#1042 Type Two Storie: Abbie

Abbie has type 2 diabetes and is in alcohol and drug recovery.

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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 friends, and welcome to episode 1042 of the Juicebox Podcast.

Today I'm talking to Abby, she's 27 years old, has had type two diabetes for 16 years, and has quite the story. Abby comes from a family that has problems, and she is a recovering alcoholic and drug addict. Her parents were married and divorced three separate times, and she has an estranged relationship with both of them. While you're listening today, 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. If you'd like to, you could go to cozy earth.com You could buy a bunch of stuff like sheets or towels or clothing all very comfortable and high end. And then you could use the offer code juice box at checkout to save 40% off of your entire order. That's cozy earth.com. use the offer code juice box to save 40% And if you want to start with ag one you can with my link drink ag one.com forward slash juice box. Using that link will get you five free travel packs in a year supply of vitamin D with your first order. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored by Dexcom dexcom.com. Forward slash juicebox. Get yourself a Dexcom G seven or Dexcom G six right now today, this minute this instant, maybe an hour from now when you're done listening to the podcast@dexcom.com forward slash juice box. This show is sponsored today by the glucagon that my daughter carries. G voc hypo pen. Find out more at G voc glucagon.com. Forward slash juice box.

Abbie 2:04
The name is Abby and I'm from Texas.

Scott Benner 2:07
Abby, you are on the show today because you have a wicked case a lumbago No,

Abbie 2:14
no, I have type two diabetes. I've had type two since I was 15. I was diagnosed in 2011 or 2012.

Scott Benner 2:25
You woke me right up with that. How old are you?

Abbie 2:29
I'm 27. Snap

Scott Benner 2:31
as the kids say 15 years ago? Sorry. 15. Is it in your family?

Abbie 2:40
Oh, yeah. Ramping. Really? Yeah, side, sides. Both sides. Both sides. And it's tough to on both sides.

Scott Benner 2:49
We'll start here. Your mom has it. My mom and my dad and your dad, their parents. At least one of both of their parents, siblings of your parents.

Abbie 3:00
Siblings on my dad's side. Nobody confirmed on my mom's side.

Scott Benner 3:04
Look how easily you can rattle this off. Do you have siblings?

Abbie 3:08
I have one brother. He does not have diabetes. We

Scott Benner 3:10
call him lucky. Okay. How about the dog? No dogs, the diabetes? Cats? No, I asked because one time I was talking to a person and their pets had diabetes too. And I was like, what is happening? I was like, get out of the house you live in. But wow. So is it fair to say that if we sat here and kept doing this, you could keep counting cousins? Like that kind of thing? Oh, yeah. Wow. Okay. Can I ask your background?

Abbie 3:41
Um, yeah, so my family's Hispanic. My mom's side is Caucasian and Salvadorian. And then my dad's side is Mexican. And that played a huge factor.

Scott Benner 3:56
The Mexican side, both because my

Abbie 4:00
mom would cook very traditional, like Hispanic food. And when I got diagnosed, she was primarily faulted for me having diabetes

Scott Benner 4:11
by the physician. Yeah. Oh, at 15. Like, I'm looking at you today. And you look like a regular person. Like, like an average person is what I'm saying. Obviously, I mean, size wise, you're delightful and beautiful and all that stuff. But you look like an average sized person. Was your mom or dad Well, overweight.

Abbie 4:30
So my mom got gestational diabetes with my brother and she was I believe around 300 pounds when she delivered him. Okay, and she's, I think five one or five two. So she was pretty big.

Scott Benner 4:44
never really got past it, or did she lose the weight?

Abbie 4:47
So she lost some of the weight and then I think like maybe three years later, she was diagnosed with type two.

Scott Benner 4:55
Okay. Wow, is your father shorter?

Abbie 5:00
No, he Well, he's fine. He was five, seven. And he, when he was younger was pretty big. And then when he was 27, I think was when he was diagnosed, and he lost a bunch of weight just out of nowhere.

Scott Benner 5:15
Okay, so before he was diagnosed, the weight came off. Yeah. Probably from high blood sugars. Oh, yeah. Yeah. What kind of work did he do?

Abbie 5:24
He was working in warehouses. He was manager kind of stuff.

Scott Benner 5:30
Yeah. But he was moving in a warm place to Yeah, okay. I don't know why that matter to me. But it's it. It's fun to ask questions when you don't exactly know what you're talking about. It really does. Like, it's like the thing that pops in your head. You're like, is this something? Wow. Okay, so can I ask what you waited? 15

Abbie 5:50
I believe it was around 130 pounds. And you are how tall? I am 14. Okay.

Scott Benner 6:02
I don't know how long since

Abbie 6:03
I was like 12. Remember,

Speaker 1 6:06
it's also a curse of some Italian men. Shoot, right? Shoot right up to a height that like at when you're young. You're like a giant around everybody. And then everybody grows past you and you never get any taller. Yep. So I don't know another way to ask this. So I'm just gonna come ask it the way that it occurs to me that 130 pounds. Does it look right on your frame? Or how did you feel about it?

Abbie 6:32
Yeah, um, 120 to 130 is a very comfortable weight for me. I currently weigh 145 250. I fluctuate a lot. But I am a little chunky.

Scott Benner 6:48
Do you say that with love or do you want to lose some weight?

Abbie 6:51
I'm uncomfortable. Like, it's not a huge deal to me. But yeah, I would like to lose some weight. Okay.

Scott Benner 6:56
i The reason I asked is just because I'm trying to, I'm trying to paint a picture in my head of you at 15 years old. You know, and so, at 15 years old, you're like, I felt like I looked the way I want it to look like my body composition was there. Oh, yeah, absolutely. How did it with hindsight? I mean, you're, you're eight years older now. How did you eat when you were 15? And up until you were 15? Was it? Like, did you think of it as like, a nutritious eating style? Where did you know? You know, you knew?

Abbie 7:28
I knew, Okay. All right.

Scott Benner 7:31
Go over it a little bit. Like, like, shut your eyes. Make yourself 15. And like Monday night, what do we have for dinner?

Abbie 7:37
Oh, I can tell you. So we, my parents, they were divorced and married three times to each other. And so we went through, sometimes the poverty and there were a lot of nights that we would eat email, which is like noodles and sauce. It's a Mexican. Like really cheap meal. One cheetahs, which are just like macaroni noodles, with meat and sauce and other Mexican meal, a lot of spaghetti, a lot of sandwiches. Tuna, sandwiches kind of stuff. My favorite snack if I had money, because I've worked since I was 14. If I had money was like gas station chips and an Arizona Tea.

Scott Benner 8:25
You were living then? You're like looking at us. Big night. Yeah, I don't know if I want the ruffles or the regular. Stand there for 10 minutes. Go on like, Oh, I was broke, by the way. Abby, so I'm commiserating with you. I would have if people have heard me talk about working at my uncle's sheetmetal shop when I was a young person. And I would go to a 711 at lunch. And I only had a few dollars to spend. So I would buy like a 99 cent cinnamon roll, which was mostly sugar, a drink of some sort that definitely had sugar in it. And then something else like whatever else the money could shake out, like trying to get out there for like $3 was kind of the idea because I was only going to make Gosh, this dates me more than anything else. I thought it was going to make me sound sad and broke. But I think it just makes me sound old. I was making $4.50 an hour. So you know, eight hours 35 bucks, taxes off? Why would they tax me by the way? Child labor, we need his $3 So the whole thing's gonna fall apart. So they take the three bucks off my day or so I can only spend about $4 on lunch. Then I gotta buy gas. I make like $27 That day, like for eight hours in a were in a in a sheetmetal shop. It's just insane. Like see there was never a thought of like I'll buy something like forget like Knowing what healthy was, if I knew what it was, I couldn't have afforded it. Right. Like, that's kind of where I was. Sounds like,

Abbie 10:07
oh, that's even a thing for me now.

Scott Benner 10:09
Yeah, did it stick with you?

