM and was I was like, I need that. You know, why don't I have that? Why don't they give that to you? straight out of the hospital. You know, I understand like getting the pens out first. And you know, knowing how the insulin works and being more hands on. But I mean to CGM, like why would you not, you know, it's like, you're.

Scott Benner 23:14
So you got to you got to CGM. And then you could see what the insulin was doing the kind of apply what you're hearing on the podcast and what you're seeing in your real life. And if I can ask, Where are you at with all that? Like, what, what's, uh, what's the name one see that you're kind of getting kind of comfortably at this point?

Bri 23:31
Yeah, well, when I was first diagnosed, I think it was like 13 something. And then after that three, just three months later, it was already a 6.2. So I was like, on top of it, but I was also honeymooning as well. And also, I just listened to the episode The other day about insurance. And I just turned 26, which means that I got kicked off of my amazing parent's insurance where I didn't pay a penny for any of these things. Sure, I was kind of having some anxiety of not having insulin know of when I'm going to have my next insurance and all that stuff. So I wasn't using my, my pump during over the holidays. So that was really difficult because it's like all the extra food and all that stuff. But um, so I haven't been to the endo, so I don't even know what my wins. Right now.

Scott Benner 24:22
What was your last one that you remember?

Bri 24:24
It was like it was higher than than usual is like a 7.2 or something which I wasn't too happy with.

Scott Benner 24:31
anyone see, but I hear what you're saying. So are you I didn't expect to talk about this. But are you? How long will it take you to find insurance? Like what's your plan?

Bri 24:40
Well, yes, today is actually the last day to apply. So after I get off this, I need to figure that out. Yeah, because I want to stay with all my old doctors and stuff, which is like huge for me. Um, so I just need to find a plan that I can stick with everyone and that, you know, Omni pot Dexcom works with to

Scott Benner 24:58
you so you're still a student. And I guess this isn't we can't out you on the podcast, but I mean, you're not you're not working for a company that offers insurance is what I was gonna say.

Unknown Speaker 25:10
Nope. Yeah.

Scott Benner 25:13
Okay, let's do this by you There is so much about you that I'm going to talk about and yet there's details here. So I'm looking at my clock to make sure we're okay. Okay, so, so the little girl that you help at school, do you find it motivating, like, like, it's not I mean, like, I'm assuming there's a standard that, like, if I had, I have a job, I've had jobs in my life, right. And I show up in the, you know, to my to my work, and there's a standards and expectation, I have to do so many things, put so many things away, whatever it is, I have to do. And if I don't do those things, my employer looks at me and says, You're not cutting it. So I'm kind of guessing it's similar. Whereas if the mother sake, look, we're paying you you're coming to the school, I want my kids blood sugar to be, this is our goal. And if it doesn't, I want you to get it back. Like do you feel like that about it? Or do you feel how does it strike you?

Bri 26:06
I mean, it's just diabetes is so unpredictable, as you know, so I feel like, that would be so much pressure. If the mom was like, Oh, my God, like, you know, why is this not happening? Or right? You know, Why is her number still at this? I mean, I just, I do what I need to do, like I give corrections when needed. I'm triolo. I mean, that's what I'm there for. I'm not like an endo.

Scott Benner 26:29
Right. So I just wanted to I wanted to understand like for people, like, it's not like you show up and they're like, Look, if the kid's blood sugar goes over 140 we're not paying you for the last hour.

Bri 26:40
No, mom and I are super close. So we, we communicate effectively.

Scott Benner 26:46
Yeah, you're you're a comfort and a safety and a communication. person. Okay. All right. Excellent. And and so when you see her, when you see her blood sugar, and it's like stable and yours isn't? Does that feel weird that you were able to keep one person's but not yours? Like, I'm trying to figure out what that feels like to like be managing it. Let me tell you why. So two weeks ago, I was approached by a mother of a small child about a four year old and they said they just kind of, I forget the word she used, but there was desperation in her note to me. And she said along a CGM graph that went from like, you know, 60 to 400. Over and over again, like that. And I don't know what it was. But there was something about our note that just I couldn't, like, I just couldn't send like, Hey, good luck or anything like that. I just, I want to look, you can call me. And we talked for 45 minutes or so. And, and then I did something I'd never done before, which I almost shudder to say here. But I followed her kid on Dexcom for a little bit to help her, like, kind of adjust things more quickly. And that was a Tuesday. And by Thursday, she sent me back her first six hour period that wasn't under 70 or over 100. Oh my

Unknown Speaker 28:05
gosh, wow.

Scott Benner 28:06
Right. And she's so happy for him. And then I you know, I said look, you don't even you know, let me go away now. But there was a moment during that, where I missed on one of Arden small losses. And Arden's blood sugar was like 200 and a little, a little kids blood sugar was 110. I was like, Whoa, I got that one. Right, but that one wrong? I'm related to that one, you know, like, so. It felt first split second, it felt weird. Like I was like, like, does it feel like a lot when you're sitting there and your D? Is your diabetes on kind of cruise control? or?

Bri 28:39
Yeah, yeah, pretty much on cruise control. I'm really aggressive with my insulin, which I am with her too. But sometimes I'll come in and the nurse has just overtreated Alo by accident or something and she's like, Hi. And that it's like, I'm I have to deal with that. Like she's about to eat, I have to, you know, Pre-Bolus and crank up per Temp Basal. So it's nice because I kind of just get to do my own thing on, you know, what my gut is telling me to do? Because it's like, if anything happens, I'm there. Like, if I give too much insulin, which I'd prefer, then not give enough because it's like a whole battle field that I'm there to treat below. So it's like, I like

Scott Benner 29:17
listen, I think it's great. I think I think it's possible that you know, someone could hear that and be like, Wow, that's a that's a nice to have, you know, like like it really is but but I get it like I I was in that position where Artem was diagnosed when she was two by the time she was for a full year before she started kindergarten. And not with any of the good gear that you know we have today with Dexcom and Alibaba and stuff like that I was in a panic. I was like, I don't understand how I'm gonna send my kid to the school like she was little she weighed like 20 some pounds and she was like this little you know, and um, and it really did panic me and that's I back then. Back then before even like texting was a big thing and all that I just put it in there. 504 plan like every time they tested her blood sugar, and they had to do something, I made them call me.

Unknown Speaker 30:05
Mm hmm.

Scott Benner 30:06
And that was not something they were thrilled about. And it was, it was a small school, so it was reasonably doable. So I get this, especially out there where I'm assuming this is a large school with a lot of kids in it, right?

Bri 30:20
Um, it's a private school. It's not too crazy. Not Yes. Not like overwhelming. Okay. All right.

Scott Benner 30:26
So you do what you do. Now you have a nother job because you are a hard worker. Tell me what your other job is.

Bri 30:33
So my other job is working with a family who they are total workaholics and they travel a lot for their job. So I stay overnight with the girls. Both of them have type one. So that is a lot of a lot of work. One of the older one, they're older too. And the younger one is 11. She has a pump. No CGM, which is terrifying. And I hate that. And the older one is 16 just got her driver's license. And she has a dexcom and no, no pumps, she does MDI, but she hardly ever even wears her Dexcom. So it's so funny. It's not funny, actually, it's interesting, because the family that I work for with the daughter at the school, the first grader, those parents are so on top of their daughter, you know, they care so much about their health. And then the other family, you know, it's just like, totally lenient and laid back, the girls is the girl, the girls, a onesies are always very high, and then nines, 10s. It's, it's crazy. So it's interesting going from that, you know, like, the first dynamic to the second, sometimes the same day where it's like the same disease, but you know, they don't care about it all

Scott Benner 31:52
feels different. And so so this is super interesting. So maybe a we shouldn't use your name in the beginning of this. And but but but so now, I guess what I was gonna say is like, don't care or just so busy that they're, they've kind of left it to the kids and the kids are managing it as best people their age can do. Like, yeah, what do you think? I

Bri 32:18
think the mom cares. It's not that she doesn't care. Maybe the kids don't care. The mom cares, but I don't think that she understands the, you know, the locks. Yeah, but the complexity of it and the future repercussions of it. And

Scott Benner 32:34
so by not understanding so they have to understand on some level so do you think it is it down to like, I just don't imagine that there's anything we can do to affect this? Like it's, it does what it does, and I'm just along for the ride desert? Yeah.

Bri 32:51
Yeah, it's really strange. And it's like something that I don't want to, you know, step into when I'm, when I'm there. I'm on my butt about it, which they hate my text. Because I have it on my phone, the Dexcom and she's wearing it, but she'll just be like, Hi for hours. I'm like, What the hell's going on? And so my text her like given sling given sling given slid. I'm like, Don't make me Shut up to your school and like, step up, and

Scott Benner 33:18
I want to make sure I have my head wrapped around this. The older one has a pump, but no dex calm. The younger one has a dexcom but no pump and I get that backwards. Opposite opposite. Okay. Yeah. The older one has MDI index com, the younger one has on the pod. No. Dexcom. Okay.

Bri 33:36
Now she has a Medtronic.

Scott Benner 33:38
Oh, she's using a Medtronic pump. Yeah, okay. Well, I'm not saying that's the wrong choice. But

Bri 33:45
I it's funny, I used to I tried that pump out for a for a bit. And I did not like I went from the no tubing to the tubing. And it was like, it was not okay. Like, my dog was chewing on the that time I woke up from a nap. I was like, Okay, this is this is gonna work.

Scott Benner 34:03
Well, well. So I have a couple of things that happen to me recently that I'm going to share one of them here I did a talk. I can't You know what, I can't even say that. I'm gonna have to scrub that out and go back. So recently, I spoke to a person who has connections with a hospital. Okay, so they have, you know, can look at me trying to talk around so, so bad at talk. This is how you know, I'm being honest the other times because my words come out so easy. Let's say there's a medical person who sees people with diabetes. And they told me that as much as you would like to hope that parents all are, hey, let's take care of this. You know, I'm here with you. That there are some parents who just really don't want to be bothered and And, and we'll just, they they said that it's kind of sad because what they see them do is they give the kids the big talk, like, you know, this is your disease and you have to own it and everything they said, but if you ask me, what they really mean is I don't want to be bothered with this.

Bri 35:17
Wow, that is so interesting and not

Scott Benner 35:20
like my expectation. Isn't it funny how you, you just sort of everyone imagines that the world is the way that it is for you like, right, like I, like I know how I feel about parenting. And I know that I have made choices in my life to put my kids well before much before me and I sort of just assume that everyone's doing that. And to have to have a medical professional stand in front of you and tell you that is not the case. For me. It was shocking, a little bit, I guess. Yeah. And especially when you try to put it on a kid who then doesn't have good tools, even if they wanted to do it. Well. I mean, how would they accomplish that? You don't I mean, without anybody directing them, or helping them or showing them the way? You're so interesting for you because you have you are sitting, smack dab in the middle of two completely opposite worlds.

Unknown Speaker 36:14
Yeah. Wow.

Scott Benner 36:15
I didn't even realize that when we were talking. When we were talking about getting together and doing this. This is amazing. You're You're like the Oracle you can see all over. And so. Okay, so let me let me ask you a couple questions. Kids who weren't that interested? Or don't have the direction? Do you feel like it's not your job to help them because, you know, you know how to handle this better than they are? So do you think it's not your job? Have they rebuked you and you've tried like, what's that setup? Like?

Bri 36:45
No, I am. Like I said, I am like, totally on their bite, which I feel like sometimes they dread when their parents are journaling, because they're like, Oh, God, Bree is gonna be here. Like, I'm gonna have to get my act together, just because like, we'll sit down to eat and I'm like, oh, did you give insulin? And then they'll just look at me. And they're like, oh, oops, nope. And yeah, this was like, the first week that I was stayed with them since since last year. I guess I'm a new year. And I was like, oh, like, do you guys not have diabetes? Like in the new year, which is that your resolution? I'll kind of like mess with them joke. You know, I joke around with them a lot. But it's like, dude, if you're insane, like what is going on?

Scott Benner 37:24
And so it's just an apathy? No. Can I ask you? Are they apathetic about other aspects of life? Or is it specifically the diabetes?

Bri 37:31
No, it's just the diabetes. The older one is very embarrassed about it. None of her friends know that she has it actually. So that's, that's me. Yeah. How

Scott Benner 37:39
long has she had diabetes?

Bri 37:42
She's had it for I think, two or three years. So she was like, at that weird, you know, adolescent transitionary. teenager phase when she was diagnosed?

Scott Benner 37:53
She the first diagnosis the family the second?

Bri 37:55
No, the second.

Scott Benner 37:56
She was probably thinking she got away with it for a while, right? Like, you're like, you don't mean like, Oh, hey, got her, not me. like a like a bad horror movie. You're like, Oh, my friends dead. But I'm leaving. And so no, I well, and so you feel terrible, right off the bat? Because it's so like, have you ever tried to? And I don't know if you don't think this is your place? where maybe just flatly isn't your place? Like, have you ever said to them? Look, if you listen to if I told you tomorrow, we were going to eat at six? Could I get you to you know, start thinking about your blood sugar an hour before dinner just for a minute. Like you tell him like that's like that's a tool that would would keep your blood sugar down. And like, he hit him with the like, you know, highs and lows, lows. And once you're high, it's hard to get down and like you, and you just kind of bounces off.

Bri 38:43
I mean, I feel like they just don't care enough to even absorb that information. Like it's so irrelevant to them.

Scott Benner 38:49
Hmm. Just does one have a better grasp of it than the other? No, no, they're pretty much in the same boat.

