#373 How We Eat: Vegan Cat

Jordon has type 1 diabetes, two cats and a husband named Tyler. She also eats a plant based diet.

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

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello, everyone, and welcome to Episode 373 of the Juicebox Podcast. You may disagree, and you can let me know if you do. But for my money, this is the best episode of the podcast that I've ever recorded, and it gave me a great idea. I'll tell you more in a second. Please remember that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making changes to your health care plan. On today's show, I'll be speaking with Jordan, she's a type one who originally wanted to come on the show to talk about how she

Unknown Speaker 0:35
eats.

Scott Benner 0:38
But through some confusion, I didn't do the recording the first time and it just it was a mess sock spending theme in the episode. Anyway, Jordan gets on. And she was nervous. So I was trying to make her feel not nervous. And I by mistake, I think I recorded what it might be very well the funniest episode of this podcast ever. But we then eventually do get to how Jordan eats. And later I found myself thinking, I'd like to know how everyone eats. So this is the first in a series called how we eat. This one's not really an official how we eat, because it will you'll see it goes in a lot of directions. But future how we eat will be more focused on different people's diets. Jordan happens to be a vegan. And that's why this episode is called how we eat vegan cat. Well, that's not completely why it's called that. But you'll see this episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by the Contour Next One blood glucose meter and touched by type one, you can go to touched by type one.org to find out about all the wonderful things they're doing for people living with Type One Diabetes touched by type one.org. And the Contour Next One blood glucose meter is my daughter's meter. It is a fantastic meter. It is the gold standard in meters. It has amazing test strips that you can like, you know, touch blood, get it wrong, go back and touch it again without wasting the test strip and still get an accurate reading. It's small and easy to hold and has a beautiful bright light for those nighttime blood sugar checks. And in general, I just really love it. Contour Next one.com forward slash juice box. Go check it out. I'm going to tell you two things. And then we'll get started. Okay. Okay. The first thing is after I ghosted you last time we were supposed to do this. I thought I wonder if she'll do it back to me just to be funny.

Jordan 2:54
The thought crossed my mind. But

Scott Benner 2:56
so that's what did it actually did you think I'm gonna do it back to him?

Jordan 3:00
No.

Unknown Speaker 3:02
Well, I thought

Jordan 3:05
last night when I was driving home, I remembered that I had this today. And I was like, Oh, I wonder what would happen if I just had forgotten.

Scott Benner 3:14
But what would I have said Really? I mean, there wouldn't have been anything I could do. Right? So are we gonna say your name? Yeah. Okay. So Jordan. Jordan was supposed to be on the show, you know, a couple weeks ago. And I, we can't but was it it was a holiday right was Martin Luther King Day? Yeah. So that day threw me off. And I just was a day behind in my head. So while Jordan was up, I'm guessing pretty early in the morning. Where are you at? Washington State. So it's nine o'clock here right now. It's six where you are? Yes. So while Jordan was up very early in the morning to record a podcast, I was cleaning my house and doing laundry. Completely able to record a podcast if I wanted to just there was no reason to because I thought it was a different day that it was. So when she was logging on this morning. I thought wow, what a nice person she actually is here. very well may have just been like ups. Now, here's the second thing. It's all gonna make you feel worthwhile.

Unknown Speaker 4:21
What?

Scott Benner 4:21
During the time you were supposed to record I had a piece of software do an automatic update that I didn't realize it did. And it changed a setting like deep down setting that you would not have noticed on top okay. Because of that. I recorded three episodes that were not usable.

Unknown Speaker 4:46
Oh, no.

Scott Benner 4:48
And had I not ghosted you by mistake. You would have been the fourth.

Jordan 4:54
Well, it all worked out. I guess. That's how I'm trying to look at this.

Scott Benner 4:59
Now We can get rolling and then you have to go off to your job where you let me think I remember because here's the funny thing after this happened, I just I was like Jordan call me so he must have spent like 20 minutes on the phone with me just like very ham fisted Lee trying to make you laugh and apologizing. I just was like, let me give her something for the day. I probably just wasted your time. You're like, yeah, wish you could have just left me alone, but I don't know what happened. How did you feel after I? Okay, well, anyway, let's start with this. What's your name?

Jordan 5:28
My name is Jordan. Do you

Scott Benner 5:31
have diabetes? Jordan?

Jordan 5:32
I do. Yes.

Scott Benner 5:34
And did I leave you hanging to record the podcast on your birthday?

Unknown Speaker 5:38
You absolutely did. I won't. Wouldn't you have been on the day? We were recording?

Jordan 5:43
26

Scott Benner 5:44
Happy birthday. Thank you very well. Okay. How old were you when you're diagnosed? I was

Jordan 5:51
eight.

Scott Benner 5:52
Okay. I got some quick math going. I feel what is going on here. Mother. I know what this is. wife's at home working? Oh, it's not my. My quick master. That was 18 years ago. But then I had to check myself 1922 and I'm right on.

Jordan 6:12
Here. It'll be teen years in August.

Scott Benner 6:15
Do you think like your diabetes as an adult now? Maybe it'll go off on its own and take care of itself?

Jordan 6:19
Maybe I'm excited for it to turn 21. So I can take it out for a beer and have a little chat?

Scott Benner 6:25
What will you tell it when you take it out for that beer?

Jordan 6:29
Well, we'll reminisce a little bit on some good and bad times. But Alright, let's just talk about things.

Scott Benner 6:36
I think that's fair. Why don't we practice? Wait, first of all, are you on for any reason? Is there something you want to say?

Jordan 6:45
Eventually, maybe we'll talk about that diet a little bit. Ah, gosh, I'm kind of and open to talk about whatever. Alright, well,

Scott Benner 6:53
let's do this. Since we hadn't planned for it. If your diabetes was a person, what would you sit down and tell it?

Unknown Speaker 7:02
Did it ruin your childhood? Did it

Scott Benner 7:04
drive away a potential dating prospect? Has it made your room smell weird? But is it done?

Jordan 7:12
it? Honestly I think it's kind of made me who I am today. I I I don't know my life without diabetes. But I feel like I'm more health conscious. And just

I don't know, the person I am. Because of it.

Scott Benner 7:29
It helped to shape you. Yeah, in good ways, bad ways or in a collection of ways.

Jordan 7:35
Probably both.

Scott Benner 7:38
Has anything good and bad? Well, we'll start with a good because you're a positive person. And you're in that upper Midwest, Upper West Coast kind of an area. So I'm thinking I mean, I'd six in the morning, but you're high as a kite right now. Is that right? Jordan? You've been smoking for 1020 hours at this point. Is that right?

Jordan 7:58
Well think that Yeah,

Scott Benner 8:00
you don't you don't have to lie, Jordan. I'm trying to point out to people that you're like, one of the nicer people I've ever met. I don't imagine that's true of you. Not that you couldn't be a nice person and be completely blazed. I'm just saying that I don't think you are. And you're not right. What's this? What's the riskiest thing you've done in your entire life?

Jordan 8:21
riskiest, yeah,

Unknown Speaker 8:22
like something with no idea.

Jordan 8:26
I'm pretty boring.

Scott Benner 8:28
Probably don't admit that upfront in the podcast. Okay. Because people are be like, well, Jordan said she was boring. So I just like I bailed after a couple of minutes.

Jordan 8:36
Not listening anymore. Up gave up already.

Scott Benner 8:42
Looks like I'm talking to Arden about how to Bolus for a muffin. 40 more.

Unknown Speaker 8:51
There. Sorry.

Scott Benner 8:54
She doesn't feel well today. She's got like a, there's like sort of, I don't know about like six o'clock last night. And she suddenly like for a half a second like spiked like this tiny little fever like 99 for like, is that right? 99 is a fever. Do I mean nine? I think that's what I mean. She had a tiny feet, which is like up one point. And and then she's just as like, My throat is scratchy. And and we were like, Alright, and we let her sleep like we let her lay in our bed last night to try to get comfortable. And then she fell asleep. And I said to Kelly I'm like, how are we going to get her out of here? Jake we couldn't wake her up. She's like a lead weight at this point. She's like a real person. Now you know what I mean? So like, like we could wake up I'm like, okay, so I spent my evening overnight sleeping in the eight and a half inches between the edge of the bed and that and on my side. And then Kelly did the same thing while Arden was like all spread out in the middle of

Jordan 9:52
it bring back some memories

Scott Benner 9:54
brought back memories of my back not feeling well. And so. So she gets up in the morning. She's like, I've got to go School. She's such an oddly, she's an interesting person when it comes to school because that happened to me as a child, I would have just said, Well, this is an obviously appropriate reason for me not to go to school today. Kelly would have gone to school. If you know somebody had recently shot an arrow into her skull, and she was still functioning and Arden's like a weird mix between the two Arden toxic a game about not caring about school. But then everything she does indicates that she cares about it a lot. It's a it's it's interesting. She's got my like, she's got the way I talk about it and the way Kelly feels about it. It's very interesting because they don't go together in any way.

Jordan 10:41
Yeah,

Scott Benner 10:42
imagine the person ranting and raving that they hate bologna sandwiches while they have a bologna sandwich in each hand and are eating it voraciously. That's are they talking about? Alright, have I loosened you up yet? Are you nervous? What's going on here?

Jordan 10:56
I'm a little nervous, but I'll get over it. Okay,

Scott Benner 10:58
so let's we'll let's talk about that for a second. Are you just nervous about this specifically? Or would you be nervous in any scenario like this?

Jordan 11:07
Any scenario? Okay.

Scott Benner 11:09
All right. So let's find out a little more about yourself. Then, when you were diagnosed at what I'm calling eight years old, whether it's true or not. Let's just go with it. Were your parents coupled in a traditional way

Unknown Speaker 11:19
at that moment? Yes. Did

Scott Benner 11:22
the did your care fall to one of them or to you? Or was it a group effort?

Jordan 11:27
And it was a group effort. My dad worked and my mom was at home more. So she did more the immediate caretaking, but my dad would take me to a lot of my appointments and stuff. But I pretty early on, I decided that I wanted to start doing my own injections. And I think it was only like, maybe six months in before I was like, Okay, I want to do this on my own. Cool. And and you started with injections.

Scott Benner 11:55
Yes. How long did you do MDI?

Jordan 11:59
until I was

12? I think I was in middle school. Before I decided I wanted a pump

Scott Benner 12:07
kind of pump. So what kind of pump was available then? Which ones were on the market? Do you remember which ones you joined up with?

Jordan 12:15
I had the Animus

Unknown Speaker 12:17
the ping?

Scott Benner 12:19
Is that right? It was called the Animus ping?

Jordan 12:21
I don't think it was the ping back then. No, not even the packet? No, I think it was before that.

Scott Benner 12:27
Any chance they call it the Pong? Probably not right. It's so what made you want to go to a pump back then.

Jordan 12:36
I think

just hearing about it. And people kept saying it was the way to go. And the best way to manage so I decided to give it a try. But leading up to that I was like, I don't want anything on my body. I don't want to deal with that. So, um,

Scott Benner 12:52
as Jerry Seinfeld would say, Who are these people? Were they teachers, other people you knew had type one your doctors who was kind of directing you,

Jordan 13:02
doctors and my parents a little bit. I know they wanted me to just kind of do what I wanted to do and was comfortable doing but deep down, they knew that I would be better with a pump.

Scott Benner 13:14
That's a parenting secret for anybody who is younger, doesn't have kids yet you know exactly what you need your kids to do. And then you some people act like it's up to them. And then they behind the scenes are puppet mastering everything. And some people just come out and say it and some people just hope that the kids figure it out. But you figured it out. So that's actually or like not that not to say that a pump is a necessary thing. Just that it came to you that you would like to do it. Are you wearing a glucose monitor right now?

Jordan 13:44
I am Yes. Which do you have? The dexcom?

Scott Benner 13:48
Is it the G six? It is? Is it the one that's available@dexcom.com forward slash Juicebox. Podcast? I just say about No, I'm just kidding. So when did you go to a glucose monitor?

Jordan 14:02
Oh, man, I have had one off and on but really consistently for the last like year and a half.

Scott Benner 14:08
Okay, so did you start with the G for the G five?

Jordan 14:13
thing think? Yeah, I started with the chief for that at one point. I had a Medtronic pump. So I had that GM

Scott Benner 14:22
is that when you get a Medtronic pump they kind of I don't want to say force but they force their CGM audio, right. Like it's

Jordan 14:29
Yeah,

Scott Benner 14:30
it's like here. It's a package ticket like that. Okay, so but you went to, uh, how long were you with Medtronic?

Jordan 14:41
Three or four years? I've been all over the place. I've also had Omni pod. Look at

Scott Benner 14:45
you for a shy person. You're not that shy about things are you know, so you've used every conceivable insulin pump. Which one are you using right now?

Jordan 14:54
I'm not using one right now.

Unknown Speaker 14:57
I don't know why I asked. I should have just assumed that. All right.

Scott Benner 15:01
What was your favorite pump that used?

Jordan 15:05
Probably, honestly, Medtronic, okay, because I didn't have the best experience with Omni pod. Okay? It was like five or six years ago, and it just kept alarming on me. It was in malfunctioning, so I got off of it when you're

Unknown Speaker 15:24
getting like occlusions

Jordan 15:27
Yeah, I would just I would put one on and like, within a few hours, it would start alarming, and it was just on my abdomen. So it wasn't even like I was putting it in weird places. So I was in college at the time, and I got to the point where I just get so anxious about it going to class or something that it would start alarming and middle class and I would thought it was gonna have to change it and, and so listen, and want to be stuck without insulin

Scott Benner 15:54
course. And then so those are the Medtronic, just soldiered on for you.

Jordan 16:00
Yeah, it just worked and was pretty much hassle free.

Scott Benner 16:05
And then, but now you're not using a pump at all? What led you back to MDI

Jordan 16:12
and just being annoyed having something on me? So I pretty much came full circle.

Scott Benner 16:20
Jordan, Are you married?

Jordan 16:21
Hey, poor guy.

Scott Benner 16:22
I see what's happening here.

Jordan 16:26
Yeah, he's a trooper. Yeah,

Unknown Speaker 16:27
I would imagine this.

Scott Benner 16:32
Has the word fickle ever been used about you in your presence?

Jordan 16:37
Not that I know. No. So you don't like maybe behind my back, Jordan, tell me

Scott Benner 16:41
why it is. You're 26. But you're talking about life like you're 53.

Jordan 16:48
Maybe diabetes maybe grew up fast.

Scott Benner 16:52
But no, seriously, you're just very like measured. And you're like, I tried that. I didn't like it. I tried that. It gave me a problem. This one didn't give me a problem. But I'm not using it anymore. Anyway. And you just you're rolling through things, are you? So you, you know, we talked earlier about for a brief second about Arden being inconsistent with how she does things, but you are too. You're like, like, on your face. You're like I'm you know, I'm kind of quiet and a little shy. And everything except you're not shy about switching pumps or the ways you get insulin, or jumping around from your cgms. Do you see that? These two things seem incongruent.

Jordan 17:33
Yeah, I guess, okay. I'm also here to talk about that stuff. I don't just like bring it up with strangers and start talking about it. Know,

Scott Benner 17:41
when that'd be something I didn't think you did. But no, I meant like just just that you're, maybe I'm wrong. But when I think of someone who's sort of quiet reserved, I think of them as getting something it works. And they just stick with it. And, and they're trying to keep things simple, and from being a problem. And maybe that's me projecting. And also, not being a quiet person. I'm guessing a little bit too, but it just it struck me as it's like when I'm interviewing people, there's a little voice in the back of my head that kind of knows where things are going. Don't me like people don't surprise me that often when they speak. And and but it's only because I've been doing this for a while but you have never so far in 17 minutes. You haven't said one thing after another thing that I was like, I knew she was gonna say that. So

Jordan 18:31
I was trying to keep it interesting.

Scott Benner 18:33
I fit part of me feels like you're lying. Just Just like to think of what I feel like. And I'm going to say the opposite. And then I'll go back to me and then I'll but I know you're not but it's just very Okay, so how long

Jordan 18:45
you've been married? Three years. Interesting. Now.

Scott Benner 18:51
College person yourself. You said yes. Right. Yes. And you have a degree and I know you're out in the world doing something. Do you talk about what you do? Or is that something you're keeping private?

Jordan 18:59
Yeah, I can talk about it.

I work in cardiac and pulmonary rehab.

Scott Benner 19:05
So you force unhealthy people to run on a treadmill. Is that right? Jordan?

Jordan 19:10
Yes.

Scott Benner 19:12
Yes, you're a sadist?

Jordan 19:14
I don't make them come from. What

Scott Benner 19:16
do they do they just kind of hop up go for a little walk. You walk and you do what?

Jordan 19:21
Help them? Well, I prescribe exercise intensities, basically. So we'll do the treadmill or seated machines and some strength training. You

Scott Benner 19:32
ever go too far and kill one of them? Just tell you don't have to say but just tap on the microphone once if it's happened. No, I haven't. You have not excellent Good for you, by the way and if you have good for you not admitting it. So you're just Are you trying to get people back? I guess some people back to healthy some people. You're just trying to find a, I guess a balance of life style for them. And they're all they're all rehabbing from some sort of a heart issue.

Jordan 20:00
In cardiac rehab they are and just giving them lifestyle changes they can make to decrease the risk of furthering their heart disease. And then for pulmonary rehab, it's just disease management and trying to help them breathe a little bit easier. How do

Scott Benner 20:21
you find that work? Do you enjoy it?

Jordan 20:23
I do. Yeah. Built a lot of relationships through it. Nice.

Scott Benner 20:27
What did you take in college that led you to this?

Jordan 20:30
my undergrad degree is in kinesiology. Just basically just movement of the body. And then my graduate degree is in clinical exercise physiology.

Scott Benner 20:44
No kidding. This pay pretty well. This is why this guy latched on to you at an early age.

Jordan 20:51
He's not at

Scott Benner 20:52
home play video games while you're helping people or is he

Jordan 20:55
know he is in school right now himself?

Scott Benner 20:58
getting a good degree, I'd like to see a little equal share of the burden coming up, you know, yeah,

Jordan 21:03
yeah. Oh, yeah.

Scott Benner 21:04
How long are you gonna let this go until he's, you know, pulling his own weight?

Jordan 21:09
Oh, well, we got four years of school left. So

Scott Benner 21:11
four years, becoming a lawyer, Doctor.

Jordan 21:18
Doctor of naturopathic medicine.

Scott Benner 21:22
Not that I don't find that interesting. But I just realized that there should be a Netflix comedy called lawyer doctor.

Unknown Speaker 21:29
During the day,

Scott Benner 21:30
yeah. Right. And he does. So while he's fixing you, he's also setting up a lawsuit against himself. Right? On the weekends, he's a volunteer fireman. What do you think of this?

Jordan 21:43
It could work. But

Scott Benner 21:45
You're damn right. It could. I think it's a limited run situation, though. I think maybe after four hours, you would get tired of it. But I think for a couple of hours, it would be right there. If that ever comes up on any television show. I'm using this recording as a reason to sue somebody.

Jordan 22:02
You can ask the lawyer doctor to help you. I couldn't

Scott Benner 22:05
be either of those things. The idea of going to school for that long baffles my mind. But I do know my wife right now, if I said to her, hey, we've got all the money in the world. You don't have to work anymore. she'd take a day and a half off. And then she find some degree to go get. She would love to go she loves being in school. It's very strange. Did you enjoy it? Does your husband let's call them making air quotes because I think he might just be a squatter. But is your Does your husband enjoy it? Oh,

Jordan 22:34
he does. Yeah, he's a good student.

Scott Benner 22:37
Alright, so are you guys. Do you like that part of the country? You think you'll stay there?

Jordan 22:41
Yeah, definitely.

Scott Benner 22:43
I think you there's probably only a few places where an energy as laid back as yours, Jordan Bulwark. I feel like have you ever been to like a place that's moving like 1000 miles an hour? Like you've ever driven on the highway in Los Angeles or walked across? Yeah, you're

Jordan 22:57
terrifying. It's kind of cool. Cuz everyone's got it's bumper to bumper traffic, but everyone's going like 80 miles an hour.

Scott Benner 23:05
Makes you feel like you're in a NASCAR race. Yeah, you're like, I wonder which one of these people

Unknown Speaker 23:09
is gonna stop?

Scott Benner 23:13
Now, when that happens, do you get a little excited? Like, like, what happens to you when you get flipped out? Is it just this measure Jordan that I'm talking to you now? Or do you have like another gear?

Jordan 23:28
I get excited. But not. I don't start screaming or like it.

Scott Benner 23:34
I wish you guys hear anything. I wish everyone listening could see. Like, I can see a picture of Jordan right here. And Jordan, you're a beautiful person, you know, way does your picture match your like your speech pattern? I don't know another way to put it. Like, it's just very interesting. I don't know. I don't even know how to explain it to anybody. Just the person I'm looking at. It's not the person I'm talking to in my mind. Were you always a quiet child?

Jordan 24:04
I think so. I'm the youngest. So

Scott Benner 24:07
Oh, you were just lucky to be alive.

Jordan 24:10
I see. No, my parents paid a lot of attention to me because of diabetes.

Scott Benner 24:17
Okay, so all right. Let's dig in here a little bit. Maybe we'll find it here. psychologically. Do you think that's the only reason your parents paid attention to? Yeah, no. So you think they love you for other reasons? Absolutely. Are there any of those other reasons that you're the best of the siblings?

Jordan 24:35
I wouldn't say Oh, do you

Scott Benner 24:36
remember when a girl came on and did say that? How much fun that was? Do you have any idea how many emails I got?

Jordan 24:42
I do remember that. For any of the emails from her siblings?

Scott Benner 24:46
No. Although that would have been terrific. They were just one other people like Yo, I love that girl when she said that she was the best kid. Anyway, how many siblings do you have? So there's three of you total. Yes, my math is late today. I don't know if you've noticed or not. I have had plenty of sleep plenty of sleep. Although my sleep was on eight inches of a mattress, I still did get my hours. And two, how much older Are they the new?

Jordan 25:17
My brother is about a little less than a year and a half older. And my sister is nine years older than me.

Scott Benner 25:23
Oh, there's a story here.

Jordan 25:26
She's, she's my half sister, but we grew up together. So

Scott Benner 25:30
they would find her on the street. One of them made them now let's guess. half sister dad side. Yes. Mm hmm. See how I know people?

Unknown Speaker 25:39
It's okay.

Scott Benner 25:41
All right. So

Jordan 25:42
the only predictable thing you'll

Scott Benner 25:45
feel naturally I forgotten one thing, right yet. I'm just like, Alright, so, dad, your dad made a baby with some lady. And then we don't know what happened to her. It's not important. And then he bumped into your mom, I'm gonna say the disk attack in the 60s. Right. Right. And then they became fast friends, because of their love of Molly. And then they got married. And then they wait a minute, how old was your, your oldest sister when your parents got married? You know?

Jordan 26:20
Let's say like,

Scott Benner 26:21
five, five. And then they had to wait four more years until they made the brother. Yeah, then he wasn't too much of a trouble. three more years. Sorry.