Abbie 10:12
I have huge food insecurity, like, with I live with my partner and my brother, my brother works on the road as a welder. And my partner and I, we split groceries and he, you know, will shell out whatever kind of money I need to go grocery shopping. But I have such a problem feeling like, there's just not enough food in the house. Yeah, we're gonna run out of food. And so, and even with the food that we do, buy, it's so expensive to eat healthy consistently. And so, in our town, there's a place where you can go get produce, once a week, and, or once every couple of weeks, I think, and I go pick up produce, because it's free. Yeah. And it's a ridiculous amount of produce, but I store it and I freeze it, and I can it so that we have it

Scott Benner 11:10
good for you. That's great. I was walking through I gotcha. I realized I was gonna say something. And then I realized it was going to be talking about the end of my mom's life, which I didn't mean to do, Abby, but I was walking through a hospital the other day, and there was a table with brown bags on them. And it just said, like, free food, take one. And I would walk in in the morning and the table was full. And when I left in the afternoon, it wasn't. And I was like, Oh, wow, like it really struck me. I was like, that's something like I thought, Oh, that's nice. Maybe someone will walk by and need this. But that wasn't it. It was it was needed and absorbed every day. And I I don't want to lie to you like I can afford to eat now. You know, but I still watch my wife and I. The last place we still look poor, is at the grocery store. We still sometimes like if we don't stop ourselves when we shop like to rubes who found $200 on the ground. Like Does that make sense to you? Yeah, exactly. Oh, wow. All this resonates with me so much. Okay, so she's like, people seem to like these. I'm like, do we want that? She's like, I don't know. But they're selling and we can afford it. I'm like,

Abbie 12:30
and my brother he is a brand whore he he you know it has to be hidden valley. It has to be craft. It has to be the brand name and I buy generic everything. Yeah, the generic it's going to my basket.

Scott Benner 12:46
I think if we took your brother to Nobu. He'd be like, I don't want this garbage.

Abbie 12:52
would tell him he got all the good jeans. And that's what he's like that.

Scott Benner 12:55
That's something so he's more Wow. Does it affect your palate? like growing up like that? Do you have like a taste for sugary or pasta? Like that kind of stuff? Bread. Do you lean that direction when you're eating?

Abbie 13:10
Oh, yeah. My my boyfriend makes fun of me. Because between like lunch and dinner or dinner in bed, I'll tell him like I need to sweet. Just like to go find something. Yeah,

Scott Benner 13:22
a little treasure hunt.

Abbie 13:23
Yeah.

Scott Benner 13:25
All right. Okay, so when you're 15 you know, let me just say this, Abby, before we move forward. You're shorter on time today, or I would spent Wani solid minutes asking about your parents three marriages and divorces to each other because I know someone they were not. I know somebody who did that. And they were crazy. So I was like, like these like, like whirlwind kind of romantic things, these horrible fights, and then I can't believe we're not together and then it happens again. And then you're like, oh, and then they do it again. It's like, I don't know. I don't know what it's like. It's like watching an animal step in a trap. Getting out of it finally and running right back over it, like stepping on.

Abbie 14:07
Yeah, that's exactly how it went. And by the time I was in high school and then divorced the last time I was just like, I'm done with both of you.

Scott Benner 14:17
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Abbie 16:07
I'm sorry, I've lost it for a while. For both of them actually had they know this, but I had genuine hate for both of them for the way that we'd grown up and the way that things had turned out. I I didn't want anything to do with my family in general. And my mom and I have worked really, really hard on our relationship. We're in a really good place now. A lot of what transpired in our relationship had a lot to do with my addictions. I was I'm an alcoholic and a drug addict. And I'm in recovery. I am right. About to be must be 16 months sober.

Scott Benner 16:54
Oh, good for you. Congratulations. That's excellent. All right. Well, we've

Abbie 16:58
done family therapy and just worked on a lot of things. So her and I are in a really good place. My dad actually passed when I was 20 years old. I'm so sorry. Thank you. Um, so we didn't never get to that place. Um, I did what I could for him when he was sick. But we just, it was never,

Scott Benner 17:19
that's hard. No, I that happened to me too. So you're not in a healthy relationship with a parent as they're dying. But you're not going to ignore their health. But you're in a room. It feels like you're helping a stranger almost, doesn't it? Oh, yeah. Yeah. That's something. How did your dad pass?

Abbie 17:38
So he passed from complications of diabetes and alcoholism? How old was he? He was 40s. Sir 47.

Scott Benner 17:51
I don't know your dad, are you and that almost made me cry. Oh, God, I'm sorry. That's because my mom just died. Sorry. I'm not laughing. I'm still. I'm surprised the things that are making me sad over the last couple of weeks. And they come out of weird places. Like I did not connect my mom to your statement. It was just that when you said it, my eyes filled up. When I got in the car the other day. Arden wanted to go pick up groceries. Oddly. She got in her head to bake something. She's like, I'm gonna make shortbread cookies. We're like, okay. And she's like, but I gotta go to the store. Come with me. She says, and I'm like gay. Yeah. Which I now realize is code for come pay for the groceries. I never like followed that before. But we get in the car. And she's driving. And she says to me, which grocery store should I go to? Because we're sort of in the middle of like two of them. You can kind of make a left and go to one or a right and go the other one what she was really asking us which one is closer? I start crying. What grocery store? Should we go to my eyes burst open waterfalls out of them. I'm upset. And I don't know why right away. Then it hits me. I call my mom every time I get the store and go shopping. Like and because I'm like I work in the house. Like, you know if we need a thing for tonight. I bet go I'll run to the grocery store. I drive back and forth to the grocery store. Three or four times a week. You also all know me pretty well. Like I could probably go fewer times if I took a list but ruins the fun. I am now crying and she goes What's wrong? Like she knows my mom passed away like two days before that. But she's still like, where did this even come from? And I had to sit there for a minute to figure it out. Like I pulled myself together very quickly. And then I was like, Why am I crying? Why and I makes me sound unstable, by the way. And I'm like, Why am I crying? Why am I crying? I'm like, oh, it's the I would I would have gotten in this car and first thing I would have done was call my mom and then we would have chatted I might have put my earbuds in and kept talking to her when I was in the grocery store and then come home cuz I'm always working. And it was it was always a good free time to call her. Anyway. I'm sorry for your loss. That's terrible. I do want to pick through a couple things quickly though. Complications to type two diabetes. Yes. What did it like? What was it on paper? What got him heart.

Abbie 20:21
So, really, they didn't clarify. It was a bunch of things that had kind of spiraled he first had Mersa and then had gangrene and one of his toes. And they had to amputate the toe and he decided he did not want to go through physical therapy. And he quit walking just gave up.

Scott Benner 20:44
Or your dad gave up at 46 years old. Yeah. What was this drink of choice?

Abbie 20:51
Um, mostly beer.

Scott Benner 20:53
Okay. And when did you start drinking?

Abbie 20:58
I started drinking. I had my first drink when I was like, 11 or 12 years old

Scott Benner 21:03
through your parents or other media? No, not through your parents. What drugs did you start with?

Abbie 21:11
I started with marijuana when I was 11. It didn't my drinking didn't get really serious until I was 16. And I tried cocaine while I was in high school wasn't really for me. And then when I was in my 20s it just my drinking was at an all time peak. And I was hooked on cocaine.

Scott Benner 21:35
Wow. So you didn't like the Coke, but you liked what it did? Or yeah, so were you drinking?

Abbie 21:43
I was bouncing against drinking. Okay. So

Scott Benner 21:47
I've had this explained to me before and make sure I have it right. You drink you get so drunk, you start to shut off the coke wakes you back up so you can drink more.

Abbie 21:57
That's how it's supposed to work. Okay, how to work for you. Um, I would usually get so drunk that the cocaine wouldn't do anything. And I would just be wide awake drunk.

Scott Benner 22:09
Oh. Oh, so you didn't get the you didn't get the zoom. But you're now awake. Yeah. Oh, is that a really strange feeling? People say that

Abbie 22:18
the cocaine is supposed to sober you up. And it never really sobered me up. But just yeah, it just gave me the high but the wide awake drunk. It started affecting my life because I I would go home and I would go lay in bed and I would just lay there until I had to get up the next day.

Scott Benner 22:43
Oh my God, just staring. Sleep. And then you know, you're awake for like, my eyelids. You're awake for like, 48 hours in a row kind of stuff. Yeah. She's dying to make you crazy to tell people because I don't think people believe it. Cocaine everywhere. Right? It's everywhere.

Abbie 23:01
Oh, absolutely. It's so accessible. I hardly ever paid for cocaine because it was just there. Wow. People will just hand it out to you.

Scott Benner 23:10
Not funny. No, gatekeeper. No. in other walks of life. That's a lovely thing. Not here. What happens? Well, I guess let me first ask while you're drinking and everything. You know what? I'm sorry. How the hell do you start drinking when you're 11

Abbie 23:27
my parents had alcohol in the house. And I had friends that would sneak it with me. Okay. And I did the water refill to keep it at the line that they had it that

Scott Benner 23:37
nobody know. Yeah. Interesting. Your mom drank too?

Abbie 23:41
Um, no, not really interesting. Okay. My mom's never been a big drinker.