Bri 38:57
Yeah, yeah. And it's interesting what you're saying about what the doctor said, because I feel like parents lay the foundation of the kid's relationship to diabetes, or, you know, or just any topic. It's like, you know, you need to care for yourself. And it's, it's a team effort. You know, it's like the family I work for at the school. Like I said, Everyone has a phone. And everyone makes an effort to take care of this little girl's health. And it's like, the other kids don't even understand anything about it.

Scott Benner 39:30
So it's a willful misunderstanding, because it's not that they don't have the, I mean, these aren't. I mean, their parents travel a lot for work, and they're paying you to watch them. I'm assuming there's a couple of dollars rolling around the house where they could, you know, go find things out if they wanted to, they can afford to go to the doctor and that sort of thing. So yeah,

Bri 39:49
yeah. It's so funny. These those families have the same doctor.

Unknown Speaker 39:53
The same stuff. Interesting.

Unknown Speaker 39:57
I thought that was crazy.

Scott Benner 39:58
Oh, and not uncommon. Good in an area I there's people around me who are like gay have the same doctor. So, huh? Wow, okay, hold on, I got a little like I got thrown there by that a little bit I did not expect you. I mean, in fairness, I never expect anything from anybody because I do no work before we sit down and talk, which is on purpose for anybody who's new to the podcast, I like the conversation to be organic. I just did not expect you to tell me what you told me. So it's, it's weird to imagine I'm imagining the situation that you're in with them. Because, again, you by the way, you've only had diabetes for a year and a half, these kids are probably longer than you could probably like, Listen, you don't know what you're talking about. You know, there's probably part of the things where you get to where I'm at. You'll you'll see how hard this is. And then there's this other part of my head who thinks I'm thinking back to the person I talked about earlier met him on a Tuesday, blood sugar's all over the place, Thursday, blood sugars, not over like, a 45 minute phone call and a couple of follow ups, and the more they got, and it makes me feel like, Oh, I could do that with that kid to where somebody, somebody could do that with those children. And, and you know, but it does take, listen, I'm gonna say something that will sound like I'm speaking for myself first. I can, but I'm not I think if I'm good at one thing. It's not, I guess I have the information. Having the information is one thing, I think I'm good at explaining the information. And so I don't think I don't think I'm the only person that can do it. And I don't think that it works every time. But I do think that it's uncommon for me to tell you that I can talk to somebody for 45 minutes and help them understand their insulin better. But I've I've done it enough times now that I'm comfortable saying that it is true more often than not. But if you but how does one doctor, get it through? So So I guess it's the parent, right? Like, I guess it's the fact that, right? You have a child who's too young to make its own decision. So the parent gets to decide, we're going to be proactive and take good care of this. And I'm going to figure out how to do that. And put time and effort into that. And it's working for that little kid in that little kindergartner. And then you have the other side where the family is not saying that they're saying, Hey, here's your stuff, go take care of it. And the kids don't have success, which if my interviews in the past, have taught me anything. Those girls don't want to be in the situation they're in that they don't know what to do about it. And like because there's plenty of interviews with people in their 30s who had diabetes through those formative like teen years, and they'll tell you, I just needed someone to help me. I wanted my mom to tell me Hey, I'll help you with us. We'll figure it out together. Something like that.

Bri 42:45
Yeah, I think everyone wants that. Anyone? Yeah. When I was first diagnosed, I had a boyfriend. And he was just like, not very supportive of my diabetes. We were together for five years broke up over this past summer. And there would be times where I'd be like sitting on the couch so low. He had my dex comment with literally say, like, blow arrow down. I'd be like, I can't move. Can you get me a juice? And he'd be like, you can get your own juice. So it's like

Scott Benner 43:13
tough love a seizure.

Unknown Speaker 43:16
Gotta love it.

Scott Benner 43:19
Five years, Marie, come on. There is no one better than Kim. Is he really handsome?

Unknown Speaker 43:25
I'm not really.

Unknown Speaker 43:29
Oh god, I'm

Scott Benner 43:31
wrong to name this episode. Brees, ugly ex boyfriend was a jerk. But see, interestingly enough, again, what you're describing is a person who doesn't understand and isn't willing to take the time to understand.

Unknown Speaker 43:48
Exactly, exactly.

Scott Benner 43:49
Can I ask you this? This one's going all over the place. And I'm gonna lead you a little bit with this question, because I can't imagine your answers otherwise, but fairly heartbreaking to find out a person you'd been with for five years didn't care enough about you to figure it out?

Bri 44:03
Yeah, um, yeah, I mean, that's an aspect with a lot of my friendships too. I've kind of realized like with since I've been diagnosed, like who came to the hospital to be with me, who, you know, my, one of my best friends is on my dexcom share, like she's, she cares. And she's important. So it's kind of like, allowed me to like filter out people in my life in a way. Just because, you know,

Unknown Speaker 44:28
luckily,

Scott Benner 44:30
I met a person recently who experienced the gap in their insurance coverage. They had medical insurance, they had decks comment on the pod, and then they lost that happy to report they have it back now, but they also have a perspective that they lacked previously. I want you to know how impactful it was to me to stand in front of someone who is literally crying tears of joy. To get their insulin pump back again. This person was just standing there holding their PDM and just grateful to have it. And I thought here is someone who really understands what the Omni pod brought to their life and knew what it felt like to have it taken away. Now for those of you who don't have an omni pod right now, you have nothing to compare it to. But if you would have been there with me, and seeing the just absolute gratification on this person's face to have this back in their life, I think he would know what it meant to them, is incredibly powerful. And so you know, we stand here and talk about Temp, Basal rates and tubeless nature and you can swim with it. You don't have to disconnect for sports, but it's more than that. So take a minute, go to my on the pod.com. Get yourself a free, no obligation demo the only pod today, and find out what that person knows what I know, life with Type One Diabetes really is better when you have on the pod. I know this seems like a fairly melodramatic story, and you might have trouble believing it, but it is 100% true. Just in case you still can't believe me. Just know that that demo that you can get from Omni pod is free, it has absolutely no obligation and allows you the opportunity to wear a pod and try it for yourself. Miami pod.com forward slash juicebox. Listen, I want to tell you this. years ago, I I interviewed some people, and and i they're married. And they told me a little bit about their courtship and when they met and how one of them found out the other one had diabetes. And, and I can't remember if it was the woman, I think it was realized the guy was just such a good guy. And she had been through so many guys prior to that, who were not supportive of her diabetes and what she needed to do. And she realized, I think pretty immediately she was going to marry the guy. And I thought that the the tone of that episode really the takeaway of it should be the when you find the right person, you'll know and then you'll be great. You'll be grateful for not having been with the others. You know,

Unknown Speaker 47:01
that's

Bri 47:03
Yeah, dealing with diabetes, like at my age is like so weird, too. Because it's like, some people will say the stupidest things like I was on a date with this guy. And he's like, do you have the good kind of the bad kind? It's like, Oh, my God, like, this is so annoying. So it's just like another component of like, being added on to the burden of having diabetes and having to work with it every day. But like having to introduce that to a new person is like, kind of scary, you know?

Scott Benner 47:30
Because how are they going to take it?

Unknown Speaker 47:32
Wow,

Scott Benner 47:33
are they gonna understand? But do you ever put yourself back in that spot you were in in that doctor's office where you were like once like pre diabetes, and I'm away with a setup, like so. But I guess at some point, it gets tiresome right to explain it.

Unknown Speaker 47:47
Yeah.

Scott Benner 47:48
Okay. What are you gonna do there, you're gonna start a dating app for people would type

Unknown Speaker 47:53
out. That's really, that's a good idea.

Scott Benner 47:59
So that they know what they're, you know, like, it's no different than if you like, like, let's say you had a fetish where you love the bridges. You wouldn't want to spend time with people who didn't also love bridges. Because that would just be a waste of your time because a person who didn't love bridges would look at you at dinner and go, Wait, did you want to go after this? And say No, thank you. But no, I mean, I wonder if there's a way to, I guess there's not really like dating such an odd thing to begin with. Right? Like there's this whole this whole, like, just blanket of humanity around you and who of them are someone you'd be attracted to visually, someone you'd be attracted to emotionally intellectually, like all these things that whittled down whittle it down whittle down that start from this big pile of people moving around? You're getting down to the few that fit these categories? And then you got to find one who doesn't hear? Oh, you have diabetes? Is it the good kind are the bad? Can you imagine if you would, Did this happen to you? Was this a guy you thought was like a good a good choice?

Bri 48:58
Did I mean obviously, I explained it to him after that. But yeah, and then there's just been like, other people are like really interested in it and like, want to learn all about it. And going back to like, what you're saying about how parents kind of like, build the foundation of the relationship with it. Same with me, like, I feel like my ex boyfriend made me feel like any partner will feel like it's a burden and like, I shouldn't talk about it with other people. And I should just like, keep it to myself. Really. Right. Exactly. So it's been like interesting like meeting other people and like learning Oh, it's like people actually are interested about it and like, want to help me and it's okay. And come out of my shell about it.

Scott Benner 49:39
So as someone who is, I guess, I'll just barking out noise fine as someone who is probably pretty close enough to being old enough to be your parent. Right? But probably not. I mean, it would be creepy. I would have been like 17 or something like that one. But you know, it would have been, you would have been on my little mistake in high school, but just the point. The point is, I still am old enough to tell You can't build a personal relationship where you feel like you need to hide stuff. Right? It will, it will encumber you in a way that I don't even think you'll understand until it's too late. You can't hide you don't I mean, please, I don't want to find out everybody. Listen, this podcast got divorced next month, because they all ran home. And they were like, hey, there's something I haven't said. So, but so if you've been hiding something long enough, just keep hiding it you're doing fine. But I mean, you don't want to is what I'm saying. You would prefer

Bri 50:31
for the other person?

Scott Benner 50:32
Yeah, no, you don't need that you're you have enough you have diabetes. You're a grad student, your your you multiple jobs, you're working hard. You're gonna start hearing other people's problems as a part of your, you know, your your life as I already

Bri 50:45
do. I got my whole clientele. Exactly. Well, the story is he was just uneducated about all of it, and didn't care enough to do any research

Scott Benner 50:53
or come to you and just say, look, we've been together a really long time. And I think I'd like to ask you to marry but I'm really concerned that you can't have a healthy baby, is that true?

Unknown Speaker 51:06
About thing?

Unknown Speaker 51:07
And also could have googled it? You know, like, which? You did? Well, to get rid of that one. You're so good. Absolutely. Oh,

Scott Benner 51:17
my gosh, that's exhausting to hear. And, and so for people who are listening who have younger children, who think oh, my God, is this what my kid has to look forward to in dating, there are also plenty of gaps. There are plenty of episodes that don't go this way with people who find great people. And so don't worry, plus, there are plenty of people without diabetes dating jerks to

Unknown Speaker 51:38
everywhere.

Scott Benner 51:42
Okay, let's take a breath for a second. Okay, you know what, I'm gonna put an ad here. I just got back from Orlando where I attended dancing for diabetes touched by type one event, I was able to meet a lot of you. And I really appreciate you making the trip to come out and talk to me about what the podcast has meant to you. And I also got to speak with new people who had never heard about the podcast. This is all thanks to dancing for diabetes, and what they're trying to do for people living with type one, take a minute to check them out. Dancing, the number for diabetes.com. We're also on Facebook, and Instagram. I don't know where I want to go with our last 10 minutes because I don't want to pick too far into other people's private stuff. I don't want to put you in a position to talk about other people. And at the same time, you've only had diabetes for a year and a half, which is both a lot a long time and a short time. Yep. Are you excited? Will you you have next comment on the product? Will you move on to horizon artificial pancreas when it's available in a year or so? Or what's your thought about artificial pancreas in the future? Oh,

Unknown Speaker 52:54
oh, yeah. Yeah,

Bri 52:56
I should. Like I said, I had the Medtronic and like that. I was like, what was it that a goal thing is like 140 MB of blood sugar. Yeah, I hated that. Yeah. So is it is it I was listening to that podcast episode last night actually with the guy from Omni pod. He did say it is user definable. Right. And

Scott Benner 53:15
they said that's their goal. They say that every time that I tell them, I mean, I guess it's still going through the FDA review process. I guess it comes down to what they can prove they can make work and work safely and make, you know, yeah, so. But it sounds like that is their goal. I think that any pump company who's trying to make a closed loop system, who doesn't see that as a shortcoming of the first ones that are on the market is not paying attention? I think the pods paying attention. So yeah, because right, what's the point? If you're keeping your budget, like if you have an A one C with it's an average blood sugar of 110? Why would you want to switch to something?

Unknown Speaker 53:51
I'd rather just put in extra work,

Scott Benner 53:53
but at the same time, those girls that you're talking about that you that you work with, they would really benefit from something like they will. Right, right, right. So there's a lot of value in it for everyone. It just depends. It just depends on what your what your definition is, I guess, and how much work you're willing to put in otherwise, because I have to agree with you. If you told me that it was going to keep Arden's blood sugar at 140, I'd say well, I guess I'm not interested that, you know, I mean, I would love the overnight. Now, if you told me you could throw into auto mode overnight. And I don't know, maybe that would tease me enough to try it and then like do it manually otherwise, but I don't know if it's gonna have manual modes and auto modes. We don't know enough about it yet to make that decision. But I'm excited. Like I think it's

Unknown Speaker 54:38
Yeah, me too. Yeah. Yeah. I

Scott Benner 54:40
think that I think the future is, is now for the lack of a better Yeah, unless cheesy phrase, but but i think i think it really is. And it's only going to go and get better from here. Should you live you live by yourself right now? I do. What's that like? Because you said you're pretty aggressive with your insulin but you live by yourself. How do you? How do you do that? Like, how do you keep yourself from worrying?