Jordan 26:30
While you're

Scott Benner 26:33
cooking, you're adding in the cooking time for the baby, which I can't do on the fly. Just so you know. And then they didn't dislike him very much. And so they made another one. Yeah, and now we're done. And it's that you think he's gonna stay with your mom or you think you'll run out and like go roll up again on some other lady and start over?

Jordan 26:53
I think they're in it for the long haul.

Scott Benner 26:56
How old are your parents? Like just if they're in their 50s? Or 60s 50s 50s was trying to imagine like a 65 year old guy like I'm out of here. gonna talk to Betsy? She seems sweet. Do it again. God, all right. Um, you on their insurance, though? Because you have a job. You have your own. Were you on their insurance right up until you started working? Making old people walk on treadmills.

Jordan 27:24
I was on it until this last year, because I turned 26. So you, you thought like cool

Scott Benner 27:30
advantage of that? Yeah. Can you talk about how helpful that was while you were in college?

Jordan 27:39
Well, I mean, it was really helpful. I don't I don't know how helpful it would have. What am I trying to say? If I just I don't know any different?

Unknown Speaker 27:52
What would have happened if you try.

Jordan 27:55
If I was in college, and I wasn't on their insurance, I would have had to pay for my insurance somehow and probably wouldn't have gotten as good of coverage and not being able to have a pump for CGM or anything. So do you think you help me with that?

Scott Benner 28:09
Yeah. Do you think you would have had to turn yourself out? If that happened? Is that a phrase you don't know? Would you have had to hook is what I'm saying? Do you think you would? Would you had to become some sort of a part time prostitute? Just before it's

Jordan 28:24
possible? I mean that diabetes is expensive. So

Scott Benner 28:28
do you think that happens on college campuses?

Jordan 28:31
I'm sure it does. Yeah, I

Scott Benner 28:34
think the younger girls are probably not as a hardened at that age. Right? That can't be how it goes. But that would be a sad story. By the way, if, if you were on here to tell us that you hooked your way through college to pay for your insulin pump. But by the way, if let me just say this for a second, if anyone listening hooked their way through college to pay for their diabetes supplies, please immediately send me a note and asked to be on the podcast. Thank you very much. Jordan, I at this point want to ask you with all sincerity. Has your heart rate ever gone over 85? If you put yourself on that treadmill, could you get your heart rate up?

Jordan 29:14
I can Yeah.

Scott Benner 29:16
You're still nervous, aren't you? A little bit. I have tried really hard for you. Service. I don't know what to do at this point.

Unknown Speaker 29:24
Well, what would make you just keep going?

Unknown Speaker 29:29
I just thought of something to say I'm not gonna say

Scott Benner 29:39
I apologize. Excuse me. Okay. All right, Jordan, let's so you had no real affinity for any of your insulin pumps. You switch back to MDI because you're tired of being attached to stuff. Although you don't seem to be worried about being attached to this guy, he's not paying any bills. That seems to be okay with you. I'm just joking. I'm sure he's a lovely person. I'm so sorry. Yes, if you talk, I will

Jordan 30:05
be sad. He feels bad. I

Unknown Speaker 30:08
will be sad.

Scott Benner 30:10
What's his name? Tyler Tyler, listen to me. I have been a stay at home dad for 20 years, 20 years of me going up to my wife at gift giving occasions and saying, look, I got you this happy whatever day and her looking at it and going, I don't want this. And then me knowing in my heart, she's thinking, I just paid for something with my own money that I don't want. So jever it's not a good feeling like so. But I've learned to live with a Tyler so just suck it up. Okay, you're gonna be alright. You just put your head down and plow through, it'll be fine. And one day, you'll make a couple of dollars. And hopefully this beautiful girl won't kick you out of the house and you'll get to make it up to her. But if her dad's any

Unknown Speaker 30:55
indication, you're not long for this world.

Scott Benner 31:02
By the way, if you ever get divorced, it's not my fault.

Unknown Speaker 31:04
I just did. I'm just joking.

Jordan 31:08
send you a message like a year from now and be like Scott, you ruined everything.

Scott Benner 31:13
I had to leave with my five year old but don't worry, I found another guy who it'll be fine. No, seriously, probably you shouldn't feel bad about this man. It's a it's a nice thing that you guys found each other. And you're willing to support each other in this situation. It really is wonderful. I am you know, I'm, I'm saying a lot of stupid things. I don't mean 85% of them. But the 15% that I do mean, I drastically mean them. But, but you'll have to figure out what the percentages are and how that breaks down later when you're listening back. I just know. I think it's nice. Um, it is uncommon for in my eyes for somebody your age, to be married. And have come from a decent home. Yeah, yeah. I mean, like we were married young, but we were raised like animals. Like, like, honestly, my parents will never hear this. Neither were Kelly's. But let me just say, not a parenting instinct between the group of them. You know what I mean? Like, really? Not? If I got diabetes, when I was a kid, there's no way I'd be alive. That I mean, people would have just been like, good luck. And then that would have been it. You know, Kelly's parents probably would have sold her for I don't know fabric and yarn or something like that. So it so you were raised like these people took really good care of you. Let's look into that for a second. You said you switched over to kind of your own management pretty quickly. Do you remember what your goals were? And if you were meeting them I guess back then really a one C was the only measurement people gave you right?

Jordan 32:42
Yeah, I I can't remember when I was younger what my a onesies were but up until a few years ago, I didn't. I didn't really have set goals. Yes, I I would always shoot for in the sevens for my agency, but I never actually got there until a few years ago.

Scott Benner 33:07
A few years ago, the diabetes technology society you can find this online did a thing about blood glucose monitoring systems blood glucose meters. And I bet you can guess which meter was at the very top of that list. Contour Next One. The Contour Next One is the blood glucose meter that my daughter uses. It is incredibly accurate. It plays very well with ardens dexcom CGM. And it's easy to use, easy to hold easy to read has test trips that allow a second chance so if you touch the blood drop and don't get enough, you just go back and get more and it doesn't really need very much. But one that you can touch on touch and touch again and still get an accurate reading from that's not common. But it is with the Contour Next One Contour Next one.com forward slash juice box. Go check out the Contour Next One and all the meters from a sensia touched by type one.org that's where you're gonna go I'll do it right now with you touched. you spell it right there you go touched by type one.org programs like their annual conference, their awareness campaign bofur cause their dance program called dancing for diabetes. The D box that they send out to newly diagnosed people who request them so much going on at touched by type one. And all they want from you is for you to know about it so you can take advantage. Head over, touched by type one.org. Get in there. See what you can find out learn become a part of last thing I'd love it if you guys with the T one d exchange.org forward slash juicebox and participated in the T one D exchange survey. I've done it just recently. If you do it, you'll be supporting research for type one diabetes and supporting the podcast. So it's like a win win. In that scenario that I've described, T one d exchange.org. forward slash juicebox took me about seven minutes to fill it out was not a lot of like deep personal information about Arden. By the way, you need to be a type one diabetic who lives in the United States, for the person who's caring for an under aged type one diabetic who lives in the United States to participate. But I think it's well worth your time. And here are just a few reasons why T one D exchange research has led to increased insurance coverage for blood glucose meter strips, it has led to changes in the American Diabetes associations guidelines for pediatric a one c goals. And maybe you remember when Medicare started covering CGM devices. That was also from the information that the T one D exchange gathered, right? Through the surveys, you can be a part of that. It's fantastic. Hundred percent HIPAA compliant, completely anonymous, you can back out of it anytime you don't have to stay in it. You don't have to leave your house to participate. You'll never be asked to see a doctor or go to a site. And once a year, they'll send you a little update you just you know, answer some questions, update your answers. That's it. T one d exchange.org. forward slash juicebox. Contour next.com forward slash juicebox. Touched by type one.org. Support the sponsor support the show, there are links in the show notes of your podcast player, and at Juicebox podcast.com. Let's get back to Jordan and get ready to laugh and actually learn about how she still so we're getting to that.

What changed a few years ago,

Jordan 36:58
I started just doing more research about what helps and I got my CGM and started doing just taking more responsibility. I graduated from college. So I, I don't know I think I just started taking life more seriously. And I got married and was thinking about kids and stuff. So knowing that I had to get my stuff together if I was ever going to have a family and

Scott Benner 37:27
that said just felt like the only path to it. Yeah, yeah, it's funny. First of all, you have to give me a ton of credit here because I stopped myself during your really thoughtful answer from saying that you realize that you're gonna have to take care of Tyler's that you need to

Unknown Speaker 37:40
be healthy.

Scott Benner 37:44
I'm so sorry, teller. I'm still just joking. But, but no, I mean, that's a really. I mean, I think that's a moment that a lot of people come to right. Like you're in the sevens and thinking, well, this is where you really like in honesty really like good enough. Is that how you felt about it?

Jordan 38:02
No, I wasn't in the seven. I was in the eights and nines. Oh, you're shooting

Scott Benner 38:08
for the sevens but we're landing in eights and nines.

Jordan 38:11
Ah,

oh, God, I think I think back on it. I'm just like, I don't know how I made it this far without having some major emergency or being in decay or having a serious low or anything. But as far as emergency situations, everything was pretty mellow. But I just don't remember thinking about my diabetes as much as I do now.

Scott Benner 38:36
See, You surprised me again? Like you really I'm genuinely I'm being genuine like you. Like everything about you made me feel like when I eventually asked you how you are managing and how it was going that you were gonna say Oh, Scott, I I vary between a five six and a five nine. You know? Yeah, I thought you were I thought you were gonna be one of those people like, I I can't imagine like it just did. You're challenging everything I think about everything.

Jordan 39:06
Now my agency is what's 5.8 most recently so I'm there now so I'm personally you think I am now?

Scott Benner 39:17
So the person I thought you were that you weren't? You are now. Yes exactly. But Tyler still not paying the electric bill. I gotcha. You guys live so far for me. That's the only reason I'm comfortable doing this. There's no way Tyler can lose his mind to come completely across the country like even if he did by the time he flew over like Wyoming he'd be like this wasn't worth it. I should go home.

Jordan 39:39
forget why he went there in the first you

Scott Benner 39:41
would think by Minnesota he just be like, why am I on this point? What what changes so interesting for people? What changes did you make like concrete changes? Did you make the go from an A one C and the nines two. Are you in the fives now? Yeah. Wow. That's by the way. It's amazing how many years did that take, though.

Jordan 40:03
And I remember my first day when seeing the sevens about almost coming up on three years ago. And then I've been in that. And then I was in the sixes. And I've been in the fives now for a little over a year, I think,

Scott Benner 40:21
what was the first change? You made?

Jordan 40:24
my diet?

Scott Benner 40:26
What was your diet previously? Was it just pizza, whatever you found on the floor of your dorm room, or?

Jordan 40:32
No, that's the thing. When I was in college, I thought I was. I mean, I felt like I was eating healthy. I wasn't eating fast food every day, or, I mean, I was eating what I consider to be a healthy diet, and but I was still just all over the place with my blood sugars. So I was always really frustrated with them. And I think I just kind of gave up at one point, I was just like, they're just gonna do what they want anyway. But I hadn't listened to this podcast either. Which helps.

Scott Benner 41:06
Wait a minute. Now we're getting to me. I'm getting very interested. What I'm, there's a certain segment of people who thought I was serious. But that's when did you start listening to this show? And And where was your a once you when you started listening?

Jordan 41:21
I started listening about a year ago, I think so I was I was pretty well controlled already. But it just helped me view things a little bit differently and help to I don't know, I for a while I had my high alert off on my CGM. So I could be high and just not even know. And now I have it set at 120. So I just try to catch things sooner. And even things out a little bit.

Scott Benner 41:50
made me smile when you said 120. I hope you know. I was that was nice. And so you're is that really what's going on? Well, let me ask this first, when you say you change your diet, did you change your diet to like, did you go low carb or

Jordan 42:06
quite the opposite? Actually? Good.

So I eat pretty much all like fruits, veggies and whole grains. I don't eat any animal products or anything. But there's a lot of research out there that talks about insulin resistance and how fat causes insulin resistance. And I know you and Jenny did an episode recently right on insulin resistance. But from my understanding, and everything I've learned, like true insulin resistance is caused by fat in your body, whether you're overweight or not. Making it so that carbohydrates can't get into the cells that they need to get into. That's easily because there's fat blocking the way basically. And so when I changed my diet and started just focusing on like, Whole Foods and not eating, I don't eat a bunch of processed foods anymore, either, but just cutting out a lot of the high fat foods, my insulin sensitivity, like shot up, like my I know you don't use a insulin to carb ratio. But I went from one unit for every nine carbs to one unit for every 30 carbs. Wow, just by

Scott Benner 43:39
going to a cleaner diet.

Jordan 43:41
Yeah, no kidding.

Scott Benner 43:42
And so in that gives you more consistently,

it stays pretty consistently. And that gives you more control. Because you're not using as much was it hard to want to use so much insulin when you were doing something? Did that scare you ever? When you like prior to this, like the bigger boluses scare you or?

Jordan 44:03
No, not really, I just I didn't know any different and I just did as much insulin as I needed to do and I would my insulin sensitivity kept, like getting worse and worse because I my ratio kept getting lower and lower. Like it would be one for every 15 and then eventually it was one for every 12 carbs. And then my lowest I remember is like 148 or one per nine.

Scott Benner 44:34
Were you gaining weight through that time or no?

Jordan 44:37
No, no, it just

Scott Benner 44:39
the diet.

Jordan 44:41
Yeah, and I know people. I mean, even people without diabetes, if they have a diet that's high in fat, I imagine their pancreas is are just pumping out more and more insulin to try to compensate for that.

Don't show up. But I

Scott Benner 45:02
feel like that's happening underneath anyway. Well, I will say that my body, excuse me, my body is not a temple of great eating. But I'm also not unaware that, you know, the more you put, the more challenge you give to your body, the more it is challenged, you know, if I, I'm looking at a piece of paper, if I eat it, my body will find a way to process it, you know, and you put stuff in there that it has a harder time with, or that maybe, you know, maybe your body is really not meant to, to have in it. And, you know, you're you're going to use up services, you're going to use up resources, and it's going to work harder to get less accomplished. It's, it's like anything else. Honestly, I have no nutritional background whatsoever. But that's just common sense. Right? You know, I don't whatever keeps the Twinkie fresh for 35 million years is probably not good for you. All right, my guess, you know, don't know hundred percent not sure people from Twinkie might disagree. I'm not saying I know anything. Just saying that. It seems to me that that's not a that's not reasonable. And you know, not that you couldn't throw one in every once in a while. But like you said, if they become if that processed food becomes a staple in your life, then you know, that you end up or you end up and that turnaround that you had your insulin to carb ratio going, like one to nine to one to 30 is, is significant, really significant. You know,

Jordan 46:33
I didn't even know it was possible until it happened. I'm just like, okay, there's a few days where I just, I kept going low. And I was like, Man, this is getting frustrating. But I just kept cutting my insulin back. And I mean, I eat between 300 and 500 grams of carbs a day. But they're all from home. good and healthy foods. It's that. But

Scott Benner 46:59
hold on a second. It was cool. What you just said, Hold on. I really did. It did take you a while to warm up. But you're there now. Okay, so hold on a second. So at a one to nine. If I took 500 divided by nine, it please trust me. I'm not 100% sure I've just done the right thing. But it seems like that's 55 units of insulin at a one to nine. But at a one to 30 I would take the 500 divided by 30. It's 16 units of insulin. Mm hmm. So prior, so if you would have eaten 500 cart, wow. 500 or you're nine feet tall, 500 carbs of, of, you know, pizza and chips and that kind of stuff, you would have needed 55 units of insulin. And I'm gonna guess that might not have been enough. And so, but if you have little asparagus and an apple and a couple of things like that, keeping the I guess you're keeping out you're vegan, right? Yeah, you keep out that stuff. You're down to 16 units of insulin a day for 500 carbs worth of food. Yeah. And you're not gaining weight. Right. So it's healthy for your body. Yeah. All right. So what do I do now? Let's just go over this. I might start doing this Jordan. What do I eat? What do I What do I gotta do?

Jordan 48:19
So Well, before I even so I have over the past. Probably year, I've also lost about 30 pounds, but my insulin sensitivity had had gone way up before I even lost any weight. So okay, so even

Scott Benner 48:40
weight loss. You had that experience? Okay. No, no, no, I'm, I'm, it's Listen, we're from two different coasts. You're speaking at one speed and I'm speaking another and I'm trying my hardest. And so but you don't hear you want to hear a secret? Usually when people speak very slowly. You I don't mean usually. I mean, in the past, my there'd be a little voice in my head that I could hear yelling at me like speed up go faster. Like right, like they're like, tell him to hurry. But this podcast has actually helped me. Like, not feel like that anymore. Like you spin Yeah, you speak slower than I do. And I'm not anxious about it. But I used to be. I used to feel there's an episode of this podcast where a guy spoke so slowly that when I edited it, I had to take out all the pauses. It took me like hours to edit it out. But he just

Unknown Speaker 49:38
couldn't

Unknown Speaker 49:41
talk

Scott Benner 49:44
fast. It's like, oh my god. No one's gonna listen to that. They'll fall asleep in between the words. So I like I compound it down that still made it seem normal, and I still get notes about it about how slowly he speaks in that episode. Well That's okay. It's fine. He was thinking about every word. Except skin. Yeah, I mean, is it and you just say a couple things that don't make sense. People like that was funny. And then it ends you know it's over to get going. Okay, so your what's a normal day for you get up and have breakfast? What does it

Jordan 50:22
mean usually have some berries with oats and bananas and dates.

Scott Benner 50:28
And Bambi doesn't try to take it from me or Thumper or anybody?

Unknown Speaker 50:33
No, no.

Scott Benner 50:34
Okay. And then you're starving and you eat again in five minutes. Now, just kidding.

Jordan 50:39
That is such a big breakfast. Do you snack

Unknown Speaker 50:41
in between meals?

Jordan 50:43
No, I don't.

Scott Benner 50:44
Okay, at lunchtime.

Jordan 50:48
It varies, but, I mean, we make curry or chili or pasta or? No, sometimes, sometimes we'll have salad but not very often.

Scott Benner 51:02
That salad see a couple people every year you ever noticed that ever just pops up? You never see a lettuce that kills people, like every couple of minutes? Not a lot. But it's like a handful of people every year like that. They eat a bad head of lettuce. They're dead. Yeah, they poo for three days and died. Like

Jordan 51:19
sounds like a terrible way to go.

Scott Benner 51:22
It. It really does, doesn't it? I am a strong, strong possibility for the title of this episode. Two for three days. And I don't know today's episode. Did you see today? You didn't because you're on different coasts. But I put an episode up today that finally made my wife go, how do you name the podcast? I called it waxing waning and Hulk Hogan's dragon. And she's like, what's that about? I was like, it's all there, baby. She's like, it doesn't make any sense. And I was like, I said the episode was about so much. I didn't know what to call it. And these words were mentioned in the episode. So go listen to it. Find out what it's about. Meanwhile, she wouldn't do that. I bet you she's never listened to the podcast. I don't ask her.

Jordan 52:16
But you're afraid? Are you afraid that

Scott Benner 52:18
I'm afraid to ask that like, like Tyler's afraid to mention

Unknown Speaker 52:23
the rent.

Scott Benner 52:31
Anyway, Tyler, nice going, man, I'll tell you right now, when young men come up to me and they say, what should I be looking for? In a woman I always say, earning potentials first and then after. You want to go getter? The girl. It's not gonna be like, you know, happy to take a day off in the middle of the week. Just go go go a worker.

Jordan 52:52
Oh, I'm still happy to take the day off. And

Scott Benner 52:56
wait, you're saying that in an Armageddon situation. You're not willing to pull a plow.

Jordan 53:02
That's, that's not my situation.

Scott Benner 53:06
Can you imagine that? There was a time in the world where you would literally put your wife on the front of a handheld plow and be like, yo, pull this through the turret. I was it not the guy pulling the plow? You know that this is a true thing I'm saying right.

Jordan 53:20
Yeah, yeah, maybe. Maybe the women were more capable? I don't know. Listen,

Scott Benner 53:25
if my life is any indication, women are way more capable. And I think Tyler's gonna have to say the same. So I don't see how he can get out of this. You know what I'm doing for you right now. Right? It's like, I've set this man on a path where he's gonna just make a ton of money and take care of you now just to get rid of this pain. And you will call him thank me later. Now, you'll be like, Wow, he really got to it after college. And I was like, say Meanwhile, this is very sexist. Women can do this. Right? How would you feel if you went to all this trouble to get your eight one c nice and low, right? Let's paint a picture. Tyler comes home from a long hard day of listening to other people talk in a room. And you guys are amorous. And by mistake, a little baby Jordan comes out like in nine months. And then Tyler's like I'll stay home with the baby. How would you be with that?

Jordan 54:20
I don't know. Probably not very happy but

Unknown Speaker 54:26
so would you want to

Jordan 54:27
be like No, no.

It's time for you to go away.

Scott Benner 54:32
It's enough for you buddy. I'm just saying trying to set up Tyler's expectations here. So now would you you want to stay home with the baby? Are you looking to be a working person so

Jordan 54:44
I want to stay home at least for a little while but I don't know. How long would you take it? Yeah.

Scott Benner 54:51
I took our new an appointment yesterday. I'm not I'm This is no lie. I can't believe this is coming up. And the woman working behind the counter says something thing like to me like it was like 230 in the afternoon was right after school. How are you able to be here with her? And I said, I must stay at home dad. I've been a stay at home dad for 20 years. And she's like, Oh, I tried that. couldn't take it. Now, this was a younger person. So I'm like, I try. I said, how old your your babies? She was. I just have one, two. I'm like, wait, one, two. And she was Yeah, he's two years old. Like you couldn't take it for two years. I was like, Where is he now? And she's like, basically, I forget exactly what she said the kids in some sort of a human kennel. Now you don't I mean, like, and so she, she's like, I couldn't take it. He was too much.

Unknown Speaker 55:35
I was like, What was

Scott Benner 55:36
so ordered, I go to the she goes to the appointment, we come out, we get in the car. Look at each other. We really are like two peas in a pod. And she goes, what was that woman expecting when she had a baby? I was like, I have no idea. I was like, but there are a lot of work. And I said they basically just poulan things and don't do anything else. Like they're fairly useless. You know, like, you can't they're like weights that you have to keep alive. Like, imagine if you were in charge of keeping your broom alive. Like there's like it's it doesn't do much, you know? And she said, Arden was like baffled by that. And I was too so you're thinking about having a baby, right?

Unknown Speaker 56:13
Yes, sooner than later.

Jordan 56:17
Well, I mean, we got four more years.

Unknown Speaker 56:21
You're, you're on a countdown

Scott Benner 56:22
clock. What happens in four years do you think? Do you think your eggs are gonna expire? or something? Or what do you

Jordan 56:28
know Tyler graduates from school?

Scott Benner 56:31
Oh, you have to wait. Four more years.

Jordan 56:32
It's at least four more years. Yeah.

Scott Benner 56:35
Interesting. Now, you know, my marriage advice is don't marry till 30. Right.