Scott Benner 23:45
So you started with just the like, kid play stuff. Like, people would come over and be like, Hey, we could drink some of that. And then we'll refill the thing. And it'll be fun. But then you start. You escape with it. I mean, you did paint a picture. It would have been fun to make fun of your parents for being kooky. But you weren't in like a super stable situation, either.

Abbie 24:03
So when I was 16, my parents started letting me drink with them.

Scott Benner 24:07
Hey, special occasions or every day?

Abbie 24:10
Yeah, special occasions.

Scott Benner 24:12
I don't know why. Writing on the white meats, beef. Like it mattered to me. Where did they look at you? Was it like when I got my driver's license? I started driving when I was 13. So when I took my driver's test when I was 16. All I remember the guy saying yes, I exited the course and park and waited for him to tell me if I got my license or not. Because it feels like you've been driving for years. And I went, huh? Did your parents not noticed that you were like hanging and like it wasn't hitting you the same way or it's just part of life.

Abbie 24:44
Both of my parents were so I would I like to explain about my parents is that they were so wrapped up in each other. Okay, that we had everything we needed and most of what we wanted. We were just Hello, Anna there. Yeah, we had each other my brother and I, but emotionally my parents were just not available to us then. Wow.

Scott Benner 25:09
Okay. All right, I appreciate you going through all this with me. I really do. Because somehow to me it paints a larger picture. What are you doing for your type to at 15? What do they say to you? Like? Do you get the like, you gotta go for a walk? Or is it meant for men? Or what do they

Abbie 25:29
put me on that plan? And they gave me a meter. That gives me the Calorie King book. I don't remember what it was called. But it's that book where it's got all the calories from all the fast food places. It's like, compact.

Scott Benner 25:44
I know it. Yes.

Abbie 25:47
I think I just got rid of it actually recently. And then they Yeah, talk about some nutrition stuff. And that's really it.

Scott Benner 25:57
15 You're not being parented? Well. And now you're in a doctor's office being told this? Do you have that? Like, oh, I got the sugars like everybody else feeling? Or are you like, oh, I can fix this or beat this? Or like, what's your, like marching orders when you leave there?

Abbie 26:14
No, I kind of slept and was like, it's whatever.

Scott Benner 26:17
Wow. So I'm just gonna pop this pillow on my mouth. And not sometimes if I feel like it. Yeah, but not always. And you're not making any adjustments. It's still Arizona Tea and chips. If you've got a couple of bucks. Yep. I gotcha. Mom doesn't say, hey, we'll start making pasta every day. No, nothing like that. You just keep going. Do you know Do you know what your Awan sees where

Abbie 26:39
I belong. I don't know what they were back then. But it wasn't until my dad passed when I was 20. That I was like, I really need to do something about this. And I was living with a boyfriend at the time. And I took my blood sugar one morning, and it was almost 600. Wow. And I thought, Do I need to go to the hospital? Like, what do I do about this? I don't, I don't know what I'm supposed to do. And I called my mom and I said, What do I do? And she said, Do you feel okay, and I said, Yeah, but I'm pretty sure my sugar's probably been like this for a while. And she said, then you need to schedule an appointment with an endocrinologist and get it under control. But don't go to the hospital.

Scott Benner 27:29
So she knew enough to tell you to go to a doctor as a very Yeah. Do you do the math? Do you go 46 minus 26 equals I got 20 more years when you test your blood sugar that day, like what kicks you into gear, like your dad's passing like something got you to go right row. So you know what

Abbie 27:51
I think it was something in my grief was just like pushing me. So like how you talked about just like little things that you don't recognize or little things that you're not sure why they set you off. That's how my grip was at the time. And I didn't know why things were happening the way that they were happening, or why I was acting the way that I was acting. And I want to tell you, I'm also sorry for your loss. And thank you, you're you don't have to apologize for anything. Because I understand.

Scott Benner 28:25
You're trying to make me cry over you. It's gonna be pretty easy to do. It's only been a week. And I'll tell you so far, one of the blessings in the last week. And that's not a word I throw around lightly is making the podcast. Because generally speaking for an hour or so every day, I just like I get to go away in my head and just have like a very kind of intimate conversation with somebody and my mom does not come up usually. And so it's been Believe it or not, I don't know that it might be people may be able to figure it out. But there'll be an episode that will have gone up months before this one does. Maybe not months, where you'll if you listen hard enough. I'm recording that episode, because I know my mom's dying that day. And I am just trying to like be somewhere else in my head. So I did not cancel my recording the day my mom was in hospice and my poor brother was pumping morphine into her trying to help her. So

Abbie 29:27
I did the same thing. I went to work, the day that I knew my dad was going to die. And I actually was his next of kin. Because my parents were separated and or they were divorced. And hey, if they

Scott Benner 29:41
had more time they would have got back together. Yeah.

Abbie 29:45
He was on a ventilator. And they told me that I had to decide if he was going to stay on or if we're going to turn the ventilator off but he I had already known that he was gone and they told me he was brain dead and So they had put cooling blankets on his body. And then when they were trying to warm them back up, and it just nothing was working. So that Tuesday, I decided we weren't going to just stop. But everybody said their goodbyes and turn off the ventilator. So I went to work that morning, and I said, I need to leave by noon, and go to the hospital. And I did. I went to work, and just acted like it was a normal day.

Scott Benner 30:27
Yeah, I thank the woman at the end of the episode. I was like, You really helped me today. I say we had some, I don't know, conversation about something that I'm not going to remember till I listen back to it. And all I'm trying to do is like, keep my mind off of what's happening. So yeah. Anyway, I don't know how weird that'll sound in retrospect, hopefully, I pulled it off.

Abbie 30:49
And thanks. So yeah, we'll see. Yeah, the something you might grief was just messing with me about my own health. And my brother was 16. At the time, he had no health issues, so I wasn't worried about him. My mom, you know, her own diabetes was her own responsibility. And so I took my sugar that morning realized, we have a problem. My parents, they were both diagnosed in their late 20s. I was diagnosed 10 years earlier than them. Yeah. So yeah, it's gone through my head a lot. How long I have. And my partner and I have a lot of conversations about what happens when I go because I my life expectancy is much shorter than his.

Scott Benner 31:39
Do you think that or do you think there are things you could do? Like that would give you like, normalcy? Like, I see you wearing a CGM. Right, like, is that what I see on your arm? Okay, yeah, I wear a Dexcom Oh, cool. And you know how to eat now? Can you afford to eat better now? Not Yeah, better? Yes. Right. But not all the way. Not all the way. You have healthcare? That's excellent. What are you taking any medications?

Abbie 32:07
Yeah, so I'm still on Metformin, and then I take to jail. Okay. And I was taking ozempic I'll tell you a funny story about this. Um, I was having stomach problems for nine months. And it was debilitating. I was, I mean, glued to the toilet sometimes. And my stomach hurt so bad that I couldn't get out of bed. Or if I did go to work, I would be right back in bed after work. Couldn't get household stuff done. It was ridiculous. And I went to my primary, three different times and they said, We can't do anything for you. What's the bacterial infection? And they gave me antibiotics and told me to take them if it didn't get better, but like, no clearer instructions. And then I got with a gastro. I had to call for almost two months to get an appointment with a gastro. And then when I went to go see the gastro, they, I was really scared that this was colon cancer. Okay, or gastroparesis. And when I went, they said, it's likely a mix of gastroparesis and part of your bowels, and then severe IBS and the other part of your boss.

Scott Benner 33:29
did none of this exist for you earlier? No. But it was was it just the ozempic.

Abbie 33:36
So while I stopped taking, they told me at that, that appointment, they said, Well, your ozempic causes these symptoms and your Metformin causes these symptoms. I said, I've been on Metformin for 10 years. I've been on ozempic for three years. I've been on these medications for years, and these symptoms have been present for months. There's no way Okay, Okay, interesting. And there was epic, everybody, you know, there's that hype about ozempic and weight loss and insulin resistance. And I do you know, it helps with some of that for me, but it's not a huge, I don't see a huge difference. And my my personal body, I called and told my medical team that I was going to stop taking it because I needed the doctor to believe me. And so I stopped taking DSM pick and the symptoms didn't go away. And they tested me for a bunch of different stuff. I ended up having SIBO small intestinal bacterial overgrowth.

Scott Benner 34:39
Interesting.

Abbie 34:41
And I'm still pushing to have a follow up done for testing with a colonoscopy and endoscopy to find out if there is anything with to validate if there's gastroparesis or IBS

Scott Benner 35:00
Is your food digesting slowly so

Abbie 35:03
that because there's symptoms of slow digestion and accelerated digestion? It, you know, alternates on the days or like the times when I eat they're anticipating that it could be built.

