#1313 Mr. Anderson

September 23, 2024Scott Benner

Beth is the mother of a five year old type 1.

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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 back to another episode of The juicebox podcast.

We got Beth today. She's 32 years old, the mother of four children, including her son, who has type one diabetes. His name is Paul. Paul is using loop. We're going to talk about that and other things while you're listening. 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. Sit back and relax and get ready to listen to Mr. Anderson. Does everybody remember that from the Matrix? Mr. Anderson, don't forget to save 40% off of your entire order@cozyearth.com All you have to do is use the offer code juicebox at checkout. That's juicebox at checkout to save 40 percent@cozyearth.com when you place your first order for AG, one, with my link, you'll get five free travel packs and a free year supply of vitamin D drink. AG, one.com/juice, box. Guys, don't forget to check out the private Facebook group juicebox podcast, type one diabetes. There's links in the show notes. I think you're going to enjoy it. I appreciate you guys downloading and listening. Please make sure you're subscribed or following in your favorite podcast app.

Today's podcast is sponsored by us med. Usmed.com/juice box. You can get your diabetes supplies from the same place that we do, and I'm talking about Dexcom libre, OmniPod, tandem, and so much more US med.com/juice box, or call 888-721-1514, this episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by the continuous glucose monitor that my daughter wears, the Dexcom g7 dexcom.com/juice dot com, slash juicebox. Use my link by typing it into a browser or click on it right there in the show notes of your podcast player. That link is also available at juicebox podcast.com

Beth 2:12
so my name is Beth. I am married to Danny, and we have four kids. My oldest is 10. My next oldest is five. His name is Paul, and he has type one diabetes. And then I have Anna is three, and my youngest is three months.

Scott Benner 2:29
Holy, Oh,

Unknown Speaker 2:30
yeah. You

Scott Benner 2:31
know my first question Beth, right?

Unknown Speaker 2:32
No,

Scott Benner 2:33
you doing this for the Lord? Or why we making all these babies? You build an army?

Speaker 1 2:37
We are Christian family, but I don't know that that's the reason why we have all these kids. My oldest is adopted, so we have grown in different ways. But yeah, we love them all. They're great.

Scott Benner 2:48
Beth you adopted a baby?

Speaker 1 2:50
How long ago? Well, I actually he came to our home when he was almost six through foster care, and then we finalized his adoption last year, when he was 10.

Scott Benner 3:01
So you Alright, hold on a second. So you had wait. I'm trying to why is my brain not working?

Speaker 1 3:09
Well, the timeline is funny. So my five year old Paul was one was was the first in our home, once we did foster before, but he was the first permanent child in our home. So he was born in 2018 and then the next year, my oldest King came to join us when he was almost six. And then the next year, my three year old, Anna, was born in 2020 okay. And then we had a little break. And then three months ago, Lydia, yeah. Wait,

Scott Benner 3:39
hold on a second. Did you say King?

Unknown Speaker 3:41
King?

Scott Benner 3:42
Did you leave that out because of my comment about building a an army for the Lord or No, no,

Unknown Speaker 3:48
it wasn't intentional.

Scott Benner 3:49
Did he have a name leader? I guess, hey, with a kid, you don't get to rename them, right? Like you have to keep a name they come with. It could be a

Speaker 1 3:56
choice that some people make. I would think when they're as old as he was when he joined our family, most people would not

Scott Benner 4:03
make that choice a six year old. Hey, listen, you're Jimmy now, okay, yeah,

Speaker 1 4:08
I would hope they would involve the child in that decision, but I

Scott Benner 4:12
would have a hard time changing an animal's name that I don't think would know the difference. True. Oh, my God. Okay, good times, is that it? Or you just rest in that? I'm just gonna say resting that thing up and you're gonna go one more time. But what's your plan?

Speaker 1 4:26
You know, that's probably it, but we'll see what happens in the

Scott Benner 4:30
future. Wow. Well, that's a it's a nice family. How old are you? Yeah, I'm 32 god damn Beth way to jump in the game and start playing both hands. Well, King was actually

Speaker 1 4:41
making fun of me last night because I had to think about my age for a minute, and he thought that made me seem old, which I guess so, but at least I was practiced for this moment.

Scott Benner 4:49
Yeah, no kidding. I hate when I don't know how old I am, but it happens a lot. All right, so Paul has type one. Does anyone else have any autoimmune issues?

Speaker 1 4:58
I come from a. Large family. So the only one person I can pinpoint is my mom's cousin's son has type one. But I don't know if that's just because there's enough people that it would have happened eventually. There's no no large spread autoimmune you

Scott Benner 5:16
don't see any thyroid stuff,

Speaker 1 5:19
not that I'm aware of interesting Paul. We had a little scare with Paul, but his numbers are back down to normal now, so they bounced a little. Yeah, my endo said it's normal for kids, but we had his, it was around 1.2 when he was diagnosed, and then two years later, when they did the routine check, it went up to three point something. And she wasn't concerned about that, but I kind of was, so we rechecked it again a few months later, and it was 4.9 his TSH, yeah. And then she's and then we rechecked it again, I think a month after that, and it was back down to 1.6 so it's certainly something in the back of my head. But for now, nothing

Scott Benner 5:59
was he symptomatic during that time at all, so

Speaker 1 6:02
nothing major. The only thing that I noticed was he would sometimes be cold more than I would anticipate. Like most kids are cold getting out of the bath, but I feel like he talked about it more, or there was one time he had a snow cone, even though it was hot outside, he was cold for like an hour. Nothing like no tiredness or fatigue or hair falling out or anything,

Scott Benner 6:23
right? Maybe he's just like me. I would have relished the chance to bitch about something.

Unknown Speaker 6:29
I mean, he's five, so it comes with the territory. I'm

Scott Benner 6:31
telling you. I was at a garden center yesterday picking up a couple of small shrubberies. I don't know why that made me laugh and and there were, it was cold. It was like, you know that springtime, I don't know where you live in the country, but there's that part in spring where you like, trick yourself into thinking it's going to be warm, and then you go outside and you're like, why is it's got that cold wetness that that was yesterday here. And there are a bunch of ladies working at the garden center, and they're outside bundled up and just eating lunch. And I said to one of them, I'm so impressed that you're just sitting out here eating. And she looks at me like, like, this woman had a look on her face, like she had been through it. You know what I mean? Like, I don't think you end up working at a garden center in your 50s if, like, Goldman Sachs worked out you just shifted right. So she's like, she looked like she had had a tough life. And she looks at me half crazy, like, What are you talking about? I'm like, it's so cold out here. How do you eat it when it's this cold? And she's like, Hey, you just eat was such a funny like response. And I was like, oh, and she looked at me and I said, I'd be complaining just out of both sides of my face. Yeah,

Speaker 1 7:32
I my I work closely with one other person, and I think several times this week, I told her about how cold it is in the office, and that was indoors.