Jordan 56:41
I have heard that. Yeah.

Scott Benner 56:42
Okay. And but but don't have a baby till 30. Okay, so let's say let's say Tyler graduates, then we got to hang back a little bit. Make sure you can get a job you understand? I'm saying and then he gets hooked up with some some employment you're like, Alright, this seems to be going okay. I will now allow you over here to make a baby. And then that happens. And then you're 31 is taller your age?

Jordan 57:05
Yes.

Scott Benner 57:06
Okay. Thank god cuz I thought you're gonna say was younger, and I don't know why that would have bothered me. And for no real reason. But so you're both 31 little baby Tyler Jordan is here. Tyler Jordan sounds like a title of a movie. But anyway, that's nothing that's neither here nor there. He's here. You look at him for a while or she? and two years later, you realize you can't take this kid anymore.

Unknown Speaker 57:30
You go back to work.

Scott Benner 57:32
Is that your Do you have a plan?

Jordan 57:35
No.

Scott Benner 57:37
Have you ever had a

Jordan 57:38
ball up in the air right now? Gotcha.

Scott Benner 57:41
You have what is one thing you've planned this worked out the way you expect it to?

Jordan 57:47
Go into school. Nice.

Scott Benner 57:49
That's a good one. Was that hard to do? was our server point during college that you thought like this isn't for me? Or were you really like locked into it?

Jordan 57:59
More so I think just thinking What have I done? What did I get myself into? But no, I I wanted to see it through

Scott Benner 58:10
give massive loans that you will never be able to pay off.

Jordan 58:15
They're up there but they're not

absurd. Good. They're pretty average. I think as far as student loans go,

Scott Benner 58:22
That's excellent. Good. It's a it's a scary proposition. Yeah, and this Tyler I mean, come on. He's gonna be a couple hundred grand in the hole by the time this is over. Yeah, I mean,

Jordan 58:34
yeah, it's a different story. That guys maybe should wait till you're not paying on those yet. So I

Scott Benner 58:40
think you should wait till Tyler graduates and and get a cat. Maybe you have a cat. So there was one thing I was sure of while we were talking. And that it was you owned a cat? That's because they're quiet and slower. And I feel like that would make you

Jordan 58:59
we have to

Scott Benner 59:00
do they fight with each other? Sometimes? Mm hm. Whose cats? Are they? Tyler's are yours.

Jordan 59:08
We got them together. I didn't say that. I said

Scott Benner 59:10
who's really in charge of the cat? Like, who cares? Like who would be like, oh God, the cat died and be upset and who would be like, ah, did the cat die? which one is which?

Jordan 59:21
I would think we would both be sad. Was that he? He worries about them more when we're not really? I guess.

Scott Benner 59:32
Yeah, Tyler's a nice person. He

Unknown Speaker 59:36
is he he?

Scott Benner 59:37
He's a sweet guy. I worry about our dogs when we leave the house. I'm always like, we have to go home. And then I complain. Why did we get a dog? Oh my god. I'm arguing with the bologna sandwich thing. I guess that's not surprising to me. But I love the dogs and I want the very best for them and like if we have to go out like for a long afternoon, I feel badly about that. But it immediately makes me say to my wife, I told you not to get a dog. But the dog is ruining our life. That cat can't ruin your life though, because you can leave a cat home for I mean until it runs out of water. It's just gonna be okay. Right?

Jordan 1:00:15
arc. Cats are pretty needy, needy cats. I know. One of them has a food allergy and the other one will eat all the food.

So we can't just leave food out.

Unknown Speaker 1:00:35
I don't know if anybody cares about this episode, but I'm having such a good time. You have a

Unknown Speaker 1:00:41
cat with a food allergy?

Jordan 1:00:43
Yes.

Unknown Speaker 1:00:45
You can't make it a vegan. You know, it'll kill it. I know. Chip receipt, people I've

Unknown Speaker 1:00:52
seen people have eaten cats.

Jordan 1:00:55
I've heard about it.

And that's

Unknown Speaker 1:01:04
your one cat your cat eat?

Unknown Speaker 1:01:07
I can't stop laughing.

Jordan 1:01:12
I don't I don't know what it is. Exactly. It's I think that he's allergic to some form of protein. But

what about Scott? you're

Unknown Speaker 1:01:28
allergic the protein.

Jordan 1:01:45
They're allergic to like chicken or turkey or some?

Unknown Speaker 1:01:51
I don't know.

Unknown Speaker 1:01:53
It's just you in the other category. It's Tyler the cat, the kitty.

Unknown Speaker 1:02:02
Oh, holy.

Unknown Speaker 1:02:12
This is either the best or worst episode that I've ever done. I won't know until later. Okay, all right. Hold on. We're coming up on an hour. Let me pull myself together here. Okay.

Scott Benner 1:02:26
You did say some really important stuff about the diet, I want to make sure that we we underscored for a second you changed your diet, you took out processed foods became vegan. You're a one season the fives now and you're using to my math, a quarter of the insulin that you're using prior is all about correct. Yeah. How do you feel overall with your health compared to back then?

Jordan 1:02:51
Much better. Yeah, I yeah. Before I just kind of was in this state of mind where I felt like I was gonna get complications or have complications from diabetes. And it was just kind of a matter of when they would come on. And now I feel like I can just live a normal life and not really have to worry about the complications, not that they will never happen, but I'm much less worried about them now than I was before. That's

Scott Benner 1:03:25
excellent. Yeah, I would wait, I would worry way more about the lead weight that is Tyler than I would about diabetes. And I really appreciate Tyler as being the comic foil of this episode. Please. Pass on my regards. Actually, you should tell him that this didn't happen. Probably just be like, I don't know. It just didn't work out. Or we're gonna try again later.

Jordan 1:03:49
Yeah, I was gonna have to listen to it before I let tell anyone else about it.

Scott Benner 1:03:53
Oh, I 100%. Don't think you should let him hear this.

Unknown Speaker 1:03:59
Because I'm kidding. Fair warning.

Scott Benner 1:04:01
Yeah, I've been kidding the whole time. But I'm looking back now. And there's like three things I don't think he wants to hear. But no, seriously, I it's really cool. what you guys are doing the way you're like, you know, let's be serious for a second, you're in your mid 20s. Both of you are becoming educated. And you're supporting each other. You're, you know, you're a couple, you're married, you're taking care of each other. You're taking care of your diabetes in an amazing way. This is really a success story. Your life really is like it's easy to joke about but just because you're younger and you talk slower and you're kind of quiet, your cat can't eat protein. But I mean, other than that, though, you really do have your stuff together. So I mean, you should really be congratulated you by yourself pretty much in your mid 20s. Got your a one C from nine to five. And that's no joke. That's Yeah, as well done, you know, do you ever stop and just, you know, pat yourself on the back? I would. Seriously Have you ever do. What I was gonna say have you ever really stopped and thought about what in the comments This is

Jordan 1:05:01
Yeah, I have. And Tyler talks about all the time. Like, if I have a randomly, not random, I'll know what happens. But if I have a high number, Tyler will bring up the fact that when I when we first met and I would check my blood sugar, like two or 300 would be a normal number that we would see. And now it's very rare. So it's cool to look back and see,

Scott Benner 1:05:28
you know what I'm what I'm interested about about your transformation with food too is that you weren't addicted to food, right? Like it was easy for you to change. Because it seems like you just made a decision to eat healthier, and you just did it. Whereas if you said to me, Scott, you need to eat, you know, a certain way all the time. I don't know that I could, like so seamlessly do it. Was it seamless? How long did it take you to make the transition? We just like one day, you're like, I'm not gonna be like this anymore. That was it, or have you faltered back and forth, or

Jordan 1:05:59
the first change was just to a vegan diet. And we would still eat, like processed foods and still some higher fat foods. And I didn't see a huge change in the diet. And then when I switched to eating like just like Whole Foods, and not any processed or not a bunch of added fat or anything. I mean, you can have vegan pizza and also make your blood sugar go crazy if it has a bunch of fat in it. But once that happened, then it was the biggest change. But it was it was pretty much overnight.

Scott Benner 1:06:40
The change.

Jordan 1:06:42
Yeah, the transition, but I mean, eating, it's such a, like everyone has their habits with eating, and they have their favorite meals that they make all the time. And it's just about finding meals that you like, and what works for you. And eventually, just making those changes you can make a transition with maybe not even really realizing what a big transition you've made. Oh,

Scott Benner 1:07:08
it's really inspirational, honestly, I mean, as a person who I mean, my weight fluctuates constantly, it doesn't make any sense. Like one day, I'll look in the mirror and I look like one person. And three days later, I look like a different person. I'm like, What happened? But I think it's I don't think it's a secret what happened. Like, I really do believe that it's like processed foods and stuff like that, that makes your body begin to like, retain water and you know, and all kinds of stuff. So I agree with you. I just don't not 100% sure I could eat. Like, I'm never hungry is my problem. Is that as weird as it sounds like the food you talked about eating sounded like a lot? To me.

Jordan 1:07:47
It is a lot. Yeah. It's a lot of food. Yeah. And then I know nutrition is a controversial topic, especially right now. Because in low carb is a big craze right now. And high carb low fat is a big craze. So there's a lot of confusion out there. But I think if someone wants to make a change, definitely doing research and kind of looking into it before. It's important. But

Scott Benner 1:08:17
what I found interesting about what you said is that the transformation happens so quickly. So it makes me feel like the right answers what works. You know, like, whether it's one or the other, like wherever you're seeing, like real impact. Like like that would indicate to me that your body likes what's happening.

Jordan 1:08:36
Yeah,

Scott Benner 1:08:37
you don't I mean, I really would like it. My wife is asking me if I'm still recording. So I'm telling her Yes. I don't know why. She's asking me she has not usually this interested in my life. So weird.

Jordan 1:08:54
So cuz she is working from home.

Scott Benner 1:08:56
I'm wondering if she's gonna burn the house down with me and that's really my main concern. Because then she gets, you know, a small there's a small insurance policy on me. But the house and me plus then she gets like the, you know, the town will feel bad for they'll probably make her casseroles for like a year. And then the kids will really be stuck just the only loving her. I think this is what she's gonna go for here. Let me wait for the return text. Probably gonna be like you smell smoke. I'm gonna go check. That's her cover for the cops. You know, they mean I tried to help him but he was upstairs. He couldn't hear because of the headphones and I miss them. Like that kind of a thing. Like she's probably working or acting right now down there. She's gonna kill me one

Jordan 1:09:39
mile. So she walks when

Scott Benner 1:09:40
there are days when I think it will happen eventually. I always imagined she'll get me with a pillow while I'm sleeping. Classic, you know, they mean no reason to be flashy. Just, I don't know. I think he had sleep apnea.

Jordan 1:09:56
kept telling him to go to the doctor,

Scott Benner 1:09:57
my guest that's how I'll tell you what I bet That's how Tyler goes. I just had to take one more. So I get Tyler, who I'm sure is a lovely person that I've never met. Before, I guess. Listen, I would imagine is because you seem like a very grounded reasonable person. I don't think you would couple up with a jackass. So I think Tyler's property terrific. You really are wonderful. You know that, right? Like, I screwed you over a couple of weeks ago by mistake. And you were just like, that's cool. And now today, You're up early again doing this. And we are just it is six o'clock in the morning. And I am saying that your I called your husband a lead weight, I inferred that you would make a baby with him and then leave him like your father did to your first wife. We have said every ridiculous thing about your life that is possible. And the only reason this happened is because you were nervous, and I had to fill the time. You cause this yourself, Jordan. That's what I'm trying to say.

Jordan 1:10:58
I do appreciate you actually calling me today.

Scott Benner 1:11:00
Oh, look at you take it a swing back at me with some sarcasm. That's lovely. I like that. Jordan, you're terrific. If I was 25 years younger, and Tyler hadn't gotten there first, I would absolutely bother you at college. I'd be like, This girl is gonna make a great berry breakfast one day, I can tell. And she's gonna walk these people to death on a thing. And she looks real earning potentials there's I can tell. So that would check the first box right there. There you go. I don't really tell Well, wait, I was gonna say I don't really say that to people. But I have in the past joked about it. Like, you know, but it's sort of not a joke to at the same time. Like, I know someone who obviously I want out who is married to a person who is in my estimation, oh, lazy. Just like this person just doesn't. I know about their details. They're not motivated. They don't have health issues. There's nothing keeping them back. They just aren't really like looking to kill it in life. Do you know what I mean? Like, they're just like, yeah, you know, I'm awake. This is good enough. Like that kind of thing. And I didn't want a life like that for myself, like I wanted. I wanted to try a little bit. You don't mean like, I'm not trying to be wealthy? I don't, that doesn't motivate me. I'm not looking to you know, I'm not looking to be the king of something. But I would like to be able to, like turn around and say I need $20. And for it to be there. You know, and for that to be comfortable. Yeah. So it was important to me that actually, all the Joking aside. And I'm going to ask you a question in a second about Tyler that series. My daughter and her friend. My daughter has a friend who enjoys my company. I don't know why it's weird. But we got a text early in the week. And she's lovely. They she's one of my daughter's friends who I really, I think is one of my favorite ones of my daughter's friends. And so her name is Bella and Bella said, I want to go out for Friday night for chicken with your dad take us out to dinner. So my wife got sick Friday, which is a shame because she was going to come out. And so Bella and Arden and I went out to get Bella chicken, which is really what was happening and 100% I'm still not sure how it happened. So we're driving back to the house. And the kids start, you know, like sometimes kids to ask like bigger life questions. They started asking like, what kind of a person do you see me with like when I get older, because we were people watching in the restaurant. And I was pointing out to them, like, Look, you can see how people end up together. And we were doing kind of that like social math. Like this guy is handsome, but he's not as tall. So he ended up with this girl who's this but she's like, like, you know what I mean? Like, it's it's such a horrible thing to say, but we all fit somewhere. So we were just kind of talking about how people fit together. This made them really wonder who they fit with. And I was like, Look, I'm you know, there's no way to know, I was like, before we started talking about Bob and Bella says, you know, how did you and your wife end up together and I said, hundred percent. The most important thing to me is that my wife is bright, and articulate, and I can talk to her. I said 100% that's what attracted me to my wife. First. She's a thoughtful person, you can have a deep conversation with, you know, everything's not surface. She's not easily confused by things. You know, they mean like, You know how sometimes you can just make some, like half assed argument to somebody and you change their mind and like in the back of your head, you're like that was it like I swayed you? You know what I mean? Like, like you didn't want to, like work toward or anything. She's reasonable. But she's thorough. She's a hard working person. Her job means something to her. She takes pride in the things she does, and I always knew when I was dating her that she'd be a good mother. Like I could really tell and she absolutely 100 percent is all those things and more. And so I told the kids that and they were like, oh, and I'm like, Yeah, I know. That was the truth. Now let's get back to the fun stuff where we talk about the short guy not being able to get a tall girl, here we go. But yet, for a minute, we were like being real with each other. It was lovely. And so I'm wondering, see, thank you if you're comfortable. And to save his soul, in case he ever listens to this, how did you? How did you decide Tyler was the right one.

Jordan 1:15:32
Um, he is very smart, and very sweet. And he's been super supportive with my diabetes, which has been really just really helpful. My mom was saying the other day that she always thought that I would have to end up with someone else who has type one. Because, like, it's such a hard thing for other people to understand. If you don't really live with it, and know it. But she was talking about how grateful she is for Tyler and how much she's supported me. So yeah, just all around a good guy.

Scott Benner 1:16:13
That's lovely. Very nice. Well, Tyler, you're an all around good guy. And that is a really amazing thing to be seriously. I don't think people think sometimes that other things are, are thought of over just being a decent person, and having good, you know, intentions for people. And I is a person who, you know, I joke around here a lot. But you know, I'm sort of like that. And I found it to be undervalued by others in life. And it's a shame, like, I haven't bent from it. But it's definitely not something that the outside world looks at and goes, Oh, this guy's been a really good father for 20 years. That's not a point thing for most people. You know what I mean? they're just, they're like a, he didn't have a job, or he didn't do this or that, you know, all the things I joked about with Tyler through the hour. So anyway, I think joking aside, I, I find that to be the most important thing. I believe you guys will be married for a bazillion years, and have a bunch of cats that can't tolerate all kinds of different foods together.

Jordan 1:17:20
Hopefully a kids someday

Scott Benner 1:17:21
Well, let's hope the kids can eat tuna while though what would you make? Would you make a baby and make a vegan? Do you think he would write? copy? no reason not

Jordan 1:17:30
to play? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Nice.

Scott Benner 1:17:34
All right. Yeah. Well, I want to know how that goes.

Jordan 1:17:39
I'll keep you updated.

Scott Benner 1:17:40
Well, you won't stop it. So wait. So here's the question. You're an animal, right?

Jordan 1:17:47
Yes.

Scott Benner 1:17:48
So could a vegan baby drink your breast milk?

Unknown Speaker 1:17:51
Oh, go ahead and answer the question.

Jordan 1:17:56
Yes.

Scott Benner 1:17:59
You don't want to be controversial about that at all. Jordan. Nothing. Okay, but you wouldn't get you don't drink cow's milk.

Jordan 1:18:07
And I'm not gonna stick my baby on the cows that are?

Scott Benner 1:18:12
Well, you'd wipe it off first. They're dirty because they walk around. They lay in the room. But yeah, oh, that gets sick. very dirty animals. Very, very dirty animals. But the insides are clean. That's why the milk is okay. You would, but you wouldn't give cow's milk to yourself, right? No, that's vegan. Vegans like nothing that comes from an animal at all? Yeah, okay. So your shoes are like, what? Yeah, like plastic shoes on like the whole thing, right? It's like sandwich bags wrapped around your feet or something. Or what do you got?

Jordan 1:18:46
Just go barefoot everywhere. Gotcha. All right.

Scott Benner 1:18:49
I'm leaving you with a. I'm leaving you with this. For a second story. My friend Mike who is no longer with us, dated a vegan when we were kids. And try to imagine that this was in the early 90s it was not exactly the epicenter of veganism. And we were shopping one day walking through a mall. We were all together. And we walked past a shoe store that had just, I there must have been 1000 pairs of leather shoes in the shoe store. And I'm not gonna lie. You could smell the leather as you walked past the shoe store. And we're all just strolling down the mall. And she just gasps and yells

Unknown Speaker 1:19:30
and yells against smell the leather. She ran away.

Unknown Speaker 1:19:40
And I put my hand on my shoulder. I was like,

Unknown Speaker 1:19:43
how do you handle this one?

Unknown Speaker 1:19:47
He says swear to God, it was like November. And he goes I think she got me a pretty good Christmas present and the sex is great. So I'm gonna hang on a little longer.

Unknown Speaker 1:20:02
I don't know where that girl is now.

Unknown Speaker 1:20:05
But a

Unknown Speaker 1:20:07
bless her she was really thrown by that she

Scott Benner 1:20:12
is one of like the I have two memories of that girl. This next one if your kids are listening, the podcast is over now shut it off. Okay. But my other memory of them is that we all went to the zoo together, which now that I look at it, I'm not sure that she should have been okay with it as a vegan. And, and we were really young, right? So we are and it's another time I want you to remember another time when I tell you the story. So the entire drive to the zoo she's talking about she's just had her nipple pierced. I told you to shut it off and you're listening with your kids, right? And we're all kind of amazed by that. And it wasn't really a vibe of people that we had hung around and we get out of the car. And she's taught she keeps talking about my nipple pierced my nipple pierced and like she's like, you can see it right through my shirt. And I don't know what possessed me and as an adult, I would not do this. But I reached out with the very tip of my finger and I touched it. I was like, Is this it? And there's this long pause and she goes, No, that's my nipple.

Unknown Speaker 1:21:12
And I pulled my hair back slowly. I went. I apologize. We wish

Scott Benner 1:21:18
everyone laughed. It was fine. But um, those are my only two memories of that girl. I don't know her name. I can picture her in my head running away from a shoe store but that's pretty much it. I don't I don't remember anything else about it. I do have a lot of fun memories of Mike but uh, but of her Those are my only two. Anyway, I don't get one so not bad, right. I don't know what he got for Christmas from her. But I hope it was worth waiting. Yeah. All right, Jordan, you were really lovely.

Unknown Speaker 1:21:45
Thank you. No, thank you for doing this. I appreciate it.

Scott Benner 1:21:49
When you email me an hour from now and tell me I'm never allowed to play this or people will completely understand so just

Jordan 1:21:56
know, you might have a angry mob of my family coming after you but

Scott Benner 1:22:00
I would or we could run it where everything said about your by the way everyone said in jest because I don't know any of these people about your father his first marriage. And Tyler you imagine if there was just like 1000 beeps over this episode. That was just you and I like four words went fine. There's like a beep beep beep beep and then went on maybe I put that up. Alright.

Unknown Speaker 1:22:19
Thank you so

Scott Benner 1:22:20
much. I hope you have a great day at work running people into the ground on the treadmill. Thank you seriously go save some lives you What are you doing here?

Jordan 1:22:29
I'll do my best. Huge thanks

Scott Benner 1:22:34
to the Contour Next One blood glucose meter touched by type one. And of course, don't forget about taking that survey at T one d exchange.org. forward slash juice box. Check out the Contour Next One blood glucose meter at Contour Next one.com forward slash juice box. Find out more about touched by type one at touched by type one.org. A bigger thank you to Jordan and an even more bigger Thank you which is not English. But you know what I mean? Bigger than bigger. So huge mungus. To Tyler, who? Let's just face it took it pretty hard for absolutely no good reason during this entire episode. Tyler You sound like a great guy. And I'm certain that you'll have a fulfilling life as a stay at home dad, two cats that can eat protein. Last things support the sponsor support the show, leave a fantastic review on Apple podcast. Share the podcast with someone else. Don't forget about juice box docs.com if you're looking for a great endocrinologist, or other practitioner who helps with Type One Diabetes, this is a list that is being compiled by listeners of the podcast looking for a great doc or have one to share juicebox Doc's calm. Are you trying to share the diabetes pro tip episodes with someone but you just can't figure out how to do it. Send them to diabetes pro tip.com. No s on that tip. It's just a pro tip diabetes pro tip.com. Love the show. Want to share it with a friend. Do that. Love the show? Want to make a great review on Apple podcasts. Do that. Don't want to do any of those things. All right, that's fine with me. Take your free podcast and just go Don't forget to check out Juicebox podcast.com. And of course subscribe to the show in your podcast app if you're listening online right now which I can see that countless thousands of you do. I'm alright with that. Right? Don't don't it's fine with me if you want to listen online, all the lessons count the same. That's fine, but still a subscribe is. He's really saying I love you. It's a commitment. You know, just go into a web page. I go I remember this guy Scott. I go holler at him real quick. See what he's doing. You know, you just click on a link on your like online listening. I mean, that's sort of like it's nice, but it's not a firm commitment. We're not really dating you and I we're just seeing each other. I don't want it to be dirty like that. So get an app on your phone Android or Apple. Apple's the other one right Apple or Android. You know, apple, for instance, there's a free podcast app on their Android. There's a bunch of I got links Juicebox podcast.com. You can find free players don't pay for a player and subscribe. Come on, it pushes me up on the lists. The lists are important. I found that a little lispy. When I said lists just now a lot of SS was you know, there isn't an S at the end of the tip at diabetes pro tip.com. I've clearly run out of things to say. So let me end with this.