Scott Benner 35:20
What are your blood sugar's look like?

Abbie 35:23
Right now? Not great. I did not wear index calm for about 10 days and my current blood, my current blood sugar is 245

Scott Benner 35:36
And have you eaten today? It's like you're in a different timezone. What's about 10 o'clock in the morning?

Abbie 35:41
15 right now. Yeah. I have not eaten. No, that's my fasting.

Scott Benner 35:46
Okay, all right. So you're on Metformin, your fasting blood sugar's 250. You were in a CGM. You have overgrowth in your intestines, which is probably from the higher blood sugars. Maybe you just have slow digestion, maybe it doesn't have to be gastroparesis. Okay,

Abbie 36:07
but I haven't always had these high blood sugars. So for a long time, especially. This is like, just currently my last a one C was 6.1.

Scott Benner 36:20
Okay. All right. Maybe it's an under Help underlying health issue that's pushing your blood sugar up. You get an exercise? Oh, no, I don't work out. No, I mean, go for a walk.

Abbie 36:34
I walked the dog. But I don't go for extended periods of time. I live in Texas. And it's like 110

Scott Benner 36:41
I've heard many new records in Texas the other day. Yeah. So I will not be going outside. Let me say this to just for timestamping. It's June 30. Today, and Canada. The smoke is back. I don't know what you people are doing. But it can't be that you have all that snow melted and put out the fire. Please help me. That's all now I cursed because of Canada. Let me write that down. It cannot possibly take this long to put out a fire camera. This is This doesn't look good for you. I'm outside. I'm outside again today. Like headaches, smoke floating through the air. It feels like somebody 20 feet from me put out a garbage fire with a bucket of water and the smoke is just sitting around my house. And I live in New Jersey. So come on Canada, please. Kevin's killing me. But you guys are working on your own hellscape down there with the heat. Yeah. So no outside it. You live in an apartment? Yeah. Okay. Isn't that interesting how these little things, these little things, you wouldn't even think of social economic. The way you grow up, like all that stuff. Like, kind of pushes you in a direction. You don't even know it. Like you don't I mean, you end up living a life that is more of the making of your influences and less of the making of your desires. So yeah, it's terrible.

Abbie 38:11
With I will tell you, I was doing a wellness program for a while and I was using my apartment gym. And I had to stop because with the so I only got the SIBO resolved. About two weeks ago, I went on antibiotics, and it cleared up and things are great. And I can move around and I can live my life. But right when that was going on, I was not eating. i If I could eat it was like very bland. Like minimal foods. And I had been put at one point on an elimination diet to see what foods are triggering these fits. Yeah. And then after that was eating FODMAP low FODMAP

Scott Benner 39:04
foods. Fine. Yeah.

Abbie 39:08
And in that time period, it was probably a span of two months. And my blood sugar was going low.

Scott Benner 39:18
Oh, really? Yeah. On this diet, so you can diet your way out of these blood sugars. If you eat cardboard. Yeah, yeah, that's what I think when I hear low FODMAP diet. Well, here's a question from just an outsider's perspective. If the SIBO is gone, why don't you go back on the ozempic

Abbie 39:39
so now I am going back on this epic but I have so I was originally on a two milligram

Scott Benner 39:48
we got a ramp to it prescription. Yeah, I

Abbie 39:50
have to start slowly because I'm I'll throw up on them.

Scott Benner 39:53
Yeah, no, it's uh, do they do point two 5.51. I think it started out at point five Point five then one, then two, then one, two. Okay. So and you have to do four weeks of each, right? Yes. Okay, so you're getting back, because maybe that's just why your blood sugars are higher because you're not getting the help from those epic deals. Right? Yeah. But you don't lose weight. So this is interesting. Abby, you listen to this podcast, right? Yes. Basically, I use ozempic Mines called V govi. I keep my head, I keep all my pens here to remind me that I shouldn't be eating a bunch of that's not good for me. And so I'm up to 1.7. I've done two injections of 1.7. I have noticed something. I'm at the point now, where I think I could overeat if I wanted to. Like if I made the conscious decision to do that. I almost I'm starting to think of it like when you heard about people getting like a gastric sleeves. And then you hear sometimes, like they figure like sometimes people get gastric sleeves and figure out a way they'll like liquefy their sugar or something like that. Like they like to, you know, get around this. I mean, went all that trouble, but I you know, like so. And I'm starting to get that feeling like we go V i don't have hunger, like I don't get hungry. My brain never tells me I'm hungry. And I very infrequently get any rumbling in my stomach that's like, oh, I can't believe I've eaten like, I don't know, it's magical when it comes to that stuff. And in the first few months, if I ate too much, I'd get like, like, like, oh, I should not eat that much. But I have noticed like, there are some foods I can eat more of than others. Like I could willfully eat around the window of you if I wanted to. And I wouldn't lose weight. But I am laser focused on doing this correctly. Like you see me I'm wearing a sweatshirt today. That doesn't fit me but it used to. And I'm almost wearing it to like remind myself of like, Yo used to fill up this sweatshirt, man. So keep going. You know? Do you have that with ozempic? Have you learned how to eat around it?

Abbie 42:02
I don't think I eat around it. I think with those Olympic I do have the repressed appetite. But I don't eat a lot in general.

Scott Benner 42:11
Okay. All right. So that's not your the it's the kind of foods that are available to you that are the bigger issue. Yeah. And how much? I mean, you said it earlier, but it's cultural. Right? And then are you is that it's difficult to get away from like you said, you're dating somebody? Is he have like a similar background as you? Oh, no. Okay. Would you do you get what would you pull? He's a white man. What kind of guy did you get? So your, your little Caucasian boyfriend? Is he? Is he dragging you in another direction? Like with food?

Abbie 42:50
Um, no. So he tries to be he's a power lifter. Okay. And so he tries to be but he eats so much more than I do. Okay. And so the types of meals that we make, like, he needs carb, I'm trying to stay away from a bunch of carbs. He needs very, like a lot of protein. And like, we have to divvy up like what we're eating. And the house that I grew up in. I could cook for, you know, 10 people, because my mom did that kind of stuff. And I've learned how to cook for one person. Now I'm cooking for two people. He's learning how to cook for both of us. I think we're just set a learning curve of what how to meet both of our knees in like a sustainable way.

Scott Benner 43:40
Yeah, it was interesting when my son graduated from college, and then he decided not to go to grad school and play more baseball. He got a job and he moved away. And he's teaching himself how to feed himself. And he says to me, one day, he goes, I don't I don't need all this size anymore. He's like, it's weird, but I don't need to weigh this much. Like I'm not trying to hit a baseball 400 feet anymore. Like I could, like I could lose weight. And he did like he lost. He dropped 10 pounds. Just by I don't think people realize like, in the the situation for your, for your boyfriend and eating to gain mass. Like it's a lot of food. He's like, it's so much better. He's like that I was eating food. Like I didn't even want it. I just like, you know, working out so hard and I'm playing so much. He's just forcing yourself to eat to keep your size up and he went from he was like 201 He's down to 190 and he's like six A's like six feet tall. But it was my point of bringing it up was it was interesting to watch him go I don't even need all this food. Like but he had been doing it for so long that it was just like you know, get up in the morning eggs rice. You know, put bread on it. Do this like give me more of something like he was so active like he couldn't be in bad shape, but it's you know, health wise So I don't know if it's still great for you or not, but he couldn't take in enough calories basically. Okay. Is your boyfriend ever like dead lifted you?

Abbie 45:11
He's never dead lifted me. He does pick me up. But

Scott Benner 45:15
it's all it's all I could think when you said he was a power lifter and that you're you're forefeet 11 Is that right? We're 10 for 10, not even for 11. And he's 640. That's what I was hoping. Yeah.

Abbie 45:29
And right when like the NK, like, problem was going on with inflation. Yeah, he was putting eggs on our grocery list and said, I need six eggs every morning for this meal and this protein. And I said, No, you're dating

Scott Benner 45:47
the wrong girl for that.

Abbie 45:48
Yeah. I said, you don't get eggs. We were buying egg whites, the liquid ones.

Scott Benner 45:54
Tell the chickens to make cheaper eggs? And then you can absolutely have them again. Yeah. So your management is a little up in the air right now. Because you're off. I'm glad that this CBOs cleared up for you. Do you do things like probiotics to try to keep your gut bacteria in a better direction?

Abbie 46:11
So I was directed not to worry, all of this was going on? Yes, the overgrowth?

Scott Benner 46:15
Right. What do they have you doing now that they think it's cleared up?

Abbie 46:20
Um, this doctor's office is not very communicative? So I have an advocate, nurse, and we're gonna figure out what we're gonna do.