Scott Benner 7:42
No, I love the bitch. No kidding. Okay, let's see what made you want to come on the podcast. I

Speaker 1 7:49
guess a few motivations. I don't know that our story is necessarily unique or interesting or anything, but I

Scott Benner 7:56
Beth, don't start like that. We want them to keep listening, and the advertisers would really like it if they made it to an ad at least. So go very unique

Speaker 1 8:04
and interesting. So my son was pretty young when he was diagnosed, and you know, that's not statistic wise, the most common thing. So I it is always nice for me to be able to hear from other families who have dealt with diabetes in a child so young, and I guess probably when I reached out to we were having a hard time, and I thought, well, maybe Scott can weigh in on this hard time, but you know, then it's six months later, so I can't even remember what was going on. Isn't that so

Scott Benner 8:31
let's talk about that for a second. Sure. How quickly? So how old was he again, when he was diagnosed,

Unknown Speaker 8:37
he was two, almost three, all right, so

Scott Benner 8:39
you've been at this a couple of years now, a little longer, almost three years. Yeah. So what makes you email a stranger and go, Hey, I need help. What was like? Do you remember what was happening? Or can you think of things that have been happening? Dexcom g7 offers an easier way to manage diabetes without finger sticks. It is a simple CGM system that delivers real time glucose numbers to your smartphone, your smartwatch, and it effortlessly allows you to see your glucose levels and where they're headed. My daughter is wearing a Dexcom g7 right now, and I can't recommend it enough, whether you have commercial insurance, Medicare coverage or no CGM coverage at all Dexcom can help you. Go to my link, dexcom.com/juicebox, and look for that button that says, Get a free benefits check that'll get you going with Dexcom when you're there, check out the Dexcom clarity app or the follow. Did you know that people can follow your Dexcom up to 10 people can follow you. Right now I'm following my daughter, but my wife is also following her. Her roommates at school are following her. So I guess Arden's being followed right now by five people who are concerned for her health and welfare. And you can do the same thing, school nurses, your neighbor, people in your family, everyone. Can have access to that information if you want them to have it, or if you're an adult and you don't want anyone to know, you don't have to share with anybody. It's completely up to you. Dexcom.com/juicebox, links in the show notes. Links at juicebox podcast.com. I don't know how you guys order your diabetes supplies, like CGMS, pumps and testing equipment. But at our house, we use us Med, and I'm gonna walk you through the entire process right now. I'm looking at the email from us med. It says it's time to refill your prescription, dear Arden, please click the button below to place your next order. Then you click the button that was it. Two days later, I got this email, thank you for your order from us. Med. We wanted to let you know that your order, and it gives you an order number was shipped via UPS ground. You can track your package anytime using the link below, and then there was a link, and then it showed up at our house. Now I'm going to walk you through the entire chain of events. On the 29th which was the Saturday I clicked on the email. On that Monday, the first, I got an email that said the order had been sent. Four days later. On the fifth, the package arrived. If you can do it easier than that, you go get it. But if you can't, us, med.com/juice, box or call 888-721-1514, get started today with us Med, get your diabetes supplies the same way we do.

Speaker 1 11:32
I think it was around the time. I can't remember exactly, no, we've we've had so many changes, but the timeline isn't matching up in my head. So it was probably just all the variables that go into play with diabetes, especially for a child who's growing it was probably just something changed, and it was the fourth change that happened that week, and we were trying to keep up with it. But what led me to reach out and think that this could potentially be helpful is that the podcast has been the most helpful thing in our journey with diabetes, so far, as far as knowing how to manage his care.

Scott Benner 12:06
Okay, all right. Well, we'll get to that for sure, sure. In your note, you say trialing multiple therapies, and you list like, different CGMS, different insulins, different, you know, algorithms. So tell me a little bit about like, what have you been doing? Are you like a mad scientist over there?

Speaker 1 12:24
I'm not a mad scientist, but I am the type of person who's going to try to find the best solution right now. Paul uses loop with OmniPod dash and Dexcom g7 and his insulin is fiasp. We started off just MDI, as everyone does. So we left the hospital with Lantus for his long acting in violin syringe, and then I believe it was Novolog, whatever insulin ass part is, for his fast acting in a pen. So we did that for about two months before, we convinced the endocrinologist to put him on a pump, we were kind of getting the routine we need to do MDI for quite a while first, but since he was so young, we really wanted the micro dosing that the pump could offer, sure, so we switched to OmniPod dash at that time, ultimately switched To OmniPod five as soon as it was available. After he was on OmniPod five, we switched to fiasp, which was another thing I had to kind of bring up with the endo several times she was concerned about, I guess this the clinical trial, when they were bringing FDA clearance for fiasp in young children, noted a slight increase of hypoglycemia. So she was concerned about that, but eventually wrote us the prescription. He did use g6 with the OmniPod five for a while, and then our one of our big motivations to switch to loop was because we wanted him to be able to use the g7 we've had a decent amount of issues with Dexcom, even though it's life saving and not anything we would ever want to give up. We we have ongoing issues with Dexcom, and we're hopeful that switching from g6 to g7 might work, but okay, I think that covers most of it all. Right. Cool.

Scott Benner 14:13
So what makes you go manual, automated, then automated? DIY. How come you switch from OmniPod five?

Speaker 1 14:23
The biggest motivator for us is we wanted him on the g7 and it was not compatible. Still, at this point, is not compatible with the OmniPod five, but we still wanted an algorithm. I also like that DIY includes a few more features that OmniPod five at this time doesn't have available, for example, the caregiver us on our phones being able to see his current insulin on board and carbs on board, and things. And the fact that I just think DIY loop has a better handle on all of the different variables of. OmniPod of diabetes compared to OmniPod five. So the fact that you get to choose kind of how the carbs are expected to impact him with timing, OmniPod five was not as adaptable to the changing needs of our young child as we needed it to be. So for example, you know, let's say Halloween, where he likes to eat, you know, 200 carbs or so, then we'd see OmniPod five being more aggressive over the next week or so, because it saw that his insulin needs rose after that day. Versus, I feel like with DIY loop, we have more of an opportunity to manage and adjust for expected changes. So for me,

Scott Benner 15:45
I'm sorry, almost like if you could just tell OmniPod five, hey, this is an excursion we expected, right? Yes, yeah, this isn't a trend change. This is a this is a steak and a potato and and ice cream like that kind of thing. Yeah, yes.