No kidding. I've actually run out of things to say I was gonna say something flippant and nothing came out of my mouth. Stop back soon. There are two episodes every week, download them both. Listen, with your ears from start to finish, consume the podcast, become one with the Juicebox Podcast. Hey, if you're on Facebook, find the podcast. It's bold with insulin. That's the public page. There's also a private page where people are talking all about management ideas. That page is called Juicebox Podcast, Type One Diabetes head over, you know, throw in with us and have a nice conversation. Just about 5000 people in the private group now and I think the public groups up to 10,000 is doing great. You can find me on Instagram as well at Juicebox Podcast but there's no like major league conversation on the Instagram just pictures and you know if you're into that, I guess I'm not gonna tell you not to do it. That accounts actually up to about 10,002. So head over see what all the trouble is about. See what all the hullabaloo was going on is and then remember Brum, Brum,

Unknown Speaker 1:26:56
Brum, Brum,

Scott Benner 1:26:58
having trouble making thoughts maybe I should sing an old 20 song. What's a good 20th song? Hold on a second. Famous 1920 murders movies mobsters, musicians music There we go. Whoo. Ain't misbehaving was huge in the 20s. dark was the night downtown Hartford blues in the jailhouse. Now making whoopee by Bing Crosby. My man

Unknown Speaker 1:27:35
huh?

Scott Benner 1:27:37
West and blues Louis Armstrong. Do not wonder what the words to make an whoopee we're cuz.

Unknown Speaker 1:27:46
Now I'm wondering.

Scott Benner 1:27:48
Every time I hear that dear old Wedding March. I feel rather glad I have broken. Wait, I have a broken arch. I have heard a lot of people talk. And I know that marriage is a long long walk. To most people weddings mean romance, but I prefer a picnic or a dance of the bride and groom and other sunny honeymoon. Another season another reason for making Whoopie Is this the back end later the wedding. The chorus sings Here comes the bride and other victim is by her side. This is misogynistic. He's lost his reason? Cause it's the season for making Whoopi. down through the countless ages. You'll find it everywhere. Somebody makes good wages. Somebody wants her share. Jesus. This is harsh. She calls him toodles and rolls her eyes. She makes him strudels and bakes him pies. What is it all for? This is like a bad Cat in the Hat. It's so helpful for making whoopee. Wait, you got to trick me into those sex. Another year or maybe less? What's this? I hear? Well, can you guess she feels neglected? So he suspected of making whoopee. Are you following this? I think the inference here is men don't want to be married to the 20s. But that's the only way they're going to get laid. And so you give him a pie if you're a lady, and then he marries you. I'm not clear on what you get out of this yet. And the ladies I'm saying and then soon enough, he's going to get tired of your pie from what I'm guessing here. And then he's going to go make the Wolfie with somebody else. Or is he making the copy? Or do you just feel neglected because he's ignoring you and therefore you think he's making the copy? Let's read on it. We'll find out. She sits alone most every night. Oh, no, he's out. He doesn't phone or even right. He's gone. He says he's busy. But she says is he not easy peasy. Why? Like, is he from Grey's Anatomy is he? He's making whoopee. He doesn't make much money $5,000 per year. skies a slacker even by 1920 standards, some judges who think he's funny some judge who thinks he's funny says you'll pay six to her. Oh, I see. He only makes five grand but he's got to give six to the lady. I mean, how many pies did she make? He says now judge suppose I failed the judge says budge right into jail. We are up to this guy going from not wanting to go to a wedding because his foot doesn't hurt. He can't dance. To now he's gonna get locked up for not making his alimony you better keeper you'll find it's cheaper than making won't be. Oh, not cheating is cheaper than giving away your money. So dark song written by two men Gus Kahn and Walter Donaldson. A lot of people recorded this song Doris Day. Eddie Cantor, Ella Fitzgerald in Crosby Huh?

Unknown Speaker 1:31:01
What do you know?

Scott Benner 1:31:04
My ADHD led us to reading the lyrics of making won't be at the end of an hour and 30 minute long podcasts where all we really did was make fun of Jordan's husband Tyler for no reason that is discernible. I guess that makes sense.

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#372 After Dark: Divorce and Co-Parenting

ADULT TOPIC WARNING

A father of a type 1 discusses his divorce and co-parenting 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

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

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello, everybody. Welcome to Episode 372 of the Juicebox Podcast and Episode 1234 episode seven of the afterdark series. So far we've done afterdark for drinking, weed smoking, trauma and addiction. Sex from the female perspective, depression and self harm sex from the male perspective. Today we're doing divorce from the perspective of the father of a child with Type One Diabetes. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored today by the Omni pod tubeless insulin plump, plump, plump by the Omni pod tubeless insulin pump, go to my Omni pod.com Ford slash juicebox. Today to get a free no obligation demo of the Omni pod sent directly to your home. plump up your diabetes game. I don't even know what I'm talking about. The episode is also sponsored by the dexcom g six continuous glucose monitor dexcom.com Ford slash juice box will tell you everything you need to know about what is in my opinion, the world's most amazing diabetes tool for measuring your blood sugar. See what direction and speed your blood sugar is moving in, in real time with the dexcom g six continuous glucose monitor. You want to make good decisions about insulin, get a G six. If you've been thinking about these tools and have been procrastinating, what are you doing get to it. And if you don't know what I'm talking about, you have to go look, this stuff is amazing.

It took me quite some time to find someone willing to come on and talk about being divorced. And having a child with type one diabetes, and the CO parenting that goes with it. But today you're going to speak to a wise and brave man named Jeremy. And he's really going to share how his divorce went when his son's diagnosis cropped into the story and how they dealt with things and continue to deal with things to this day. Please remember, while you're listening that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, please always consult a physician before making changes to your medical plan are becoming bold with insulin. You could become part of some amazing Type One Diabetes Research right there from the comfort of wherever your butt is at this moment from your phone or computer, go to T one d exchange.org. forward slash juicebox. Take yet you gotta be from the US for this. Take a short survey, I think it took me about seven minutes to take, you're going to be supporting research and supporting the podcast at the same time. T one d exchange.org. forward slash juicebox.

Jeremy 3:02
My name is Jeremy Ross Meyer, I'm a single dad of 11 year old type one diabetic named thaman. We've been diagnosed at this point about two and a half years. And we have had an A one C at this point of six or under for the last two years.

Scott Benner 3:22
Congratulations. That's excellent. So you, Jeremy were very kind. I've put this call out a number of times and never gotten a response. But of the private messages that I get a number of them are consistently about Do you have any episodes about co parenting about you know, divorce that, you know, I'm having a lot of trouble. It always feels like it's one or the other, you know, either we're not on the same page or one person's taking the care. You know what, what feels like more seriously to this person than the other person is. And no one ever really knows how to do it because of all of the other entanglements that are wrapped around it. And so you're, you're here to talk about your your time with this, which is really kind and I appreciate it for everybody. So unlike most episodes, I'm going to start with how old are you and when did you get married?

Jeremy 4:22
I'm 38 now, um, got married when I want to say I was 25 or 26.

Scott Benner 4:32
Okay, how long did you How long did you make it? I'm gonna try to make this fun if I can

Jeremy 4:39
find I think I have a good way of answering this and it's not exactly how you want me to answer but I'm going to answer in this way please. So um I have always growing up. I grew up in roller skating rinks whether that be in Lincoln, Nebraska or up here in Montana and There was a co worker that said, Hey, I have this friend, I think that you would really like to meet. And she brought, I was the Friday night, Saturday night DJ for 15 plus years at this roller rink at this point, okay. And she walked through the door, and I instantly knew that, yes, that's the one, it was one of those things. And at this point, she was 17. I was 21. So I was, you know, it was a little different, but it is what it is. And from that point, on to the point, we got married, it was about four years, okay, um, and I'm a product of a divorce myself. And it was one of those things where we wanted to make sure in every way shape or form that that we were going to work. And if the even meant that we moved in together and live together for about two years to make sure that sight was gonna work, we always knew that we were going to end up getting married. But we wanted to make it make sure it was going to work. And in the end, it didn't work. We so we dated for about four years. And we were together, just under six years. And we've been divorced for just about seven years now.

Scott Benner 6:28
Okay. So you do you're married, you were together for four years living together, and then we're married for two years. Now we were married for six, six, excuse me. So four to 10. In total? I got it. Yeah. All right. So you went from 21 to 31. During that time? Excuse me, you met when you were 21. So you got married when you were like 25? She was 21. Okay, I got it. Yep. All right. Sorry. Okay, so so that's a, that's a long time. How is there a moment? in those 10 years? Where you thought, this is not working the way I wanted it to? Or did it sneak up on you? Did you walk in the house one day, and she was like, your stuffs on the lawn? I'm leaving and you went? Wait, what's happening? Or did you feel it coming?

Jeremy 7:17
Can you talk? No, she it? Uh, I knew that it was coming. It was one of those things? Were they were all the warning signs. She blatantly told me Look, you know, this needs to happen. And I guess we need to go into a little bit of, of at least least what what caused the divorce a little bit to understand kind of what happened. And, and at the time, I would have told you Well, look, kind of like you said earlier that that that, you know that. You know, I married that night and I didn't it was me being you know, retrospectively looking back over all this, you know, it was me honestly. Not wanting to put the effort forth in the in the marriage to make it work. I said, Well, I got what I wanted, don't need to go out and go to the park. I don't need to go out and do this. I don't need to go out and do that. And you know, you want to go have a have a one shot at the lake. Okay, let's go to Lake and well, I'm hot. Let's drive back. You know, it was me not putting forth a lot of the effort that was required.

All around, I guess, being lazy.

And it was me.

I guess being socially awkward, me being having a bit of social anxiety and not liking to be around large groups of people. Those aren't excuses. It was just, you know, looking back on. I think that's a lot of what I was struggling with at the time that it always seemed like she would ask me to go do something I would tell her No, I would continue sitting in my chair. And she would leave. And it got to that point where she's, you know, she had vocalized her concerns multiple times for a couple of years, to be honest with you, right? And I kept on saying, you know, no, I'll change no oil change the oil change. And

Scott Benner 9:34
did you can I ask, did you share with her that you had, like this social awkwardness? Was she aware of that?

Jeremy 9:41
Not really, until afterwards. It wasn't until we were we were divorced. And we for you know a good number of years, probably three years or so. That that I we really sat down and talked about it. And it was kind of eye opening at that point because she she kind of understood me more at that point. And I understood her more.

Yeah, it was just a really awkward time. Do you?

Scott Benner 10:15
Do you have feelings? That you said, You're from a divorced family? Did you feel like you were like that was going to happen? At some point? Did you have an expectation that you couldn't stay married? I'm wondering or no,

Jeremy 10:28
I was always very, very much from the standpoint of, you know, marriage. Because I mean, I grew up in parochial school until at least sixth grade or so. And I was raised that you know, whenever you get married, you get married, and you're married. And that's it. Yeah. You know, once and done it, it isn't a failure option thing. But in a way, yes. Because like I said, You know, I took every precaution beforehand, unlike, you know, lots of people nowadays, or even 10 years ago, where, Hey, stop a cat,

Unknown Speaker 11:10
where

Scott Benner 11:10
you got to give that cat a better name. I know

Jeremy 11:15
where it was, ever. They just, you know, kids nowadays, they just move in with each other not trying to bet anything.

Scott Benner 11:24
Well, that's a good point. And during those four years that you live together, were you awkward then or is that something that you grew into?

Jeremy 11:31
It, it was something I grew into, and I've always been a bit socially awkward. And it's been one of those things where if even now trying to go to Walmart, by myself, for myself, it's not, it's not gonna happen, unless I have someone there. Like, even my son, violent someone there, I'm okay, I can go inside, I can shop all day long. It just got socially, Eric, I guess it got worse with the marriage because I started learning that I don't even have to go, I could just ask her to go.

Scott Benner 12:04
I say, you know, taking away this awkwardness for you by being the person who went out and did this thing, you didn't have to do that anymore. But then when she has wanted to do something personal with you, you are getting more and more comfortable. In at home.

Jeremy 12:18
Exactly. Okay. The

biggest thing, but with that, it also, I didn't realize at the time that that's what it was, it wasn't until you know, I I seeked out a doctor and I and I talked to a doctor over all this that I found out about all this, you know, I knew that there was something wrong and but I couldn't explain it. It wasn't until after the divorce that I truthfully understood what it was and why I was experiencing it and everything else. Because I've always been okay at work. Because Well, I be there a been in a position of power, if you will, at work where I'm in control. But you put me in a situation where I'm not in control. And that's where I break down.

Scott Benner 13:07
Okay. And you didn't even know it yourself. So you couldn't even tell her. It just felt like I don't want to go out or I'll do it.

Jeremy 13:17
Yeah, it was overwhelming anxiety. And at that time, once again, didn't know what anxiety really was, you know, I? It was it's different, I guess.

Scott Benner 13:29
And and so I guess when you don't know what it is, it feels like, like, Oh my god, she's bothering me all the time to do these things. She knows I don't want to do them. Like why so you can almost get angry in return. In this scenario where you have no real? No, no real right to be angry. But it just it kind of manifests itself I guess. In that

Jeremy 13:51
Yeah. And I wouldn't really call it anger. It was just it wasn't, like I said, an overwhelming sense of anxiety.

Scott Benner 14:00
Okay. So you didn't mind her asking you to go out you just once the Ask happen. You just were like, well, I can't do that.

Jeremy 14:06
Yeah. And then you know, and I knew there was a serious breakdown whenever she stopped asking, right? It was, Hey, I'm gonna go over to my parents. Or, hey, I'm gonna go do this. It wasn't, hey, let's go do this. Or let's go to the park or let's do this, or let's do that. It was I'm going,

Scott Benner 14:27
huh? So it's kind of it's fairly classic then. So you get married. There's a person there that does this stuff. We are together because I work or you work or we both work and we we intersect we have a meal. We'll bang our genitals into each other once in a while. keep the house clean, pay the bills. That's what we're doing over and over again. Like that's just what this is. And, and she wanted more than that. And you were really probably pretty thrilled with how it was I would imagine.

Jeremy 14:55
Yeah. And then I mean, don't get me wrong. We had tons of great years. tons. great memories match.

I mean, and I

I'll be honest with you, I mean, I, she's, she's been remarried now for three or four years. If she was to get divorced and want to get back together, I would take her back in a heartbeat. We've grown that much since then. I still love her as the mother of my child. But we actually get along better now than we did for most of our marriage.

Scott Benner 15:35
Well, I guess probably because you explained yourself to her. She understands now and yeah, and the and the stressors gone? Because, you know, do you think if Do you think if we wave the magic wand, and she was back in the house and said, hey, let's go out and have a picnic? you'd just be like, yeah, cool. Or would you say, Oh, no, that makes me anxious. But let's work through it. Like, where are you at?

Jeremy 15:56
It's giving me anxiety right now, just thinking. Gotcha. But at the same time, I don't know. It's like it would be worth it in the long run. And I'm not saying that that will ever happen. I understand. No, I understand. In my mind, we've, we've, we've grown enough to I think we could end up doing it. But that's you're trying to say that

Scott Benner 16:17
you guys have your relationship didn't stop growing. When the divorce has no,

Unknown Speaker 16:22
yeah, I'll be honest with you.

Jeremy 16:25
Whenever we even

so right after the divorce thing, not right after right before the divorce, and then the preceding years after the divorce things were not great.

And I think we need to talk about that.

Scott Benner 16:42
Yeah, Jeremy. That's why you're right. Yeah, that's why you're on because because you had a contentious divorce. And it's not any longer and so let's just put a little perspective on it. Your child with diabetes? How long? How old was? How old was your child when you were divorced when you got divorced?

Jeremy 17:03
Um, he was four or five appetite?

Scott Benner 17:07
Okay. Did he have type one then?

Jeremy 17:10
No, we didn't get it diagnosed until 2019. February 9 2019. Oh, no, not 918.

Scott Benner 17:19
roughly how long? Were you divorced when he was diagnosed?

Jeremy 17:24
Four years.

Scott Benner 17:25
Okay. There's a fair amount of time. And yeah, in those four years, what you were about to say is your relationship with your ex was how

Jeremy 17:34
it was. Okay. So it was interesting. I mean, right before the divorce and for, you know, since then it was it was very rocky. I mean, it was where everybody's taking notes on everybody else, just in case. And, you know, this is your time, this is my time, if it was me trying to manipulate a lot of the situations. It was me fighting to get this done or fighting to get that done. It was, you know, it was me versus her. But at the same time, we always, she always still called me whenever she was, you know, needed something, or should we still talk like we were friends, but there was still a hardcore line there. Yeah. And

as that progressed,

it got more and more to the point where we were talking more as friends. Even to the point where she would call me about her boyfriends. Hey, this guy is saying this. What does this mean? You know, and it was it was weird, but at the same time, I knew that she trusted me, right. And even to this day, I mean, like, whenever thaman went to his first camp last year, his diabetes camp. She called me at 3am in the morning on her porch, freaking out, you know, talking to me, and I'm like, you have a husband go talk to your husband about it seems like no, but you understand.

Scott Benner 19:17
So cat and I are sleeping. So

Unknown Speaker 19:19
yeah, exactly.

Scott Benner 19:21
No, no, I hear what you're saying. So So this, so I guess removed from being impacted by your social anxiety. She really did like everything else about you. It wasn't it was it was really that part right there. Did you must have really been a hermit huh? Yeah, yeah. Yeah. I say it. Alright. Tell me about the diagnosis a little bit. How did that go? Cuz you're gonna have a different story than other people. This week, I've been helping a newly diagnosed family get through the first couple of days with type one. This is something I'm doing personally in my own time and It didn't take 48 hours for the person to say to me, is there another way to get this insulin in besides these needles? And I said, Yeah, I mean, you could get an insulin pump. They asked me which one I would choose. And the only thing that I could tell them was that the Omni pod tubeless insulin pump has been a mainstay of my daughter's life since she was four years old. And Arden is 16. Now, for 12 years, every day, my daughter has been wearing it on the pod tubeless insulin pump. And it's been a friend, honestly, in our our lives with Type One Diabetes. So not because you know, it's a click for the podcast, but I just said to her here, go to this link. And give it a try. it'll send one to your house, and you can slap it on and give it a whirl, my omnipod.com forward slash juice box? Well, the pods on its way, and they're very much looking forward to it. And I'll be able to report back to you what they do in the future. But I'm you know, them I don't, I don't care what any of you do. I'm just telling you that the Omni pod exists, I think it's terrific. And it's super simple for you to check out because you can get a free, no obligation demo, my Omni pod.com forward slash juice box. The Omni pod is tubeless. It's easy. It works. You can swim bave, recreate, do whatever you want, and keep it on. Super important not to have to disconnect to do those things. Because when you do that you're without your insulin. That's it. You don't need a big sell. For me. It's what I think is right. It's why on the positive sponsor, if I didn't like on the pod, if I didn't love it, if my daughter didn't have the most amazing experience with it, they would not be sponsors on this podcast. That's it. That's how you can take that to the bank, as they say. So support the podcast if you will use my link. And if you don't, as long as you guys are happy. That's what makes me happy. Another thing that makes me happy is being able to see the speed and direction of my daughter's blood sugar. You don't think I thought those other people about Dexcom? I certainly did. Why? Because right here on my iPhone or on their Android, she told me I have an Android phone. So don't worry, it works with that too. I can see my daughter's blood sugar right now. Well, I know what it is. It's 115. That quick, it's stable and steady. It is not rising or falling. It's actually been 115 for about the past 45 minutes, she came down from a little bit of a high from a lunch that had some fat and protein in it that it didn't do a great job of bolusing for but we were able to bring that number down and come in for this beautiful landing at 115. Because we can see Arden's blood sugar in real time because of the Dexcom g six, understand, went to a lunch had some food it hit or harder than it should have. And instead of sitting there all like I don't know what to do, you know, for three or four hours and looking at this big blood sugar, we were able to bring it down gracefully and safely. right back to where we want it.

I'm not even gonna bother telling you today. You know what I said? I'm gonna tell you anyway, right about the share and follow features. My daughter's sharing her Dexcom data and I'm seeing it on my phone, she could actually share it with up to 10 people of her choosing. If she was an adult and still wanted us to follow her blood sugars in college, we could do that. Or even if she was a you know, 1000 years old, the oldest person in the world with diabetes, we could still follow her blood sugar on our phones dexcom.com forward slash juicebox my Omni pod.com forward slash juice box links are in the show notes and at Juicebox podcast.com if you can't remember them, and please add your name to the T one D exchange T one d exchange.org forward slash juice box back to Jeremy hoppy dem one take no edits. I am so pleased with myself right now you have no idea I don't mean to break the fourth wall here and you're listening to the podcast I'm thinking like is Jeremy going to tell more about like is he is he's gonna get really into being divorced now and stuff like that. I don't think he cries. But one time he almost made me cry. not the point. The point is, I just did that ad in one take no edits. I only fumbled a word like one time. I am so happy with myself right now. I'm so sorry. Here we go. podcast Here comes. Tell me about the diagnosis a little bit.

Jeremy 24:26
At that time. claim. My ex wife lived in Helena about 80 miles away from where we live in Great Falls. We Great Falls. It's it's me thaman my son and her parents. And she lives in hell 80 miles away. And he stays up here in Great Falls to go to school. That's where all his friends are. That's where he started everything and then she sees On the weekend, or whenever she comes, she'll either come down to Great Falls and standard parents or thaman will go up to her. My, my. I don't want to call her my ex mother in law because she's so much more than that. To me, she's really is my secondary mother and her parents very much are still my family gotcha. She had noticed that he was urinating more than usual. I'd kind of noticed that, but he's growling, whatever. And then finally, the school teacher called and said, You know, I don't know what's going on. But Damon went to the bathroom 15 times today. And Kathy is sorry, is Damon's grandma had told me Hey, look, you know, he's been going to bathroom law, just pay attention. So the teacher actually allowed him to do it. And then that night, I was like, Okay, so this, yeah, he had gotten up four or five times. And then all of a sudden, he started wetting the bed. I'm like, What the hell is going on? You know, he's, he's nine years old, this shouldn't be happening. And then all of a sudden, it was he peed the bed four times that night. And I'm like, Kay, there's something going on here. So I had called Kathy, my ex mother in law. And she said, You know, this can be quite a different couple things. It's probably just urinary tract infection. But I had this one kid at school, where it was something else. I don't want to mention what it is just you make an appointment. So I made an appointment. And I had called, said, Hey, this is what's going on. Can I get an appointment sometime this week? And she's like, Well, yeah, so they scheduled it three or four days later. And within 30 minutes, our pediatrician called me back and she said, we're not waiting till Wednesday. I need you down here. Now. I'm like, Okay, is there something wrong? She goes, there could be Don't worry about it. Just get down here. Now. Let them know what the front desk who you are. Just get down here. Yeah. We got down there. It was just me and Damon at this point. And I did that the nurse was at the door with the door open waiting for us. They pretty much had this nailed down from the very beginning. And, I mean, the nurse grabbed ahold of Damon's arm, started walking fast. I'm like, Whoa, chill out. He just peeing a lot, man. And she's like, Well, good, because he's peeing all the time. He can pee in this cup. And she peed in the cup. And they put us in a room and I have 45 seconds later, the pediatrician was in there with the with the big old glucometer on one of those vampire pokers and got him bleeding stuck him. It was like 532. And I'm like, okay, that seems high. That seems like a good score.