Scott Benner 46:29
Was it not until your father's passing that you understood the impact of type two diabetes? Or did you know, and you didn't pay off in general, in general, you just thought like, I'm gonna live forever, because I'm young. And this is life. And that's how it works. Yeah. And that's something you never thought about the drinking or the drugs having a poor effect on you.

Abbie 46:50
Know, I knew they weren't good for me, but I didn't think that they would really be a big deal. I just thought, you know, it was everybody does it? Because that's who I was hanging around.

Scott Benner 46:59
Did you start paying attention to your diabetes, or your sobriety first, or did they happen at the same time? My diabetes, okay, so you're like, Well, I'm

Abbie 47:10
being a drunk diabetic, you don't take your medicine. So

Scott Benner 47:14
I love the idea of you're like, I'm gonna go get some of those good vegetables and candidum who's got the coke? I'm just imagining there was a day in your life that you went vegetable shopping, and got high on the same day? And probably Yeah. And you're like, Oh, I'm doing better. I'm being healthy. I'm having a salad. I mean, what is wrong with people? Not you, us in general? What is wrong? Yeah, what's been going on? I'd be on a health kick.

Abbie 47:49
Exactly.

Scott Benner 47:50
Oh, my God. I just, I see you over a coffee table explaining to people how you're getting your life together with your type two. And it's just it's really not like, I get him laughing. Because it's ridiculous. You know? Yeah. So what makes you go, I should not drink or get high anymore.

Abbie 48:08
I wrecked my car, and almost killed myself.

Scott Benner 48:11
And that'll get you. If you're lucky. I've heard people have done that and been like, God wants me to be alive.

Abbie 48:18
Yeah, no, um, I, I don't even remember this night, I went to a bar. And I was with people that I'd been hanging around for months and got into it with a guy that I'd been talking to got really upset. The bartender had lost my card. And so she'd been serving me free drinks all night. And I was ordering doubles at this

Scott Benner 48:42
point. If they're free. Yeah.

Abbie 48:46
So the last thing I remember is like storming out of this bar. Apparently, some people had tried to get me to get into an Uber and I screamed at them, stumbled to my car, got in my car and drove off. When I woke up the next morning, so this was March 4 of last year, I woke up the next morning, and I didn't know how I'd gotten in my bed. I was still in the clothes from the same night the night before. And my front door was unlocked. And I went to go look for my car, but I couldn't find it. And so I tracked it on my phone with my Bluetooth. And it was double parked, like diagonal in my apartment complex. And one of the, the, the axle in the front was broken in half. And one of the wheels was kind of angled like Lightning McQueen,

Scott Benner 49:47
ya know, to me.

Abbie 49:49
And then the tire on that wheel had a big huge bubble in it.

Scott Benner 49:55
Can I say I'm super impressed. You got it back to your apartment. Thank you. Yeah, you're welcome. Because I

Abbie 50:00
don't know what I hit or where I hit it, but I didn't get arrested as far as I know, it didn't hurt anyone else. Anywhere. No good for you. I didn't hurt myself. And I called into work that morning, obviously, because I couldn't get there.

Scott Benner 50:19
I don't feel well, it's just it's probably a head cold. I'll see you tomorrow.

Abbie 50:22
I told my boss that I was having car trouble. You are in line.

Scott Benner 50:29
I'd say it's absolutely that's that's the most honest thing. You probably said that day. I'm having car trouble. I'm also cocaine trouble and alcohol. And yeah. So do you just sit there all day and think like, oh, God, I gotta fix this.

Abbie 50:43
No. So I came upstairs. My brother and I lived here. And I told my brother, I need you to come look at my car. And my family knew the kind of things I was doing and had already been on my sabbatical. And I came and got my brother. I told him what I had found, and I needed him to look at it. And he just ripped me anyone. Yeah.

Scott Benner 51:07
Word food. You can't afford a car. Oh, yeah. Yeah.

Abbie 51:11
So I actually ended up selling that car to a mechanic. And that helped me get

Scott Benner 51:15
another one. Oh, wow. For parts.

Abbie 51:19
Yeah, no, we actually fixed it. We fixed it. And somebody drives it around my town. I see it all

Scott Benner 51:23
the time for people amazing. Wonderful. I gotta tell you, you describe the car to me that I would have gone man, we should take that to a junkyard. That thing is done. But somebody knows how to fix that. That's pretty cool. And that

Abbie 51:36
car was so just wouldn't die.

Scott Benner 51:40
Oh, apparently you're not going to either. You seem like you might have nine lives going. Yeah. Is it a great reminder to see the car bang around town? Like, yeah, I think it might be like almost like a little guardian angel that once in a while rolls by and goes don't forget not to use cocaine. You're like, no problem. I won't. Thank you, dad. No, that's interesting. So what are you gonna do? You gotta go to AAA you gotta go. Like,

Abbie 52:03
so I actually called My, my mental health physicians had been telling me that I needed to get clean. And then I said, Nope, I'm not going to. And I called my psychiatrist and I said, Hey, I need to get clean, but I'm not going to go to rehab. I don't have time or money to do that. So what's my next option, and she put me on naltrexone. And so I took naltrexone and I detoxed at home by myself,

Scott Benner 52:29
Oh, tell me about that.

Abbie 52:32
I didn't think I was gonna go through withdrawals. I didn't think it was going to be that bad. And because I didn't think I was an alcoholic, or an addict. I thought I'd do a little coke here and there, and I drink. But I don't drink like an alcoholic. And when I stopped, I had my friends come and get all the alcohol out of my house, and I started taking the naltrexone and I would go to work and I would have to walk out of my office, because I would start shaking so bad. And then at home at night is when it got really bad. I would toss and turn in my sleep, I would get cold sweats. My bed would be soaked.

Scott Benner 53:15
It was awful. How long did it go on for?

Abbie 53:19
I think my detox was probably right around two weeks.

Scott Benner 53:23
Wow. If I said to you right now, top of your head, the most important thing people have is what would you say? Their life? Yeah, exactly. It's, it's out. Great. Excellent. My son called me. He had only been out for a couple of months. And we were having this conversation about what's important. And he's like that stick up for me here. This is what's important. And I said call, it's just health. I was like, it's health. Health is the only thing and it relates to everything. Your health could be that it's 110 degrees outside, you can't go outside and go for a walk. Your health could be, you know, how you eat, how you, you know, feel in your mind. In the end, it's all health. Like, it's so easy to say, oh, yeah, sure, let's, you know, Triton. Anybody can say that. But I mean, my experience in my life tells me that if you don't have your health, you don't have anything. And your whole life is then focused on slowing this decline that is happening faster than it should be. And that's about being alive. So while you learned it early, that's great. Now what do we got to do? Do you need insulin?

Abbie 54:36
I take insulin Yeah, let's do is insulin. Yeah, but

Scott Benner 54:39
I mean, like meal insulin. No, I know you're taking a background but you said you've gotten low before too. So the Basal is enough for you mostly. Okay, how much do you take?

Abbie 54:51
Typically 20 units? If so, that's like my standard. And then if I am riding high like I am right now I can go up to 40. And then if I'm having lows are where I need to be the know kind of talk to my doctor in the portal about adjusting. Do you

Scott Benner 55:13
see a lot of spikes? Or is it just do you just ride higher?

Abbie 55:17
So no, not typically my, I would say my average blood sugar. My average fasting is probably like 110 120. Okay. And then like My average day like daily, like during the day is between 150 and 170.

Scott Benner 55:38
Okay, but I'm gonna do it when you're 250 There's no fast acting insulin they gave you like, if you have to get it down, like that kind of thing. Would you? Call on me? Yeah. Would you even be comfortable doing that?

Abbie 55:49
Probably. I think so. Okay,

Scott Benner 55:53
a lot of pump companies are coming out with type two pumps now that they're, and I've been

Abbie 55:58
offered a pump? Yeah. From my Endo. Yeah.

Scott Benner 56:01
What was your thought about it?

Abbie 56:04
I'm just not ready.

Scott Benner 56:05
Okay. Okay. So what is your plan? I mean, you've now you've proven to me that you can do a hard thing you've done a number of I mean, your whole story is you're doing hard things. So what's the hard thing you need to do for the diabetes? Because I want to say this, Abby, I don't think you're damned to dying early. Like, I don't think that's your, I don't think that's true. So like, what are the hard things you need to do that would get you to a better place?

Abbie 56:35
I think the hard thing for me with my diabetes, I know that. So I have a fatty liver. And with the extra weight that I carry on my body, I know that if I lost that weight, things would be easier. But like when we were talking about earlier, the extra 1520 pounds that I carry, I am very comfortable with that weight. Because the weight that I carry now has taken me through hard things. So I'm attached to this body. I'm gonna cry. I'm attached.