Speaker 1 15:58
I certainly don't think DIY loop is for everyone, but for us, it's been great because we're willing to put in the time to learn about all the variables and all of the different insulin to carb ratio and the correction factor, all the different parts and pieces that you have to kind of fine tune. I think for someone who knows and understands those as thoroughly as you can, loop makes a lot of sense, because you can manipulate them in ways that work for your case, or your child versus OmniPod five. You kind of leave a lot of it to the system to handle, which I'm not very good at, and I don't think in our case, worked as well. It's

Scott Benner 16:35
kind of funny that how companies, I'm not even just singling one out here, but how companies sometimes like, you know, we'll take it over, like, we'll automate it. And you're like, I'd like to be able to see the switches and the and the and the knobs, if you don't mind, because I might want to turn one of them. But they, you know, I get their point too, and I also see their perspective. You listen to this podcast, and you would think that everybody that has type one diabetes is out there, just like, I know what to do. I'll make my instant sensitivity 1.5 weaker. And I'm gonna do like that most people are not in that scenario. And, you know, if you can put them in an automated system, it keeps them, you know, in a somewhere in a six, A, 1c, like, Geez, what a godsend, really, you know. And I think maybe that's the market there that they find themselves in and I understand that

Speaker 1 17:23
I'm a health care provider, I'm an audiologist, so I work with families with different medical needs, and so I I kind of understand the spectrum of what caretakers are are taking on in different roles. So I agree with you that for the vast majority of people, the algorithms that are available on the market are fantastic for us, people like me who want a little bit more tweaking and control. Yeah, why is Yeah,

Scott Benner 17:46
you like to have access. I mean, listen audiology. So if you put, I don't know, a hearing aid on somebody who doesn't completely understand how it works, they just missed, like, part of the Rockford Files, you know, like, it's not like their blood sugar is going to get super low or something like that. So, you know, it's, but it is really about people's ability. You can't make a thing for everybody. It just, it just won't work that way. So you make something that's safe for the most amount of, I guess, targeted audience, right? You know, it's, um, but, but I take your point. Look, Arden uses Iaps right now, and if something better came along, I'd go to that. I mean, like, I'd be, like, let me try this. Like, I thought loop was terrific, but Iaps works like, really well. So

Speaker 1 18:33
I've, I've heard a little about that one and considered it, but I haven't done enough looking into it to find out if it would do anything better for us or not, what's

Scott Benner 18:41
your outcomes with loop and g7 like

Speaker 1 18:45
good, I have a hard time keeping up with the changes, and I'm hopeful that as he gets bigger, that might get better, until we hit puberty. Then I'm sure it's going to be crazy for several years. But for us, I feel like we'll nail things down and it's going well, and the blood sugar's doing what you expected to do. And then the next day, he things go crazy. And then two days later, you find out, Oh, he was getting a stomach bug. And then, of course, with a stomach bug, things are messed up for weeks afterwards. And with a five year old in school, I feel like that's constantly happening because there's

Scott Benner 19:17
dirty little I was going to curse, but those dirty little kids are like, they're always getting each other sick.

Speaker 1 19:22
Yes, I think we've had four stomach bugs this year, and that's the worst one to try to manage. So we should

Scott Benner 19:30
be able to rename them without them having a say. That's what I think. At this point, we're

Unknown Speaker 19:36
satisfied with everyone's names.

Scott Benner 19:37
No, I mean even other people's children. I'd like to, like, just walk around and be like, You look more like a hiring. So you mentioned the stomach bugs and things are different afterwards. For you. Is it a lower need of insulin afterwards? Generally?

Speaker 1 19:51
Yeah. So usually, when a stomach bug happens for the few days, he's in it, our insulin needs are very, very minimal, I'd say. A third to a fourth of what he's usually doing, and then we've had stomach bugs where he's been at like half of his insulin needs for four or six weeks after. I don't know if that's typical, but it's definitely been the case for us, or sometimes a few days later, it slowly goes back up to normal, and then we're fine, but you never quite know which one it's going to be.

Scott Benner 20:20
Yeah, you hear that story so much. I wonder if somebody's studying that, you know, trying to figure out what that, what that is. Because, I mean, if we could just keep everybody low level sick,

Speaker 2 20:31
they'd use less insulin. Pros and cons of that, yeah. I mean, you know, the downside, of course, is the nausea and vomiting and stuff like that. When you said you wanted to get to the g7

Scott Benner 20:43
why? Why were you hot to get to it?

Speaker 1 20:45
So I guess I'm a little torn, because I don't know how honest I should be about our Dexcom. Hold on

Scott Benner 20:51
a second. Let me be clear about something I don't care. Just say what happened to you. Like, Listen, if Dexcom or any of my sponsors stopped buying ads because somebody came on here and told their honest opinion of what happened. I would probably call them out on it afterwards. I'd probably say, Hey, you're not going to hear ads from blah blah blah anymore because they had a little fcking, you know, nutty after somebody said blah blah blah because, I mean, these things just don't work the same for everybody. And I say it all the time, Dexcom just works for Arden, yeah, I've talked to people who can't get a decent reading out of a CGM Dexcom libre doesn't know. It's like their body chemistry doesn't work with the CGMS for some reason, so I don't know why, but yeah, tell your story. Go ahead. What would we say in church? Testify. Go ahead. Testify. Got

Speaker 1 21:38
it. Yes. I'll testify. So I do, like you said, I think we're in a very small minority of people, but I do see other stories similar to ours online. So my best guess is that Dexcom just does not jive super well with his body chemistry. For he started Dexcom in May of 2021 so very early on in our diabetes journey, he's been wearing it continually since then, and for, I'd say, three or four months, it worked well. We would get the 10 days aside from adhesive issues, which, with a three year old, things come off. But in the fall of 2021 our our sensors just stopped lasting for 10 days. I'd say, since then, I've had less than 10 sensors that have made it to 10 days. And it's a variety of things that happen for us. The I'd say the most common one is day four or five, but sometimes earlier or later, we just start getting sensor errors that pop on, pop off, pop on, pop off. So then you're not really getting any usable data for several hours. And then, I don't know, we've had a few times where we've waited that out for long enough that it's gotten back on. But sometimes you wait it out and then it ends in the sensor failure. And sometimes you wait it out and just give up. Well, with a sensor error, no. The guidelines I have for myself, as far as calibrating is, I only try to calibrate it if we're getting good, continuous data, and it's like straight as it can be, and if we're having off readings. But this is just with the sensor areas where we're not getting, you know, it'll go for a while, and then it'll just be blank for an hour, 30 minutes, or whatever. That happens most commonly, but we also pretty frequently have sensors that just start reading artificially low. And it's not because of compression. It's just, you know, he's coasting along at 100, 120 or something, but his sensor is reading 4050, and those I do try to calibrate, but sometimes it works, and most of the times it doesn't, and we'll just have it looking like that for hours, and then eventually need to change it, especially with, you know, an automated system that's not helpful. Yeah, with the g6 I'd say on average, sensors would last five or six days for us, and we're switching to something else. Thankfully, Dexcom has always been very good about replacing if we need to pull it early for some reason, but we were hoping switching from g6 to g7 would eliminate the issues, which didn't end up happening. I would say it's better, but we have the improvement that we do see is we don't have to wait the two hour warm up time when we are switching from one sensor to another. So that's been helpful with the g7 to have just a 30 minute warm up, or even shorter at some times. So yeah, that was our biggest motivation. I mentioned in the web page. I think that when I wrote into that, we also did use the FreeStyle Libre for a bit, and mostly we never, we never got off of Dexcom. But we could get the libre and either, like a couple times, our endos office gave us a sample to try, or we would purchase it out of pocket, so that, let's say we were going on a vacation or something where we wanted to not have to worry about the Dexcom issues. We could. Uh, have the Dexcom on him. And then if we started having issues, we would put a libre on him as well, and be able to, you know, track what was going on that. How

Scott Benner 25:08
did you find the libre good? We the libre

Speaker 1 25:11
three was fantastic. It worked really well for him. It's teeny tiny. The thing I don't love about libre compared to Dexcom, is the alerts and alarms, they're not as customizable. And I just, yeah, I don't, I don't feel ready to make a switch. And I know as far as looping goes at this time, it's not as compatible with loop. There are ways to do it, but it's just more of a workaround. So we've stuck with Dexcom, but not sure what the future will look like. We we did not have issues as far as like sensor errors and the readings being off with the libre that we've had with the Dexcom. But I'm not sure if that's just because we only used it occasionally, or Yeah, or whatnot.