Scott Benner 28:15
500 that's a hard number to get.

Jeremy 28:17
And I'll be honest with the I remember that point because her name's crystal. She's an amazing, amazing doctor. She just immediately broke down and started crying. I still remember that. Like it was yesterday. And I said, Is everything okay? And she's like, well, I'll be honest with you.

It looks like your wife's about to change.

Unknown Speaker 28:44
For

Jeremy 28:47
I need to get some blood to verify it, but she goes, you know, just be prepared if you need to call anybody to come down to the hospital with you and everything. You know, this could be type one diabetes, and it's a it's a fairly large change in your life and you're gonna need support. Like, okay, well, you know, my grandma had type type two, I got this this. And I remember seeing grandma every bit every night just taking a shot. I bet it'll be fine. Right? So, you know, we we got the blood test. And it was taken a while to come back. And she said, You know, I want you to go home. And, you know, I'll call you get your stuff together, though. You're probably gonna have to go into the ER. And so we went over to grandma and grandpa's, because grandma grandpa's was a lot closer to the hospital and where I currently live. And I sat there and I talked to Rick, my ex father in law once again, so much more than just to ex father in law. And I told him right before we left the doctor a call back and she goes yeah, you're gonna have to get down to the ER And I talked to my son now I'm probably not going to be able to do this by myself if this is something crazy. Just stay on standby. We got down to the ER, they they smelled his breath. They did all this other stuff. They took blood and they're like, oh, yep, this type one diabetes and I. And I kind of just sat there for a second. I didn't know what any of it meant. Of course, they're not explaining anything but he's not in DK at this point isn't like, we're, you know, rustling and bustling. And yeah, like, everything was going off. And I. And I just I remember picking up the phone and talking or calling his grandpa and I was like, Look, you need to get down here. I might need a second set of ears on this. I'm kind of deer in the headlight right now. And he came down and he was there for the next at least 18 to 20 hours with me?

Scott Benner 31:01
How do you handle that with your, your ex wife being so far away with you? Do you tell her in that moment? Or do you tell her at the end? Or when do you contact her?

Unknown Speaker 31:11
So, um,

Jeremy 31:13
the way we've always done medical stuff is it's 5050 decision. And which, you know, that's just a legal term to keep people happy in my opinion. And it's just something on a piece of paper, you know? And I and I called her and I said, Hey, you know, I kind of kept her abreast but I've always known you know, you don't give her the full shebang right away. Just let her kind of know the basics of Hey, I'll keep you informed if it's anything crazy. Oh, give me a call. And I remember calling her and I and I told her I said, Look, we're down at the ER. They're saying his blood sugar's high. At this point, they're they're saying something about type one diabetes? I don't know much about it. Don't worry, I'll keep you keep going. I go, I just need from you it. I mean, if Can I need to know that I have your permission to do whatever needs to be done. Hmm. And she's like, Well, isn't that serious? And I said, it's, it's starting to look that way. Yes. And she's like, well, is he gonna die? And I'm like, No, he's not gonna die. He they said, He's fine. He'll live he'll, you know, be fine. And everything, it just, I need your permission that, you know, if they say they need this, you know, an IV, if they need this, give that and she's like, No, just do whatever you need to do. She goes, you know, just let me know what's going on. And, but with everything else, just like nowadays, it's like he needs a flu shot. Yeah, yeah, get it, whatever. You know, we felt each other out to know kind of where liberties are. Because primarily, I'm the one taking them to the doctor's, I'm the one getting ready for school. I'm the one that's, you know, she lives 80 miles away. And so at this point, she just trust me to do whatever just, you know, tell her afterwards, and she's fine. But what type one it was, it was a little different. I mean, there was a lot of asking a lot of

explaining a lot of

Scott Benner 33:28
so give me a second here, because that's interesting, because you're the one who understands what's happening as best as possible, because you're there, but you still need to get someone's okay. But I'm assuming you don't have you can't walk her through it every step of the way to make sure she understands, because you don't have that kind of time on this end. And, and so does it does, in your opinion, does somebody have to just give over and say, Alright, look, you know more about this than I do. So I'm gonna defer to you, or is it about educating the other person? And how do you, I guess, what did you end up doing?

Jeremy 34:06
So, from that point, um, I finally told her, you know, we got our own room, go ahead and come up. He's perfectly fine. He's not gonna die. But there is a lot of information, we're not going to be allowed to leave the hospital until all the caretakers are up there, get educated and we pass the test. That's just how they do it up here. And she's like, okay, so she came down and there was this moment whenever she had called me whenever she was outside, because the pediatric floor up here is locked. You have to be let in. So crazy people can't come in and steal your kit. Or the kids can't wander off, right? And I remember meeting her at the door. And I remember she wanted to go into the room and I said no, we'll just come over here with with you For a second, and this is really where it all for us. This is where it all broke down. Okay, well not broke down in a bad way. I pulled her into the room right next door and I said, Look everything in the past, everything that we've been fighting about for the last two years, three years, whatever it was that point, all of the bolts that we've been doing all of the arguing all the fighting all the lying all the everything else. It ends now, okay, I go, what you're about to walk into is going to change your life, our life, our family's life, forever. I go, things are completely different now. So at this point, I need your word, that everything from the past, it's done, it's clean slate.

There can't be a divide anymore. Yeah.

And she, she kind of, I remember, I remember this, like it was yesterday, she just, she kind of looked at me. And she's like, Is it really going to change her life that much. And I said, every day, it's going to be something different. And if we don't work for a team, as a team, there's going to be more payment, payments, health is going to be at risk if we do not work as a team. Yeah. And I remember she just kind of it she, she let out this little. Like she, like, let out all the air in her lungs. And she's like, Okay, let's do this. And it was off to the races at that point.

Scott Benner 36:46
I have to stop for a second, I'm imagining that when you said that to her, she thought, Wow, this is so bad. You and I are gonna be nice to each other. You know, I'm

Jeremy 36:56
sure. And you have to kind of remember, at that point, you know, it was it was weird. We were still friends. But we were still whenever it came down to the same in level, we were very, very against each other. You know, this is my day, this is my day, you know, you get in between this time and this time? And can I ask you that this?

Scott Benner 37:19
Like, from your perspective? Why does that happen? Like, what what? What is it a fear that, that he's gonna like one of you better or that like, what feeds that in?

Jeremy 37:29
Okay. So and

I have an interesting way of looking at that, um, for one, and I'm not talking about like, my ex wife at this point, I'm just talking in general, I honestly think it's a power trip. I think that it's because I remember this, I remember getting in into this exact fight was cleaner. I said something to the point of our son or my son, and we're, she's like, No, he's not your son. He is my son. And I remember fighting with her about No, it no matter how many times you spend this, he is our son. We created him, whether you like it or not, we are going to be, you know, dealing with this until he's 18. Right. You know, and so I think a lot of it is is a power struggle, you know, you did me wrong, so I'm going to lock down and be you know, this is my kid. It is a lot of it. A lot of people do have something to worry about. There are those those relationships where, you know, either either one of them are abusive, and it would be stupid to let them you know, take full control. Yeah, or, you know, there are those situations, but for the most part, I think it's a bunch of peacocking. It's, you know, they're everybody, they're still in that stage of being pissed off about the divorce, they're still in that human stage, I guess, kid, whatever, whatever it is, and they get stuck in this thing. And they they're like, the kids are perfect ammo for my destruction of this other person

Scott Benner 39:18
is the one thing that I still know you care about. And that you'll be upset about if it goes the way you want it to go.

Jeremy 39:27
Now, I understand that not all cases are like that. I mean, there's some families it's like, I bet I read online. It's just like, I wouldn't get into I wouldn't give the kid to him either. Yeah, yeah.

Scott Benner 39:38
Yeah. your specific situation, your two very decent loving parents who either of them could, you know, either of you sounds like could have your child full time and it wouldn't be detrimental to your child, but either are situations where there are people defending against more than just bickering. It's absolutely absolutely right. Gotcha. Wow. Okay, so So you basically came from the perspective of Look, this is a health issue. And we can't, like nothing's more important than his health. So we're going to, we're going to put this all aside, did it work initially? Or were there bumps getting to that?

Jeremy 40:19
Oh, no, it was an immediate for us, it was immediate, there was a little bit of feeling out of, you know, that there had, there was a lot of trust, that had to be built in a short amount of time. Um, and for the first three months, when we were still, you know, doing the, the what the endo wanted, if you will, um, there was a little bit of a, of a power struggle, but it wasn't bad. I mean, it wasn't like we were arguing left, right and center.

Because at this point is primarily just

myself and his grandparents. claiming to have to go back to Helmand. She had been trained at the hospital, but it was still it was military boot camp, you know, there's no, here's your pens goodbye. Although I will admit, our hospital up here did amazing job, I mean, that I still met the pediatric nurse Jamie was amazing, I could bet that woman deserves a raise three fold over. But anyways, it wasn't until about three months in whenever I've always been that type of person that like I owned a lot of Honda Civics and I could still probably tell you what every single wire in that car does, okay? Know what the voltage is what it leads to, and everything else. And I kind of applied the same thing to diabetes. I instantly got online the night he was diagnosed, I remember sitting there until four in the morning, and we were putting a double room and given the corner room. And they knew there was a lot of families so that we needed a bigger room and whatnot. So I slept in the hospital with him. And every single night he was there. I remember sitting online, and I started researching. And then I found Facebook groups. And then I found out found other Facebook groups, and then I found parents of you know, parent type groups. I'm trying to be sensitive here to names of groups. And I buckled down and I started reading people's experiences and their knowledge. And then, of course, I went off the deep end and of course had to I wanted to know exactly what failed in my son. And you know, he and he and I trained my son that way the same way to us that kid would now for Sella beta cell, adult cell and a gamma cell is he can tell you what each one does. You know, and I, I deep dove and became obsessed with anything and everything, diabetes. And all of the crazy ways that his body works differently than our bodies and everything else. And I quickly learned that what grandma and grandpa knew and what mom do knew and what I knew there was a clear, you know, like, Okay, what the endo is telling us, yes, that will keep him alive. But I don't want to just keep him alive. I want to make sure that when he leaves 18 or whatever, and then I've told him I go Do you want to live with me until you're 30 I don't care. then ultimately, you know, whenever you turn 18 I want his Look, I want to be able to honestly tell him that if he goes out and keeps doing the things he's doing, he's gonna live a long and happy life.

Scott Benner 43:59
Yeah. And do you think he's getting how long he had type one now, I guess a couple years

Jeremy 44:06
is about two and a half years. Okay. And

Scott Benner 44:09
it's going really well for you that you really are. I mean, I watch you in the in the Facebook group and you're a resource for people you really have a handle on it, how are things going and how have you been able to communicate that back and forth with his mom and him and you you have a smooth system at this point.

Jeremy 44:30
It as smooth as it can be? It is very smooth. So I would want to say if you had to break it down, grandma and grandpa have him about 50% of the time. I have him about 40% of the time and cleaner has him about 10% of the time because she has weekends and whatnot here. So, um, you know, like, like I said the very beginning I'm a single dad, I and whenever I mean single, I mean single single. I don't Have someone else to watch my son whenever I go to work. So Grandma and Grandpa, haven't they I give them a couple nights a week because of all they do for for me. So it comes out to about 50 4010. And whenever I finally said, Okay, I'm taking control of all this. And, you know, I understand what's going on the way that I see diabetes in my head. I'm sure I could make an episode just about how visually it works in my head. Because it doesn't make sense to me, let alone anybody else, but it ends up working out. Okay. So, anyways, so the communication part at this point is kind of like your episode texting with diabetes, except it's instead of the school and instead of with your kid, it's literally with the kid, the mom and the grandparents. There's group chats, we use tide pool to enter in all of his carbs and his mealtimes and what he ate. So I can kind of look at things whenever he's over there and go, Okay, this rises from the food. It isn't just bazel or anything else, I can kind of look and see, okay, well, we'll had pasta tonight. That's kind of what this is. So we use tide pool where everybody can enter in information, and everybody can see everything that's being done. Real Time. Um, we use sugar mate to call us at night.

Scott Benner 46:43
If he gets low, or something like that happens, everybody gets that ring through phone call that sugar mate does.

Jeremy 46:48
Oh, yeah. Oh, yeah. And and, you know, does it get annoying? Like, especially if he's at someone else's house? And he hear it? No, it doesn't. it the way we all see it, and we all discuss it and everything else is that it's back up? You know. And normally, we don't start getting a little antsy and start texting each other back and forth like crazy people. Unless he gets, you know, very low 60s or into the 50s. And typically at that point, it's at this point, it's just the text that Damon, have you Okay, dude?

Scott Benner 47:28
Yeah, someone's gonna do something about it. You just did it the anxiety of not knowing if they're maybe missing it? Yeah.

Jeremy 47:34
Because I'll be out for at first it was like anytime that that thing went off, and he was blown away at it was like, Oh, my God, what happened? Is it activity is food isn't this. And there is still a little bit of that on my side. Because, with, with me doing all the pump changes with me doing all of the generalized, this is the direction we're moving. It's one of those things I kind of need to know. And then it's turned into me just texting grandma and saying activity question mark. And she'll say, No. And I'm like, just sitting on his butt. And he's, she's like, yep. And so if I see that around two to two days in a row, typically I can go Okay, well, that's bazel just speed touched a sec, you know, just a little bit. Um, but that's kind of how we communicate at this point, at least me in the grandparents, we do have some phone calls that may last a little longer to try to figure out, you know, a little bit more, but for the most it's just very simple text. And then there's still times where things are just not right, like right now, right now. He's, he's just starting puberty. And although he's still like, 8590 95% range every day. There's the bazel still needs to be pushed down. You know, he's bazel just as like porn on you know, it's like your analogy with airplanes is your icon dump there, you know. And so anyways, we're going through that a little bit right now but like that, that's just we know that's what's going on. I'm, you know, add a little bit more, a little bit more, a little bit more every day. And the common thing you'll hear between me and the grandparents anyways, give me a couple days I'll fix it. Hmm. And they know at that point, you know, a, I know there's a problem b i have a plan to attack it and see just give me a couple days. With Mom, it's a little different. With mom, since she isn't around it quite as much. There's a lot more phone calls going on. And every time that you know, and she knows there's an open door and she calls sometimes it's she doesn't have to call call sometimes. She calls two or three times in a weekend. Yeah. And that's okay. Ultimately, I don't just tell her what to do and hang up the phone. It's typically I, I give her a quick, this is why it's happening. This is what to look for. And this is how we, this is what I would do.

Scott Benner 50:22
And that because yes, it works. And so

Jeremy 50:26
and why not typically, it's one of those things that you hear about that type of thing, once she gets it, we fix it, we move on. And that's really, you know, what we've had to do as a as a as a family. And you've probably seen me post it plenty of times in your group, you know, just fix it, and move on.

Scott Benner 50:47
Yeah. You know, there have been enough times where something's been fixed that then she says, Well, I figured this out now. And then that stops being a communication point, because she doesn't need it anymore. Like she's Oh, yeah, growing more slowly, because she's not around that as much but still figuring it out.

Jeremy 51:01
Yeah, yeah, exactly. And like I said, it is one of those things where I explain it to her once she gets it and we move on. There's there are some times that she'll text me and she goes, is this what we were talking about last week is the same thing happening here. And I, you know, ask a few questions. I'm like, Yeah, it is. So sometimes she wants backup just to acknowledge that, yes, this is what's going on. But for the most part, she's fairly independent at this point. There might be thing and she knows, then there are some times that if something's looking crazy, I will just call called Damon, I will take control, and I will tell him what he needs to do. He knows what's going on. If she needs to know at that point, then then he explains it to her. In a lot of bits, a lot of it's transitioning from me talking to the grandparents and me talking to cleaner to me talking to Feynman. And he, he may be 11 and everything, but there are some times I'll call him and say, Hey, dude, what do you think's going on right now? And he'll tell me? Well, it's obviously bazel. Dad, come on, you know. And so a lot of the communication now is between me and thaman. And everybody else just kind of follows that lead. Yeah. Now there is the point that yes, I do still have to tell Grandma and Grandpa, what what? You know, Damon and I are doing or?

Scott Benner 52:36
Yeah, they need to know, right? They can't they don't I don't want them to be surprised or not know, something's happened in him. Forget them. Yeah. Yeah. Back on it.

Jeremy 52:42
I mean, I can't tell them well, I'm increasing bazel. Because of this, and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I mean, I can't sit there and go on for 30 minutes about it. Just, I need to let them know that I'm handling am adding a little more bazel. Here, I'm taken away a little bit here. Watch out at these times, hey, I've, you know, lowered the carb ratio down for breakfast or lunch. Just be kind of mindful of that timeframe.

And that's about it at this point, you know,

Scott Benner 53:09
yeah, well, it does become a situation where it is. So kind of 24 hours a day that you you don't there's not enough time to explain it, you'd need to different you'd have to pause your day to have an explanation day and diabetes doesn't work that way. So well.

Jeremy 53:22
Let's see. That's how that's how it was at the very beginning. I'll be honest with you there, I tried to explain everything to everybody. And the way I am, you know, like I was telling you earlier, I learned everything and everything. And I was trying to explain glycolysis to them at one point. And they're just looking at you know it and that's fine. They'll they'll get there on their own on that type of stuff. But I was trying to overload them with information to the point that it was like, why, why just shut up Jeremy. Just tell them you got it. Tell tell them hey, hormones,

Scott Benner 53:59
you know,

Jeremy 54:00
and and move on. And it we've evolved quite a bit because I although I'm like, socially awkward, I can tell when people are like looking at me going. Do your overexplaining way too much.

Scott Benner 54:16
Yeah. I listen, I it's not uncommon. I have you know, I find it sometimes it feels very important for me to people to understand all the facets of a scenario and it's not like they don't care and it doesn't matter. Yeah, it feels like it matters to me and you know it doesn't it you know, stuff like that causes problems sometimes because sometimes you're just talking and people are just like, what do you shut up? Like, just give up on them. Let's keep moving here, you know? Yep. So would you say that if I told you, Jeremy, I need you to put this into one sentence. The key or the key to your success right now. Is the anger part. You guys gave away? Yes, that was it. Right, like you just decided not to be angry with each other anymore.

Jeremy 55:04
Yeah, and

I know that's hard one sentence, but

it it's kind of like that saying, let go and let God.

I mean, I'm not I'm not religious or anything but you know, the whole concept of, you know, this is bigger than ourselves. And as parents, there's nothing more important than the child. And ultimately, you don't mean anything in this world without your kid. And if you don't get along, there's always going to be that risk of that kid not be in there.

Scott Benner 55:51
And what's the point of I think that probably when you hear people say they have these amazing divorces, I think those are people who both said, Wow, this was a mistake, we should not have gotten married. And everybody's everybody, you know, just suddenly backs up and goes, Oh, this is better like this. This that was a definite mistake. But I think a lot of divorce. Even. It's not always just on one side. But people are like, I don't really want to get divorced. I just don't see a way out of this. And it keeps repeating and repeating and repeating. You know, my life is going on, I'm not going to live forever. So I can't do this forever. We're not going towards anything. But I don't think that people get divorced thinking Yes, that's what I want. I think they think oh, that didn't work. But I wanted it to. Yeah, and it's a sadness that it doesn't work. And then, you know, there's that person still exist somewhere, and especially if you've been together for enough time? Oh, yeah. It's hard to think that there's a person that exists out into the world that you wish you were with, that you don't see. And, and I could take that away from divorce for a second say, you know, my brothers and I moved away from each other. And every day, I think, why do we not live closer to each other? You know, like, I wonder what my brother's doing right now. And, and the knowledge that I'll keep wondering that and keep wondering that and keep wondering that for years and decades. And then one day one of us is just gonna die. And yeah, like, that's, that's a really hard thing to think about. And I want to tell you something here, to hopefully make you feel good about sharing your experience. I'm, I'm a child of divorce, as well. And if you ask me what the most important thing in the world is, to me about my family, I don't want them to know what that feels like. Because I know, I know exactly what it feels like, I can see the looks on my little brother's faces. When it happened, I can hear my mom crying, I can see how angry My dad was, like, I, my goal in life is for my family to never understand what that is. And having that goal sometimes causes me to do do things that are actually detrimental to the goal. And I know that's really strange. But when you don't want something bad to happen, you know it. I explained it once that bad things don't just, you know, always happen because somebody puts them into into motion. Sometimes there's a bunch of different things that kind of intersect, and they're nobody's fault. You know, somebody dropped something or somebody and then it starts saying, oh, somebody says a curse word and that it's met with her, you know, but the next thing you know, you know how something like that starts in 10 minutes later, everybody's upset. And you think, wait, this is because the coaster fell on the floor? Like you don't mean like, how did we get to this? And when, when I see those things, cascading? It is right away, front and center, in my mind, stop this, like, stop this, that. And I really did just make up the idea of a coaster falling, but a coaster falling is not going to be why my kids know the pain that my brothers know, like unity, like like, and that's unreasonable. And I know that and I work at it, to not let it overwhelm me. But there are times where I feel like oh my God, this has to stop right now. We're all gonna end up in a bad place. And

Jeremy 59:09
it's a slow burn.

Scott Benner 59:11
Yeah. It's a slow burn terrible for anyone who doesn't know. You're lucky.

Jeremy 59:16
Yep. Yep.