Scott Benner 57:16
I'm gonna cry. Abby, just let's be clear about that.

Abbie 57:20
And like my stomach, just in general, like, it's a comfort for me to like, be able to touch my stuff that's on hold my stomach. Do you know, hard?

Scott Benner 57:32
Do you know what happens? Look how it is like a teddy bear? Or like,

Abbie 57:37
I don't know, it's like, I don't know why it is. But like our Yeah, I will hold my own stomach or like, lift up my shirt if I'm home. And just like, let it be there. And I know that sounds so weird. But it like that's just how I've been for the past 10 years probably

Scott Benner 58:00
remind you of somebody. Something,

Abbie 58:04
I want to say that it's connected to like when I was little, I would take off my shirt as a kid and say like, I want to be like my dad. And then when I got older, my mom was like, Hey, you can't take up shirt anymore.

Scott Benner 58:16
Honey. It's over now. Might not be fair, but it's how we live this so? Well. Yeah. So you're working with a mental health person?

Abbie 58:28
Yes, I go to two different therapists, and then I see a psychiatrist as well.

Scott Benner 58:33
And this is not in my business. So you can this is not my business. Everything I've asked you is none of my business. So it's a weird thing for me to say. But I often find myself going this is not my business. A couple of therapists. So is some of it for the addiction stuff. Is some of it about how you grew up? Or do you have other like, mental health concerns that we haven't talked about?

Abbie 58:59
So one of them is talk therapy. And that's just like, whatever I need to catch up on whatever I need to work on. We also with that specific therapists, we do Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, or Dialectical Behavioral Therapy. And I have BPD. So we do that for my BPD. What is that

Scott Benner 59:20
bipolar disorder?

Abbie 59:22
I have bipolar disorder, and I have borderline personality disorder. Okay.

Scott Benner 59:27
How long do you feel like you've had those whole life? Like,

Abbie 59:33
I mean, I'm sure I've had bipolar my whole life. I just didn't know until I was probably a teenager, that it was an issue.

Scott Benner 59:41
Okay. Do you think? Do you think your parents have had it?

Abbie 59:47
I think my dad did. And then my neither one of my parents had been diagnosed with any mental health disorders. Okay, and so you There's not really a way to pin down where it came from. But bipolar is genetic. So how does

Scott Benner 1:00:04
it had to come? How does that impact your life? Like, what are the like real repercussions of it? Honestly, it takes over my life like it. It controls my life. Okay, for swaths of time, and then it doesn't or is it constant?

Abbie 1:00:22
I feel like it's constant. But there will be times where people will tell me that I'm doing well. And they can tell and they're proud of me. And like, right now, in my life for the past couple of weeks, like I've been trying to keep my together for other people, and just be there for my friends and be there for my family and do things for our household. And I was folding laundry the other day, and I looked at my boyfriend and I started crying. And I said, I need you to hold me because I'm about to have MTV. The bipolar has, because of the switching and the splitting. With my emotions on different people. It's affected a lot of my relationships. Yeah. And I, before the boyfriend I have now I could never sit in a committed relationship. I was always running. And then the borderline personality disorder, I I believe that it is a symptom of being raised in the household with someone who was a narcissist,

Scott Benner 1:01:32
and everything's so unstable, and moving around constantly, yeah, stability is so important for people. Wow. Okay, all right, Abby, this is a good time for us to take a breath. We've learned a lot. We've only been speaking for an hour. And we've gotten a lot out. Holy crap. You really stuck me for a second there. I didn't see that part coming. Isn't that crazy? I should have, by the way with the drugs and alcohol at the young age and your dad was drinking, I guess should have like, I'm almost disappointed in myself. I've been doing this for a long time. Yeah. Wow, you're very nice to come on this show and share this. Why the hell are you doing this?

Abbie 1:02:11
Because I want people to know that there's, you know, there's other people like them. And there's other people that go through these things. And my my road has been a hard road. But I feel like I have a purpose. And I want to share my story so that people know.

Scott Benner 1:02:28
Yeah, no, it's excellent. It's really lovely. It seriously, it's not lost on me that the podcast is like it's, it's, I mean, I could have made a podcast about management. It could be me and Jenny or me talking about diabetes a little bit, but it wouldn't be this robust if it was that it's people coming on. And I mean, this is the ninth year of this podcast, nine solid years, and pretty close to 1000 episodes. And I can tell you right now that on June 30 2023, if you said, Scott, I want to be on the podcast, I think I'd have to book you in February next year, like eight. So it's those people who I don't, I don't go find like they come find me. And we have these amazing conversations about things that generally speaking people do not talk about, but definitely live with. And I don't know, it just feels it's it just feels like I feel grateful that you're willing to do this is really cool. Do you use the show for management at all with your diabetes?

Abbie 1:03:35
I listen to some of the management podcasts and try to implement some of the like advice. It's just so hard to make it a habit.

Scott Benner 1:03:48
You see, I find that that's what the weego V is doing for me, by the way is Oh, first and foremost, it's helping me form a healthy habit that I was prior to this not I don't even want to say able to make. I don't even know that I was aware that I should make it like I didn't know anything. You know, I think in fairness, I didn't know anything was wrong. Like I knew my body didn't seem to work, right. And that I carried weight that like didn't make sense for what I was eating. Like I thought, you know, but I've just had an experience recently where I mean, I've lost 25 pounds in I don't know 16 pens. however long that is right. And in the beginning while the weights falling off, and in fairness, I'm a boy, we seem to lose weight easier. So you know, I don't think everybody's going to lose 25 pounds in the first couple of months. But I was so I adjusted how I was eating both, you know, because the medication helped me and because I wanted to and the weights come in and the numbers falling, right like so you're celebrating the number you're like, hey, A like, I don't care to tell you like I was like 233 that first day. And I'm like to, I don't even know what I am to haven't weighed myself yet. But I was to 10 yesterday. So I'm like, are 209 So I'm like 25 pounds down, and the numbers falling, its falling, its falling. You're like, I'm winning, I'm winning the numbers going down, I'm winning. And then I hit this, like, 25 number. And I like stood in the mirror. And I was like, Oh, damn, I'm still not in great shape. Like, and I used to tell myself forever, like, I just need to lose 20 pounds. Like, like, it's fine. Like, if I lost 20 pounds, I'd look like, you know, your boyfriend and his bodybuilding guy. And then I lost 20 pounds. I'm like, I'm just a smaller version of the mess I was before. Isn't that interesting? You know. And so for me, I thought, well, it felt like motivation, like, I'll keep going. But you know, yesterday, I or two days ago, I said to Arden, oh, we're waking up tomorrow before I record the podcast and going for a walk. And then we're going to do it again the next day. And we're going to keep doing that. Because this is not enough. Like just losing the weight. It's nice and close, like enclosed. Like, stand up, and I look so much better. And like the like, under my chin is going away, which was the thing that I've hated about my face for like my whole life. So but it's not the whole thing. Like that was like that was the crazy part. Like I looked in the mirror. And I was like, this is not nearly over. Right? I thought it was I thought 25 pounds. I'm good. Like, yeah, I want I want we go V like a bell was gonna go off or something. I got it, everybody, don't worry.

Abbie 1:06:40
I think the other piece too, is when I found a podcast, it was recommended by someone. And when I found the podcast, I found the Facebook group too. And I joined the Facebook group, Facebook group. And when I see people's posts, if I'm like, Oh, I've wondered about that, too. I'll go look in the comments. And though there are comments that I find helpful.

Scott Benner 1:07:02
Yeah. Oh, please, that Facebook group, like, I hope someone brings that up at my funeral. Like, I'm not kidding. You know, like, when people are like, Oh, he was good to the poor, I hope people I hope people go like he started a Facebook group. And I'll tell you what, it really helped people. That thing is crazy. Like, like, yes, the conversations are helpful unless the stories are helpful and blah, blah, blah. But you can be in the Facebook group and not listen to the podcast. And as a matter of fact, it happens, and vice vice versa. But there's nothing like it's not. It's not groupthink in a bad way, where everybody just gets together and agrees. And now we're all just believing each other's lies. Like it's a really interesting place where people come in and add their perspectives. And then you end up in every post having enough flavor from different perspectives where you can go, I'm going to that part seems valuable. And that part seems valuable. I'm going to take it over here and make my own thing out of it. Yeah, it's amazing. Like I really and I want to say again, I did not do that on purpose. Like once I started seeing what it was like, I put my effort into it. But in the beginning, I was just like, people were like, can you make a Facebook group? And I was like, Oh, like that, that Facebook group used to have one rule, it was like, I think it actually said in the rules. Don't be an asshole. I'll close this thing down. I don't want to be involved in this. But I'll do it for you guys if you want. But if anybody turns into a problem, like I'm shutting this off, and it's turned into, like a thing that I'm actually proud of. So yeah, more and more type twos are coming in every day, too. So that's really great. And it's it's the ecosystem is friendly. like nobody's like you have tight to get out of here. You know,

Abbie 1:08:51
the thing is, you've created a space and you've held space for people with type two.