Scott Benner 25:56
But How great is it to go into the loop settings and just be like, I'm gonna wear a g6 No, I'm gonna wear a g7 that just like, switches, yeah, yes. And then the other companies are like, we can't get this to work. I'm like, I mean, a guy got it to work,

Unknown Speaker 26:12
you probably could, yeah. I

Scott Benner 26:13
mean, I hope to one day meet the person. But whoever Ivan is, like, he's my go to name. Like, Ivan figured it out. I love it. I just love it when they're like, it's hard to make something work with Android. It's hard to make something work with Apple. It's hard. I'm like, Ah, the guy did it, right? Ivan, he did Yes. Ivan, Hey, Ivan, if you're out there, man, big fan, yes, absolutely. But yeah, isn't that fascinating? Like, just really, like, like, oh, we can't get it straight. I'm like, you can't like, or we can't get it through the FDA, or it's taken forever. I know, listen, I know. Ivan doesn't have to go to a governing body afterwards and say, Uh, hey, this, uh, you guys happy with this and test it with however many people, etc, but, um, have you ever once heard somebody in the DIY community complain about some catastrophic failure, commiserate with what the retail companies are telling you that they're worried about? And no, like, I've never heard someone say like, Oh my God. Like, you know, they made it work with the g7 but it's unreliable, or it's about it just, you know, hold on a second. I have to text Arden sure she thinks she knows something. I just had to let her know she didn't All right, now she knows how she realizes again, that I'm that the parent is always right, yes, that I know things she doesn't know. Oh, she was very, uh, she was very nice about it. That's good. Oh, good. Sometimes they fight. They think, actually, that's more me, my wife's like, you're still arguing. You know you're wrong. I'm like, I know, but I think my argument is rock solid. She's at school. She needed two tires on her car. Hold on a second, and so she took it to a dealership first. And I was like, Oh, don't do that. And they, you know, the price wasn't bad. Can I read this on a podcast recording? I hope she lets me

Speaker 1 28:11
I was gonna say, I think she's gonna say no, based

Scott Benner 28:15
on like, this would be so funny. You know her better. So, so I said, um, they wanted to put the same damn tire on the car that rotted out from under the car, like the first time. And I'm like, no, like, we're gonna go get better, like, better tires. So I told her, I'm gonna send you to a place up the street, I'm gonna have them order tires, and you can have them put on right? And so it's just now she texts and goes, the price here wasn't that much better than the other price. And I said, No, but these are better tires. And and she goes, Okay, gotcha. And then I'm done. Oh God, I want to redo what she just said, Oh my god, okay, I'll go back to it shows if she, I hope she lets me read this. It's so interesting doing stuff like distance wise with her, yeah, you know, because she's very far away. And so I was like, Oh, I'll get I'll take care of ordering them, like I said, I'll move money into your account that you can pay, like, pay with. And she's like, okay, but then, you know, this is her day off, so this is the one day a week she doesn't have classes. Okay, oh, I can read this all right, okay, I'll say thank you. How long until you're home? Okay, so the price here was not that much different. I said better tires than they were, and then they were going to use. Gotcha ready. It is 11:26am on a Friday, and I am at Discount Tire. My makeup from yesterday is on my face. My boobs are half out, and doja cat is playing.

Unknown Speaker 29:49
That's quite a picture.

Scott Benner 29:52
She speaks in words like a pictures. Excuse me anyway. So this is where she's at, not bothering me, by the way, she knows I'm recording. But that didn't seem to stop her. Well, yeah, yeah, they told her that she'd be in and out in an hour, and now they're telling her an hour and a half. Oh, I think she'll live through it, since I'm paying, since I'm paying for the tires, back to the CGM thing. So you tried libre. Liked it, but had limited case, you know, use for you didn't use it a ton. So you didn't, you weren't dissatisfied with Dexcom enough to be like, let's just keep using the libres.

Speaker 1 30:27
Yes, yes. Well, Dexcom, despite the issues that we have, it, is the most flexible as far as connecting to the pump, which is non negotiable for us, and then having different alerts and alarms on his phone versus our phones, and just being able to keep up with, yeah, with the alarm. So we're, we've always been on Dexcom. We're, I will say, so thankful for it. And I know people who have had diabetes for decades like, you know this is a non issue, and I'm sure it is, but, yeah, it's been good to us, despite the difficult.

Scott Benner 31:04
It's interesting to hear people who are more newly diagnosed talk about technology because you don't have like you didn't have to, like your kid, didn't shoot, you know, regular and mph and do the exchange diet or whatever. So this is the world you were dropped into. They tell you, Hey, this is what the thing does. And when the thing doesn't do it all the time, you're like, hey, you told me it did that. And so, I mean, I always say I don't have one piece of technology that really works exactly the way they say it's going to. I have, like, even down to my monitors on my computer, like, sometimes they just won't wake up. I don't know why. I have to pull the video cable out of the back of the back of the computer and plug it back in to get the monitor to come back on. I want to be clear with you, the monitor cost 800 goddamn dollars. It should work. You know what I mean. And if you're like, oh my god, $800 it's big, wide monitor because I'm old and I have to edit on and I can't see a goddamn thing. So don't give me about my monitor being expensive, but it doesn't work all the time, and it my phone freezes for reasons I don't understand, and stuff reboots all the time, and blah, blah, blah. And then when something related to health does that, we're like, oh, like, we're all just like, like, you know, we act like we're a virgin. And we're like, oh my God, I don't believe this is happening. It is what it is like. Should it be No. Do we want it to get better? Yes, but you go ahead and live without a CGM for a year after having one, and tell me if you wouldn't take a couple of false readings? Yep, yeah, absolutely. And the one thing I can never quantify for people is you hear this question a lot from people who are considering algorithms, if I lose my CGM signal, like, what happens, or if it's reading falsely high or falsely low, like, aren't I going to get too much insulin or not enough insulin? And the only answer I've ever had that I know is not satisfactory is my daughter's been doing this a long time. It's never really been a problem.