Scott Benner 59:19
But for those of you who do know about it, and who write in all the time saying, Is there an episode about how to handle type one diabetes? With divorce? I think Jeremy just went over a bunch of things that are really valuable. support a third party even I think it's a big deal about your mother and father in law being involved. I heard group text messages everyone knowing when to be involved and when to be an onlooker. And the idea of you got to stop punishing each other, which is, you know, or yourself, by the way, which I think sometimes happens when you're when you have a person and you're you're just you're going at them all the time all the time all the time, there's got to be a part in the back of your head that thinks, and I genuinely don't want to make you upset because you've been so valuable here. But there's got to be a part of you that thinks like, how did I not figure this out soon enough to save my marriage? And that's, and so you're punishing yourself and punishing them? And vice versa? It's, it's really, yeah, ugly, you know,

Jeremy 1:00:21
and, you know,

I, I'll be 100% honest here with you. Um, I have honestly punished myself every single day. For the last seven years. It's gotten better over time. But there still isn't a day that goes by that I don't think I could have done something more. And ultimately, I think, in order for, at least, myself to move on, is I need to learn how to forgive myself. Because I've already forgiven her for all of her side of things, because there was things on her side to you. No, no, no, marriage is perfect. Understand. And that's the biggest thing really is. Everybody needs to learn how to forgive each other. Find the best way to move forward as a dysfunctional family unit, whatever that is, you know, a divorced family. And realize that it's just not about you. Because that's what caused all the fighting at the beginning and everything else of It's me, me, me, me, me. It's no longer us. So I have to focus on me. But yeah, there isn't a day that goes by that I still don't. In some way, just go you know, what? You're divorced dad. And what not, and I don't want to beat myself up. But you know that it is the constant, you know, failure point in my life, I guess. So all I can do at this point is to become a better dad. And I know this sounds weird, be a better ex husband. You know, um, and it's it's not me trying to get back with her. It's not you know, I had my dad, you know, who lives in Lincoln, Nebraska, who, you know, as far away from he told me, he goes, Jeremy, you're just being nice to her because because you want to get get her back. And I'm like, No, dad, that has nothing to do with it. I mean, it wasn't until he came up the next year for three weeks in the summer. And he saw how labor intensive type one was, and understood why. You know, I would go over to Kathy and Rick's for dinner, is he didn't understand like, like, we walked up to their house, and we just walked into their house. And he's like, Well, why aren't you knocking? I'm like, Dad, they're my family, just like you are, he thought. And

Scott Benner 1:02:55
he really thought that you were just gonna, like you were pretending to be the person that your wife was looking for when you were married, hoping that that would just break Exactly. Not understanding how important doing those things was to your son's health?

Jeremy 1:03:07
Well, yeah, because, you know, my mom and dad got divorced, too. And that was that was nasty, nasty, nasty divorce. And his idea of divorce was completely different than my idea of divorce and how I was handling my divorce versus how he handled his divorce. You know,

Scott Benner 1:03:30
yeah, no, see, he was just he was just seeing what happened to him and kind of projecting onto you. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Wow. Dude, that was, uh, I appreciate this. I really do. Like you were me at one point at the end,

Jeremy 1:03:42
dude, I come on every hour. Yeah.

Scott Benner 1:03:44
Well, first of all, that you said, I'm gonna be honest. And I thought, what you were being honest, man, you don't have to be any more honest than that. But that was the other part is like you didn't really need me, which is great. Sometimes I like that you can just you just came on and you can tell your story. And you knew you had it laid out. And I appreciate you being so verbal. And

Jeremy 1:04:02
well, and Scott, I'll be honest with you there there. There's so much left on the table. Like I said, I could talk for three hours. I know that's not a thing. But yeah. Well, they're there

Scott Benner 1:04:12
highlight a couple things for me, though. But I mean, what else do you think people need to know

Jeremy 1:04:17
99% of its communication. And it's not about you, it's about the kid. I mean, those that's really where it focuses around. And

at first, it's going to seem like herding cats.

You just have to figure out how each cat needs to be wrangled in, how how each cat likes to be stroked, and where not to touch certain cats.

Scott Benner 1:04:42
So when you're all in when you're on the same team, you know, family team, then there's a feeling from each person like when it's a connected family still like everybody's married all in the same house. There's a feeling of like, well, I don't agree with that, but I'll go along with it. But as soon as everybody kind of backs Way, everyone has their own style. And you're not going to get a meshing the same way. You're saying like, you have to understand there's this, this person's not going to react to that. So we don't do that with this person we do. Yes said, Ah, okay, because

Jeremy 1:05:14
grandma has it has one understanding of diabetes and the way that she cares for diabetes, grandpa has a different view. And mom has a different view. And I have to try to wrangle the whole group and try to get one cohesive line of treatment. And that's been the biggest challenge really, is to try to, you know, you read all these posts all the time of, well, he's that his dad's again, he's been above 300 for the last two hours. And, and I, I didn't want that. So I had to find out how to get

a lot of your

teachings, I guess if you want to call them those sounds

Scott Benner 1:05:59
alright. High minded when you say it like that. And

Jeremy 1:06:01
I know I have a blow that head up. I wanted

Scott Benner 1:06:04
to, I wanted to put on a burlap robe and shave my head bald when you said that, then go sit.

Jeremy 1:06:09
And I'll be honest with you.

Grandma was like, because I send her over episodes to listen to, like if something was going on, I would send her the fat and protein. You know, I don't do that every time. But you know, so she would understand that she's like, he has a lot of good points. But boys he cocky. He says he's so full of himself. But he has really good information. And I know you've heard that before. I've heard you say it before. Sure. And but that's the generation gap, because and that's the other big thing is we all know that. Type One is a family led disease. You know, the endo gives you your boot camp instructions to keep the kid live. Everything else is up to you. I mean, unless you have a really, really, really good endo. So grandma and grandpa are from the the generation where you went to the doctor, you listen to the doctor, and you didn't dare question the doctors authority, because they know and, you know, they're from that older generation. And where, you know, with me, in my generation, it's like, okay, the doctor said this, but how about a second, third and fourth and fifth opinion, and let's get as much information as we can. And let's move forward. You know, and so it's trying to find, or crowl, three different four different ways of thinking and getting one plan together to still have excellent glycemic control and be able to, you know, move forward.

Scott Benner 1:07:47
Yeah. No, I hear you. I'm Well, listen, man, congratulations. I think it I'll tell you, what really strikes me is that you were willing to say this and have it recorded, which means that the people you were speaking about, you very much believe we'll agree with what you said. And yeah, and that's a big deal, like, in my mind is that you didn't just set up some sort of, you know, it's not a paper tiger, right? Like, it's not like it works. But everybody's just teetering on the edge and about to explode. Like you, you guys actually are all comfortable with your piece of this. And, and it's okay that there's a person who has more of the knowledge about diabetes than the others and they're willing to, everyone's willing to work off of that. I think it's really wonderful. And, and by the way, I have a message to Grandma, I'm here in case she ever hears this. I'm trying grandma to get a bunch of information to people's heads. And I have to project a certain amount of confidence where I am confident, and I don't want to meander in the conversation. Because if I spend a lot of time being, but I am assuming she would take us polite and, and not forceful than the conversations get too long. And then nobody listens. And you lose the thread of the ideas. So there's a there's a method to this madness. I think if she sat with me, she'd feel like I wasn't like that. But you know, I'm sure No, I'm just kidding. I don't care what she says. I just listen, I'm from the east coast and you're in Montana. Yes, sir. I would assume she just like I probably talked too quickly and I just I come I probably come off terribly tired. I'm sorry. Tell her I'm sorry. But I'm glad everything's going happy the kids Okay,

Jeremy 1:09:33
that's all no I mean, she's she's she loves your podcast. It's just well that's

Scott Benner 1:09:36
still well tell her please tell I was you know, obviously being light hearted there. But then again, I don't know if it's obvious or not if she'll be like Carrie is doing it again. But I was just being light hearted but I appreciate that. It's helpful to you guys. I really do. And, and please, my best to everybody. And I really appreciate you doing this. Like I said there were not a lot of people willing to come on and talk about this stuff. So he did a really cool thing here today. I tried. Oh, you really did. Thank you so much and got my best your cat cat. But this isn't what is.

Jeremy 1:10:13
The cat is literally named kitty because that's what Damon wanted to name it.

Scott Benner 1:10:17
Well listen,

Jeremy 1:10:18
I'm like, dude, we can name it George man could

Unknown Speaker 1:10:21
name it. So

Jeremy 1:10:22
he tried to name at once. He was like, well, maybe we can do Bolus and bazel because there's two cats,

Scott Benner 1:10:29
okay.

Jeremy 1:10:30
And I'm like, I'm like, well, which one's Bolus and which one's Basal? That's about as far as that got. So it turned back into kitty one and kitty to

Scott Benner 1:10:38
say that, by the way, that's only something that would happen in a single Father's house. So that is a try.

Jeremy 1:10:43
Absolutely.

Scott Benner 1:10:45
There's not one woman listening to this right now that's thinking I would allow my cats to be called kitty one and kitty. Oh my gosh. All right, Jeremy, thank you so much. I really appreciate it. Hey, I really appreciate Jeremy stepping up when a lot of other people couldn't actually got a couple of notes from people like I would love to do this but I can't. So Jeremy, your aces man, you're a great dad sounds like you're a great co parent. And there are a lot of people out there who are divorced a co parenting are probably pretty jealous of of what you guys have going on. Also a big thank you to Omni pod, check out the Omni pod tubeless insulin pump today at my Omni pod.com forward slash juice box get them to send you a free no obligation demo by typing in a tiny bit of information at that link, it might literally take you less than two minutes to get that demo coming to your house, my Omni pod.com forward slash juice box. Find out more of course about the Dexcom g six continuous glucose monitor@dexcom.com forward slash juice box and the T one D exchange beyond being beyond doing great work is completely HIPAA compliant. One bazillion percent safe for you to do I did it myself put my my information right in there as the parent of a child with type one. That's what they're looking for people with type one diabetes, or parents of people with type one who live in the US. And this is completely blinded, meaning your answers are not in any way connected with your information. You know what I mean? Like it's that doesn't say like Scott said this, it's just parent of type one answered this way that kind of you know, it's it's anonymous is what I probably should have said, anyway, you take this survey, which did not ask any deep probing questions, as far as I was concerned, took me about seven minutes, and I was done. They're gonna follow up once a year with a couple of other questions. If there are other opportunities to do things, I have the option to do them, but I don't have to. And the best part is, you can do this from your living room right there on your phone or on your PC. That simple. And if at some point in the future, decide you just don't want to be involved anymore, you can drop out, no big deal. T one d exchange.org. forward slash juicebox support Diabetes Research and support the podcast at the same time. All of these links, of course are available at Juicebox podcast.com. You can also find it Juicebox podcast.com. The best doctors that listeners to the podcast have suggested for you. That's at juicebox Doc's dot com. And all the diabetes pro tip episodes are available at diabetes pro tip.com case you want to share them with people or something like that. Otherwise, everything like I said, is it Juicebox Podcast. And of course you can listen to everything that I've ever done right here. Hundred percent for free, always for free. Thanks so much for listening, check out the other afterdark episodes or diabetes pro tip episodes or just the regular episodes of the podcast at your leisure. And of course, please subscribe in your podcast app, tell a friend about the show and leave a wonderful review on Apple podcasts or wherever you listen this five star reviews really help other people to check out the show. It actually happens. Trust me, it's not for ego if I didn't have any reviews. I still know how many people are listening. It doesn't matter to me. What matters is that the next person coming along says Oh look, people find this podcast valuable and then maybe they'll learn some things like you did, or it'll help them or they'll be entertained or not feel alone or whatever. But somehow they need to know this is the show I should try. So help me there if you can have a great week. I'll talk to you soon.

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#371 Diabetes Pro Tip: Explaining Type 1

Explaining Type 1 Diabetes to friends, coaches, employers and more

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

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

Scott Benner 0:00
Hello, everyone. Welcome to Episode 371 of the Juicebox Podcast. Today's show is a diabetes pro tip episode, mostly sort of, you'll see what I mean in one second.

The pro tip series that exists inside of the Juicebox Podcast is mainly about management of type one diabetes. There's also some informative stuff like what can you do when you go to the emergency room to make your experience easier. And today, I'm going to be filling a need that's been presented to me by the listeners. So I don't know if this episode is for them to get ideas from, or for them to share, or maybe both. But in this episode of the Juicebox Podcast, I, along with Jenny Smith, Jenny, of course has had Type One Diabetes for 32 years. She's a certified diabetes educator and an all around amazing person. And me, Scott, who's you know, just the host of the podcast, and the parent of a child with Type One Diabetes. So this episode is for people who need to understand Type One Diabetes more, or for those of you with type one who struggle to talk to those people about what type one diabetes is. See, if you're like the school nurse, or a teacher, maybe my boss, friend, neighbor, somebody wants to have my kid over for a sleep over this episode is for you to try to understand better what type one diabetes is and what your role in it can be. And if you're a person living with type one or the parent of someone living with type one, and you're struggling for how to talk to people about it, this will be beneficial for you as well. This episode of the podcast does not have any ads. But I do want to let you know that the Juicebox Podcast is proudly sponsored by dexcom, makers of the G six continuous glucose monitor and Omni pod, the world's only to boost insulin pump. That greatest blood glucose meter in the world in my opinion, the Contour Next One blood glucose meter. We're also sponsored by g Volk, glucagon, Lily's chocolates touched by type one, and the T one D exchange. There are links to all of the sponsors in the show notes of your podcast player. And at Juicebox podcast.com. When you support the sponsors, you're supporting the show, but like I said, there's no ads in this episode because I don't know you're gonna give this what to your kids, you know, baseball coach, and what's he gonna do by an insulin pump. Having said that, dexcom.com forward slash juice box my omnipod.com forward slash juice box Contour Next one.com forward slash juice box touched by type one.org g Volk glucagon.com, forward slash juice box. And if you'd like to get involved in some amazing Type One Diabetes Research, T one d exchange.org. Ford slash juice box. Last thing before we start, please remember that nothing you hear on the Juicebox Podcast should be considered advice, medical or otherwise, always consult a physician before making any changes to your health care plan. or becoming bold with insulin. And a huge welcome to those of you who don't usually listen to a type one diabetes podcast, those of you who care enough to try to learn a little more about type one so that you can be a better support system for the people you know, and love living with Type One Diabetes. This means a lot to them. I'm sure they're really, really excited that you that you took the time. So I hope we can make this informative and fun for you. I think we have let's get started. I want to jump right into this because this has been interesting since I brought this up to you the other day, I I sat down myself and I thought who in my time Have I spent have I had to describe diabetes to you know, when I started kind of making a list and then a lot of people a lot of people and and then I went online and I said you know into the private Facebook group for the podcast and I said Hey guys, Jenny and I are going to do this thing. Who do you wish you know, we could talk to and here's how the list came back. grandparents, teachers, parents, babysitters, somebody who might have my kid for a sleep over my child's friend's parents, a coach of a team spouses or significant others, co parents, roommates, extended family school nurse co workers bosses bus drivers and and what and family of adults with type one. So people who are diagnosed as adults who then are around other adults who never get Getting it. And then very much at the end of the list, someone said, Oh, I wish you could explain to chaperones and I started thinking,

everyone should have just answered with the same word, it should have said, people, because this is just, this is like everything else around diabetes like you like, oh, explain it specifically to a coach. So what I'm going to tell you is, I think we're going to have a conversation, that, whether you're one of the people I listed, or just a person who knows somebody with Type One Diabetes, when you're done, I'd like you to understand the basics of type one better, maybe a little bit of terminology. So things are happening, and maybe more so the mind of the person with type one, what's happening to them, and how you could be supportive of them. I think that's the goal here like not to speak to like, like there was there. In the beginning, I thought, oh, we'll do a couple of minutes talking to grandparents. And then a few minutes talk, and I'm like, No, no, it's all the same thing. Really. Right.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 5:59
Yeah, it is. And I it's really funny, you bring this topic up, because it's actually we do a monthly newsletter, and my my article last month was sharing your diabetes. Okay? And it was kind of along this same line, it was, how do you talk to other people about your diabetes and give them the baseline of what you need them to really know. Without, like a textbook, that's like 4000 pages long, overwhelming, it's overwhelming. And I some of the big points were one, set a time to discuss specifically diabetes, with these people, or this person, or this coach or whoever it is, I like your term, just people in general, right? Pick the person. You need them to know this, this and this, these are the important facts. Because it's a lot easier if you've set a time for it, than if you go to the coach at the end of practice. You're like, Hey, can you just take five minutes with me, I really want to talk to you about you know, Billy's like type one diabetes, and the coaches got, like, you know, soccer balls over there hungry and trying to get home. So to go

Scott Benner 7:15
home and get yelled at. There's a lot going on in my life right now.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 7:18
Right, right. So setting up a time and, again, the timeline of what are the important things you want these people to know? Like you said, the basics.

Scott Benner 7:27
Let me add this to that. The other things that people came back in their, in their responses very overwhelmingly was, I want this episode to be something I can text to somebody like a link and say, Please, can you listen to this and understand diabetes? Because many of the people who came into speak said, Look, I'm not very good at describing it. Like I can take care of myself. But when I start, there was an overwhelming feeling of when I start to explain it to somebody else, I either get frazzled or too detailed. You and Jenny do it. And I'm like, Alright, well, we'll do it. So Jenny's after you listen to this episode, and you decide you really want to help a person you love with Type One Diabetes, or someone who's in your class, or because there was one very specific woman who said, I'm a college professor, I wish I could explain it to my students. better, right. And so whoever you are, in this scenario, here's what I can promise you, Jenny, and I will not make this boring. And we will not make it overly, like taxing. It won't be so technical, you won't understand. And it should be a good runway up to you having that conversation that we just spoke about with this person in your life who has type one diabetes. So that's my overarching goal, Jenny, don't mess it up. Okay. Okay. I'm talking to myself. I don't want to mess it up. Do we start with? Well, we usually talk about diabetes in such a specific way. But why don't we start with just a really simple description of Type One Diabetes? You want to go?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 8:56
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, Type One Diabetes is the body's inability to create insulin, or to put it out into the body. And so without it, your blood sugar gets too high. So type one diabetes is a deficiency of insulin, it's specifically an autoimmune disorder, which means the person did nothing to cause type one diabetes. It's not because they sat in a hole hose for, you know, three years or whatever. So and I think that's a, that's an important one to put out there. And just the simple explanation, because there is a lot of misunderstanding around just the term diabetes. Sure. So

Scott Benner 9:37
yeah, and it is a lesson it's a genetic issue, right. It's an autoimmune disease. You know, you can use an example my daughter was two years old when she was diagnosed, she weighed 19 pounds and I you know, Federer, the same stuff, all of us feed our kids. And and her body just was like, you know, got confused one day, I mean, that's even that right for these people listening, I don't know exactly what triggered my daughter's type one onset, what I can tell you is that testing can prove that you have markers, that that make you more likely to get diabetes. I don't know if my daughter had them, obviously, because no one ever checked her. But she got sick. And, you know, it's always been my belief that her immune system got confused. And instead of killing her virus, Winton killed her pancreas for the lack of a better term. And I want people to understand, too, that the advent of insulin is still fairly new 1921 one, right. So, for context, if my daughter's pancreas would have crapped out in 1919, she would have died in a couple of weeks, right? That's correct. Okay. The insulin is the only thing keeping people with type one diabetes alive. Otherwise, the first time your blood sugar starts heading up, it will just keep going up and never stop. That's right, right. And you'll slip into a coma and die. Okay, I told you, this wasn't gonna be too technical. So so people are getting this insulin in, in a ton of different ways. And so I think that would be important, what are the different ways people get insulin,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 11:14
initially, and some people even long term after diagnosis continue to take injections. So the age old, you get a little like bottle or what we call a vial of insulin, they now come thankfully, and easily dispensing pens. And you dose it through the course of the day based on many factors. There's other ways such as an insulin pump, that you could take your insulin, kind of a fancy little page or size device that sort of drips it into the body through a tube, or if you're using a tubeless, one like Omni pod, then that would be another way to do it. So essentially, an injection or a pump, those are two ways to get in the body. Now there is one other way. I mean, if we wanted to be truthful about it, there's also an inhalable insulin called a frezza. So that's another way to use

Scott Benner 12:03
it, most people inject insulin correct. And so inject like Jenny said, with a pen, which really is just a very fancy syringe, you might see someone do it with a syringe, you might see someone wearing a device on their body, or carrying a device that's connected to their body with a tube, there's different ways. But in the end, you need to get that insulin under your skin, right. And this could happen for a number of reasons it could happen because you're eating, it could happen because your blood sugar just went up on its own, and you need to bring it back down. When it needs to happen, it needs to happen. And I want people to understand that asking a person with Type One Diabetes to go into the bathroom, and extensively hide while they're injecting is not the right thing to do. So if please, there's, throughout this, I'm going to tell you say things like, please don't ever say this, here's one of them, people around here might be uncomfortable with your diabetes, you can't do that to a person. Yeah, if they're uncomfortable, they can leave, I need to give myself this insulin. So my blood sugar doesn't go up really high. And don't get me wrong, like not getting the insulin is not going to you know, it's not going to kill you in the moment if your blood sugar is going higher, but here are a lot of things that could happen. They're thinking could become cloudy, right? Right, they could become agitated. So if you're a teacher, you don't want your kids blood sugar high, because they're gonna have trouble concentrating, thinking, they're not going to learn norming performing in all kinds of different ways. Same thing with sports, your blood sugar gets too high, you slow down your body has a difficult time, you know, I can see it my daughter's foot speed. If my daughter's blood sugar gets over a certain number high where it doesn't belong. I can literally see her slow down while she's running, she just can't go as fast.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 13:56
Right?

It would be the same thing too. I think in like a corporate world type of setting where someone may feel like it wouldn't be acceptable in order to use their insulin or to respond to their pump, telling them to take the insulin or whatnot. And the same thing if they're being asked to present or to discuss something that's very, very important. They may not have the ability to do that in if their blood sugar is not in the right place. Yeah.

Scott Benner 14:25
So you need to give people the freedom to do what they need to do. If you want them to be themselves, or be able to do the thing you're asking them to do or hope that they can do. They need to be able to take their insulin and feel comfortable about it. It's difficult to have. This is a lifelong disease like it's not going to it's not going to get cured anytime soon. It's not going to it's not going to go away. It's not going to one person said make sure people understand it doesn't just transform into type two diabetes, like it's a progression from one to two right? Right, so having type two diabetes, completely different thing, right. And so this person, it's hard, it's really difficult. Like, I really want people to listen and think that every time you have a body function that puts pushes up your blood sugar. And so for people whose pancreas is work fine, could be adrenaline, stress, pain, so many different things can make your blood sugar try to go up, when that happens to you out there with a working pancreas, your pancreas just stops it, you don't even see it happen. Like if you were monitoring your blood sugar in real time, and you got some adrenaline like it might blip for a second, but it would come right back. A person who doesn't have that their blood sugar is going to shoot up and keep going or get too high and stay there. And then they need to put that insulin in into their body, to bring it back down again. It's just it's 24 hours a day and to have somebody make it more difficult for you is, is kind of terrible.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 15:57
And I think in terms of even bringing up the technology that is available, such as an insulin pump in terms of delivery, I know that there's also the misconception even in our day and age right now. Oh, you've got a pump. It takes care of it all. Yeah. And that's a that's not true. 100% not true at all, there is so much that the person with diabetes has to interact with in order for that technology to do what it needs to do for them. So just because they're connected to these devices, can be helpful. But it's not doing anything without their interaction with it.