Bri 55:04
I'm dexcom share. I mean, I have my mom on there. I have my friend who lives down the street from me. And every time I go low, I mean, my phone is blowing up. I

Scott Benner 55:15
can't avoid it.

Bri 55:17
Like I just ate like they don't understand either. Like, it takes a few minutes to kick in, right? Like Jesus, like I just had a juice like give it some time

Scott Benner 55:24
happened to us last night Arden's blood sugar went to like, it got to 70 so it alarmed, it's like four in the morning. And, and I was like, I got up, and I'm pulling myself together. And I'm like, What am I gonna do about this? Like, am I gonna do some, so I looked at the trend line. And I thought, Okay, I think this is going to continue down. So I gave her a little bit of juice, and I didn't want to shut her bazel off, because I know she's getting up in two hours. And you know, four o'clock getting close enough to, you know, her kind of witching hour where her blood sugar starts to kind of creep back up again. So I didn't want to cut bazel. So I just gave her some juice. And I got back in bed. Same thing, like I figured three revolutions, the Dexcom, maybe 15 minutes or so. And I'd be i'd feel comfortable going to bed. Every time it'd be between that and we'll ended up being 20 minutes later, when I was comfortable going back to sleep. My wife barely came out of her sleep. And she'd go, she was like, three minutes, just three minutes. I was like, what she's okay. And I'm like, she's okay. It's okay. I've got it. Okay. And now, you know, now I'm like, I'm online. I'm trying to read the news or just keep myself awake for 10 minutes, you know? Five minutes later, BP? Hey, there's three. There's three. Like she didn't say like, Oh my god, I'm like, go back to sleep every time for four times. And finally it rose up over 70 and I don't know if I was more relieved that Arden's blood sugar was going up or that my wife is going to stop half popping out asleep, like talking about how many times she could hear beeping. Yeah, I was just like, but but so that's really interesting. When so when people text you or call you, you respond, you hear it? Yeah. Okay. And some people don't. So what what number? What number do people start calling you at with your jet low? Only? Under 55? Yeah, okay. That's cool. Look, I it's a great support system to have.

Bri 57:15
Just, they just want to make sure I'm awake. cuz sometimes it's happened. Like if I'm taking a nap or something. So

Scott Benner 57:20
yeah. And how frequently do you get under 55? Do you think it happens?

Bri 57:25
Often I usually just like turn off my, my bazel if I'm at like, 60. So it'll like start creeping back up.

Scott Benner 57:32
Yeah, I like the way you're doing this. I can't see. And so you pick that stuff up from this podcast?

Bri 57:38
Oh, my God. Yes. And you know, like, no one, I wouldn't if it worked for you. Like, I wouldn't have even known any of this. You know, like the endos in the hospital, like, Oh, you give you give a shot when you like before you eat? And it's like, don't you don't do that like that. That screws you up?

Scott Benner 57:53
Wow, that's so cool. I'm so happy to hear that. Like, I really don't. I have enough contact with people that, you know, I get emails. And by the way, you guys have been writing a lot more lately, even then you had been in the past, which I really appreciate. If I don't get back to you right away. It's just because I'm like a one man operation over here. But I get back to everybody at some point. But to hear someone say it is it's nice. Like I don't know, another way to put it to hear you say that is really just I feel good about that. So it's really cool for you to share that with me. And yeah, and everything you're doing really I mean, like look it in one way or another you're helping three other people with diabetes besides yourself. Do you ever feel with the the two older girls that you that you work with? Does it ever bother you? Do you ever feel badly about it? Like I sometimes take on guilt from other people? So if I if I try to help somebody out and they can't figure it out, it makes me feel bad? And I don't know if that's me? Or like, Do you ever feel like that? Do you ever wish you could impose yourself on them? or teach them faster? Or better? Or like, are you pretty good at keeping it separate?

Bri 59:04
Yeah, I feel like I'm pretty good at keeping it separate. Just because like with my therapists job, like I seem with that, like I have to keep like the, you know, the slaves like here and they're separate from my home life as well. So it's kind of like seeing what that job like I have to keep that separate. I can't carry that burden with me. But um, yeah, it's it's tough when the kid does not have a CGM. And you know, it's on me like I am the caretaker. So it's like, I'm setting my alarm, you know, every two hours to go check her sugar because I'm so paranoid about it. I don't like that. I don't like I can't see where she's going. So I would love for her to get a dexcom at some point.

Scott Benner 59:43
Do you give her insulin when she's sleeping without her knowing?

Unknown Speaker 59:47
Yeah, through her pump. Yeah. Okay.

Scott Benner 59:49
So there's that kind of comfort level between Yeah, sure. They're not looking to be that involved anyway, so anybody that's helping is probably Oh yeah,

Bri 59:56
they would love if I could just follow them around everywhere. And Do it.

Scott Benner 1:00:01
Well, I'll follow them on the next common I get them going. I figured out it takes me takes you out three days to teach somebody how to do it, but they still look. But they have to listen though they can't say why. And they have to wrap their head around the ideas. And so I it's interesting too, because there's a boy named William that was on this past year. And he was 15. At the time I talked

Unknown Speaker 1:00:26
that listen to that light, but

Scott Benner 1:00:28
he is just it's funny how it sounds like he heard the information. I'll try this right? I'm going to try it. Yeah. Oh, my gosh, do you ever try to? Could you get the older one to like, just listen to the podcast to see if they would connect with it or not? Or do you think

Bri 1:00:48
I can talk to her about it? And I just don't? Yeah, I think she just had such a weird age right now. And I hope that she'll care more as she gets older. And maybe, and I tell her, you know, maybe it might take a health scare of something happening for you to realize how important it is for your numbers to be more consistent and more study,

Scott Benner 1:01:08
it's so hard now to talk. It's really difficult to know what to say to somebody like, do they need to do they need? You know, some people need a kick in the butt. Some people need a pat on the back, like that whole thing like and how do you know who is who and, you know, back then when you go back and listen to somebody who's 36 tell you that when I was 15, if my mom just would have done this, that would have meant the world or that or you know, been there. I've talked to people who want to help their kids it is to some degree, you know, not to some degree, it's completely about how available the child is to the information like right, like how much are they resistant or want to listen. And I always tell them the same thing. Like you have to, you have to like sit down and just say, look, obviously we haven't done really well at this so far. But I've got some new information and I need a month to put it into practice and to to get a cut me a break for a month, like for a month I'm going to say Bolus and I need you to do it when when we say because yeah, and you'll learn what's happening so that we can make because that's that really, to me, that's the heartbreaking thing is that if they understood the things that we talked about here, that diabetes really would be less of their day, if they they just knew what to do, and and kind of did it in a timely fashion. And they're being overwhelmed with it. It's probably constantly on their mind, you know, even though they act like it's not.

Bri 1:02:31
Yeah, and I actually went to um, was it connected in motion? The diabetes camp?

Unknown Speaker 1:02:36
Yeah. Yeah, my

Bri 1:02:38
my friend that I was telling you about her, and I went, and there is a diabetes psychologists there. And he kind of made a good point. He's like, if you're in denial about your diabetes, like you're thinking about it more, and it's being more of a burden in your life, or is it just like, you give insulin for your food, that's like a routine thing. It's just like an added step that we have to do. I was

Unknown Speaker 1:02:58
like, Oh, my God, like, I

Bri 1:02:59
don't want my CGM to show or like, I don't want, you know, anyone to see me pulling out my PDF, because it's so bulky and embarrassing. Like, that's how the older one thinks, like, she has that mindset. And that must be like, so hindering to her. Yeah. And, you know, a huge weight on her shoulders versus, like, open about it.

Scott Benner 1:03:18
Yeah, always heartbreaking like to hear about them is, is really kind of crushing. And I think that's a, it's what we say it's what I tell people all the time. Like, I know, I say to them, like, Look, you have to Pre-Bolus a little bit that, hey, if he tries to go up, you can nudge it back down, like and people are like, Oh my god, you must be involved with this all the time, like no, barely, ever, you know, like, like, once you get on a roll with it, you understand how to do it, it really requires much less of your time, effort and your attention, which then can drift off and think about other things. And not worry about anything. And like I just said to somebody the other day, I'm like, the first thing I need you to do here is move the high alarm down in your next calm. And then people always say something, it's gonna beep all the time. I'm like, No, it won't. It's like if you if you and I talk about this a couple times, it will not be bought the time, I promise you. And so yeah, okay, well, obviously, it's difficult to know, you know, how much you can impose yourself into another person's life. And it's, I'm not telling you you need to be doing it or that you know, that you're, you're certainly not letting them down. You're doing them a huge, you know, a huge thing already by being there for them the way you are. I was just I was more just wondering how, like, how you found their availability to ideas and to help.

Unknown Speaker 1:04:32
Yeah,

Bri 1:04:33
I mean, I tell them, you know, like, instant doesn't hate you for a while you have to Pre-Bolus you have to give insulin before your meals. And it's just like, what, it just goes in one ear out the other like the 11 year old is in her own little world of like

Unknown Speaker 1:04:46
slime. Like,

Bri 1:04:49
like doing her own thing. She doesn't care. She doesn't understand the older one though, like she would be able to understand if she actually, you know, was open to the idea.

Scott Benner 1:04:58
So here's my thoughts. Like if I was in your spot, and I was with them, based on what I know, and based on what you know about your other job with the kindergarten aged child, what if you What if you approach it with them as Hey, listen, you guys are about that the greatest weekend of your life, because I'm going to take care of your diabetes for 48 hours in a row, and you're not involved, you're not going to be it'll be hard on you, you'll be devastated. You know, like, you'll be crushed, like, at the end of the two days. But I wonder if two days would be enough for you to get them into a better range, so they could start to feel better. And say to him, Look, this is what this took. Now, you know, why don't we do it together? and get you to a point where you can do this on your own? Like, I wonder if it's something you could show them? Because, yeah, you don't mean because trying to get them involved in it is going to be nearly impossible, because first of all, their blood sugar is crazy high, they're probably aggravated to begin with. And and they already don't understand it's already probably a sense of shame for them. And so like, what if you came in and just reset them? Like just hit Control, Alt Delete, which I think by now is our old reference, right? You don't even like said, Look, let's start over. I'm gonna take care of for a couple days, I'm going to show you what I think you could do pretty easily. I don't know, like, and they might tell you to go to hell, like I have no idea. You know, but I just it just, it runs through my head. And it seems like such a, I don't know, it's hard.

Bri 1:06:29
The hard part is is that they go to their dad's house over the weekend. So I watched them during the school week. So when that school, you know, they're not giving then they're gone. If they say they do they say they give insulin but especially with the older one who has MTI is like how am I supposed to tell? If she is

Unknown Speaker 1:06:47
Yeah, cuz she's, you know, yeah,

Scott Benner 1:06:48
cuz she didn't have a pen, right, that measures that or tells you what she's used or,

Unknown Speaker 1:06:53
hey, yeah, it's

Bri 1:06:53
like, I have no idea. Yeah, right. Yeah. So I don't know. That's, I can do that when they're at home, though. Like, and show them. Because also like what you were saying on some of their podcasts, I was listening to the other day, like, totally Enjoy your day. But you're saying like you want Arden to like be her most authentic self? Because it's like, like you said, like you're moody and irritable when your blood sugars are high, and you're not being your normal self. So that's like a component of it as well.

Scott Benner 1:07:22
Yeah, you just, I mean, it's so crazy to think that somebody could be having reactions and feelings that aren't really the ones they'd be having if their blood sugar was lower or higher. You know, that's just such an odd, there's a ton about life, I don't find fair. But the one thing that I don't find fair, that kind of really makes me angry is the idea of wasted time, like wasted time really makes me upset. And to think that you might, that those kids might be living a day or a week, where it just, it's not who they would be at. And it's also, by the way, unfair to put you in a position at your age, when you're not related to them to feel in any way responsible for that. But I was just, I'm just wondering, like, if you could just kind of take it from them. Let them just relax, not think about it, but have good outcomes, and then say, look, now let me like all together, we can we can do this together?

Unknown Speaker 1:08:16
You know, that's a good idea.

Scott Benner 1:08:18
I don't know that. If you did that. You could, you know, you could definitely ask for a raise after that. You'd be like, hey, fix your kids blood sugars. And nobody broke into the house. So I'm gonna need some, you know, an update to the pay.

Unknown Speaker 1:08:33
Yeah.

Scott Benner 1:08:35
Really delightful. I appreciate you so much coming on. We're over an hour. So let me just ask you if there's anything that we didn't cover that you wanted to that I might have missed?

Unknown Speaker 1:08:46
Not that I know of. No, we covered a lot.

Scott Benner 1:08:48
I know. There was so much there. Just think you have there are three things that we spoke of. We could have just talked about you the whole time, which would have been reasonable. We could have talked about you in the kindergarten. I just was trying to hit on everything because

Unknown Speaker 1:09:01
what a perfect Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:09:02
super interesting. So okay. Well, thank you so much. And I appreciate that you that you put so much effort into being on I'm glad you got rid of the boyfriend who doesn't care about you. dog is adorable. Please keep in touch. I'd love to know how things are going.