Speaker 1 32:54
Yeah, yeah. I agree. When we're having issues, we'll just turn off the algorithm for a bit. One thing that's really nice with DIY loop is, if we are having times when we don't have the data we need, we can go in and enter a manual blood sugar, and then it still is kind of considering that when it's making its decision. So that's been nice, but yeah, it's I feel like using the algorithm 90 95% of the time is great. And then when we need to turn it off for a little bit because our technology is being unruly, then, then

Scott Benner 33:27
that's what it is, yeah, and listen, and if it happens all the time, I get it. But you're also, like, I said this once on a recording, but I said it with a guy from Dexcom, so I imagine that cynical people thought I was defending them. But I really think this, like, it's a piece of like technology, like metal and plastic and electronics intersecting with the liquid in your body, right? Like, just be amazed by it. Like you don't even just stand back and go, I can't believe this does this fascinating. And instead, people are like, mine only makes it eight days or something, you know, and then I'll be like, did they send you new ones to go? Yeah, I'm like, so you tell me you had to send an email. Is this the, this is your hardship? Like, so I don't know. I'd like to hear about the diagnosis that you that you had with your son, and because you said it was during potty training, and you said that, like it was specific, I want

Speaker 1 34:23
to know why. Yes, I in my head, I think we, we potty trained him into DKA. It was when you look back, you can see the signs of diabetes. Had already kind of settled in for weeks, but we had scheduled this weekend to do potty training with him, and the method that we used was essentially pumping him full of liquids so that he would have to go to the bathroom a lot and then practice using the toilet. Okay? And so that included juice and, you know, high sugar, things that we didn't usually have around. And so we were just kind of. Was through the potty training process, giving him a lot of extra fast acting carbs that we didn't know were just trying to kill him. So it was a Friday, we started potty training, and then through the weekend, and then that Monday, I believe, was when we finally brought him into the pediatrician and ended up at the hospital after that. And you know, he was not doing well before again, when you look back, you can see the signs, but it was, I think, that extra that made him go into DK and have the by the time we were there, he was having the respirations, the shallow breathing and just was not staying awake and things like that. And I did have some background knowledge of diabetes, but I kept kind of writing it off over the previous weeks. And I do remember at one point in the potty training process, he said that he didn't want the juice anymore. And in the back of my head, I said, Man, if this really is diabetes, then this kid is like evolved enough to know that this is not good for his body. But I didn't. I didn't know I was still writing it off. You know, I didn't know enough about the seriousness of it to actually take the next step. But it was just,

Scott Benner 36:13
you have to tell me why you thought diabetes what it was your background knowledge.

Speaker 1 36:17
I had dated someone when I was 17, 1819, who had type one. So that's another interesting story. Yeah, so that. And then I also, I was in an organization in college, and the the philanthropy that the organization had was JDRF, so I knew, yeah, maybe

Scott Benner 36:36
you've been destined to this for some reason, I

Speaker 1 36:38
guess so. Yeah, I obviously, well, I married someone different from that Boyfriend Back in the day, and ended up still with a child with type one diabetes. The odds

Scott Benner 36:49
can't get away from this Exactly. How long did you date that kid?

Speaker 1 36:53
Um, it was a couple of years. He was young too, so and was not managing his diabetes or handling his diabetes well. So it's very interesting to think about that time versus being in a totally different role and and caring for diabetes. But he was kind of in that stage of he was diagnosed in his teens, and then now this was, he was an old teen or young 20 something, and was in the stage of not wanting to do anything about it, just wanting to ignore it, kind of a thing. So

Scott Benner 37:22
did your experience in that dating experience? Did it make you think diabetes was something that it wasn't or were you even aware back then that he wasn't doing well enough for himself?

Speaker 1 37:32
I was aware that he was not doing well for himself. I'm sure it. It colored how I interpreted diabetes at the beginning, but I think that probably changed quickly as I gathered much more knowledge about it. But at that time he was he was on MDI. He really wanted a an insulin pump, but the way his parents, who were the in the insurance carriers in the family, they wouldn't let him get an insulin pump until he was doing better with his management. So we were in that kind of cycle of, you know, he didn't, he wanted to ignore it, but you can't really, well, you can never ignore it. But with MDI, you have to be pretty, you know, doing the injections all the time. And that was one big thing that he had a hard time with, and just coping with the fact that he had diabetes, is that, you know, every time I have to eat or I want to eat something, I have to take an injection. And so it was, it was not a good situation. I know he was in DKA at least once during our when we were dating. And then he just was always, I think, running high. So of course,

Scott Benner 38:32
I don't ever understand that perspective. I know that if they think somebody's just not taking care of themselves, their concern is, if we take them off MDI and they don't put their pump on, or they let their pump run out of insulin, they're going to go into DKA and drop dead. So at least if they're injecting their basal insulin, they've got something going but, boy, that's such a least common nut denominator way of thinking about things. You know, yeah. I mean, it sounds more to me like this kid just didn't want to inject insulin all the time, but insulin all the time with a needle, like, give him a pump so he could push a button. Yeah. And then people are so certain, like, we're not gonna let you do this until that I'm like, What do you know about anything? You know? You mean, like, everybody's got opinions. I mean, I have a ton of opinions, but, you know, I'm saying, okay, so looking forward. I mean, Paul's pretty young still. Yeah. How involved is he in his management?

Speaker 1 39:27
Pretty much zero at this point. He is welcome to be involved like every once while. I'll see if he wants to do his finger stick or things like that, because he can do it, but he's just not interested. He wants things to be done as quickly as possible so he can move on to something else. The one thing I've been thinking I need to focus on a little bit more with him is having him practice and understand that he can't just eat things without thinking about it ahead of time, because we try to, when we're managing his diabetes at home, we try not to make it a big deal, you know, like. I'm not talking every time before we have a meal about like, Oh, I'm giving your insulin now and things like that. But I think that can have consequences. As far as he could be out and about, and someone could offer him a cookie and he wouldn't think anything, you know, like, if his cousin, when we're visiting gave him a cookie or something, he would just eat it and not think about it. So that's one thing. I think he's ready for some more responsibility. But overall, he's not involved.

Scott Benner 40:22
Are you gonna go with that? Basically, the way I did it, just kind of talk out loud about it until it seems like it's commonplace. Yeah, probably, yeah. I think. I mean, it worked for Arden. I don't know. I don't know if it'll work for everybody else, but yeah, I am stunned at her level of understanding, sometimes based on how little effort she appears to put into understanding it, you

Speaker 1 40:45
know, just became a background of how she lived her life. Just

Scott Benner 40:49
seems like she knows, yeah, to the point where now, if you, like, text her and you're like, Hey, she's like, I gotta leave me alone. Stop. I'm like, All right, fine. Like, she's like, Do you really think she said to me one time? Do you really think my blood sugar's 60 and I'm not doing anything about it? I'm anything about it? I'm like, No,

Speaker 1 41:04
as a parent, though you sometimes do you like, go to worst case scenario, but

Scott Benner 41:08
yeah, no, of course. Like, I'll say no, I genuinely believe you are. But if, for some reason, that CGM is wrong and you're actually 30 and it came on you quickly and you didn't realize it, or you're asleep or something like that, then, I mean, I feel it feels incumbent upon me to do this. And she's like, I took care of it already. I'm like, Okay. She'll be like, I'm fine. This thing's wrong. She'll say that sometimes, though. And I'm like, Just test, uh, test like, Orange. Just test real quick. Fine.