Scott Benner 16:36
Yeah. And it's, it's easy for people who don't understand to make an assumption, like, Oh, they got the machine, the machine fixes it. Right, right, or something like that. And I want to be really clear for everyone listening, like, I'm not coming down on you, there are plenty of disease states that I don't understand in any meaningful way. But what that does is it stops me from, you know, saying things about it that I don't understand. And like, there's a ton of different things. You might think, Oh, this is helpful. Like, if you find yourself with a parent of a child with type one, and they've just been diagnosed, and you think, Oh, this parents so smart, or look how well they're handling it. It's not right to say to them something to the effect of you know, well, God gave the child with Type One Diabetes to the right person, because you can really handle it. Right. Really think about that sentence. But you know, when you're in it, because it happens to a lot of people. No one's lucky that their kids got diabetes. Nope. No adult feels lucky. No one walks around going, thank God, I'm a head screwed on straight kind of person. And I'm the one who got type one cuz Jimmy up the street hot mess. And if he would have got it, it would have been way worse for him. It's bad for everybody. Okay, it's just that's a, so be careful how you speak to people. Right? I think I think about a person who's been on this podcast before who had a child who passed away and I asked like, what's the right thing for someone to say to you? And she's like, there is no right thing for someone to say to you. And and, you know, anything you do is just going to, it's not going to make anything better. Unless you offer like sincere, simple support. Hey, if there's anything you need, I don't know what to do. But if you tell me I'll do it for you that works with this as well. You know,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 18:18
I think it's I think it's along the same line as offering up information about your neighbors, Grandma, who is something Something happened because they had diabetes, I same thing. It's like, don't, don't offer up in terms of like a connecting point. You know, if sure if you've got a cousin who has type one or you know, an uncle who had type one, and you have a little bit of understanding that might even further your discussion in terms of what the person with type one talking to you could put back into the conversation. But unless you've really lived with it, or you have taken care of somebody with type one, please don't. Yes. Tell them about your neighbors, uncle's friends,

Scott Benner 19:04
Jenny's politely saying don't look at somebody go diabetes. Oh, where have I heard diabetes from my grandmother? Oh, you know what? Oh, my grandmother had diabetes. They cut her leg off. That's not a good thing to say to somebody don't do. Yeah, right. And just Yeah, don't don't do that. Okay, so keep keep those thoughts inside. Because that's not helpful. And it might have nothing to do with the person you're talking about your grandmother's situation, very well could be a ton different than this person situation. And that's important to understand, too, is that in this day and age right now, I know this sounds kind of strange. But this is the best time in the in the history of the world to be diagnosed with Type One Diabetes. So people have a much greater chance of staving off, what could be long term complications, and they have a much better chance of managing day to day in the moment in a way that won't impact their lives too badly. Now, I feel strange saying this because on one hand, what I'm telling you is that These people need some leniency, they need some understanding, they need a little space because they're making decisions about how their bodies, you know, working. And at the same time, I want to tell you if they can do anything, and so don't limit them. You know, and that's hard to do too, because you might not feel like you're eliminating them, you may feel like you're protecting them. And correct, they don't need that. And if they do need that, they'll they'll ask, they'll ask you for it.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 20:27
Yes. Right, exactly. Which is part of this, you know, the purpose of this is understanding, if they're having a conversation with you about what you need to know, the reason is, because a lot of times they want you to know what to do in case they need help, right? Some understanding about this is diabetes, this is what you know, might see me carrying such as the devices, this is I might make some noise, my products might be bet tie, or whatever, you know, but in case of this, this and this, these are the things that you could do to help me and this is how to help me right?

Scott Benner 21:03
Because they may at some point need that help. Right? And so you understanding like say you're a teacher, you understanding like signs of visible signs of hypoglycemia, okay, so low blood sugar, and I'm going to read your list which I'm not a big list reader on the podcast, but this person could feel shaky, be nervous or anxious. They could be sweating, have chills, feel clammy, irritable, impatient, confused, their heartbeat might pick up, they could feel lightheaded or dizzy, voraciously, hungry, nauseous, their skin sometimes can get pale, they'll look tired or could feel tired, they could end up feeling weak, their vision could get blurred or impaired. My daughter talks about her mouth gets tingly and numb if her blood sugar gets too low headaches, trouble coordinating themselves, clumsiness I'm this is coming right from the A's website, the American Diabetes Association associations website. in their sleep, they can have nightmares or crying their sleep. And if their blood sugar gets too low, they can and if it gets low enough, we'll have a seizure. And so they'd like to know if they're not making sense when they're talking so that they can take in some carbohydrates of some kind to bring their blood sugar back up. And so you being a person around them, like like a coach. And you have to figure out the line, right? Because these things while they can happen, may very well not happen. So think of the other side of it. You know? You've got a little girl on your soccer team and she's running around and every three seconds you're jogging next to her going, Becky, do you feel okay? All right, Becky, Are you dizzy? You don't feel clammy? Do you? Hey, Becky, Becky, Becky, Becky, you're ruining Becky's life when you do that, okay? Don't Don't do that. But at the same time, you could look over once in a while and visually, just, you know,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 23:00
evaluate the performance. If you're the coach, you know, how your kids usually perform or do things, you know, how they interact with their other teammates and whatnot. So yeah, it may not be

Scott Benner 23:12
at all, a strange thing to say, like, Look, we have a two hour practice. Everyone sits down, you know, halfway through and drinks water. I'd really like it. If Becky tested her blood sugar, then, you know, because I don't maybe you don't feel comfortable as the coach like you don't want to be on the hook for like seeing if this kids about the fall over or not right? I get that. So talk to the parents and say, Look, can we just coordinate a blood sugar check, you know, at some point, you know, for safety, and then make it normal. Don't call attention to it don't like it's happening. And everyone doesn't have to stare and people are going to stare in the beginning. But you got to just give the kid the the space to let it happen because everyone will get used to it. And I guess that's what I want to bring up with them. When my daughter was very little the first day of school. I'd go in and it's and I would give a talk like to the kids like five minutes on the literally the first day. Hi this is Arden. Arden has type one diabetes, her pancreas doesn't make insulin. Once in a while you're going to see Arden pull out this thing and give herself insulin with it her controller for her pump. Hey, you know what Arden is just like the rest of you. She doesn't need, you know, she doesn't need you to check on her constantly. But if she looks like she's busy, she's not making sense. It would be nice to tell your teacher, right? But it still didn't stop this one little girl from mothering her. And so she came home one day and she's like, this kid will not leave me alone. Like like and she goes it seems really sweet. But she won't stop I need this kid. Stop back off. Do you Yeah, like leave me alone. So that there's there's a balance in there somewhere where you can be supportive and understand Ending without being a burden to them or making them feel different. Or look that. And this is very important. Like it really goes

Jennifer Smith, CDE 25:10
across the board and what you're saying to not just the little kid component, but the teacher or the coach, like you said like bugging, bugging, bugging, are you okay? Do you feel okay, do you need some more juice? You know, that kind of thing? Or even goes cross crosses over into spouses, significant others? Yeah, you know, especially and I would expect that later in marriage, or later in partnership, you've had enough visualization to not be like bugging, bugging, but in newer relationships, I think an upfront important talk when you know that it's going a little bit further than just let's go out and get a drink or whatever, right? I mean, it's important to bring up this is how you could help me. Don't bother me, though. You know, don't, don't tell me not to have the potatoes with my dinner when we go out for dinner. Because Oh, my goodness, they have carbohydrate, in my usual how the potato

Scott Benner 26:01
makes your blood sugar go up? Thanks. That's what I want you thinking about right now? unless the person says, Look, I have trouble saying no to potatoes. So if you could like if they want it, that's different, right? It's could

Jennifer Smith, CDE 26:13
you remind me not to do exact Yes,

Scott Benner 26:15
when I see the french fries, if you could just go Hey, you told me last time, I shouldn't get french fries to bring it up. I don't think anything that we've said in the last couple of minutes about kids and coaches and teachers doesn't specifically apply to adults in adult situations, either. It's correct. It's all exactly the same. It's why I didn't want to break these up into like, okay, now, here's 10 minutes for your boss. If someone's working for you, and they have type one diabetes, they're going to have some needs. And the most important thing is to support them and not make them feel awkward or odd about it. And I'll tell you why. As a person who I'm hoping cares about other people who have type one, you know, you could create a, an eating disorder by telling someone, don't don't use your insulin here, because what you're saying to them is don't eat right now. And then they start associating the awkwardness of giving themselves the insulin with eating, and then they'll stop eating. And I know that sounds like oh, that won't happen, that happens a lot,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 27:12
or hide their eating right, or in an effort to not like show others. I mean, there there is, it's I mean, it's a whole nother broad topic in terms of diabetes, the eating disorders that are associated with diabetes. I mean, food is a huge part of diabetes management it is. And so it's not odd, that it can become an issue. But it certainly is something that in terms of being supportive for another person who has diabetes, you don't want to push the envelope that way.

Scott Benner 27:42
And I know that people listening right now don't know us. And they are like, it's 2020. Like, everybody seems super sensitive and social justice II and everything. We're not like that. Like, I'm not saying that at all. Like, I you can hear my terrible accent, I'm from the northeast, I'm good with like, Hey, get up, you'll be fine. I'm good with that I really am. But what I'm saying is, there's a real opportunity to mold a person in a positive way, or a negative way. And that goes for everybody I understand. But around this specifically, it does not take long to make someone feel different in a bad way. You know, and it'll stick with them, especially you teachers, who, you know, hear an alarm and are annoyed because you're trying to teach and it's alarming. Try to keep in mind that when that's happening, the student whose blood sugar is falling, who's now scared that they're going to pass out or die or something like that. They don't want this to be happening either. Correct. And you can't say let me just finish this lesson. Or they need to address because we've talked about high blood sugars, but low blood sugars are more immediate, immediate, yes. Right. You can't just ignore because a blood sugar that's falling could be falling quickly. And one of those issues could pop up out of nowhere. So if this kid's wearing a monitor that tells them like, Hey, your blood sugar is getting low, or they say I feel dizzy, I need to test or you know, like, you can't just say okay, well wait till after recess is over. Or as soon as I get done explaining this math problem, like they need to do it now. Which is another great reason to normalize it, let them take their meter out at their desk and check their blood sugar. It's not going to hurt anybody. And and they'll have an answer immediately about what to do next. But the five minutes you want them to wait could end up being much too much time for them. Yeah,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 29:34
yeah, absolutely. I mean, in terms of you know, even that also acknowledging what they're using to treat a low blood sugar is, is something that you also don't want to form any, like, wrong feelings about someone might use, you know, in terms of carbohydrate, it's just simple sugar that we really want to use to treat. So simple in terms of it could be juicy It could be Skittles, it could be something that we call glucose tablets. It could be honey in there multiple things. And everybody seems to have a preference for what is great for them and even flavor preferences. So just because the kid in your class is using like Skittles, and you're thinking, oh my goodness, Skittles, why are they so unhealthy? Right?

Scott Benner 30:23
Yeah, you don't understand what you're talking about, which is a good is a great example of keeping your mouth shut in that situation. Like, they're not eating Skittles. Because you're, here's what's gonna happen to you, you don't know what you're talking about, the kid takes Skittles, and you think in your head, this is why they have diabetes, look how they eat, no, they need sugar to go into their body so quickly, that it can literally fight off this extra insulin and stop from making them too low. So know what you don't know, I think is important. And if you want to know find out more, but don't say silly things to people that, you know, it's not there. It's not their preference to have diabetes, the kids not looking for Skittles, you know, like, an adult doesn't want to get up in the middle of a business meeting and bang a Gatorade back. They're not like, Oh, you know, what I want to do today in front of 30 people who I'm trying to get to take me seriously. And that's the other thing too, is that you have to understand that adults often are hiding their diabetes at work, because they don't want you to judge them and like and lose out on on professional opportunities. Correct?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 31:25
Yeah, promotion and those types of things. And I think that's also in terms of people with diabetes. As I mentioned, initially, you have to really know, who do you need to share your diabetes with who is really important as an adult, it might be your boss, it might be the co workers at the team members that you work with, as a child, it might be you know, your teachers, and hopefully your parents will help with that. Even some of your really good friends. I mean, I remember as a kid, when I was diagnosed, it was really helpful to have some of my really good friends know a lot, you know, in terms of like, their understanding language, teaching them things about why I was you know, doing a finger stick and all of that, but I think it comes down to defining who do you need to share with and what applies to this situation? You know, you're probably not going to teach your soccer coach about carbohydrate counting. I mean, that's, that's not purposeful. But you're gonna teach them things like hypo awareness and you know what to do in case who to call emergency contact to there are defined pieces, I think to teach everybody

Scott Benner 32:37
Yeah. And so it's also important to understand the diabetes is mostly an invisible disease meaning that the people around you unless you're having a struggle, aren't ever going to see it. As a matter of fact, I pulled this up here just to so that people can have a an idea. Former Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler has type one diabetes. Bret Michaels has it Nick Jonas has it and rice the author has it. Mary Tyler Moore, my close friend of mine coaches for the Philadelphia Phillies Sam fold he has he used to play for the Oakland A's he was in centerfield had type one diabetes. There are plenty of people. The Justice Sonia Sotomayor, right. Right has type one. So you

Jennifer Smith, CDE 33:22
can do was a baseball player?

Unknown Speaker 33:26
Atlanta.

Scott Benner 33:28
Oh, yeah. There's a guy Well, there's a guy pitching for the cubs. He's been on the show before Brandon Morrow he has it. I think the tight end of the Ravens has it. There's, there's nothing you can't do with Type One Diabetes. there's a there's a guy that I know really well, who's a four time Olympian who has it, right. So and, and the point is, is that you look at those people, and I don't tell you they have type one diabetes, and you're never going to know these people are doesn't mean it's easier for them. They don't have the easy diabetes, because you don't notice it. They work very, very hard at their health. I know it's hard to imagine, but I the best I can say is imagine that you had to think Breathe in, breathe out, breathe in, breathe out, or you wouldn't breathe. Like that's what it feels like having type one. I'm going to eat something I need insulin, it has to be this much. Not that much. I don't want to get too high. I don't want to get too low. I can't have a bunch of insulin in me when I go for a run later because I might get low then it is like constant kind of tapping on the back of your head. You know, I call

Jennifer Smith, CDE 34:31
it diabetes inner monologue. Okay, let's see

Scott Benner 34:34
Jenny. Jenny's had type one for 31 years now. 3232 Okay, regulations. And, and she can tell you that you Jenny's really, really good at managing her diabetes, but that doesn't make it No, of course, but that doesn't make it not in her mind. And and so it's there,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 34:55
right and then everyday conscious effort.

Scott Benner 34:57
Yes. It's so if you're a nice That so that you'd hear that and so that if you are the spouse of a person who has type one, or your child has type one, but your spouse takes care of most of the management, you may not understand what's going into it on an emotional and physical and maybe sometimes lack of sleep level, it's really hard. It's incredibly hard to do well, it's also incredibly hard to do poorly. So if you're really great at managing or terrible at managing, that that comes with different struggles, people who are great at it understand, you know, the timing and how to take care of things in a way that maybe some people don't get to understand. But the people who are struggling, are aware every moment of the day that they're probably on their way to complications that are serious, because they can't figure it out, or because no one will help them. It's constantly in their head. Now, if you're co parenting, I can't tell you how many people come to me and say, can you please find a way to talk to people who are like a divorced spouse? Or, you know, a step parent or somebody who's not for the lack of a better term in the fight constantly? Right? They only see, oh, look, he's fine. Yeah, this isn't that hard, or his blood sugar just went up for seven hours, that was no big deal. It is a big deal. And and, either, you know, I, I don't normally get preachy, but either figure it out, and help or get out of the way. But don't let your ego stand in the way of someone managing their health, which happens a lot. It may not be happening to you person listening right now. But it happens a lot more than you might want to think. Right? You know? Anyway, I didn't mean to get like that. I just, I don't know if you saw the notes from like my X, you know, my kids blood sugar's terrific for a week and then they go to my exes for the weekend and his blood sugar's 300, all weekend long. so incredibly unhealthy. And, and I

Jennifer Smith, CDE 37:05
see the same thing with you know, as good as family caregivers could be like, you do the best that you can as parents, and then you have a weekend away, and you're like, Yay, we've got a weekend away. But even in terms of those parents that weekend away, is not free of diabetes thought, right? You know, their thought has gone into prepping whoever the caregiver is prepping their child for they may not know this. So you know, text me if something comes up, or you know, the grandparents or caregivers or godparents or whoever there are, that's taking care of them thinking, well, can't they just have a little of this? Or Can't we just give this to them, and we don't have to really worry about it, everything, everything is considered in diabetes. And as you said, you know, that couple of days that they're running now at 300, because you didn't follow the set of directions that you were given. That's making a difference in that person or that child's life. Yeah,

Scott Benner 38:04
no, and, and so that people can understand when your blood sugar is high, There's too much sugar in your blood and no way to release it, the insulin is what releases it, we're not going to get into super technical stuff. But when you hear later, you know, when you turn on the news, and some guy died of complications of type one diabetes, now, you know, what they really died from was a heart attack or a stroke, or an aneurysm or something that comes from too much for the lack of a better term sugar scrubbing away, you know, in the inside of your body, is it going to happen today, if a kid's blood sugar goes up to 300 watts, because you messed up the insulin? No. But if it keeps happening, it will happen very likely one day. And so you're making a decision today on Sunday to maybe save someone's life 30 years from now, but that's, that's worth understanding, you know, and just because it's going to be later doesn't make it not super important. And don't forget to you're helping them be clear minded, you know, thoughtful, being able to learn or perform like a lot goes wrong inside of the functioning of your body when your blood sugar's high. It just, it's just very important. And the people who love you and are hoping you'll understand are, they don't know how to explain it to you. So they asked us to make this. I will tell you, Jenny brought something up a minute ago that I wanted to kind of like add on to if there was a super simple way to make it, okay. Everyone with diabetes would be doing it already. And you wouldn't have to worry about it. There's no shortcut to it. So if you're having a pool party, I think you really need to try to understand how terrible it is to not invite one kid because you're scared or you don't understand or you just don't want the hassle. Like, just find some time talk to the parent come up with a simple plan that everybody can deal with because that kids sitting at home and they're thinking I'm not at this pool party right now. I'm not gonna sleep over right now, because I'm a problem. That's how it feels to them. Right? I'm broken, and nobody wants me around. And you can't you can't be a part of making people feel that way.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 40:11
No. And if you don't know, like you said, it's, it's ask, you know, a lot of the kids that I work with, that's one of the big things I bring up with parents, you know, it's, if there's going to be asleep over something they've been asked to, again, defining a time to sit down with those parents, or even the good, the good friend's parents, and make sure that they have a basic baseline kind of understanding. But I think it also takes from the standpoint of not not being the parent with a kid with type one or not being you know, the employer who has type one or any experience with it, it takes asking, really just I mean, don't be afraid to ask any question is a really good question. As long as it's not, I guess derogatory, or, you know, it doesn't come out as well, should you really be doing that? You know, I don't know very much about this. But should you be doing that

Scott Benner 41:03
I know, a lot of people have type one diabetes, don't ask them if they should be eating something that doesn't sit well with them, you know, they'll, they'll, they can eat anything they want if they know how to use the insulin to manage it. And and so in the end, it's just that idea of us being supportive. And like Jenny said, if you don't understand, try to find out and understand that when you go to find out, it's very possible that the person you're going to ask them mother of a kid who's had diabetes for six weeks, she might not understand yet, either, you know, and so her her instructions might seem like a lot, or Babli, like, or I've babbled a lot of people when my kid first had diabetes, I'm like, Listen, you don't understand, she can't get highs, you can't get low and you start rambling. And before you know it, you're like, Oh, great. I'm the crazy person in the room.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 41:51
You get the glazed over eyes. And they're just like,

Scott Benner 41:54
I always imagined, somewhere between like, I'm so glad this didn't happen to me, and why won't they shut up, but they won't shut up because they're scared, right? Because this stuff as much as it seems like, you can make it seem mathematical. Diabetes is not like I take a pill every morning. And I'm okay. It's very fluid, it changes pretty consistently, depending on a ton of factors. And the people who really understand it, or the people who are living with it, are just sort of struggling moment to moment, because they don't know what's going to happen next, it feels like you're running for your life in a disaster movie. And you know, you're like a bridge collapses underneath of you, and you pull yourself up on the bank. And then as soon as that's happening, a zombie bites your leg and a building falls on your wife, you know, like, you're just like, wait, when is this gonna slow down? You know? And at the same time, I know, I just said that. And it's true. This is gonna sound crazy. Don't treat people like they're running through a disaster movie, because they're trying to find some normalcy. And you could be a big help in that.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 42:59
And I think sometimes, within that understanding, let's say you're the teacher, or you're the boss, or you're the coach, and you've, you've been schooled, right, somebody sat down with you, and they've given you information. They're like, this is the plan of action. And then next year, they come to you, and they're like, Okay, do you understand everything? And you're like, yeah, yeah, yeah, I got it, you gave me this whole, like, you know, hour long, entire, you know, information session, you're like, Okay, but this year, this is a little different, right? This is what we're experiencing now. So know that, like, with Type One Diabetes, also kind of, it's a little bit more fluid. There's, there's change that ends up happening, you know, last year, to juice boxes at the middle session of a soccer match, might no longer need to be there. This year, the reaction is a little bit different. So, you know, also continue to ask questions along the way to say, Well, does anybody anything changed for you? Or you know, is it is it still the same? Do we need to consider anything different? I think that's why in the beginning of the year for kids, especially, there's always a there's a point at which you need to go in and you need to reestablish that care plan for this year, what's going what needs to be different, what needs to change? Because Because life changing, right?