Bri 1:09:16
Yeah, thank you so much. It's great talking to

Scott Benner 1:09:19
you as well. Have a great day. You too.

Unknown Speaker 1:09:21
Bye bye.

Scott Benner 1:09:23
I believe we can all agree that Brianna was very open and honest and a lot of fun to talk to. And I think we could agree to that. We want to find out more about Dexcom on the pod and dancing for diabetes, bring good into the show notes. We're going to click on the links. We're going to go to their web pages dancing for diabetes.com dexcom.com forward slash juicebox in Miami pod comm forward slash juice box. Let me take a moment to thank you for all the great ratings and reviews have been popping up on Instagram for your emails and social media notes. And in general for sharing the show with other people. This again will be the most common Popular month in the history of the podcast. That's because everyone out there is sharing. So thank you for that and get yourself excited because next week Jenny Smith will be back. We're going to talk about the variables that come up in life with diabetes, and how those variables may change your management decisions.

---

Please support the sponsors

The Juicebox Podcast is a free show, but if you'd like to support the podcast directly, you can make a gift here. Recent donations were used to pay for podcast hosting fees. Thank you to all who have sent 5, 10 and 20 dollars!

Donate

#229 You Sank My Battleship

Hey there Eliza……

Eliza has type 1 diabetes and a lot of people who love her.

You can always listen to the Juicebox Podcast here but the cool kids use: Apple Podcasts/iOS - Spotify - Amazon Alexa - Google Play/Android - iHeart Radio -  Radio Public or their favorite podcast app.

+ Click for EPISODE TRANSCRIPT

---

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

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello everyone and welcome to Episode 229 of the Juicebox Podcast. Today's episode is sponsored by real good foods Dexcom dancing for diabetes and Omni pod. To find out more about the sponsors or just to see the Juicebox Podcast online you go to Juicebox podcast.com You can also find links in the show notes of the podcast player you're listening to right now. But if you'd like to be old school about it, go to dancing the number four diabetes.com my on the pod comm forward slash juicebox dexcom.com forward slash juice box or real good foods calm and use the offer code juice box at checkout to save 20% on your entire purchase. Let me just tell you very quickly two things. First of all, of course nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making changes to your medical plan or becoming bold with insulin. And speaking of being bold with insulin, I've done a bold thing myself tried to make a little less work for myself I've combined merge together in fact, the two Facebook pages one for Arden's day, and one for the Juicebox Podcast, they've been merged together into one Facebook page called bold with insulin, please make sure you're following. I don't want to put a challenge out there. But to you Facebook users, I do get a lot of activity on Instagram. Not as much on Facebook. So I mean, if you're feeling competitive with the Instagram folks, get in there. Also if you're considering asking me to your event to speak, my calendar is starting to fill up for 2019 now's the time go to Juicebox podcast.com. Scroll to the bottom. Click on contact send me a note. Today's guest was told about the podcasts by a friend. She listened to it and didn't particularly like it. But guess what? spoilers. She feels differently now.

Denal 2:06
Prime Minister now I am the wife of Nicholas and the mother of three kids. I have Eliza, who is almost 10 years old. And Henry and Alison, who are three and a half year old twins. And my Eliza, my oldest is my type one diabetic.

Unknown Speaker 2:25
There's a lot of numbers there. We get a pen. analyze a pipeline, a couple of twins we've had we don't talk about except the wonder if they're feeling completely left out.

Scott Benner 2:36
How long have you guys been married?

Denal 2:37
We've been married for 20 years, almost 20 years.

Scott Benner 2:41
So let's start a little bit with Eliza story. She's how old again?

Unknown Speaker 2:44
She is almost 10 almost 10

Scott Benner 2:46
diagnosed.

Denal 2:48
When she was three and a half the same age the twins are now No kidding. Okay, so

Scott Benner 2:51
you're you're coming up on seven years are right there.

Denal 2:54
Yeah, we just passed six in August

Scott Benner 2:57

2011. you're rolling along? You've been married for quite some time already. Wow. Yeah. And so what happened there with the I appreciate a good we didn't just get married and have a bunch of babies right away stories. What are you guys doing in the beginning

Denal 3:10
world domination? Yeah, that's what we're aiming for. No, we we actually wanted kids right away. But that did not seem to be in the cards for us. And so we we tried a number of different things. And then we had the opportunity to adopt Eliza. And so we adopted her and became parents.

Scott Benner 3:31
That is what I was getting. Excellent. Yeah. So I'm adopted. Also.

Denal 3:36
I know, I think that's awesome. You want to know something else you have in common with a lot of our friends? Yeah, you're both from Pennsylvania. No kidding. Wow, that's

Scott Benner 3:44
really cool. Have I ever told that whole? Like, I never really told my whole auto adoption story. It's such a bizarre story

Unknown Speaker 3:50
that I'd love to hear. I love adoption story.

Scott Benner 3:52
You want to start with that one? I'll give you the two. I'll give you the two minute version Ready? Okay. A man in South Carolina has a wife and nine children. All right. The children range from 18 years old all the way down to whatever. He gets up one day and decides he's going to go to Pennsylvania and shack up with a different woman that isn't his wife. Oh, wow. And he leaves when this episode is over, and by the way, there's a little bit of bonus conversation at the end. Just some chit chat between me and do now. Anyway when it's over, even if like you have to pee, I don't care, skip that. Go right to dancing for diabetes calm. That's dancing the number for diabetes.com. Now if you sit down to pee, you can do these things at the same time. The wife and her nine children don't like that so much. So the wife packs up the nine children moves them all to Pennsylvania, and goes about getting this man back in their lives. That process takes enough time that her oldest daughter got time to find a job. Meet a boy get pregnant. Wow, have a baby that ends up being me. Wow, the mother does not get the husband back does not allow my birth mother to bring me back to South Carolina puts me up for adoption there. Wow. years. Isn't that nuts, years and years and years later, my wife makes me reach out and try to find out something about my birth parents because we're having kids and she just wants to know the medical side of it. And I am not. I'm not one of the like. I feel like sometimes adoptive people fall into buckets. I'm not I'm not overly bothered or bothered at all about being adopted. So I never even occurred to me, but I did it because my wife asked. So we find an attorney is able to find a sister of the of the mother of my mother. I call her on the phone. And she goes about telling me a story that her mom made her sister give the baby up for adoption, which was very weird to hear yourself talk spoken about like that in the third person, right? And Mater give me away. She said it caused her to become incredibly depressed. She couldn't, couldn't shake that depression her entire life, became morbidly obese, shut herself out of it in her 40s tried to get gastric bypass surgery to get her life back together and died on the operating table. Oh my goodness. Isn't that insane?

Unknown Speaker 6:21
That's so sad.

Scott Benner 6:22
It is incredibly sad. A few moments later, she said if my younger brother calls you about money, and I was like, well, I gotta go. And I. And I've never spoken to them again since.

Unknown Speaker 6:32
Wow.

Scott Benner 6:33
Wow. Now you've now these people were from like, they were literally like, lived in the kind of woods in South Carolina. And you've listened to this podcast for a while. How long? Do you think I would have made it there?

Unknown Speaker 6:45
Yeah, no, I don't.

Scott Benner 6:47
I don't think so. Someone would have accidentally shot me during hunting. At some point. I'm pretty sure. So anyway, I feel pretty lucky because I quite enjoyed my life. So I'm glad it went this way. And I I just I don't know, I've never told anybody that before. So there you go. That is that bizarre story that a person told me on the phone like 10 years ago, as I was my wife standing in the doorway going What's happening? I'm like, it's hard to explain just

Unknown Speaker 7:15
that is really crazy. You know how

Scott Benner 7:17
Eliza ended up with you? Do you know her path?

Denal 7:19
Yeah, her path art. It's a little craziest. I'll try to tell the shortest version of it. We we had been married for about 10 years at that point. And we had gone through some, you know, infertility stuff. And we had started thinking about adoption. Now my younger sister has adopted her oldest child. And and so she had gone through that process before when a friend of hers that's a mutual friend of ours actually called her up and said, Hey, I have a family friend who is looking to place the child for adoption is denault. Thinking about adoption. They've been married for 10 years, like, you know, I'm just making some assumptions here. And so she had contacted my sister, my sister was like, Well, let me do some things on the back end, and figure out if this family is serious about placing, because that's a really hard thing to go through. The only person I've ever told that I was considering adoption was my sister. And so she did all this back stuff, you know, like called the family made sure they were really serious. And then we got a phone call from them saying, hey, are, you know, we are thinking about placing for adoption? And my, you know, my sister was involved in that. And so yeah, it was through this really random string of people. We hadn't even finished our paperwork yet for adoption. We rushed it through. And they live in the other in Pennsylvania. She was a very young girl. And she was raised by her grandparents who were really old and just said, like, you know, we're, we're not gonna be able to raise another baby, and you're not ready to do this. And she agreed, she knew she wasn't ready. And she wanted something better for her daughter that was about to be born. Now, when Eliza was born. She was born in December. And we fully expected to have her place with us then. And the birth mother backed out. And so we were like, my husband was crushed. For me. I was like, Well, I think this is just kind of the impetus to push us to get our paperwork done, because we were kind of dragging her feet on it. And then all of a sudden, next thing we know, we got a phone call three months later, and she was like, I, I'm ready. Now. She, and I'm sorry, can you come tomorrow? And I was like, Oh my gosh, I had nothing.

Scott Benner 9:29
I'm just laughing because apparently it takes about 90 days of not sleeping for a teenager. I really,

Denal 9:37
honestly, like that three, like if you remember when your babies were tiny and three months is like that tipping point, like, right. After three months, they kind of start getting a little bit better. And it gets a little bit easier. So I'm like, I'm so glad she did write

Scott Benner 9:50
that. Yeah. What if she would have made a little longer? Right. And she might have?

Denal 9:53
Yeah, I mean, I think that that it was, it was the right thing for her to do. I mean, she really wasn't in a place. She hadn't graduated high school, she never did end up graduating high school. And her grandfather ended up passing away right after that. And so there was no other, there was no other way for her to really be successful. Well, I

Scott Benner 10:12
can't imagine. I can't imagine anything more difficult. I mean, I've, you know, I've considered it for myself. And now I know the story that you know, of, of my birth mother sort of being forced, basically to just said, Look, we're not taking we didn't, we didn't. I mean, can you imagine when you stop and think about it, you and your nine kids leave to go get your husband back and show back up with not just your you know, your cheating husband, but a baby right now, like, at some point, the apparently the embarrassment line hit her mom, and she was like, I can only go back to South Carolina was so much, you know, baggage. But, but where it really hit me about how difficult it must be to let go of a child like that. Now, I think in Eliza's case, or mine, there's love behind that, like you said, there's absolutely no idea of I can't, I just I know I'm gonna mess this up. And let's not put this baby in that situation. Where it really, really struck me very recently was my father. So not my birth father, but my adopted father did eventually leave my mom when I was 13. And when my brothers were eight, and three, yeah, well, so we have 13, eight, and three, and my dad left. And he never really was all that involved with us throughout his life. And he passed away. And you know, we saw him a little bit towards the end. And that was it. Where it really struck me was after I dropped my son off at college, and I was driving home and couldn't stop. Like, I wasn't full out like, like movie crying. I just, I couldn't stop like the tears from flowing out of my eyes while I was driving. And I left my son in possibly one of the best situations that an 18 year old boy could be in. And I thought, if this is this difficult for me, why was it so easy for my dad? Like, that was the first time that struck me, I was like, oh, gosh, he really did not care about us all that much. Because, like, at least that's how it felt to me. Because, you know, because how could it have been this easy for him? You know, and that was the part that's where it really struck me. I was like, if it's this hard for me, just to leave my son two and a half hours from here, knowing I'm going to see him next week, then what was my what was going through my father's head when he was like, Okay, I'm out of here. You know, like, that was really, really a strange thing for me. But anyway, I don't know about you, but sad conversations about adopted children. And the families that had to give them away, make me want to eat low carb. So that's why we're going to talk about real good foods calm right now. Now, I don't know if you understand this or not, but real good foods calm when you use the offer code juicebox. at checkout, you In fact, will save 20% on your entire order. A couple that with the idea that real good foods has free shipping. And we're starting to look at quite a little deal here. Now I got a note recently from someone from Arizona who said, You know, I wanted to order but I don't know about the warm weather and shipping frozen stuff. Do not worry real good foods, knows how to ship frozen. They're amazing at it. As a matter of fact, just yesterday, I got a shipment in the mail of some of their new food offerings, which I'd like to tell you about right now. Of course, you already know about the breakfast sandwiches, the chicken cross feeds, the cauliflower crust pizza, the enchiladas poppers and chicken crust pizza. But have you heard about the brand new chicken alfredo and marinara and cheese? Italian entrees. Oh, oh, you have not? Huh? You just heard about this. Now, you're probably gonna want to go to real good foods calm and check it out. When you get there. And you see those entrees. And the brand new breakfast sandwich is looking so good. Just you know, clicky clicky into the cart, put them in there, throw in some cauliflower crust pizza and a couple of poppers. And when you're done and you hit and checkout real good foods once you do use the offer code juice box, and when you do, it will take 20% off of your order real good foods comm use the offer code juice box.

Denal 14:09
You know, we felt that a little bit when we had Eliza placed with us you know that very next day. I was like, Oh my gosh, she feels like my daughter. Like this is my child. I felt an ownership in a and a love for her that was so strong. And for the next year and a half we actually battled the birth father a little bit and the idea of her being taken from me I was like, but she's mine. You can't take something that belongs to me, you know? So I understand. Like, I can't imagine just walking away from that.