Speaker 1 41:44
Yeah, I do think too about where management will be in 13 years. I you know, I don't anticipate we'll have a cure by then, as I've heard from so many people that that was promised for so long, but I'm sure things will be different. So just thinking about him being off on his own, and who knows how long, it seems pretty far away at this point. I'm sure.

Scott Benner 42:06
I hope that every one of those pump companies is working on an AI based system to Yeah, to learn that can actually kind of learn your situation, learn the variables and make adjustments I'm seeing. So I'll tell you this now, because it's nobody's gonna hear it for six months, and then it's just between you and I, and you seem like I could just tell you, like you're gonna go to hell if you say this and you won't say it. So I've just signed an agreement with a company. It's a startup, but they're going to index my entire podcast, and they have a proprietary AI system that pulls information from the entirety of the podcast, and so you'll get a prompt on a website where you can ask it a question and that it'll It's like, it's like, you're Googling just the juicebox podcast, if that makes sense, yeah. And so I'm hoping that that's going to be a way that people can ask diabetes questions to, you know, to this thing. And of course, you know it's going to be, it's a tough decision that I made, because it could be wrong. First of all, I could be wrong. It could misinterpret something that was correctly said, like, who knows, right? So it's gonna, you know, it's gonna be disclaimer doubts out the ass, basically. But at the same time, you know, when you Google something, nothing says you're gonna get the right answer back, right? You know, I think the world understands that. Now and then, I just entered into something with another company. They are developing an AI doctor. So, I mean, that's actually like a pay like service where you'll be able to, again, ask an AI doctor questions. And they wanted to incorporate the podcast into their database as well. I haven't agreed to that yet. I've entered into an agreement with them to be like, they'll come to me when they have questions with the consultant. I've entered into a consulting agreement with them, in case you're all like, oh my god, it pays nothing. So just be like, switch to I have a quarter percent of a stock if this company goes, you know, to bazillion dollars, then Scotty, then I'll be I'll be rich then. And that's probably not going to happen. No disrespect to the gentleman who's working, you know, his his ass off on it, but it's just, you know, unlikely. But if it goes public and it goes big, I'll make some money that way. This is not a thing where I'm going to make money if somebody uses it or not. I've been thinking about this now for a couple of years. Yeah, you know, I was listening to a couple of interviews with people talking about AI, and I kept thinking, like, what if this large language model was just trained on the podcast like this? I don't imagine. There isn't anything that we haven't talked about in here, right? You know. And one of the biggest problems that I've seen over the last 15 or so years being in this space is these people, like, write these amazing blog posts, and then they're gone. Like, you know, they're read by 20 people, they're read by 100 people, they're, you know, and it's gone. Or somebody puts up this thoughtful post on Instagram, people like, oh my god, that really helped me. And then 24 hours later, it doesn't exist anymore. This keeps happening. We keep you know, I put all this information together. If I stop making the podcast, people like, Why do you put out so many episodes? I'm like, if the podcast doesn't stay popular, the information dies. Like, so I put the podcast out every day so that hopefully it's more of an entertainment thing for people that's mixed in with diabetes, and honestly, then I'm looking to basically trick you into taking care of yourself, or almost the way I tricked Arn into understanding diabetes. Basically, I'm doing to you guys what I did to her, and I'm just talking about diabetes out loud without you feeling like you're being like spoken to by a teacher, I guess. Yeah, the idea. And so I want this stuff to stay behind, and they're telling me that it's not crazy to think that one day you'll ask it a question, and that it'll literally answer in my voice. Oh, and I'm like, that's creepy, but yeah, I do want that. I don't know how they would make that happen, because I've recorded my voice so much it can be sampled, like, like an algorithm will actually be able to just rebuild my voice from the sounds that I've already made. It'll be like, you're a robot, yeah, but my kids will be able to talk to me when I'm dead, even if, as long as they only ask about, No, probably not. Isn't that an interesting question. So are your parents with us? You're young. They are right. Beth. You seem like an older person with your measurements, like your your personality, you come off in your 40s. Are you the person I'm thinking? Are you very responsible and even tempered and that kind of stuff? Yeah, it's how you sound. Did you know people sound like that? I guess

Speaker 1 47:01
I wouldn't say people sound like that, but in having a long enough conversation, I guess you would get that vibe.

Scott Benner 47:06
I get it from you right away, just from the sound of your voice. I'm very happy to jump to conclusion people like you shouldn't generalize. I'm like, that's how I do everything. It

Unknown Speaker 47:14
works a lot of

Scott Benner 47:16
fun. Like you, I shouldn't do that. It's all I do. Yeah. So like, would you go to a prompt at a computer and talk to a dead relative, knowing that it's not really them, but it's got so much of their thoughts and conversations archived that it could approximate how they would answer?

Speaker 1 47:36
So I'm not my first thought in that would be, I probably wouldn't do that for someone like my husband or my parents, who I, you know, spent my life with and got to talk with them regularly, but like maybe my grandmother, who passed away when I was young, just to, like, get more quote, unquote, time with her. But not sure,

Scott Benner 47:59
I think, I think overall, it's interesting and valuable. I think if you got confused into believing you were actually talking to that person, then it would borderline on sad and creepy. But, yeah, but imagine if you had that like, I'm not trying to brush your husband out the door, but imagine your husband's gone right, and you knew that you could ask that prompt certain questions, and it would answer, and he would say something like, Beth, I love you and I miss you, yeah? Like, you might do that, yeah, probably the picture of my mom in my office. It doesn't talk to me, but yeah, I do have some of her voicemails, yeah, and I listen to them sometimes, and it makes me feel nice when she's like, I'll call you later. And I think, Oh, I'm gonna talk to my mom later. Yeah, yeah. And then I know I'm not really going to, but it feels nice for a second. Would my kids jump onto this? Listen? I can say this. I think if there's a portal online that Arden can go ask it diabetes questions as she's growing up, and my voice answers her back, I think it would be really nice. Yeah,

Speaker 1 49:06
yeah. I'm curious to see how that ends up, like what the answers will be, and how the AI will take into account podcast episodes that are older versus newer. You know, because a question could be asked now and the answer would be potentially different than what it was five years ago. But, well,