Scott Benner 1:08:55
Yeah, no, it's crazy. And it's called Juicebox Podcast type one diabetes because and you know why honestly, because I've learned it doesn't matter what it's called. Yeah, like it's the way the word spreads is that thing could be called like, you know, Spearmint Rhino. Oh no, it that's a strip club and why is that in my head? Oh, I know why that's in my head. Not important and not not a dirty story. Just I just anyway, it could be called anything and the word would get around and people and people would find it and that's that to me the sign of something that's that's working Yeah 100% I mean, yeah.

Abbie 1:09:41
We won't go too much into this but um, somebody recommended this to the podcast to me on a

Scott Benner 1:09:48
work call. on a on a work call. Nice. I love where people get like from from doctors. I met a lady at Costco like I love reading the intake forms. I Read one, the essay that said, My child was just diagnosed with type one diabetes. My neighbor's kid has type one. She told me this is the only Facebook group worth being a part of. And I was like, Oh, that's really lovely. Yeah, I mean, 40,000 people grows by 300 people every seven days. So if the words out because you don't like you don't publicize the Facebook group? I mean, I guess I could, but seems like that's, you know, seems greedy. I mean, I'm already winning. How much do I want to win by? Well, you know, now there's a voice in my head saying that you want to win by more? Maybe I need a therapist. Is there anything we haven't talked about that we should have?

Abbie 1:10:46
Okay, so my other therapist, so I have the one for the talk therapy. And my second therapist is for EMDR.

Scott Benner 1:10:55
Oh, I was wondering if you do the rapid eye movement. Does that help?

Abbie 1:11:00
Yes. Yeah. For me, it does.

Scott Benner 1:11:02
I don't even think I need it. And I'd like to do it after hearing people talk about it.

Abbie 1:11:06
I actually don't do it for you would think I would do it for my childhood. But I actually do it for an abusive relationship I was in for four years.

Scott Benner 1:11:16
Wow. Okay. Is that a drinking relationship? So we were

Abbie 1:11:21
both drinkers. And I didn't stop drinking, but I minimized my drinking while I was in that relationship, because I felt like somebody had to be sober, or somewhat responsible.

Scott Benner 1:11:37
Well, that's how you know you're in trouble when you're like, I'm gonna be the responsible one in this situation. Well, holy hell, Abby. Thank you. For very much. I have to go to work. Right.

Abbie 1:11:53
I have about 45 minutes. I

Scott Benner 1:11:55
have a little time. Okay. All right. Then if you have a little more time, let me ask this question. I forgot about the timezone when I said that. What's it like trying to find a good doctor? Any kind, mental health endocrinologist general practitioner? How many of them varies.

Abbie 1:12:17
But like my endocrinologist, I went in, scheduled the appointment, I've been with him for seven years, I have not had any problems. They're literal angels. And I will never go anywhere else. They didn't, I said, they offered me a pump that they'll do whatever I need to manage my diabetes. At one point, I wanted children and they said, your diabetes will not hinder your ability to have children. So they are so helpful. My primary. I'm not going back there. So I will need to find a new one. I imagine that will probably be a pretty big task, the gastro that was not hard to find it was hard to schedule, because they don't answer their phone. And if they do, they don't have anything for six weeks. Yeah. And now it's just these follow ups that I need to get done are gonna take forever, but that one's graph of mental health. That's a show. Yeah. Because, and my, my, my boyfriend works in mental health. So I can I see what it's like, you know, firsthand because I live with someone who does that for a job. But when I was going to a certain clinic, I was not getting great care. They didn't really care what was going on with me. I ended up in the mental hospital. And when I was in the mental hospital, they asked me if I wanted to go back to the same physicians or if I wanted to have them schedule new appointments with new physicians. And that, you know, they didn't do anything right at the mental hospital. That was one thing they did, right. Okay. So they scheduled me with my talk therapist that I see now. The psychiatrist that I previously had I stopped seeing her though, because she recommended that I do ketamine treatments for depression. And I'm a recovering addict. I don't feel comfortable with that. Yeah. All of my mental health physicians are in the same office now. And they are all of them are pretty great. So I like how things are going right now. But that has been a journey of its own and mental health is finding people that know what I need to know how to do what I need.

Scott Benner 1:14:52
Yeah. So competency, not just talk therapy, but like real like dig down stuff and not that talk therapy is easy to do, but You know, you could

Abbie 1:15:01
taste it. Even the talk therapist, like can provide guidance and, and we do the DBT. In addition to but with a talk therapy, he can talk me down from things that I'm spiraling from, or things that somebody else has triggered. And they're not for me to hold on to.

Scott Benner 1:15:21
Yeah, go, that's excellent. But it's, I mean, I'm starting to even see, like, there's one doctor that helps my kids. And they're there. I mean, we, we give it to our insurance afterwards, and it's reimbursed, but it's a cash pay, like, and it's starting to turn into six, eight weeks to see that person. You know, and me used to be a few are paying in cash and happen faster. And now? No, you know, and it's worth the extra, it's worth the extra step. Because you do have to put the money out. You do. But we get, I mean, honestly, just about 90% of it back. So it's not really a problem. But, man, I just used to be that used to be like, fast track. You don't I mean, like, yeah, that's not even right anymore. Like, there are not enough doctors. And then you find them and they don't know what they're doing half the time or they're not valuable for you, and, and then you still have all these problems. And I think that's the thing that when people seem like they give up, it takes you two months to get an appointment to find out the doctor is not going to be valuable. And now you're back to like, I gotta go try to find a different doctor. I already thought this one was the right one. I'm wasn't right about that. I have to find another one. I have to wait two more months, then what if I get there and they're like, I don't know. I'm six months into this now. And that's a terrible, I've seen it happen to people along all kinds of disease states. And it's a real problem. Like the way the system is set up is monkeyed up somehow. It's worse than Canada, by the way. Where like, if you're not dying, you dropped to the bottom of the list. And then by the time they get to you, you're dying. You know what I mean? And so is something worse is happening. It's really sucks. You want to have kids. So with all you have going on, and you're just gonna say to get a cat

Abbie 1:17:22
I have a dog she's enough. Good enough.

Scott Benner 1:17:27
Yeah, but, but there is that drive? Right? Like, you don't? What made you change your mind about having a baby? Male? Yeah. You don't think you really don't think talk about it for a second, but I can tell on your face. You don't think you're gonna live forever? Like you you think your life is shortened? Yeah. What do you think is gonna get you?

Abbie 1:17:49
Honestly, that's not the diabetes. I think it's going to be cancer from like the food I eat or, you know, something I've put in my body that I shouldn't have.

Scott Benner 1:18:01
Well, I think the I think your body can rebound from the drugs and the alcohol you're still pretty young. I've seen people do worse themselves and and be okay. The food is financial. Or I completely think

Abbie 1:18:14
it's a I think it's a mix of financial and like knowledge. Okay.

Scott Benner 1:18:22
You because you don't know what to buy. Right? All right. cookies, crackers, white flour, No. seed oil. No. We're halfway there now. Okay. Okay, if you need oil, cold pressed olive oil, don't cook with anything else. butters better than canola vegetable, blah, blah, blah. Please don't cook with those oils. Go to coconut oil if you have to. Like for little things. That's the only oil that's in my house cold pressed olive oil that barely gets touched. Maybe just the wet a pan and coconut oil to make popcorn with those are the two things we haven't asked no oil. Did you listen to the episode with Jessie glucose goddess about the order to eat your food and to lower lessen glycemic impacts of food? No, I haven't heard listen to that one. I had her on because she was people are asking about her. She's like very popular. Online. I get a lot of feedback from people that said they've just reordered their meals type ones. They reorder their meals and they're seeing less impacts in places. So maybe just that might be easy to do. But white flour, noodles, bread. You know it's not really good for you. You wait you are you ate once and brought your agency into the fives. Yeah, Was there nothing in that diet you liked?