Scott Benner 14:39
Okay, so no one knows it. But you were nervous when we started. Are you nervous now I made you comfortable.

Denal 14:45
I'm coming down. I'm coming down.

Unknown Speaker 14:49
So

Denal 14:50
I'm a high strung person. Anyway, Scott. So this is gonna be nervous the whole time.

Scott Benner 14:55
I think that a lot of people I've interviewed in the past just heard you say that. thought, Oh my gosh, me too. Okay, you have to have enough energy and confidence to reach out to be on the podcast, right? That's, that in itself is pretty difficult. So you go through all of this and get a baby. And then three years old, three and a half years old and she develops type one. Now this is interesting, because you're you have no, it's not like any of the family history that you have. Right? not worried about it. Right? It never even occurred to you. So how does it present?

Denal 15:29
So it happened really fast. And for some reason, I think so we didn't know the birth father had type one. And but that was, it was a very strange way that we kind of knew that. And so that was kind of in the back of my mind, although I never googled the tsys. I never looked into it. So I knew nothing about it, other than I had an acquaintance A long time ago that had type one. But I knew enough that when some symptoms started presenting themselves, like, I figured it out rather quickly. And within a week of her, I never googled it, which is stupid of me, because within a week of it, I knew that's what it was. But I didn't take it very seriously. I thought it would be like one of those things where, you know, you went into your doctor, and you're like, Hey, I think she has diabetes. And they're like, okay, let's give you the name of a specialist. And you'll go through that specialist will take three months, and then you'll get things figured out. And I had no idea. So you know, she's wedding suddenly wetting the bed, and she's drinking a ton. And she's so hungry. And I was like, Oh, my gosh, you know, what is going on? First, we start cutting off water, then we start, you know, then it dawns on me like, this is this is diabetes. And so we had an appointment already scheduled for preschool. And so I was already going to see the doctor. And I thought, well, I'll just ask about it then. And, and so I took her into that appointment, and it was a nurse practitioner, and at the end of all of the things, you know, checking blood pressure and all of that she asked, Is there any questions that you have? And I said, you know, we might want to check for diabetes, because she's been peeing a lot. And she's been drinking a lot. And she kind of looked at me with this look like, Did you really just wait to the end of our appointment for this? And I was like, You know what, yeah,

Scott Benner 17:10
she could have an infection from a splinter. That's where I'd like to start. Yeah. Did you in the back of your mind? Did

Denal 17:16
you just not want someone to tell you that she had diabetes? I guess I just thought it was gonna be something like, you know, all the other times that you ever take your child in for something, you know, like, she had a speech delay. And so, you know, we took her in, and they're like, Okay, well, you're going to call this specialist. And then three months later, you'll have an appointment, they'll tell you what to do. And, you know, it wasn't, I just think it would be like that I it wasn't that I was trying to deny it. I just didn't know so serious. And so when she said, Okay, we'll do a quick urine check. And, you know, and then came back in the room with like, this pale face, and she says, she has ketones. And I was like, I don't know what that means. And she said, it means that she has diabetes, and you're on your way to the emergency room. And I was like, that's when the gravity of it hit me like the emergency room. Why? And I was like, Can I stop by home. And she's like, is home on the way to the emergency room. And I was like, kinda, and she's like, you can go grab something, but we've already called them they've got a room for you. And I was like, Oh, so I call my husband and I was like, We're on our way to the emergency room with Eliza. And he's like, wait for me. I'll be there in a few minutes. And so he works in DC. And he jumps on the metro and comes home and at home. I'm sitting there, you know, waiting for him. It's about 45 minutes for him to get there. And I'm trying to explain to my little three year old what's happening to her. She's really calm about it, but she's hungry. And they told us not to feeder. And, and I'm like, well, you have diabetes and my understanding of diabetes at this point is you can't eat sugar, almost like it's an allergy. You know, like, you're going to be you're allergic to sugar now. And so she starts asking me questions. Mom, can I still eat pickles? Can I still eat olives? These are her favorite foods. And so I grabbed a jar of pickles out of the fridge and a great jar of olives. And I'm not looking at carbs because I had no idea. No idea. But I am concerned about sugar. So I'm looking at the ingredients. I'm like, oh, sugar, and then she goes Mom, can I have honey? And I was like, I don't know. Let's look and so I grabbed the honey. And did you know that there's no honey? There's no sugar in honey.

Scott Benner 19:22
Plenty of carbs. Just no actual.

Denal 19:25
Like you can have honey and I'm like I'm converting all my recipes. Now to have honey in your mind. Right? Yeah, yeah.

Scott Benner 19:34
Understand, I imagine that this episode is called pickles and honey, right? We're going from here but but so so so you're so that's By the way, bizarre and beautiful. At the same time we were you having this like, was it so the hunger. That's what I want to talk about. I remember the day before we figured out Arden had type one. She stood with this like thousand yards. They're on her face in front, in front of a plate of food eating it. Like Did you have you seen the original Jurassic Park movie? Yeah, I know when the two little kids climb over the fence, the little boy gets electrocuted. They end up back in the in kind of like the way all the food is. And they stand there like, like monsters and shove the food into their mouth. Yeah, that's how hard it was eating sheet 1000 yard stare like she'd just been electrocuted. And she was just reaching at the plate grabbing food with her hand and shoving it in her mouth over and over again. And I was looking.

Unknown Speaker 20:28
I couldn't see her full enough.

Unknown Speaker 20:29
Yeah, right.

Denal 20:30
I know. That's exactly I was like, you're eating more food than I am. I'm a full grown human. And you're this little tiny three year old and you're just shoving it in and that in the amount of water to it was like, Oh my gosh, No wonder you're wetting the bed. Knock it off. You know,

Scott Benner 20:44
wherever you look back. Arden's eating all that food, like you said massive amounts of food, not eliminating it and losing weight. Yeah, right. It was like there was a, you know, like an alien enter. Which there was that

Unknown Speaker 20:57
right? So

Scott Benner 20:59
Well, okay, so you you and your pick? Did you just tell me where the pickles in the car with you while you're driving?

Denal 21:05
They were not I should have. Now I look back and I'm like, I wish I would have given her some food because she was so hungry. And they wouldn't let her eat until like four hours later. And the whole time. She's like, Mom, I'm hungry. I'm hungry. And a hungry child, to me is like the worst thing in the world. And so to have her be telling me she's hungry made me feel just so sad inside. It did. And so, you know, then the doctor comes in and bless our doctors hard. She's an amazing woman. She comes in and first question Eliza asks is can I olives and pickles and honey? And our doctor said, Of course you can. You can eat anything you want. You're going to figure out how to cover those carbs. And like this weight came off of my shoulders to have like, Oh, she's like, nothing's going to change. You just have to cover the carbs. And I was like, oh, my goodness,

Scott Benner 21:51
nothing changed and nothing changed at all. Everything's exactly the same. Right? It's all

Denal 21:54
the same, right? It's all good. You know, I mean, obviously, like then we had a lot of discussions about what would change but it was not like, Hey, no, you can't have these things anymore. Your life is going to continue on and you're going to be able to eat these foods, you're just gonna have to figure out how to how to cover those carbs.

Scott Benner 22:09
So So what did they send you home with to do that job?

Denal 22:13
We were on MDI and on fingerprick for a long time, Hema log and Lantus. And then we, the push to get a pump came because Eliza said to us at one point, I don't like shots anymore. And so I started looking into pumps. And then they the insurance decided that they wanted to change us from lantis to love Amir, and it was going to change to from one shot to two shots a day. And I was like, I can't now tell her when she's saying to us no more shots. I can't shoot another one. Yeah, add another one in there. And so we looked at pumps, and we did land on the on the pod. And we have never looked back. We love that pump so much. Arden needed an injection the other day, which hasn't happened in a really, really long time. And I know she looks right at me like well, what are we doing? Oh, yeah,

Scott Benner 23:02
I was like, we just have to just inject this. I'm checking, trying to check to see if her her site was not doing what I thought it was doing. Or if it was her period coming in. It was it was her period coming this site was fine. So, but she still she looked at that needle like Hey, buddy, I noticed you're walking towards me with a needle.

Denal 23:22
Yeah, you should see Eliza okay. So we did MDI for like, two, three years, and she was fine. But you should see what happens now when a flu shot has to happen. We have to hold that girl down to get her a flu shot. like Oh, girl, I don't know why you're being so wimpy about this. You're a tougher golden this

Scott Benner 23:38
absolutely happened to art in the same way she was she did injections from two years old till four. And you know, never batted an eye at it. I mean, after the beginning when you had to, like kind of sit on her once in a while. But I mean, once you got into the role, it was no big deal. But then she didn't do it for years. And then you know, go to the endo every he'll get that blood test once a year. And you know, and and nothing, no problems, no problems. All of a sudden, she's about nine years old. And she just went off like a like a, like a crackhead ninja in the office. She was like up on the table like kicking and had her arms go and then she was like, get away. And we did I did take her out of the room like what what's happening? And she's like, I don't want her to take my button. Like when we do this, like, like, What are you talking about? Like, you know, like, and I couldn't I take her in another room. calm her down. The nurse pretty much had to like armbar to get it finished and the next couple of blood tests after that. progressively got better, but they were bad for a while.

Denal 24:38
Oh, yeah, we've had to bribe her with so many things just to be able to get her to get that blood drive done. And oh my gosh, it's crazy. And I had no idea how strong her legs were until I got kicked by her. That girl's got some strong legs.

Scott Benner 24:52
craziest thing is that you know, maybe two blood tests ago you know three years into this like slow titration from you know, crazy crack head ninja back to normal again, and and she just started explaining to the phlebotomist that because you have for a couple years, I don't know what happened, but it was freaking me out. And the woman's like, okay, now she goes, I don't love it now, but I'm okay. So I don't know what happened gets better. Good. Yeah, she must have just hit like some sort of magical limit about being stuck with a needle and was like, that's it. It's over. But She's good. She's good again. I mean, good. What is good mean? I have to get right. I'm having a procedure next week, I have to have a little blood taken for every day I get up. I'm like, I'm gonna go get that blood draw done tonight. I don't know. No one's looking for me.

Denal 25:37
Well, I think about my other my two little ones that are the same age that Eliza was when she was diagnosed. And I'm like, there is no way that either one of those would handle the things that she has handled. She is so much stronger than the two of them. So thank goodness, I mean, if it was going to have to happen to one of my kids, Eliza is the one to have it happen to because she's so much more brave and strong than these other two little wimpy kids. So

Scott Benner 25:59
what if Eliza's not great, but all the other two are just a real mess? What could that

Denal 26:04
might be? This could be true.

Scott Benner 26:07
So you have twins are those? Did you take some drugs to make the babies?

Denal 26:15
We we took lots of drugs. Gotcha. Okay, isn't it? Yeah, they're IVF. Babies. It's funny because we have we have a lot of twins in our family. My sister has a set of twins. I have sisters who are twins. And so we've got a lot of twins. So when people ask me like, Oh, do twins run in your family? I can say yes, without having to get into the whole IVF thing. But that is how they were created was to right? Yes. That's how

Scott Benner 26:36
you something that you said earlier that struck me so strongly, but it didn't fit into the conversation anywhere was that someone surmised? Because you had been married about 11 years without kids? were having trouble conceiving? Like, wow, I didn't realize that if you didn't have babies, and you've been married for certain amount of time, there was a portion of the population that just assumed you were trying it wasn't working out. Like I couldn't have been possible that you just didn't, you weren't having kids on purpose. It's just a very interesting leap that someone made. You know, I

Denal 27:05
think that, you know, obviously, it was spoken about the community in which I am a part of, and I think that in that community family is a really big deal. And so obviously, you know, that's something that I and this girl knew me too. And so she knew that we had a goal of having children.

Scott Benner 27:22
So yeah, so now I realized that before we officially started the podcast, we talked about this, we haven't talked about it in the body of the podcast. You are You are somehow again, no one is pre screened before they come on the podcast is slowly becoming the diabetes Mormon podcast, so so so within your religion, not having kids for that long is

Denal 27:44
like, it's a flag. For sure. You know, it's not like everybody must have this many kids at the certain time. But you know, it's something that we do put placed an emphasis on and having kids is important and, and it was for us, you know, like we really wanted a family. When we first got married, I think my husband said I want a dozen kids. And I was like, Whoa, whoa, whoa. Let's start with less a few less and then if you need to figure out how to have more than that. We'll figure that out. But

Scott Benner 28:08
we'll start taking babies at the mall, but I'm not making babies.

Denal 28:13
I actually did say like, I think I could probably do six but then the rest will have to figure out how long they come in because I don't think my body can do more than that. It turns out I'm not very good at making them at all in general and so one pregnancy was enough for me I have three kids from one pregnancy we're good to go. Good job.

Scott Benner 28:31
Okay. Oh my gosh. So how how? Just made me laugh. How old is Eliza when you decide pump and is it pump? First? You're using the CGM.

Denal 28:40
We are using CGM. We just switch to the to sex and we love it.