Scott Benner 44:13
And and seriously, because your grandmother or your aunt or your uncle has type two diabetes, you don't understand type one at all. There's nothing about that. That translates over to this in any meaningful caregiving kind of a way. I remember just recently we were having a conversation before a school year. And one of the teachers, you know, my daughter's information about her blood sugar is on her cell phone, right, which is really cool. And so the teachers like, well, we take the cell phones away at the beginning of the class, and I laughed, and I was like, that's fine Arden's not going to be giving you her cell phone, she needs it, you know, make life and death decisions. And she's very good with their cell phone. She's not going to abuse it and everything like that. She was well what do I tell the other kids? And I said, I swear I said this in a roomful of about 10 teachers that tells me them if they want to get a lifelong incurable disease, then they can keep their cell phone on them too. Otherwise, they should shut up and like, and you have to have the nerve to do that, like you should turn to 20 other kids and go, listen, her situation is different than yours. I don't even care if you but just stop, you know, like it's a it's a big deal. Imagine wanting to use someone's diabetes as an excuse to keep your cell phone or to be a malcontent for a second, and then you as an adult, don't just shut that down right away. Instead, you're like, Oh, well, you know, Kim does have a good point. It's not fair. Of course, it's not fair. It's also not fair that my daughter's carrying a juice box with her and like, something called glucagon in case she passes out to somebody can stick it in their leg. It's not fair either, you know. So just think I'll tell you a common sense, is, is a huge help with diabetes. It really is, and and especially about being around them. But let's look what I think everybody understands. Now, hopefully, why don't we drill down a little bit more about how in a situation whether you're a teacher or grandparent who's babysitting or something like that, or a, you know, a boss who's trying to, you know, keep somebody healthy? Like, let's give them more nuts and bolts of what goes on in the day of a person with type one diabetes, and how they may be able to be helpful in those situations. So, I mean, but before we do that, Jenny, I'm sorry. Can you explain to people what it feels like to be high and what it feels like to be low? for you personally, it's gonna be different for some people. But

Jennifer Smith, CDE 46:35
yeah, so lows. As I said just a bit ago, low symptoms for the person can change through the course of life with type one, too. So my lows now, I feel as though I have like these racing thoughts. I feel like things are going really like exponentially fast. But I feel like I'm moving through mud. Like, I feel like I just can't get there. Even though everything in my brain feels fast. I feel like I'm just moving at like a snail's pace. It feels horrible. I also, for a long time, it started in college, and I didn't have this symptom before, but kind of like you mentioned that like nom, with Arden, I have like this numb, tingly tongue kind of feeling for low blood sugars. And I've never thankfully knock on wood. I've never gotten to the point of needing glucagon, I've never had to use it in my 32 years of life. Nobody's had to give it to me. I have had to have assistance for treating a low. But um, you know, sometimes I've, I've, like started talking kind of weird, like, not really what the whole conversation was about or like mumbling and sort of rambling. And my husband said, like, your blood sugar's kinda low. And this was before CGM, like we were married early on. Yeah. You know, he knew some of the things to watch for. So I mean, those are my lows. Now, when I was younger, I definitely was shaky. I mean, it was very visibly, my blood sugar was low. And again, that was a time when there were no continuous monitors and pumps were not really beneficial. So but highs, highs, I get really, like tired, and really kind of, like more annoyed, I don't get annoyed, I don't get that like, irritated angriness with lows like many people can get, I get that more when I'm high. And I feel like I just can't put a lot of really good, like thoughts together consistently, I feel slow, so hard to put the

Scott Benner 48:52
effort in for anything. And it's not something that you can just fight through. It's not like that. It's not, it's not like I didn't get enough sleep last night, but I need to be at work. It's an absolutely physiological issue that is limiting you. So for people listening, it's sugar, glucose is the is the energy your brain runs off of. And having the right amount of it is perfect. Having too little of it, you know, is goes the way we've discussed and having too much of it does something to your body with a working pancreas just keeps you in a great range all the time. So you don't experience all these things. But a person who maybe could do something so simple as Hmm, let's see. Let's say you have a kid in your class who says I have to give myself my insulin right now because I'm eating in 10 minutes. And you say no, no, we're gonna finish this first. Don't do that. I don't want you giving yourself insulin in front of all these people. Well, you've now missed time, their insulin with the impact that the food's going to have on their body, which will very likely drive their blood sugar higher and cause what Jenny just described. Similarly, if they say I put my insulin in 10 minutes ago I know you want to talk for five more minutes, but I have to start eating now. You can't say no, because then their blood sugar could go the wrong way the the insulin will continue to pull the sugar out of their blood, it doesn't know how to stop like a, like a healthy body does,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 50:14
it's expecting there to be food there to work with.

Scott Benner 50:16
Yes, and when that foods not there, they can get awfully low and all the way up to like, I don't want to, like, you know, I don't want to make you feel like I'm trying to be dramatic, but you could kill them. And you know, anywhere from shaky to not making sense to angry to seizures to passing out to dying, like if you take too much of that sugar out of their blood. That's like taking electricity away from a light bulb, and you can't turn it back on again, by putting the sugar back in after it's off. So it's really important. And at the same time super important not to make people feel like pariah and and not to give them long term, serious psychological issues around this thing that they you know, I'm gonna say this, but I don't think it matters. They have nothing to do with getting it. But even if they did, why would you? Why would you want to make them feel that way? You know, and I think that's important. And I don't think any of the people listening to this want that. You just don't know what they're talking about. And then you make assumptions. You know, I don't know if a lot of the things that we think are is anecdotal, you know, we kind of went over like, oh, diabetes, that keys off. My grandmother had diabetes, I understand diabetes, I live with my grandmother for three years. No, that's different. That's probably type two diabetes. And your grandmother probably took a couple of medications and, you know, different thing. But the person who says that? I don't think they say that out of malice. I also don't think the person who tells you, you're so strong. Thank God, this happened to you. And not me. I don't even think I don't think that person means that with mouse. No, you know,

Jennifer Smith, CDE 51:51
they're in any conversation, we're always trying to find a connecting piece, you know, I mean, communication is that it's a given a take between two people or six people or whatever. But if you're in the, if you're the person that doesn't know, then ask more than talking. Yes. Right. It's, it's always, well, goodness, I, you know, I didn't know that you had type one diabetes, tell me what that's like. I mean, that's a very easy, simple, you know, and if the person really doesn't want or need to share with you, maybe they would just say, Well, you know, I manage it, and it's okay. But if they're, if you're sharing with them for a reason, then continue to really be more the ask the questions. But don't share too much. Unless you truly have some experience to share. I feel

Scott Benner 52:38
like before we go over nuts and bolts like management ideas that people will have to intersect with, I think what we should really be saying here is, in case you haven't been paying attention for the last 49 minutes, this is about communication. And most people are terrible communicators. And it's because they don't listen enough, and they interject their thoughts. And and it's a very human thing to feel like, you know, but you don't like I could sit here for the rest of my life and make a list of things I don't understand. You know, but I'll tell you what, put me in a situation where one of those things, I probably puff up a little bit start reaching into my common sense, or, you know, a little bit of my anecdotal information I have, and I start saying, No, no, I know what's up here. You know, it's, it's like talking about, I know, we're recording this during Corona. But like, it's, it's that thing, when people step up, they go, Oh, no, no, you know, what you have to do you have to do this. How do you know that? Right? Is it because you're a Harvard researcher? Or is it because you heard a guy say a thing, and now two people said it, you're like, Oh, that must be true. And that's just how our brains operate. And it's very valuable day to day. It's not very valuable when you're trying to talk to somebody about something important like this, that you don't understand. And they very well may be struggling with as well. Right now. So anyway, All right, I'll start you jump in. Okay, I'll do breakfast, you do lunch, and we'll go from there. My daughter gets up in the morning. And if we're lucky, her blood sugar's been stable overnight. But if she's been low overnight, we may have had to take away some insulin, or give her food, she could wake up a little higher. Because of that, it could throw off the timing of her eating, she might end up being late for school because of that. She may end up being a little rundown. You can wake up if you have a bunch of low blood sugars overnight, you wake up with, but people some people call a low blood sugar hangover. Yeah, right. And so that could be that. So you got to give these people a chance to get their lives moving. And then they've got to get to work. And what if I get myself insolence or on time and I have to get my car then and drive to work and now I'm scared I could get low while I'm driving like these poor people or you're just eating, you got a pancreas, it works. You get up you make some eggs, you throw them in your face, you run out the door, and it's all good. People with diabetes are already 45 decisions into life and it's 730 and they haven't been in the shower yet. So they so they get that together. My daughter, you know, heads off to school and, you know, half an hour, 45 minutes later, she needs to know what her blood sugar's doing. So she's gonna have to look. So you see, my daughter looked down at her phone in the first in first class, she's not ignoring you, she's making sure that her blood sugar doesn't get out of whack. And then she's got to start thinking about like, Oh, I'm getting low, and I have gym two hours from now. And, and lunch is going to be in three hours. And, you know, I have to give myself insulin during social studies so that it's working for, you know, all that stuff, right. And they have to count their carbohydrates and their food. So I'm going to ask Jenny to explain like, what what they're doing, they're around their meals.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 55:41
Yeah. So I mean, carbohydrates are, it's just a big word for sugar, right? I mean, all all carbohydrate foods, like starchy foods, fruit, even vegetables have some kind of carbohydrate or sugar in and when we take insulin, insulin is meant primarily to cover the impact of carbohydrates. So timing is really important around that in terms of like you said, she might need to take her insulin in social studies so that by the time she gets to lunch, the insulin is already there, the way that our insulin today works, it's meant to meet with food in the system. But our insulin has to actually do what we call peaking, kind of get in get working get circulating in order for food, carbohydrates was which digest really fast. Once they start, you know, getting into the stomach, that insulin has to meet it at the right time. And so when we count our carbohydrates, it's a certain amount that goes along with a certain amount of insulin, so that our blood sugar doesn't get too high after that might involve looking at a food label that might involve looking up information on your phone. So that maybe you're you know, visiting an app that's got a calorie or a carb counter in it, you may see somebody again on their phone or their device looking something up, and I guarantee with diabetes and fits around a mealtime, it's not that they're ignoring you or trying to be rude, it's likely that they're looking for information, or maybe that they're telling their pump to do something important. Coming into that meal time.

Scott Benner 57:13
And if you stand in their way of doing that, then most people to feel like they fit in Next time won't do it, then you'll make their insulin late and they're going and their blood sugar's gonna be higher. Not everybody is me, I don't care what people think I would just do whatever, you know, and I've raised my daughter that way. I'm like, Oh, don't worry about them just do what you need to do. But But you have to understand that many, many people can't overcome social pressure. And so you pressure them even on the way you don't understand, you may send them in another direction. So they count all these carbs that give themselves their insulin. Now they're not sure if it's going to work, their blood sugar might go up and might go down. Now they might have to have their meter out to check their you know, they might have to poke a hole in their finger, make some blood come out, check it with a test trip, some people might be wearing a glucose monitor that's feeding their, their blood sugar live to them on their cell phone, there's a lot of gear they have. It's not, you can't restrict their access to their gear is is a big thing. Because I've seen people say like, Oh, just leave your bag here. Like I need that bag. I can't just leave it here. And that might mean if you're a teacher, that at recess for this year, you're gonna be wearing some kids bag over your shoulder at recess, and just I know it sucks, but just do it. And that's it. For for, for I was good place.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 58:29
Oh, I was gonna say along with that, like in terms of like, Oh, you have to leave your bag here, whatnot, I've worked with quite a number of adults, especially who are government employees weren't allowed to run their phones aren't allowed to have certain devices like a phone or whatnot within their government building. And I think the important thing, I mean, if you are certainly, you know, within the realm of being an employer, for people with type one I policies need to change then that's the biggest thing that I can say, because while the device itself might have pieces that you don't want within the building, you're really restricting their ability to have a healthy life in terms of also what you're asking them to do performance wise on the job, things change. And that

Scott Benner 59:11
goes right to what I was gonna say with like school nurses, like, I know you've been a school nurse for 25 years and no kid has ever died from type one diabetes, except the way that you took care of it 15 years ago is not the way people take care of it anymore. It's much more fluid. It's It's It's better. It just it really is and and saying to somebody Oh, it's okay. Or I'd rather their blood sugar be high than low? No, you wouldn't rather their blood sugar behind them low you'd rather the blood sugar be normal normal than either of those things. Stop finding either ores in your head, I don't want to go down the wrong road away from away from diabetes, but everything's not black, white. It's not this or that. There's all kinds of other options and gray areas and just because your brain picks I'd rather be high than library Rather than behind the load that doesn't make you right. And that doesn't mean that's the only option. There are a ton of options. Kids having to leave class, to go to the nurse to do diabetes related things. That's bad. Okay, I know you think it's Oh, they need to be around me. So they do it right, you need to everybody needs to teach them how to handle it on their own, because lose losing five or 10 minutes of math when you're too, you know, in second grade is one thing, but losing 10 minutes of advanced trigonometry is another thing, you know, like, or

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:00:31
may miss the whole concept.

Scott Benner 1:00:32
Yes, and it's gone. And and, and if you learned how to manage on your own in the moment, you can just kind of find a need meet the need, keep going instead of wait till the needs a problem, go to the nurse spend a half an hour getting out of the problem going back much better to be proactive than reactive. And the going to the nurse thing all the time is reactive, it's waiting for a problem. These things can can be done in classrooms. It technology's amazing. My daughter has been managing her blood sugar through text messages with me for a decade. Right and, and she does no lie. Since the last day of second grade, my daughter who was a junior in high school has not been to the nurse's office for anything diabetes related in all that time.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:01:20
Well, and even in terms of like safety, too, you know, I know that there are a number of schools and families that have worked with Well, they have to send my child to treat the low blood sugar to the nurse's station, it's down three levels and across the building and whatnot. And like, blood sugar is low, they need to treat it in class. Now, there's no reason that you're sending a kid whose blood sugar is dropping, you know, for a five minute walk through the halls in order to go suck some juice down in a nurse so they can watch and make sure they drink the whole box. That's ridiculous. Like

Scott Benner 1:01:50
they're like, well, we'll send a kid with him like, Oh, great. So there'll be another eight year old there, because I'm always putting eight year olds in charge of important things. You know, hey, listen, you just go with Jenny. And if she passes out, you know what to do your aid. Exactly. 20 year old wouldn't know what to do, we'd be like, oh, what happened? Jenny fell over, we left her there. And she died. Like, you know, like, they just don't put kids in charge of stuff. It's weird. Like I get if it's a little like, Oh, she just wants to have somebody to go down with and it's all nice. But the nurse's office is for emergencies. And here's the crazy thing. Having Type One Diabetes is not an emergency, it's just a, it's just an extra thing you do during the day. So stop treating them like they're sick, Trump's stop treating them like they're broken. They're, they're just they're not, you know, and so and so listen, they're gonna have to get on the bus, or you're gonna have to drive home from work. And you're still thinking about your blood sugar. And so if someone comes to you and says, Look, I need you to watch my kid tonight for a couple of hours, or you're the babysitter, or a grandparent, it's very doable, someone's gonna say to you look, eight o'clock, test their blood sugar, you know, text me the number, I'll help you do what you do. If you know if the numbers in this range, that's cool, give him this much insulin, let him eat this snack, you know, and here's what the snack is. Just follow the instructions, the person giving you the instructions is fairly confident that they're that they're right. And questioning them all the time is bizarre, you have any idea how many school nurses fight with parents, like I've been taking care of this kid for 10 years. And you want to tell me how to do it now because that's how we've always done it here. Very strange way to come at something. I get that you don't want to get into a long conversation with a family who maybe doesn't understand and maybe least common denominator, it might make it easy for people who don't know, but instead of doing that to them, like what if you said to them, Hey, I think there's a way we could do this that your kid could be healthier or you know, that kind of thing. And, and I want to say to I'd like to give Jenny a chance here to talk about what it would feel like if her spouse had those kind of like anecdotal thoughts and was leaning on her all the time. First of all, I'd be dead. She'd bury him somewhere. It's over. She wouldn't take it. But But like, what would it be like for another adult who you respect in all other things, to suddenly have thoughts about your health that that aren't warranted or founded?

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:04:21
It would be it would, it would feel horrible. I mean, this fact that somebody that like you said you care so much about and that you have a lot of good rapport and almost every other thing that you talk about and live with and decide about together. I mean, it would make you feel kind of countered, honestly, in terms of what you've been doing and also like visually how you feel like they're now seeing you. Like is it all about this is this all they see now is a really gosh, they're they're really worried about this or they feel like they don't have any, there's no confidence there. And what I in what I'm able to do for myself, you know, I've been managing this for 30 some years. They feel like I can't do it anymore, that they're constantly asking like, are you okay? Or did you just check your blood sugar before bed tonight? Because, you know, I heard your ducks come later

Scott Benner 1:05:13
today, feeling like feeling like someone looks at you and sees diabetes, not you is is is kind of crushing, you know, and that's another great little tool you're looking for a tip don't lead with how's your blood sugar every time you see somebody, something else first, how's the day? Isn't it sunny out, blah, blah, blah. Like even if you're the school nurse like just walking in there. It's a drudgery for kids, right to do that.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:05:36
Like it's very rare for my husband to actually like, ask, even if he hears like my Dexcom making a noise or something. It's very rare for him to ask I he does have the follow app on his phone. And even with that, he never I think it was maybe a month ago that he texted me to ask, you know, I've gotten these like urgent, low alerts. He's like, you know, and I've gotten a couple of them like, are you okay? It's kind of all he asked, or, you know, and I was like, yep, it's the sensor. That's totally off. I was like, I just restarted it this morning. Yeah, I actually texted him a picture of like, my actual, like, finger stick. I'm like, I'm like, 92. Totally fine. He's like, okay, I just wanted to make sure that he's like, cuz I keep getting them. And I just want to make sure that everything was okay. But other than that, usually it's not, you know, it's not even something I do.

Scott Benner 1:06:31
But it wouldn't be pleasant if if he was constantly.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:06:34
No, in fact, usually my my late native work, in which he doesn't work, he usually makes dinner, and he'll actually usually text me and ask, you know, hey, I was gonna make this this evening, you know? This is how much carbs in it, because you know, is that I need to Pre-Bolus or he'll have measured something for me. And this is how much was in it? Or, you know, when do you think you're going to be done, because he knows that the Pre-Bolus component is really important. So those kinds of pieces are really helpful. They're not, like, annoying to give example. It's

Scott Benner 1:07:08
a good example of him. Like, look, what are we saying, Listen, talk, ask questions, be empathetic, do things that are actually helpful, not that you think are helpful, right? I learned that from being married, by the way, that the things that I think my wife wants aren't necessarily the things that she wants. And that you know, and that I would be much more helpful if I did the things that would actually be beneficial to her and not the things that I feel would be beneficial, right. So listen, talk, ask questions, let them talk, realize it's hard for them as well. And like Jenny said, at the beginning, set a time to sit down and talk about this. And if you don't understand, keep asking and understand that things could continue to kind of morph and grow and change and that what you know, today to be true, very well may not be true a year from now. Right? You know, you've no idea how things evolve and change hormones and kids are huge stress is, is can sometimes be hard on your on your diabetes, but I really do want to make sure that no one leaves this feeling like oh, well, people with type one diabetes, I shouldn't hire them. I shouldn't put them on my kids baseball team. It's not the case. With with good support and understanding. I mean, this Okay, you guys are listening. Because somebody sent you this episode, you don't know this podcast, you don't know me. I've met thousands of people with type one diabetes in my life. And overall, some of the kindest, smartest tuned in people that I've ever met in my life, like, imagine how tuned in you are when you have to understand the inner workings of your body constantly. You want these people on your side, like they're, they're great teammates, they're there. They're great coworkers, there's just a little bit that they need you to understand. And then you'll find a rhythm. That's the other thing is like, this isn't forever, you'll find a rhythm together, whether you're, you know, you know, the parent of a friend of a kid or something like that, or whoever you are, in this scenario, you do this more times, it won't be a thing anymore, you'll just you'll have it, you know, and it's worth doing because you're going to get to know some great people who otherwise may be marginalized. And I don't know, just think about it, like you've an opportunity to put in a little bit of effort to figure something out. And keep a kid from being the kid who's not invited to a birthday party, or a person who loses a job that they're completely qualified for, because they got low at work, and nobody knew how to help them that made all of you nervous, you know, right, that that sort of thing. I want to say to that, if you really want to dig in more, there are episodes of the podcast called defining diabetes. And they're very short and they they define very specific things. So like if we set a word here, like Bolus or Pre-Bolus, that you didn't understand, it will explain that to you very simply. And if you really want to dig down deep and understand what people Thinking about when they're managing their blood sugars. There's an entire series of episodes called diabetes pro tip. Right? So it's diabetes pro tip Pre-Bolus diabetes pro tip something, there's maybe 20 of them by now, if you really want to understand what people with type one diabetes are thinking about, those episodes will take you well inside. And same thing for people listening who are like, I can't make anybody understand Pre-Bolus sing like just you could send them one of those. So

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:10:27
yeah, I was actually going to mention that too. So yay.

Scott Benner 1:10:30
Thank you very much. And this is the first episode that Jenny and I recorded with a new microphone. And I have held in my excitement about how good she sounds the entire time we were doing this. So for regular listeners to the podcast, you they're all right now going like Jenny sounds so much better. And for everybody else, they're like, Huh, I didn't know that was a big deal.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:10:49
I asked Scott, if it was actually gonna get rid of my Wisconsin accent. And he's like, Yeah, probably not. Not. No, it'd be so much clearer.

Scott Benner 1:10:55
You talked earlier about the night, your husband when you work late, your husband cooks. And there were four words that if I hadn't spoken to you so much, I don't know that I would have known what you were saying.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:11:05
Oh, really?

Scott Benner 1:11:06
No, that's right. I said water a couple of times in here. So everybody who's not from Philly is like, What is wrong with this guy, thinking I'm having a stroke, probably. Anyway, I really hope this was valuable. I know, it's not possible for us to cover everything. But the goal was for you to be the person who's in some way supporting someone with Type One Diabetes, or once to understand better. And I hope that by listening to this, you have a better understanding, I think you will.

Jennifer Smith, CDE 1:11:34
And also know that you are really important in terms of the person's like feelings about things and that that background support piece, you're a really important part of that as long as you understand things in the way that you need in order to provide that support. So

Scott Benner 1:11:52
I think that in the last thing, I think I want to say is that as my dog barks, that you don't want to separate yourself from a person's life because you're scared of their thing. Like that hurts like it might because I talked about co parenting earlier and spouses who aren't as involved, I believe, sometimes they just don't want to mess up. So they step back, but you end up alienating the person with diabetes and stranding the person who's trying to help them. And and I know, it's a lot to figure out, but you could like Trust me, I know, as you're listening, you don't know me. But I'm, there's nothing special about me and I understand diabetes really well. And everything I know about it. And Jenny knows about it, we put into those pro tip episodes. So if you're just a dad or a mom, or you know who's like, I don't want to get involved, because I'll mess it up. You know, you're doing other things that I think you don't mean to be doing in your relationships. And if you understood it better, I think you could do better, but hell yeah, I really would. Anyway, I could keep talking about this forever. So let's just stop. Jenny, thank you very much for doing this with me. Of course. This is usually the place where I thank the sponsors and the guests, but instead, thank you for listening. Thank you for wanting to know more about type one diabetes, for spending the time to try to learn. If you have more questions, you can look for episodes of the show called defining diabetes, or other diabetes pro tip episodes. Just look right there in your podcast player and check it out. If you're looking for a place to pick around even a little further, there's a blog at Juicebox podcast.com. Thanks so much to Omni pod Dexcom touched by type one, the Contour Next One blood glucose meter. Lily's chocolates, g vote glucagon T one D exchange. I think that's it. That's all the sponsors we have. It's a lot of sponsors. Thank you for being sponsors. Seriously. Get a free no obligation demo of the AMI pod to blend in so tubulin tubeless insulin pump at my omnipod.com forward slash juice box. Their demo is absolutely free and has zero obligation. Learn more about the Dexcom g six continuous glucose monitor@dexcom.com forward slash juice box. Get what I think is the best blood glucose meter on the planet at Contour Next one.com forward slash juice box. lend your voice to insanely incredible Diabetes Research. T one d exchange.org. forward slash juice box. You want to pre mixed pre filled glucagon. It even comes in a hypo pen. It's amazing Jeeva glucagon.com forward slash juice box no more mixing up your glucagon payable and Lily's chocolates. Make some great chocolate with far less sugar in it than you expect. Their ads will begin in the second half of 2020 and they will be accompanied by a savings coupon so you can try some lilies and save some money. That's coming soon. Check out my absolutely favorite diabetes organization at touched by type one.org. I know this episode didn't quite fit in with the other diabetes pro tip episodes, but I do think this is the place to put it. As I think about everyone learning about their type one, at some point part of it becomes talking to other people about type one diabetes. So this is where this belongs. Thanks so much for listening. I'll see you soon.

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