Scott Benner 49:26
yeah, that would be for you to dig through. But I'm going to tell you, I've seen the returns that come back, and they are astonishingly accurate and valuable, nice, uh, astonishing, yeah. So imagine this too, with the AI doctor, which will be called, I think it's called, it's going to be called Vision AI. It's going to have access to your live CGM data. So how about when I demoed it? It was hooked to a live person, and I said to it, hey, what's my blood sugar? And it said, your blood sugar is currently 78 it's been stable for the last blah, blah, blah, like it. Laid out my blood sugar, and I said, Do you think I'm gonna get low in the next hour? And it said that it didn't expect that we were gonna get low in the next hour, but that if I was concerned about it, I should have this many carbs right now. And I was like, God, damn, really? And this is not, like, fully fleshed out yet, like it's still being built. And I said, um, I'm going to eat a 60 carb meal. How much should I bolus and how long should I wait before I begin to eat? And it gave me a number for both. Well, so if you don't know what you're doing, imagine if it if it knew, and then eventually maybe you'd learn, and you could stop paying for the service and move on. And

Speaker 1 50:43
I guess the hope with AI is that it could incorporate more variables than like the current algorithms do. Oh,

Scott Benner 50:50
yeah, like where you are, what restaurant you're at, what was your outcome the last time you ate at this restaurant on a Friday versus what was your outcome the last time you ate at this restaurant on a Tuesday

Speaker 1 51:00
or even, like your activity low, like your heart rate over the last couple hours, and how that might,

Scott Benner 51:05
right? Yeah, that's what I'm talking about. Yeah. I don't see any reason why it couldn't do that. I was in a meeting the other day about one of these companies, and I asked the question, I can't be specific. I was like, Can it do this? And the guy goes, no, but asked me again in six months, oh, like that, quickly, quickly, yeah. And I was like, okay, he goes six months from now to be able to do that. Wow, my God, damn. What is it? I don't understand that's happening in the world. You know what I mean. So anyway, I don't know good or bad how it's going to be, but I think this is the direction that I'm seeing things going in. I kind of want to be along for the ride to see what happens. Yeah, definitely. We'll see what happens. And I want you all to know if that stock should go public and make me rich. The first thing I'm going to do, and I hope they're not listening, is I'm going to drop all my advertisers, so I don't have to do that anymore. And I'm just going to make the podcast. I'm going to be like, Oh my god, I finally don't have to make those ads anymore. Not that I don't love the advertisers. They're actually all really terrific and very supportive and wonderful. And I'm not saying a bad thing about them. It's just so much extra work. Well,

Speaker 1 52:11
if the advertisers are listening, we did choose OmniPod, mostly because of the juicebox podcast. I was really thinking T slim, but my husband was hooked by that so see, they'll stay on,

Scott Benner 52:23
shut up and send me money. No, I'm just kidding. You should hear how they complain to me, Doc, not OmniPod, but some of them, your clicks are down this month. I'm like, leave me alone. Your blah, blah, blah rate is this one company was like, like, I said, I'm selling these things in the doctor's office, not online. I'm like, No one's buying that online. Like, stop it. Yeah, they get. People get into the doctor's office and they're asked a question, and people go, Oh, you know what I've heard, I'd like try this, please. Like, you think people are going online to buy glucagon? Like as an example, like, who's doing that? You know what I mean? No one, no one. But the world's all metric stuff, anybody who doesn't have to be involved in advertising and all of the pressure that comes with it, like, Count yourself lucky, because, yes, I basically feel like I work for every one of the advertisers, yeah, like so you know, when your boss expects something from you and how much pressure that is, I have 10 people that treat me that way, so it ain't fun. Yeah, Beth, what did I not let you talk about that you wanted to

Speaker 1 53:33
talk about. I didn't want to talk about managing a young child with diabetes. And I know that's a huge, broad topic, but the thing that always comes to mind for me when I'm listening to these episodes of parents who are managing their children is, it seems to me that for a young child who's smaller in stature weight and therefore has generally lower insulin needs for us, one little misstep can impact their blood sugar, and it seems like such a bigger way. So for example, with Paul, especially when he was younger, if we missed by point one units of insulin, you know that was going to impact his blood sugar probably 50 points down the road, versus an older child, I would imagine, like Arden now, maybe wouldn't even point one unit. It wouldn't make a difference, right, right? So I don't know. I've been trying to come up with a good metaphor for it, and the only I'm hoping maybe you have an idea, because the only thing for me that comes to mind is thinking about reality shows like Survivor, where they're trying to do those competitions. And I'm thinking like with a an older child. So the vision in my head is someone trying to balance on, like a flat, like a plate, but it's totally flat, trying to balance the ball without the ball falling off the edges. And I think about an older child being like a pool, like a billiards ball that's heavier. And, you know. Know, even if you shift it a little way, still have a decent amount of leverage to get it back where you needed to go, versus, like a ping pong ball, this small child that's, you know, the wind blows and it's off the edge. But I don't know that's one thing that for me, it's been hard listening to the podcast episodes and trying to compare my situation to others, and just feeling like, even though I'm trying my best we end up so veered off to the side so often, but I do think a part of that is just because he's small.

Scott Benner 55:26
Okay, so my my question is, I get this sometimes, not just on this topic, not just like you know you're talking about this, but my kids younger, I get well, everything seems like you're talking about pumping, but I'm on MDR or, you know, this is outdated, like, this is a conversation about loop from three years ago. I wish people could understand, and they will, after time, it's all the same in one way or another. It's all timing and amount. That really is the truth. Like, everything about managing insulin is using the right amount of insulin at the right time, whether it's point one, you know, or 20 units, or something like that. The basis of the ideas are all the same. Now, what happens afterwards? Feels different when your kid's younger, when they're smaller, when they're more active, less active, etc, when to an adult versus a kid, but the bedrock of it is always going to be the same, yeah, even when it's one day in magic algorithm that is like, oh, you're a Pizza Hut. And the last time you were a Pizza Hut, it took this many units to blah, blah, blah. Like, it's all still going to be timing an amount true. That's it. So the way I figure it is, there's nothing really to say to you as I mean, unless I'm missing the boat, there's nothing I can say to you that's going to help you in the current situation you're in, other than to tell you you're going to have an amazing understanding of how insulin works. He's going to put on weight, and these small amounts are not going to mean the same anymore. Yeah, it'll get better, and that will come more quickly than you believe. Yeah, that's pretty much it like, there, there are some questions around these, these diabetes things that don't have answers. And sometimes the answer is, wait till the honeymoon ends, or wait till you gain 10 pounds, that kind of stuff, like, so I don't know, like, it sucks. I mean, I had a little kid with diabetes. Arden was two when she was diagnosed, and it was, you know, and we used the, I did the whole thing with syringes. Yeah, I didn't even have a pen. As a matter of fact, Arden's never used an insulin pen. And people find that, like, astonishing, but I don't know what happened. Like, nobody ever said to me, do you want to try an insulin pen? I was like, Oh, this is fine. I just got, I just got syringes that did half units. This will be okay, yeah. And when people say the MDI thing, it's frustrating to me sometimes, because I over and over again, I'll say, look, the only difference between MDI and pumping like just regular manual pumping, is that you can't do extended boluses. You can't do temp basals off and on, or higher and lower. And other than that, MDI is pretty much the same thing. Just you'll have to inject more often to accomplish these things. Yeah. And they're like, Well, I want more MDI content. I'm like, that was it right there? Like, that sentence is the MDI content. And I think people don't believe that. I think I think sometimes they think I'm ignoring them, sure, because everybody uses pumps, but the truth is, is most people don't use pumps. Did you know that, like, people with type one diabetes mostly inject, makes sense? Yeah. You just, you're hearing a podcast where people talk about, you know, like, kind of high level management stuff all the time. So you see more people with pumps? Yeah, yeah. So, I mean, I don't know, feed that kid more. Stretch him out. Get a Time Machine. Jump forward. Yeah. Is he very active? Does he have like, five he's not really doing a lot of sports or anything. Is he No,

Speaker 1 58:53
no organized sports, no. But he does like to run around and get sweaty and, yeah, active.