Scott Benner 28:46
How would you like to hear how marketing people talk about the Dexcom g sex, let's say

Unknown Speaker 28:50
no idea where that numbers headed up. For now. CGM is more like a story. It stands for continuous glucose monitoring. And the

Scott Benner 28:58
Oh, that's nice. But now let's talk about the Dexcom g six like people like those who understand the battle. In the end, you need to know which way your blood sugar is moving, how fast it's getting there. And that is exactly what the Dexcom g six brings to you. Recently, I've been fine tuning ardens bazel programs, and I'm doing that with the information I'm getting back to the Dexcom half an hour ago, her blood sugar was trying to get low, but it never did. Why? Because Dexcom told us it was coming. And Arden was able to go get her nighttime snack at the exact right time to not only stop below, but to create a nice smooth transition from the blood sugar that was dropping to a nice stable blood sugar up let me look and tell you 97 Not only does Dexcom show you the direction your blood sugar's moving and how fast it's going. But it allows you to see those things remotely so Arden was in the shower as her blood sugar started getting low. I saw that on my phone. And by the time I got the Arden to tell her she was telling me Hey, that my blood sugar is getting lower. I'm gonna have that snack now. That amazing. Alright, listen, you You can get the dexcom share and follow on Android or iPhone. And you can find out all about the Dexcom g six by going to dexcom.com forward slash juice box. Because I have a tiny bit of time here at the end, I want to tell you that the Dexcom g five CGM system is now covered under Medicare for people living with type one or type two diabetes. You definitely should check out the CGM that's helped me keep Arden say one see between 5.2 and 6.2. For five straight years. The links you're going to need are at Juicebox Podcast comm we're in the show notes of your podcast app.

Denal 30:36
on here, so we did pump first when she was in first grade, we got the Omni pod and second grade. We did the CGM. So yeah, and we've we have loved it.

Scott Benner 30:48
When did you find the podcast?

Denal 30:51
So I found the podcast? That's a great question. Because what happened is I, I, I've always felt like I've been pretty awesome with diabetes. Right? I'm good at this. Our agency has always been around seven. And I joined like the beyond type one community. And I always felt like I was kind of like the person like helping people understand things a little bit. I kind of knew the answers. And, and that we've even been asked to be a mentor, and you know, through our, our office, and our endocrinologist office. And so I've always felt like, you know, I've got this, I'm doing pretty good. Yeah, there's things that kicked my butt every once in a while. But most the time, I felt pretty on top of the world. But then all of a sudden, allies was having these nighttime highs, and I could not get them down, she would hit 250. And I would throw insulin at her all night long. And I could not get her down. And so that made me start looking at the way other people were kind of managing diabetes. And there was a couple people online that were having these amazing numbers, that I was like this person, they're a crankcase, how are they even getting that they're just way too extreme for me. And so I kept looking and I remembered that a friend of mine is going to be listening to this too. So Hylia had mentioned your podcast. And I had never even listened to like any podcast before. I was like, let's give it a try. So I listened and I it was one of the first episodes and I listened to I probably listened to like two or three. And honestly, Scott, if I'm being honest, I thought you were kind of a crap case to the first time I listened to you. I was like this guy is extreme. It's fine if he manages his daughter that way, but I don't want to kill mine. So and So you were a little extreme, but some of the things you said made sense. And one of the first episodes I listened to was Steven ponders. And I was like, Okay, here's yet another voice saying kind of the same thing Scott is saying, and these other people on the beyond type one. And so I was like, Okay, I'm gonna take some of these things, and try to you know, make her a one clo better to make these 19 highs stop. And, and so I started kind of applying those things. And then there was like this one moment, this one key moment, that really forced my hand and made me realize that I had to follow some of the things that you were suggesting. And we were playing a license or playing a board game. We were playing battleship, do you know that game? worse? Yeah, so so I've just been teaching her the game, she had never played it before. And, and she was understanding it, you know, she's, she's the smart little girl, she can understand this game. And you know, you've got the part up above, that's where you put your, you know, your ships, and yeah, your pegs that you're guessing to the other person, then your slips below. And then you've got your cross lines that you've got to, you know, line up and everything of J 10, or whatever. And she was getting that she was having a fun time. And we started off with blood sugar was was around 100. And within the next like 45 minutes to an hour of playing this game, her blood sugar went from 100 to about 200. And during that time, her cognitive reasoning diminished the entire time we were playing that game. And I was like, I can't do this to her anymore. I cannot let her get shot. He struggles a little bit in school. And I was like, it's her blood sugar is an average of 150, which is what a Wednesday of seven is. That means that there's a lot of times that she's sitting at 200, which I our threshold on Dexcom was 200 I wasn't taking action. It's not like I ever looked at 185 and said, Oh, good job. I nailed that. I always knew that was high, but I wasn't taking any action. Unless it was meal time and then I'd correct it. But, you know, I'd let her sit there. And because it wasn't above that threshold of 200 and

Scott Benner 34:42
that moment yourself into being okay with

Denal 34:45
Yeah. And just, you know, just like I wasn't told anything different either, you know, and so, I at that moment, I was like, okay, you know, one of the things Scott does is he lowers his specials. So we lowered that threshold back down. I think I lowered it at that. Point to 150. And, and it was amazing the mental shift that happened in my brain. At that point, I was like we are, I'm taking action all of a sudden, and it's not taking I crashed a couple times because it does not take as much insulin to bring down a 150 as it does a 250. And so, you know, I've crushed her a couple of times and learn to slow down on that. I'm sorry, I'm getting another call. And I'm gonna have to go out there and it's stopped.

Scott Benner 35:28
I couldn't even tell. Okay.

Denal 35:31
Yeah, so so that was the first thing that I did. The second thing was starting to Pre-Bolus her. And I couldn't believe what a difference that made. And so we went into the endo, after a couple months of following some of your advice, went from a seven to a 6.2. And my endo was like, and she comes into the office, she's like, I'm sorry, I'm late. And I was like, I didn't even notice. And she was like, I was walking around with your chart showing all the other endos your daughter's chart? And I was like, and she goes, she goes, What have you been doing? And I was like listening to a podcast. And she's like,

Scott Benner 36:07
she was probably walking around trying to take credit with the other kids, they probably have some sort of a bet in the back office, you probably put her over she wanted the gift card or something like that. Which by the way, is a fantastic idea. I don't worry, yeah, they could be playing like some sort of a game with all their patients. Well, well, first of all, I'm glad you capitalist thing, you know, and I get how, if you come in cold, especially now that the podcast is older, like back in the beginning, if you would have come in in the beginning, you would have just been like growing along with me, while I was kind of like fleshing out the ideas. And I would have seen more like you searching and less like the person who had already gotten to the spot, you know, right. And so I get that I, you know, I just got back from speaking somewhere. And I started by saying, this is gonna sound crazy to everybody in the room. But Type One Diabetes is mostly about Pre-Bolus, seeing and understanding the balance between timing and amount. And that's really kind of it. Like, there's more than that. But that's the, to me, that's the seed of where it all starts. You know, and it's just, you know, to hear somebody say, my kids, a one sees in the fives when yours is good. And yours was good. You know, at seven. That was that that does sound insane. I hear from a lot of people Oh, I just figured you were low carb when I saw that at first. I get that there's a barrier to, to wanting to hear more. But I'm glad you did. It sounds like it's going really well for you. So that's really, the key to the whole thing for you is been Pre-Bolus Singh and not letting her blood sugar get too high before you act.

Denal 37:39
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, those two things alone have changed so much about what we do. And, and, you know, there's been these moments where she has, I can tell that she just feels better. And you know, and when she gets high now she recognizes that and she even has started taking action. You know, she'll give herself a bolus, she's crushed herself a couple of times. And I've had to tell her, like, let's not just jump to two units there, let's, you know, now the rule is she has to follow whatever the pump says, you know, when she puts her blood sugar in, if she's feeling high, she did it once. And we're on a date. And she was home with the babysitter and she saw that, that she was like at 150. And I kind of purposely ran her a little bit high just because I didn't want to deal with we've been having these like, lows right before bedtime. It sounds like I'm not having this happen. So I ran it a little bit higher so that I could just be on a date with my husband and I'm sitting in the theater and all of a sudden I'm getting this, you know, alarm that she's like having a 50 and I'm like what this is not supposed to be happening and turns out she had decided to give herself two units where I would have given her a half for that

Scott Benner 38:40
trial. She's gonna I mean, that's another way to learn, you know, is to kind of her own little experience. It's cool that she feels like you know, like she wants to do something about it. I will tell you that like Hold on tight because you know, everybody says we told you know wait till it happens wait till they hit that spot that age you know it's harder with girls and is with boys you know on because of like, hormones and blood sugars and stuff and I'm telling you I'm I'm four months into it being harder. And yeah, and right now all it means is it's less predictable than it had been in the past. Staying fluid is more important than ever, and I am really really seeing how much benefit bazel rates can bring. Because it's they've been a huge help to me. Moving forward doubling basals moving Basil's way up when she's RNNs resistant from her insulin. It really is. It's nuts and it lasts for so long. Like even when I did an interview a while back with somebody and we all we talked about was like, you know menstruation and how it worked. I was like, Oh, so like, weeks before the actual you know, period like this. I'm like, Okay, I get it. I get it like it's okay, now that it's happening. I'm telling you those years moving up to this those as hard as they seemed those years Your training will yours. So

Denal 40:01
I'm just hoping that horizon or dash or whatever it is, it's coming from Omni pod and her in in the Dexcom comes out before I had to deal with any.

Scott Benner 40:10
I guess you will probably honestly age wise you'll it'll it should be. It should beat her. It should get here before her maturity time, I guess.

Unknown Speaker 40:19
I hope so. I hope so I

Scott Benner 40:21
think it but it really has been working for me. I mean, I just had to set up a new bazel program that I didn't name anything, but it was the one I'm thinking this is the period bazel program. It takes her basal rate from like 1.4 to three an hour. Oh, wow. And that's enough to hold things down. So it was really bad bent my mind a little bit when I started doing it. It took me I will tell you, that was mentioned this the other day to somebody. I found myself sitting in my house very quietly one day thinking, Okay, when this happens to other people, what do I tell them to do? I really did think like, Okay, if this was somebody if this was somebody else talking to me, what would I say to do?

Unknown Speaker 41:08
You know, and so I just took your own advice. But not

Scott Benner 41:11
I don't mean it like that. I don't mean it, like in a douchey way What I mean is like, I mean like that. It was you know, things have been going along so well for so long that I was just on like I was on cruise control. And I didn't I didn't have to make any grand adjustments. And then a couple of years prior, like I'm telling you, I just did what I did. I did what I say on this podcast and her a one season two fives, it's like no big deal. And then all of a sudden, it was a big deal. And and I had to like it wasn't just like little bump and nudge changes, like I have to make like a, like a wholesale change here to something I'm doing. What would I say to someone else? And I thought, Well, what I would say to someone else's if their blood sugar's high, there's not enough insulin, or it's Miss time or combination of both. So I was like more insulin and it wasn't just enough to bolus more. And when and then I was like, Oh my god, I'm doing all this big bolus and the blood sugar is not coming down. And then I thought, right, because when you're bolusing, too much, your bazel is not high enough. And I was like, Oh, that's a thing I say on the podcast. And so. So I made all the adjustments and our blood sugar came back down. I was like, no kidding, that podcast works. Like, it floored me because it's something that from the outside. You know what I mean? Like, it's something you see differently than I see. And yeah, and so I, I don't know, it's hard to put into words, but I actually just stopped myself and think like, what would I do? And, or what would I tell people to do? But it's, it's going well, again, it's a little different. But you know, it should get us through this part. plushies growing you can see it on her she's getting bigger and more mature. Like, you know what you mean? And her boss like thickening and like get everywhere. She's not she's not gonna be a kid much longer. so crazy. Everyone Hold on tight.

Denal 42:53
Yeah, we just had to increase Eliza's bazel at night too, because we were having again, like we got through that little patch six months ago. And I think she's on another growth path growth spurt again, and I just increased her bazel from I think it was 8.5 or point eight, five, to now one. And I think that's a little strong enough to bump it back down. Because this morning, she woke up and she was like at a 63. And I was like that's a little probably lower than I I want you to wake up at. So I think that was a little stronger than it should have been

Scott Benner 43:21
for making the adjustments and paying attention. And that's the part you have to that's the stuff you have to do to be perfectly honest.

Denal 43:27
It is constant. It is

Scott Benner 43:29
it really it really is there's Arden's home today, there's no school today, here. It's one of those pretend holidays where teachers are like, I'm being enriched. I'm like, Okay, and so I'm in Arden sleeping in. So there's this possibility in the next like, 15 minutes while we're finishing up, I might actually have to go make an adjustment to her bazel while she's asleep, but I'll let you know.

Denal 43:49
I wish my kids would sleep in that would be so nice. That's I don't know how you have kids that sleep in maybe not. Oh, it's miserable.