Abbie 1:19:52
I mean, is there so I think the thing about the knowledge now is I'm I I have the knowledge of what I am supposed to be eating for me. Okay, but then I have this six, four man who's 267 pounds, who is telling me what he needs to eat. And I'm like, maybe

Scott Benner 1:20:18
the girls again, if he's like, that's all. That's how I'd handle it. You guys, if I was a girl, I'd get a lot accomplished with my boobs. I'm just saying. I know why you guys aren't doing that more. I would say yeah.

Abbie 1:20:34
I think it's just the now it's the transition of what meals are we eating together? Because the all the meals that I can make myself, right, I know what I'm supposed to eat. But then we're eating together. And I'm like, he left those noodles in there. And I don't really want those to go to waste. So I'm going to eat them.

Scott Benner 1:20:52
So when it's in front of you, you'll eat it. If you don't have it, you'll avoid it. Right? I relate to that statement. If I if I live by myself, this house would have like some eggs in it. Like a couple of maybe like a head of romaine lettuce and some like, I don't know, rice crackers if I wanted to get crazy.

Abbie 1:21:11
You John salad. Yeah, I love salads and salads that are like, full of like, all the topping. Yeah. I love salad.

Scott Benner 1:21:22
So it would be malpractice for me as a podcaster. Not to bring this up. You are saying there's no way you can live longer because the way you eat, but then also saying that you are knowingly eating that way. Right? Yeah, yeah. Okay. I think you can do it. I think if you can stay straight for 16 months, and you can hammer your way through the relationship you had with your parents and are talking to your mom again. And it's and it's good. And you could make it through breaking the axle on your car and coming back getting yourself back together again. I don't see why you can't skip pasta.

Abbie 1:22:06
I'm going to tell you the other big thing. Okay. I am huge on helping other people taking care of other people. I have a really big family. As far as like, how close we are. There's 13 of us. We're super close, super tight knit. I have younger cousins who I'm very involved with. But if I'm taking care of other people and helping with other things, I'm not going to take care of myself. I'm going to put that on the backburner. Yes,

Scott Benner 1:22:39
that happens to people.

Abbie 1:22:42
But it's all I'm working on that you're working on.

Scott Benner 1:22:44
I know it's also a comfortable excuse, right? Oh, yeah, yeah. Because it's not like I don't do it because I don't care or I don't do it. Because I'm crazy. It's I don't do it. But it's because I'm doing something very important. Otherwise, yeah, like, That's the excuse. You know, when I

Abbie 1:23:02
was folding the laundry and crying the other night, I told my boyfriend, like, it's just so hard to have all of these moving parts. And to still, you know, take care of things at home and take care of me and take care of the dog and take care of you and take care of everybody else.

Scott Benner 1:23:21
I use a sliding priority schedule, which is not a thing that I'm going to generalize here. Now the thing I see ladies doing very often, I see ladies making lists in my life, and whatever got to be number one. always stays number one, even if number five suddenly became more important, when number five becomes very important. Instead of moving five to one, they go well now I gotta get done. 123 and four, so I can get to five. Does that sound? Like how your brain works?

Abbie 1:23:48
I do that. Yeah, don't

Scott Benner 1:23:49
do that. You want to know why boys look so carefree? is one of the reasons okay? If one was very important on Monday, but five is more important today. Five is one. That's it. I know that sounds ultra simple. But it you're you're, you have too much to do. We all we all have too much to do, right? In a modern society. We're all doing way too much. And that's not going to change. Like it's easy to sit around and go we should do less work. Okay, great. That's not going to happen. So like so when that's not gonna happen. Sliding priorities. That's it. My priority and for me for you, my health is first. Right? And then I think you know, eating is one in one A, one B. So the foods I choose my overall health, mental and physical, your relationships because I think you need strong relationships. If you're going to be able to keep up with your sobriety. Your sobriety is up in there. And then the rest is nice. Nice to have. Right? And you said it so casually earlier, like we had what we needed and most of what We wanted, I thought that was a very healthy like, state and I grew up broke. I know what you mean, like. And so yeah, to me, it's all about, it's about reprioritizing. Like, instead of looking and going, oh my god, number five just became really important, but I already wasn't getting done the laundry, like, I got to take the laundry and push it up, push it in the corner, and then do it tomorrow. That's it. That's what I got for you.

Abbie 1:25:27
The The other thing is, I've never I've never been one to ask for help. And with, like, trying to be, you know, taking care of myself and trying to be healthier and trying to be in healthier relationships. I was talking to my mom the other day, and I told her about all this stuff that was going on. And she said, she doesn't have a job right now. And she said, Well, I have time. And she offered to come over. And so she's coming over tonight, and she's going to help me clean.

Scott Benner 1:26:00
Nice. Don't let her cook. No, I'm just kidding. We saw what you did in the kitchen, you're good, clean something. Give me some more of that free lettuce. But stay out of the kitchen, please. Well, that see, that's terrific. Like, that's really great. Like, just do that. Like don't take advantage your mom, but like, you know, as like, continue to do that. Ask your boyfriend for help. At work, you know, there's so much of people taking on. They just keep taking a lot more work. And and now work just feels like it never ends. Do you work out of your home? Yeah, yeah, that's taken from somebody who's been doing that for longer than COVID. You know what I mean? It's tough. Because there are times the end of the day, you're like, well, it's nine o'clock. I'm not tired, but I couldn't go edit a podcast. And now I'm like just making this podcast constantly. I got to look a little right yesterday, you know, Isabel from the Facebook group. I texted her yesterday. And I said, I need someone to edit this show. For me. I was like, I am stuck in a loop. I want an editor, I desperately don't want to work with an editor. And I can't pay an editor. But I like like I just thought about if I can move this one thing off of my plate, how it would expand my life personally, and how I'd be able to put more effort into a lot of stuff for the podcast and grow other ideas that I have for people. And it's this one thing, it's the editing that's holding me back. Like it just is because like you and I are talking for an hour and a half, right? I'm gonna have to edit this. It's an hour and a half. So now your conversation is a three hour conversation. And then it has to be prepared. And I have to like, I have to do the thing where I sit down, I go I go. This episode of The Juicebox Podcast is sponsored. And I got to do all that right? And like so I do that stuff and then the editing together and that happens every day. So like I never stopped doing that. And then she's like, get an editor and I was like I don't want somebody to screw my podcast up. Something's gotta give you know what I mean? So I love that you had your mom over to help you out. That's really nice. Well, maybe you could make something good for her to eat. And you guys could both feel better. Yeah, Abby, I really appreciate you doing this with me. Thank you very much. Absolutely. I had a lovely time. And I over and above appreciate that you came on as a type two. So it's hard to hard to get more tattoos. I try really hard. I get them sometimes. But your story is going to fit right in with the other one. So I appreciate it very much.

Abbie 1:28:46
Thank you no shame in my game. I was actually told at one point that I was like one and a half

Scott Benner 1:28:54
at 15.

Abbie 1:28:55
Probably I think I was 20 when they said this okay. They thought Yeah, because because of my diagnosis being when I was 15 Did you get nobody?

Scott Benner 1:29:05
Did you the testing the C peptide testing? No. No. They just use common sense when you didn't die without insulin. Eventually Yeah, gotcha. And your father I'd like to and everybody you've ever looked at as type two and it's it's not it's not wrong for me to say that like in a from your background type two stronger as well. Right? Yeah, it's food. It really is ABBY Yeah. Indian culture to a lot of tight to the it's just it's the food you're eating. Alright, well don't get chips in an Arizona iced tea but go get something different

Well, first, a huge thank you to Abby for coming on the show and sharing such a personal story. I also want to thank Dexcom makers of the day Dexcom G six and G seven continuous glucose monitoring systems. Get yours right now@dexcom.com forward slash juicebox. A huge thank you to one of today's sponsors G voc glucagon, find out more about Chivo Capo pen at G Vogue glucagon.com forward slash juicebox you spell that GVOKEGL You see ag o n.com. Forward slash juicebox

thank you so much for listening. I'll be back soon with another episode of The Juicebox Podcast. If you have typed to or pre diabetes, that type two diabetes Pro Tip series from the Juicebox Podcast is exactly what you're looking for. Do you have a friend or a family member who is struggling to understand their type two and how to manage it? This series is for them. seven episodes to get you on track and up to speed. Episode 860 series intro 864 guilt and shame episode 869 medical team 874 fueling plan episode 880 diabetes technology episode 85 GLP ones metformin and insulin and an episode 889. We talk about movement. This episode is with me and Jenny Smith. Of course you know Jenny is a Certified diabetes Care and Education Specialist. She's a registered and licensed dietitian and Jenny has had type one diabetes for over 30 years. Too many people don't understand their type two diabetes, and this series aims to fix that. Share it with a friend or get started today.

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