Scott Benner 58:59
Make his blood sugar go down. Yeah, absolutely. Make you cry in the bathroom. I

Speaker 1 59:04
know the trampoline can be the best and the worst thing, depending on what the blood sugar is at when you start.

Scott Benner 59:09
How would you say that you're dealing with it, like, like, emotionally, generally,

Speaker 1 59:13
good. But I do have times where it seems like everything's changing and we don't have a handle on it, that it feels really hard. I haven't had any times where I would say I was burnt out, or, you know, totally overwhelmed. But there's just, there's days and moments that feel like it's a lot, too much. No, I wouldn't say too much. Just I'm I maybe it's personality thing, but it's kind of just, it is what it is, right? It's not like you can pretend it doesn't exist.

Scott Benner 59:44
Did you grow up in a very blue collar way,

Speaker 1 59:48
moderately? Yeah. Okay, yeah. And I guess to me, one thing that does feel like a big blessing with how young he was diagnosed, is that we as his parents came. Can be the ones shouldering most of the burden. You know, of course, he's the one living it and experiencing in his body, but the fact that we can be the ones who are investing the time and figuring out the right technologies and the right dosages and all of that stuff and that he can just be oblivious to it, I'm thankful for that.

Scott Benner 1:00:20
I agree. I think that they need to understand, but they don't need to be burdened, and especially at five. Like, you know, I mean, what the hell are we expecting from him? Yeah, you know what? I mean, seriously, I love, I love when you hear people's like, well, it's their disease. I'm like, well, she's seven. Like, I mean, she can't get her room clean. We should put her in charge of extended boluses. I'm not sure. Yeah, I think that sometimes people don't see the expanse of time that this process is going to take. Yeah, you know, like you're not trying to get to this by Friday, yeah, and it's not a thing. We're going to have this all straightened out by next summer. Like it's, it's a much slower process than that, true.

Speaker 1 1:00:59
Yeah, I remember listening to the podcasts and being, you know, in the same kind of management role six months and a year into his diagnosis, and just thinking like, well, I already have so much knowledge and information like, how can it possibly get better? But I think just the and, you know, we're three years in now, so I'm hoping in the future, it'll be even more, but just the ability to see something happen over and over again and experience it. But that's almost what makes caregiving and thinking about passing off the caregiving role, either in the future or just to someone else, like at school or to some like a babysitter, hard is that I know I'm not perfect, but it's taken years of experience to get to where I am. So expecting someone else to, yeah, take that on is not easy, but then we get the benefit of having all the remote features and following opportunities and things. So

Scott Benner 1:01:57
yeah, no, it makes it makes the remote management so much easier, even just texting. I remember when I figured that out, I was like, wow, this really just leveled us up. Probably been years since I've said this on the podcast, but it really is about having an experience, learning from it, doing it again, over and over. And I don't just mean a couple days in a row or something like that. I mean over six months, a year, or two years, to the point where, like, I genuinely don't know what could happen with diabetes, that I wouldn't immediately know what the answer was to it, and that just comes from time, like and, and I've tried to explain it like by saying, you know, you don't walk out of a room with a closed door and think about, oh, I'm going To Turn the doorknob as you're walking towards it, right? It just happens. You just literally, you never consider that the room is closed, that the door is closed, and you somehow end up on the outside of it. And that's how diabetes feels to me now, like I just walk through life and whatever I'm intersected with with diabetes, my body, my brain, knows what to do automatically, yeah, but it takes a lot of time, yeah. And I used to have the greatest way of putting it, but at the end of the first Matrix movie, when Neo figures out the matrix and everyone's shooting at him, and suddenly he just freezes all the bullets in there and just kind of walks between them. That's how diabetes feels to me now, yeah, I see all the bullets, but I'm not going to walk into them, so it's not going to be a problem. Yeah. And I just make my way kind of ever slowly through them, just kind of brushing them aside, and then I come out the other end, and then the guy looks at you all weird. What was his name, Mr. Anderson. And then he knows I kicked his ass. And then diabetes is Mr. Anderson. There you go. Oh my God, that's what we're going to call your episode. Diabetes is Mr. Anderson, perfect. I mean, that's a little long. We'll figure it out. That's your job. Yes. Beth, thank you for putting that on my shoulders. Beth, listen to the thing I tell people all the time that's 100% true, is this is hard. It sucks. It's never not gonna suck, and it's never gonna be easy. But one day, you'll be so good at it, it might feel easy, and that's not bad, yeah, so just got to hang in and keep doing what you're doing. Yeah. Hey, you guys are sounds like you're doing great, actually, all right. Well, I really appreciate you doing this with me. Thank you very much.

Unknown Speaker 1:04:14
Thank you. You

Scott Benner 1:04:20
on this, Arden has been getting her diabetes supplies from us med for three years. You can as well usmed.com/juice box, or call 888-721-1514, my thanks to us, med for sponsoring this episode and for being long time sponsors of the juicebox podcast. There are links in the show notes and links at juicebox podcast.com to us, med and all the sponsors. Today's episode of The juicebox podcast is sponsored by the Dexcom g7 which now integrates with the tandem T slim x2 system. Learn more and get started today at Dexcom. Dot com slash juicebox,

if you or a loved one, was just diagnosed with type one diabetes, and you're looking for some fresh perspective, the bold beginning series from the juicebox podcast is a terrific place to start. That series is with myself and Jenny Smith. Jenny is a CD CES, a registered dietitian and a type one for over 35 years, and in the bowl beginning series, Jenny and I are going to answer the questions that most people have after a type one diabetes diagnosis. The series begins at episode 698, in your podcast player, or you can go to juicebox podcast.com and click on bold beginnings in the menu. I want to thank you so much for listening and remind you please subscribe and follow to the podcast wherever you're listening right now, if it's YouTube, Apple podcast, Spotify, or any other audio app, go hit follow or subscribe, whichever your app allows for and set up those downloads so you never miss an episode, especially an apple podcast. Go into your settings and choose download all new episodes. Thank you so much for listening. I'll be back very soon with another episode of The juicebox podcast. The episode you just heard was professionally edited by wrong way recording, wrongwayrecording.com. You.