Scott Benner 43:57
That's a hard Do you have you considered threatening them? Because I have to. Because that's that's you can't do that. That's not good at all. I Oh, that's horrible. No, no Arden would sleep her whole life away if she could, if you didn't work she when she's it's interesting. through middle school. You couldn't get her to get up on time for school. It was a constant battle. like you'd have to be in there like shaking her, you know. And for a long time, I couldn't figure that out. Then we realized she had hypothyroidism when she got on Synthroid, that got a little better. So she wasn't as tired. So then I felt bad about that because I thought she was just like, lazy and didn't want to get up. But I think it turns out, it was a thyroid issue. But, but still, for the year and a half after she was on the Synthroid. She still likes to sleep. So but she can get up now. Like now she can actually get up without a problem. And then high school started and it was like a switch flipped. And she's like, I'm gonna be on time in high school all the time. And I was like, Great and she's never been late. Chao pops up and gets dressed and she didn't know how to hurry. Before, does that make sense? Like if you can't, like hurt, like if that it felt like if the house was on fire and people were shooting, she'd be like, this is the pace I'm moving at. And now and now she knows how to look at the clock and think I have to move quicker. And she actually does it on her own without being taught so or being without being told. So hopefully, growth like that will continue because, you know, I think your biggest parenting job is to repeat things over and over again without getting completely frustrated. And I was getting tired of being like, hurry up, hurry up, please hurry up. Please go faster. You're killing me. Why don't you go faster? That finally went away, it'll be replaced with a much bigger problem that probably involves a boy. Good luck with that, guys. Yeah, I'm sure it's gonna go horribly. Anyway, okay. So you're you're doing like you're at a seven. And you start just making small adjustments like Pre-Bolus saying and being a little more aggressive. And the one thing again that I can't stress enough. I, your high mark for Dexcom where you alarm at a high. The lower you bring that down, the quicker you can react with less insulin, the less lows you get later, the less highs you're half right. In the 11 years that Arden has been using the Omni pod tubeless insulin pump, it's always felt like it was made just for us. It just fits her life. It fits her needs. And it's easy. The last time her pump needed to be changed the timing of it was not great for school, we had put the pump on I think on a Saturday in the afternoon. And of course, it needed to be changed on the school day, then in the afternoon, still while Arden was at school. So I made this sort of like split second decision as we were going out the door for school, like we have to change your pump now. Because otherwise, it's going to need to be changed while you're at school. So come here real quick. And I always wish you guys could watch while we're doing that the pump change is just so simple insulin, fill it, push the button it Prime's itself, needle cap off, stick it on push button, click like like it's in, you're all done. I mean, to call the diabetes pitstop would even be unfair. It takes no time whatsoever to change an ollie pod. One of the little things I love about it, because it's easy to stand here and tell you about Oh, it's tubeless. And you can swim with it or you can shower with it or you know, you'll always get your baseline. So no matter what you're doing, even if you're liking activities, or climbing up the side of a mountain doesn't matter. But in the end, once you get the pump and you realize it works, and it works in all parts of your life. What's left is how it impacts your days. And the pod just doesn't, it just doesn't get in the way of you being you. I hope you go to Miami pod.com forward slash juicebox. And check out a free no obligation demo of the Omni pod today. The greatest deal in the world they're gonna send you out a free pod you can stick it on see what it feels like wear it. Check it out, really give it the once over you know what I mean? Put it through the paces. Dancing for diabetes.com dancing, the number four diabetes.com do it now. Why not now is almost over doing the podcast. All you have to do is go to dancing for diabetes.com that's gonna fill your heart with goodness. And make the rest of your day better.

Denal 48:25
Yep, absolutely. Yeah, I haven't set now to 140 I heard you lowered serious recently. And I was like, whoa, I'm not sure if I'm ready for a 120 or 125. But we're at 140 now and it's it's pretty it's working pretty well for us in definitely respond. And it's amazing how when you respond when she had said you know, 140 Mark, or you know, if you see it going up rather quickly at 130 or something, you know, you respond to that. But you know, when she hits 140 I'm like I'm gonna nudge that back down. And it works so much better than when I was getting a 200 it was so frustrating at night, I would sit there and watch her going up. And you know, I'm sitting there watching like a 140 to 150 to 161 70 and I'm doing nothing and I'm just gonna go here we go again. Here we go again. And then finally it hits 200 nuns walking up the stairs to give her a bolus and and you know, when I listened to you and I realized like I should be reacting at 140 because I know this is happening. The problem was I couldn't respond to it. Because it would happen sometime between like nine and midnight. And so I never knew when that you know turn would happen. I couldn't just give her a bazel increase. At that point it was going to have to be a bolus because some nights it wouldn't happen. It was this weird growth spurt thing that was happening and but responding to it at 140 made such a big difference and responding to it at 200. So yeah, it's made a huge difference for us and she's waking up in range, which means that she's staying around all day, and huge difference there in great a lot of times the way you start is the way you finish. So Oh absolutely.

Scott Benner 49:54
Yeah, it's you start with a high blood sugar in the whole day can become a rack and warm vice versa. So it is great. It's so much you're describing that, that prices right? mountain climber game, where it's Yoda Lee and he's going up and you're like, it'll stop. It won't fall off the edge. It won't. It always falls off the edge. And, and you're watching a blood sugar climb the same way. Is it an interesting 140 50 6070 8090? Nothing but then it hits the hits the where you said, Oh, hi. And like, well, now I have to do something that is such an arbitrary thing that everyone does. It's crazy. It's like, why is it 200? Like, what if someone would have said that line at 150? You would have stood up at 150?

Denal 50:37
Yeah, yeah. And that's exactly what happened. Once I lowered it, like my brain just switched over like, this is what a high is, you know, and, and it became like a competition to myself, like keeping her down below that, because I was really good at keeping her below that 200 Mark, even if it was 198. You know, now I'm, you know, this competition of keeping it below that 140 Mark, haven't said this in a long time. But if you can keep a blood sugar stable 200, you can keep it stable at 180. If you keep it stable 180 and keep it stable 140. If

Scott Benner 51:03
you go to 140, you can do it at 90, it's all the same thing. It's all the same. The only difference between 90 and 200 is what

Unknown Speaker 51:12
I don't know, what's your fear.

Unknown Speaker 51:15
It's your fear. It's your

Denal 51:17
it's your fear what you've said a million times, I can't believe I didn't just say I'm sorry, don't be upset.

Scott Benner 51:21
It's no, it's your absolute your fear, it's your it's your turn that you can't react quickly enough to stop below if it should happen. The funny thing is, if you're staying around 90, you're using much less insulin to accomplish that. Which makes which makes a low, much less likely.

Denal 51:36
Well, the other thing he said to about lows that made so much sense to me is if you can rescue it with a juice box, if you know how much juice box or Skittles or whatever it is, you know how many carbs it takes to rescue her, you know, then don't be afraid of giving that much insulin. And that makes so much sense to me. So I was like, Oh, you know, I can give her two units of insulin because I know when juicebox is going to take care of that. So that's not a problem. And we're already at, you know, if she's having a really stubborn high, and we're sitting there at 180, and I can't bring it down, like two units is going to be rescued the juice box, let me just throw three at it. Because I need that other unit to like really knock that sucker down.

Scott Benner 52:13
So much. You're such a good listener. And I don't mean like, I don't mean listening to me, I mean, listener of the pie, after I said that, I was like, Oh my God, I've said that to an animal before you're such a good listener. I didn't mean it that way. No, but you really pick this stuff up quickly. So So then my question is, when you start listening, once you get past the, the kind of crappy part where you're like, I'm doing fine. So this guy must be a lunatic. Then once you got past that, did you find that when you were hearing things, you thought, Oh, this is stuff I've thought, in the back of my mind and never given light to? Or was it completely new? Or was it a mix of that?

Denal 52:54
I think it was probably a mix. And you know, without having the I don't know, that boldness factor of being able to say, this is working for somebody else. And if I do it, you know, he's having success. So I can do this too. And I can have success. You know, because we've certainly played around with things before. And I never felt like I had to call my endo to get permission to make changes. I always felt like I had that ability. So this was just like that next step. And that next growth of making changes was to just take it on myself. And, and yeah, and do what you said, Be bold with insulin.

Scott Benner 53:37
And just genuinely grateful that it struck you that way. Because he could have been the opposite. Obviously, you could have listened and just been like, this is stupid and go away. And I realized that that probably happens to more people than I think, you know, who kind of come on and listen for a little bit than think this isn't for me, or, you know, he's doing something I don't understand, or He's full of crap or whatever it ends up being that you think you think right away.

Denal 54:00
I will say though, I have told a lot of people about your podcast, and I have gotten a lot of people, you know, giving me feedback saying this has changed everything. This is so great. And so I i've advocated a lot for you think I deserve a part of your paycheck, I think

Unknown Speaker 54:16
like a magnet.

Denal 54:18
Awesome. No, no, yeah. And it's nice, because, you know, like, even if I had figured this out and come to my own conclusions, I'm not the kind of person to start a podcast or to start, you know, throwing that out there. It's definitely not my passion. But I'm so glad that people like you, that do add this voice to our community because it adds weight. When I give suggestions to other people. Like I said, I've been a mentor for other people at our endocrinologist office and and whenever I say, you know, they'll call me and say, Oh, my son is in high all night and what to do, and I'm like, well, he needs insulin. And then I'm like, Well, you know, let me let me show you what I mean. Go listen to this podcast and this episode. Really explains it. And it's like it gives weight to something that I'm a nobody. They're not going to listen to me. But like, you have a podcast to listen to. Yeah, I can't

Scott Benner 55:07
believe that's the thing.

Denal 55:08
Yeah, well, it is like, right. I mean, you know, I think you've probably seen sometimes I've on Facebook, I'll say yes. Or just like, you know, I've tagged you in posts before and things like that. Yeah. Because I know that, like, my voice is not very strong, but your voice is stronger. And if I can help people through you, that's great. That's really great. And I'm really appreciative that, that you have not let diabetes define you. But you have found definition in having this diagnosis in your family. And I'm, and that's what I think is beautiful about this disease. It's not something that that is something to be mourned, but something to find, I don't have a definition, and, and help other people. And it's a great community that we're a part of,

Scott Benner 55:51
it's wonderful. It's a great thing you're doing by helping other people. And I think you're, you're undervaluing yourself a little bit, because your story is valuable to you. We're where they were, and you're not born. And you're not there anymore, either. Just because, you know, the path that you found came through this doesn't mean you didn't have the the confidence and the nerve to like, look for an answer. Fight, fight through when it didn't make sense. At first keep going like there's a lot you did to get through that, like giving me the credit really is. I don't think it's necessary needed or even completely true. To be perfectly honest. Like if, if, if I would have written all if there was a magic way to write all this down on one sheet of paper, and you would have found that hanging on the wall in your endos. Office, you wouldn't have later thought, Oh, well, that I have to tell people about the person who wrote that on that paper. You don't I mean, like, it's just the problem with diabetes is that it's obviously a multifaceted thing. There's so many variables, and to read about them. It just doesn't do it justice, like these conversations are how it comes out. Like You I don't even know at this point, right. We've been speaking for almost an hour. And I will let this sit for a while I'll go back and edit it out. You'll have said something that I don't remember at this moment that when I go back and listen to it, I think oh, wow, that's incredibly valuable, somebody is going to really get something out of that. And if I would have asked a different person the same question, they wouldn't have said it the way you said it. The way you said it's going to hit somebody in the way I say it's going to hit someone else in the way the person last week said it's going to help and those are the voices that blend it all together to give me credit is to say that, all I really do is I had this idea. I have a way I manage. And then I bring different people together and let them talk about it with me. That's really it. You know, it's it's incredibly valuable. Don't get me wrong.

Unknown Speaker 57:43
It's so powerful.

Scott Benner 57:44
Yeah. But to give me credit for it is ridiculous. Because if I just sat here and talked for an hour, nobody would listen, I would have run out of things to say a long time ago.

Denal 57:52
You know, that's it, you even just decided to do it, I think is really important. And I think it's it's a voice in our community that is, is needed.

Scott Benner 58:01
Well, that's really, that's very kind of you to say, but it's it's exactly for the reason of your bat. It's your battleship story. Like right as you saw your daughter's like you think, Wow, like she started playing this game. She was so good at it. And then her blood sugar went up a little bit, a little more, a little more, and she lost her ability to even reason her way through this game. I can't I can't let this happen to her. Right. That's exactly what you thought. Yeah. I've had feedback from people for so long.

That it that's how it strikes me, I How could I see this happening? And then just go Oh, well, good luck. You know, the other day, I helped a 22 year old girl who's had diabetes, and she was 18 months old. And it took me half an hour to talk to her while I was cooking dinner. And she went from a lifelong struggle to this amazing graph in 24 hours, 24 hours was insane. And I almost

Denal 58:56
I was gonna say I almost wish that I had the opportunity to find a licensed birth father and talk to him too, because there was this moment, when we found out that he had type one. And we had the opportunity to have about a year and a half into our adoption. And we knew that he had type one. And through the birth mother had had mentioned that. And so when we met we have this like big party, they welcome to their home. And we were just having this like good time get known. One of the reasons we wanted to be there was to like really kind of, you know, get some medical history. And so I brought up diabetes to him. I said, Hey, I understand you have type one. And he goes, Oh, no, I used to but I don't really anymore. And I was like, wait, I was like I don't think that's how that works. But I don't know anything about this disease. I'm not going to argue with you. And his mom is sitting right there too. And she was like, Yeah, he was really young when he was diagnosed, but he doesn't really have it anymore. Like, oh, I don't know, I guess maybe they just don't want to talk about it. But now looking back on pictures and some other things that we know about, you know, the birth mother mentioned that he had had seizures that he had had his passed out a few times. And, like, in my mind, I'm like, Oh my gosh, I want so badly to go and like find you and like, help you now, we've lost contact with him a little bit, I probably could, but I don't like, obviously didn't want to talk to me about it. So I'm not going to go and like intrude in their life and be like, now that I'm an expert about diabetes, let me tell you how used to be managing your life, but I see pictures of him. And I'm like, that is exactly how Eliza looks when she's high. And I know you're just high all the time, like you're just not living the best you could be. And I want to, like, share this with you.

Scott Benner 1:00:35
I completely understand. And I think that the, I think the real sadness that we don't talk about too much. And is that this podcast or beyond type one, or any of the other? Many, many really valuable tools that exist, don't reach nearly everybody, you know, there probably are only reaching a fraction of the people who are looking for answers. Like I don't even I don't reach everyone who's out there hoping to find something like this. Right? You know, so how do you reach the people who have given up? And so that's why I think the podcast is, I always wanted to get back to doctors, right? I like I love that you told your endo, the ag learned us on a podcast, because at some point, doctors are gonna start saying the things that we're saying here before you even need a podcast, and then you won't need this. You know, I think that's all it really is needed. And listen, if people want to make decisions moving forward, that don't take the best care of their health, that's absolutely up to them. But they should, that they should at least know the truth. before they start, they shouldn't get stuck in, here's some needles, you'll figure it out. And then a year or two later, they haven't figured it out and they give up or they get depressed or whatever happens. Or your blood sugar, your blood sugar gets so high for so long. You can't even think about it.

Denal 1:01:50
Right? You know, and and you just think that that's what life with diabetes is like, we deal with highs and lows, that's what life is it's never in between. and there is a better way, there is a way that you can have it so that it's not a roller coaster, every single moment, both things happen, we spike up, we go low, those things happen. But it shouldn't look like that every second of every day. And there is a way to figure out how to be better.

Scott Benner 1:02:12
And there is a you know, a way of thinking that a lot of people have which is well I have diabetes. Now that means I'm going to live a shorter amount of time. And they accept that. And then then they once they make that acceptance, and they don't really have to put a ton of effort into the management side because, well, it doesn't matter. Like this is my lot in life. And it's certainly not true. But maybe it's true. Maybe it's true for them maybe for a number of different reasons. They really can't do the things you're doing or the things that I'm doing. And they just go Okay, well, let me just get on this rollercoaster ride as fast as I can until it crashes, and then I'll walk away. You never know, I know somebody with type two diabetes, it takes no care of it whatsoever. And constantly sweating and confused and everything and try to help and you say stuff and they just don't care. Sometimes their spouse gets them back. Again, using the medication, you can see that they completely change. And then not too much longer. And they just give it up again. And that's it. So I mean, not everybody's you know, can't save everybody, I guess. But at the very least I'd like to reach them once and tell them it exists so that they can at least have the option.

Unknown Speaker 1:03:21
Or Absolutely. It's my hope, though.

Unknown Speaker 1:03:24
You're doing a good job, Scott, keep it up.

Scott Benner 1:03:26
Yeah, very cool. I appreciate you saying that. Really. I'm a little tired this week, because I just got done traveling. So I was so happy that you were talking.

Unknown Speaker 1:03:36
I am very chatty,

Scott Benner 1:03:38
not just chatty, don't don't do that to yourself. You were responsive and thoughtfully responsive. So I said something, you were actually listening to what I was saying, and you kept it going, or you who knew what you thought I thought that was fantastic. So I appreciate that. Very, very well. I

Denal 1:03:53
hope I wasn't like to interrupting all the time. I I have a tendency to do that. And I apologize when I talk to every year.

Scott Benner 1:03:59
I don't think No, I think we were having a conversation. It's funny. My wife is a I talk you talk person. She thinks she thinks she gets to say everything she wants to say. And then when she's done you can say everything you want to say. And I think conversations are a little more back and forth. Mainly that's because I can't keep things in my head long enough to let someone else finish before I start talking. So I appreciate that. Sometimes you have to, you know, something comes out of your mouth when someone else I mean, you and I are looking each other right now you can't tell that all the facial cues that you would use in person are gone. So you kind of have to wait and go is he done talking? You know, I I'm doing the same thing. This podcast I was telling somebody the other day. If you really go back and listen through it has made me a much better listener. It really has helped me in ways outside of diabetes to have that is one of them. I'm I'm a much more complete listener. I used to be a person who while you were talking, started formulating what I was going to say next. Instead of letting you finish and seeing if what you said was gonna carry me somewhere else. So I fall out of it once in a while, I'm sure I'm gonna get an email from somebody like you still do that idiot. But I'm trying, okay.

Unknown Speaker 1:05:11
You really get emails from people saying things like that to you,

Scott Benner 1:05:13
the angry emails are very few and very far between but every once in a while I get them one person really did not like when I call periods lady time that seemed to one eye you talk over people, you think you're you're smarter than other people, you know that kind of stuff. But very, very infrequently. I have to say that. And it's nice. It's nice to get all the feedback. Because you can't obviously can't take the good feedback without without taking the bad stuff. You can't just say, Oh, I must be perfect for those people. So I'm perfect. And I want I really did learn about this years ago, and I've probably mentioned this before, but I wrote a book about parenting. And the first nine professional reviews that came back were also glowing. That like two weeks into the review process. I was walking around my house like I've written a perfect book, obviously. And then the 10th one came, and it was so bad that the publisher called me and said, Listen, there's going to be a review of your book tomorrow. That's not good. And I was like, Oh, yeah, that's fine. Don't worry about it. I have nine good ones already. We're on our way. Bhavani goes, No, listen, it's really bad. And I was like, What did the reviewer not like about the book? And he said, Well, basically, I think everything you along, he goes he stopped short of calling your family ugly, but it you know, it was really harsh. And I thought, Okay, well, that won't bother me. And then I read it. And it really bothered me. And I had to figure out how to let it go. It's the first time I realized that if I was going to put something out into the world like that I had to be prepared for the fact that some people would not appreciate how I did it, why I did it, what I did, and that if as long as I was comfortable with what I had done, and did it for the right reasons that I can't, I can't sit around worrying if it didn't strike somebody the right way. So I just do my best. And, you know, I would have to say that 99% of my feedback is all you know, more more like yours than like that. But you got to be ready to like shake it off, or it hit you pretty hard. I went out to dinner after that book review with my, my wife and she said I just sat there. Like, staring Oh, it was like, I was like how could they have hated everything about it? Like there was nothing?

Unknown Speaker 1:07:30
Anyway, anything?

Denal 1:07:30
How about bad? Like wipes away all the goods that was sent to?

Scott Benner 1:07:34
Oh, yeah. Oh, for sure. The first night, I thought were just wrong. When I just like though those people who really liked it, they must be stupid, this person knows. And then, you know, a couple days later, you realize it doesn't matter. Like that's the real key to it just really doesn't matter. I'm pleased with what I did. I absolutely did my best for the right reasons. And it's all I can do. So

Denal 1:07:53
I think that happens with diabetes too, right? Like a high altitude. You're like,

Unknown Speaker 1:07:56
I'm the worst at this. I

Denal 1:07:57
can't do this. Oh my gosh, what am I doing? I'm failing. And I've had to, like really stop myself from feeling that way of like, nope, this is diabetes, that you know, heights happen. And it's not because I'm failing. Even if I've had three highs in a row or whatever. I've had to stop myself and say, No, I've had success. I've lowered that from seven to 6.2. We're on the right path. It's okay that, you know, I goofed up I did not Bolus correctly for that Chinese food or whatever it is, you know. Yeah. So yeah, your one failure should not define all your successes,

Scott Benner 1:08:25
you set it almost the way I would have been. So I'm gonna make a slight like, I'm gonna say something about that. So I don't think it's just diabetes in the, in the sense that because I think people could hear that I know what you meant. But I think people get here that and think blood sugars are gonna go up. There's nothing you could ever do about it. That's true, it's going to happen. The truth is, there is something you could have done about it. You just didn't do it. And for for whatever reason, you know, a bazillion reasons it could have happened. But the truth is, is that you can look back at that moment later and think oh, I do see where this came from. And it might help you the next time. I just very strongly believe that it's not a mistake. It's just actionable data for next time. You know, I did something wrong like last night. Arden had I don't back down. I'm true to my word like as hard as Arden's blood sugars been. When she looked at me last night and said, I want to get Chinese food. I was like, let's do it. So. So we did it. And the first four hours after the initial bolus, things were going great. And then she starts going up and I can't figure out what's going on. And I realize I'm on her old bazel program that cuts back at 9am and 9pm. And so by the time I realized that was what was happening, then I started chasing with these, you know, I start chasing with with Bolus and I was like, oh, Scott, come on, it needs to be bazel embolus so then I put her Basal back up rebol list and she came back down, and now you know it, but it took it took a while because it was Chinese food and it got away from me. And so, you know, again, I just I think you have to strip the drama out as best you can. You really have to remove some of your emotions. You can't sit around feeling terrible all the time. Bringing your hands you have to go. Okay, I see what I did here. I won't do that again. And to your point, I might do it again. But I'm not. I'm not gonna make myself crazy about it later,

Unknown Speaker 1:10:09
that that's really cool.

Scott Benner 1:10:11
Well, thank you so much for doing this. I really genuinely appreciate that. I say, do we go over everything you want to go over? You know, I

Denal 1:10:17
think we talked about a lot of really great things. We were going to get into some more stuff about adoption. But I think that that's okay, that we didn't, we didn't get there. So

Scott Benner 1:10:27
all right, well, maybe next time I like to having you on. Did you love that one as much as I did? I can't hear you. But I would assume you're saying yes. Thanks very much at dancing for diabetes, real good foods on the pod and Dexcom. Go to dexcom.com forward slash juice box to find out about the G six continuous glucose monitor. Good real good foods calm and use the offer code juice box to save 20% of your entire purchase. Would you like a free no obligation demo of the Omni pod? Of course you would Miami pod.com forward slash juicebox. And don't forget to fill your heart with goodness at dancing for diabetes.com that's dancing the number four diabetes.com. If you can't remember any of those links are Juicebox podcast.com. Or right there the show notes of the podcast player that you're using now. Please don't forget to find the bold with insulin Facebook page and like it. Don't forget to leave a rating and review on iTunes. And don't forget to tell a friend about the Juicebox Podcast. And now the conversation that I had before we started recording, except I was recording. So before we started the podcast proper. So I know you're nervous. But I hope it helps you to know that I think I've recorded 230 of these and everyone's nervous at the beginning. Have you listened to any of them?

Denal 1:11:47
Oh, yes. I've listened to quite a few of them.

Scott Benner 1:11:49
Do any of them sound nervous?

Denal 1:11:51
No. A few. But no.

Scott Benner 1:11:54
It's one of my superpowers. I'll make you uncomfortable.

Unknown Speaker 1:11:56
Don't worry. Awesome.

Scott Benner 1:11:57
Okay. One of my superpowers that one and doing the dishes.

Denal 1:12:02
I'm pretty good at that, too. So

Scott Benner 1:12:06
I've taken to just putting my iPad next to me and watching something that I've seen before while I'm doing it. And then my wife said to me that she she was angry about something last I don't know, we've been together a long time. But she sees a cycle of about 20 days where she gets angry at me for nothing. I'm not blaming anything. And and so she seemed angry. And she's like, you just stand there with your iPad. And I was like, would you prefer I just stare at the dish? Like, what happened? I said, Did you could you send some happiness? What happened? Anyway,

Denal 1:12:40
I think it's our job is to find things that annoy us about you and point them out.

Scott Benner 1:12:45
Thank you appreciate it. I was on she she's coming at me one day and I said, you know, our daughter's 14. Like she just started getting her period like she has type one diabetes, or anyone sees in the fives. Like, you would think that just that alone. You could just leave me alone. Not just tried. Like, I just think she's got a happiness sensor on her. If I go over a certain setting, she's like, Oh, no, no, no, buddy.

Unknown Speaker 1:13:12
You matter?

Denal 1:13:12
How long have you been married?

Scott Benner 1:13:13
I would say if I was guessing. This summer, I think it's 23 years.

Unknown Speaker 1:13:20
Okay, that we beat by a few.

Scott Benner 1:13:22
I'm only 47 though, so?

Denal 1:13:24
Well, I've been married 20 and I'm only 42 Wow, you are so

Scott Benner 1:13:30
I could let me play the guessing game of where in the country you live. You're wrong. It's not that

Denal 1:13:39
probably is not. But that's not where I'm from now. Okay, so let me

Scott Benner 1:13:44
just go out. I'm just gonna make my one guest and we're gonna start Are you a Mormon?

Denal 1:13:48
I am a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints.

Unknown Speaker 1:13:53
So many Mormons on this show is

Denal 1:13:57
so weird. I hear it all the time. I'm like, Oh, another one.

Scott Benner 1:14:03
I should get like a free punch card from the church for something.

Denal 1:14:06
What might a person have are typing,

Scott Benner 1:14:09
I would like my own magic underwears. I'm saying

Unknown Speaker 1:14:11
no, no,

Unknown Speaker 1:14:12
I don't get that I can look at you. You're like,

Denal 1:14:15
don't do that. It just takes a little bit of water. And I say okay,

Scott Benner 1:14:20
I don't need it that badly. So anyway, that's, that's, oh my gosh. Now, you know, for the rest of my life. Anytime I heard somebody got married in their early 20s and his kids, I'm gonna be like, you know what I'm thinking here.

Denal 1:14:35
Well, in all fairness, I did not grow up in Utah. I am from Colorado. So I'm not a yutan important distinction. We live in Virginia. So I'm not that far from you.

---

Please support the sponsors

The Juicebox Podcast is a free show, but if you'd like to support the podcast directly, you can make a gift here. Recent donations were used to pay for podcast hosting fees. Thank you to all who have sent 5, 10 and 20 dollars!

Donate